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the majority, or of guiding his conscience in a point of such teach this Gospel to us, and the Prophetic Spirit, we with a importance by any but the written or traditional words of true and reasonable service worship and adore!" inspiration. The words which follow, therefore, and which Such, in the days of the elder Antoninus, and barely half have been sometimes supposed to be the reason given by the a century from the death of St. John, was the confession of Syrian martyr, for dissenting from the usual doctrine of the the Greek and Syriac Churches. Forty years later, we church, are, in truth, no more than the reason why the uni- have seen, on the authority of Tertullian, that a belief in the versal church were so earnest to inculcate those opinions Trinity was the predominant and prescriptive creed of the which were a stumbling-block in the way of Trypho's con-Christians in Western Africa; nor can we better sum up the version, but which, as received from the Deity himself, their result of these testimonies than in the words of Irenæus, who principles would neither allow them to suppress nor to com- was contemporary both with Justin and Tertullian and Polypromise. Επειδὴ ἐκ ἀνθρωπέιοις διδάγμασι κεκελεύσμεθα, ὑπ' αὐτὸ carp himself, and who, as a native of Syria and a Gallic τὸ Χριστὸ πείθεσθαι, ἀλλὰ τοῖς διὰ τῶν μακαρίων προφητῶν κηρυχ- bishop, was enabled to speak with greater certainty of the θῶσι καὶ δὶ αὐτὸ διδαχθεῖσι. predominant opinions in the Eastern as well as the Western

That the Son, indeed, and the Holy Ghost, were, as well world.

as the Father, adored in the days of Justin, by the great body "This doctrine," he tells us, after a clear and copious exof Christians, we learn from Justin himself, in a treatise, position of all those points for which the orthodox are now where, of all others, a mis-statement of their opinions in this contending, "this doctrine and this faith the Church, though respect would have been most wicked and most useless, scattered through the earth, has received, and guards as if his Second Apology for the Christians; a work wherein he her members were one single family. This she believes as justifies the great body of believers from the charges of with one single heart; this as with one single voice she atheism and superstition brought against them by their Pagan proclaims and teaches, and delivers to her progeny. There enemies; and wherein he professes to give an accurate ex-are many languages in the world, but the tenour of our tradiposition of those doctrines which they really believed and tion is the same. The Churches in Germany believe and maintained. teach no otherwise; nor in Spain, nor in Gaul, nor in the

Now I am convinced, that in those numerous apologies East, nor in Egypt, nor in Lybia, nor those which are in the and (to use a word which has, during these few last years, midst of the world, and in the central provinces of Italy. become popular and almost technical) those "portraitures," But as all the world is enlightened by the self-same sun, so which the advocates of different sects have, in our times, sent does the doctrine of truth shine every where, and enlighten all forth in commendation or defence of their respective tenets, who desire to come to it. Nor will the most eloquent of our no instance can be found in which the Apologist has ventured Christian teachers add to this tradition, nor the weakest in to ascribe, as an article of faith, to the universal sect, those the Gospel diminish aught from it. For when the faith is opinions which were confined to a small though learned part one, neither can an eloquent exposition add to its doctrines, of it. Not even where the tenet was of a popular character, nor the briefest statement detract from them." and likely to conciliate the good will of those for whose It may seem, then, that little either of modesty or learning perusal the Apology was intended, would such a conduct be is shown in the assertion of the same surviving chief of hazarded. There are Quakers who dress themselves like Unitarianism whom I have already quoted, that one hundred other men; but would any of these, in controversy with an and twenty years after Christ, "the majority of Christians, Episcopalian, maintain that this harmless conformity to the being plain and unlearned men, warmly resisted the Trinitaworld was the general opinion and practice of the society for rian doctrine." And not only will this supposed majority whom he was pleading? There are Protestants who rever- dwindle down into a comparatively small proportion, so ence the Episcopal institution as of primitive and apostolical small, indeed, as to have been alike unworthy the mention or appointment; but should I, or any other Protestant who holds knowledge of the defenders of the Church and its persecuthis opinion, maintain, in a friendly conference with a Ro-tors, so small as to have been unknown to Pliny and unnomanist, that the universal body of Reformed and Lutheran ticed by Justin, but of that proportion the tenets may, perhaps, churches in this respect agreed with me? Still stronger, appear to have been such as will by no means furnish a prehowever, does the case become, when the tenet in question cedent to the modern Unitarian confession. has been the subject of derision or persecution; when it is This inquiry, however, must be deferred to a future Sunesteemed the most offensive peculiarity of the sect, and that day, when I propose to examine the probable source of those from which their enemies have taken most occasion to accuse opinions which are peculiar to orthodoxy, no less than the them of blasphemy or madness. The doctrines of material- recorded doctrines of those who, in the first and second ism and necessity have been maintained, we know, by many of centuries after Christ, dissented from the majority of their the leading members of that sect which chiefly, in the present brethren. age, opposes the opinion of a Trinity; yet how explicitly do their ingenious supporters disclaim both materialism and necessity as essential or universal doctrines of the infant church; how strongly are we assured, that, whatever be the notions of individuals on these important subjects, such notions are neither taught nor received by the majority of freethinking Christians.

LECTURE III.

tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.-John xvi 7.

But the divinity of a crucified Man was a doctrine more I revolting to the Greeks and Romans than the materialism of Priestley to the majority of modern believers: the injurious manner in which the influence of the Holy Ghost and the notion of a Trinity in Unity were derided by the Heathen, is I have shown in a former Lecture, and shown, in part, apparent from the few ancient libels against our faith which from those very authorities to which our adversaries chiefly have descended to the present generation. It was incumbent, appeal, that, in the second century of the vulgar æra, and less therefore, on the Apologist of Christianity to show, that those than one hundred years from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, opinions (whether he himself adopted them or no,) were the the doctrine of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead (in which opinions of a small party only; that they were points on which doctrine the Personality of the Spirit of God is completely the church permitted every man to think as he pleased; and and necessarily included) was too widely diffused and too that ignorance only or malignity could visit their supposed firmly seated in the churches both of the East and West, to impiety on the universal body of Christians. have been, as our antagonists pretend, a heresy of recent introduction.

Such would, such necessarily must have been the conduct of the eloquent and (our adversaries themselves being judges) But neither can it be urged with any show of likelihood, the honest and candid Justin, were the Unitarians correct that this opinion, or the other features of that faith which we in their hypothesis, that their present opinions were, in his call Catholic and orthodox, were derived from that little band time, those of a great majority in the Christian world. But of philosophical converts whom Christianity received, in how different is the declaration of faith which, not in his those early ages, from the Platonic school of Alexandria. own name only, but as defender of the Catholic religion, he The mixture of that leaven with the church, if it ever took advances in his Second Apology! place at all, must, doubtless, then have been of a date too re"In gods like these," (he is speaking of the Pagan dei-cent to produce the effects which we have contemplated; and ties,)" we own ourselves to be unbelievers; but not in the the scanty infusion of learning, which was at no time suffimost true and faultless God, and Father of justice and pu-cient to rescue her from the imputation of barbarisin, can rity, and all other virtues. Him, and the Son who came to hardly have been an ally so dangerous as it is sometimes

represented, to the primitive simplicity of religion. In eccle- holy things and beings like himself could issue. The light siastical history the Platonists are conspicuous, because the itself and the inhabitants of light were all alike his offspring; share of knowledge which they possessed is advantageously all which, on earth, was virtuous or fair, or wise, was only contrasted with the general ignorance of contemporary be- so far fair and wise and virtuous as it emanated from his perlievers; but that very ignorance would present an effectual fection; and the time was anticipated when the final triumph barrier against the extension of their influence in the church. of holiness and wisdom should be no longer delayed; and A jealousy of carnal learning and metaphysical refinement when the God of goodness should destroy or conquer all has been, in every age, the usual characteristic of men in by which his gracious designs had been hitherto opposed or that situation of life, and with those means of information, impeded.

which we may reasonably ascribe to the primitive ministers But though their notions of the deity were thus pious and of the gospel; nor is it likely that the poor and simple reasonable; and though, in some obscure expressions of their bishops of Gaul, of Pontus, or of Spain, should purchase the master, we may trace a yet nearer approach to the truth, in costly manuscripts, or attend to the airy reveries, of an East- the adumbration of a Threefold existence in the Godhead: yet ern or Egyptian philosopher. did they not, in practice, honour him as God of whose es

The power of making proselytes on a rapid or extensive sys-sence they had so clear a knowledge; and, by a prudent contem is seldom, indeed, possessed by the recluse, the studious, formity with the superstition of the times, they paid a willing or the refined. The habits of science are unfavourable to that reverence to the gods and idols of their ancestors, as viceactivity which is the leading characteristic of the religious gerents of the One Supreme, and as those to whom he had no less than the political reformer; and while Clemens or committed all care of that mortality which was beneath his Pantænus or Origen were wearing out their days and nights own attention.

in the composition of elaborate volumes, which few would Their opinions as to the material principle were of a nature read at all, and still fewer would read with unqualified as- still less conformable to religion or to reason. They did not, sent, the banners of Christ were triumphantly carried through indeed, at the time of which I am speaking, (it is, perhaps, a the world by those honest and unlearned missionaries, whose vulgar error to suppose they ever did), ascribe to any thing qualifications were confined to the courage of an ardent faith, evil or material either the name or characteristics of Deity. and the untaught eloquence of feeling. But to matter they nevertheless imputed an eternal being, a

It is a problem, indeed, which the present is not the place perception of pleasure and of pain, and a blind and stubborn to solve, to what extent the learning of a rising sect may con- instinct of self-preservation, which, inasmuch as its very extribute to its progress in the world. That some of its pro-istence was impure and opposed to the spiritual life, was fessors should be raised, by their acquirements, above the exerted always in afflicting or debasing those spiritual creaordinary level of mankind, is a circumstance which may, tures which were entangled in the vortex of its influence. doubtless, raise the general party in their own estimation, and Of the evil demons, to whose agency no small proportion in the estimation of other men; it may fling a grace and dig-of the natural and moral phenomena of the present life were nity over the adoption of their creed, and redeem their con- ascribed, two different opinions were held. Some there were verts from those formidable imputations of enthusiasm or who supposed them to be human souls or heavenly spirits, vulgarity by which every rising sect has, to a certain extent, who by intercourse with matter had depraved their habits and been assailed. But learning to a rising sect is less a weapon affections: by others they were regarded as exhalations from than an ornament. The plume of the soldier, and the other the more fiery and vivacious particles of matter itself; a little pageantry of war, may illustrate, indeed, his triumph; but elevated, indeed, above the lion or serpent of the visible it is by the sword, not by the crest, that his triumph must world, but to be controlled, like their brother monsters of the first have been purchased: and it is by unlearned zeal and forest or the fen, with menaces, or flattery, or food; to be unpolished energy only, that a new opinion, or an infant state, bound by exorcism and allured or chased by odours. can hope to conquer. But, whatever were their differences in these and other cir

It may be doubted, perhaps, whether the students of Alex-cumstances of superstitious detail, in one leading principle the andria would have even desired to extend their peculiar tenets several parties agreed; that matter was, in itself, incurably beyond the narrow bounds of Platonism. It is certain that corrupt, the origin of all moral evil; that "the drop of heathey were neither qualified by their numbers nor their per- venly dew" (for so Synesius calls the soul) was degraded sonal resources to extend a new opinion, in so short a space and enslaved by its confinement in this earthly cistern; that of time, through the numerous and scattered communities of the thoughts and wishes of the sage were capable of only one the faithful. direction; and that his spirit coveted incessantly to exhale

And though some learned converts from the Platonic sect once more to that region whence she had descended. have, doubtless, adorned Christianity with some of the no- From this opinion, when applied to practice, two very opblest monuments of genius and piety which our religion has posite systems took their rise. The professors of the one, to show; yet is it by no means true that a general approxima- regarding the body as an obstinate and malicious slave, ention took place between the tenets of the academy and the joined their followers to macerate him with abstinence, and gospel, or that any considerable influx of learning or talent to punish him with stripes and chains; while the defenders was derived to the latter from the former. There was too of the other, detached from the world, and occupied without much of interested monopoly, too much of priestcraft among ceasing in the contemplation of the Divine Essence, professed the latter Platonists, to allow them to discover truth or merit to abandon the outward man to the guidance of his own inbeyond the limits of their sect; and the examples of Apuleius, stinct or passion, as one in whose sensual pursuits the soul Jamblichus, and Apollonius of Tyana, may prove that their had neither interest nor responsibility, and whose brutish leaders were more inclined to pretend to divinity themselves gambols were beneath the notice of a pure and abstracted than to acknowledge the divinity of Jesus. And the follow-spirit.

ing short review of the leading tenets of the modern Platonic, It is evident, however, that these previous notions would or, as it is called, the Pythagorean philosophy, may convince conduct the Platonists to conclusions directly at variance ns, that their system can by no means be regarded as the with those peculiar opinions of which the introduction has parent of that which we now profess; and that much of been ignorantly ascribed to their influence.

prayer and more of grace was needful before a pagan philoso- I. As the reduction of matter into form was regarded as an pher could subdue his pride to the standard of the orthodox office unworthy the immediate hand of God; and as the imconfession. perfections which they found or fancied in the visible The leading question which, at the particular time of world made them still more unwilling to ascribe its fabric to which I am speaking, divided the opinions and occupied the the Allgood and Allwise; they were accustomed to refer this attention of the educated part of mankind, was the nature and work to a subaltern, perhaps an evil, agent, whom their origin of evil; a problem which the eastern Magi and the hatred of the Jews induced them readily to identify with the Alexandrian Platonists alike undertook to solve by the bril-Jehovah of that unpopular nation.

Jiant but unsubstantial theory of two opposing principles, to II. Having assumed as a principle the utter impurity of whose struggles they ascribed that chequered face of creation, matter and all its accidents, the union of the soul with the of which the acknowledged beauties and apparent faults for- body of man was regarded as a crime in itself, or as the bade them to ascribe the whole to either a good or evil foun- punishment of former offences. They absolutely, therefore, tain. refused to believe that a pure and perfect Being could subject Of these two warring powers, this perfect and living light, itself to an union so unnatural; that the Divine nature could this deadly and impenetrable darkness; this unaltered boun- become incarnate, and as incarnate, so susceptible of hunger, ty, and this wickedness untameable; the first was God, the of thirst, of bodily infirmities, and death. pure, the perfect unity, from whose creation only pure and Lastly, they denied altogether that the body once deceased

VOL. II.-21

could be raised to happiness or glory; much more that a common sense of mankind, that a sect would hold in honour, person clothed with such an incumbrance could be admitted as their teacher and spiritual father, that person from whom into the presence or enthroned at the right hand of God. they had received their peculiar opinions, not those by whose They were principles like these which produced, in Por- authority such opinions had been originally opposed and anphyry, the most formidable antagonist whom Christianity athematized? Do the Calvinists call themselves after the ever encountered; they were these which raised the empiric name of Luther, or will the Protestants appeal to the tradiApollonius to his subsequent fabulous eminence; which are tional sentiments of Bellarmine? Is it Ali or Omar whom sometimes supposed to have withdrawn the great Ammonius the Sunnites reverence? and if Cerinthus or Carpocrates had from the communion in which he was educated; which se- superceded in the Church the authority of Peter and John, duced the acute but pedantic Julian to the forgotten super- would the latter or the former names have stood conspicuous stition of his ancestors; and which kept Synesius, beneath in the Christian rubric, and assumed, in our temples and our the mantle of episcopacy, more than half a Pagan still. manuals of devotion, the attitude and halo of sanctity? Among those few Platonists, indeed, who embraced a nom- Would not the Gospel of Leuce have in such a case supinal Christianity, the same preconceptions led them for the planted that of Luke? and would not those who, sixty years most part to join any sect of Christians, rather than those afterwards, professed the same opinions, (instead of appealwhose tenets I am now defending; to deny, with the Docetæ, ing to the real or pretended sentiments of those Apostles the bodily existence of Christ; or to degrade him, with the from whom they had revolted,) have told us of his triumphaut followers of Carpocrates, into a merely human philosopher. zeal who had extricated, from the mists of Jewish error, that And, while almost all the heresies which distracted the genuine religion which the original followers of Jesus had church during the three first centuries are deducible from obscured or betrayed?

Platonic principles, the small number of philosophers who For those whom we call Apostles or Evangelists the hereembraced the Catholic faith were rather orthodox in spite of tical sects had no such implicit reverence. St. Paul was their Platonism, than conducted by Platonism to orthodoxy. styled Apostate by the Ebionites; and in like manner, beThe words of Tertullian are well known, in which he calls yond a doubt, would the Trinitarians have proceeded, had the great master of the Academy, "the seasoner of all her- they derived their origin from any of those whom the twelve esies;" and the contumely to which Origen himself was had delivered to Satan.

exposed in the ancient church may prove, that the allegiance "But the heresy," it will be said, "is the error of a later of the Alexandrian school to Christianity was at no time period; and the last of the Apostles had gone to his reward free from suspicion among the more rigid and less learned before Christ was worshipped as a God, or the Holy Ghost believers. revered as a distinct intelligence.”

But if the Platonists had really sufficient influence with I will not now remind our learned antagonists, that not the Christian world to infect, as our antagonists maintain, only had these doctrines been taught by Clemens, Ignatius, their faith with the doctrine of the Trinity, why, it may be and Polycarp, but that in the days of Justin and Irenæus asked, was the contagion limited to this one peculiar opinion? they were the prevailing and prescriptive opinions of ChrisWere the ceremonies of magic or the notion of the metemp-tendom. I will not ask them to calculate what time is needful sychosis less likely to seduce an ignorant multitude than a to disperse an idolatrous creed (for such they esteem it) speculation as to the manner of the Divine existence; or through the many thousand Unitarian churches which must were they more at variance with the spirit of Christianity have arisen, during the lifetime of the apostles, in every rethan, if we believe our antagonists, the adoration of the Holy gion of the empire. But whenever the innovation was Ghost and the Son? Or how can we believe that the Pla- effected, it must, doubtless, have had a beginning; and if tonist, who, to gain admission into the Church, had renounced that beginning had been opposed by the scholars and immehis more obvious peculiarities, should have raked out, from diate successors of the twelve, supported by their recent authe darkness of the Timæus and the Parmenides, a doctrine thority, the apostles, it is plain, would not have been held in which, far from being a conspicuous tenet of the Academy, such exalted reverence by the fathers of the succeeding age. was hardly known, it may be thought, to its students, till it We may perhaps be answered, that "the crafty heretic who was quoted against them by the Christians? sowed such tares in the evangelical field, professed no nov

That a doctrine, however, may be found in the works of elty, but the revival of ancient opinions; that he grounded Plato which bears a resemblance, though an imperfect one, his system on the alleged authority of the apostles themto the Catholic faith of one Divine Being displayed in three selves, which the universal church, as he pretended, had Hypostases, is a truth acknowledged by all. And though subsequently corrupted or mistaken."

the above considerations may prove, that the Christians can- That this should be attempted, and attempted with sucnot have borrowed it from the Academy, the Socinians may cess, at a time when the last of the apostles was hardly cold do well to reflect, whether that opinion, which was espoused in his grave, and while many thousands were yet alive who by the deepest thinkers of the ancient world, can be, in itself, had received from his living lips instruction, and from his so repugnant to natural reason or natural religion as its oppo- hands ordination and authority, is a mystery, it may seem, as nents would have us believe. hard to be believed as any one of those for which the Socin

But, not only is it highly improbable that the orthodox ians despise and revile us. If we granted, however, what opinion should have been introduced into Christianity by the can only be granted for the sake of argument, that this reply Platonist, it may be shown, that we must, on every rule of might solve the difficulty which arises from the frequent relikelihood (and independently of those proofs which it is in ference of the early fathers to apostolic tradition and autho our power to produce from the Apostolic writings,) assign its rity, yet will another remain, which Unitarian ingenuity, I introduction to the Apostles themselves. apprehend, can hardly obviate.

For, first, we have already seen the confidence with which For, 2dly, the appeals of Tertullian, Irenæus, and Justin, Justin and Irenæus and Tertullian appeal to Apostolic tradi- to apostolic authority, are perfectly silent as to any interruption and authority. tion of that tradition to which they lay claim, or to any loss To the general weakness of such appeals in themselves I and subsequent revival in the church of those tenets which must not be supposed insensible: I am far from denying that, they profess to have been the tenets of our Lord's immediate in the space of half a century, many actions or assertions might followers. be fathered on the Apostles, of which the Apostles were alto- But if the orthodox opinions arose in the church from any gether guiltless. But though Apostolic tradition be not alone other teaching but that of the apostles themselves, there sufficient to establish the truth of any particular doctrine, yet, must, doubtless, have been a time at which they were unfrom the frequency of these appeals two facts will necessarily known. And on whatever pretence and by whatever artifice follow: 1st, That the orthodox regarded the Apostles as the their introduction was effected, its author, whether reformer original founders of their sect; and, 2dly, That they acknow- or innovator, could not, we may be sure, have produced so ledged no interruption in the tradition of the Church; no sub-great a change, without a painful struggle against previous sequent loss and revival of the Apostolic tenets. opinion, and a display of talents of some kind or other which

But as every innovation must have had its beginning, every must have ensured him the veneration of his followers. religious sect its heresiarch, so will it also be allowed, that The name of reformer or restorer, in the general estimation the doctrine of the Trinity (if it were indeed an innovation of mankind, is little less illustrious than that of first disand a heresy,) must needs have been introduced, if the Apos-coverer. Luther, we know, as well as Melancthon and tles were still alive, in opposition to their authority; if after Calvin, professed to teach no novelties; but to inculcate a their decease, in opposition to the general sense of that return to the primitive models of doctrine and faith and worChurch which they had established. ship. Manes and Mohammed revived, as they pretended, the Is it not plain, however, from the common custom and original tenets of the Messiah; yet when will these men or

Peter or James or John?

the changes which they effected pass away from the memory vious meaning. However they were divided as to his rank of the world? Had such a revolution as our antagonists in the scale of nature, and the manner of his procession from suppose taken place in the Christian church during the first the Deity, they did not cease to revere him as an actual Pacentury of its existence, would not the volume of Eusebius tron and Advocate; and Manes and Arius, and Mohammed have overflowed with its details, and would not the teacher himself, may be no less urged against the followers of Sociby whose agency it was accomplished have assumed anus than Athanasius, or Basil, or Hilary. scarcely less lofty rank in the estimation of his followers than The first of these, whose opinions have been cleared from all their ancient obscurity by the patience and learning of Such a teacher as is here supposed would have been hon- Beausobre, assigned to the Spirit of God, an existence and oured by Trinitarians as the second founder of Christianity; habitation distinct from the Father, and offices and actions apas the reviver of a church oppressed by Jewish prejudice; as plicable to a person only; and the followers of Manes were the comforter and purifier of the afflicted household of Jesus. by the avowal of Augustin himself, no less correct than that His patient journeys from Syria to Spain, and from Alexan- most orthodox Bishop in the confession of a perfect Trinity. dria to Lyons, while disseminating the revived opinion; his The opinion of the Arians is known from the concurrent arduous disputes with the patrons of established prejudice; testimony of Theodoret and Epiphanius; from the facts that his fearless indifference under the anathemas of the impious, Basil, in his treatise on the Holy Ghost, composed during the and the holy zeal which mocked the arts of Ebionite bland- heat of the Arian controversy, is only concerned to prove the ishment; all which the Arians (if their sect had triumphed) divinity of the third person in the Godhead, without regarding would have related of their supposed reformer; all would it as a necessary part of his task to vindicate his personal exhave swelled, beyond a doubt, the annals of religious contro-istence; and that Arius himself, in his epistle to Alexander, versy, and have remained as a sacred legacy to the gratitude admits expressly the existence of three heavenly persons, and imitation of succeeding Trinitarians. though he denies their mysterious union, and allows to one

But for this elder and greater Athanasius we search the of them alone the title of God. Mohammed, too, though he page of history in vain. Of such a convulsion no traces are sometimes assigns the name of Holy Ghost to our Saviour, found in the writings of the earliest fathers. They, like our-more usually identifies him with the angel Gabriel; and in selves, treat every opinion but their own as an impious and either case can only be understood as imputing to him a disdaring novelty; and acknowledge no other founder or reno- tinct and intelligent Being. vator of the faith than that omniscient Spirit who separated And to these, by far the greatest streams which have ever Barnabas and Paul to the work of converting the Gentiles. emanated from the Christian source, may be added the more Nor will it be said by those who are even moderately ac- ancient suffrage of the first heresiarch Simon; of the primiquainted with the ordinary progress of opinion, that a change tive Gnostics, whose Ennæa and Monogenes can be no otherso considerable could have been effected in night and silence; wise interpreted than of the spirit and eternal word; of the that the corruption was so gradual that its original author Ebionites, who, if we believe Epiphanius, acknowledged the is unknown; that the venom devoured the vitals of religion, Holy Ghost to be a real and most powerful Personage; of the before those outward symptoms were displayed which would Nazarenes themselves, in whom the modern Unitarians would have produced, at first, a prompt and efficacious remedy." gladly find a precedent for their error, but who, in two several passages of their own gospel, according to the Hebrews, must have learned the same opinion.

The time was too short, the years were too few, the body was too extensive, for an imperceptible cause to produce effects so portentous. The corruption of a single church might Nor must we omit, in this enumeration of evidence, the have been effected in a few years of neglect and ignorance; expressive silence of the orthodox fathers, who, in relating but to pervert the whole empire of Christ with one universal the errors of other ancient heretics, afford no reason to supand unobserved contagion, must have required the lapse of pose that they were in this respect defective, though neither more than a single century. The transition which is rapid Epiphanius nor Jerome nor Theodoret were inclined to overmust be painful; and whatever is painful will neither pass look or to soften the features of religious disunion. Where unperceived nor be speedily consigned to oblivion. If such the innocence of Lactantius could not escape uncensured, a change as this has not been noticed by contemporary wri- there is little probability that real heresy would be allowed to ters, we may be sure that it never took place at all. pass without detection; and we must therefore confine the Nor can it be urged with any show of likelihood, that, in denial of the Holy Ghost to those sects only to whose charge adducing the opinions of that body of Christians who have it is expressly laid, to the Sabellians of ancient times, and the agreed in the worship of a Triune Deity, we are contenting modern followers of Socinus. ourselves, with the party statements of a single sect; conspi- Nor is there need of any further argument to show, that if cuous indeed from the final subjugation of the Christian world, we have erred in embracing in its literal sense the promise of by their arts and their influence'; but, at the period which is our gracious Master, we have erred in company with the Chrisnow in question, not more entitled to our deference, either tian world of every party and period; and that all, with the from numbers or respectability, than many of those reputed above exceptions, (which, how slight they are, is known to heretical bodies, who have perished in the lapse of time, or every one even moderately versed in history,) all have antiunder the sword of persecution. For that they to whom the cipated a powerful and personal agent in the Comforter by titles are applied of the church and the Catholic Christians whom our Saviour's presence was to be supplied. were, indeed, as those names imply, the great majority of be- But let God be true and every man a liar! Though we lievers, the assumption of such lofty titles, in opposition to expect, and expect with reason, no little weight of evidence all who dissented from their worship or jurisdiction, is itself to withdraw us from an interpretation of Scripture, which if no inconsiderable argument. it were not founded on truth could hardly have been univer

For when all alike were levelled by the iron hand of perse-sal; against evidence, nevertheless, however offered to our cution, to what pre-eminence but the pre-eminence of num- notice! against that evidence, above all, which is professedly bers could any single sect lay claim? What endowment, what founded on Scripture, our reason and our religion alike forbid authority did the orthodox enjoy under the yoke of Severus or us to rebel. An explanation may be true, (by bare possibility the Antonini, beyond the poorest Ebionite, the wildest and it may,) and if demonstrated from the word of God it may still most frantic Basilidian? What were their privileges but a demand our acquiescence, though it have slumbered for ages popularity more obnoxious to the jealous rigour of the law; in the fairy shades of allegory; though the wandering genius an honourable but fatal preponderance in the noble army of of Origen have never disturbed its repose; though Manes and martyrs; a more than common share in the distinctions of the Augustin have failed alike to trace it; and though St. John cross, the gibbet, or the wheel? Where the authority of the himself have concealed its mystic clue from his disciples church or assembly is appealed to by the ancient Fathers, it Polycarp and Ignatius. can be only that authority which arises from general opinion; and the appeal would have been worse than ridiculous, had those societies, against whom the church employed it, been able to muster as strongly as herself.

We challenge, then, our antagonists to make good their hypothesis by the only proof which remains; and (since the literal sense of our Saviour's promise is, confessedly, in our favour) to demonstrate that the spirit of God is elsewhere spoken of in scripture, under circumstances and in language which prove the present passage to be allegorical.

But, further, in the discussion of the spirit's personality, it is altogether unnecessary to confine our inquiries to the limits of orthodoxy alone, since not only the Catholic church, but And this has been attempted by the production of several by far the greater part of those who have dissented from her passages from the Old and New Testament, where (by the tenets, have maintained with no less precision than ourselves common avowal of both parties) the term of Holy Ghost, or this common opinion, and have united with ourselves and our Spirit of God, is used under circumstances which cannot fathers to receive the promise of our Lord in its literal and ob- properly belong to a Person.

Thus we read of the spirit being given and received, and gion which he founded? "A man in "Christ;"—" a margiven in a larger and smaller proportion: the Holy Ghost is riage in the Lord;" -a saint "to whom to live was Christ ;" said to be extinguished by human carelessness, and to be-are these less forcible expressions than those which have improved by human piety. been pleaded as impugning the Spirit's Personality? Or what

But a Person, and, above all, a Person of so exalted a more certain grounds are afforded in Scripture to believe nature is incapable," they tell us, "of accidents thus degrad- that God himself is an intelligent and real agent, than the ing; and if these accidents are predicated of the Spirit of distribution, and volition, and government, and testimony, God, that Spirit can be no intelligent Person." and speech, and grief, and desire, which in the New Testa

That it is not, however, an objection which a person moderately versed in the forms of reasoning need greatly fear to encounter, may appear from the following considerations.

This is the purport of the objection, as it is advanced by ment are attributed to the Holy Ghost? Let these be the most considerable teachers of Unitarianism; and it is an resolved into metaphor or allegory, and the name of Jehoobjection, I believe, which has had more effect than any vah may be shown on the same indentical principle to be no other on those whom they have persuaded to adopt their more than nature personified; the Bible itself transformed opinions. into a manual of Atheism; and the desolate and silent abomination of Spinoza erected on the altar of the Most High. But we are told again, and the objection has been urged so triumphantly, that our antagonists, to all appearance, are se rious in producing it, that "if the Spirit of God be accounted In the first place, our antagonists must allow, that, what- a Person, we must extend, by a parity of reasoning, the same ever be the character of those passages from which the Per- character of personality to the Schekinah, the power, the wissonality of the Spirit is inferred, those texts which are dom, the influence or finger of God, with many or all of which advanced to prove the contrary are clearly and necessarily the Spirit of God is used as synonymous." Thus "the prefigurative. The expressions which have been referred to, if sence of God," in the first member of the eleventh verse of literally understood, are as completely inconsistent with their the fifty-first Psalm, is the same thing, if we believe Eben hypothesis as with ours; inconsistent, indeed, with every Ezra and Kimchi among the Jews, and Lardner among Chrishypothesis, but that absurd one which would reduce the tian critics, with his Holy Spirit" in the corresponding Holy Ghost to a material fume or afflatus. An accident, or member. And our Lord's expression, as reported by St. modus operandi, which has no existence in itself; an abstract Matthew, of casting out devils by the Spirit of God," is quality, which is the empty phantom of a rhetorician's given by St. Luke as if he had not said the Spirit of God, brain; these can be no more conferred or divided than they but his "Finger." can be sent or grieved or blasphemed. Nor are the latter expressions more appropriate to a person than the former to a substance or thing.

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It would be, perhaps, no difficult matter to prove that many, perhaps the greater part, of those texts which Lardner has cited to this point of the controversy, have been, in truth, But qualities, attributes, virtues, powers, are nothing else, nisunderstood or misapplied. The task, however, is needas has already been shown, than the manner in which cer- less, since, though we should admit to the fullest extent the tain effects either are or may be brought to pass; and premises urged by Lardner, the objection which he deduces whether the Holy Ghost be an accident or a person, it is from them is, in truth, no objection at all. plain that such expressions as those referred to are only in- With those who believe that the Holy Ghost is a Person, telligible as applying those characteristics which are proper by whom and through whom the unseen and unapproachable to the thing produced; either to the manner in which it is Father has manifested alike his power, his presence, his graproduced, or to the agent which produces it. cious influence to men, no difficulty can arise from the acNor has any ground been shown why the latter of these knowledgment that such a Person may be as properly styled metaphorical applications is not as proper and as possible as the Finger or Glory as the Breath of God. Nor, as we conthe former; or why, in the words of Glassius, as well the tend, can any one of these titles (for titles they doubtless persona efficiens as the modus efficiendi may not be put for the are,) nor all of them together, detract from the existence or res effecta. Yet it is on this assumption that the links of individuality of Him whose nature and office and intercourse their argument depend; which may be reduced in effect to a with mankind they dimly serve to shadow. With personsyllogism like the following. "The name of a personal ality none of them are inconsistent, since the metaphorical agent can never be employed to express the effects produced illustration which they convey is as natural and as intelligible by his agency. But the name of the Holy Spirit is fre- when applied to a person as to an attribute or modus operandi; quently employed to express effects which the same Holy and since in ancient alike and modern times the former of Ghost produces. Therefore the Holy Ghost is not the name these applications is, at least, as common as the latter. Did of a personal agent." If the major of the above propositions the author of that ancient Epistle which bears the name of be not conceded, it is apparent, that all their examples to Barnabas, design to resolve the Son of God into a mere atprove the minor will not accelerate their progress a single tribute of the Deity, when he styled him the Sceptre of the step towards the conclusion. But if it be conceded, I will Most High? Was Simon Magus annihilated in the opinion not so far insult the solemnity of this hallowed place, or the of the Samaritans, when they called him, in superstitious understanding of my present audience, as to do more than veneration, the Great Power of God? The eyes and ears of instance the least preposterous of the conclusions, which, by the ancient kings of Persia are known to have been officers, a process equally legitimate with that of our antagonists, by whose agency the monarch communicated with his promight be deduced from this single concession. vinces and armies; and, in modern days, we apply the term If we use on the authority of the Apostles such express- of police, or civil power, not only to the abstract idea of ions as those of receiving and quenching the Spirit of God, magistracy, but to the magistrates themselves, and executive do we not also use on the same authority (for repeated in- ministers of justice. stances may be found in the New Testament no less than in With still less reason can it be denied, that, as many ofthe common practice of mankind) the same or parallel ex-fices may be filled by the same individual, so may the names pressions, where the reality of the Person has never been and titles of that individual be multiplied in proportion to the the subject of debate? How often do we speak of the Book number of the relations which he bears to others. The Unity of Moses as if that volume were Moses himself! We talk of the Father is not endangered, though he be called alterof reading Moses; of dividing Moses into chapters; of com-nately and indifferently the Supreme, the Eternal, the Ancient paring one part of Moses with another. Yet to assert or of Days, Adonai, Schaddai, and Jehovah. The Lamb of God, believe that the Moses of Scripture is a personification only the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Son of Man, the Bread of the singular care by which God conducted his people, an which came down from Heaven, are all alike applied to the allegorical representation of their passage through the sea, Person of the Lord Jesus Christ: and, in like manner, how (the etymology of his name would signally favour such an great soever the diversity of operations and of gifts, we may hypothesis,) or that he is no more than an abstract term for recognize in each of them the same identical Spirit, the same those Divine truths which are embodied in the Pentateuch, God, which worketh all in all. -to assert and believe all this would be as wild insanity as But further, if the Unitarians will concede, with Lardner, theirs, who reduce the entire Old Testament to an hierogly- the identity of the Holy Ghost with the Presence or Glory or phic ephemeris: it would be little less preposterous than the Schekinah of God, (these last terms are undoubtedly synony assertion of those learned men who would reduce the Spirit mous,) which on certain occasions appeared in a bodily form or God to an empty name!-Have we forgotten, or do we to the Israelites, and which was supposed by them, as its know so little of Scripture, that the fact has escaped our name implies, to be the constant and tutelary "inhabitant" knowledge; have we so learned Christ, that we know not of the sanctuary, they will find themselves not far, indeed, as how often the name of Christ is employed to express the reli-will be hereafter shown, from the opinions of the orthodox

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