Such is the close of the Ecclesiastical History of the doctrine of the Trinity. The fourth general Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, which established the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the growth of the dark ages, passed also out of the hands of theological artists, in its perfected and orthodox form, this singular evidence of the fixed and primitive faith of those who taunt Unitarianism with its want of fixedness, and describe their own creeds as the “unimproved and unimprovable revelation.” It is this workmanship of Councils which is so confidently referred to the inspiration of Apostles. No wonder that they who preach orthodoxy as saving Faith, revealed from the first by God in a perfect form, say so little to their hearers of the history of their creeds. There is good reason why Ecclesiastical History should be little encouraged by the divines of the English, or of any other dogmatical Church. It is with good reason that the Universities show about the same degree of favour to Ecclesiastical History and to Moral Philosophy. They have an instinct that tells them of their enemies.
Let me now summarily restate the obligations of the doctrine of the Trinity to the human and erring sources of OPINION.
I. Oriental philosophy led the Jews of Alexandria, before the time of Christ, to allegorize the Old Testament Scriptures.
II. The Jews of Alexandria formed the connecting link between Christianity and Grecian Philosophy.
III. Platonic Theology put its own mythological meanings on the expressions Logos, and Son of God.[[509]]
IV. At the beginning of the fourth century this mythological conception had gained such ground that, with a severe struggle, and a controversy that shook the world, a general Council decreed that Christ in his divine nature belonged to the same class of Beings with God.
V. In a second general Council, the third Person in the Platonic Trinity found, by public authority, a parallel in the Christian Trinity, and became, for the first time, the faith of the Church.
VI. A third general Council, A.D. 431, distinguished, for theological purposes, the deity from the humanity of Christ.
VII. A fourth general Council, A.D. 451, found it necessary, for theological purposes, to unite the deity and humanity in one person.
VIII. The fourth general Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, consummated the Trinity and prepared the way for the Inquisition. Having established such a faith, it became necessary to take means to enforce it. Persecution is the first-born of Dogmatism. In the phrase of Robert Hall, quoted with approbation in Christ Church as a felicitous expression, orthodoxy is “necessitated” to be a Persecutor, to treat as a Dæmon and Enemy of Souls every form of Christianity but her own. It is a necessity of her nature, she pleads,—a simple consistency with her own principles. True,—the reasoning is without a flaw;—but then a question arises, does a Nature of which these are the “necessities” breathe the spirit of Jesus? Who can think of Jesus as being necessitated to condemn any thing but sin?