SECT. V. NO DOCTRINES ADDITIONAL TO THOSE PREVIOUSLY TAUGHT BY CHRIST, OR COMMUNICATED ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, INCULCATED IN THE EPISTLES.

Thou, O God, the Father! art invisible: but thy Son, who came to us in human form, was gazed on by human eyes, and he hath declared and exhibited thy character to the world; he being the brightness of thy glory and the express image of thy person. DR. THOMAS CHALMERS.

The gospel of our Saviour is defaced and obscured by affected mysteries, and paradoxes, and senseless propositions; and Christ himself, who was the brightness of his Father's glory and the express image of his person, who in the most plain and perspicuous manner declared the will of God to us, is represented with a thicker veil upon his face than Moses, and the glory of the second covenant is much more obscured with a mist of words than the first was with types and figures. This will appear to any man who shall observe what strange interpretations are commonly made of those texts of Scripture, especially in St. Paul's Epistles, wherein Christ is mentioned; what absurd propositions are built on them, what pernicious consequences drawn from them, to defeat the great ends of Christ's appearing in the flesh. DR. WILLIAM SHERLOCK: Knowledge of Christ, pp. 1, 2.

As for the Epistles, they do chiefly contain confirmations and illustrations of things which are recorded in the Gospels, and repeated persuasions to the practice of that holiness which is recommended by them. DR. THOMAS BENNET: Confutation of Popery, p. 49.

We must not regard the Epistles as communications of religious doctrines not disclosed before; as displaying the perfection of a system of which merely the rude elements had been indicated in the writings of the four evangelists. This address of our Lord to his apostles [John xvi. 12, 13] is commonly alleged in support of the assertion, that additional doctrines were to be propounded in the Epistles. That such cannot be the meaning of the passage, the preceding inquiry as to the several articles of Christian belief has proved. To what particulars, then, did our Saviour allude? That Christ was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles no less than the glory of the people of Israel; that the peculiar privileges of the Jews were at an end; that the Samaritan, the Greek, and the Barbarian were to stand on a level with the Israelite in the Christian church; that Christ did not purpose to

enthrone himself in worldly sovereignty, and to constitute his apostles the great men of the earth; that it was not his will to restore at that time the kingdom to Israel. The post, then, which the Epistles occupy in the sacred depository of revelation is not that of communications of new doctrines. They fill their station as additional records, as inspired corroborations, as argumentative concentrations, as instructive expositions, of truths already revealed, of commandments already promulgated. In the explication of moral precepts, the Epistles frequently enter into large and highly beneficial details. Abridged from GEORGE TOWNSEND: The New Testament Arranged, part xii. note 10.

But this writer maintains that the doctrine of a Triune God, and of the Deity of Christ, was revealed in the Old Testament and in the Gospels.

The latest writings of these three great apostles — Paul, Peter, and John contain no traces of any other more mysterious doctrines than they had received from our Lord, and taught to their first converts at the beginning of the gospel. . . . . . It may be safely said, that whatever we find in the New Testament, as to a gradual communication of Christian truth, relates to this one point, that the disciples were to be led on gently to a full sense of the unimportance of the ceremonies of the Jewish law. Christianity was given complete, as to its own truths, from the beginning of the gospel; but the absolute sufficiency of these truths, and the needlessness of any other system as joined with them, was to be learned only by degrees; and, unhappily, it never was learned fully. - DR. THOMAS ARNOLD: The Church, III.; in Miscellaneous Works, pp. 35–7.

Christ had many things to say of his doctrine which the disciples were not then in a condition to understand. But he was just about to leave them; and therefore he pointed them to the Spirit of Truth, which was to unfold all the truth he had proclaimed. It was not to announce any new doctrine, but to open the truth of his doctrine, to glorify him in them, by developing the full sense of what he had taught them. AUGUSTUS NEANDER on John xvi. 12-14; in Life

of Jesus Christ, p. 401.

As we have already noticed, some theologians have thought that our Lord did not teach the doctrines which are now called orthodox, because his disciples were not as yet able to receive them, but that he left these doctrines to be imparted by the Holy Spirit to the apostles, and by them to be developed in their oral and written discourses. We have, however, no reason to believe, that the only-begotten Son, who was commissioned to

reveal the will of the Father, concealed, while on earth, any of the essential principles of his religion; but rather, on the contrary, that he had made known all things which he had heard of the Father, John i. 18; xv. 15. The "6 many things" which he says (chap. xvi. 12) his disciples were not capable of bearing did not at all relate to the essence of God, of himself, or of the Holy Ghost, respecting which the apostles never speak; but, as the words are interpreted by the best Trinitarian commentators, to the abolition of the ceremonial law, the rejection of the Jewish nation, and the calling of the Gentiles, matters which Jesus had indeed sufficiently intimated, but had not openly or directly communicated. In his "Illustrations of the Truth of the Christian Religion," pp. 215-16, Bishop MALTBY well remarks: "The universality of the new dispensation, the qualifications of its future members, added to the demolition of the temple at Jerusalem, with the ruin of the Jewish polity, might have made a nation, not entirely blinded by former views, understand that the law was to be absorbed in the gospel. This, however, was not the case. . . This was one of the most delicate points upon which the discourses of our Lord could turn; yet even this offensive truth he did not entirely conceal, though he touched upon it with the utmost circumspection."

No one perhaps will maintain that there is any new truth of Christianity set forth in the Epistles; any truth, I mean, which does not presuppose the whole truth of human salvation by Jesus Christ, as already determined and complete. The Epistles clearly imply that the work of salvation is done. They repeat and insist on its most striking parts; urging chiefly on man what remains for him to do, now that Christ has done all that God purposed, in behalf of man, before the foundation of the world. Let the experiment be fairly tried; let the inveterate idea, that the Epistles are the doctrinal portion of Scripture, be for a while banished from the mind; and let them be read simply as the works of our fathers in the faith, of men who are commending us rather to the love of Christ than opening our understanding to the mysteries of divine knowledge; and, after such an experiment, let each decide for himself, whether the practical or the theoretic view of the Epistles is the correct one. For my part, I cannot doubt but that the decision will be in favor of the practical character of them. The speculating theologian will perhaps answer by adducing text after text from an Epistle, in which he will contend that some dogmatic truth, some theory or system, or peculiar view of divine truth, is asserted. But "what is the chaff to the wheat? I appeal from the logical criticism of the apostle's words to their apostolical spirit, from Paul philosophizing to Paul preaching and entreating and persuading. And I ask, whether it is likely that an

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apostle would have adopted the form of an epistolary communication for imparting mysterious propositions to disciples with whom he enjoyed the opportunity of personal intercourse, and to whom he had already “declared the whole counsel of God;" whether, in preaching Christ, he would have used a method of communicating truth which implies some scientific application of language,—an analysis, at least, of propositions into their terms, in order to its being rightly understood. And I further request it may be considered whether it was not by such a mode of inference from the Scripture language, as would convert the Epistles into textual authorities on points of controversy, that the very system of the scholastic theology was erected. BISHOP HAMPDEN: Bampton Lectures, pp. 374–5.

The Epistles of St. Paul were manifestly directed to different churches, and were intended merely to silence doubts or answer difficulties proposed by them, and also to correct and amend some accidental or local corruptions; and, if we examine them carefully, we shall find that the greater portion of our most important dogmas, instead of St. Paul's defining and explaining them, are only occasionally, parenthetically, and as illustrations, introduced.- CARDINAL WISEMAN: Lectures on the Doctrines of the Catholic Church, vol. i. p. 59.

We cannot believe, as Schneckenburger does, that James wrote the Epistle at a time when Christianity had not thoroughly penetrated his spiritual life; because there is no proof that his doctrinal views were enlarged at a later period. Nor do we imagine, that any of the apostles, after the day of Pentecost, became still more enlightened in their view of divine things. Their doctrinal development seems complete after that crisis. - DR. SAMUEL DAVIDSON: Introduction to the New Testament, vol. iii. p. 315.

Agreeably to the extracts made in pp. 351–5, many eminent Trinitarians distinctly confess that our Lord was reserved in his communications respecting the alleged Divinity of his nature; or, in other words, that he did not inculcate the contradictory doctrine of his equality and identity with the Father and the Holy Ghost. In this and the preceding section (p. 356, sqq.), we have shown, from other authorities equally orthodox and respectable, that the apostles did not promulgate any new or additional truths: whence it indisputably follows, that, if the writers quoted have taken a proper view of the subject, as, with some slight abatements from expressions necessarily used by Trinitarians, there is every reason to believe that they have, neither Jesus Christ nor his apostles taught the popular dogma of the Trinity,

SECT. VI.

A TRIUNE GOD, AND THE DEITY OF CHRIST, NOT
DOCTRINES OF EXPRESS REVELATION.

It is reasonable to expect, that those doctrines which form the leading articles of any system should be plainly stated in the book which professes to make that system known. DR. WARDLAW.

The more you recede from the Scriptures by inferences and consequences, the more weak and dilute are your positions. LORD BACON.

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The word "homoousian" is not found in the Sacred Writings; and therefore, from these alone, what the Arians deny cannot be taught or proved, except by inference. If the name "God" is clearly added to the Holy Spirit in the canonical books, as it is frequently annexed to the Father, rarely to the Son, in the Gospels and Epistles, I shall acknowledge myself mistaken. ERASMUS: Opera Omnia, tom. ix. pp. 1034, 1173.

The procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, the equality of the three persons in one substance, and the distinction of the same by relative properties, are not expressed in the Sacred Writings. MELCHIOR CANUS: Theol., lib. iii. c. 3, fund. 2; apud Sandium, p. 5.

It is to be observed, that certain articles are set before us as necessary to faith and salvation, but which are not expressly and clearly contained in the Sacred Books, and which cannot be infallibly deduced from them; and are therefore admitted only because the ancient and primitive church received them in this sense in councils and creeds, and in the writings of the fathers. I will subjoin examples: 1st, We believe that God is one in essence and substance, and three in personality and subsistence; but Scripture does not expressly open up this distinction, or show it by undoubted inference, &c. MASENIUS: Medit. Concord.; apud Sandium, pp. 7, 8.

It is nowhere, we confess, said expressly, and in so many words, "The Holy Spirit is the Most High God." HERMAN WITSIUS: Dissertations on the Creed, Diss. xxiii. 16.

Similarly, JEREMY TAYLOR, in Works, vol. xiii. pp. 143-4, who, with WITSIUS and other Trinitarians, means, of course, by the "Holy Spirit," a third person in the Godhead. In vol. vi. p. 510, the bishop, with great good sense, says what is very applicable to the subject of the present section: "God hath plainly and literally described all his will, both in belief and practice, in which our essential duty, the duty of all men, is concerned... In plain expressions we are to look for our duty, and not in the more secret places and dark corners of the Scripture."