same importance and signification, and none of them include anything of imperfection, they are properly used in the declaration of the unity of the Godhead. There is mention in the Scripture of the Godhead of God.-Rom. i: 20. "His eternal power and Godhead." And of his nature, by excluding them from being objects of our worship, who are not Gods by nature. -Gal. iv: 8. Now this natural Godhead of God, is, his substance or essence with all the holy divine excellencies which naturally and necessarily appertain thereunto. Such are eternity, immensity, omnipotency, life, infinite holiness, goodness, and the like. This one nature, substance, or essence, being the nature, substance, or essence of God, as God is the nature, essence, and substance of the Father, Son, and Spirit, one and the same absolutely in and unto each one of them. For none can be God as they are revealed to be, but by virtue of this divine nature or being. Herein consists the unity of the Godhead.

This unity in Trinity is, undoubtedly, mysterious and incomprehensible. But it is not unreasonable. It is above and beyond the capacity and limits of reason to discover or comprehend. But so is all that relates to God and things supernatural and divine. Reason, we have seen, by all its searching can know nothing of the nature and essence of any material object or of the human soul, much less of God. It never could, and never did, prove the absolute unity of God. This, as may be seen in Plato's Parmenides, was the bottomless and fathomless gulf to human reason. Reason has proved as it thought, and practised upon the belief of a plurality of Gods, and by a corruption of primitive revelation human reason has believed in a trinity of Supreme Gods. Reason therefore, now humbly and gladly receives that teaching which Socrates and Plato sought and even expected, and rejoices to believe that there are three persons in the adorable Godhead, and that these three are one.*

*

"Ye lofty minds, whose maxims some e'en now
Pretend to follow, true philosophers,

Who sought whatever ye could find of God,
How would your hearts have bounded to the voice

Of God in flesh made manifest! whom they

Among the Fathers, says Hagenbach, in his History of Doctrines, vol. 1, pp. 93-7, "The more profound thinkers, however, were well aware that it is not sufficient to demonstrate the mere numerical unity of the Divine Being, and accordingly placed the transcendental unity far above the mathematical monas.

The idea of a revealed religion implied that so much of the nature of God should be made manifest to man as would be necessary to the knowl

Who follow up your systems hold in scorn;

And tuning o'er the first part of the strain

Of angels, which, as though from Heaven t'were caught
By inspiration, ye divinely sang,

The closing numbers jarring discords deem

But ye were witnesses of darker times;

And shall in judgment 'gainst your followers

Of these bright days of revelation rise,

As well as those who in your twilight hour

Denied or hated the fair truths ye taught."—Ragg.

That the Scriptures are the word of God is, in this controversy, assumed. But if they are, then we know as assuredly that they would be so worded as to guard in every way against that idolatry which they everywhere and in all its forms, condemn. The plain, obvious, and necessary teaching of Scripture that God is in one sense one, and in another sense three, and that while there is but one divine Godhead there are three persons, to each of whom, Scripture attributes this Godhead with all divine honour and prerogatives pertaining to it, makes the doctrine of the TRI-UNITY or Trinity of the divine nature the teaching of God himself, concerning his own ineffable nature. And surely, to use the language of Robert Hall, this is the true way of contemplating the doctrines peculiar to revelation, "to consider them as facts, believed on the authority of the Supreme Being, not to be proved by reason; since their edge of salvation. The Church, therefore, has ever cultivated the λoyos TELL OEov (theology.) On the other hand, the insufficiency of human ideas was always acknowledged, (in opposition to the pride of speculation,) and the character of the Divine Being was admitted to be past finding out; some even entertained doubts about the propriety of giving God any name. Much of what the Church designated by the term mystery (sacrament,) is founded partly on a sense of the insufficiency of our ideas and the inaptitude of our language, and partly on the necessity of employing certain ideas and expressions to communicate our religious thoughts and opinions. When the martyr Attalus, in the persecution of the Gallican christians, under Marcus Aurelius, was asked by his judges what the name of God was, he replied “ο θεος ονμα ουκ εχει ως ανθδωπος.” Euseb., v. i. (edit.

Heinchen. T. ii, p. 29, comp. the note.) Such was also, the opinion of Justin M. Apoligy, ii, 6; whatever name may be given to God, he who has given a name to a thing must always be anterior to it. He therefore draws a distinction between appellatives and names. The predicates πατης, θεος, κυριος, δεσποτης, are only appellatives. God is not only above all names,

but also above all existence. Minuc. Fel. c. 18. Hic (Deus) nec videri potest, visu clarior est, nec comprehendi, tactu purior est, nec aestimari, sensibus major est, infinitus, imenensus et soli sibi tantus quantus est, notus, nobis vero ad intellectum pectus angustum est, et ideo sic eum digne aestimamus, dum inaestimabilem dicimus. Eloquar, quemadmodum sentio: magnitudinem Dei, qui se putat nosse minit, qui non vult minere, non novit, nec nomen Deo quaeras: DEUS nomen est. Illic vocabulis opus est, quum per singulos propriis appellationem insignibus multitudo dirimenda est. Deo qui solus est. Dei vocabulum totum est. Quem si patrem dixero, terrenum opineris; si regem, carnalem suspiceris, si dominus, intelliges utique mortalem, aufer addiltamenta nominum, et perspicies ejus claritatem.

truth does not result from any perceptible relations in our ideas, but they owe their existence entirely to the will and counsel of the Almighty Potentate. Let the fair grammatical import of Scripture language be investigated, and whatever propositions are, by an easy and natural interpretation, deducible from thence, let them be received as the dictates of Infinite Wisdom, whatever aspect they bear, or, whatever difficulties they present. Repugnant to reason they can never be, because they spring from the Author of it; but superior to reason, whose limits they infinitely surpass, we must expect to find them. The facts which we have become acquainted with in the natural world, would appear stupendous were they communicated merely on the evidence of testimony; they fail to astonish us, chiefly because they have been arrived at step by step, by means of their analogy to some preceding one. We have climbed the eminence by a slow progression, and our prospect has insensibly widened as we advanced, instead of being transported thither instantaneously by a supreme power. Revelation conducts us to the path at once, without previous training, without any intellectual process preceding, without condescending to afford other proof than what results from the veracity and wisdom of the Creator; and when we consider that this truth respects much sublimer relations and concerns than those which subsist in the material world, that it regards the existence and nature of an infinite and incomprehensible God, the ways and counsels of God respecting man's eternal destiny, is it surprising that it should embrace what greatly surpassed our previous conjectures, and even transcends our perfect comprehension ?"

To question or deny this doctrine of the TRI-UNITY of God, although admitted to be taught by the language of Scripture, plainly and naturally interpreted, because it is incomprehensible, is to destroy all certain assurance that the Scriptures are the word of God, or that there is one God, or indeed, as we have seen, a God at all. To disprove the doctrine of Scripture, that while the divine essence, nature, or Godhead, is numerically one, there is a real distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to whom this essence and all divine attributes are severally and equally applied, we must be able to prove from our actual knowledge of God's nature that such distinctions cannot possibly exist in the divine nature, and which is, we have seen, an impossibility. Apart from what

God reveals concerning himself, no finite reason can tell what is God's nature, what is proper or impossible to that nature, what the unity of this nature is, or what a personal distinction in that nature is. "It is a clear point, I think," says Prof. Stuart,* "that the unity of God cannot be proved without revelation. It may, perhaps, be rendered faintly probable. Then you depend upon Scripture proof, for the establishment of this doctrine. But have the Scriptures anywhere, told us what the divine unity is? Will you produce the passage? The oneness of God they assert. But this they assert always in opposition to the idols of the heathen, the polytheism of the gentiles-the Gods superior and inferior, which they worshipped. In no other sense have the Scriptures defined the ONENESS of the Deity. What then is oneness, in the uncreated, infinite, eternal Being? In created and finite objects, we have a distinct perception of what we mean by it; but can created objects be just and adequate representatives of the uncreated ONE? Familiar as the assertion is, in your conversations and in your sermons, that God is ONE, can you give me any definition of this oneness, except a negative one? That is, you deny the plurality of it; you say God is but one, and not two, or more. Still, in what, I ask, does the divine unity consist? Has not God different and various faculties, and powers? Is he not almighty, omniscient, omnipresent, holy, just, and good? Does he not act differently, i. c., variously, in the natural and in the moral world? Does his union consist, then, appropriately in his essence? But what is the essence of God? And how can you assert that his unity consists appropriately in this, unless you know what his essence is, and whether oneness can be any better predicated of this, than of his attributes?

Your answer to all this is, the nature of God is beyond my reach; I cannot define it, I approach to a definition of the divine unity, only by negatives. That is, you deny the negative plurality of God; or you say there are not two or more essences, omnisciencies, omnipotencies, &c. But here all investigation is at an end. Is it possible to show what constitutes the internal nature of the divine essence, or attributes; or how they are related to each other; or what internal distinctions exist? About all this, revelation says not one word; certainly the book of nature gives no instruction concerning it. The assertion then, that God is one, can never be fully understood *Letters to Dr. Channing, pp. 45-6.

as meaning anything more than that he is numerically one; i. e., it simply denies polytheism, and can never reach beyond this. But how does this prove, or how can it prove, that there may not be, or that there are not distinctions in the Godhead, either in regard to attributes, or essence, the nature of which is unknown to us, and the existence of which is to be proved by the authorities of the Scriptures only?"

When Unitarians, therefore, inquire what that distinction in the Godhead is, in which we believe, we answer that we do not profess to understand what it is; we do not undertake to define affirmatively. We can approximate to a definition of it, only by negatives. We deny that the Father is in all respects, the same as the Son; and that the Holy Spirit is in all respects, the same as either the Father or the Son. We rest the fact, that a distinction exists, solely upon the basis of Revelation.

In principle then, what more difficulty lies in the way of believing in a threefold distinction of the Godhead than in believing in the divine unity?

The unity of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, is, indeed, a mystery, a fact clearly revealed, yet suggesting questions which no analogy of consciousness, no walk of human experience, enables us to solve. "Doth this offend" us? Shall we deny the fact? Shall we, in our pride of intellect, assume the one God must be as one man-his unity shall be as one of our unities that he cannot contain, in his own essential nature, the element of love, the object of love, and the manifestation of love; that the human definition of God must be the true definition; that if the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost be God, there must be three Gods, and not one, even though the Scriptures teach us that God as revealed in the Scriptures-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-is "the only living and true God?" Rather let us acknowledge, for assuredly it well becomes us, that as "no man knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of man which is in him, even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. For the whole subject is at an infinite distance from us, and wholly foreign to us, nor is it revealed to us, for it even surpasses the apprehension of angels.*

Concerning this most excellent and holy Trinity, we cannot find any suitable words in which we might speak of it, and yet we must express this supernatural incomprehensible Trinity

*Stowell on the Works of the Spirit, pp. 81, 406.