theology! Do you undertake to measure the extent of any man's understanding except your own; to estimate the strength and origin of his habits of thinking; to appreciate his merit or demerit in the use of the talent which God has given him; so as unerringly to pronounce that the belief of this or that doctrine is necessary to his salvation? . . . If different men, in carefully and conscientiously examining the Scriptures, should arrive at different conclusions, even on points of the last importance, we trust that God, who alone knows what every man is capable of, will be merciful to him that is in error. We trust that he will pardon the Unitarian, if he be in an error, because he has fallen into it from the dread of becoming an idolater, - of giving that glory to another which he conceives to be due to God alone. If the worshipper of Jesus Christ be in an error, we trust that God will pardon his mistake, because he has fallen into it from a dread of disobeying what he conceives to be revealed concerning the nature of the Son, or commanded concerning the honor to be given him. Both are actuated by the same principle, — the fear of God; and, though that principle impels them into different roads, it is our hope and belief, that, if they add to their faith charity, they will meet in heaven. - BISHOP WATSON.

The passage marked [1] is taken from the Anecdotes of Watson's Life, p. 405; that numbered [2], from the Preface to his Collection of Theological Tracts, vol. i. pp. xv.-xviii.

That a belief in these formulas [those which have been retained since the Nicene Council in the system of the church, established and enforced] should be declared essential to salvation, as is done in the Athanasian Creed, cannot but be disapproved. This creed, however, was not composed by Athanasius; nor was it even ascribed to him before the seventh century, though it was probably composed in the fifth. The principle that any one who holds different views respecting the Trinity salvus esse non poterit [cannot be saved]... would lead us to exclude from salvation the great majority even of those Christians who receive the doctrine and language of the Council of Nice; for common Christians, after all the efforts of their teachers, will not unfrequently conceive of three Gods in the three persons of the Godhead, and thus entertain an opinion which the creed condemns. But if the many pious believers in common life who entertain this theoretical error may yet be saved, then others who believe in Christ from the heart and obey his precepts, who have a personal experience of the

practical effects of this doctrine, may also be saved, though they may adopt other particular theories and formulas respecting the Trinity, different from that commonly received. These particular formulas and theories, however much they may be regarded and insisted upon, have nothing to do with salvation. - G. C. KNAPP: Christian Theology, sect. xxxiii. 2.

We know that different persons have deduced different and even opposite doctrines from the words of Scripture, and consequently there must be many errors among Christians; but, since the gospel nowhere informs us what degree of error will exclude from eternal happiness, I am ready to acknowledge, that, in my judgment, notwithstanding the authority of former times, our church would have acted more wisely and more consistently with its general principles of mildness and toleration, if it had not adopted the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed. Though I firmly believe that the doctrines themselves of this creed are all founded in Scripture, I cannot but conceive it to be both unnecessary and presumptuous to say, that, except every one do keep them whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." BISHOP TOMLINE: Elements of

66

Christian Theology, vol. ii. p. 222.

I would willingly admit, that salvation may be obtained without a knowledge of the Athanasian Creed. Thousands and millions of Christians have gone to their graves, who have either never heard of it, or not understood it; and I would add, that let a man believe the Scriptures, let him profess his faith in Christ in the plain and simple language of the New Testament, and he may pass through life as piously and happily, he may go to his grave with as quiet a conscience, and, more than this, he may rise again as freely pardoned and forgiven, as if he had dived into the depths of controversy, and traced the nature of the Deity through the highest walks of metaphysics. But, &c.— DR. EDW. BURTON: Theological Works, vol. i. p.

283.

I do not believe the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed, under any qualification given of them, except such as substitute for them propositions of a wholly different character. Those clauses proceed on a false notion, which I have elsewhere noticed, that the importance of all opinions touching God's nature is to be measured by his greatness; and that, therefore, erroneous notions about the Trinity are worse than erroneous notions about church government, or pious frauds, or any other disputed point on which there is a right and a wrong, a true and a false, and on which the wrong and the false

may indeed be highly sinful; but it does not follow that they must be; and their sinfulness does not depend upon their wrongness and falsehood, but on other circumstances in the particular mind of the person holding them. - DR. THOMAS ARNOLD: Letter 185; in Life and Correspondence, pp. 321–2.

By such a procedure [as that of persons stigmatizing as heterodox all appeal to private judgment, except that of their own judgment, and that of such as agree with them], uninspired and fallible men arrogate to themselves an authority which belongs only to God, and his inspired messengers; and the creeds, articles, catechisms, and other formularies of a church, or the expositions, deductions, and assertions of an individual theologian, are, practically, put in the place of the Holy Scriptures. . . . To decide who are and who are not partakers of the benefits of the Christian covenant, and to prescribe to one's fellowmortals, as the terms of salvation, the implicit adoption of our own interpretations, is a most fearful presumption in men not producing miraculous proofs of an immediate divine mission. ARCHBISHOP WHATELY: Essays on Dangers to Christian Faith, pp. 238–9.

How was the noble heart of Dante crushed by the thought, that his dear master, and all the men whom he reverenced in the old world, were outcasts for not believing in the Trinity! That thought evidently shook his faith in the Trinity. And it would shake mine, because it would lead me to suppose that truth only became true when Christ appeared, instead of being revealed by him for all ages past and to come; so that whoever walked in the light then, whoever walks in it now, seeking glory and immortality, desirous to be true, has glimpses of it, and will have the fruition of it, which is life eternal. FREDERICK D. MAURICE: Note on the Athanasian Creed ; in Theological Essays, p. 369.

We are cheered with a belief, that, in the darkest ages, hundreds and thousands of unlettered men felt an influence which they could not explain, the influence of love attracting to itself the particles of truth that lay scattered along the symbols and scholastic forms of the church. The great mass of believers have never embraced the metaphysical refinements of creeds, useful as these refinements are; but have singled out, and fastened upon, and held firm, those cardinal truths which the Bible has lifted up and turned over in so many different lights as to make them the more conspicuous by their very alternations of figure and hue. The true history of doctrine is to be studied, not in the technics, but in the spirit, of the church. In un

numbered cases, the real faith of Christians has been purer than their written statements of it. Men, women, and children have often decided aright when doctors have disagreed, and doctors themselves have often felt aright when they reasoned amiss. . . . Many who now dispute for an erroneous creed have, we trust, a richer belief imbedded in their inmost love. DR. EDWARDS A. PARK: Theology of the Intellect, &c.; in Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. vii. p. 560.

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If, as admitted in this chapter, the authoritative Teacher of his own religion avoided all metaphysical speculations on the essence of the Deity, and his instructions are so marked for their simplicity and universality as to be easily comprehended by the honest and inquiring, whether illiterate or learned; if the essential truths of revelation are so clearly impressed on the pages of the Bible, and especially of the New Testament, as to be perfectly intelligible to all capacities, and to be recognized in some measure by all members of the Christian church; if Christianity is not a religion of speculative or theoretical propositions, but of vital facts and practical principles; if there are no mysteries in the gospel records, except those which were once hidden from the human mind, but are now revealed and understood; if the faith prescribed by the great Master, avowed by the apostles, and enjoined by them on all converts, was of the briefest and simplest nature, implying merely an acknowledgment of the divine mission of Jesus, and a profession of obedience to his holy laws; and if a belief in the dogma of a Triune God, or in the metaphysical subtleties of creeds, articles, and confessions, is not essential to salvation, then will it follow that Christianity is not Trinitarianism; unless, indeed, a Trinity in Unity, and a Unity in Trinity, were a doctrine so plain as to be comprehensible by the common understanding, and so practical as to be capable of ameliorating the heart and the life; forming, moreover, one of the great subjects of the instructions of Jesus, and the preaching of the apostles. Then will it also follow, that the mysterious dogmas of so-called Orthodoxy, even though they could be elaborately inferred from a combination of passages drawn out of their connection, are not of that importance which they are represented to be in the established or popular formularies of faith.

The qualifications here made, however, will be found unnecessary; for in the following chapter, and in other portions of this work, we shall, with the aid of eminent writers belonging to orthodox churches, prove that the dogma of a Triune God is, in one form or another, either obscure, unintelligible, absurd, or self-contradictory; and that it derives no support either from the express declarations of Jesus Christ, of prophets, evangelists, and apostles, or from any rational mode of inference employed in the collecting, arranging, and comparing of texts.

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CHAPTER V.

TRINITARIANISM EITHER UNINTELLIGIBLE OR SELF

CONTRADICTORY.

SECT. I. VARIOUS AND OPPOSITE STATEMENTS OR DEFINITIONS OF

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.

When men have several faiths, to find the true,
We only can the aid of reason use.

SIB W. DAVENANT.

IN pages 2 and 3, we gave a brief abstract of the principal theories of a Triune God which have been set forth in the writings of eminent theologians. In the present section, it will be our aim to exhibit these theories in the words of their respective authors, or of those to whom they have been attributed.

We shall, in the first place, present the formulas of two of the most ancient ecclesiastic symbols, the Apostolical, so called, and the Nicene; each of these containing a profession of faith in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; namely, in a kind of Trinity, but not in a Triune God; — the first and oldest of these creeds being, in its statement of the Deity, Unitarian; and the second, Dualistic. We shall then quote a variety of propositions emanating from very different sources, but all acknowledging belief in the dogma of a Trinity in Unity; and shall endeavor to show that these propositions are either so obscure and unintelligible as to express no ideas, and afford no ground whatever for belief, or that they contain such affirmations and such principles of reasoning as lead to conclusions very different from that which they are intended to recommend; that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so far from their subsisting as three co-equal and co-eternal persons in one God, according to the usual representation of the Trinitarian doctrine, are, by virtue of the statements, the admissions, or the reasonings of Trinitarians themselves, either - I. Only one divine person or agent with three names; II. Three finite intelligences, each, considered in himself, imperfect, but all constituting one God; III. Three unequal beings, of whom only one is the absolutely True, the Self-existent, the Supreme God; or, IV. Three co-equal, co-eternal, and infinite Gods.