If the spirit of heresy (the offspring of the Evil One) had not regarded the whole system as of divine origin and authority, it never would have condescended to the attack of any of its parts; but, treating it altogether with silent scorn, would have reserved its force to be directed against some future system that should be better able to support a claim to such origin and authority. If, on the other hand, the Gospel system had not been of divine origin and authority, but yet had possessed such warrants, either internal or external, as rendered it on any account a suitable object for the assaults of heresy, surely every blow would have been fatal, and every breath of fluctuating opinion would have had its invalidating influence; and long ago the base imposture would have been torn piecemeal, and each fragment would have been flung by its specific opponents on the waters of oblivion; or the whole would have been exhibited on the page of the historian, as an anatomized and dissected carcase, affording only a demonstration of the depravity of falsehood, and of the weakness and wickedness of its originators and supporters. But how is the fact? The spirit of heresy has been making its assaults upon the vitals of Christianity from the time of the DOCETE, who first denied the substantial humanity, and of the EBIONITES, who first stumbled at the divinity of the Logos of the sacred Scriptures, down to the last showy though shadowy efforts of the modern Socinian; and yet the consistency and integrity of the general body of revealed truth, together with all its parts,

remains undeniable, undiminished, and unchanged: and though the scalpel of the heretic may have scarred over the beauty of the surface, yet the dissected system, whilst triumphantly asserting its divine origin and sanction, has demonstrated the beauty as well as the immutability of eternal truth, and the glory of the foundation on which it rests: and thus the grand system of Gospel salvation, the essential feature of which is the positive though mystical reunion of the natures of God and Man in the person of Christ Jesus, or, in other words, "the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh," continues to be the substance of the faith of the true Church; whilst a denial of its essential, and, by consequence, of its collateral and dependent features is persevered in by a comparatively small, though by no means harmless, minority, whose ratiocinative faculties render them too elevated to stoop for the truth, and too proud to receive it, when freely offered by its divine Author, unless he will first forego his own preroga

If

* If Socinians are asked whether their sect is a large and increasing one, they will probably answer in the affirmative. they prove what they affirm, yet the sect is at present very inconsiderable, when compared with the vast body of all denominations, who, however they may differ on other points of less moment, yet agree in holding as an essential the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity. The dimensions of Socinianism may appear large, when the term is made to comprehend every thing that lies between the bounds of absolute Trinitarianism and undissembled Deism; and it is with much of this latitude that the terms Socinianism and Unitarianism are to be used. But Mr. Belsham, in his Letter to the Bp. of London, (p.48,) nevertheless speaks of the sect in his time as being "few in number, unfashionable, unpopular, despised, hated, calumniated, and everywhere spoken against."

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tive, and come down, in all particulars, to the level of that platform on which finite understandings are, from their very nature, compelled to act. Numerous as heresies have been from the beginning, yet surely we may boldly affirm that there is not one of them, whatever pain it may have occasioned the Church for a time, but has revealed a gem where it would have fixed a blot, and manifested a glory where it would have invoked contempt; and thus we are graciously led to see how wisely the Author of the mediatorial scheme has overruled the caviller, and the gainsayer, and the wise according to the wisdom of this world, so as that, upon the collected fragments of exposed error, His own unchangeable truth might have a wider field for its foundation.

*

Leaving the consideration of heresies in general, I confine my few introductory remarks to Socinianism or Unitarianism, with a view to prepare the mind of the inquiring reader for a more cordial perusal of the following pages, which bear on them an impress of sterling worth, to which I cannot hope to add any thing.

*The term "Socinian" is usually objected to by those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity; and they prefer "Unitarian," because, as constantly explained by themselves, it signifies a worshipper of One God; and thus they use it, as if the worship of One God were peculiar to themselves, and not common to all Trinitarians. The principal Socininan writers, in their choice and adoption of the latter term, seem as if they wished their readers to understand, that the point in dispute between them and Trinitarians is, whether there be Three Gods or only One; and, as if they would have them infer, that while they are holding the true light, all Christendom is lapped in the darkness and error and impiety of Polytheism. This view of the matter is as unfair as it is untrue.

That the primitive Church of Christ ever looked upon an hypostatical union of the divine and

The primitive Church gathered its views of the great and fundamental doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, from the apostolic source, and transmitted it accordingly, as the writings of the fathers abundantly testify. With regard to the views entertained and promulgated by the Apostles, the Bp. of St. David's, in his Tracts on the Divinity of Christ, (p. 3.) thus forcibly remarks :Nothing but a belief in Christ's divinity, his omnipresent influence, and omnipotent power, could have induced his disciples and apostles to honour him with divine worship, and to endure the privations, indignities, and sufferings which they underwent for his sake. The divinity of Christ was not with them a 'speculative notion,' a 'disputable dogma,' as the Unitarians represent it, but a great practical principle, which influenced their whole conduct, and infused into their minds a fortitude and constancy which made them rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer shame and death for his name. To die, and to be with Christ, they counted better than life. What things were gain, in a worldly sense, they counted loss for Christ; yea, they counted all things loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Their belief in Christ's divinity, their confidence in him as God, ever present to sustain them in their difficulties, was the governing principle of their minds through this life; and their trust in his atonement was the ground of their happiness in the next. They knew that the blood of bulls and of goats could not put away sin; and the inspired Psalmist had long before declared, that man was utterly unable to redeem his brother. But in Christ, who was with God, and was God; who was over all, God blessed for ever, their great God and Saviour; God manifest in the flesh, who was made flesh, and came the flesh, that he might, by his death, be a propitiation for the sins of mankind; in Him they trusted, as a Saviour, "able to save to the uttermost all who should come to God by him." Their belief in that truth, which Christ himself declared, which his contemporaries testified, proclaimed, and arraigned, as blasphemy, and for which Christ was crucified; which the Apostles preached and recorded; which the primitive church received, and transmitted to succeeding generations; was their warrant for the reception of the other great doctrine, which their sins and imperfections, and their inability to save themselves, had rendered necessary for their salvation. Christ died for the sins of mankind, not because the infinite malignity of sin required a sacrifice of infinite value, but because no sinful creature, and therefore no man, could by his death atone for the sins of others. Still the Socinian, rejecting the doctrine of man's total depravity, and with it the need, and therefore the truth, of the atonement; and

in

human natures in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, as the essential characteristic of the plan of human salvation through a mediator, and as being the clearly revealed truth of God, is beyond all dispute ; and certainly a belief in, and a worship of, a triune Godhead is coeval with the planting and first propagation of Christianity: nor is it less certain that though the simplicity of the doctrine of the Trinity, viewed as a matter for faith to embrace, rather than for demonstration to develope, may have been somewhat affected by the feeble though well-meant attempts at demonstration, which some of its most zealous adherents have made; yet, practically, the same views precisely are entertained of it in the Church now, as were embraced and promulgated by the primitive Church. It holds

stripping the Saviour of all but his proper humanity and divine commission, refuses to render him the anciently-paid worship due to his divinity, though it is written, and cannot be gainsayed, "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philip. ii. 9-11.) Alas, alas! notwithstanding the clear declarations of God's Word, and the current testimony of the Church from the beginning, the Socinian seems to be gazing on vacancy; and, trembling lest he should strike against the Scylla of Polytheism, dashes fatally against the Charybdis of infidelity.

In contradiction to the evidence gathered from antiquity, Socinians profess to found their opposition to the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, on its supposed novelty before the time of Justin Martyr, (A. D. 140,) although the heresies of the Doceta and Ebionites, in the latter part of the first century, supply direct evidence (if there were no other) of the current reception of the doctrine of the Trinity by the primitive Church for, had that doctrine been but a figment of the mind, springing up in the time of Justin Martyr, and not previously entertained as the basis of the true faith, how could