veys to my mind no intelligible idea, and, it appears to be equally unintelligible to you. We both, in reality, in assenting to it, assent to nothing but words, and if they convey to us no intelligible meaning, to us they are nothing, and we assent to nothing. Were these words in the Bible, then I might say that I believed they expressed truth, though I could not understand it. But not being in the Bible, or any words of the same import, I consider them the mere invention of fallible men. I cannot believe on their authority. So far from supposing them to be true, as I cannot understand them myself, and no one can explain them to me, I think it fair to conclude that those who framed them had no clear ideas.

Plurality in God then, is impossible, it is a self-contradiction. The attributes of God exclude plurality. Plurality of men, or of finite spirits, is possible. They may be multiplied without end, for they do not exclude each other. But one infinite Person, must necessarily exclude every other infinite Person. There cannot be two infinities of the same kind, whether of Beings or Persons, or things; for they must either exclude each other, or become identical. There can be, for instance, but one infinite space. For the same reason, there can be but one God in any sense. Neither can there be three Persons, each of them Supreme; for in affirming supremacy of one, you deny it of the others. So the doctrine of the Trinity, when analyzed, resolves itself into a contradiction, or rather a tissue of contradictions. One part denies what the other part affirms. In order to support the personality of each of the three Persons,

it must ascribe to them attributes which constitute them three Beings. To maintain the Unity of God, they must be proved to be one Being, and to make them one Being, those very attributes must be denied, which were necessary to constitute them three Persons. It may be said, it is a mystery. We answer, that it is a -contradiction. A mystery may express truth, but a contradiction cannot, for it affirms and denies the same proposition.

It follows inevitably from the self-evident principles we have just developed, that any division of God into three Persons, I mean which is real, and not nominal only, necessarily involves the consequence that each of these Persons must be imperfect. Deity, from its own nature, is one whole. Any imaginable division of it destroys its very nature. Any division of Deity cannot be Deity, whether you call that division person, or by any other name. In order to identify the three Persons of the Trinity, some separate or exclusive actions must be attributed to each, and of course denied of the others. Is it not evident that if the appropriate acts of Deity are divided among three Persons, neither of them in his actions can be perfect God? One must be shorn of his glories, to adorn the others. If one created the world alone, then the other two did not create it. If one governs the world, then the others do not, and He is the only proper object of prayer. If on the other hand, they all do the same acts, and there is no diversity of action, then there is nothing in those acts themselves to prove that there is more than one Being or Person in all that has ever been done by the Deity..

Besides, when we have recognized the existence of one Infinite Person, such as the Father, or the first Person of the Trinity is universally allowed to be, is he not competent to all the purposes of Deity? Is anything gained by associating with himself two, or two hundred persons? They can do only what he was infinitely competent to do alone.

But it is said, that a Trinity is necessary to the economy of redemption. The atonement to be infinite must be made to God by an infinite Being. The Being to whom it is made is infinite, and the Being who makes it must be infinite. But the three Persons of the Trinity are infinite, not because they comprehend and are identical with three infinite Beings, but because each comprehends and is identical with one and the same infinite Being. Then if one Person of the Trinity make an infinite atonement to another, it must be by virtue of comprehending and being identical with. the same infinite Being who constitutes the infinity of the Person to whom the atonement is made. So after all, it will be the same Divine and infinite Being, who makes an atonement, acting through one Person to himself, and receives it acting through another Person. Of such a scheme of atonement as this, I leave every one to judge.

No atonement can be made by a Being strictly and independently infinite, to a Being strictly and independently infinite, without involving the supposition of two independent, infinite Beings, and of course two Gods. This theory of atonement then, demands what even the Trinity cannot give it, two independent infinite Beings,

two Gods. The three Persons of the Trinity are not enough for it, for they are each of them infinite only by including and being identical with one and the same infinite Being. The same infinite Being must act in or through one of the Persons in making, at the same moment he is acting in, or through the other Person, in receiving it, which reduces it, you perceive, to a mere fiction. The common scheme of atonement is an impossibility. It requires more infinite Beings than there are in the universe to enact the parts supposed in it.

In short the more we examine the doctrine of the Trinity in its intimate relations, the more we shall find it full of inconsistencies and contradictions. And the moment we lose sight of one God, in one Person, the whole Deity becomes a riddle which puzzles the brain beyond all explanation. The doctrine therefore, is not found in nature, and is rejected by reason as an impossibility. If it is found anywhere, it must be a doctrine of pure revelation.

We hasten, then, to the scriptural argument. And here its best friends confess, that it is nowhere expressly taught. It is nowhere asserted that God is three in any respect. It is nowhere affirmed that he subsists in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, or that these three are one God. It is drawn as an inference from a very few detached passages. But we maintain that these very passages, which are said to teach it, contradict it, or are inconsistent with it. It is attempted to be proved from the form of baptism, "Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Is it here said that these

three are equal? Look at the very words themselves, by which those Persons are said to be designated, Father and Son. So far as these names express the relation which subsists between these two Persons, they signify that one is derived from the other. Can you consent that one of your Persons of the Trinity shall be a derived being, and of.course not eternal? So far then, from being equal in power and glory, in this very passage which is brought to prove it, the very names and appellations imply inferiority of one to the other. What makes it still more decisive, Son is the highest designation of the second Person, where he stands in his appropriate connection as one of the Persons of the Trinity. But the mere fact of the names being placed in this connection, does not prove the Person to have Divine attributes. That would be taking for granted the very thing to be proved. We must go elsewhere to learn these attributes. Let us turn to the thirteenth chapter of Mark. There it is said, "Of that day and that hour, knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Then the Son is not God, for God cannot be ignorant of anything. It appears then, that the second Person, the Son, did not know when the destruction of Jerusalem was to take place, but the Father did. He was therefore inferior in knowledge to the Father, not equal, was not omniscient, was not God. Here the usual subterfuge, that he says this in his inferior nature, or as man, cannot be resorted to, to elude the force of this irresistible conclusion, for Son is the highest name or character he assumes, the very character and name he as