the New-Testament Scriptures. We find in the New Testament no other fundamental article besides that of which the apostle Paul says, that other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, the annunciation of Jesus as the Messiah; and Christ himself designates, as the foundation of his religion, the faith in the only true God, and in Jesus Christ whom he hath sent, John xvii. 3. What Paul styles distinctively the mystery relates in no one instance to what belongs to the hidden depths of the divine essence, but to the divine purpose of salvation which found its accomplishment in a fact. But that doctrine presupposes, in order to its being understood in its real significancy for the Christian consciousness, this fundamental article of the Christian faith; and we recognize therein the essential contents of Christianity, summed up in brief, as may be gathered from the determinate form which is given to Theism by its connection with this fundamental article. It is this doctrine by which God becomes known as the original Fountain of all existence; as he by whom the rational creation, that had become estranged from him, is brought back to the fellowship with him; and as he in the fellowship with whom it from thenceforth subsists, - the threefold relation in which God stands to mankind, as primal ground, mediator, and end; Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier; in which threefold relation the whole Christian knowledge of God is completely announced. AUGUSTUS NEANDER: General History of the Church, vol. i. p. 572.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not a fundamental article of the Christian religion, for it is not expressed in any one passage of the New-Testament Scriptures; but a belief in the only true God, and in Jesus Christ whom he hath sent, is the very foundation of Christianity, and pervades these writings. So says NEANDER. Should not, therefore, the "Christian consciousness "" accept the fundamental article of the Christian faith, which forms the great principle of Unitarianism, and reject the very idea of there being three persons, individuals, agents, beings, characters, or relations, in one God?

It must be recollected that the Scriptures do not furnish, readyformed, a systematic and scientific statement of the doctrine in question [the doctrine of the Trinity]. — PROFESSOR SHEDD: Introductory Essay to Coleridge's Works, vol. i. pp. 41-2.

To solve the problem, how a dogma which is not systematically stated in the Scriptures could be derived from them, the learned professor says that "the orthodox mind" brought into the controversy with the "heterodox" an antecedent interpreting idea.” He adds, however, what we

might expect from a Trinitarian who has uttered an unwelcome admission, that this idea of the Trinity was "not entirely independent of the Scriptures."

The proper inquiry would seem to be, What view of this matter [the divine Tripersonality] is, on the whole, most in accordance with the teaching of Scripture? In the absence of any direct positive testimony on the point, what may be fairly and legitimately inferred from what the Bible does affirm respecting the Divine Being? JOSEPH HAVEN, Jun., in the New Englander for February, 1850; vol. viii. (new series, vol. ii.) p. 2.

Though he regards the doctrine of the Trinity as one merely of inference, this writer says that the Scriptures, in the plainest terms, assert the Unity of God, and the Divinity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

We opened this section with an appropriate motto from Dr. WARDLAW's "Discourses on the Socinian Controversy," and would close it with the equally appropriate remarks of Dr. CHALMERS ("Institutes of Theology, book iii. chap. ix. § 23, 28), adding a few words by way of illustration: "In every book of moral or doctrinal instruction, it is natural to expect that the most important truth will be the most pervading; that just in proportion to its value will be the frequency of its recurrence, or the number of passages wherewith, by direct avowal or by implication and allusion, it is in any way interwoven. Like the cheap and common beauties of nature, will not the great qualities of Christian truth both be so placed and so disseminated that the eye might easily see and the hand might readily apprehend them?"

To apply the remarks of these eminent writers: From the concessions made, it has been seen that the doctrine of a Triune God is not "plainly stated" in the Bible; that it is not "so placed and so disseminated that the eye may easily see and the hand readily apprehend" it; that, in short, it is a doctrine of mere inference, and not of express revelation, there being no passage in the Sacred Writings in which it is expressly mentioned. But, if this doctrine was true, and was of so astonishing a character as to be entirely out of the province of reason to discover it, as is almost universally admitted, it would surely be "reasonable" and "natural to expect" that it would “pervade" the Bible, not only "by implication and allusion," so readily taken for granted when the mind of a reader is prepossessed with the value of an hypothesis, but by "direct avowal;" and "that just in proportion to its value" would "be the frequency of its recurrence," in terms as clear and express, at least, as those of human creeds and confessions; rendering altogether unnecessary the laborious process of collecting and collating passages, some of them of a dark and dubious character, and drawing from them conclusions mysterious and unintelligible, if not revolting to

reason.

SECT. VII.

THE DOCTRINE OF A TRIUNE GOD, AND OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST, CANNOT BE PROVED FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE.

They [the proofs] had need be both full and clear, before a doctrine of this nature [that of the Trinity] can be pretended to be proved by them.-BISHOP Burnet.

I hope the Romanists will not disadvantage the catholic cause so much as to confess that the Godhead of Christ... cannot be proved by Scripture, and that the fathers were forced to fly to unwritten traditions for proof of it. -DR. RICHARD FIELD.

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It would appear that the good doctor betrayed his own fears for the validity and soundness of the evidence in favor of the Deity of Christ, and therefore, as the orthodox themselves reason, of the Trinity in Unity; for, as we shall immediately show, Roman Catholics have often indeed " fessed that the Godhead of Christ," with its accompanying dogmas, "cannot be proved by Scripture;" thus "disadvantaging" the cause of Trinitarianism, as acknowledged and deplored in the following passage by the excellent JEREMY TAYLOR, in "Dissuasive from Popery," part ii. book i. sect. iii. 1:

"I cannot but observe and deplore the sad consequents of the Roman doctors' pretension, that this 'great mystery of godliness, God manifested in the flesh,' relies wholly upon unwritten traditions; for the Socinians, knowing that tradition was on both sides claimed in this article, please themselves in the concession of their adversaries, that this is not to be proved by Scripture. So they allege the testimony of Eccius, and Cardinal Hosius, one of the legates, presiding at Trent: 'Doctrinam de trino et uno Deo, esse dogma traditionis, et ex Scripturâ nullâ ratione probari posse.' The same was affirmed by TANNER, and all that were on that side, in the conference at Ratisbon, by HIERONYMUS à S. HYACINTHO, and others."

Bishop TAYLOR here uses in the Trinitarian sense the phrase, “God manifested in the flesh;" referring it to the dogma of the incarnation of a being called God the Son, which Unitarians regard as entirely unscriptural.

We believe the doctrine of a Triune God, because we have received it by tradition, though not mentioned at all in Scripture. — Abridged from CARDINAL HOSIUS: Conf. Cathol. Fidei Christ., cap. 27.

That the Holy Spirit should be adored, that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, and of the same nature, &c., we do not perceive so set forth in Scripture that heretics can be convinced without the church acting as interpreter. POSSEVIN; apud Sandium, p. 5.

Concerning the Trinity, whether there are three really distinct persons; concerning the eternal oμoovoia, the generation of the Son from the substance of the Father, the equality of the persons in the Godhead, the two natures in Christ, and the Deity of the Holy Spirit, the church ought to determine: the Scriptures cannot. COPPENSTEIN; apud Sandium, pp. 5, 6.

Those [the Lutherans and Calvinists] who bind themselves to Scripture alone, that is, to written words, and who do not set up any other rule or law of belief, sweat to no purpose, and are conquered by their own weapons, as often as they join battle with such pests [the Antitrinitarians] as conceal and defend themselves likewise with the language of Scripture alone. And we know from history that this frequently happened to them in the conferences and disputes into which they entered with the Photinians and the Arians. — PETAVIUS: De Trin., lib. iii. cap. xi. § 9; Theol. Dog., tom. ii. p. 301.

That the Son is of the same essence as the Father, or consubstantial with him, is not manifest in any part of Sacred Scripture, either in express words or by certain and immutable deduction. . . . Not in express language, because this phrase, "of the same essence," never occurs in the Sacred Writings; nor by infallible deduction, because nothing of such a character can by any means rest on reason and Scripture which is at variance with Scripture itself, and the principles of reason. They believe those matters which are propounded by Athanasius in the Creed on the Trinity, both as respects the distinction of persons and of the divine nature, and the equality of its attributes, and as respects also the divine processions; Christ begotten by the Father from eternity, the Holy Ghost not begotten, but proceeding from both, nor only from either. These and other opinions of the Protestants no one can prove from irrefragable deduction from the Sacred Writings, the traditionary word of God being laid aside. This request has often been made, but no one has made it good. Scripture itself would in many places have seemed to exhibit the opposite, unless the church had taught us otherwise. MASENIUS;

apud Sandium, pp. 9-11.

It is obvious, that, if any articles are particularly necessary to be known and believed, they are those which point to the God whom we are to adore, and the moral precepts which we are to observe. Now, is it demonstratively evident, from mere Scripture, that Christ is God, and to be adored as such? Most modern Protestants of eminence answer no. - DR. JOHN MILNER: End of Religious Controversy, Let. 9, p. 76.

As to faith, we should be almost ready to retract every word that we have written, if a well-attested case could be proved to us of any one, left to learn religion from the Bible, having hence deduced the doctrine of the Trinity, or of one only God in three real persons; or that of the Divinity of our Lord, in its true sense, as consubstantial to

the Father, as being one in person, and having two perfect natures. These are the two dogmas which the church has considered essential to salvation, and fundamental of all revealed religion; yet we feel confident that no single person has ever discovered these for himself in the Bible, and that they are only believed by Bible Christians (where they are believed) in consequence of a self-deceit or selfimposition in fancying that they hold on Scripture evidence what in reality they only maintain because they have been so taught in church, that is, on the evidence of their clergyman. DUBLIN REVIEW FOR OCTOBER, 1852; as quoted in Christian Examiner for Jan. 1853.

To the same purport, according to Locke, in his "Commonplace Book," - BELLARMINE, GORDONIUS HUNLAIUS, GRETSER, TANnner, Vega, and WIEKUS. Several other Roman Catholics are referred to by Sandius (in his "Scriptura S. Trinitatis Revelatrix," pp. 4-17) as speaking to the same effect.

It is a curious anomaly in the history of religious sects, that, in their discussions with Roman Catholics, Trinitarian Protestants are wont to contend earnestly for the due exercise of the intellectual powers in matters pertaining to theology and religion; but, in their zealous warfare with their fellow-Protestants the Unitarians, they not unfrequently accuse them of leaning too much to their own understandings, and of rejecting the plain instructions of Sacred Scripture, because, in the honest use of their rational faculties, the believers in the simple oneness of God have come to a conclusion different from theirs. More curious still, many of the very persons who thus act so inconsistently, are, as we have shown in the sixth section of the present chapter, obliged, from the force of truth, to acknowledge that the doctrines which they espouse, and which they assert to be essential to salvation, are not directly set forth in the pages of the Bible, but must be gathered by a sort of inferential proof, arising from the use, or rather from the abuse, of that reason which they so frequently represent as at war with the doctrines of Holy Writ. It is also a remarkable fact, that the Roman Catholic has often triumphed over his Protestant antagonist by demonstrating that the great principle of Protestantism the right of individuals to interpret Scripture, without resting on tradition and the authority of the church- inevitably leads to Unitarianism. Witness the discussions of the BELLARMINES, the PETAVII, and the MASENII, with the Trinitarian Reformers of their day; the MAGUIRES, the HUGHESES, the FRENCHES, and the WISEMANS, with ministers of the Established Church of England; and the learned divines of the Puseyite school with the "evangelical" section of their own church.