It must be owned, that the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is proposed in our Articles, our Liturgy, our Creeds, is not in so many words taught us in the Holy Scriptures. What we profess in our prayers we nowhere read in Scripture, that the one God, the one Lord, is not one only person, but three persons in one substance. There is no such text in Scripture as this, that "the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped." No one of the inspired writers hath expressly affirmed, that in the Trinity none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another, but the whole three persons are co-eternal together and co-equal. But, &c. BISHOP SMALRIDGE: Sixty Sermons; Serm. xxxiii. p. 348.

It may startle those who are but little acquainted with the popular writings of this day [the fourth century], yet I believe the most accurate consideration of the subject will lead us to acquiesce in the statement as a general truth, that the doctrines in question [that is the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement] have never been learned merely from Scripture. Surely the Sacred Volume was never intended, and was not adapted, to teach our creed. However, certain it is, that we can prove our creed from it, where it has once been taught us, in spite of individual producible exceptions to the general rule. From the very first, the rule has been as a matter of fact for the Church to teach the truth, and then appeal to Scripture in vindication of her teaching; and, from the first, it has been the error of heretics to neglect the information provided for them, and to attempt for themselves a work for which they are unable the eliciting a systematic doctrine from the scattered notices of the truth which Scripture contains. NEWMAN: Arians of the Fourth Century, p. 55; apud Wiseman's Lectures, p. 93.

The sublime truths which it [the Athanasian Creed, so called] contains are not expressed in the language of Holy Scripture; nor could they possibly have been so expressed, since the inspired writers were not studious minutely to expound inscrutable mysteries. Neither can it plead any sanction from high antiquity, or even traditional authority; since it was composed many centuries after the time of the apostles, in a very corrupt age of a corrupt church, and composed in so much obscurity, that the very pen from which it proceeded is not certainly known to us. WADDINGTON: History of the Church, p. 220.

The doctrine of the Trinity is rather a doctrine of inference and of indirect intimation, deduced from what is revealed respecting the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and intimated in the notices of a plurality of persons in the Godhead, in the form of baptism, and in

....

some of the apostolic benedictions, than a doctrine directly and explicitly declared. We have now come to the limit of explicit revelation, and are entering upon the region of reasoning and inference. .... I admit that we have not the same clear light to conduct us which we have hitherto enjoyed. I admit that a doctrine of inference ought never to be placed on a footing of equality with a doctrine of direct and explicit revelation. It is very obvious, that, in so far as our belief of any doctrine is the result of inference, it is not an exercise of faith in the testimony of God, but in the accuracy of our own reasoning. That the Holy Spirit is a distinct person from the Father and the Son seems to be removed one step from a direct, explicit revelation, by the necessity of previously determining that a being capable of willing, choosing, designing, commanding, forbidding, of loving, being displeased or grieved, and other particulars of a similar nature, is to be regarded as a person. That there are three persons in the Godhead is a second remove from explicit, direct revelation; because, after defining what we mean by a person, and finding that the Father is thus determined to be a person, and also the Son and the Spirit, while yet we believe that there is only one God, we infer from the whole, that there are three persons in one God.-CARLILE: Jesus Christ the Great God our Saviour, pp. 81, 369.

What shall we say when we consider, that a case of doctrine necessary doctrine, the very highest and most sacred. - may be produced where the argument lies as little on the surface of Scripture — where the proof, though most conclusive, is as indirect and circuitous as that for episcopacy, viz. the doctrine of the Trinity? Where is this solemn and comfortable mystery formally stated in Scripture, as we find it in the creeds? Why is it not? Let a man consider whether all the objections which he urges against the Scripture argument for episcopacy may not be turned against his own belief in the Trinity. It is a happy thing for themselves, that men are inconsistent; yet it is miserable to advocate and establish a principle which, not in their own case indeed, but in the case of others who learn it of them, leads to Socinianism. A person who denies the apostolical succession of the ministry, because it is not clearly taught in Scripture, ought, I conceive, if consistent, to deny the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, which is nowhere literally stated in Scripture...... If the Lord's Supper is never distinctly called a sacrifice, or Christian ministers are never called priests, still let me ask, is the Holy Ghost ever expressly called God in Scripture? Nowhere: we infer it from what is said; we compare parallel passages. OXFORD DOCTORS: Tracts for the Times, vol. i. No. 45; vol. v. No. 85, pp. 4, 11.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY, ETC. CANNOT BE PROVED
FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE.

I hope the Romanists will not disadvantage the Catholic cause so much as to confess that the Godhead of Christ... cannot be proved by Scripture, and that the Fathers were forced to fly to unwritten traditions for proof of it. DR. FIELD: Of the Church, book iii. c. 29.

[It would appear that the good doctor betrayed his own fears for the validity and soundness of the evidence in favour of the Deity of Christ, and therefore, as the orthodox themselves reason, of the Trinity in Unity; for, as we shall immediately show, Roman Catholics have often indeed "confessed that the Godhead of Christ," with its accompanying dogmas, "cannot be proved by Scripture."]

We believe the doctrine of a Triune God, because we have received it by tradition, though not mentioned at all in Scripture. Abridged from CARDINAL HOSIUS: Conf. Cathol. Fidei Christ. cap. 27.

That the Holy Spirit should be adored, that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, and of the same nature, &c. we do not perceive so set forth in Scripture that heretics can be convinced without the church acting as interpreter.-POSSEVIN; apud Sandium, p. 5.

Concerning the Trinity, whether there are three really distinct persons; concerning the eternal ouoovaia, the generation of the Son from the substance of the Father, the equality of the persons in the Godhead, the two natures in Christ, and the Deity of the Holy Spirit, the church ought to determine: the Scriptures cannot. - COPPENSTEIN;

apud Sandium, pp. 5, 6.

Those [the Lutherans and Calvinists] who bind themselves to Scripture alone, that is, to written words, and who do not set up any other rule or law of belief, sweat to no purpose, and are conquered by their own weapons, as often as they join battle with such pests [the Antitrinitarians] that conceal and defend themselves likewise with the language of Scripture alone. And we know from history, that this frequently happened to them in the conferences and disputes into which they entered with the Photinians and the Arians. PETAVIUS: De Trin. lib. iii. cap. xi. § 9; Theol. Dog. tom. ii. p. 301.

That the Son is of the same essence as the Father, or consubstantial with him, is not manifest in any part of Sacred Scripture, either in express words, or by certain and immutable deduction. .... Not in express language, because this phrase, of the same essence, never occurs in the Sacred Writings;-nor by infallible deduction, because nothing of such a character can by any means rest on reason and Scripture, which is at variance with Scripture itself, and the principles of reason. ...... They believe those matters which are propounded by Athanasius in the

Creed on the Trinity, both as respects the distinction of persons and of the divine nature, and the equality of its attributes, and as respects also the divine processions; Christ begotten by the Father from eternity, the Holy Ghost not begotten, but proceeding from both, nor only from either. These and other opinions of the Protestants no one can prove from irrefragable deduction from the Sacred Writings; the traditionary word of God being laid aside. This request has often been made, but no one has made it good. Scripture itself would, in many places have seemed to exhibit the opposite, unless the church had taught us otherwise. MASENIUS: apud Sandium, pp. 9-11.

[To the same purport,—according to Locke, in his "Common-place Book," - BELLARMINE, GORDONIUS HUNLEIUS, GRETSER, TANNER, VEGA, and WIEKUS. Several other Roman Catholics are referred to as being of the same opinion, by Sandius, in his Scriptura S. Trinitatis Revelatrix, pp. 4—17.

It is a curious anomaly in the history of religious sects, that, in their discussions with Roman Catholics, Trinitarian Protestants earnestly contend for the due exercise of their intellectual powers in matters pertaining to theology and religion; but, in their zealous warfare with their fellow-Protestants, the Unitarians, they accuse them of leaning too much to their own understandings, and rejecting the plain instructions of Sacred Scripture, because Antitrinitarians have come to a conclusion different from them, in the honest use of their rational faculties. More curious still, many of the very persons who thus act so inconsistently, are, as we have shown, obliged, from the force of truth, to acknowledge that the doctrines which they espouse, and which they assert to be essential to salvation, are not directly set forth in the pages of the Bible, but must be gathered by a sort of inferential proof, arising from the use, or rather from the abuse, of that reason which they so often represent as at war with the doctrines of Holy Writ It is also a remarkable fact, that the Roman Catholic has often triumphed over his Protestant antagonist by demonstrating that the great principle of Protestantism the right of individuals to interpret Scripture, without resting on tradition and the authority of the church inevitably leads to Unitarianism. Witness the discussions of the PETAVII, the BELLARMINES, and the MASENII, with the Trinitarian Reformers of their day; the MAGUIRES, the HUGHESES, the FRENCHES, and the WISEMANS, with ministers of the Established Church; and NEWMAN, and others of the Puseyite school, with the evangelical section of their own church.]

CHAPTER VI.

GOD IS ONE. - THE FATHER ONLY, THE TRUE GOD.

SECT. I. -THE UNITY OF GOD, A FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF BOTH NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

There is but one only living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection; a most pure spirit; invisible; without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, &c. WESTMINSTER DIVINES: Confession of Faith, chap. ii. 1.

An evident and most natural consequence of this universal and necessary idea of a God, is his unity. All that mention the term God intend to convey by it the idea of the first, most exalted, necessarily existent, and infinitely perfect Being; and it is plain there can be but one Being endued with all these perfections. ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON: Theological Lectures, Lect. vii.; Works, p. 571.

When we come to compare events, and to take them all into our minds at once; when we observe that there is an unity of design in them all, considered collectively; we ascribe them all ultimately to one great Intelligence, and consider him a person. There is one thing

never to be forgotten for a moment; that is, the unity of God. Scripture and Reason jointly proclaim, there is but one God: however the proofs of the Divinity of the Son and Holy Ghost may seem to interfere with this, nothing is to be allowed them but what is consistent with it. The divine nature, or substance, can therefore be but " one substance;" the divine power can be but " one power." DR. HEY: Lectures in Divinity, vol. i. p. 8; ii. p. 250-1.

To prove the unity of this great Being, in opposition to a plurality of gods, it is not necessary to have recourse to metaphysical abstractions. It is sufficient to observe, that the notion of more than one author of nature is inconsistent with that harmony of design which pervades her works; that it explains no appearances, is supported by no evidence, and serves no purpose, but to embarass and perplex our conceptions. There is but one such Being. To affirm there is more than one, without reason, must, by the very terms, be unreasonable. But no shadow of reason can be assigned for believing in a plurality of such beings, because the supposition of one accounts for all that we see, as well, and even much better than the suppo