Ła broken up, except by a freer intercourse and communion among all who bear the Christian name. Let them listen candidly to each other, and if not brought to think alike, they will be brought to perceive that the points in which they differ, are of less importance than they imagined, while they kept aloof from each other. And above all, let them beware of the iniquity of condemning unheard, any class of Christians, who take the Bible for their guide.

LECTURE II.

TRINITY AND UNITY. ·

JOHN, XVII, 3.

AND THIS IS LIFE ETERNAL, THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW THEE, THE ONLY TRUE GOD, AND JESUS CHRIST WHOM THOU HAST SENT.

Ir will be the object of this lecture, to state the argument between the advocates of the Trinitarian and Unitarian faith. What are their doctrines, and by what arguments are they sustained? What objections lie against them each, and how are those objections explained away ? The two parties agree in their definition of what God is. In the words of the Westminster Catechism, "God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." In the answer to the next question of the same Catechism, they both agree. Question. "Are there more gods than one?" Answer. "There is but One only, the living and the true God." In the answer to the next question, they are diametrically opposed. "How many persons are there in the Godhead?" The Trinitarian answers, There are three Persons in the Godhead, the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Ghost." This the Unitarian categorically denies. He affirms, that the Father is the only living and true God, that the Son is not God, and that the Holy Ghost is not a person. Here then the case is made up, and the question stated, and the evidence is to be produced on both sides, and all who hear or read, are the jury to decide which side is proved by the evidence.

But before we proceed to the discussion, it is necessary that we should settle the meaning of the terms we are to use. What do we mean, when we say that God is One? We mean, I conceive, the same thing that is meant, when the Scriptures say, "that God is a Spirit." All we can know of God, is through the analogy of the human spirit. We cannot imagine a single attribute in God, which we do not find in ourselves in some degree. We have the authority of the Scriptures for saying, that God created man in his own image. We find no Trinity of persons in man ; and if there is in God, then man is not created in the image of God. The attributes of a human spirit are, one undivided consciousness, carrying on one process of mental operations, and one will; one thinking principle, and one agent. This is the only possible idea that we can form of God. What is the meaning of the word person? It has two principal meanings. One is, a rational, intelligent agent. The other is, a character in which an agent acts. Under different characters the agent may continue identically the same. These are the only intelligible meanings of the word person. If we use the word in the first sense, the

proposition, "There are three Persons in the Godhead," becomes contradictory. It will be this, There are three Persons in one Person. If we use it in the second, the phraseology is wrong. It ought not to be, There are three Persons in the Godhead, but God acts in three Persons, or three characters, which would not be inconsistent with his essential unity. The way then, in which this fallacy is covered over, is by a slight shifting of terms in the two propositions. God is changed in the second proposition into Godhead. Godhead can, in reality, mean nothing more nor less than God. But if the word God had been retained, the very proposition would have carried its own refutation along with it, for it would have stood thus, There are three Persons in God.

But the advocates of the Trinity declare, that they do not use the word Person in either of these senses. But in what sense they do use it, they do not define. If this be the case, then we are contending about a proposition, the meaning of which its very advocates themselves do not pretend to understand. It is impossible to refute a proposition which has no definite meaning. You may take it in all known meanings, and refute them all, and still they may say, that they do not take it in any of them, and refusing to define their meaning, still assert that the proposition is true.

There are but two sources of evidence upon this subject, the works of God, and his word, the light of Nature and the light of Revelation. Does nature, the works of God, furnish any evidence that God subsists in three Persons? Not one particle. There is

no more evidence that he subsists in three Persons, than in four, or forty. The whole universe bear marks of being the work of one designing mind, one first cause, one intellect, one will, one energy, in short, one Person, in the only sense in which the word person has any meaning when applied to the subject. Not the slightest traces can we find of the agency of more than one Person in the universe. From nature then, the proposition, "There are three Persons in the Godhead," derives not the least particle of support. So far then as one source of evidence is concerned, it falls to the ground, and the opposite proposition is established, that God subsists in one Person, instead of three.

We go then to the Scriptures, the second source of evidence, with a strong presumption in favor of the doctrine of the personal unity of God, and against that of there being three Persons in God, or God subsisting in three persons, arising from the fact, that the doctrine. that God is one Person is intelligible, reasonable, and consistent, and is confirmed by the appearances of nature; whereas a God in three Persons is unintelligible, unreasonable, inconsistent, and comes so near a contradiction, that many minds can see no difference between them.

When we come to the Bible, the state of the question is this. It is not pretended that it is any where expressly asserted that God subsists in three persons. On the other hand, it is expressly asserted that God is one; not only that there is but one God, but that God is one. The way then, that the doctrine