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the mouth confession is made unto salvation." And hear what Christ said to the lawyer who tempted him, saying, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live." (Luke x. 25-28.) There is, moreover, in the Saviour's own words, a description of the day of judgment, in which those who are cast into outer darkness are represented, not as those who have imperfectly comprehended his essence or nature, but those who have neglected works of charity and kindness.

But it is your impression that "many who refuse to acknowledge the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ, have never duly examined one line of the scriptural argument, which presents to your mind the most conclusive evidence of this truth." This is a broad statement. Nor can I help thinking that my Treatise will be more new to your congregation than yours will be to mine, for the following reasons: -First, a large number of Unitarians frequently attend the services of the Church of England, whereas the Churchman comparatively seldom joins in the worship of the Unitarian Chapel. Secondly, we are often put on our defence by the zeal of proselytists, while we ourselves feel much more called upon to promote practical Christianity, and to carry the knowledge of Christ to those who do not know him, than to press our individual opinions on those of our

fellow-men who already bear his name. And thirdly, from the feelings entertained by many towards the denomination to which we belong, we are subject to certain social deprivations, from which, I suppose, most of us would gladly escape, did not truth of conscience stand in the way. Not without strong personal and social ties growing up in our household of faith, do we worship together, amidst many joys and sorrows, and much kindly intercourse; but we are not insensible to the happiness of believing with the multitude. We have no preference for the few over the many, for the dissenting chapel over the parish church, for a narrow over a wide field of influence. Even supposing, however, the Unitarians of Hampstead to have been so in love with their isolation, and so content to let the tide of theological thought ebb and flow unobserved, as not to have read the Trinitarian controversy, this certainly has not been the case with all who, like ourselves, have been unable to subscribe to the doctrine of our Lord's Deity. And here let me again call your attention to an extract from Dr. Watts's Solemn Address :

:

"Thou hast taught me, Holy Father, by Thy Prophets, that the way of holiness, in the times of the Gospel, or under the kingdom of the Messiah, shall be a highway, a plain and easy path; so that the wayfaring man, or the stranger, though a fool, shall not err therein. And Thou hast called the poor and the ignorant, the mean and the foolish things of this world, to the knowledge of Thyself and Thy Son, and taught them to receive and partake of the salvation which Thou hast provided. But how can such weak creatures ever take in so strange, so difficult,

and so abstruse a doctrine as this; in the explication and defence whereof, multitudes of men, even men of learning and piety, have lost themselves in infinite subtleties of dispute and endless mazes of darkness? And can this strange and perplexing notion of three real persons going to make up one true God, be so necessary and so important a part of that Christian doctrine, which, in the Old Testament and the New, is represented as so plain and so easy even to the meanest understandings ?"

Bear with me, Rev. Sir, while I enlarge yet more on a subject which I cannot but regard as of the utmost importance to the Church of Christ in our times. You express yourself in terms of affectionate interest in us; yet is not every tender and holy feeling you or any of us possess, but a drop from that infinite fountain of love and goodness which is in the Father? Suppose you are wholly in the right and we are wholly in the wrong, believe me, our Heavenly Father, and that Saviour who came to seek and save the lost, are far tenderer to the erring than any man can be. When you have contemplated the sublime truths of revelation-when you have experienced most joy and peace in believing-when you have felt that you could not wish one syllable in your creed altered, and that you have entered into its meaning with unusual fulness, has it never seemed that still in the presence of the truth you were but as a little child

"An infant crying in the night;

An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry ?".

Have you not been ready to kneel down and weep and adore at the thought of the boundless realms of meaning, which remain to be explored as soon as you are old enough in wisdom and in holiness to enter upon them? Ought then those, who are themselves but in the infancy of their education in divine things, to speak confidently of one man being eternally saved, and another eternally lost, for holding or not holding opinions on which thoughtful and earnest men have differed from the beginning? Does it make us more truly children of God to know or fancy we know a little more of the divine nature? What must the angels think when they see poor, ignorant, fallible mortals exalting their own comprehension of the deep things of God, and condemning one another to perdition for not professing just the same belief with themselves? Is there not danger sometimes that our so-called orthodoxy should make us more like the Pharisee who prayed thus with himself, "God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are," and less like the Publican, who, "standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto Heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner?" He who refuses to admit his fellow-men into Christian communion, save through Athanasian doctrine, seems to me to have another warning in those Jewish converts of the first age who were unwilling to receive Gentiles into the Church by any other way than that of Judaism. Surely it was far more excusable for the first Christians, all of whom were Jews, to say to the heathen, You cannot become Christians unless you embrace Judaism, than it is for

men in our time to say, You cannot become Christians unless you embrace Roman Catholicism or Evangelicism, or Calvinism. It is just as possible for a man to become a Christian now without joining any sect, as it was in the apostolic age for a Gentile to become a Christian, without also becoming a Jew. The method in both cases being by direct discipleship of the Saviour himself. We should remember, moreover, that there is depth of religious belief as well as surface, and that it is not always he whose articles of faith are most numerous, who feels most intensely a living relation to Christ and to God. After all, is not the chief thing that inward life which is hid with Christ in God?

But suffer me to set this matter in yet another light. You bid me study the Scriptures.

so with the best aids within my reach.

I have done

You tell me to resort to prayer. This also has not been omittedprayer, not for this belief or for that, but for the truth and the spirit of Christ, and for that Holy Spirit which leadeth into all truth. Still my conclusions are some of them different from yours. Do you claim any authority by reason of apostolical succession? But what can you answer, when Cardinal Wiseman tells you that your only avowed claim is through St. Austin sent by Gregory the Great to England; that the Church of England is, at best, therefore, but a branch of that tree of which the Roman Catholic Church is the trunk, and that at the Reformation this branch. voluntarily severed itself from the stem? Do you feel the Spirit of God working in you; but did it not also work in Baxter, Wesley and Channing?

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