second, a cordial approbation of Mahomet and of the Koran. The one is said to be raised up by God, to scourge the idolizing christians, whilst the other is spoken of as a precious record of the true faith. Mahomet they represent to be "a preacher of the gospel of Christ," and they describe themselves to be "his fellow champions for the truth." The mode of warfare they admit indeed to be different, but the object contended for they admit to be the same. "We with our Unitarian brethren, have been in all ages exercised to defend with our pens the faith of one supreme God; as he has raised your Mahomet to do the same with the sword, as a scourge on those idolizing christians."

From what I have said, and were I to go to the works of English Unitarians, I might quote largely to shew the intolerant spirit in which they speak of the Trinitarian, and especially of the Calvinistic faith,-it is more than apparent that the spirit of intolerance is confined to no sect or party of men, be they philosophers, or religionists, political or literary, and whether their association be secret or avowed, and to no age or period of the world. It is the development of that inward pride, hate, revenge and ambition which are characteristic of unrenewed human nature.

Our comparative deliverance from this intolerant spirit, we owe to the separation of Church and State, which Presbyterians mainly secured in this country§-the establishment of the great truth of man's responsibility to God, and to God only for all religious opinions and practices, which are not incompatible with the maintenance of public morals, or with the security of life; to the existence of those numerous sects and denominations who exert a most powerful restraining and correcting influence on one another, and render a consolidation into one spiritual despotism impossible, while they stimulate thought and investigation and lead to conviction and faith, instead of a mere nominal and groundless belief—and to a growing intelligence, soundness, discretion and capacity of judging, in that great tribunal of a free country, I mean public opinion. No church in this country, except the Romish, either retains in its creed or avows in its journals, the principle of intolerance or persecution. And we may hope that they will all come practically to act upon the belief that candor, liberality and charity are as essential to the defence and diffusion of the gospel as

§ See the author's Ecclesiastical Republicanism, and Foote's History of Presbyterian Church in Virginia.

they are to a perfect christian character. "Let what is by-gone be by-gone. Only let us not dress up, in the present day, a picture entirely on one side, and hold that partial delineation forth as specifically characteristic of any contemporary denomination."

A second remark which I shall make, and which may also be regarded as general, is that the system of Unitarianism is so indefinite and indeterminate as to be past finding out, by any inquirer after its truth.

"What is Unitarianism? The name is no guide to what the system is," for, says Dr. Putnam of Boston, himself a Unitarian, "Unitarian is a name which refers to a single doctrine, and one that has become less and less subject to controversial interest; a doctrine, too, which all other denominations profess to hold, and which some do clearly hold, as positively as we do."*+ Mr. Garnett in one of the Tracts of the Unitarian Association, is very strongly of the same opinion.**

"What then makes a Unitarian? The denial of the divinity and the atonement of Christ; the rejection of the doctrines of depravity, regeneration and justification by faith? But these negations are common to almost all unbelievers, and they cannot therefore be made the peculiarities of any one denomination."

"Does the denomination include all who agree in this-that they have no positive faith; all who can not or will not tell what they believe; all who reject the dogmas of 'Orthodoxy?' Is it a promiscuous gathering of those who can find no other local habitation in the christian world?" How then shall they be distinguished? Of late they have styled themselves "liberal christians." "We do not concede the name, and Dr. Putnam says that there is a tone of arrogance about it," and Mr. W. H. Channing affirmed at an anniversary of the Unitarian Association, that "there is more bigotry at Cambridge than anywhere else in the land, and that Unitarians cannot adopt, with propriety, a single term of their triune motto, Liberty, Holiness and Love."

What then, I ask, is Unitarianism? "The time has fully come" says Dr. Putnam "when it is incumbent on the Unitarian denomination so called, either to draw some boundary lines for itself, and agree upon some sort of standard, and so become

*See Unitarian Tracts No. 184, pp. 23 and 24.

**Until the time of Biddle, in England, Socinians retained much of the christian religion, for example redemption by the Cross and the omnipresence of Christ.

really and intelligibly a denomination or a sect, or else to remove, as soon and as entirely as we may, what little show there still is of boundaries and standards and cease absolutely to be, or appear to be, a denomination at all."

What Unitarianism is who then can tell? I have inquired with some diligence, and have been obliged to come to the conclusion that Unitarianism, as a system of doctrine to be believed, is simply the rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity of the Godhead and whatever ELSE every individual may believe and assert. Among the Tracts of the Unitarian Association, I find that except on this one article of faith, "they avowedly differ more or less among themselves," and that different views on what we would consider essential doctrines, are expressed in its various tracts. The faith of Arius differed from that of Servetus. Socinus made essential to his system what "staggers the common reason and moral sense" of modern Unitarians.†† And now among those called by this name, we find diversities of faith varying from the spiritual views of Dr. Gilman to those of Theodore Parker "who (with abilities and attainments not inferior to those of Mr. Newman) has reached the point of universal scepticism, as the latter has reached that of implicit reliance upon authority, by simply following out, with logical consistency, the principles in which he was educated." We cannot, therefore, receive as the system of doctrine revealed in the word of God, a system which is a chaos of conflicting opinions, containing among them those which are so unscriptural that even the organ of the body called christians, and who are claimed as Unitarians, "frankly acknowledge we are not prepared to pursue a course that will identify the christians with any people whose discipline is so lax that it cannot be strained up to a point high enough to excommunicate an infidel."

A third reason why I cannot receive as the gospel the system of Unitarianism is, because it leaves me without a Bible as a divinely inspired and certain rule of my faith and practice.

Unitarians have indeed boasted that the Bible is their creed, but there is a fallacy in the popular motto, "the Bible only," which deserves to be exposed. To say that I believe the Bible, may be a very faint indication of my religious sentiments. It may mean nothing more than what a Mahommedan might say, or nothing more than that I am not an infidel.

++"They regard the several books which comprise the volume as THE RECORDS OF A DIVINE REVELATION."-Unitarian Tracts No. 202, p. 17.

"What sort of a Bible do I believe in? An Oriental fiction— A collection of scriptures introductory to the Koran? An ethical treatise? Or a Revelation from God, attested by the oppropriate singns? How much of the Bible do I believe, and how do I believe it? By what system of hermeneutics or philosophy do I interpret the Bible, and which do I seek to conform to the other?"

"Do you say," asks Dr. Putnam himself, "the Bible only is our standard, and therein we are distinguished and marked off as a denomination? That is a plausible idea, and it has answered pretty well in quiet times; but it is unsound, and does not answer in all emergencies. There is no such thing as the Bible only, either for us or other christians. We, like all others, must take with the Bible some means or principles of interpreting it, ascertaining its purport and requirements. That, therefore, which we have usually held forth as our denominational test-the Bible only-is not sufficiently definite or distinctive to serve as a real test."

An inspired, infallible, definite and intelligible rule of faith, is the very pillar and ground of all revealed authoritative truth, -the adamantine base on which it stands. Now that God has revealed the doctrines which are essential to salvation, and that this truth is in the Bible both parties agree. "But how has this revelation been made? Have we any infallible record of it?" The orthodox christian answers, yes; the Unitarian, no. The one believes the Bible to be a revelation-the other that it merely contains a revelation. Observe the difference. One regards the Bible as an inspired book; the other as the bare depository of some inspired things; one as an authoritative rule in all duty; the other as having no authority whatever. The contrast is perfect. The Orthodox christian has but one step to take to ascertain the truth; the Unitarian has another more difficult task, namely, to determine whether the particular text is inspired, or whether the sentiment which it embodies is true.

Dr. Gilman speaks of the four gospels of the New Testament as "replete with inspiration." But to what extent it is inspired, and whether the Old Testament is inspired, we are uninformed.

We do know, however, that on this subject there exist among Unitarians, the most varying opinions. Probably the most general is, that the Bible is the depository of a revelation but

that it is not itself plenarily inspired, so far as that it is infallibly true in whatever it makes known.*

"But what, we ask, is a book containing a revelation, but not one itself, worth to a man? What knowledge does it convey? What new ideas? We can confide in none of its declarations, unless we can verify them from independent sources of information."

And "it comes, therefore, to this, that the Bible contains an infallible revelation, from God, of those truths only which the light of nature discloses. Other doctrines of christianity cannot be tested and established from natural sources of information. It amounts to nothing that they are contained in the Bible-they may be the errors of the writers. In short, the Unitarian hypothesis is reduced to this absurdity, that the Bible does not even contain a revelation-for that part of its contents only which the light of nature first reveals, can be known to be true."

Such also is their peculiar mode of interpreting the Bible, that the doctrines which other christians, equally sagacious and equally good, can find in it, which appear to them as if written with a sun beam, and which they also consider as of the utmost importance to man's salvation, they cannot find in it. The devil and hell, and everlasting punishment many of them, therefore, reject as nonentities.

Dr. Priestley, who is claimed by them in the Tract above referred to, says: "Not that I consider the books of scripture as inspired, and on that account entitled to this high degree of respect, but as authentic records of the dispensations of God to mankind, with every particular of which we cannot be too well acquainted." "The writers of the books of scripture were," he says, "men, and therefore fallible; but all we have to do with them is in the character of historians and witnesses of what they heard and saw."

Mr. Lindley, also claimed by them, says: "The scriptures themselves, which might mislead us, are full of heathen prejudices, and so left, it should seem, on purpose to whet human industry and the spirit of inquiry into the things of God."

Some of their ranks, however, following the lead of Strauss, have of late subtracted so much from the history, authority and instruction of Jesus Christ, as in the opinion of Dr. Norton, not to leave enough to constitute any consistent and well grounded christianity at all. Still professing to believe in Christ they *Unitarian Tracts No. 186, pp. 33, 34.