It is my firm conviction, that, before every mixed or unlearned audience, the plain duties of temperance, modesty, diligence, resignation, honesty, veracity, humility, placability, and piety, illustrated again and again by the dignified phraseology of Scripture, and enforced by the awful sanctions of future rewards and punishments, as prepared by that Being who "spake as never man spake," are more proper for the pulpit than topics known under the technical terms of consubstantiality specific and numerical, hypostatic union, eternal filiation, eternal procession, actual regeneration by special grace, possible justification by faith only, supralapsarianism and sublapsarianism, and other phrases, familiar, I grant, to the polemic, dear to the bigot, and animating to the multitude, but uncouth to the ear and unedifying to the heart of many well-informed and well-disposed Christians. — DR. SAMUEL PARR: Works, vol. v. pp. 118-19.

This version ["the express image of his person," Heb. i. 3] has given rise to the opinion, that the word "person," as applied to the Trinity, is scriptural. The Greek word iñóσтασıç, however, signifies substance or essence. It is true that in ecclesiastical Greek it is also used to denote person; but this signification had not been given to it when the New Testament was written. After the rise of the Arian controversy, the word úñóσтασis began to be used for person; but, at an early period, that sense was unknown. The term "person,” therefore, is not found in Scripture in the sense in which we usually speak of the three persons of the Trinity. DR. SAMUEL DAVIDSON : Sacred Hermeneutics, pp. 23-4.

But this writer approves of the use of the word in its dogmatic sense.

The name of "purgatory" scarcely requires a passing comment. It has, indeed, been made a topic of abuse, on the ground that it is not to be found in Scripture. But where is the word "Trinity" to be met with? Where is the word "Incarnation" to be read in Scripture? Where are many other terms, held most sacred and important in the Christian religion? CARDINAL WISEMAN: Lectures on the Doctrines of the Catholic Church, vol. ii. p. 50.

It is admitted also by ERASMUS, TILLOTSON, HEY, TOMLINE, and many others, that the words and phrases here spoken of do not occur in the Bible. But where is the man who would venture to say that they do? Combining this fact with what seems equally obvious, that there are no other terms in which a Trinity in Unity can be expressed than those which have been used by theologians, it will follow that the doctrine itself is not revealed in Holy Scripture.

SECT. II. - THE DOCTRINE OF A TRIUNE GOD, OR OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST, NOT REVEALED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, OR KNOWN TO THE JEWS.

He takes false shadows for true substances.

SHAKSPEARE.

§ 1. NOT REVEALED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.

It is evident, that, from the authorities of the Old Testament, sufficient and clear proof cannot be drawn either for the Trinity, or for a plurality of divine persons. BISHOP TOSTAT: Op., tom. xii.; De Sanct. Trin., p. 14.

The mystery of the most Holy Trinity had never at any time penetrated the mind, however excellent, or inquisitive as to divine matters; nor could it; but to the gospel alone the disclosure and preaching of that mystery were reserved. . . . That article was not laid down in the Old Testament as an object of belief, because the people as yet were incapable of receiving it. The unity of God was, however, inculcated in the law, in opposition to idolatry; whence this first command, "Hear, O Israel! the Lord our God is one God," Deut. vi. 4. SALMERON: Comm., tom. i. pp. 201–2; Prolog. xi. can. xxv.

The mystery of the most holy Trinity was not yet [at the time of Christ] divulged, so that the Jews could expressly believe that he was by nature the Son of God, God of God, of one substance, power, and glory with God the Father. This doctrine Jesus reserved to himself to promulgate; ... though he did not at the beginning expressly teach it to his disciples, but led them to it by degrees. LUCAS BRUGENSIS on John i. 49.

The doctrine of the Trinity was not propounded expressly to the Jews in the Old Testament, because they were incapable of it, &c. CARDINAL BELLARMINE: De Christo, lib. ii. cap. 6.

So say also RUPERTUS TUITIENSIS, GALATIN, STEUCHUS EUGUBINUS, SALABERT, and other Roman Catholic commentators.

The glorious mystery of the Trinity came hereby to be unfolded more clearly, if not the first discovery made of the three persons hereby, there being scarce the footsteps of them distinctly and clearly to be seen in the works of the creation or in the law. But now, when the gospel came to be revealed, &c. -DR. THOMAS GOODWIN: Works,

I think that it [the doctrine of the Trinity] was a thing not only locked up from the researches of reason amongst those that were led only by reason, I mean the Gentiles, but that it was also concealed from, or at best but obscurely known by, the Jewish church. ...That God did so [conceal it], the Old Testament, which is the great ark and repository of the Jewish religion, seems sufficiently to declare; there being no text in it that plainly and expressly holds forth a Trinity of persons in the Godhead. Several texts are, indeed, urged for that purpose; though, whatever they may allude to, they seem not yet to be of that force and evidence as to infer what some undertake to prove by them; such as are Gen. i. 1, 26. Isa. vi. 3. ..I conclude that it is very probable that the discovery of this mystery was a privilege reserved to bless the times of Christianity withal, and that the Jews had either none, or but a very weak and confused knowledge of it. — DR. ROBERT SOUTH: Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 296–301.

Take the Old Testament without the New, and it must be confessed that it will not be easy to prove this article [that of the Trinity] from BISHOP BURNET: Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, Art. i.

it.

p. 43.

No one can take from the Jews those traditions of the Trinity which the Holy Spirit hath scattered here and there in the Scripture. It was by these that God prepared the minds of men to receive that incomprehensible mystery. At the same time, he conducted the people slowly, step by step; and the knowledge of that great truth was proportioned to an economy covered with shadows and figures. If, in spite of the light which the evangelists have shed upon it, and the accomplishment of prophecy, which of all commentaries is the clearest and most intelligible, we still can with difficulty discover the Trinity in the Old Testament, one may presume that the Jews paid but little attention to it, and that, with all their research, they had but a very obscure perception of this dogma. There is reason to fear, that these men, who do not see the Trinity in the New Testament, where it is clearly expressed, will have still greater difficulty in discovering it in the Old, where it is only obscurely intimated. BASNAGE: History of the Jews, b. iv. c. 5; apud Blomfield's Dissert. upon the Traditional Knowledge of a Promised Redeemer, p. 168.

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There are no passages in the Old Testament which indicate a Trinity [of persons in the Godhead]. - DÖDERLEIN: Institutio Theologi Christiani, § 113.

As no passage in the Old Testament satisfactorily proves that the writers had any knowledge of three persons in the Godhead, and as it is not at all probable that among the Hebrews, who on various occasions manifested a proneness towards Polytheism, the doctrine of the Trinity, such as is exhibited in the Christian church, could be rightly understood, or be imparted without exerting an injurious effect on the worship of the one true God, I am of opinion that, &c. — H. A. SCHOTT: Opuscula, tom. ii. p. 56.

CALIXTUS gave occasion for increasing the strife, by a disputation on the mystery of the Trinity, which Dr. Jo. LATERMANN wrote and defended under him, in 1645; in which it was maintained that the doctrine of the Trinity was not made known to the fathers under the Old Testament; and that it was a created angel, and not the Son of God, who appeared to the patriarchs. JOHN R. SCHLEGEL, as quoted by Dr. Murdock in his edition of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, vol. iii. p. 374.

A disciple of the school of Voltaire might indeed object, that what the learned divines at any period in the history of the church did not know, was at all events known to the Holy Ghost, and that he might have taught it to them. To which question I would only reply by asking, Why did the same Spirit, who spake by the mouth of the prophets under the old covenant, merely declare the unity of the Godhead, and not the Trinity, by the mouth of Moses, to the chosen people? The answer to this question will probably refer, on the one hand, to the plan of the Divine Wisdom for the education of the Jewish people, and, on the other hand, to the Polytheism of the ancient world, which made such a strict opposition necessary. GUENTHER, as quoted in Archd. Hare's Mission of the Comforter, vol. ii. p. 432. I do not say that you will find the doctrine [of the Trinity], which we have been proclaiming to-day, in this chapter [Ezek. i.]. I do not believe that you can. I have not the slightest wish to find it there, or to put it there. It would be a shock to all my convictions, if I thought that Ezekiel was enunciating a dogma when he professed to be recording a vision; or that the mystery, which, as the church teaches by the order of her services, could not be revealed till Christ was glorified and the Spirit given, was already made known to the prophet as he sat among the captives by the river Chebar. I cannot say how much mischief seems to me to be done, when, instead of striving to follow strictly the actual statements of the Old-Testament writers, we insist upon wringing out of texts or symbols, which we

...

have moulded according to our fancy, the proof of some New-Testament revelation. . . . Ezekiel had been taught upon his mother's knees the words, "Hear, O Israel! the Lord thy God is one Lord.". F. D. MAURICE: Prophets and Kings, pp. 429–30.

66

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[1] Prior to this moment [of the incarnation of the Logos], there has been no appearance of Trinity in the revelations God has made of his being; but just here, — whether as resulting from the incarnation, or as implied in it, we are not informed, a threefold personality or impersonation of God begins to offer itself to view. . . . . The word spirit" had been used before, as in reference to the agency of God, but only in a remoter and more tropical sense, as the word "Father" had been the conception of a divine personality or impersonation, called the Holy Spirit, was unknown. We may imagine otherwise in one or two cases, as when David prays, "Take not thy holy spirit from me," but, I think, without any sufficient reason. [2] The Old Testament. . . not only reveals oneness, leaving the matter of threeness to be revealed afterward, as some might imagine, but it so reveals the oneness as to exclude any suspicion or thought of threeness; and so that every pious Jew, between Abraham and Christ, would have insisted on a unity of person in the God of their worship, opposed to every conception of threeness; and would have referred, without hesitation, to Moses and the prophets for his proofs. DR. HORACE BUSHNELL.

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The passages numbered [1] are quoted from " God in Christ," pp. 147-8, 172; that numbered [2] is from "Christ in Theology," pp. 165-6.

We have seen the full and explicit testimonies given to the unity and personality of the Deity.... Respecting the divine nature as involving a Trinity of persons, though it may be implied or dimly intimated, no declaration is made. This is a distinctive doctrine of the New Testament. The fact that God existed as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is not co-eval with its enunciation; nor is the knowledge of this fact necessarily connected with any acts of the Divine Being which imply such a peculiarity in his essence.... To our minds, already enlarged with other views of the divine economy, it may be easy to perceive, that God, in many of his interpositions before the advent of Christ, did still communicate with men in the person of his Son, or in the person of the Holy Ghost. Is there decisive evidence that the fact was recognized? Does the Old Testament contain proof that the people of God had the conception of a Trinity in the divine nature ?. If God had been declared then as existing as Father,