2. Or which defines person and Unity in the usual sense; or a contradictory Trinity.
3. Or which defines person as usual, and the Unity as only Union; or Tritheism.
4. Or which defines person as only manifestation; or Sabellianism.
These four are all the views ever hitherto given, and are all untenable. We might stop here, and say that the Trinity is utterly unsupported. There is no need of going to the Scripture to see if it is taught there; for we have, as yet, nothing to look for in Scripture.
The Trinitarian's difficulty appears to be in defining person. But possibly he may say, “I cannot, indeed, give a positive idea of person; but I can give a negative one. I cannot say what it is; but I can say what it is not. It is not a mere mode on the one hand; and not being, on the other. We must neither confound the persons nor divide the substance.”
We will, then, go further, and say, as Trinitarians have never yet defined person, without making it either a mode or a being, so they never can define it otherwise. There is no third between being [pg 497] and mode. They must either confound the persons or divide the substance.
Again: that which differences one person in the Deity from another must be either a perfection or an imperfection. There is nothing between these. But it cannot be an imperfection; for no imperfection exists in God: and it cannot be a perfection; for then the other two persons would want a divine perfection, and would be imperfect.
III. The arguments in support of the Trinity are wholly inadequate. Since, according to Neander, the Trinity is not stated in the New Testament, it follows that it is a doctrine of inference only; that is, a piece of human reasoning. Now, we have, no doubt, a perfect right to infer doctrines from Scripture which are not stated there; but, as Protestants, we have no right to make these inferences fundamental, or essential to the religious life. They may, indeed, be metaphysically essential; that is, essential to a well-arranged system; but they are not morally essential; that is, not essential to the moral and spiritual life of the soul.
But this is just what Dr. Huntington attempts to do. He tries to show that there is a doctrine essential to the life, peace, and progress of man, which the New Testament has omitted to state; which is neither distinctly stated by our Saviour nor by any of his apostles; which has been left to be inferred, and inferred by the mere processes of unaided human reason.
What arguments does he allege for this?