be God and Lord; so are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, there be three Gods, or three Lords. The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this trinity none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another; but the whole three Persons are co-eternal together, and coequal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity. Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation, that he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is, that we believe and confess, That our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man; God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man of the substance of his mother, born in the world; perfect God, and perfect man, of a reasonable soul, and human flesh subsisting; equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father, as touching his manhood. Who, although he be God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ; One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God; One altogether; not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. For, as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ; who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose

again the third day from the dead; he ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty; from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good, shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire. This is the Catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved."

To this I subjoin the modern doctrine of the Trinity : "There are three Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. These three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory."

These Creeds, you perceive, when compared with each other, exhibit most clearly the gradual formation of the Trinity, or rather its interpolation into Christianity. In the doctrine of Jesus and his apostles, in the form of baptism as interpreted by its own elements, by Justin Martyr, and in the Apostles' Creed, we have the same pure doctrine of one God the Father Almighty, and the miraculous character and divine mission of Christ, but no intimation nor allusion to the Personality, much less the separate Deity of the Holy Spirit. In the Nicene Creed, we have an approximation to the deification of Christ, by identifying him with the Platonic Logos. But still no more is made of the Holy Spirit than in the form of baptism, or in the Apostles' Creed. In the Athanasian Creed, eight hundred years after Christ, we have Christ and the Spirit exalted to full Deity, with the slight exception of derivation, which was no objection in those days.

In the same doctrine in modern days, this faint vestige of Platonism disappears, the scaffolding falls away, and we have the Trinity complete, three equal persons in one God.

As to the Athanasian Creed, though it was enacted by no council, it is a fair specimen of Theological speculation of the age in which it originated. It bears marks on the very face of it of being the production of some idle monk of the dark ages, who had nothing better to do than to exercise his scholastic ingenuity in stringing together a chain of monstrous and startling paradoxes on the received doctrine of the Trinity, which appearing to assert the most astounding propositions, really assert nothing but what depends upon a fictitious and quibbling distinction between created and begotten, which when applied to God, with those who have any just idea of the spirituality and unchangeableness of the Divine Nature, can have no meaning; and between begotten and proceeding, a distinction quite as trifling and ridiculous.

The awkward figure which derived Divinity makes in these enlightened days, may be sufficiently learned in the attempts to connect the modern Theology with that of the Schools. "The Father," says one, "by generation communicated his whole and perfect essence to the Son, and retained the whole of it to himself, because it is infinite."

I have now, I hope, redeemed the pledges I gave at the commencement of this discourse, to show by the history and progress of Creeds the origin and formation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the elements from which

it sprung, and the steps of its advancement, and its final completion. And are these the things, it may be indignantly asked, which still hold their place in the nineteenth century as the infallible interpretation of the word of God? Are these the fetters which are fastened upon the mind of this age? Can it be a fact that any one can impose, or any one submit to such a mingled mass of Paganism and Christianity? Can it be possible that one of the most enlightened nations of Europe dispenses not only ecclesiastical but civil honors and emoluments to those only who will subscribe to these relics of the dark ages? Is there any enlightened Christian who does not perceive that it is equally in violation of the express commands of Christ to form, as to assent to a Creed?

By what right can any body of men impose a Creed? By none other than that of a majority. And is a majority the infallible seal of truth? And can a Protestant resort to such an authority as this? If in one class of Christians the majority have a right to enact a Creed for the minority, then the majority of the whole Christian name have an equal right to enact a Creed for the church universal. And who does not know that were the whole church represented according to numbers, the Protestants would be found in a minority, and be compelled inevitably, on these principles, to surrender all the glorious achievements of the Reformation and return to the Mother Church? Who does not perceive that there is not and never can be uniformity of opinion? Subscription, therefore, if it be meant to be literal and exact, must be, in a majority of cases, insincere

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and dishonest. If it allow latitude, who is to prescribe the bounds of that latitude? And if they are not prescribed, the Creed is a mockery, and ought to be abandoned. When honor and station are attached to it, who does not see that it operates as a privilege to the insincere, and a bar only to the conscientious? Is truth the exclusive discovery of one age? Is it rational or tolerable for one age to dictate opinions to its successors forever? Where then is the sense of Christian ministers repeating to their congregations the decision of a council of the fourth century upon a point of heathen philosophy, the merits of which neither they nor their hearers comprehend? Is reasonable faith promoted by repeating a form of words, without any increase of evidence, or without any evidence at all? But such is the force of custom that it binds together, by its continuous and lengthening chain, the most distant ages in the reception of the same errors and abuses, as well as the same truths. Creeds, whenever formed and fastened on the mind, especially when incorporated with ecclesiastical and civil organization, cramp its faculties, discourage inquiry, and produce indifference to truth; and nothing short of some great convulsion in society has power to throw them off. Resting as they do on the imaginary authority of many, no one has the moral courage to assume the responsibility of abandoning them, or calling them in question. Even if the conviction arises in the mind of any that it ought to be done, there is a disposition to delay; so day glides on after day, till ages are numbered, and nothing is done. In many weak and timid minds there seems to be an apprehension, most