Where did Mr. James find this quotation? I shall supply some words which he has omitted, coming in between two clauses, which he has printed as continuous parts of the sentence. The omitted words supply a good test for a fundamental principle of Trinitarian interpretation, that of equalizing all persons joined together by the conjunctive conjunction. I shall give the omitted words in italics.
“Justin is answering the charge of atheism, which was brought against the Christians, and observes, that they were punished for not worshipping evil demons, which were not really gods. ‘Hence it is that we are called atheists: and we confess that we are atheists with respect to such reputed Gods as these: but not with respect to the true God, the Father of justice, temperance, and every other virtue, with whom is no mixture of evil. But Him, and the Son who came from him, and gave us this instruction, and the host of the other good angels which attend upon and resemble them, and the prophetic spirit, we worship and adore, paying them a reasonable and true honour, and not refusing to deliver to any one else, who wishes to be taught, what we ourselves have learnt.’”
After such careless quotations, to say the best of them, I am not surprised to find Mr. James, with singular self-devotion, placing himself beside Mr. Byrth, to share the condemnation that falls upon injurious representations, not only unproved, but disproved. Mr. James speaks of the Unitarian crime of distorted representations, as proved by Mr. Byrth. Mr. James may make common cause with Mr. Byrth, if he is unwise enough to do so; but I can assure him that his own burden is heavy enough to bear, without encumbering himself with any portion of another’s.
To the greatest part of his quotations Mr. James has given no reference, so that it is impossible to verify them. If he is correct, he has been more fortunate in some cases than Professor Burton. I should be glad to have the means of testing his extracts from Origen. He ought to have stated, that both Bishop Bull and Dr. Priestley, when speaking of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, never confounded the Trinity of these Fathers with the Post-Nicene Trinity, or with modern Orthodoxy.
Nothing can be more unphilosophical than the manner in which testimonies to modern opinions have been found in the Fathers. Any words that will bear the sense have been pushed forward as authorities. No distinction has been made between the ideas suggested by the words to modern readers, and the ideas of the writers originally suggesting the words. The suggested and the suggesting ideas would be found strangely different. Whoever wishes to have clear ideas on this question, the opinions of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and the origin of the Trinity, should read the portions of Cudworth’s Intellectual System that bear upon the subject.
LECTURE VII.
THE UNSCRIPTURAL ORIGIN AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
“THE FATHER THAT DWELLETH IN ME, HE DOETH THE WORKS.”—John xiv. 10.
It is a profound observation of Professor Dugald Stewart, that you never destroy an error until you have traced it to its sources, until you have accounted for its origin. A popular doctrine, full of life in the strong faith of those who hold it, cannot be encountered at the height of its power, and struck down at once by an argument; the world is apt to take for granted that whatever is widely believed must have some roots in truth, and you must go up the stream of opinion, if you would gradually remove this idea so supporting to error, of its strength and fulness, stripping away the impressions of magnitude as you ascend, until at last you have left all the strength behind you, and have come to where you can contemplate, undeceived, the weak and miserable beginnings of the turbid flood. Were some Grecian idolater to have followed the gliding steps of his river God, until his majestic movements were shortened into the tricklings of the mountain spring, if the deity did not entirely disappear, it would at least have changed its form, and melted into the minor nymph of the Fountain.
Whenever we encounter the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is received at the present day, and attempt to arrest it by the strength of Reason and the strength of Scripture, the flood is too strong for us, the faith of the world flows upon the current, and we are swept aside as things that had vainly interposed to intercept the rushings of some mighty tide. We must travel up to the first droppings if we would demonstrate the derived nature of this now full stream of faith. If the ascent terminates before it reaches Christ and the Apostles, then its origin is not Scriptural but Ecclesiastical; its fountain is not in the depths of the nature of God, but in the airy speculations of the vain philosophy of man.