Whitaker alleged, that the Jews crucified the God of the Patriarchs on Mount Calvary; and since his day, some have been heard to assert, that when Christ hung on the Cross, there was no God in heaven! Basil in 370, is said to be the first who taught the full equality of the Son to the Father-the equal deity of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son had not yet been asserted; but it was decreed in the second general council held at Constantinople, A. D. 381. This new discovery was added to the Nicene Creed-and thus, says Mosheim, "This council gave the finishing touch to what the Council of Nice had left imperfect; and fixed, in a full and determinate manner, the doctrine of three persons in one God." He appears, however, to have forgotten, says the Rev. Mr. Scott, of Portsmouth, "That neither the hypostatic union, nor the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as well as from the Father, had not yet been discovered." Pope Nicholas the First, A. D. 863, added the words, and the Son (filioque*) to the Nicene Creed. The Eastern Church would not receive this addition, and hence the Greek Trinity is less complete than that of the Roman and Lutheran." He REJECTS it, because it degrades the Father,+ and dishonours the Son. It degrades the Father, by imputing to him such conduct as is in opposition to all the sentiments and principles of right and wrong, which he has himself implanted in the heart of man. It makes the Son his rival, and in generosity of of character, his superior. It dishonours the Son by giving him titles and epithets which he disclaims-representing him as a being which he never affirmed himself to be-and by frequently contradicting his own plain and most positive declarations ::- The Son," said he, "can do nothing of himself." Nay, says Trinitarianism, he can do all things by his own sovereign underived power. "Of that day and of that hour," says Christ, "knoweth no man; no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Notwithstanding, replies Trinitarianism, he knows it as well as the Father himself; for he and the Father are one in "My Father," says Christ, "is greater than I." Here, essence. 66 "The addition to the Nicene Creed of filioque was projected in the seventh century, and not received by the Latin Church before the ninth." Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. iii. p. 62. +"All the indignities offered to the person of Christ were done to Jehovali, who was joined to that person, and his final sufferings on the cross denominated him by the sentence of the law, cursed. It is false to say this is only applicable to the humanity of Christ, for none but Jehovah could sustain our execration!"-Abstract of Hutchinson's Works, p. 198. This incomparable Trinitarian says, that "the self-contradicting notion of eternal generation, has confounded the Christian faith more than any other position." Id. 223. says Trinitarianism, he speaks not as a "whole and entire," but only as a part of himself; and when he says "I," we must not understand an individual being, as the singular pronoun I, in all other cases, signifies; but two beings, of one of which only, what he utters, can be true; for the other being is equal to the Father in all his attributes; and to deny it is an Arian and Socinian leprosy, and a soul-destroying heresy ! SECTION FIFTEENTH. The Superior Excellence, and cheering Prospects of Unitarianism. THE Unitarian turns with delight from the Trinitarian hypothesis, to the contemplation of his own simple and sublime faith. He pants to escape from the dank fogs of a dungeon, from the sepulchral lamp-light, and the sorcerer's spell, to view the ethereal vault, to respire the pure breeze, to hear the voice of nature, and enjoy the warm and cheering light of heaven. His soul feels emancipated from bondage; and he comes forth rejoicing in the benignant smile of the Father of all. His heart expands and thrills with emotions of love, to the Almighty ONE, his everlasting benefactor and friend. In the scheme of man's redemption, he beholds a scheme of ineffable love, planned by the great Author of good, and executed by the ministry of his divine Son. drinks of the waters of salvation, flowing from the living rock, as an emanation from the free grace of God, unmerited and unbought; not as the purchase of a bloody sacrifice, or as a right extorted, by an infinite price, from inexorable wrath. The supreme exaltation of the Father, does not diminish the honour and glory which are gratefully acknowledged to be due to the Son. But he believes that he loves and honours the Son most, when he acts most conformably to his precepts. He honours the Son, even as he honours the Father, in receiving his dictates as the dictates of God himself. He Unitarianism recommends itself by its simplicity. It needs no tedious ratiocination to explain or support it. It does not begin with incomprehensibility, and end with mystery. It can be comprehended by babes, and understood by the illiterate. It is among religious creeds, what Newton's system of the universe is among the systems of other philosophers. The astronomer, who had not read nature truly, was obliged "To build, rebuild, contrive To save appearances, and gird the sphere And for the purposes of astrology, to prescribe "The planetary motions and aspects But when the true astronomer, the great hierophant of nature, comes forth to exhibit her temple from a point of view whence it can be fully contemplated, all confusion and irregularity disappear. Unitarianism has no phenomena, for the explanation of which she is obliged to have recourse to invention. She requires no contrivance to save appearances. But true to the principles of sound philosophy, she does not admit two causes where one will suffice. Her system is consentaneous to the laws of nature and revelation-simple, as it is grand-harmonious, as it is magnificent. God is the centre from which all beauty and order emanate; around which, all lights revolve; the great prime mover; the unwearied dispenser of life and happiness to men, to angels, and every order of animated being. The Unitarian is more strongly armed by a single shaft from the armoury of divine truth, than Trinitarianism with all the weapons she can collect from the same store; for in her hands they are powerless, refuse to be wielded in her cause, and turn their edge against her own bosom. As to the triple mail of fathers, councils, and human legislatures, in which she chooses to array herself, it shivers like glass beneath a single stroke of the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. A single text, "There is ONE God, and there is none other but he," Mark xii. 32, is fatal to her system. It subverts her councils, and turns her gravest deliberations to folly. Powerful as the pebble from the sling of David, it smites through her forehead, and penetrates her sensorium. Unitarianism "has a superior tendency to form an elevated religious character." This has been demonstrated by Channing in a sermon of superlative excellence ;-he observes truly, "That it promotes piety by presenting to the mind one supreme spirit, to whom all religious homage must be paid-by admitting no divided worshipby opening the mind to new and ever-enlarging views of God-and especially by the high place it assigns to piety in the character and work of Jesus Christ," "We deem our views of Jesus Christ more interesting than those of Trinitarianism. We feel that we should lose much by exchanging the distinct character and mild radiance, with which he offers himself to our minds, for the confused and irreconcileable glories with which that system labours to invest him. According to Unitarianism, he is a being who may be understood-he is one mind-one conscious nature. According to the opposite faith, he is an inconceivable compound of two dissimilar mindsjoining in one person a finite and infinite nature-a soul weak and ignorant, and a soul almighty and omniscient; and is such a being a proper object for human thought and affection?" to ebullition, for all the rest of mankind, on whom it hurls incessant volleys of sulphurous thunder, and precipitates, in legions upon legions innumerable, to the infernal abyss. Lavish of damnation to others, it cannot always guard its own chosen ones against the terrors of the fiery gulf. The images on which they have gloated during life, haunt them fearfully at the hour of dissolution. That hour which the Unitarian contemplates with pious resignation to the divine will, and with joyous anticipation of celestial bliss, is often regarded by the Calvinist with anguish and despair. His death-bed becomes the scene of inexpressible, inconceivable horrors. One who has witnessed them, and who has a right to speak from having had "painful demonstration of the mischiefs. produced by Calvinism, in the name of Christianity," says, "Recollections of this description are on my mind which can never be erased. I have seen the anxious mother stand by the cradle of her sick and suffering child, and doubt the salvation of her own infant if it expired. I have seen men, who believed that their day of grace was past; that there was no room for repentance left for them upon the earth, and who were, consequently, driven to despondency, to gloom, and to repeated attempts at self-destruction. I have stood by the bed-side of the dying and sincere, but not consistent believer in these creeds, and I have heard his screams of anguish in the anticipation of a speedy dismission to the torment of eternal fires. I have stood by the bed-side of the infidel, and have seen him departing this life, strong in his infidelity, because he could not believe, that any being, deserving of veneration, would act as orthodoxy told him that God, whose name is love, did."* Such are the genuine effects of Calvinism. Let its mistaken and deluded votaries read and tremble, and as they value their happiness, hasten to abjure their impious, demoralizing, heart-rending creeds;—let them turn to Unitarianism— from darkness to light-from the power of Satan unto God, and then will they begin to have a just perception of the beauty, and a true feeling of the beatifying power of Gospel truth. As Unitarianism possesses so many incontestible claims to preference, being the religion of reason, common sense, and the Bible, it may be asked why it has not been more extensively diffused? We ask, in reply, why is not Christianity in general diffused more widely? Why did the ipse dixit of Aristotle prevail so long in the schools, in defiance of sound philosophy? Why are the steps of civilization so slow, and the discoveries of science known only to so small a minority of the human race? Why does the genius of despotism continue in so many countries, to crush the rights and liberties of man? Why has tradition been Speech of the Rev. Mr. Fox, at the Meeting of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, held in Manchester, June 1830. so successfully employed in rendering the commandments of God ineffectual? And why do those who exalt the supremacy of Scripture, belie their professions by the substitution of unhallowed creeds of human invention? The Reformation was long in making its appearance, and since it has appeared, why did it ever become stationary or retrograde? In the Synod of Ulster, at this day, its principles are neither acted on, nor understood. "This is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil" As to Unitarianism, the marvel is, not that it is so confined, but so extended, maugre the multifarious obstacles by which its progress has been obstructed. It is among the ordinances of a probationary state, that virtue shall be opposed by vice, and truth by falsehood. Unitarianism must expect, and should always be prepared to meet the hostilities of Polytheistic creeds. The gods of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Zidonians; Moloch, Mammon, and Belial; Ashtaroth, Chemosh, and Milcom, arrayed themselves against it, among the Jews; and the passions which those idols represented, have been equally hostile to it among Christians; the worship of groves and images, under the old dispensation; pride, avarice, ambition, and spiritual wickedness in high places, under the new. It has been obscured-almost buried and lost, beneath a mass of superstition; argued against by the subtle, crushed by the strong, and anathematized by the bigoted; reviled, tortured, and robbed. It is passed by with contempt by the sanctimonious Pharisee, excluded from the wealthy synagogue of the lordly Sadducee, and branded with the names of leprosy, infidelity, deism, and enmity to God.* But it has always possessed a mind conscious of its own rectitude, and a holy reliance on the eternal One, whose name it delighteth to honour. Its spirit is immortal;-it may be repressed, but never extinguished-" persecuted, but not forsaken * Every man who writes in support of it, may be almost certain of having not only his literary and religious, but his moral character assailed and calumniated by Calvinism. If he escape with being accused simply of want of candour, and not of downright forgery and falsehood, he may deem himself fortunate. An honest review of any composition of an Unitarian author, by an orthodox critic, would be a strange anomaly in the history of criticism. Let the Eclectic Reviewer, if he dares, answer the challenge of "the Watchman," in the Monthly Repository, for November 1830, to discuss the question of the unity and supremacy of the Father. The pages of the Repository offer him a fair field for the contest. But will he accept it? We venture to answer, no. And from what cause? Conscious imbecility. Tutius est, igitur, fictis contendere verbis Quam pugnare manu Safer for him to shoot poisoned arrows from his secret den, than to come manfully into the field with the honest weapons of war. |