We will not dwell further on this head, nor examine our friend's argument to show that we cannot consistently, as Unitarians, have any piety. We will try, then, to have it inconsistently.
VI. Great evils to the Church have come from the doctrine of the Trinity.
It has tended to the belief in three Gods. It has tended to a confusion of belief between three Gods of equal power and majesty, united only in counsel; one supreme and two inferior Deities; one Deity with a threefold manner of manifestation; and a vague, undetermined use of words, with no meaning attached to them—unhappy confusion, which none have been more ready to recognize and to point out than Trinitarians themselves.
And what shall we say of the continual struggles, conflicts, and bitter controversies, which this doctrine has caused from the time of its entrance into the Church? What is there more disgraceful in the history of the Church, than the mutual persecutions of Arians and Athanasians, and of all the minor sects and parties, engendered by this disputed doctrine?
This is what Dr. Bushnell says of one of these matters; and his testimony is, perhaps, sufficient on this point,—
“No man can assert three persons,—meaning three consciousnesses, wills, and understandings,—and still have any intelligent meaning in his mind, when he asserts that they are yet one person; for, as he now uses the term, the very idea of a person is that of an essential, incommunicable monad, bounded by consciousness, and vitalized by self-active will; which being true, he might as well profess to hold that three units are yet one unit. When he does it, his words will, of necessity, be only substitutes for sense.
“At the same time, there are too many signs of the mental confusion I speak of not to believe that it exists. Thus, if the class I speak of were to hear a discourse insisting on the proper personal Unity of God, it would awaken suspicion in their minds, while a discourse insisting on the existence of three persons would be only a certain proof of Orthodoxy; showing that they profess three persons, meaning what they profess, and one person, really not meaning it.
“Such is the confusion produced by attempting to assert a real and metaphysical Trinity of persons in the divine nature. Whether [pg 508] the word is taken at its full import, or diminished away to a mere something called a distinction, there is produced only contrariety, confusion, practical negation, not light.”
So far Dr. Bushnell. On another point thus testifies Twesten:—
“There are many to whom the biblical and religious basis of the doctrine is exceeding sure and precious, who are dissatisfied with the Church form of the doctrine, and even feel themselves repelled or fettered by it. It is to them more negative than positive, more opposed to errors than giving any insight into truth. It solves no difficulty, it unseals no new revelation.”