LECTURE V.
THE PROPOSITION “THAT CHRIST IS GOD,” PROVED
TO BE FALSE FROM THE JEWISH AND THE
CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES.
BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
“FOR THOUGH THERE BE THAT ARE CALLED GODS, WHETHER IN HEAVEN OR IN EARTH (AS THERE BE GODS MANY, AND LORDS MANY), BUT TO US THERE IS BUT ONE GOD, THE FATHER, OF WHOM ARE ALL THINGS, AND WE IN HIM; AND ONE LORD JESUS CHRIST, BY WHOM ARE ALL THINGS, AND WE BY HIM.”—1 Cor. viii. 5, 6.
Scarcely had Christ retired from our world, before his influence began to be felt by mankind in two different ways. He transformed their Worship, and purified their interpretation of Duty. They have ever since adored a holier God, and obeyed a more exalted rule of right. Looking upward, they have discerned in heaven a Providence more true and tender than they had believed; looking around, they have seen on earth a service allotted to their conscience, nobler and more responsible than they had thought before. Watched from above by an object of infinite trust and veneration, they have found below a work of life most sacred, to be performed by obedient wills beneath his sight. Faith has flown to its rest there, and conscience has toiled in its task here, with a tranquil energy never seen in a world not yet evangelized.
To suppose that a set of moral precepts, however wise and authoritative, could ever have produced, in either of these respects, the effects which have flowed from Christianity, seems to me altogether unreasonable. Had Christ done no more than leave in the world a sound code of ethics, his work would probably have expired in a few centuries, and have been very imperfect while it endured. A few prudential and dispassionate minds would have profited by its excellence; but never would it have trained the affections of childhood, or overawed the energy of guilt, or refined the rugged heart of ignorance, or consecrated the vigils of grief.
The power of Christ’s religion is not in his precepts, but in his person; not in the memory of his maxims, but in the image of Himself. He is his own system; and, apart from him, his teachings do but take their place with the sublimest efforts of speculation, to be admired and forgotten with the colloquies of Socrates, and the meditations of Plato. Himself first, and his lessons afterwards, have the hearts of the people ever loved: his doctrines, indeed, have been obscured, his sayings perverted, his commands neglected, the distinctive features of his instructions obliterated, but he himself has been venerated still; his unmistakable spirit has corrected the ill-construed letter of the Gospel; and preserved some unity of life amid the various, and even opposing developments of Christian civilization.
The person of Christ may be contemplated as an object of religious reverence, or as an object of moral imitation. He may appear to our minds as the representative of Deity, or as the model of humanity; teaching us, in the one case, what we should believe, and trust, and adore in heaven; in the other, what we should do on earth:—the rule of faith in the one relation, the rule of life in the other.
Did his office extend only to the latter, were he simply an example to us, displaying to us merely what manhood ought to be, he might indeed constitute the centre of our morality; but he would not properly belong to our religion: he would be the object of affections equal and social, not devout; he would take a place among things human, not divine; would be the symbol of visible and definite duties, not of unseen and everlasting realities. A Christianity which should reduce him to this relation, would indeed be a step removed above the mere cold preceptive system, which depresses him into a law-giver; but it would no more be entitled to the name of a religion, than the Ethics of Aristotle, or the Offices of Cicero.
It is then as the type of God, the human image of the everlasting Mind, that Christ becomes an object of our Faith. Once did a dark and doubting world cry, like Philip on the evening of Gethsemane, “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us:” but now has Christ “been so long with us” that we, “who have seen him, have seen the Father.” This I conceive to have been the peculiar office of Jesus; to show us, not to tell us, the spirit of that Being who spreads round us in Infinitude, and leads us through Eternity. The universe had prepared before us the scale of Deity; Christ has filled it with his own spirit; and we worship now, not the cold intellectual deity of natural religion; not the distant majesty, the bleak immensity, the mechanical omnipotence, the immutable stillness, of the speculative Theist’s God: but One far nearer to our worn and wearied hearts; One whose likeness is seen in Jesus of Nazareth, and whose portraiture, suffused with the tints of that soul, is impressed upon creation; One, therefore, who concerns himself with our humblest humanities, and views our world with a domestic eye, whose sanctity pierces the guilty mind with repentance, and then shelters the penitent from rebuke; who hath mercy for the victims of infirmity, and a recall for the sleepers in the grave. Let Messiah’s mind pass forth to fill all time and space; and you behold the Father, to whom we render a loving worship.
In order to fulfil this office of revealing, in his own person, the character of the Father, Christ possessed and manifested all the moral attributes of Deity. His absolute holiness; his ineffable perceptions of right; his majestic rebuke of sin; his profound insight into the corrupt core of worldly and hypocritical natures, and to the central point of life in the affectionate and genuine soul; his well-proportioned mercies and disinterested love, fill the whole meaning of the word Divine: God can have no other, and no more, perfection of character intelligible to us.
These moral attributes of God, we conceive to have been compressed, in Christ, within the physical and intellectual limits of humanity; to have been unfolded and displayed amid the infirmities of a suffering and tempted nature; and, during the brevity of a mortal life, swiftly hurried to its close. And this immersion of divine perfection in the darkness of weakness and sorrow, so far from forfeiting our appreciation of him, incalculably deepens it. The addition of infinite force, mechanical or mental, would contribute no new ingredient to our veneration, since force is not an object of reverence; and it would take away the wonder and grandeur of his soul, by rendering temptation impossible, and conflict a pretence. Since God cannot be pious, or submissive to his own providence, or cast down in doubt of his own future, or agonized by the insults of his own creatures, such a combination seems to confuse and destroy all the grounds of veneration, and to cause the perfection of Christ to pass in unreality away.
To this view, however, of the person of Christ, Trinitarians object as defective; and proceed to add one other ingredient to the conception, viz., that he possessed the physical and intellectual attributes of Deity;—that he is to be esteemed no less eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent, than the Infinite Father; the actual creator of the visible universe, of the very world into which he was born and of the mother who bare him, of the disciples who followed and of the enemies who destroyed him. These essential properties of Deity by no means, we are assured, interfered with the completeness of his humanity; so that he had the body, the soul, the consciousness, of a man; and, in union with these, the infinite mind of God. But in a question of mere words, in which the guidance of ideas is altogether lost, I dare not trust myself to my own language. To disturb the juxtaposition of charmed sounds, is to endanger orthodoxy; and, in describing the true doctrine, I therefore present you with a portion of that unexampled congeries of luminous phrases, commonly called the Athanasian Creed. “The Catholic faith is this: that we worship One God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost: ... the Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal; and yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.... So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.... So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And, in this Trinity, none is afore or after other; none is greater or less than another; but the whole three persons are co-eternal together and co-equal.”
Of the second of these three persons, the second article of the Church of England gives the following account:—
“The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance; so that two whole and perfect natures,—that is to say, the Godhead and the Manhood,—were joined together in one Person, never to be divided; whereof is One Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us.”
In opposition to this theory, we maintain the Personal Unity of God, and the simplicity of nature in Christ. It is my duty at present to submit these contrasted schemes to the test of Scripture. In order to effect this, I advance these three positions:
(1.) That if the Athanasian doctrine be found in Scripture, then, on our opponents’ own principles, Scripture does not contain a revelation from God.
(2.) That if it be really in the Bible, certain definable traces of it there may justly be demanded; and, before opening the record, we should settle what these traces must be.
(3.) That such traces cannot be found in Scripture.
I. “If,” says Bishop Butler, “a supposed revelation contain clear immoralities or contradictions, either of these would prove it false.”[[164]] This principle, generally recognized by competent reasoners, has been distinctly admitted in the present discussion; and Dr. Tattershall, in particular, has employed much ingenuity to prove that the doctrine of the Trinity, containing no absurdity or contradiction, involves in no danger the authority of the writings supposed to teach it. But no subtlety can avail to remove the inherent incredibility of this tenet, which even its believers cannot, without uneasiness, distinctly and steadily contemplate. Long usage and Church authority alone prevent men from perceiving that the propositions, announcing it, are either simple contradictions, or statements empty of all meaning. The same remark is applicable to the notion of the two natures in Christ.
Before proceeding to justify this assertion, let me guard myself from the imputation of rejecting this doctrine because it is mysterious; or of supporting a system which insists on banishing all mysteries from religion. On any such system I should look with unqualified aversion, as excluding from faith one of its primary elements; as obliterating the distinction between logic and devotion, and tending only to produce an irreverent and narrow-minded dogmatism. “Religion without mystery” is a combination of terms, than which the Athanasian Creed contains nothing more contradictory; and the sentiment of which it is the motto, I take to be a fatal caricature of rationalism, tending to bring all piety into contempt. Until we touch upon the mysterious, we are not in contact with religion; nor are any objects reverently regarded by us, except such as, from their nature or their vastness, are felt to transcend our comprehension. God, of whose inscrutable immensity creation is but the superficial film; Christ, the love of whom surpasseth knowledge; futurity, veiled in awful shadows, yet illumined by a point or two of light; these, which are slightly known, and greatly unknown, with something definite, representing a vast indefinite, are the peculiar objects of trust and veneration. And the station which the soul occupies, when its devout affections are awakened, is always this: on the twilight, between immeasurable darkness and refreshing light; on the confines, between the seen and the unseen; where a little is discerned, and an infinitude concealed; where a few distinct conceptions stand, in confessed inadequacy, as symbols of ineffable realities: and we say, “Lo! these are part of his ways; but the thunder of his power, who can understand?” And if this be true, the sense of what we do not know is as essential to our religion as the impression of what we do know: the thought of the boundless, the incomprehensible, must blend in our mind with the perception of the clear and true; the little knowledge we have must be clung to, as the margin of an invisible immensity; and all our positive ideas be regarded as the mere float to show the surface of the infinite deep.
But mystery, thus represented, offers anything but objects of belief: it presents nothing to be appreciated by the understanding; but a realm of possibilities to be explored by a reverential imagination; and a darkness that may be felt to the centre of the heart. Being, by its very nature, the blank and privative space, offered to our contemplation, nothing affirmative can be derived thence; and to shape into definite words the things indefinite that dwell there is to forget its character. We can no more delineate anything within it than an artist, stationed at midnight on an Alpine precipice can paint the rayless scene beneath him.
There cannot, however, be a greater abuse of words, than to call the doctrine of the Trinity a mystery; and all the analogies by which it is attempted to give it this appearance, will instantly vanish on near inspection. It does not follow, because a mystery is something which we cannot understand, that everything unintelligible is a mystery; and we must discriminate between that which is denied admittance to our reason, from its fulness of ideas, and that which is excluded by its emptiness; between a verbal puzzle and a symbolical and finite statement of an infinite truth. If I were to say of a triangle, each of the sides of this figure has an angle opposite to it, yet are there not three angles but one angle, I should be unable to shelter myself, under the plea of mystery, from the charge of bald absurdity; and the reply would be obviously this: ‘Never was anything less mysterious put into words; all your terms are precise and sharp, of definable meaning, and suggestive of nothing beyond: the difficulty is, not in understanding your propositions separately, but in reconciling them together; and this difficulty is so palpable, that either you have affirmed a direct contradiction, or you are playing tricks with words, and using them in a way which, being unknown to me, turns them into mere nonsense.’ If to this I should answer, that the contradiction was only apparent, for that the three and the one were affirmed in different senses; and that it would be very unfair to expect, in so deep a mystery, the word angle to be restrained to its usual signification; I should no doubt be called upon to explain in what novel sense this familiar term was here employed, since, in the interval between the expulsion of the old meaning and the introduction of the new, it is mere worthless vacancy. And if, then, I should confess that the strange meaning was some inscrutable and superhuman idea, which it would be impossible to reach, and presumption to conjecture, I should not be surprised to hear the following rejoinder; ‘you are talking of human language as if it were something more than an implement of human thought, and were like the works of nature, full of unfathomable wonders and unsuspected relations; hidden properties of things there doubtless are, but occult meanings of words there cannot be. Words are simply the signs of ideas, the media of exchange, invented to carry on the commerce of minds,—the counters, either stamped with thought, or worthless counterfeits. Nay more, in this monetary system of the intellectual world, there are no coins of precious metal that retain an intrinsic value of their own, when the image and superscription imprinted by the royalty of intelligence are gone; but mere paper-currency, whose whole value is conventional, and dependent on the mental credit of those who issue it: and to urge propositions on my acceptance, with the assurance that they have some invisible and mystic force, is as direct a cheat, as to pay me a debt with a bill palpably marked as of trivial value, but, in the illegible types of your imagination, printed to be worth the wealth of Crœsus.’
“Verbal mysteries,” then, cannot exist, and the phrase is but a fine name for a contradiction or a riddle. The metaphysics which are invoked to palliate their absurdity, are fundamentally fallacious; and equally vain is it to attempt to press natural science into the service of defence. In the case of a Theological mystery, we are asked to assent to two ideas, the one of which excludes the other; in the case of a natural mystery, we assent to two ideas, one of which does not imply the other. In the one case, conceptions which destroy each other are forced into conjunction; in the other, conceptions which had never suggested each other, are found to be related. When, for example, we say that the union, in our own constitution, of body and mind is perfectly mysterious, what do we really mean? Simply, that in the properties of body there is nothing which would lead us, antecedently, to expect any combination with the properties of mind; that we might have entertained for ever the notions of solidity, extension, colour, organization, without the remotest suspicion of such things as sensation, thought, volition, affection, being associated with them. The relation is unanticipated and surprising; for thought does not imply solidity: but then neither does it exclude it; the two notions stand altogether apart, nor does the one comprise any element inconsistent with the other. It is evident that it is far otherwise with the union of the two natures in Christ; the properties of the Divine nature, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, directly exclude the properties of the human nature,—weakness, fallibility, local movement and position; to affirm the one is the only method we have of denying the other; and to say of any Being, that besides having the omniscience of God, he had the partial knowledge of man, is to say that in addition to having all ideas, he possessed some ideas. All the natural analogies at which theologians hint in self-justification, fail in the same point. They tell me truly that it is a mystery to me how the grass grows. But by this is meant only, that from the causes which produce this phenomenon, I could not have antecendently predicted it; that if I had been a fresh comer on the globe, the meteorological conditions of the earth in spring might have been perceived by me without my suspecting, as a sequence, the development of a green substance from the soil. We have again an example of an unforeseen relation; but between the members of that relation there is not even a seeming contradiction. Nor do I know of any other signification of the word mystery, as applied to our knowledge or belief, except in its usage to express magnitudes too great to be filled by our imaginations; as when we speak of the mysterious vastness of space, or duration of time: or, viewing these as the attributes of a Being, stand in awe of the immensity and eternity of God. But neither in this case is there any approach to the admission of ideas which exclude each other; on the contrary, our minds think of a small portion,—take into consideration a representative sample, of those immeasurable magnitudes, and necessarily conceive of all that is left behind, as perfectly similar, and believe the unknown to be an endless repetition of the known.
It is constantly affirmed that the doctrines of the Trinity, and of the two natures in Christ, comprise no contradiction; that it is not stated in the former that there are three Gods, but that God is three in one sense, and one in another; and in the latter, that Christ is two in one sense, and one in another.
I repeat and proceed to justify my statement, that if, in the enunciation of these tenets, language is used with any appreciable meaning, they are contradictions; and if not, they are senseless. I enter upon this miserable logomachy with the utmost repugnance; and am ashamed that in vindication of the simplicity of Christ, we should be dragged back into the barren conflicts of the schools.
“If,” says Dr. Tattershall, “it had been said that He is ONE GOD and also THREE GODS, then the statement would have been self-contradictory, and no evidence could have established the truth of such a proposition.”[[165]] Now I take it as admitted that this being is called ONE GOD; and that there are THREE GODS, is undoubtedly affirmed distributively, though not collectively; each of the three persons being separately announced as God. In the successive instances, which we are warned to keep distinct, and not confound, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, proper Deity is affirmed; in three separate cases, all that is requisite to constitute the proper notion of God, is said to exist; and this is exactly what is meant, and all that can be meant, by the statement, that there are three Gods. I submit then that the same creed teaches that there are three Gods, and also that there are not three Gods.
From this contradiction there is but one escape, and that is, by declaring that the word God is used in different senses; being applied to the triad in one meaning, and to the persons in another. If this be alleged, I wait to be informed of the new signification which is to be attached to this title, hitherto expressive of all the ideas I can form of intellectual and moral perfection. More than this, which exhausts all the resources of my thought, it cannot mean; and if it is to mean less, then it withholds from Him to whom it is applied something which I have hitherto esteemed as essential to God. Meanwhile, a word with an occult meaning is a word with no meaning; and the proposition containing it is altogether senseless.
But the favourite way of propounding this doctrine is the following: that God is three in one sense, and one in another; Three in Person, but only One Individual, Subsistence, or Being. The sense, then, if I understand aright, of the word Person, is different from the sense of the words Individual, Being, or Subsistence; and if so, I may ask what the respective senses are, and wherein they differ from each other. In reply I am assured, that by person is to be understood “a subject in which resides” “an entire set or series of those properties which are understood to constitute personality; viz. the property of Life, that of Intelligence, that of Volition, and that of Activity, or power of Action.”[[166]] Very well; this is distinct and satisfactory; and now for the other sense, viz. of the words Individual, Being, and Subsistence. About this an ominous silence is observed; and all information is withheld respecting the quite different meaning which these terms contain. Now I say, that their signification is the very same with that of the word Person, as above defined; that when you have enumerated to me a complete “set of personal attributes,” you have called up the idea of an Individual, Being, or Subsistence; and that when you have mentioned to me these phrases, you have made me think of a complete set of personal attributes; that if you introduce me to two or three series of personal attributes, you force me to conceive of two or three beings; that a complete set of properties makes up an entire subsistence, and that an entire subsistence contains nothing else than its aggregate of properties. To take, for example, from Dr. Tattershall’s list of qualities which are essential to personality; tell me of two lives, and I cannot but think of two individuals; of two intelligences, and I am necessitated to conceive of two intelligent beings; of two wills or powers of action, and it is impossible to restrain me from the idea of two Agents; and if each of these lives, intelligences, and volitions, be divine, of two Gods. The word substance, in fact, will hold no more than the word person; and to the mind, though not to the ear, the announcement in question really is, that there are three persons, and yet only one person. Thus men “slide insensibly,” to use the words of Archbishop Whately, “into the unthought-of, but, I fear, not uncommon, error of Tritheism; from which they think themselves the more secure, because they always maintain the Unity of the Deity; though they gradually come to understand that Unity in a merely figurative sense; viz. as a Unity of substance,—a Unity of purpose, concert of action, &c.; just as any one commonly says, ‘My friend such-an-one and myself are one;’ meaning that they pursue the same designs with entire mutual confidence, and perfect co-operation, and have that exact agreement in opinions, views, tastes, &c., which is often denoted by the expression one mind.”[[167]]
No doubt this excellent writer is correct in his impression, that the belief in three Gods is prevalent in this country, and kept alive by the creeds of his own church. And how does he avoid this consequence himself? By understanding the word Persons, not in Dr. Tattershall’s, which is the ordinary English sense, but in the Latin signification, to denote the relations, or capacities, or characters, which an individual may sustain, the several parts which he may perform; so that the doctrine of the Trinity amounts only to this, that the One Infinite Deity bears three relations to us. This is plain Unitarianism, veiled behind the thinnest disguise of speech. Between this and Tritheism, it is vain to seek for any third estate.[[168]]
The contradiction involved in the doctrine of the two natures of Christ is of precisely the same nature and extent. We are assured that he had a perfect human constitution, consisting of the growing body and progressing mind of a man; and also a proper divine personality, comprising all the attributes of God. Now, during this conjunction, either the human mind within him was, or it was not, conscious of the co-existence and operation of the divine. If it was not, if the earthly and celestial intelligence dwelt together in the same body without mutual recognition, like two persons enclosed in the same dark chamber, in ignorance of each other, then were there two distinct beings, whom it is a mockery to call “one Christ;” the humanity of our Lord was unaffected by his Deity, and in all respects the same as if disjoined from it; and his person was but a movable sign, indicating the place and presence of a God, who was as much foreign to him as to any other human being. If the human nature had a joint consciousness with the divine, then nothing can be affirmed of his humanity separately; and from his sorrows, his doubts, his prayers, his temptations, his death, every trace of reality vanish away. If he were conscious, in any sense, of omnipotence, nothing but duplicity could make him say, “of mine own self I can do nothing;” if of omniscience, it was mere deception to affirm that he was ignorant of the time of his second advent; if of his equality with the Father, it was a quibble to say, “my Father is greater than I.” I reject this hypothesis with unmitigated abhorrence, as involving in utter ruin the character of the most perfect of created beings.
The intrinsic incredibility then of these doctrines, involving, as they do, “clear immoralities and self contradictions,” would throw discredit on the claims of any work professing to reveal them on the authority of God. And whether we listen to the demands of Scripture on our reverential attention, must depend on this:—whether these tenets are found there or not. And to this enquiry let us now proceed.
One remark I would make in passing, on the supposed value of the theory of the two natures, as a key to unlock certain difficult passages of the Bible, and to reconcile their apparent contradictions. Christ, it is affirmed, is sometimes spoken of as possessing human qualities, sometimes as possessing divine; on the supposition of his being simply man, one class of these passages contradicts us; on the assumption of his being simply God, another. Let us then pronounce him both, and everything is set right; every part of the document becomes clear and intelligible.[[169]]
Now which, let me ask, is the greater difficulty: the obscure language, which we wish to make consistent, or the prodigious hypothesis, devised for the reconcilement of its parts? The sole perplexity in these portions of Scripture consists in this,—that the divine and the human nature are felt to be incompatible, and not to be predicable of the same being: if we did not feel this, we should be conscious of no opposition; and the ingenious device for relieving the bewilderment, is to deny the incompatibility, and boldly to affirm the union. If you will but believe both sides of the contradiction, you will find the contradiction disappear! What would be thought of such a principle of interpretation applied to similar cases of verbal discrepancy? It is stated, for example, in the Book of Genesis, that Abraham and Lot received a divine communication respecting the destruction of Sodom; and the bearers of the message are spoken of, in one place, as Jehovah himself; in another, as angels; in a third, as men.[[170]] What attention would be given to any interpreter who should say; ‘it is clear that these persons could not be simply God, for they are called men; nor simply men, for they are called angels; nor simply angels, for they are called God: they must have had a triple nature, and been at the same time perfect God, perfect angel, and perfect man?’ Would such an explanation be felt to solve anything? Or take one other case, in which Moses is called God with a distinctness which cannot be equalled in the case of Christ: “Moses called together all Israel, and said to them: ... I have led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes have not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot. Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink; that ye might know that I am the Lord your God.”[[171]] What relief, let me ask, should we obtain from the difficulty of this passage, by being told that Moses had two natures in one person, and must be received as God-man? Who would accept “a key” like this, and not feel that in loosening one difficulty, it locked fast another, and left us in labyrinthine darkness?
II. When a Trinitarian, and a Unitarian, agree to consult Scripture together, and to bring their respective systems to this written standard, it is essential that they should determine beforehand what it is that they must look for: what internal characters of the books are to be admitted in evidence; what kind and degree of proof each is entitled to expect. Each should say to the other before the Bible is opened, “Tell me now, distinctly, what are the marks and indications in these records, which you admit would disprove your scheme: what must I succeed in establishing, in order to convince you that you are mistaken?” The mutual exchange of some such tests is indispensable to all useful discussion. I am not aware that any rules of this kind have ever been laid down, or I would willingly adopt them. Meanwhile I will propose a few; and state the phenomena which I think a Unitarian has a right to expect in the Bible, if the Athanasian doctrine[[172]] be revealed there, and its reception made a condition of salvation. If the criteria be in any respect unreasonable, let it be shown where they are erroneous or unfair. I am not conscious of making any extravagant or immodest petition for evidence.
If, then, the existence of three Persons, each God, in the One Infinite Deity,—and the temporary union of the second of these Persons, with a perfect man, so as to constitute One Christ,—be among the prominent facts communicated in the written Revelation of the Bible, we may expect to find there the following characters:
(1.) That somewhere or other, among its thousand pages, these doctrines so easily and compendiously expressed, will be plainly stated.
(2.) That as it is important not to confound the three persons in the Godhead, they will be kept distinct, having some discriminative and not interchangeable titles; and, moreover, since each has precisely the same claim to be called God, that word will be assigned to them with something like an impartial distribution.
(3.) That as, in consistency with the Unity, the term God will always be restricted to one only being or substance; so, in consistency with the Trinity, it will never be limited to ONE PERSON to the exclusion of the OTHER TWO.
(4.) That when the PERSONS are named by their distinctive divine titles, their equality will be observed, nor any one of them be represented as subordinate to any other.
(5.) That since the MANHOOD of Christ commenced, and its peculiar functions ceased, with his incarnation, it will never be found ascribed to him in relation to events, before or after this period.
All these phenomena, I submit, are essential to make scripture consistent with Athanasianism; and not one of these phenomena does scripture contain. This it is now my business to show.
III. (1.) Is then our expectation realized, of finding somewhere within the limits of the Bible, a plain, unequivocal statement of these doctrines? Confessedly not; and notions which, in one breath, are pronounced to be indispensable to salvation, are in another admitted to be no matters of revelation at all, but rather left to be gathered by human deduction from the sacred writings. “The doctrine of the Trinity,” says a respectable Calvinistic writer, Mr. Carlile of Dublin, “is rather a doctrine of inference and of indirect intimation, deduced from what is revealed respecting the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and intimated in the notices of a plurality of persons in the Godhead, than a doctrine directly and explicitly declared.” And elsewhere the same author says, “A doctrine of inference ought never to be placed on a footing of equality with a doctrine of direct and explicit revelation.”[[173]] If this be so (and the method of successive steps by which it is attempted, in this very controversy, to establish the doctrine of the Trinity, proves Mr. Carlile to be right), then to deny this mere inference is not to deny a revelation. But why, we may be permitted to enquire, this shyness and hesitancy in the scriptures in communicating such cardinal truths? Whence this reserve in the Holy Spirit about matters so momentous?[[174]] What is the source of this strange contrast between the formularies of the Church of England, and those of the primitive Church of Christ? The Prayer-book would seem to have greatly the advantage over the Bible; for it removes all doubts at once, and makes the essentials most satisfactorily plain; compensating, shall we say, by “frequent repetitions,” for the defects and ambiguities of Holy Writ? Nay, it is a singular fact, that in the original languages of the Old and New Testaments, no phraseology exists in which it is possible to express the creeds of the Church. We give to the most learned of our opponents the whole vocabulary of the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, and we say, “with these materials translate for us into either language, or any mixture of both, your own Athanasian Creed,” They well know, that it cannot be done: and ought not then this question to be well weighed? if the terms indispensable for the expression of certain ideas are absent from the Bible, how can the ideas themselves be present? Scarcely can men have any important notions without the corresponding words,—which the mind coins as fast as it feels the need; and most assuredly they cannot reveal them. Let us hear no more the rash assertion that these tenets may be proved from any page of scripture; we frankly offer every page, with unrestricted liberty to rewrite the whole; and we say, with all this, they cannot be expressed.
(2.) Let us proceed to apply our second criterion, and ascertain whether the divine persons, whom it is essential to distinguish, are so distinguished by characteristic titles in scripture; and share among them, with any approach to equality, the name of God.
It is self-evident, that a verbal revelation can make known distinctions only by distinctive words; that if two or more objects of thought receive interchangeable names, and the term which had seemed to be appropriated to the one is transferred to the other, those objects are not discriminated, but confounded. We require, then, separate words in scripture to denote the following notions; of the One Divine Substance, or Triune Being; of the First, of the Second, of the Third person, in this infinite existence;—of the Divine Nature and of the Human Nature of Christ. For the Trinity, it is acknowledged, there is no scripture name; unless, indeed, the plural form of the word God in the Hebrew language is to be claimed for this purpose; and thus an attempt be still made to confirm our faith by argument which an orthodox commentator calls “weak and vain, not to say silly and absurd.”[[175]] “From the plural sense of the word Elohim,” says the great Calvin, “it is usual to infer that there are three persons in the Godhead. But as this proof of so important a point appears to me by no means solid, I will not insist upon the word. Let me then warn my readers against such VIOLENT INTERPRETATIONS.”[[176]] “I must be allowed,” says Dr. Lee, Arabic Professor in the University of Cambridge, “to object to such methods of supporting an article of faith, which stands in need of no such support.”[[177]] Of the first person in the Trinity, the word “Father,” it is to be presumed, may be considered as the distinctive name; of the Second person, the terms Son, Son of God, and the Word or Logos; of the Third person, the phrase Holy Ghost, Spirit, Paraclete; and of the human nature of Christ, as distinguished from the Second distinction in the Trinity, the names Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man, the Man Christ Jesus. If these names be not distinctive, there certainly are no others; and if there be none at all, then the distinctions themselves are not impressed upon the record; they are altogether destitute of signs and expressions, and must be pronounced purely imaginary. Meanwhile we will assume the titles, which I have just enumerated, to be appropriated to the purposes which have been assigned. To the use of the words Father and Son I shall have particular occasion to revert.
The usage of the word God, in the New Testament, presents us with some remarkable phenomena. The Athanasian doctrine offers to our belief four objects of thought, to which this word is equally and indifferently applicable; the Triune Divine Being; and each of the three Persons; and its advocates profess to have learned from Scripture the well-adjusted equipoise of these claims upon the great and sacred name. We are hardly then prepared by its instructions, distinct and emphatic as they are, for the following fact; allowing every one of the Trinitarian interpretations to be correct, the word God is used in the New Testament TEN times of Christ; and of some other object, upwards of THIRTEEN HUNDRED times.[[178]] Whence this astonishing disproportion? Some cause,—something corresponding to it in the minds of the writers, it must have had; nor is it easy to understand, how an equal disposition of the Divine Persons in the habitual conceptions of the Authors, could lead to so unequal an award of the grand expression of Divinity.
Even the few instances, which for the moment I have allowed, will disappear on a nearer examination. This appears to be the proper place to pass under review the most remarkable passages, which, under Trinitarian exposition, appear to sanction the doctrine of the proper Deity of Christ.
(a.) The evangelist Matthew applies to Christ[[179]] the following words of the prophet Isaiah, which, in order to give the truest impression of the original, I will quote from the translation of Bishop Lowth: “Behold the Virgin conceiveth, and beareth a son; and she shall call his name Emmanuel.”[[180]] As this name is significant, and means “God with us,” it is argued, that it could not be assigned to any one who was not properly God.
Now even if this name were really assigned by the prophet to Christ, the most superficial Hebraist must be aware that it teaches us nothing respecting the nature and person of our Lord. “The fact is unquestionable,” says Dr. Pye Smith, “that the gratitude or hope of individuals, in the ancient scriptural times, was often expressed by the imposition of significant appellations on persons or other objects, in the composition of which Divine names and titles were frequently employed; these are, therefore, nothing but short sentences, declarative of some blessing possessed or expected.”[[181]] Thus the name Lemuel means God with them; Elijah, God the Lord; Elihu, God is he. So that to use the words of one of the ablest of living Trinitarian writers, “to maintain that the name Immanuel proves the doctrine in question is a fallacious argument.”[[182]]
But, in truth, this name is not given to the Messiah by the prophet; and the citation of it in this connection by the evangelist is an example of those loose accommodations, or even misapplications, of passages in the Old Testament by writers in the New, which the most resolute orthodoxy is unable to deny; and which (though utterly destructive of the theory of verbal inspiration) the real dignity of the Gospel in no way requires us to deny. Turning to the original prophecy, and not neglecting the context and historical facts which illustrate it, we find that Jerusalem was threatened with instant destruction by the confederated kings of Syria and Samaria; that, to the terrified Jewish monarch Ahaz, the prophet is commissioned to promise the deliverance of his metropolis and ruin to his enemies; that he even fixes the date of this happy reverse; and that he does this, not in a direct way, by telling the number of months or years that shall elapse, but by stating that ere a certain child, either already born, or about to be born within a year, shall be old enough to distinguish between good and evil, the foe shall be overthrown; and that this same child, whose infancy is thus chronologically used, shall eat the honey of a land peaceful and fertile once more. Nor is this interpretation any piece of mere heretical ingenuity. Dr. Pye Smith observes: “It seems to be as clear as words can make it, that the Son promised was born within a year after the giving of the prediction; that his being so born at the assigned period, was the sign or pledge that the political deliverance announced to Ahaz should certainly take place.”[[183]] Without assenting to the latter part of this remark, I quote it simply to show that, in the opinion of this excellent and learned Divine, the Emmanuel could not have been born later than a year after the delivery of the prophecy. It will immediately appear that there is nothing to preclude the supposition of his being already born, at the very time when it was uttered.
Who this child, and who his mother, really were, are questions wholly unconnected with the present argument. As the date, and not the person, was the chief subject of the Prophet’s declaration, any son of Jerusalem, arriving at years of discretion within the stated time, would fulfil the main conditions of the announcement; and as a sign of Divine deliverance, might receive the name Emmanuel. In fact, however, the child, in the view of Isaiah, seems to have been no other than the King’s own son, Hezekiah; and the Virgin Mother to have been, in conformity with a phraseology familiar to every careful reader of the Old Testament, the royal and holy city of Jerusalem. Amos, speaking of the city, says, “The virgin of Israel is fallen,”[[184]] Jeremiah, lamenting over its desolation, exclaims, “Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken, with a great breach, with a very grievous blow.”[[185]] Micah, apostrophizing the citadel, bursts out, “O tower,”—“stronghold of the daughter of Zion,”—“is there no king in thee? Is thy counsellor perished? For pangs have taken thee, as a woman in travail.”[[186]] The fact that Hezekiah was already born, seems to confirm rather than to invalidate this interpretation. A living child to his parents, he was yet the city’s embryo king. What sign more fitted to reassure the terrified and faithless monarch than this; that, ere his own first-born should reach the years of judgment, his twofold enemy should be cast down? What language, indeed, could be more natural respecting an heir to the throne, of whom great expectations were excited in grievous times? The royal city dreamt of his promised life with gladness; he was the child of Jerusalem, in the hour of her anguish given to her hopes; in after years of peace fulfilling them.[[187]]
(b.) This prince appears evidently to have been the person described also in another passage, from which, though never cited in the New Testament as applicable to Christ at all, modern theologians are accustomed to infer his Deity. It is as follows: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and his name shall be called wonderful; counsellor; the mighty God; the everlasting Father; the Prince of Peace.”[[188]] We have only to look at the terms in which this great one’s dominion is described, and the characters that are to mark his reign, in order to assure ourselves that he is some person very different from Christ; the Northern district of Palestine is to be delivered by him from the sufferings of an Assyrian invasion; he is to break the yoke which Tiglath-Pileser had imposed on the land of Gennesareth; to destroy the rod of the oppressor; to make a conflagration of the spoils of the battle-field, and burn the greaves and blood-stained garments of his country’s enemies.[[189]] It seems to me impossible to imagine a more violent distortion of Scripture than the application of this passage to Christ. But, be it even otherwise, there are only two of these titles which can be thought of any avail in this argument. One is, the “everlasting Father;” which if it proves anything, establishes that the second person in the Trinity is the first person, or else that the word Father must be given up as a distinctive name, a concession destructive of the whole doctrine. The other is the phrase, “the mighty God,” or by inversion, “God the mighty;” on which I presume no stress would have been laid if, instead of being presented to us in a translation, it had been given in the original, and called Gabriel. For the word God, Martin Luther substitutes (Held) hero, as the juster rendering.[[190]] But, in truth, it is sad trifling thus to crumble Hebrew names to pieces, in order to yield a few scarce visible atoms of argument to replenish the precarious pile of church orthodoxy, wasted by the attrition of reason, the healthful dews of nature, and the sunshine and the air of God.[[191]]
(c.) Let us turn to the Proem of St. John’s Gospel; that most venerable and beautiful of all the delineations which Scripture furnishes, of the twofold relation of Christ’s spirit, to the Father who gave it its illumination, and to the brethren who were blessed by its light. To our cold understandings, indeed, this passage must inevitably be obscure; for it deals with some of the characteristic conceptions of that lofty speculative reason, which, blending the refinements of Platonism with the imaginative license of the oriental schools, assumed in early times the intellectual empire of the church, and has kept the world ever since in deliberation on its creations. I do not mean that the Apostle was a Platonist, or a disciple of any philosophical system. But he wrote in Asia Minor, where he was surrounded by the influences, in constant familiarity with the terms, and accustomed to the modes of thought, peculiar to the sects of speculative religionists most prevalent in his time. At all events, it is a fact that he uses language nowhere employed by the other Evangelists or Apostles; and that this language is the very same which is the common stock, and technical vocabulary of Philo, the Platonizing Jew, and several Christian writers of the same or a kindred school. Before, however, endeavouring to suggest the idea which the Apostle did mean to convey, let me call your attention to that which he did not.
There cannot be a more misplaced confidence, than that with which the introductory verses of St. John’s Gospel are appealed to by the holders of the Athanasian doctrine. Whatever explanation is adopted, which does not throw contempt upon the composition of the Evangelist, is at all events subversive of their system: and I do not hesitate to say, that this is the only thing which I can regard as certain respecting this passage; that it never could have been written by an Athanasian. In order to test this assertion, it is not necessary to look beyond the first verse; and before we read it, let us allow the Trinitarian to choose any sense he pleases of the word God, which is its leading term. Let us suppose that he accepts it as meaning here “the Father,” and that the Word or Logos means God the Son. With these substitutions the verse reads thus:—
In the beginning was the Son; and the Son was with the Father; and the Son was the Father. This surely is to “confound the persons.”
Let us then suppose the meaning different, and the whole Godhead or Trinity to be denoted by the word God. The verse would then read thus:—
In the beginning was the Son; and the Son was with the Trinity, and the Son was the Trinity.
We are no nearer to consistency than before: and it is evident that before the Trinitarian can find in the passage any distinct enunciation, the term God must be conceived to bear two different meanings in this short verse,—a verse so symmetrical in its construction as to put the reader altogether off his guard against such a change. He must read it thus:—
In the beginning was the second person in the Trinity; and the second person was with the first; and the second person was possessed of divine attributes as such.
We might surely ask, without unreasonableness, why, when the society or personal affinity of the Son in the Godhead, is mentioned in the middle clause, the companionship of the Father only is noticed, and silence observed respecting the Holy Spirit; who at that moment could not possibly have been absent from the conceptions of any Athanasian writer. But independently of this, the awkwardness of the construction, the violence of the leading transition of meaning, render the interpretation altogether untenable. If it be true, never surely was there a form of speech worse devised for the conveyance of the intended ideas.
In order to give the passage its true force, there is no occasion to assign to the word God any but its usual signification; as the name of the One infinite Person or Being who created and rules the universe. But it is less easy to embrace and exhibit with any distinctness, the notion implied in the phrase Word or Logos. The ancient speculative schools, seeing that the Deity had existed from eternity, and therefore in a long solitude before the origin of creation, distinguished between his intrinsic nature,—deep, remote, primeval, unfathomable,[[192]]—and that portion of his mind which put itself forth, or expressed itself by works, so as to come into voluntary and intelligible relations to men.[[193]] This section of the Divine Mind, to which was attributable the authorship of the divine works, they called the Logos, or the Image of God; both terms denoting the expression or power which outwardly reveals internal qualities; the one taking its metaphor from the ear, through which we make known our sentiments by speech; the other from the eye, to which is addressed the natural language of feature and lineament. If I might venture on an illustration which may sound strangely to modern hearers, I should say that the Logos was conceived of in relation to God, much as with us Genius is, in relation to the soul of its possessor; to denote that peculiar combination of intellectual and moral attributes, which produces great, original, creative works,—works which let you into the spirit and affections, as well as the understanding, of the Author. Any one who can so possess himself with the speculative temper of Christian antiquity, as to use with reverence the phrase genius of God, would find it, I am persuaded, a useful English substitute (though I am well aware, not a perfect equivalent) for the word Logos. Dwelling within the blank immensity of God, was this illuminated region of Divine ideas; in which, as in the fancy and the studio of an artist, the formative conceptions, the original sketches and designs, the inventive projects of beauty and good, shaped and perfected themselves; and from which they issued forth, to imprint themselves upon matter and life, and pass into executed and visible realities. From the energy of this creative spirit, or blessed genius of God, two very different orders of results were conceived to flow:—the forms and symmetrical arrangements of the material universe, by which, as by the engraving of a seal, Deity stamped his perfections into vision: and the intuitions of pure reason and conscience in the human soul, by which, as by a heavenly tone or vibration, Deity thrilled himself into consciousness. And when I say Deity, I mean the Logos of Deity; for this alone, it was conceived, stood in any relation to us; the rest was an unexpressed and unfathomable Essence.
This portion of the Divine Infinitude was incessantly and vividly personified; so as to assume, even in the writings of the Jew and undoubted Monotheist Philo, the frequent aspect of a second God: though scarcely have you taken up this idea from one series of passages, before you are recalled and corrected by others, clearly showing that this is a false impression, too hastily derived from the intensity of the imagery and language. Indeed the distinction between a mere personification and a positive mythological personage is very faint. When a writer personifies an abstraction, for the moment he conceives of this object of thought as a person; and were this state of mind perpetuated, he would believe it to be a person. But his mental attitude changes; and in a less excited hour, that which had constructed and painted itself almost into a being, fades away again into an attribute. Hence the fluctuation of writers, at once imaginative and speculative, like Philo and some of the early Christian Fathers, between the logical and the mythical method of speaking of the properties of the Divine nature. And it may be remarked, that the Apostle John partook, though in a very slight degree, of the same tendency. He was fond of abstract words: calling our Saviour the way, rather than the guide; the truth, rather than the teacher; the light, rather than the illuminator; and so I conceive, in the commencement of his Gospel, the inspiration, rather than the inspired of God. And then, as if to remedy the indistinctness of this mode of representation, he resorts to personification: thus, at the dictation of his reverence, first reducing the living person to an abstraction; and afterwards, at the bidding of his imagination, recreating the abstraction into a person. The extent to which this personification may be carried, by an author who certainly had no notion but of One personal God, may be estimated from a few sentences, referring to this very conception of the Logos, from the Jewish Philo. The invisible and intellectual Logos, he says, is the image of God, by whom the world was fashioned; his first-born son, his vicegerent in the government of the world; the mediator between God and his creatures; the healer of ills; God’s divine Son, whose mother is wisdom. In another place, the Logos is the very same with the wisdom of God; the most ancient angel, the first-born of God; to the resemblance of whom every one, who would be a son of God, must fashion himself. He is even the “second God,” “To the Archangel, and most ancient Logos,” says this writer, “God granted this distinguished office, that he should stand on the confines of creation, and separate between it and its Creator. With the incorruptible being he is the suppliant for perishable mortality. He is the ambassador of the Supreme to the subject creation. He announces the will of the Ruler to his subjects. And he delights in the office, and boasts of it, saying; I had stood between you and the Lord as mediator; being neither unbegotten as God, nor begotten as you, but between the two extremes, and acting as hostage to both,”[[194]] All this sounds very mysterious; the important thing to bear in mind is, that the writer is certainly speaking not of any separate divine person, but of the impersonated attributes of One Sole Supreme.
St. John then, I conceive, does the very same; only he carefully warns us against thinking of his personification as otherwise than identical with the Supreme, by saying outright, that the Logos is God; and therefore that whatever he may say about the former, is really to be understood as spoken of the latter. The whole proem divides itself into two ideas: that from the Genius or Logos of God have proceeded two sets of divine works; the material world; and the soul and inspiration of heaven shed upon the world through Christ. His object, I believe, is to link together these two effects as successive and analogous results, physical in one case, spiritual in the other, of the same divine and holy energy. Having warned us, as I have said, in the very first verse, that this energy is not really a person distinct from the Supreme, he abandons himself without reserve to the beautiful personification which follows; assuring us that thereby were all things made at first, and thereby were all men being enlightened now; that our very world, which felt that forming hand of old, had not discerned the blessed influence which again descended to regenerate it: ungrateful treatment! as of one who came unto his own, and his own received him not. Yet were there some of more perceptive conscience and better hearts; and they, be they Jew or Gentile, whose spirits sprung to the divine embrace, were permitted to become, by reflected similitude, the Sons of God.
Thus far, that is, to the end of the thirteenth verse, there is no mention of Jesus Christ as an individual; there is only the unembodied personification of the abstract energy of God in the original design, and the newer regeneration of the world. Nor should there be any difficulty in this separation of the Divine Spirit from its positive and personal results. Of the Creative Mind of God we can easily think, as not only prior to the act of creation, but still apart from the forms of matter; and so can we of the illuminating or regenerative Mind of God, as not only prior to its manifestation in Christ, but apart from its embodiment in his person. In the next verse, however, the heavenly personification is dropped upon the man Jesus; the mystic divine light is permitted to sink into the deeps of his humanity; it vanishes from separate sight: and there comes before us, and henceforth lives within our view throughout the Gospel, the Man of Sorrows, the Child of God, with the tears and infirmities of our mortal nature, and the moral perfection of the Divine. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”[[195]]
(d.) The spirit of this exposition is directly applicable to another passage, adduced to prove the deity of Christ: “God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”[[196]] It is well known that in the most approved text, the word God does not exist, and the passage reads, “He who was manifest in the flesh,” &c. Were it permitted to indulge personal wishes in such matters, I could desire that the common rendering were the true one. I know of no more exact description of Christ, than that he was a living and human manifestation of the character of God.[[197]]
(e.) Let us now turn to the introductory verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews; a passage which is claimed as the clearest disclosure of the Deity of Christ; for no discoverable reason, except that from its great obscurity, it reveals less, perhaps, than any other portion of Scripture, except the Revelations. From the earliest times it has been justly regarded as exceedingly doubtful whether the Apostle Paul was the author of this letter; the difficulties and darkness of which are of a very different character from those which embarrass us in his noble writings, and arise from mental habits far more artificial and less healthy than his. But whatever be the authority of this work, and whatever the doctrine of its introductory portion, it is so far from giving any support to the Trinitarian sentiments, that it affords, even in its most exalted language, arguments sufficient to disprove them. The first verses of the epistle, altered slightly from the common translation, in order to exhibit more faithfully the meaning of the original, are as follows:—
“God who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath, at the close of these days, spoken unto us by his Son; whom he hath appointed heir of all things; through whom also he made the ages of the world; who, being the brightness of his glory, and the image of his nature, and ruling all things by the word of his power, having by himself made purification of our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high; being become so much greater than the angels, as he hath obtained by inheritance a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, ‘thou art my son; I have this day begotten thee?’ And again, ‘I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son.’ And when ever he may again introduce his first-born into the world, it (i.e. the Scripture) saith, ‘let all the angels of God pay homage to him.’ And with reference to the angels, it saith, ‘who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.’ But with reference to the son, it saith, ‘thy throne, O God! is for ever and ever, a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom; thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore, O God! thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.’”
I terminate the quotation here, because I do not believe that the following words have any relation to Christ. The writer’s argument not only admits, but requires, that they should be referred to the supreme God and Father of all.
Now observe with what distinctness the most lofty phrases applied to our Lord in this passage, affirm his subordination, and deny his equality with the infinite Father. At the very moment when he is addressed as God, he is said to have fellows, and to be set above them as a reward for his goodness; in the same breath which declares his throne to be for ever and ever, he is described as having a God who anoints him with the oil of gladness. He is greater than the angels, not by nature, but by the gift of a better inheritance. He is not the original divine effulgence, but an emanation of that glory, an image of that perfection; and in constituting the worlds, or rather the great æras of its appointed history, he is not the designer of its revolutions, but the instrument of God in effecting them.[[198]] If this teaches the supreme Deity of Christ, in what language is it possible to disclaim and to deny supremacy?
With respect to the peculiar terms of dignity applied in this passage to Christ, I would observe as follows:—
The words “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever,” were originally addressed by a poetical courtier to Solomon or some other Hebrew monarch, on his accession and marriage;[[199]] nor can the slightest reason be assigned for supposing that the ode in which the words occur had any reference more remote than the immediate occasion of its composition. The first half of the Psalm[[200]] is addressed to the prince; the remainder to his bride,[[201]] who is exhorted to give her undivided affection to the new relation which she has formed; to “forget her own people, and the house of her father;” and who is consoled with the hope, that “instead of her fathers she shall have her sons, whom she shall make princes through all the land.” Those who can satisfy themselves with the theological conceit, that this is a prophetic allegory, descriptive of the relation between Christ and his Church, appear to have placed themselves so far beyond the reach of all the rules of interpretation, that argument becomes fruitless; no possible media of refutation exist. They must belong to the class who have succeeded in spiritualizing the Song of Solomon; to whom therefore it has ceased to be a matter of the smallest consequence, what words are presented to them in Scripture, as they have attained the faculty of seeing one set of ideas, wherever they look, and an incapacity to see anything else. Bishop Young, convinced that the prophetic claims of this Psalm must be relinquished, and that the term God in it is addressed merely to the Hebrew monarch, and therefore used in an inferior sense, renders the passage thus; “thy throne O mighty prince, is for ever and ever.”[[202]] And surely, even those who can persuade themselves that scripture can have two intended meanings, and who imagine the poem in question to have referred primarily to Solomon, and remotely to the Messiah, must perceive that a word by which the Jewish prince might be accosted, cannot imply the supreme deity of Christ. Christ is said, in the common translation, to have made the worlds; but it is generally admitted that the phrase does not denote the construction of the material universe, and is even incapable of bearing this meaning. It describes Jesus as the agent of God in bringing about the successive states of our social world; in introducing the preluding revolutions, and the final catastrophe of human affairs. If it be asked, what ages, what revolutions, are thus attributed to the instrumentality of Christ? the answer must be sought in the fact, that the author was a Hebrew, writing to Hebrews. He seized on the grand Jewish division of time and Providence into two portions—the period before, and the period after, the coming of the Messiah; and these were the two AGES, frequently called “the present world,” and “the world to come,” which Christ is said to have constituted. Does any one inquire, in what way our Lord, if he were not at least pre-existent, could administer the arrangements of Providence in the former of these periods, that is, before his own mission to mankind? I submit, in answer, a suggestion which seems to me essential to the clear understanding of all the Christian records, and especially of those which relate to the years after the ascension. The advent of the Messiah was represented, during those years, not as past, but as still future;[[203]] they were regarded as the close of the old and earthly epoch, not the commencement of the new and heavenly; so that all that Jesus of Nazareth had already done, the mighty changes which he had set in operation,—were an action upon the former of the two great ages; nor would the latter be introduced till he returned from heaven; to rule, for a period vast or even indefinite, as the personal vicegerent of God over his faithful children here. This event, which in our own days Millenarians are expecting soon, and which the early Christians expected sooner, was regarded as the true coming of the Messiah—the point of demarcation between the ages—the introduction of “the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.”[[204]] Meanwhile the old world was drawing to a close, of which a warning (like that given to Noah before the flood)[[205]] had been given by the preliminary visit, with unmistakable credentials, of him who was to be the Messiah; he had come in the flesh, and retired in the spirit; and was leaving time for the tidings of his appointment and his approach to spread, by the voice of witnesses and preachers who published the pledges of his power. Of those pledges, which marked him out as the future prince of life and earth, none were so distinguished as his resurrection and ascension, by which God had given assurance that he would one day judge or rule the world in righteousness;[[206]] by which he was declared to be the son of God with power;[[207]] and on the very day of which he became the first-born or the begotten child of God;[[208]] and sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.[[209]] Invested with his office, he yet abstained from immediately coming to claim its prerogatives; he continued sequestered in the heavens, allowing to the world a time of preparation, a solemn pause before judgment;[[210]] repressing the impatient moment of the great revolution, and by his powerful word, bearing a while and upholding all things as they are.[[211]] If this were really the conception of the apostles, it follows, no doubt, that they prematurely expected the return of their Lord; but that they did so, is no new assumption; and in adopting it I protect myself by the authority of Mr. Locke, who says in a note on a passage of the Epistle to the Romans, “It seems, by these two verses, as if St. Paul looked upon Christ’s coming as not far off; to which there are several other occurrent passages in his epistles.”[[212]]
If the foregoing interpretation of the introduction to this epistle be true, it follows that all the power and dignity there ascribed to Christ are described as acquisition after his ascension; that not till then was he accosted with the title of divinity previously applied to Solomon; not till then did he become greater than the angels, or receive an anointment of gladness above his fellows; not till then did he receive his heirship, his filiation, his vicegerency of God. Of his supreme Deity scarcely could any more emphatic denial be conceived.[[213]]
(f.) The following passage is sometimes quoted as affirmative of the Deity of Christ: “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in (or by) his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”[[214]] But it is surely evident that with Calvin, Newcome, Dr. Adam Clarke,[[215]] we must consider the concluding pair of epithets as parallel respectively with the two penultimates. “By him that is true,” says the Apostle, “I mean the true God,” “and this Jesus Christ is eternal life.”[[216]] As to the pretence of over-nice grammarians, that the pronoun “this” must refer to Jesus Christ as the nearest antecedent, the Apostle John himself dismisses it with this one sentence: “Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This (not Jesus Christ, it is to be presumed) is a deceiver and an antichrist.”[[217]] The antecedent, in this case, is not only remote, but plural.
(g.) I know of only one other set of passages requiring explanation from a Unitarian; and of these I take the following as an example; giving, you will observe, a translation slightly differing from the authorized version, but to which no competent judge will probably object:—“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, never thought his equality with God a thing to be eagerly retained; but divested himself of it, and took on him the form of a servant, and assumed the likeness of men; and being in the common condition of man, still humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, aye, and the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him &c.”[[218]] Elsewhere Paul briefly expresses this sentiment thus: being rich, for your sakes he became poor.[[219]]
Now, in order to appreciate the striking beauty of this passage, it is necessary to remember that the Apostle is writing to Gentiles; and to enter into his remarkable conception respecting the relation of the Messiah to them. This great object of promise was, according to the original idea of him, a mere national appropriation of the Jews; made their own by birth and lineage as well as by office. So long as these peculiarities belonged to him, he could not, without breaking through all the restraints of the sacred Mosaic law, stand in any friendly connection with the Gentiles; nor did our Lord, during his mortal life, ever extend his ministry beyond his native land. Moreover, there was nothing, Paul conceived, to prevent his realizing at once, had he willed it, all the splendid anticipations of the Hebrews; nothing to obstruct his seizing, from the hills of Galilee, or the heights of Jerusalem, the promised royal sceptre, and making himself, without delay, the Lord of all below; nothing but his holy resolve to be no mere Jewish Messiah, and his desire to embrace the Gentiles, too, within the blessings of his sway. And how could this be accomplished? Never, so long as the personal characteristics of the Israelite attached to him. He determined then to lay these aside, which could be done by death alone. On the cross, or in the ascension, he parted from the coil of mortality, in which were enveloped all the distinctions that made him national rather than human; the lineage, the blood, the locality, the alliance, passed away; the immortal spirit alone remained, and departed to the rest of God; and this his soul was not Hebrew, but was human; and so his relations expanded, and the princely Son of David became, through death, the divine Messiah of humanity. Writing then to Gentiles, the Apostle reminds them of this; tells them of what attainable splendours Jesus had deprived himself, what rightful glories he had resigned, what anguish he had endured, to what death he had submitted, in order to drop his mortal peculiarities which had excluded the nations from the peace of his dominion, and to assume that spiritual state to which they might stand related. It was not his Godhead, not the application of his miracles to his personal advantage, but the dignities of the Prince of Israel, the prerogatives and triumphs of God’s vicegerent, of which he emptied himself, and for the Gentiles’ sakes became poor. He whose office made him as God, became, by his pure will, a servant; he who, without the slightest strain of his rights, might have assumed an equivalence to Providence on earth, and administered at once the promised theocracy of heaven, was in no eager haste to seize the privilege; but, that he might call in those who else had been the exile and the outcast people, entered first the shadow of suffering and shame; he who might have been exempt from death, took the humiliation of the cross; showing a divine and self-forgetful love, which disregards his own rights to pity others’ privations; and which gave a resistless force to the exhortation, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.”[[220]]
(h.) In direct contrast with this past humiliation of Christ, is the present glory and future dominion with which, in the verses immediately following, the Apostle describes him as invested by the rewarding complacency of God. And here the passage enters the same class with three others,[[221]] of which the introduction of the Epistle to the Hebrews is one, but the most remarkable is the following: “Christ, ... who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature; for by him were all things created, that are in Heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things, were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; that in all things he might have pre-eminence; for it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.”[[222]]
Calvin himself warns us that “the circumstances of this place require us to understand it as spoken,” not of the original formation of the universe, but “of the renovation which is included in the benefit of Redemption.”[[223]] Indeed a very superficial acquaintance with the phraseology of the Apostle, is sufficient to convince us that the language which we have here is very unlike that in which he speaks of the construction of the material system of things and very like that in which he describes the regeneration of the world by the faith of Christ. Describing the natural creation, he makes no such strange selection of objects as thrones, principalities, dominions, powers, with unintelligible avoidance of everything palpable: but says plainly, “The living God, who made Heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them.”[[224]] And characterizing, on the other hand, the effects of the Gospel, he says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works;”[[225]] and “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.”[[226]] Nor does the language of this passage appear so violently figurative as commentators have usually supposed. Apply to it the Apostle’s conception respecting the return of his Lord from Heaven, to reign visibly upon earth, over a community holy and immortal, and the obscurity will no longer be felt. That advent, introducing the future age or world to come, would be attended by a revolution which could be called no less than a “new creation.” No term less emphatic would adequately describe the superseding of all existing arrangements, the extinction of earthly rule, authority, and power;[[227]] the recal to earth of the spirits of the just;[[228]] the immortalizing of the saints who had not slept;[[229]] the gathering together the whole family of the holy in Heaven or earth;[[230]] the everlasting destruction of the faithless from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his power;[[231]] the bowing of every knee before the Prince of Life;[[232]] the opening of the kingdom that cannot be moved;[[233]] and the award of recompense to those who, having suffered, should reign with him.[[234]]
Already were the elements of this blessed society drawing themselves together, some in Heaven, others upon earth; the investiture with immortality had commenced. Christ was the beginning, the first-born from the dead: and the departed saints sharing his heavenly rest, and ready for the Lord to bring with him;[[235]] the afflicted Church below, in earnest expectation of the manifestation of those Sons of God, and though waiting for the redemption of the body, yet risen together with Christ to that spiritual mind which is life and peace;[[236]] all these were kept by the power of God unto the salvation, which was ready to be revealed in the last time.[[237]] The multitude of the holy was thronging in, showing that no scant dominion was forming; but that it pleased the Father that, in his vicegerent, all fulness should dwell, and whatever is perfect be united. Lifted above the hostile reach of human might and dominion, above all mean comparison with earthly names of dignity, he sees all things already beneath his feet in the world as it is, and all things prospectively submissive in the world as it is to be.[[238]] Nor was Jesus, in his retirement above, unoccupied with the glories of his commission, or indifferent to the recompense of his followers; rather is he preparing and allotting to the glorified there, and the toiling here, the privileges and powers of the everlasting age which shall take place of the thrones and principalities of this. Over both portions of the community of Saints, the seen and the unseen, the Heavenly and the earthly, he is the living head, and his spirit filleth all.[[239]]
This vision of the Advent, with all the magnificent ideas which gathered round it, seems to me to have given rise to the glorious “rapture” of this passage; to have thrown in, at first, its light and darkness, and when applied now to its interpretation, to disclose the dim outline of its plan. And though, in form, the anticipation itself was at least premature, in spirit it receives, in the providence of the Gospel, one prolonged fulfilment; and many of its accompanying conceptions realize themselves perpetually. Though as yet Christ comes not back to us, yet do the faithful go to him, and there, not here, are for ever with the Lord. Though with no visible sway he dwells on earth, he more and more rules it from afar; wins and blesses the hearts of its people, bends their wills, sends his image to be their conscience; and long has he had a might and name among us, far above our principalities and powers, and made the cross superior to the crown. And who can deny that he hath united in one the family in heaven and earth, compelled death to fasten innumerable ties of love between the kindred spheres, and trained our rejoicing sympathies to see in creation but one society of the good, whether they toil in service and exile here, or have joined the colony above of the emancipated sons of God.
What then is the result of our inquiry into the scriptural use of the word God? That it is once applied, by way of transference, to Christ, in a passage of whose honours Solomon was the first proprietor. The views of the writer, and the purpose of his letter, might make this secondary application of the Hebrew poem right and useful. But now, how miserably barren must be that religion, how unspeakably poor that appreciation of Christ, which thinks to glorify him, by throwing around him the cast-off dignities of a Jewish prince! All these convulsive efforts to lift up the rank of Jesus, do but turn men from that greatness in him which is truly divine. And after all they utterly fail—except in turning into caricature the image of perfect holiness, and into a riddle the statement of the grandest truths: for the scanty evidence will not bear the strain that is put upon it. Nothing short of centuries of indoctrination could empower so small a testimony to sustain so enormous a scheme, and enable ecclesiastics, by sleight of words, to metamorphose the simplicity of the Bible into the contradictions of the Athanasian creed.
Our remaining criteria may be very briefly applied.
(3.) Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible is this; that as there are three persons equally entitled to the name of God, that word must never be limited to One of these, to the exclusion of the other two.
Yet do the Scriptures repeatedly restrict this title to the Father so positively, that no more emphatic language remains, by which it would be possible to exclude all other persons from the Godhead. If the texts we shall adduce of this class do not teach the personal unity of God, let it be stated what terms would teach it; or whether we are to consider it as a doctrine incapable of being revealed at all, however true in itself. Meanwhile, I would ask, whether the most skilful logician could propose a form of speech, closing the Godhead against all but the Father, more absolutely than these passages; “There is but One God, the Father.”[[240]] “Father! ... this is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”[[241]] “The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; the Father seeketh such to worship him; God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”[[242]] “There is one God and Father of all.”[[243]]
If such passages as these do not deny the Deity of all persons but One, it must be because the word “Father” is used in them to denote the whole Trinity; and if this be so, then this name ceases to be distinctive of the first person in the Godhead; no discriminative title of that person remains; it becomes impossible for language to characterize him; and the whole mechanism of speech, by which alone a verbal revelation could disclose the distinctions in the divine nature, vanishes away. You must either confess absence of the distinctions themselves, or show the presence of distinctive names.
(4.) Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible would be this; that when the persons are named, by their distinctive Divine titles, their equality will be recognized, nor any one of them be represented as subordinate to another.
If an Athanasian received a divine commission to prepare a Gospel,—a statement of the essentials of Christianity,—for the use of some unevangelized nation, he would not, we may presume, habitually represent the Son, in his very highest offices, as inferior to the Father, as destitute of independent power, as without underived knowledge, and possessed only of a secondary and awarded glory. At all events, these representations would not be made without instant explanation; and the writer would accuse himself of rashly periling the mysteries of God, if he committed himself to such statements without guard or qualification, in broad unlimited propositions. Yet these are precisely the phenomena of Scripture. It is perpetually maintained by Trinitarians, that the miracles of Christ were acts of power, inexplicable except by proper Deity, united with his humanity; and that his superhuman wisdom was an expression of that Divine Nature which blended itself with his mortal constitution. If so, his miracles were wrought and his teachings dictated by that element of his personality which was God,—that is, by GOD THE SON;[[244]] but this, our Lord unequivocally denies; “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do;” “I can of mine own self do nothing.”[[245]] “The words which I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works;”[[246]] “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father;”[[247]] “The works which the Father hath given me to perform.”[[248]] These passages declare, with all the precision of which language admits, that the wisdom and the might which dwelt in Christ, were not those of the Son, but those of the Father; the incarnate God had no concern with them, for they are ascribed exclusively to him who never became incarnate. Indeed we ask, and we ask in vain, for any one divine act or inspiration ascribed by our Lord to this humanized Deity with whom his mortal nature was united: his teachings are one prolonged declaration that the divinity that dwelleth within him was THE FATHER. If he felt within him a co-equal Godhead, how could he make the unqualified affirmation, “My Father is greater than all?”[[249]] Or can a more specific disclaimer of Omniscience be framed than this; “Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels who are in Heaven, NEITHER THE SON, but the Father?”[[250]] Dr. Adam Clarke, unable to resist this overpowering text, expresses his suspicion that it is not altogether genuine, and that the words, “neither the Son,” should be expunged. It would appear that the temptations to “mutilation” are felt by other parties than the Editors of the Improved Version. If it be said, that in the passages which have been cited, the subordination alleged of Christ, refers to his human nature, and his mediatorial office, then it follows that his highest title may become the name of what is called his lowest capacity; and if this be so, no medium of verbal proof remains by which to establish any higher nature.[[251]] But can any supposition be more monstrous than this; that whenever our Lord used the familiar language of personality, and discoursed with the peasants of Galilee, and the populace of Jerusalem, he was perpetually performing a metaphysical resolution of himself into natures, characters, and offices, and putting forth, now a phrase from the divine, now another from the human capacity; here a sentence from the pre-existent, and there another from the mediatorial compartment of his individuality? And the absurdity is crowned, when writings, crowded thus with mental reservations, are handed over to us as a Revelation.
(5.) Our last expectation from a Trinitarian Bible is this; that, since with the incarnation began and ended the peculiar office of Christ’s humanity, he will not be spoken of as man, in relation to the events before or after this period.
The glory which our Lord is thought to have possessed before his entrance into this world, was the essential, underived, inalienable glory, which belonged to his Divinity; nor was his highest nature yet blended with the suffering elements, or capable of being described by the inferior titles, of his mediatorial office, or his mortal existence. Yet is it under the designation of SON OF MAN that he is described, according to the prevalent interpretation, as pre-existent; it is the SON OF MAN who “was before,” in that state, whither he was to “ascend up again;”[[252]] it was, “He that came down from Heaven,—even the SON OF MAN, who is in Heaven.”[[253]] Whatever doubt there may be respecting the precise import of this title, it certainly cannot be thought to denote the separate divine nature of Christ, as it existed before the incarnation. In perfect consistency with this language, it appears that for the restoration of this original glory, Jesus declares himself wholly dependent on the Father; “And now, O Father, glorify me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”[[254]] Here, if there be truth in the Trinitarian hypothesis, it was the man that prayed for a re-bestowal of that which the man never possessed, and which the God never lost or could receive from another. It must be admitted that no expression of dependence can be more solemn and absolute, than that which pours itself forth in prayer; and if our Lord was able to resume his former state, by the energy of his own Omnipotence, this act of supplication loses all semblance of sincerity. Yet, if here his dependence on the Father is acknowledged to be implied, with what consistency can another passage, relating also to his departure from earth to Heaven, be seized upon to prove that he raised himself from the dead, by that inextinguishable and glorious power, which, nevertheless, he entreats the Father to restore? If his proper Deity brought back to life the crucified humanity, it was a mockery for his manhood to concern itself in prayer, for the restoration of the proper Deity. That his resurrection is not ascribed to inherent power of his own, is evident, not merely from the habitual language of the preachers of this great miracle, who declare without reserve that “this Jesus hath God raised up;”[[255]] nor from the words of Paul, who calls himself “an Apostle by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;”[[256]] but even from the very text (when read without curtailment) which is adduced to prove the contrary; “No man taketh it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this commandment have I received of my Father.”[[257]] “The Messiah is privileged to be immortal; and my seeming fall by hostile hands will neither disprove my claim to the office, nor deprive it of this peculiar feature; my mission gives me a right to live, which will not be forfeited, though I exercise the right to die. Let no one think that my life is forced from me without consent of my own will; you can no more take it from me, than you can restore it to me. It is by the arrangement of the Father, whose will is also mine, that I take my Messianic immortality, not at once, but through a process of suffering and death.”
If we pass forward beyond the mortal life, to the final exaltation of Christ, he is still presented to us undivested of his humanity. Listen to the modern preachers of Orthodoxy, and they will tell you that the judicial capacity of the Saviour could be filled by Deity alone; that to pass judgment on an assembled world, to read the secrets of all hearts, and allot their final doom, are offices demanding nothing less than Omniscience, Omnipotence, Independence.[[258]] But from the Apostle Paul we learn, that “God will judge the world in righteousness by that MAN whom he hath ordained;”[[259]] and our Lord himself says, “I can of mine own self do nothing; as I hear I judge;”[[260]] “The Father hath given him authority to execute judgment also, BECAUSE HE IS THE SON OF MAN.”[[261]] Nor is it the presumption of heresy alone that esteems it possible for God to confer on a human being the requisites for so august an office; for it is Archbishop Tillotson who says, “We may promise to ourselves a fair and equal trial at the judgment of the Great Day, because we shall then be judged by a man like ourselves. Our Saviour and judge himself hath told us, that for this reason God hath committed all judgment to the Son, because he is the Son of man. And this in human judgments is accounted a great privilege, to be judged by those who are of the same rank and condition with ourselves, and who are likely to understand best, and most carefully to examine and consider all our circumstances, and to render our case as if it were their own. So equitably doth God deal with us, that we shall be acquitted or condemned by such a judge as, according to human measures, we ourselves should have chosen, by one in our own nature, who was made in all things like unto us, that only excepted which would have rendered him incapable of being our judge, because it would have made him a criminal like ourselves. And therefore the Apostle offers this as a firm ground of assurance to us that God will judge the world in righteousness, because this judgment shall be administered by a man like ourselves; He hath, saith he, appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained,” &c.[[262]]
It is, then, in his humanity, that this high prerogative belongs to Jesus. Yet are our opponents right in their assertion that, if there be any office attributed to him, requiring divine perfection, it is this; no higher exaltation remains, no superior glory is referred to him from which, with any better reason, we can conclude his equality with the Father. Human in this, he is human in all things.
Not one then of the proper characteristics of a Trinitarian Bible can be found in the Scriptures; and it is vain for the Athanasian system to claim their support. This conclusion can be subverted only in two ways; either by showing, that the criteria which I have laid down, for ascertaining the theology of the sacred writings, are unreasonable and incorrect; or by showing, that the application of them does not yield any of the results which I have stated. I say any of the results; for if all the phenomena which I have assumed as tests, would be necessary to give a Trinitarian complexion to the Scriptures, the absence of even a portion of them would decide the controversy against our opponents’ scheme, whatever difficulties might remain to embarrass our own. If the list of criteria be thought materially wrong, let it be shown where and why; let it be explained how there can be a verbal revelation of “distinctions,” without any distinctive names; how, without such discriminative words, we are to know, unless we assume the whole doctrine to be proved, when the human nature of Christ speaks, or is spoken of, when the divine; how the poor, who first had the gospel preached to them, ascertained this with the requisite degree of nicety; and above all, we would request to be furnished with a better set of criteria; and to be distinctly informed, what scriptural phenomena would be required, in order to disprove the Trinitarian scheme. If, on the other hand, I have erred in the application of my tests, let it be shown how far into the substance of the argument the error extends. I cannot hope that the exposition which I have given will be found free from mistake and inaccuracy; and let these be exposed with such severity as they may deserve. Only let it be remembered, that the real question is not about the skill of the advocate, but respecting the truth of the scheme; and when all the errors of the one have been cleared away, let it be still asked, in what condition stands the evidence of the other. I have purposely taken my principal station on the least favourable ground of the Unitarian argument; I have exhausted the strongest passages adduced against our theology: and I have done this the more readily, because these portions of scripture appear to possess an excellence and beauty, which are obscured by their unresisted controversial repetition, and marred by the lacerations of Orthodoxy.
And may we not, without immodesty, ask any candid Trinitarian, are these passages so very plain and easy, are they so numerous, are our interpretations so irrational and ignorant, as to justify the imputation of deceit, of blasphemy, of wilful mutilation of the word of God, which we are condemned perpetually to hear? As to that excellent man, who on Wednesday last, treated in this way our most cherished convictions, and our most innocent actions, I have said nothing in reply to his accusations; for I well know them to have failed in benevolence, only from excess of mistaken piety. Had he a little more power of imagination, to put himself into the feelings and ideas of others, doubtless he would understand both his Bible and his fellow-disciples better than he does. Meanwhile, I would not stir, with the breath of disrespect, one of his grey hairs; or by any severity of expostulation disturb the peace of an old age, so affectionate and good as his. He and we must ere long pass to a world, where the film will fall from the eye of error, and we shall know, even as we are known.[[263]]
In conclusion, then, I revert with freshened persuasion, to the statement with which I commenced. Jesus Christ of Nazareth, God hath presented to us simply in his inspired humanity. Him we accept, not indeed as very God, but as the true image of God, commissioned to show what no written doctrinal record could declare, the entire moral perfections of Deity. We accept,—not indeed his body, not the struggles of his sensitive nature, not the travail of his soul, but his purity, his tenderness, his absolute devotion to the great idea of right, his patient and compassionate warfare against misery and guilt, as the most distinct and beautiful expression of the Divine mind. The peculiar office of Christ is to supply a new moral image of Providence; and everything therefore except the moral complexion of his mind, we leave behind as human and historical merely, and apply to no religious use. I have already stated in what way nature and the gospel combine to bring before us the great object of our trust and worship. The universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ his Spirit. We climb to the Infinitude of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of worlds silently quiver here and there, like a small leaf of light. We dive into his Eternity, through the ocean waves of Time, that roll and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The scope of his Intellect, and the majesty of his Rule, are seen in the tranquil order and everlasting silence that reign through the fields of his volition. And the Spirit that animates the whole is like that of the Prophet of Nazareth; the thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One that passed no sorrow by. The government of this world, its mysterious allotments of good and ill, its successions of birth and death, its hopes of progress and of peace, each life of individual or nation, is under the administration of One, of whose rectitude and benevolence, whose sympathy with all the holiest aspirations of our virtue and our love, Christ is the appointed emblem. A faith that spreads around and within the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the light of every pure affection, and presses with Omnipotent power on the conscience; and our only prayer is, that we may walk as children of such light.