persuaded, had the author adopted some form of subdivision; and we would suggest that this should not be forgotten, if, as we hope, a second edition of the work shall be called for. Would it not be practicable also, instead of the repetition, page after page, of the heading," Rise, Progress and Decline of Trinitarianism," to substitute some indication, in the same number of words, of the contents of each page, after the manner of Mr. Kenrick's recently published Essay on Primæval History? The first portion of the volume, to which we propose at present to confine our attention, relates, as we have mentioned, to the origin and history of the Trinity, independent of any direct reference to Scripture: that is to say, it shews us the doctrine of a Trinity, in various forms, in the ancient heathen religions, and thus leads inevitably to the conclusion that that doctrine cannot, at any rate, be regarded as a doctrine peculiar to Christianity. It is this part of the "Illustrations" which constitutes their distinctive feature. And if the line of argument here entered upon can be legitimately sustained and enforced by evidence, as we believe it can, then, we are assured, the ground is cut from beneath the feet of the advocate of the Trinity, and his doctrine must be abandoned, as one derived not from Christ or the Christian Scriptures, but from sources which existed hundreds of years before Christ came into the world.

Our author begins by pointing out the mystical sanctity which in ancient times was attached to the number Three, and of which traces are still visible in many Greek and Latin words, or in whole expressions of various writers in those languages. Thus,

"The Pythagoreans, with whom three was the most perfect number, explained a name of Athene, namely Troyeva, having three natures, of the number three, sacred to that divinity. Mithras, among the ancient Persians, received the epithet of Tonλagios, thrice-formed, in consequence of his threefold manifestation. Bacchus also was called Toyovos and Topuns, thrice-born, as being the son of Persephone, Semele and Zeus. Accordingly, the orgies of Bacchus were celebrated every third year; and the year itself, as well as the months and days, was divided into three seasons, of which Hercules, with three apples in his hand, is an image. Hecate was three-headed; the Sphinx, the Chimæra, had each three bodies; the Graces were three females united together."-Pp. 3, 4.

A mysterious triplicity was also ascribed to the Divine nature. Of this, instances are given, and then follows a brief account of the Indian Trinity. Here the resemblance to our modern doctrine becomes apparent:

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More distinctly marked is the account of the Hindoo triads, given by Bähr, which in substance is as follows. Out of the great Es, or Parabrahm, who is without number and form, there proceeds the well-known Trimurti, or union of the three powers; Brahma, the Creator; Vischnoo, the Preserver; Siva, the Destroyer, Changer, or Restorer. These are only concrete forms, or manifestations of the one divine essence, the conception of which, according to the Indian view, comprises creation, preservation and destruction. The primitive being is not worshiped. Adoration is reserved for the three persons of the Trimurti or Trinity."-P. 8.

Of this Trimurti, two curious illustrations are given,—one representing the Deity as one body with three heads; the other shewing us "the three persons rising out of a lotus-tree, the stem of which was on the world's egg floating on the water."

Vestiges of a Trinity are found among the ancient Persians (Illustrations, pp. 9, 10), and among the Babylonians (p. 12), from which latter nation the Trinitarian doctrine appears to have passed into Palestine and the neighbouring countries. Here we find it, in different forms, among the Phoenicians and Syrians (pp. 13, 14):

"It was a peculiarity of the Syro-Phoenician worship to set up as objects of adoration several, generally three, idols near one another. In the sanctuary of the temple of Tiratha, at Mabug, there were, besides Gods of the second rank, whose images stood in the outer apartment, the figures of Juno, or Tiratha, with that of Jupiter, or Bel-Chijun, between which stood Semiramis. In the temple of Belos, at Babel, was the image of Bel-Saturn, in the act of walking; by his side that of Beltis (Luna) standing; while Melitta, in a sitting posture, was between the two."-P. 14.

And so in other instances. Thus it is plain that a species of Trinitarianism existed in the East in ages long anterior to the promulgation of the Gospel. The vicinity of the region in which it is thus found to have originated and prevailed to the original seat of Christianity, or, rather, the identity, in some degree, of the former with the latter, is a sufficiently remarkable fact. Besides this, the sects who first disturbed the Christian community with their novel speculations, had their origin in the same regions, and amidst the same prevalent influences and modes of conception respecting the Divine nature.

"The errors of the Gnostic sects.... were oriental in their origin; and arising in that tendency to theosophic speculations which has always been a marked feature in the character of the East, entered with minuteness, precision and hardihood, into distinctions and refinements regarding the emanations by which the essential Mind of the universe was supposed to have made himself known."-P. 14.

It is not, however, until the Trinities of the Egyptian Mythology are described to us, that we are enabled fully to perceive the sources of the corrupting influences that prepared the way for the transformation of the pure monotheism of the primitive church into the Trinitarianism of the Athanasian Creed. The Egyptian Trinities are accordingly set before us (pp. 15-23) with a sufficiency of detail and of pictorial illustration. For these we must refer to the work itself, and content ourselves with the following extract, shewing the result arrived at:

"The idea of a Divine Trinity, then, more or less distinctly outlined in other Eastern systems of religion, appears in that of Egypt fully and definitely formed, and may in consequence be legitimately considered as the immediate parent of the modern doctrine. The Trinity of Egypt does not, it is true, present an exact identity with that of corrupted Christianity. Its second person is a female; yet even this feature has been seized on as a testimony to the ordinary doctrine of Christian divines. The writer of 'The Antiquities of Egypt' [a work published by the Religious Tract Society], remarks-the circumstance that the second person of the Egyptian triad is always described as a female is a remarkable point, which we notice without presuming at all to trespass beyond the exact letter of that which is written. The female impersonation of wisdom in the Book of Proverbs (i.-ix.) is a remarkable circumstance in this connection.' (P. 139.) He adds- We also discover another remarkable point presented, like the rest, under a debased and carnal figure, in the circumstance that the third person in the Egyptian triad is described as the offspring of the other two.' (P. 139.) This is a lamentable instance of the blindness of a too eager zeal. In his overpowering desire to find support for a doctrine whose want of Scriptural

evidence may now be considered as axiomatic, this representative of a very large and influential portion of the Established clergy scarcely hesitates to employ language which introduces low, earthly, debasing ideas of the Divine nature, and tends to throw around the subject associations and feelings which must wound the mind of the purely devout, and gratify the inconsiderate enemies of religion."-P. 21.

Our author next proceeds, before passing on to the speculations of Philo and Justin Martyr, briefly to mention the conceptions of God, or the Gods, entertained by the Greeks and Romans. This he is led to

do, because it was in the Greek and Latin languages that Christianity was first proclaimed to the world. It is evident that there would be some danger that persons receiving the new religion would transfer to it some of the notions respecting the nature of the Gods expressed by the old and familiar terms of those languages. The low conceptions attached to the term God, in the Greek and Roman Mythologies, are sufficiently well known. And remembering this, our author very justly observes,

"It is strange that persons who speak as authorities on the subject, should have attempted to prove the supreme deity of Jesus from the words of the younger Pliny, in which he represents the Christians of his day as singing a hymn to Christ as if to a God-Carmen Christo, quasi deo, dicere secum invicem. To say nothing of the force of quasi (as if), the term deus, from Pliny's pen, meant no more than it meant in the current language of the day, in which it was applied to persons of superior character or pre-eminent station."-P. 28.

We are now led again to Egypt, the country of the Jew Philo, to whose writings the author appeals, as shewing the causes which were at work in the very days of our Lord himself, and ready waiting, as it were, to convert his pure monotheism into a system of Trinitarianism :

"The details into which we have gone, will serve to shew the reader that the soil of Egypt was ill adapted to afford healthy nutriment to monotheistic views. The Egyptian mind was essentially visionary. The modes of thought in which it delighted were fantastic, as well as mystical. Its own habitual tendencies, which were encouraged by images and structures that had all the venerableness of an extreme religious antiquity, bore strongly in favour of a spiritual materialism, which was most alien from the genius of Christianitypower, love and a sound mind. It was at Alexandria, the celebrated metropolis of the Delta, that Christianity first came into living contact with the native elements of Egyptian theology."-P. 29.

To these "native elements of Egyptian theology" we have already briefly alluded. But besides them, Christianity here came into contact with the corrupting doctrines of the Platonizing Jews, of whom Philo is to be taken as the representative. These persons were led by various causes "to qualify the rigorous monotheism of their Hebrew forefathers, and to set forth the doctrines of their sacred books, in modes of thought and diction borrowed from oriental philosophy." (P. 30.) And little need we wonder that the Gospel, in the hands of such men as Justin Martyr, was transformed into a sort of modification of the Platonic philosophy, when we find the religion even of the bigoted and inflexible Jew himself so completely metamorphosed under the same potent influence. Nor was this the case in Egypt only, in immediate contact, that is, with the Platonists. Even in Judea was the same transforming cause in powerful operation. There is reason to believe that the

conception of the Logos, transferred in Christian times to Jesus Christ, had already, long before his birth, begun to act upon the exclusively Jewish idea of the Holy Spirit, insomuch that this object of contemplation had begun to be conceived of as a personal existence distinct from God, after the manner of the Logos in Philo's writings. Where this would have ended, had it been permitted to go on, we cannot now conjecture. The conception of the Logos soon became appropriated among the Christians to Jesus alone-though is it not possible that we may still have traces of the operation of Platonism on Judaism, in the points referred to, in the manner in which the Holy Spirit is occasionally spoken of in the New Testament?

However this may be, the fact that the Platonic doctrine could thus operate upon and modify the religious conceptions of Jews, shews us most clearly its very great power, and serves to lessen our surprise that the Christian Gospel should have felt and yielded to the same subtle influence. But let us observe, that as the philosophy of that day was the cause of the corruption of Christianity in the great doctrine to which we are now more particularly referring, so the better and truer philosophy of the present day seems destined to be a powerful cause of its restoration to its primitive purity. Our author has justly and forcibly pointed this out in the following words:

"We do not believe that the ecclesiastical notions involved in the doctrine of the Trinity can long endure, against the new light in which the modern science of astronomy has placed the nature and pervasive energy of God. The doctrine, now established, of a plurality of worlds, seems to render that of the incarnation of one of the persons of the Trinity necessarily transient and short-lived. A God suffering infinite pain for infinite sin in the numberless orbs of the thickly-peopled universe, is a notion too obviously formed on the old idea that the earth was the centre of the world, and the chief, if not the sole, object of the Divine care, to endure very long in the present advanced state of science. By the enlargement and expansion of our conception of the created universe, the idea of the Creator has become enlarged and expanded, till it implies, on the part of God, a spirituality which repels as childish the definitions of the schools and the contradictory distinctions of the Athanasian Creed."-P. 24.

The transformation of Christianity was vigorously promoted by Justin Martyr. This venerable father was a Heathen and a Platonist, long before he became a Christian; and what wonder, therefore, that some of his old philosophic ideas clung to him, and were allowed to enter into and modify his Christian faith? The process actually took place. It was hardly in human nature that it could be otherwise. The proud philosophy of the unconverted Gentile could not submit to be altogether subdued or destroyed, in Justin's mind, Martyr though he became, beneath the simple Gospel of the crucified man of Nazareth. The latter, on the contrary, must be improved, elevated, brought into harmony with the divine philosophy of the Athenian. Well, therefore, may the author of the "Illustrations" ask, in reference to Justin,

"In the present advanced state of theological knowledge, need we make any lengthened remarks to shew that our mystical theosophist can possess no authority as an expounder of Christian doctrine? The quarters whence he drew his ideas, the tendencies of his mind, the aims he pursued, and the means he employed for their attainment, combine to require the Scriptural student to be on his guard while perusing his works, and to make him look

on Justin as a rock from which to flee, rather than a port in which to seek shelter or aid. While, however, Justin is worse than useless as a guide, he may be serviceable as a witness. As he himself employed the Evangelists for the sake of their facts, so may he be used to give evidence of the sources whence the church of Christ received the doctrine of the Trinity. On this point we shall find Justin in striking harmony with Philo.”—P. 51.

This last assertion is illustrated by a brief account of the doctrines of Justin, especially on the subject of the Logos. Into the consideration of this account, however, it is not necessary for us here to enter at length. Our object, in these remarks, is rather to gain the attention of our readers for the work under our notice, than to copy its arguments and statements into these pages.

At the close of what we have termed the first part of the "Illustrations," the author presents the results thus far attained in the following words:

"Here then we pause, and cast an eye back on the ground over which we have passed. Whatever information has been gained respecting the rise and progress of Trinitarianism, it has come from other sources than those which the Bible supplies. And we seem warranted, by a retrospect, in declaring that Trinitarian notions, of a nature more or less modified by the peculiar character of the system with which, in each case, they are found connected, present themselves to the student of history in several parts of the ancient world; had a point of union in Alexandria, whence they came at an early period into the Christian church, at first indirectly and in small portions, but, with the progress of time, in their own proper character; and, when once there, assumed the chair of instruction, the rather because introduced by men of cultivated minds and distinguished abilities.”—P. 56.

Will it, however, in reply to these various evidences of the heathen origin of Trinitarianism, be alleged that the doctrine of the Trinity is proved to be in harmony with reason and with natural religion by the fact of its having been an element of the heathen religions in antechristian times? This reply the author anticipates, and thus he exposes its insufficiency:

"An attempt to found the Trinity on an appeal to reason, is, of all futile things, the most futile, especially after the aid of reason has been so repeatedly and so emphatically repudiated, and anti-trinitarians have been so severely blamed for bringing the doctrine to its bar. The simple fact seems to be, that the Trinity, in all cases, is the offspring of speculation. It is a human thing-an hypothesis, devised by minds more contemplative and mystical than wise or enlightened, to account for phenomena supposed to be involved in God's connexion with the world. These phenomena were little else than fancies, and the theory to explain them was a speculation. Growing knowledge has exploded the phenomena; and therefore it scarcely needed improved reason to expose the untenableness of the speculation. In truth, the Trinity is a child of philosophy, and not a dictate of common sense."-P. 199.

MISAPPLIED CHARITY.

HE that said that a cup of cold water, given for his sake, should not be given in vain, would take no exception, if, for his sake, it were ignorantly given to Judas Iscariot.-HARTLEY COLERIDGE.