f HE SPARKS ) LIBRARY. ^ [MISCELLANY.] ^ Collected by p JARED SPARKS, LL. D., " President of Harvard College. Co X ' ? Purchased by the Cornell University, ■' 1872. BT111 Sm"*" ""'**"'•>' '■""■■'T olln Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029373721 LETTERS ADDKESSED TO RELATIVES AND FRIENDS, IN REPLY TO ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF THE DOCTllINE OF THE TRINITY. By MAEY S?B. DANA, AUTHOE OF ' THE SOCTHEEN AND NOETHEEN HABPS,' ' THE PAETED FAMILY,' ETC. BOSTON: JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 1845. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by James Munroe and Company, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachuse BOSTON: PRESS OF THURSTON, TOHRY, 31 Devonshire Street. INTRODUCTION. The days of torture, fire, and the sword, have, happily, almost entirely passed awayi He who changes his religious opinions has not now, in Protestant countries at least, to fear the strong arm of ecclesiastical power, nor the civil law ; no Inquisition holds over our heads its rod of terror ; no dungeons open to receive us ; no " Form of Concord" is imposed upon us; no " Act of uniformity" hinds us to submit to certain rites and ceremonies. But is there not a kind of persecution still en- acted, which, though less extreme and violent, is quite as onerous, and no less difficult to bear? The days of proscription, slander, insult, and neglect, have by no means passed away. Cold greetings, averted looks, long and intimate friendships sundered in a moment, tell a mournful tale in respect to the toleration really exercised, in this country, so proud of its civil and religious liberty, towards those who have conscientiously changed their opinions. Nor are these the only methods by which the spirit of unyielding intolerance is developed. Injurious suspicions ; direct charges which would almost break the heart of the sufferer, did he not feel himself above their reach ; the imputation of any and every motive but the real one ; all these must be experienced and endured by one who feels it his duty to leave the ranks of popular or ortho- IV INTRODUCTION. dox theology, commonly so calUed, and candidly avow his honest opinions. Many people do not seem to imagine, that one can honestly depart from the faith in which he has been educated. Indepen- dent thought in matteiS of religion seems to be regarded as an arrogant assumption, and to excite general indignation and surprise. It is evidently thought to be an innovation upon the established order of things. It is a phenomenon for which people are not prepared. And when I look around me, and observe how the great majority of mankind are blindly follow- ing the lead of others, how few there are who think for them- selves, how few are willing to test their religious opinions by comparing them with other systems of faith, by bringing them all to " the law and to the testimony " of God's inspired word, clinging firmly to truth, following it wherever it may lead, and boldly rejecting error, -^ when these things meef my view, though I may be distressed at the exhibition of intolerance, I ought not, perhaps, to be surprised at the spirit which is mani- fested. That I have ample ground for these remarks, will probably become sufficiently evident from the ensuing pages of this work. I have received letters from various quarters, since my change of opinions became known, some of the sentiments of which have amazed and appalled me. As I have been charged with indecent haste in making a change so fraught with momentous consequences, I wish to show, by other evidence than my own, that my change has not been so sudden as it has seemed to those who had no intimate knowledge of the workings of my mind. As my motives have been unkindly assailed, I wish to show, that I have not been actuated by mere caprice, but that I have reasons for my present opinions, which, at least, satisfy INTRODUCTION. V me. So much has this cominvinity interested itself in my affairs, — so much has been said for which there was no foun- dation, — so much ignorance has been evinced in regard to my present opinions, and the religious belief of that body of Chris- tians with whom I now sympathize, — that I feel it due to myself and to them, to remove, if possible, some of the erro- neous impressions of those whose injurious remarks are the result of ignorance and prejudice, and not of malice. To some of the numerous communications I have recently received, I propose to reply in the following pages. It was im- possible for me to answer individually all the letters I received ; and, even if I could have done so, there were many other per- sons who were saying, substantially, the very same things, and who could not have been reached by mere individual replies to my various letters. The extracts I shall make from these com- munications will, I think, abundantly prove that I have been, in a manner, compelled to speak in my own defence, and in defence of those who, through me, and in consequence of my present position, have been extensively and unjustly assailed. And may I not hope, that I may be instrumental in doing something to promote the interests of liberal and enlightened Christianity, or, at least, to soften the rigor of that judgment which has been so freely passed upon a conscientious and respectable body of Christians? At this age of the world, a rational religion is certainly needed to counteract the prevalence of infidelity ; and nothing but a rational religion will do this. Those in high places may sound the alarm, if they please, and tell us, that it is dangerous to use our reason in matters of religion, but it will be all in vain. We are not living in the dark ages ; the majority of men in the present day will have a reasonable religion, or they VI INTRODUCTION. will have none. It ■will not always do to bind the consciences of men to creeds formed in the ages of darkness and super- stition. As the world continues to emerge, gradually, it may be, from the midnight gloom in which it was enveloped before the Eeformation, the work of reform will be more and more complete. This is the natural course of things. The morning sun slowly dispels the darkness of night, and shines brighter and brighter unto the noon-day, although it may not always shine uninterruptedly. Sometimes a cloud arises, and obscures for a while its radiance ; but when the cloud disperses, we find that the god of day has been silently, but surely, advancing in his course. So is it with the glorious work of reformation and moral renovation. It is not half accomplished yet. Sometimes the work advances rapidly ; sometimes, for a season, it seems to be retrograding ; but it is cheering to perceive, that, on the whole, its march is onward. I observe, with pleasure, that many irrational and unscriptural tenets, formerly so popular, are now only nominally held. When their advocates are pressed upon the subject, they explain them away, so as to make them mean just nothing at all ; and thus they virtually abandon them. And I also rejoice to perceive, that liberal sentiments are slowly, but surely, spreading themselves among the great body of the people. Let us thank God, and take courage, while we pray that the truth, as it is in Jesus, may prosper and prevail until all the inhabitants of the earth shall be brought under its blessed influence and control. I will here take occasion to remark, that it will be impossible to observe any great degree of order in my arrangement of topics, as the same general subjects have been touched upon, in the different letters addressed to me, in a variety of different aspects. I could not, in reply to them, bring together all the INTRODUCTION. Vll remarks relating to one general subject, without creating some degree of confusion. There will therefore, perhaps, be a little repetition of topics in different letters ; but I hope, on so im- portant a subject, that a little repetition will be pardoned. There is no limit to the frequency with which the same objec- tions are advanced, after they have been answered over and over again. It will be observed, that all the ensuing letters, with the exception of those to my parents, and one to a particular friend, are addressed as if to one individual ; though, in reality, this is not the case. I have pursued this plan, for the sake of friendly concealment and convenience. The letters of my revered father contain no such sweeping assertions and denun- ciations, as will be noticed in some of the extracts from other letters. Though he has felt the trial as deeply as any other individual, his method with me has been that of calm investi- gation and argument, and therefore I have no desire to conceal the authorship of those things which he has written. He has approached the subject with that honest candor for which he is remarkable, and for which I honor and revere him. I bespeak for the following pages a kind and candid consid- eration ; and may the Holy Spirit of God lead into all truth both writer and readers. Chahiebton, S. C. CONTENTS Page. IsTBODDCTIoif, . . . . ... . iii LETTER I. A change of views, p. 1. The Trinity, 2. Modified Views, 3. Spirit of Inquiry, 4. Means of information, 5. Solitary In- vestigation, 6. Ne w Views, 7 - 1 1 . .... 1 LETTER II. The terms God and Lord, 12-14. E::planations of Texts, Isa. vi. 1-10, compared with John xii. 41, pp. 15, 16. Rom. ix. 5, p. 16. Phil. ii. 6, 7, p. 17. Rev. i. 6, p. 18. Rev. v. 5-14, p. 19. Rev. xxii. 16, p. l5. 1 Tim. vi. 15, comp. with Rev. xvii. 14, p. 20. a^Cor. xiii. 14, p. 21. John i. 1, pp. 21, 22. Isa. vi. 1-10, comp. with John xii. 41, p. 23. John xx. 28, pp. 23, 24, 25. Phil. ii. 6, 7, pp. 26, 27. 2 Pet. iii. 18, pp. 27, 23. Heb. i. 6, p. 28. Col. i.. 16, 17, p. 29. . . . 12 LETTER HI. Scott's notes, 30. Whitby's retractation, 30, 31. Extracts from Whitby, 31, 32. The divine Will, 33. Whitby on the Opinions of the Fathers, 34, 35. Sir Isaac Newton, 35. Pliny's letter to Trajan, 36. St. John's Gospel, 37, 38. . . . 30 LETTER IV. Connection of doctrines, 39. Always an Inquirer, 40. Collateral doctrines, 41. The great point of difference, 42. Sources of Information, 43. Importance of our Influence, 44. Scott and Newton, 45. ....••• 39 LETTER V. Investigation no Crime, 47, 48. Paternal faithfulness, 49. Caution recommended, 50. Review of circumstances, 51, 53. Exhibi- tion of consequences, 53. . . . . • 47 X CONTENTS. LETTER VI. Remarks upon Honesty, 54. The Trinitarian Doxology, 55. The Unitarian Hymn Book, 56. Dr. Watts a Unitarian, 67-61. Watts's Psalms and Hymns, 62, 63. . . . 54 LETTER VII. An Explanation, 64. Early Opinions, 65. Bible Phraseology, 66. Inquiries and Replies, 67, 63. Extracts from Dewey's Ser- mons, 69. On the use of certain terms, 70. On the Baptismal form, 70, 71. On the Atonement, 71. On Human Depravity, 72. On- Regeneration and Election, 73. On the Future State, 74. ........ 64 LETTER Vin. Inquiries answered, 75. Morality of Unitarians, 76. Involuntary Errors, 77. Unitarian Writings, 78. Lines on Luke xviii. 29, 30, pp. 79, 80. . . . . . . .75 LETTER IX. An overflow of Peeling, 81. Love and Honor to Christ, 82. Christ a King, 83. Mistakes corrected, 84. Human Reason, 85. Expression of sentiments, 86, 87. A Prayer, 87, 88. . . 81 LETTER X. Unitarians do not deny Christ, 89. Additions to truth Errors, 90. Views of Atonement, 91. Illustration, 92, 93. Christ our Foundation, 94, 95. . . . . . .89 LETTER XI. The Scriptures honor Christ, 96. Trinitarians dishonor Christ, 97. An Extract, 98. Unitarians Christians, 99. Christ's author- ity, 100, 101. ....... 96 LETTER XII. Instability, 102. Opinions ought to be tested, 103, 104, 105, Who has the Holy Spirit? 106. No infallible human guide, 107, 108. . . . . . . . .102 LETTER XIII. Mental Freedom, 109. General Ignorance, 110. Assembly's Cate- chism, 111. Inward Conflicts, 112. Depravity, 113. Election, 114. Conflicts, 115. ...... 109 LETTER XIV. Calvinism, 116-121 . . . . . . . ng CONTENTS. XI LETTER XV. God our Father, 122. Conceptions of God, 123, 124. Native De- pravity, 125- 127. . . . . . .122 LETTER XVI. Contemplation of Virtue beneficial, 128. Triumphs of Virtue, 129. Penelon, 130. Horror of Calvinism, 131. My former faith, 132,133. Blessing of Freedom, 134. . . . .128 LETTER XVII. Signs of the Times, 135, 136. 1 Tim. iii. 16, p. 137. Mysteries, 138-140. Extract from RoljinsoH, 141, 142. . . .135 LETTER XVIII. An Extract, 143. Abstract Truth, 144. Erroneous Premises, 145, 146. Human Creeds, 147. Danger of Combination, 148. Belief not voluntary, 149. An Extract from Sparks, 150. On Vows, 151. . . . . . . .143 LETTER XIX. Truth and its Consequences, 162. Volume of Poems, 153. God, our Saviour, 154. Christ's words, those of the Father, 155. A Reply, 156. Extract and Reply, 157, 158. . . 152 LETTER XX. Klection, 159. Final Perseverance of Saints, too. Anti-Christ, 161,162. An Extract, 163. Dogmatism, a sign of Weakness, 164. Arminians, 165. Christ not the Infinite God, 166. The Trinity, 167, 168. . . . . . .159 LETTER XXI. The phrase " I Am," 169, 170. Early Trinitarians, 171. Extract from Sparks, 172-175. . . . . . .169 LETTER XXIL Extracts from Sparks — the Fathers, 176-179. The Apostles, 180. Roman Catholic Writers, 181, 182. Lutherans and Ar- minians, 183. Dr. Watts, 184. Smalridge and Atterbury, 185. Tradition and Inference, 186, 187. . . . .176 LETTER XXIII. Erroneous Premises, 188. Colossians ii. 9," p. 189. Absurdity, 190. Religious Freedom, 191, 192. Searching the Scriptures, 193. Uniformity, 194, 195. Mental Freedom, 196. Injurious Imputations, 197, 193. Christian Charity, 199, 200. . . 138 Xll CONTENTS. LETTER XXIV. Mental Suffering, 201. Extract and Reply, 202, 203. An Extract, 204. Denunciation unwise, 205. The Duke of Sussex, 206. Unitarians love Charity, 207. Religious Controversy, 208. An Extract, 209. Phil. ii. 6, p. 210. Atonement, 211. Mediation, 212. Christ ever Present, 213. Christ's Knowledge, 214. Omnipresence, 215. Harsh Epithets, 216, 217. . . 201 LETTER XXV. Extracts, 218, 219. The Light of the Truth, 220. Colossians, chap. I. and II., p. 221, 222. Creation by Christ a Spiritual one, 223-227. An Extract, 228. Mystery, 229. Creation by Proxy, 230. Human Teaching not Infallible, 231. Extract and Reply, 232, 233. . . . . . . .218 LETTER XXVI. Method of Investigation, 234-236. Use of Reason, 237, 238. Principles of Unitarianism, 239-241. .... 234 LETTER XXVII. No Human Creeds, 242, 243. Who are Christ's Friends ? 244, 245. The Lost Sheep, 246. Extracts and Replies, 247, 248. 242 LETTER XXVIII. Extracts and Replies, 249. Scripture Tests, 2S0, 251. Testimonies of Trinitarians, 252 — 253. ..... 249 LETTER XXIX. Causes of Infidelity, 256-258. Signs of the Times, 259-263. . 256 LETTER XXX. Painful Themes, 264, 265. John Blanco White, 266. General Re- marks, 267, 268. Unwillingness to read, 269, 270. An Extract, 271,272. . . . . . . . .264 Appendix, . . . . . . .275-318 LETTER I. January 19th, 1S45. My kind and venerated Parents : It has become my solemn duty to make to you an announcement, which, I fear, will fill your hearts with sorrow. Would to God, that I could save you from the pain, which, from my knowledge of your views and feelings, I am sure awaits you ; but I believe, as God is my Judge, that truth is dearer to me than life itself, and I dare no longer disavow the sentiments, which, after thorough, and honest, and prayerful delib- eration, I have at length adopted. I will keep you no longer in suspense, but will pro- ceed to declare, that I do not now believe that my blessed Lord and Sayiour Jesus Christ is the Supreme God. I believe that there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things. I believe that " all power," was given unto him in Heaven and on earth ; * that he was * I would remark, that I suppose these terms to be applied to Christ as the Messiah, and that the expression, "all power," re- lates to his Messiahship, and to the offices he was to perform in Heaven and on earth, in connection with the redemplion of man- kind,' which glorious object was what his Father sent him to 1 "6 THE TRINITY. the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament writers, who, in the fulness of time, came into the world with a commission from God, and full power and authority to do the work which God had given him to do.. In other words, after long and earnest deliberation, much dili- gent study of the Holy Scriptures, and fervent prayer to God for the assistance of his spirit, I conscientiously and firmly reject the doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine was a part of my education. I re- ceived it, as many others do, without thorough investi- gation, though, I must confess, it has often perplexed me beyond measure. Still I held it, as it seems to me all must do, as a strange mystery, which I must not attempt to comprehend ; not considering, that a mys- tery does not necessarily suppose an incomprehensi- bility ; and losing sight of the danger of admitting, what now appears to me to be an impossibility. It is impossible for me, and I now perceive that it has always been impossible to make one of three, or three of one, — one perfect and infinite being equal to three perfect and infinite beings. There may be gifted minds capable of comprehending this doctrine, but such is not mine. It is plain to me now, that I have all my life been worshipping three distinct beings ; never hav- ing been able, with the most strenuous efforts, to combine the three in my own mind so as to form a accomplish. It does not seem natural to use any of these terms in an unlimited sense. Jerome, one of the early Fathers, sup- poses that this term, "all power," had reference to the great power which came upon him when the Spirit of God descended vipon him at his baptism. MODIFIED VIEWS. 6 simple idea. But now I bow to the divine authority, when I hear Jehovah saying, " Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord." But to return. So anxious have I always been for clearer views upon this point, that I have eagerly read everything upon the Trinitarian side of the question which came in my way ; yet always without the satis- faction so desirable to an honest and inquisitive mind, and always with the same melancholy feeling, that it was a strange mystery ; though still I felt bound to re- ceive it. And now I will relate to you the process through which my mind has passed. For many years, I have not been able to believe, that faith in the Trinity was necessary to salvation, because I saw a great many exemplary Christians who did not hold the doctrine, but who nevertheless believed that Jesus was " the Christ," and "the Son of God;" and because the apostle John has said, that whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and that whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwell- eth in him, and he in God. I have often been startled, by hearing passages of Scripture wrested from what appeared to me to be their legitimate meaning, and forced to an agreement with some favorite hypothesis. Not long ago, in a bible class which I attended, the first part of the gos- pel by John was examined, and then many doubts found their way into my mind, but not with so much force, or in so tangible a form, as they have recently assumed. But, had I ever been disposed to give 4 SPIRIT OF INq,UIRT. the subject a thorough examination, I have never had access to the arguments in favor of Unitarianism, nor have I ever in my life before read upon that side of the question. Not very long ago, while conversing with a much- loved friend, (you will know to whom I allude,) I found that my impressions in regard to Unitarians and to their system were exceedingly erroneous ; and I expressed a wish to know a little more about their faith and practice. Was this desire wrong .'' Was it not in perfect accordance with that Christian charity, which " hopeth all things," and " thinketh no evil .'' " And here let me exonerate from blame the two in- dividuals from whom, entirely at my own request, I have procured the information which I wanted. In both instances, they expressed a hesitation in comply- ing with ray request, fearing to be considered obtrusive, if not by myself, at least by my friends. I cannot but believe, that this feeling arose from a confidence in the strength of their position, and a foresight of the consequences which have actually ensued. Now what was I to do .'' Shut ray eyes resolutely, and blindly cherish the faith in which I had been edu- cated, or sift the matter for myself .' What kind of faith is that, which fears to stand the test of impartial inquiry .' Would not an ingenuous mind lose all confi- dence in itself, and its received opinions, while there remained a consciousness of this fear and dread of in- vestigation .'' Was it not my sacred duty to " prove all things," and " hold fast " only to that which I found to be " good " .' MEANS OF INFORMATION. Under these circumstances I indsted upon having access to sonae writings on the subject, and such as I wished were accordingly granted me. Now I know too well the candor and nobleness of my dear parents to fear that they will impute blame where none is de- served, unless indeed they carry the doctrine of impu- tation further than I think they do. Yet, in the first overflow of feeling, they may not view the matter as temperately and fairly as they will do hereafter, and this is why I enlarge upon the point. Now suppose that a Unitarian of my age and mental capacities — one, in fact, situated just as I am — should come to you, and ask you what the Trinitarian faith really was ; would you withhold from such a person the means of information ? I am very sure you would not. Be generous then, and if there be any blame in the matter, let it rest upon the guilty, and not upon the innocent, — and then it certainly will fall upon no human agent, but upon a system which will not bear investigation. Perhaps you will say, " Why did you not bring your doubts to us .'' Perhaps we could, have solved them." For an opposite course I had several reasons. First, I knew perfectly well what your views were, and I had access to Trinitarian systems of divinity, which were considered standard works ; secondly, I wished to examine the subject with an unbiassed, unfettered mind ; in short, to forget everything but the truth itself ; and thirdly, I did not wish to give my friends unnecessary pain. When the subject first presented itself fully and dis- tinctly before my mind, in connection with a desire and 1* b SOLITARY INVESTIGATION. a determination to give it a complete investigation, I felt an instinctive fear, almost a horror, at my presump- tion. I took Dr. Dwight's sermons upon the divinity of Christ, and tried to be convinced that I had all my life been in the right — I read them over and over again — I had anxious days and sleepless nights ; and even in my dreams my visions were of three distinct Gods, entangled together in dreadful and inextricable confusion. Thus was I driven to the examination of the subject with a power which I could not withstand. My chief source of information has been the New Testament, and especially the gospel by John. I endeavored to read with an unprejudiced mind, and a teachable spirit, and to explain passages of doubtful import by those which could admit of no possible mis- take. While thus reading, the doctrines of the abso- lute unity of God, and of the derived power and authority of his Son, shone forth from every page of the blessed volume with a brightness and a cleartiess per- fectly convincing to my wonderiog mind. I could no longer resist the mass of evidence which seemed fully to establish the superiority of the Father to the Son. 1 found that Christ always spoke of himself as inferior to his Father, of his power and authority as derived from his Father, — and it seemed to me that, if the case were otherwise, (with humility let me say it,) our blessed Lord had studiously endeavored to mislead us. I also found that the vast number of texts which di- rectly and explicitly asserted Christ's inferiority, could only be set aside by an assumption of the doctrine of two natures in Christ Jesus ; and even on this assump- NEW VIEWS. 7 tion, such words could not have been used without apparent equivocation. On the other hand, the small number of texts which are brought forward as evidence of the deity of our Lord, can be explained without doing such violence to our reason, as the doctrine of two complete natures in one person — one infinite and the other finite — always must. It seemed strange to me, that our compassionate Heavenly Father, who so well knew the weakness of human nature, should require us to receive a doctrine, violating the common laws of that very reason which he has given us, without such an explicit statement of it, and such an authoritative command for its reception, as would leave no possible chance for human reason to gainsay or resist it. But I could find no such state- ment, and no such command in the Bible. Now, I 'had always read the Scriptures with this doctrine joervading my mind, and thus pre-occupied, every passage of holy writ was made, if possible, to harmonize with my opin- ions. I now found that our blessed Lord had given us a very different clue to the right understanding of the Scriptures when he declared, that all power was given to him in Heaven and on earth. With this, his own declaration, constantly in view, I found that I could understand many things which were dark before ; that I had, in fact, got possession of the most prominent idea, — the current doctrine of the New Testament. This declaration of our Saviour is, to me, a most sat- isfactory comment on those passages brought forward in support of the deity of the Son of God. Now what 8 NEW VIEWS. are inferences, and what are metaphysical arguments to the unequivocal and oft repeated declarations of Christ himself, and of his apostles ? With these for my guide, the Bible becomes plain. And when I remember that many of these passages relied upon by Trinitarians, admit of various readings, — and when I consider the well known history of the received version of the Scriptures, and that our translation was made by Trini- tarians, under the auspices of that pedantic bigot, James I., I feel that the Trinitarian side of the ques- tion has had every possible advantage, and am perfectly satisfied with the views which I have adopted. And now, when I sit down seriously to compare the system of doctrines with which I have so long been fettered, with those under the influence of which my freed spirit now joyfully springs to meet its benevolent Creator, I cannot but exclaim, " thanks be to God, who hath given me the victory, through my Lord Jesus Christ ! " My mind is disenthralled, disenchanted, awakened as from a deathlike stupor, — all mists are cleared away, — and this feeling of light, and life, and liberty, arises from a delightful consciousness that I have learned to give the Scriptures a rational and simple inter- pretation, and that, on the most important of all sub- jects, I have learned to think for myself. My views of my Lord and Master are dearer to me than ever before, because they are more definite. He is still my Saviour, and the Saviour of the world — the instrument chosen by his Father through whom to bestow his unmerited mercy ; a willing instrument, for he delighted to do his Father's will ; an all-suffi- NEW VIEWS. y cient instrument, for all power was given unto him. I believe that a living faith, which will lead us to imi- tate him, is the only ground of our salvation ; but, while I fully believe in the divinity of his character and of his mission, I do not believe that he was the supreme God himself. I believe in the efficacy of his death, — the most striking circumstance of his history, — for it was the seal of a new and better covenant, — an evidence of his divine commission, and of his devotion to his Father's will ; without which he would not have given us such an assurance of the glorious certainty of a re- surrection, by being himself the first-born from the dead; without which his work would have been incomplete, and much less calculated to affect our hearts, to bring us to repentance, to lead us to God, and to save our souls. You cannot suppose, my beloved Parents, that I have embraced these opinions hastily or carelessly. It is painful to expose oneself to the charge of fickleness, and it is very painful to separate oneself from those who are near and dear ; but God is to be my Judge ; to Him alone I must answer for my opinions ; to my own Master I must stand or fall ; and I dare not dis- avow what, upon mature deliberation, I believe to be the truth. I love you, God knows how well ! but I love the truth better ; and your blessed Saviour and mine has said, " He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." If then I embrace in my heart the doctrine which appears to me to be taught by Christ himself, must I not avow it ? With an anxious mind, an honest, tender conscience, 10 NEW VIEWS. and a prayerful spirit, I have searched the New Testa- ment, and the result is what I have told you. My mind is open to conviction, though I do not believe that any views can be presented with which I am not already familiar. Mourn not over me, my beloved Parents, as over one lost to you forever. If you think me in an error, rest assured it is not a fatal one. I am firmly convinced that no doctrine can be necessary to salvation which is not so plainly revealed, that the conscientious inquirer after truth cannot possibly mistake it. " Be- lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shaltbe saved," " He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God," — about these plain statements there can be no mistake. Here is a glorious platform * on which sin- * " It will appear," says Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, in hiS' " Second Pastoral Letter," pp. 24, 25, " that the several denomi- nations of Christians agree both in the substance of religion, and in the necessary enforcements of the practice of it; that the world and all things were created by God, and are under the direction and government of his all-powerful hand, and all-seeing eye ; that there is an essential difference between good and evil, virtue and vice; that there will be a state of future rewards and punishments, according to our behavior in this life ; that Christ was a teacher sent from God, and that his Apostles were divinely inspired; that all Christians are bound to declare and profess themselves to be his disciples; that not only the exercise of the several virtues, but also a belief in Christ, is necessary in order to their obtaining the pardon of sin, the favor of God, and eternal life ; that the worship of God is to be performed chiefly by the heart, in pray- ers, praises, and thanksgiving, and, as to all other points, that they are bound to live by the rule which Christ and his Apostles have left them in the Holy Scriptures. Here then is a fixed, certain, and uniform rule of faith and practice, containing all the most NEW VIEWS. 11 cere Christians of every name can meet, and exchange the right hand of fellowship, exclaiming in sweet accord, " thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift ! " That our Heavenly Father may enable us all more perfectly to know him, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent ; that we may increase in faith, and love, and good works ; and especially that I may show in all my future life, that there is indeed the same mind in me which was also in Christ Jesus, is the earnest prayer of your affectionate daughter. necessary points of religion established by a divine sanction, em- braced as such by all denominations of Christians, &c." To all which 1 heartily subscribe, and I therefore claim the name of Christian, LETTER II. THE TERMS GOD AND LORD. My dear Father : The words God and Lord do not, I suppose, ne- cessarily denote absolute supremacy, although they do denote dominion and power. In studying the Scrip- tures, we ought to bear in mind the common sense in which certain terms were used by the common people at the time the Scriptures were written ; because we know that, in the course of time, words do very much change their signification. In the Bible we have the term God applied in various ways. In regard to its use among the Greek and Roman philosophers and poets, who lived about the time of our Saviour, we are informed by the history of that period ; we know that the term was used with very extensive latitude ; and it is natural to suppose that the writers of the New Testament, who were chosen from the people, used their terms as they were used by the people, and intended to give a mean- ing which would be readily understood by the people. The early Christians used the word God in relation to different degrees of superiority or power, and not as it is now used, in an absolute sense. And I wish these THE TERMS GOD AND LORD. 18 facts to be borne in mind while you peruse this letter. I am free to confess, that, as a general thing, the term should not now be applied to any but the Supreme Being, because now it has an absolute and definite meaning ; though, in considering those passages of Scripture where it is applied to subordinate beings, it must still be used, but always with the fact of its differ- ent use in another age of the world, kept steadily in view.* In this sense I do admit that the Saviour of the world, the Messiah, may be called a God ; and I know that he is constantly called Lord ; and why should he not be, when his Father made him both Lord and Christ ? But it is concerning the term God that I wish to write. It is then, I think, a relative term, a name for a being who has dominion. Now, we are expressly told that the Supreme Being gave Christ all power in Heaven and on earth. Likewise, because the Father loved the Son, he gave " all things into his hand." He crowned him with glory and honor, and did set him over the works of his hands. And, " in that he put all in sub- jection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him." Thus, it appears to me, in the sense which I have before explained, a sense which was well under- stood when the Scriptures were written, our Heavenly Father made his well beloved Son a God over us, and over all the works of his hands ; as he made Moses a God to Pharaoh — and as he called them Gods to whom the word of God came f — and as he commanded his * See Appendix A. t See Appendix B. 2 14 THE TERMS GOD AND LORD. people not to revile the Gods. Thus, truly, there are Gods many and Lords many ; yet to us there is, in an absolute sense, but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, &c. Christ is then made a God to us, under Him, v/ho IS "the blessed and onZi/ Potentate — the only wise God — who only hath immortaliiy." This view of the subject explains to my mind all those passages where Christ is called God and Lord, even as they stand in our common version, though most of them are said to admit of a different translation. " Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever"* — that is, that throne which God had given to bis Son, which must mean the seat of power in the mediatorial king- dom. It does not follow that he who occupies the throne by permission of the Father, who obtained it by the gift of the Father, existed from all eternity. The assertion is concerning the throne, or dominion, which is to endure forever ; though, when conieth the end, it is to be delivered up to God the Father. f In this way I can also understand how Peter called bis master Lord of all — " preaching peace by Jesus Christ, (he is Lord of all.)" J For when he lifted up bis voice on the day of Pentecost, be closed his noble address to the men of Judea, and all that dwelt at Jerusalem, with these words : " know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." Nor am I startled at that passage where Christ, ac- cording to Trinitarians, is said to be " over all, God * Hebrews i. 8. t See Appendix C. t Acta x. 36. EXPLANATIONS OF TEXTS. 15 blessed forever."* For we are expressly told how this can be. If all things were put under him, he certainly is " over all," and consequently a God ; though let us never forget how " manifest" it is that " He is except- ed which did put all things under him." f I will now tell you, my dear father, how my mind has been satisfied in regard to those texts which you have proposed for my consideration. The first is Is. vi. 1—10, compared with John xii. 41. They do not ap- pear to me at all to favor the doctrine of the supreme deity of the Son of God. The purposes of God are constantly spoken of as having been accomphshed long before they literally were. It is a common mode of speech in the Bible, and implies the certainty of the fulfilment of God's designs. Thus we read of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. As the Messiah, Isaiah foresaw Christ's glory. To give you my own ideas of what may be the meaning of these passages, I cannot do better than to quote the remarks they have drawn forth from Trinitarian commentators. I will now quote from the 361st page of Wilson's Con-, cessions of Trinitarians. " These things said Isaiah, when, by the spirit of prophecy, he saw his glory, i. e. foresaw the glorious appearance of Christ on earth in respect of the excellency of his doctrine, and greatness of his miracles, and spake of him, i. e. prophesied of Christ. — Wells. [Simi- larly, Erasmus, Op. vii. p. 600 ; Grotius, Baxter, and Hammond.] * Rom. ix. 5. t See Appendix D. 16 ISA. VI. 1-10. COMP. WITH JOHN XII. 41. " His glory ; that is, according to the application of the evangelist, the glory of Christ ; though Isaiah spoke of the Father. — Simon. [According to the Racovian Catechism, p. 116, Chkysostom, Theophylact, GuiDO Perpinian, Monotessaro, and Alcazar, maintained that it was the glory of God the Father which appeared to Isaiah. j " Avrov, his, refers to God MoRUs justly ob- serves, that Isaiah, in chap, vi., did not speak of the future greatness of the Messianic kingdom. — J. G. ROSENMIJLLER. " EiSs, he saio, either signifies he foresaw, as in chap, viii. 56, so that oi^tou (his and him) refers, in both clauses, to the Messiah ; or rather, it has respect to the description of the glory of God, in Isa. vi. 1, sqq. The words of him, may, however, probably relate to the Messiah, inasmuch as the antecedent here is not more remote than in other passages. — Vater. " The pronoun avrov, his, should be referred to Lord (namely God) in ver. 38 ; . . . . and the passage has respect to Isa. vi. I, sqq. where the prophet describes a vision, and affirms that he saw Jehovah sitting on a throne, &c. — Kuinoel. (So Bloomfield.)" I will merely remark, my dear father, that these and similar explanations of this passage never fell in my way till long after my own mind was settled on the subject, and I had come to the conclusion that It contained, no proof whatever of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ. The next passage, Rom. ix. 5, I have already noticed. The next, Phil. ii. 6, 7, even as it is translated in our common version, so far from presenting any difficulty PHIL. n. 6, 7. 17 to my mind, is, in my view, a strong Unitarian text. " fVho, being in the form of God" — that is, the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person — made so by Him who also created man in his own image — " thought it not robbery to be equal with God." He came as the Messenger of God to man, as God's vicegerent on earth, and in that sense it was no robbery to proclaim himself equal with God, and to demand equal obedience from mankind. He who refuses to obey Christ, refuses obedience to the Father, for the Father spake to the world through him. If we read on, we shall see how it was that he demanded that men should honor him even as they honored the Father. "God," says the Apostle, "hath highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The whole passage, it seems to me, even when read as it is in our English Bibles, is a clear and satisfactory explanation of the grounds on which our Master thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; and seems intended to fill our minds with the most ex- alted ideas of the dignity and authority of the "one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." But you are undoubtedly aware that many Trinitarians have contended for a different translation of the passage. And many likewise contend that the expression, ^^ being in the form of God," does not convey the idea of Christ's own proper deity. In proof of these positions, see Appendix E. The next- passage you mention is found in Rev. i. 6. 2* 18 REV. I. 6. I will quote the text, with a portion of the fifth verse. " Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." Here everlasting glory and dominion are ascribed to Christ. And why not .■' No Unitarian will object to this. On the contrary, they rejoice to ascribe to him, as the Head of his church, as the King of saints — aye, even as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords — glory and dominion forever and ever. The kingdom which God sent his Son to es- tablish, is to endure forever, and his dominion through- put all generations, and glory will forever crown the head of him who died for man's redemption. But I can see nothing in the text under consideration like a recog- nition of his supreme divinity. On the contrary, the first verse of the Revelations seems to settle the ques- tion in another way. "The Revelation of Jesus Christ," says the author, ^^ which God gave tmto him." I do not see why, in the future world, subordinate worship may not be rendered to Jesus Christ. 1 am not sure that, even after the Mediatorial kingdom shall have been delivered up to God, and Christ's kingly office, as it related to this world, shall have ceased, the well beloved Son may not be still honored as a king in Heaven, in reward for his obedience unto death. Why even we are made, by Jesus Christ, " kings and priests unto God and his Father," and are, in a sense, to reign with him forever. If we overcome, we shall sit with hrm on his throne, as he also overcame, and is set down with his Father on his throne. KEV. V. 5-14. KEV. XXII. 16. 19 You next refer me to Rev. v. 5- 14. This passage is of very much the same character with the last, and is urged as a proof that Christ is to be worshipped in Heaven. But here homage and worship is rendered to him as to a Lamb slain — as to a Redeemer, and not as to the Almighty and supreme God. The wor- ship here described is very different from that rendered to the Father. Let me direct your attention to some remarks of Trinitarian writers upon this passage. " Here," says Bishop Sherlock, (referring to Chap. iv. 11,) " you see plainly that the adoration paid to God the Father is founded on his being the Creator of all things. . . . Here, (referring to Chap. v. 9, 12,) you as plainly see the worship paid to Christ to be founded in this, that he was slain, and did by his blood redeem us. . . . JFrom all which it is evident that the worship paid to Christ is founded on the redemption, and relates to that power and authority which he received from God at his resurrection." — Works, vol. ii. p. 491 ; Disc. L Dacbuz remarks : " As the fundamental reason for which God the Father receiveth worship of the Jews and Gentiles, is because he hath created all things, and preserves them by his will, to have it perfected and executed on them ; so the fundamental reason for which the Son is worshipped is because he was slain, and shed his blood thereby to redeem all mankind." Surely, then, if he is worshipped, because he was slain, he is not worshipped as the supreme God. The next passage. Rev. xxii. 16, I have seen very satisfactorily explained in Pitkin's reply to Baker.* * See Appendix F. 20 1 TIM. VI. 15, COMP. WITH BEV. XVII. 14. The next reference is to Heb. i. 8. According to my views already expressed in regard to tJie different senses in which the term worship may be used, and in regard to the subordinate worship which I believe may be rendered to Christ — the passage, I think, admits of satisfactory explanation. I see no reason to suppose that the worship there spoken of implies supreme wor- ship, any more than the worship or prostration of the wise men from the east before the babe of Bethlehem. Nor do the next passages to which you direct my attention, interfere, as I think, with my views. In 1 Tim. vi. 15, the phrase " King of Kings and Lord of Lords," is applied to the blessed and onli/ Poten- tate, the supreme God ; and in Rev. xvii. 14, the same phrase is applied to the Lamb. But it by no means necessarily follows, that these two beings are one and the same, or even equal. If we wait " until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ," He, " who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords," will " show " us how and why his well beloved Son is also proclaimed " King of Kings and Lord of Lords ; " indeed, I think he has plainly shown it to us already. But now we see through a glass darkly ; then, blessed be our Heavenly Father, we shall know even as we are known. For further observations in regard to the above-mentioned passage, Rev. xvii. 14, see Appendix G. Another of the passages to which you refer, is the Apostolic benediction, " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 2 COR. XIII. 14. JOHN I. 1. 21 And in regard to it you say, " It has ever been among the most conclusive to my mind in favor of the doctrine, which, from its difficuhies, you have been tempted to reject." But, my dear father, it does not strike my mind at all in the same way. If grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, and God gives the influences of his spirit to enlighten and sanctify us, it seems perfectly nat- ural that the "grace" and "communion" which is thus bestowed upon us by the Father, should be men- tioned in connection with that " love " which devised and carries on the scheme of redemption. I cannot see how the mere fact of their being named together proves anything in regard to a trinity of persons in the Godhead. For further remarks upon this passage, quoted from " Burnap's Expository Lectures," see Appendix H. You allude to John i. 1. " The Word was God." If by the term " Word," Christ was certainly intended, it would be a strong passage in favor of your views. But that is a question which must, after diligent investi- gation, be decided by each one for himself. The pas- sage, says Norton, " has been misunderstood through ignorance or disregard to the opinions or modes of conception, which the writer, St. John, had in mind." Some quotations on this subject from his " Statement of Reasons," will show you what has been, to me, a very satisfactory explanation of this difficult passage. " There is no English word," says he, " answering to the Greek word Logos, as here used. It was employed to denote a mode of conception concerning the Deity, familiar at the time when St. John wrote, and inti- 22 JOHN I. 1. mately blended with the philosophy of his age, but long since obsolete, and so foreign from our habits of think- ing, that it is not easy for us to conform our minds to its apprehension. The Greek word Logos, in one of its primary senses, answered nearly to our word Reason. It denoted that faculty by which the mind disposes its ideas in their proper relations to each other ; the Dis- posing Power, if I may so speak, of the mind. In reference to this primary sense, it was applied to the Deity, but in a wider significance. The Logos of God was regarded not in its strictest sense, as merely the Reason of God ; but under certain aspects, as the Wisdom, the Mind, the Intellect of God. To this the creation of all things was especially ascribed. The conception may seem obvious in itself ; but the cause why the creation was primarily referred to the Logos or Intellect of God, rather than to his goodness or omni- potence, is to be found in the Platonic philosophy, as it existed about the time of Christ, and particularly as taught by the eminent Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria." Mr. Norton then goes on to describe this philosophy, and especially the strong personification of the Logos. I wish I had time and space to transcribe the whole passage, but must content myself by referring you to the work itself from which these extracts are taken. It will repay an attentive perusal. Mr. Norton continues, " St. John, writing in Asia Minor, where many for whom he intended his Gospel were familiar with the conception of the Logos, has probably, for this reason, adopted the term ' Logos ' in the proem of his gospel, ISA. VI. 1 - 10. JOHN XII. 41. JOHN XX. 28. 23 to express that manifestation of God by Christ, which is elsewhere referred to the Spirit of God." Mr. Nor- ton's reasons for this opinion, are, to my mind, per- fectly conclusive ; you will find them in his " Statement of Reasons," pp. 229-250. You allude again, in a more particular manner, to the passage Isa. vi. 1 — 10, as compared with John, xii. 41. You speak of the name Jehovah, as applied to Christ, and you inquire, "Who, on such a comparison of the passages, was it, or could it be, whose glory, as Jeho- vah, the prophet saw ? By what possible process can these texts be silenced .' " They could not be silenced if St. John had expressly informed us that the whole display of glory which Isaiah saw, was the glory of Christ ; but if the words, " when he saw his glory, and spake of him," refer to Christ, which some Trinita- rians doubt,* it must be to Christ's glory as Messiah — a glory given him by his Father — which Isaiah saw as a part of the vision described in the 6th chapter of his prophecy. In allusion to John xx. 28, where Thomas says, " My Lord and my God," you remark, that " Unita- rians prefer to let Thomas, in his alleged astonishment, or fright, fall into blasphemy, rather than receive his attestation." I do not know that I have met with a single Unitarian writer who regards these words merely as an unmeaning exclamation of surprise. Norton says, * " Avrov, his, refers to God." — J. G. Rosenmuller. " The pronoun his should be referred to Lord (namely God) in verse 38." — KniNOEL. (So Cloomfield.) "Two manuscripts and a few versions have the glory of God, or of his God." — Dr. Adam Clarke. Concessions of Trinitarians, pp. 184, 361. 24 JOHN XX. 28. "Both titles, (that is, Lord and God,) I believe, were applied by Thomas to Jesus. But the name ' God ' was employed by him, not as the proper name of the Deity, but as an appellative, according to a common use of it in his day ; or perhaps in a figurative sense, as it sometimes occurs in modern writers." He then refers to several passages from Young, of which the following is one ; — "The death-bed of the just Is it his deatli-bed ? No ', it is his shrine : Behold him there just rising to a God." But all Trinitarians * do not consider this passage as proving the supreme divinity of Christ. Kuinoel says : " From this address of Thomas, many commen- tators are of opinion, that the doctrine of Christ's di- vine nature may be established, and conceive that the sentence, when filled up, would be thus : ' I am not faithless ; I doubt no longer ; thou art my Lord and my God.' But, on the contrary, others justly ob- serve, that Thomas used the term God in the sense in which it is applied to kings and judges, who were con- sidered as representatives of Deity, and preeminenily to the Messiah. See Ps. Ixxxii. 6, 7 ; xlv. 6, 7 ; ex. 1. John X. 35." * I have been informed by a gentleman whose critical attain- ments cannot be doubted, and who is likewise a Unitarian, that Kuinoel and RosenmuUer were neither of them Trinitarians. They were, he says, undoubtedly Arians. Their testimony, therefore, must be received by Trinitarians for just what, in iheir estimation, it is worth. Michaelis, however, is, I believe, good Trinitarian authority. JOHN XX. 28. 25 RosENMULLER thus explains the passage : " 1 acknowledge tliee as my Lord, and as the Messiah, my King." MiOHAELis says : " I do not understand this as an address to Jesus ; but thus, ' Yes ; it is he indeed ! He, my Lord and my God ! ' Yet, in giving this inter pretation, I do not affirm that Thomas passed all at once from the extreme of doubt to the highest degree of faith, and acknowledged Christ to be the true God. This appears to me too much for the then existing knowledge of the disciples ; and we have no intimation that they recognized the divine nature of Christ, before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I am therefore inclined to understand this expression, which broke out from Thomas in the height of his astonishment, in a figurative sense, denoting only ' v?hom I shall ever rev- erence in the highest degree.' If he only recollected what he had heard from the mouth of Jesus ten days before, (chapter xiv. 9, 10,) that recollection might have given occasion to an expression which probably Thomas himself could not have perfectly explained ; as is often the case with such words as escape us when we are under the most overpowering surprise. But yet the expression might be equivalent to saying, ' He ! my Lord ! with whom God is most intimately united, and is in him ! In whom I behold God, as it were, present before me.' Or, a person raised from the dead might be regarded as a divinity ; for the word God is not always used in the strict doctrinal sense." All the above quotations are from Concessions of Trinitarians, pp'. 3S3, 384. 3 26 PHiii. II. 6, 7. Again, you allude in a more especial manner than before, to Pbil. ii. 6, 7, and after requesting me to notice the expression, " took upon lijm," you ask, " is not the him a being pre-existent, to whom another was added by way of assumption ? " I reply, that that de- pends upon the sense you give to the succeeding words, " form of a servant," — whether you mean to apply it to his condition, or to his essential nature. In regard to this point you say, " if the expression ' form of a ser- vant ' means, as it unquestionably does, a real servant, must not the former expression, 'form of God,' imply a real God ? " And you ask, " what magic can un- deify Christ here, which will not, at the same time, and precisely in the same way, unhuraanize him also ? " I have no idea that either of those expressions have any reference to a divine or a human nature, but merely, the one, to a condition of majesty and authority, and the other, to a condition of meanness and servility. That this is also the opinion of many Trinitarians, I can easily prove to you. PiscATOR says : " By the form of God I do not think that the Apostle means the divine nature itself. .... As, in the following verse, the phrase form of a servant signifies, not human nature itself, but a servile state or condition ; so, by parity of reasoning, the expression form of God denotes, not the divine nature, but a divine state or condition." "■Jesus Christ," says Le Clerc, "as man, ap- peared, in certain respects, more like God than men, inasmuch as he commanded all nature with absolute authority, and performed unparalleled miracles. This PHIL. II. 6, 7. 2 PET. III. 18. 27 the Apostle terms the form, that is, the resemblance of God ; a sense in which the same word is used in verse 7, and in Mark xvi. 12." "Nothing," says Beausobre, " agrees better with this passage, than what the Evangelist says : 'Knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands' (this is the form of God,) 'he laid aside his garments, poured water into a basin, took a towel, and girded him- self, and began to wash his disciples' feet ' (this is the form of a slave.) John xiii. 3-5." Whitby, while he was a Trinitarian, thus commented on this passage : " By this expression most interpreters do understand, that the Apostle doth intend Christ was essentially and truly God ; but though (his be a certain truth, yet I conceive this cannot be the import of the expression in this place." And, according to Wilson, Parkhurst and Macknight "both deny that the form of God indicates essence or nature, and, with Whitby, interpret the phrase as referring to the visible glorious light by which Christ manifested himself to the patriarchs." — Concessions of Trinitarians, pp. 477, 478. See also again Appendix E, where the same opinion is seen to have been expressed by Michaelis, Storr, Calvin, Heerbrand, and others. Again, you refer me to 2 Pet. iii. ]8. "To him be glory both now and forever ; " and you ask, " Can glory be given to any but God ? or, if it can, can it, as to duration, be given forever to any but him .'"' I answer, that I find, in several places in the New Tes- tament, that glory was expressly given to Christ by his Father. Christ asserts that he is glorified in his followers; 28 2 PET. III. 18. HEB. I. 6. "All mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them." He speaks of the " glory " which, says he, addressing his Father, " thou gavest me ; " and in a prayer for his disciples, he says, " that they may behold ray glory, ichich thou hast given me." And shall not I ascribe glory to him, on whom God has so abundantly bestowed glory .' And if I ascribe glory to him now, why should I not do it as long as my soul exists, which will be " forever .'"' Why should I not, without believing him to be God himself, be will- ing to say, " to him be glory both now and forever .'' " You call my attention, in the next place, to Heb. i. 6, " And let all the angels of God worship him ; " and you inquire " when man is forbidden to worship angels, as in Rev. xxii. 8, 9, can angels be ordered to wor- ship a mere man .'' " I answer, that this would be a startling passage, if the term " worship " were always used in the Bible in the same sense, and to denote supreme homage. But that it is frequently used in relation to subordinate homage or reverence, there can be no doubt. This passage, then, which, in itself con- sidered, conveys a doubtful meaning, must be interpre- ted so as to harmonize with what is plain and undoubted. Now to me it is plain that Christ has revealed himself as a being distinct from and inferior to his Father, and therefore I conclude that God's " angels " or messen- gers, were only commanded to render him subordinate worship, or reverence. In allusion to Col. i. 16, 17, you say, " even if we here admit, according to the Unitarian hypothesis, that Christ was God's agent in the creation of the terrestrial COL. I. 16, 17. 29 and celestial worlds, they are said to be made, not only 'by him,' but ' for him. ' " But I do not understand the creation here spoken of to have any reference to the material worlds, but only to that spiritual creation, or to that new order of things which Christ came to introduce. See Letter XXIV. where the subject is more fully discussed. 3* LETTER III. SCOTT AND WHITBY. My DEAR Fathek : I HAVE shown you how, to my mind, the passages you have mentioned may be reconciled with the doc- trine of the subordinate nature of the Son of God. My mother has requested me to read prayerfully the Gospel of St. John, with the notes and comments of Dr. Scott. I have done so, but no new light has been introduced into my mind, and my sentiments remain unaltered. I find that a great many of the notes touching the supreme divinity of the Messiah, are accredited to Dr. Whitby, and it strikes me that it is not quite fair in Scott to pub- lish the sentiments of an author — to give them to the world as his opinions — when that author has formally and solemnly retracted those very opinions. This has been done by Dr. Whitby, and he has, in doing it, made use of such language as the following : " Nothing," says he, " but the love of truth can be supposed to extort such a retraction from me, who, having already lived so long beyond the common period of life, can have nothing else to do but to prepare for my great change ; and, in order thereunto, to make my peace SCOTT AND WHITBY. 31 with God, and my own conscience, before I die. To this purpose I solemnly appeal to the searcher of hearts, and call God to witness, whether I have hastily, or rashly, departed from the common opinion ; or rather, whether I have not deliberately and calmly weighed the arguments on both sides drawn from Scripture and antiquity." Now it may be that Dr. Scott has some- where given some information to the simple and un- learned readers of his commentaries that the man, whose opinions he has so freely quoted in regard to the Deity of the Son of God, afterwards solemnly retracted those opinions ; if he has not — and I have never been aware that he has — then I say it is at least a question in my mind whether the procedure was perfectly candid and honest. Dr. Whitby says : " When I wrote my commentaries on the New Testament, I went on, too hastily I own, in the common beaten road of other reputed orthodox divines ; conceiving, first, that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in one complex notion, were one and the same God, by virtue of the same individual essence communicated from the Father." " Then, as a natural consequence from this doctrine, I secondly, concluded that those divine persons differed only in the manner of their existence. That the difference can be only modal, even Dr. South hath fully demonstrated ; and that this was the opinion generally received from the fourth century, may be seen in the close of my first part to Dr. Walerland." Dr. Whitby then goes on to prove that the orthodox Anti-Arian fathers condemned this very doctrine as rank Sabellianism ; and this he 32 EXTRACTS FROM WHITBT. proves from the words of Athanasius and Epiphanius ; both testifying, that to say the Father and the Son were of one and the same substance was Sabellianism. "And surely," he says, " to contend that this is the doctrine of the Church of England, is to dishonor our Church, and in effect to charge her with that heresy which was exploded with scorn by the whole Church of Christ from the third to the present century." And yet, my dear father, this doctrine is what my catechism taught me ; viz., "i/ie same in substance, equal in power and glory." Dr. Whitby goes on to prove, from Scripture, and the fathers -of the first three centuries, incontestably, as it appears to me, that the nature and powers of Christ were entirely derived from the Father. " The primi- tive fathers," says he, " of the first three centuries do also generally agree that the Son received his power from the Father, as it hath been observed already. And particularly Hippolytus, ' that his knowledge was given him by the Father : ' to which the orthodox are forced to say that he received this power, this domi- nion, and these attributes, by receiving the same indivi- dual essence with the Father ; which yet is a thing impossible in itself, since an individual essence cannot be communicated, for that very reason, because it is an individual ; that it is one, and no more." Again, he says, that they who style themselves or- thodox " constantly assert, that the will, power and wisdom of the whole Trinity is one and the same ; and that what one wills, does, and knows, they all will, do, and know, by virtue of this unity of essence." Again, THE DIVINE WILL. 33 " that where the numerical essence is one and the same, the will and actions of that essence must be one and the same. And where the will and actions are numerically distinct and diverse, there the individual essence must also be distinct and different. And this Damascen declares to be the doctrine of the holy Fathers. Hence, it demonstratively follows, that, if the essence of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be numerically one and the same, the will, and all the other actions of these three, must be numerically one and the same ; so that, what the Father wills and does, the Son and Holy Ghost must will and do also." Now, my dear father, if the three persons in the Tri- nity have one mind and will, how could Christ say he came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him .■' "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which sent me." He was speaking of a will which he came to do, and therefore must have re- ference to the mind and will which devised the scheme of redemption, in other words, the divine will, and this will, he says, was the will of another. Now, it has been shown, that, according to the orthodox belief, the Fa- ther and Son have the same mind and will ; but Christ, by these declarations, most plainly and fully contradicts the assertion. On the question whether the absolute equality of the Son with the Father, or the doctrine of the Trinity was known to the earliest Christian writers, I have collected from Whitby's Last Thoughts the following remarks : " The hypostatical union" was " broached first by Cyril of Alexandria, and by Theodoret pronounced to 34 THE FATHERS ON THE TRINITY. be a thing unknown to the Fathers that lived before him. Origen proceeds, page 387, to show, that, among the multitude of believers, some, differing from the rest, rashly affirmed, as the Noetians did, that our Saviour was the God over all, which, saith he, ' we christians, or, we of the church, do not believe ; as giv- ing credit to the same Saviour who said, my Father is greater than I.' And he saith, ' we christians mani- festly teach, that the Son is not stronger than the Father^ who is the Creator of the world, but inferior in power to him.' Which words afford the clearest de- monstration that the Church of that age did not believe that our Saviour was the Supreme God. Novatian is, if possible, still more express in his interpretation" — that is, of the text, I and my Father are one. " For in an- swer to the objection of the Sabellians from this place, he saith, ' that unum being here put in the neuter gen- der, denotes not an unity of person, but a concord of society between them ; they being deservedly styled one, by reason of their concord and love, and because, whatsoever the Son is, he is from the Father.' Pam- pelius's note upon these words is this : ' Novatian did not write accurately in this place, as making no men- tion of the communion of the essence between the Father and the Son, but introducing an example from the apostle contrary to it ; in which thing I doubt not to pronounce him erroneous, seeing the Church afterwards, in diverse councils, defined the contrary.' Many of the ante-Nicene Fathers in effect said the same thing. Justin pronounces the Son to be ' another from the Father in number, but not in consent.' Because he never OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS. 35 would do anything but what ' the Maker of the world, above whom there is no other God, would have him do and speak.' Eusebius pronounces the Father and Son to be one, ' not as to the essence, but as to communion of glory.' The council of Antioch pronounced the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to be ' three in subsistence, but one only in consent' or concord. Novatian says, God the Father is ' that one God, to whose greatness, majesty, and power, nothing can be compared.' And indeed, all the Greek Fathers, from Justin to Eusebius inclusively, do frequently inform us that the Son ' did obey the will of the Father,' that he did ' minister and was subservient to him,' &c. &c." — Whitby. Sir Isaac Newton's opinions in regard to the Trinity may be gathered from his " Historical Account of Two Corruptions of Scripture." In the number for Oct. 1823, of Sparks's Collections, he says : " Whiston tells us of his," Newton's, " profound knowledge of Church history during the three first centuries of the Christian era, and of his having been convinced by his study of this history, that the doctrine of the Trinity was introdu- ced into the Christian scheme many years after the time of the apostles. The tenor of Newton's writings is in accordance with this declaration, nor do they exhibit any evidence, that their author ever believed in a Trinity. The charge against Horsley of having suppressed his papers because they were adverse to this doctrine, has never been contradicted." You have mentioned to me, my dear father, the fact, that in Pliny's letter to Trajan, he testifies that the early Christians worshipped Christ as God. Now that 36 flint's letter to trajan. letter conveys a very different impression to my mind ; and, it seems to me, is very far from proving that tiiey made our Saviour equal with God. Bear in mind tiiat it is the testimony of a man whose heart was filled with hatred against the Christians ; so much so that he says, "it has been a question with me very problematical, whether any distinction should be made between the young and the old, the tender and the robust ; whether any room should be given for repentance, &c." Now all that he testifies is this ; — and remember too that he is only giving the testimony of those who were in the act of retracting, and of course would do their utmost endeavor to please the enemies of Christianity — " that they were accustomed, on a stated day, to meet before daylight, and to repeat among themselves a hymn to Christ, as to a God, and to bind themselves by an oath, &c." Bear in mind also that the term worship, (for though it is not used in Phny's letter, it is inferred from it,) was used in the early ages of the Church with as great latitude as the term 'God, and did no more always mean supreme homage than the term God always meant the supreme Being. Nebuchadnezzar " fell upon his face and worshipped Daniel," but not as the supreme God ; and the eastern sages worshipped the infant Jesus, but not as the supreme God. On the whole, this expression in Pliny's letter, on which so much re- liance is placed in all the ecclesiastical histories written by Trinitarians, goes very far towards convincing me that the early Christians did not regard Christ as equal with the Father. I have a few remarks to make in regard to the gos- ST. John's gospel. 37 pel of John. It Is generally supposed that the apostle John wrote his gospel to supply what had been omitted by the other evangelists. He could not have written it to prove the human nature of our Lord ; that was a self-evident truth. Nor could he have written it to prove his divine nature, for the drift and tenor of the book evidently implies an inferiority of some kind to the Father. If his main object was to prove that he had two natures, it is strange that he pays so little attention to it. If that were his object, would he not, as a man of com- mon sense, much more as a man inspired by God, have so announced it, that, at least, the proposition could be stated in his own words — not by taking detached por- tions of the book, laying them together, and inferring what his object was — but by the clear, explicit, unques- tionable statement of the doctrine which he was writing a book to establish. It appears plain to me, that his object was to prove the divinity of the mission of his beloved master ; that he came from God with full power and authority to establish a new dispensation — to create all things new. And this view throws a flood of light upon the whole book, especially upon the fourteen first verses, which can thus be explained in several ways without a resort to the perplexing and impossible ideas of three perfect beings equal to one perfect being ; or of two incompatible natures, with different perceptions, existing in one of those beings. For it is only on this hypothesis that the declaration of Christ respecting the day and the hour which no man knew, neither the Son — and several other declarations — can be explained without impeaching the veracity of our blessed Lord, 4 38 ST. John's gospel. in whom was no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. But if the divine and human will of our Saviour were one and the same, and the will of the three per- sons in the Trinity — of whom he was one — was one and the same, Christ virtually said, I seek not mine own will, but the will of myself, &c. In fact, just try to read the New Testament, with this idea, which grows naturally out of Trinitarianism, in the mind, and you will see what sad confusion it makes. May the Holy Spirit guide us into all truth. LETTEE IV. CONNECTION OP DOCTRINES. Mr DEAR Father: I AM very well aware that you speak correctly when you say, " Neither the tenets you have renounced, nor those you have embraced, stand alone." " They con- stitute," you remark, " not only very material parts, but perhaps even bases of systems of belief, which diverge farther and farther from each other the more they are carried in detail to their respective and very different results. ' By their fruits ye shall know them,' is a rule, not only for judging persons, but single tefiets and systems. And every single tenet, especially on the momentous points your letter embraces, has and must have a momentous connection with and influence upon other tenets. Human depravity, its origin, nature and extent ; regeneration and its constituents ; justification, in what it consists, and on what it rests ; and indeed, every important doctrine, almost without exception, will be materially, if not fundamentally affected. Until you have had time to contemplate these results, and to as- certain their connection, and the action and reaction of 40 ALWATS AN INQUIRER. doctrines upon each other, will it not be better still to consider yourself an inquirer, and still, when you have occasion to speak on the subject, to announce yourself such ? " Before I proceed to reply to this extract, my dear father, allow me to thank you, from the depths of an overflowing heart, for the tone of serious mildness and charity which characterizes your management of my peculiar case. Rest assured, that every word and letter which comes from your pen has infinitely more weight with me than those furious denunciations which give evidence of a zeal that is not according to know- ledge. You request me to consider myself " an inqui- rer." I do, my father, consider myself an inquirer ; and shall always do so while I live. That is to say, while my mind may be fully satisfied upon any given point, 1 shall always be ready to hear reasons for a dif- ferent opinion, and to embrace and proclaim such an opinion when those reasons satisfy my mind. In the face of all the world, and in spite of the charges of " instability," and " love of excitement," and " love of notoriety," which may be showered down upon me, I shall be ready to retract again my newly embraced opinions, when I see them to be unscriptural and un- tenable. I was in no special haste to avow my change of views ; but you must be aware that we cannot always choose our times and seasons, or control our circumstances. You must also be aware that the moment it became known to some of my friends that I was even exam- ining certain doctrinal points, all calm, unbiassed, sober COLLATERAL DOCTRINES. 41 investigation was at an end. I found it absolutely ne- cessary to acquaint my friends with the progress my mind had made — the conclusions to which I had arrived — the opinions I had adopted — and my reasons for those opinions. It has been for some time a sub- ject of remark that I did not join in singing the doxology, and I have been obliged to evade questions, and to smile at exclamations, because the proper time for ex- planation had not arrived. You speak of collateral doctrines and tenets which will be materially affected by my Unitarian views. But many of those doctrines, to which you allude, had passed in review before my mind, and had become materially modified long before my attention was turned to the great and distinguishing feature of Unitarianism — the absolute unity of God. It is a long time since my Calvinistic brethren, had they known my views, would have been willing to grant me the title of " Orthodox." But, after all, the great question is, do I believe in a trinity of persons in the Godhead, or am I a believer in the absolute unity of God, and the subordinate nature of his Son ? It is now two months or more since my mind has been entirely satisfied in regard to the one great point of difference between Trinitarians and Unitarians, and, though it should require years of prayerful study to arrive at satisfactory conclusions upon other doctrinal points, I should all those years be still a Unitarian, if I continued, as 1 now am, a believer in the absolute and unqualified unity of God. Therefore, when my friends seem to expect me to wait till I am entirely satisfied in 4* 42 THE GREAT POINT OP DIFFERENCE. regard to every point of doctrine, before I avow myself a Unitarian, I answer that this may be the work of a lifetime, and does not at all affect the question of my being, or not being, a Unitarian. It might as well be insisted upon that a man should arrive at complete per- fection, before he calls himself a Christian. I know that there are great differences of opinion among Uni- tarians, but so there are among Trinitarians ; some are high Calvinists, some are moderate Calvinists, and some are Arminians. The question with me, then, is, do I believe that there are three persons in one God, or do I believe that Jehovah is one, and one only ? Now I believe that he is strictly one, and it seems impossible that I can ever believe otherwise, when, to my mind, it is as plain as demonstration, that the contrary scheme in- volves a contradiction. I must be a Unitarian, or a Tritheist, which last I cannot be while I take the Bible for my guide. He is a Unitarian who rejects the Trinity ; and be his views of the atonement, of native depravity, of human ability, or inability, what they may, still he is a Unitarian ; he has gone over to one of the two great divisions of the Protestant world. If, therefore, he is a Unitarian, and not a Trinitarian, he ought to be in the Unitarian, and not the Trinitarian church. You remark, " it is but too evident that you have had before you the entire strength of one side of the ques- tion, &c." It may be that I have ; but you must bear in mind my declaration, that I was satisfied in regard to the undivided unity of God before I had read one single SOURCES OF INFORMATION. 43 Unitarian work, except the JVeto Testament; which I now regard as the most powerful and convincing Unita- rian book in the world. When I make this declaration, I have a right to be believed ; and I leave it with you, who know, better than others can know, my attachment to the truth. I went to the Bible, divesting myself, as much as possible, of educational prepossessions ; and it was from that source my mind was satisfied. I read the New Testament day and night, with the concen- trated energies of my intellect, and rose up from the perusal a thoroughly convinced Unitarian. I think you are mistaken also, my dear father, when you assert that one side, meaning the Unitarian side, "has had immensely and almost overwhelmingly the advantage of the other." I should be inclined exactly to reverse the statement. As I have before remarked, I have always found the doctrine of the Trinity so per- plexing, that I have read over and over again all the arguments I could find in its favor, and no one but myself can know how I have struggled to continue a Trinitarian. Your letter goes on to say, " you ought also to con- sider the influence of your course upon others, upon the cause of religion, and upon your publications, especially the volume of poems entitled ' The Parted Family,' as well as upon the feelings and happiness of your friends. Not that any of these considerations, nor all of them, should suppress or seriously interfere with sincere inquiries after truth ; but only with an unnecessary or premature declaration, which may have a use made of it by others, you perhaps do not at all anticipate, the 44 CIRCUMSTANCES CONSIDERED. occurrence of which you may afterwards deeply regret, when it may be too late to repair it We are all answerable for our influence, and though that fact should not be suffered to render us insincere, nor to suppress needful or useful inquiry, yet it should modify, qualify, and regulate the degree and manner of our disclosure to others of the results to which we may have arrived. This is, perhaps, one of those cases in which he that believeth should not make haste. I fear that many may be driven from the Bible, through indifference or disrelish of its contents, when they learn that you, through the Bible, have arrived at your present con- clusions." Your remarks in regard to the importance of our in- fluence are just what they should be, and I trust will not be without their legitimate effect upon my mind. Yet I cannot hope that my friends will be able to ap- preciate fully the force and peculiarity of the circum- stances by which I am surrounded, inasmuch as they themselves — by their affection for me, their zeal for what they regard to be fundamental truths and their opposition to what they deem fundamental error — cre- ate those very circumstances. A crisis has come when it is absolutely necessary for me most sacredly and vigilantly to guard the right of private judgment, and conscientiously and fearlessly to avow my honest opin- ions. These remarks are not called forth, my dear father, by anything which you have said or done. If all my friends had pursued the calm and consistent course which your example should have prompted, I should not DOW be obliged continually to defend myself from SCOTT AND NEWTON. 45 charges which their own misguided zeal has brought upon me. I wish, my dear father, before I bring this letter to a close, to reply to a remark of yours which has given me some pain. " I deeply regret," you say, "to hear you speak in the manner you have done of such men as Scott and Newton." And further, in regard to Scott, you say, " I have concluded to make a remark or two on the apparent insincerity of Scott in not informing his readers of Whitby's change of views when he made quotations from his writings. I have usually considered Scott as so remarkably candid a writer, that I cannot have him reflected on without defending him where I find he is defensible. Scott quoted, I must presume, just as any one would do, from a book containing what he considered correct and valuable sentiments. I pre- sume he meant neither to proclaim nor conceal the system embraced by Whitby, but to exhibit his argu- ment, leaving his readers to judge of its conclusiveness, as well as of where it might be found." If I have done Dr. Scott injustice, I am truly sorry for it ; I meant not to speak disrespectfully of such a man ; and in regard to Sir Isaac Newton,* I gave no opinion of my own, but merely mentioned where his opinions might be found, and then quoted what Pro- fessor Sparks had said in regard to the same subject. * Since the above was written, it has occurred to me that per- haps you allude to the Rev. John Wewton ; for X recollect saying to you that I thought the influence of his high Calvinistic views had operated most injuriously upon the sensitive mind of the un- fortunate Cowper. 46 SCOTT AND NEWTON. I will now say, however, with all due modesty, that it seems to me that no one can read his " Historical Account of two Corruptions of Scripture," without believing him to have been a Unitarian ; but different minds are differently constituted.* * See Appendix I. LETTER V. INVESTIGATION NO CRIME. Mr DEAR Father : I AM rejoiced to find that you do not, as some of my friends do, complain of me for having presumed to investigate opinions, when douhts of their truth had found their way into my mind. I was sure it would be so. I knew too well the remarkable honesty of your mind, to fear, upon that particular ground, your displeasure ; and I am very much pleased to find I did not mistake you. In your letter the following passage occurs, and I thank you for it from my heart. You say, " I am, my daughter, not at all dissatisfied with you for inquiring after Truth, and embracing it where- ever you find it ; and you have an intellect that can distinguish between logic and sophistry." You then add, " But if such texts as those to which I have referred you can be logically disposed of, I wish to see the way in which such a work can be accomplished." Before this time you have received the letter in which I give my interpretation of those texts. You speak of a remark I have made in regard to you, as though you feared it might be misunderstood ; 48 NOBLE SENTIMENTS. and that some persons might think it argued an indiffer- ence, on your part, in regard to matters which I know you deem of vital importance. But I will let you speak for yourself. " You have made an observation," you say, " something like this, that I was not affected, as all your other relatives are, in view of the disclosures you have made concerning what is passing in your mind. This is true, however, I think, only in one particular. Perhaps all the rest are regretting that you are pursuing your present course of inquiry — that you are examin- ing subjects, and reading books, with which they might prefer you should not meddle — into which they had rather you would not look. So far as this single particular is concerned, I do not feel thus. I am quite willing you should inquire after Truth, and em- brace it wherever you may find it, though it counteract the whole current of your former thoughts, and over- turn the whole fabric of your former views. I would hope you have a mind capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, and argument from sophistry ; and I hope that you have a candor and impartiality that will suffice to secure you from the wiles and fascinations of error, and an experience of grace in the heart that will preserve you from going far, and long, and fatally astray." These are noble views and sentiments, my father, worthy of a man, worthy of a Christian, worthy of you, and of your honest and noble soul. Such sentiments must secure the approbation of every candid and conscientious mind. I wish I could convince my relatives and friends, and yourself in particular, that I have not been entirely PATERNAL FAITHFULNESS. 49 unmindful of that caution which it is so important at all times to observe, but most especially when we are about to take a momentous step, and to assume a new position. I will, however, bear witness to the fact that you have again and again, in the most solemn and urgent manner, lifted up your kindly warning voice, and advised continually the most cautious deliberation. At the risk of placing myself in an unamiable light before the public, — for I cannot and will not explain all the peculiar circumstances which have rendered necessary what has seemed to be a premature disclosure of my change of views, — at the risk, I repeat, of placing myself in an unamiable attitude, I will do all I can to exonerate you, my dear father, from the smallest share of blame in this matter ; and I hereby declare that you have done all that paternal faithfulness could do, to hold me back from what you conceived to be the brink of a dangerous precipice. No one can read what you have written to me on this subject, without feeling and acknowledging that you have done your duty faith- fully as a Christian parent, and a Christian minister. But, to make the point still more sure, I will here quote from your letters some of the warnings of which I have spoken. In speaking of my present position, you say : — "It is a slippery road, and you will need to tread it with great care, caution, and prayer, or,. ere you are aware, you may find yourself at an awful remove from the ark of safety. I feel no disposition to discourage you from a simple, sincere, and prayerful inquiry after Truth, but do not be too rapid in its discovery, espe- 5 50 CAUTION RECOMMENDED. cially not too rapid in announcing or acting upon your discoveries. Recollect, these views are new, and much of their interest may arise from their novelty." In another place you say : — "I would guard your imaginative mind and buoyant feelings against the dan- gers that may arise from the relief and happiness you have spoken of, in connection with the new views which have entered into your mind. Do not infer that you are certainly right, merely from that circumstance. I want you to have a cheerful religion, provided it is at the same time a safe and sound one." Again, you write : — "I wish you to practise no disguise nor insincerity. But I renew my urgent advice to you, on your account as well as on ours, not to be in haste. If your new apprehensions are well founded, nothing will be lost by deliberation, — by taking time to 'prove all things,' that you may 'hold fast' only to 'that which is good.' " This is excellent advice, my dear father, and most gladly would I have satisfied my friends in regard to the time when my change of views should be made known. Indeed, I did not expect, formally, to make them known at all. I did not consider myself of con- sequence enough to render such a course necessary. If the " orthodox " community would have suffered me quietly to follow the dictates of my conscience, they should never have heard a word from me iri re- gard to myself and my concerns. But strangers and friends have been pleased to interest themselves most extensively and diligently in my case, and it is their fault, and not mine, that any publicity at all has been REVIEW OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 61 given to the matter. I have had no choice given me, I have been the victim of uncontrollable circumstances. The time came when I was obliged to make known, to my relatives at least, the process through which my mind was passing. And I have been blamed for not making it known, at least to you, before. I have been charged with showing disrespect to you-, my father, because I did not from the first reveal to' you the doubts which had entered my mind. Such a charge wrings my heart, and pains me more than I can ex- press. Perhaps my silence was an error of judgment, it certainly was not one of intention. If I have done wrong in this thing, I ask your forgiveness, and I pray also for the forgiveness of ray Heavenly Father. If I could have confided my case to you alone, as perhaps I ought to have done, God knows how joyfully I would have done it, and how much it would have lessened the fearful weight of responsbility which op- pressed me when I was groping my way alone. But I was, and still am, under the impression that it was best for me to study the New Testament in the solitude of my chamber ; and before I had got entirely through the Gospel of John, I found myself, in regard to the nature of Christ, firmly on Unitarian ground. Then, after a good deal of thought, I sat down, and wrote the letter announcing to my mother and yourself my change of views, intending to hand it to you at the first suitable opportunity. That opportunity was not long in presenting itself. The fact soon became known to most of my relatives, but there were some circumstances which had caused such a fact to be suspected for some 52 REVIEW or CIKCDMSTANCES. time. One of these was my silence for several Sab- baths during the singing of the doxology, which, as I was a prominent member of the choir, could not but be observed. As soon as my change of sentiments became known, a storm arose, and burst upon my head, such as I have never before experienced, and hope never to experience again ; and it immediately became necessary for me to act with decision and indepen- dence, or lose what I prize above all other things, my oion self-respect, and the approbation of my conscience. This is but a glance at the state of things which has rendered it necessary for me to take a decided stand, and assert those natural rights which belong to every individual, and which it is the sacred duty of every one jealously and vigilantly to protect. There are other circumstances connected with this subject, which, as I have said before, I will not name. Not only, my dear father, have you urged me to practise caution, but you have faithfully portrayed the responsibility of my position, and the consequences which may result from my change of views. On this point you thus write : — "The views you have for- merly expressed, the course you have pursued, the reputation you have acquired by your publications, the position you have occupied, and do occupy in this community, and your relation to myself, whose position for upwards of twenty years was still more prominent, place you in circumstances of weighty and peculiar responsibility." Again, after speaking of the " spirit that lives and breathes — that burns and glows" in the volume of poems from my pen, called " The EXHIBITION OP CONSEQUENCES. 63 Parted Family," you ask, " Are you aware that an entire change in the current of your thoughts and feel- ings may be the result of the new tide that has begun to set in upon them ? Have you renounced, or do you think of renouncing the sentiments and exercises that run through the interesting volume from your pen that has carried rich consolation to so many hearts ? " To these questions I answer, that I am by no means prepared to renounce "the sentiments and exercises"* which that volume contains. I have not renounced my confidence in God, nor in his Son, Jesus Christ. The words of consolation which fell from my Master's lips are as precious to me as ever, and would, I am confi- dent, prove now, as they did then, amply sufficient to bear me triumphantly through any scene of sorrow through which I might be called to pass. I will now bring this letter to a close, hoping and believing that what 1 have recorded here will abun- dantly prove to all who may peruse these pages, that nothing on your part has been left undone to deter me from pursuing the path which you deem a wrong and a dangerous one. * If any one thinks that in consequence of becoming a Unita- rian, the "sentiments and exercises " of the Christian heart must be renounced, I ask him to read candidly and carefully the Ser- mons of Consolation, by Dr. Greenwood, and he will see in what way and to what extent Unitarian Christians are comforted by their religious faith. 5* LETTER VI. REMARKS UPON HONESTY. My dear Father: You speak like yourself, and like an honest man, who is " the noblest work of God," when you say, " I vastly prefer an honest Unitarian, who is so from conviction, however mistaken and even dangerous I may regard his sentiments, to men of pretended and even boasted orthodoxy, who hesitate not at prevarication, and even direct falsehood." And yet, dear father, it almost seems to me, that in your anxiety lest I should go too far easily to retrace my steps, even if I wished to do so, you are advising me to a course, which, under other circumstances, you would not consider exactly open or honest. Let me quote your words. In refer- ence to the metrical doxologies you ask, " Is there no sense, no consistent and proper sense, in which you can say or even sing ' three in one.' Must you necessarily carry in your mind the idea of three objects of wor- ship .' " In answer to these questions I will reply that there is a sense, in which I believe in a Trinity. I be- lieve that the Father manifests himself to the world through the Son, and operates upon the hearts of men THE TRINITAKIAN DOXOLOGT. 55 by the agency of his Holy Spirit. In this sense I can say "three in one." But this is not exactly to the point. I cannot sing the doxology because it distinctly represents these three as one in another sense — as three persons in one God — each as God, and the three as one God. The singing of the Trinitarian doxology is the distinguishing mark of a Trinitarian Church — a con- cise and regularly repeated confession of faith — the Shibboleth of Trinitarianism. Until it shall be gener- ally known that I am a Unitarian, and that when I sing the doxology I give to it a Unitarian construction, I see no possible way in which I can honestly use it. You have taught me, my father, to be honest and inde- pendent. It is from you that I have learned with Christian boldness to assert and defend what I believe to be the truth, and I know you would not have me act otherwise. In endeavoring to persuade me that I can still sing the doxology, your only object is to deter mfe from exciting general remark by ceasing now to do what I have always hitherto done ; but I cannot consci- entiously do it, and I know that you would not wish me to silence the clamors, or even the whispers of con- science. You would be gratified, 1 have no doubt, and so would I, if I could perfectly agree with you in senti- ment ; but as long as I cannot do so, I know you would prefer that I should be honest, and say so. "God's truths," as you so sweetly and so truly say, " whatever on examination they may be found to be, are ' the same yesterday, to-day, and forever ; ' whatever may be the contradictions, inconsistencies, and even the immoralities of those who profess to embrace them. 56 THE UNITARIAN HYMN BOOK. To the law and to the testimony we must continually resort, saying, speak Lord, for thy servant heareth." Yes, ray dear father, that is the true Christian spirit, a spirit of filial reverence for God and for his word ; and if I ever hereafter discover that I have mistaken the teachings of that word, I again honestly declare that no worldly reproach, no bitter taunts, no charges of in- stability or love of notoriety, .will deter me from con- fessing my mistakes and errors, and acknowledging what I believe to be truth. If I can find hereafter that in giving up the faith of my fathers, I have gone astray, in the face of an assembled, mocking, jeering world, I should not hesitate to retrace my steps.* But I will introduce another subject. You appear to feel exceedingly dissatisfied with the alterations which have been made by Unitarians in the psalms and hyms of Dr. Watts. " T'here are several important topics," you remark, upon which the hymn-book you have examined, " is deplorably deficient." And you add, that " in several instances they have so altered Watts, as to have weeded out portions and sentiments which he regarded as among the most vital and valuable. Unless," you observe, " since he exchanged earth for Heaven, he has greatly altered opinions familiar and precious to him in this world, I am inclined to think that, could he now rise from his bed of dust, he would loudly complain of and protest against the use they have made of the pruning knife." It is asserted, my dear father, that before "he ex- changed earth for Heaven " he /lad materially altered " See Appendix K. DR. WATTS 4 UNITARIAN. 57 opinions once " familiar and precious to him." The proof upon this subject I have found in a condensed form in Sparks^s Inquiry, and shall quote at large what he says upon the subject. I leave it to your candor to decide with how much truth the assertion is made ; and if it can be proved to your satisfaction that Watts was himself desirous of making alterations in his hymns, you will not be so apt to find fault with those who have done it for him. The quotation from Professor Sparks is as .follows : — " A letter is extant which was written by the Rev. Samuel Merivale to Dr. Priestley, in which the senti- ments of Dr. Lardner on the subject of Watts's opin- ions are expressed in the most unequivocal terms. In conversation with Mr. Merivale, as stated in the letter, this great man observed : ' I think Dr. Watts never was an Arian, to bis honor be it spoken. When he first wrote of the Trinity, I reckon he believed three equal di- vine persons. But in the latter part of his life, and before he was seized with an imbecility of his faculties, he was a Unitarian. How he came to be so, 1 cannot cer- tainly say ; but I think it was the result of his own meditations on the Scriptures. He was very desirous to promote that opinion, and wrote a great deal upon the subject.' "After this conversation, Mr. Merivale, wishing to obtain further information respecting Watts's unpublish- ed papers, wrote a letter of inquiry to Dr. Lardner, from whom he received the following reply : — " ' I question whether you have any where in print Dr. Watts's last thoughts upon the Trinity. They were 58 DR. WATTS A UNITARIAN. known to very few. My nephew, Neal, an understand- ing gentleman, was intimate with Dr. Watts, and often with the family where he lived. Sometimes in an eve- ning, when they were alone, he would talk to his friends in the family of his new thoughts concerning the person of Christ, and their great importance ; and that, if he should be able to recommend them to the world, it would be the most considerable thing that ever he per- formed. My nephew, therefore, came to me and told me of it, and that the family was greatly concerned to hear him talk so much of the importance of these sen- timents. I told my nephew, that Dr. Watts was right in saying they were important, but I was of opinion that he was unable to recommend them to the public, because he had never been used to a proper way of reasoning upon such a subject. So it proved. My nephew being executor, had the papers, and showed me some of them. Dr. Walts had written a good deal, but they were not fit to be published. Dr. Walls's Last Thoughls were completely unitarian.'* " These facts," continues Professor Sparks, " are too plain and conclusive to need comment. They rest on the authority of Lardner, and they could not rest on a higher. He barely stated what he saw and knew. Prove Lardner to have been guilty of a deliberate falsehood, or mistaken in a case where he had every possible op- portunity of knowing the truth, and you will invalidate his testimony. Till this be done, no one can rightfully refuse his assent to the position it establishes ; which is, • See the whole of Mr. Merivale's letter in Belsham's Memoirs of Lindsey, p. 216. DK. WATTS A UNITARIAN. 69 that the unpublished papers of Watts clearly showed him to have been a Unitarian. "But we need not recur to unpublished writings. Enough may be found in print to convince us, that he was not a Trinitarian, whatever else he may have been. In his Solemn Address to the Deity he speaks as follows : ' Dear and blessed God, hadst thou been pleased, in any one plain Scripture, to have informed me which of the different opinions about the holy trinity, among the contending parties of Christians, had been true, thou knowest with how much zeal, satisfaction and joy, my unbiassed heart would have opened itself to receive and embrace the divine discovery. Hadst thou told me plainly, in any single text, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are three real distinct persons in the di- vine nature, I had never suffered myself to be bewil- dered in so many doubts, nor embarrassed with so many strong fears of assenting to the mere inventions of men, instead of divine doctrine ; but I should have humbly and immediately accepted thy words, so far as it was possible for me to understand them, as the only rule of ray faith. Or hadst thou been pleased to ex- press and include this proposition in the several scattered parts of thy book, from whence my reason and con- science might with ease find out, and with certainty infer this doctrine, I should have joyfully employed all my reasoning powers, with their utmost skill and ac- tivity, to have found out this inference, and engrafted it into my soul. " ' But how can such weak creatures ever take in so strange, so difficult, and so abstruse a doctrine as this, 60 DE. WATTS A UNITARIAN. in the explication and defence whereof, muhitudes of men, even men of learning and piety, have lost them- selves in infinite subtleties of disputes, and endless mazes of darkness. And can this strange and perplexing notion of three real persons going to make up one true God, be so necessary and so important a part of that Christian doctrine, which, in the Old Testament and the New, is represented as so plain and so easy, even to the meanest understandings ? ' "Three things," observes Mr. Sparks, "are obvi- ous from these extracts. First, that Watts did not be- lieve the Trinity, as usually understood, to be 'plainly taught in any single text ;' secondly, that in his mind it was not so expressed in the Scriptures at large, as to be intelligible to ' reason and conscience ; ' and thirdly, that the ' strange and perplexing notion of three real per- sons going to make up one true God,' is not a ' neces- sary and important part of the Christian doctrine,' what- ever may be thought of its reality. Is there a Trinitarian of the present day, who will assent to either of these propositions .' " Mr. Sparks goes on to give extracts from Dr. Watts's own writings, which, I think fully prove him to have been a Unitarian when he wrote them, and they were written long after his psalms and hymns. The extracts are too long to be inserted here, but if you are curious upon the subject, you can consult the work of Profes- sor Sparks, called An Inquiry into the comparative moral tendency of Trinitarian and Unitarian Doc- trines ; and in the chapter entitled Sentiments and Morals of English Unitarians, you will find all that DR. WATTS A UNITARIAN. 61 he says in regard to Dr. Watts and others. But I in- tend, though I cannot quote the whole, still to give some further extracts. " We have yet a testimony," says Sparks, "from Dr. Watts's own mouth. In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Colman of Boston, written in 1747, he speaks as follows. ' I am glad my book of Useful Questions came safe to your hand. I think I have said everything concern- ing the Son of God, which Scripture says ; but I could not go so far as to say, with some of our orthodox di- vines, that the Son is equal with the Father ; because our Lord himself expressly says. The Father is greater than I.'* Shall we still persist," inquires Mr. Sparks, with good reason, " Shall we still persist, that Dr. Watts was a Trinitarian, and that when he said the Father and Son are not equal, he meant directly the contrary } " We now come to the subject of Dr. Watts's Psalms and Hymns. In regard to these, Mr. Sparks says : " They certainly contain sufEcient evidence that he was a Trinitarian when he wrote them, but we know his mind was not stationary, for he afterwards ' thanked God, that he had learned to retract his former senti- ments, and change them, when, upon stricter search and review, they appeared less agreeable to the divine standard of faith.' Now we have already seen, that this was the case in regard to the Trinity ; and you are doubtless not ignorant of the fact, that he was desirous * Memoirs of Dr. Watts, Appendix, p. 19. The original of this letter 1 believe is retained among the files of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 6 62 WATTS'S PSALMS AND HYMNS. long before his death of suppressing or altering parts of his Psalms and Hymns, but was prevented by circum- stances wholly beyond his control." " Mr. Tompkins had very freely pointed out to him the impropriety of sanctioning with his name doxolo- gies to the Trinity, and especially to the Holy Spirit, since he had declared his belief, that the Spirit was not a separate being, and that such ascriptions of praise were not authorized in Scripture. In reply. Dr. Watts writes : ' I freely answer, I wish some things were corrected. But the question with me is this. As I wrote them in sincerity at that time, is it not more for the edification of Christians, and the glory of God, to let them stand, than to ruin the usefulness of the whole book, by correcting them now, and perhaps bring fur- ther and false suspicions on my present opinions .'' Be- ■ sides, I might tell you, that of all the books I have written, that particular copy is not mine. I sold it for a trifle to Mr. Lawrence near thirty years ago, and his posterity make money of it to this very day, and I can scarce claim a right to make any alteration in the book, which would injure the sale of it.'* And again, he replied to Mr. Grove, who suggested alterations, that ' he should be glad to do it, but it was out of his power, for he had parted with the copy, and the bookseller would not suffer any such alterations.' These testimo- nies are enough to show why Watts should desist from an attempt to make such alterations, as his change of sentiments would seem to require. At least they are such reasons as he thought satisfactory." • Memoirs of Dr. Watts, Appendix, p. 144 ; as quoted from Palmer. 63 But, my dear father, they would not, the first of them at least, satisfy me, nor, unless I am much mista- ken in my views of your character, would it satisfy you. It is about upon a par with the reason given by some of my friends why I should conceal my present opinions ; namely, because the knowledge of such a change of sentiment would undo all the good which, by the blessing of God, I have ever been able to do by my writings. It sounds very much like advising me to do evil that good may come. But to return. "It is evident through the whole," says Sparks, " that Watts was searching for the best reasons to quiet his mind in a case of necessity. To alter his hymns was out of his power ; he regretted this misfortune, but as it was not to be remedied, he was willing to contemplate it in its most favorable aspect. The main thing to our present purpose is, that he ac- knowledged a desire to make alterations, and never in any shape defended the Trinitarian parts of his hymns. In fact, had he believed in these parts, the discussion could not have commenced." LETTER VII. AN EXPLANATION. My dear Father : In your last communication you say : " Though somewhat doubtful, after your annunciation that you had settled two months ago the matter, which I supposed might still be in some degree in question, whether I had better resume my pen, I have notwithstanding done so, that 1 may have the satisfaction hereafter that will arise from the reflection of having done all in my power, not so much to influence and control your decisions, as to aid and direct your inquiries." I did not mean, my dear father, to express myself with arrogant confidence ; I was merely giving a reason why I called myself a Unitarian. I intended it as a reply to what you had said in regard to collateral doc- trines ; and I was endeavoring to establish the point, which was clear to my own mind, namely, that, what- ever might be my views upon other topics, while I believed in the absolute and unqualified unity of God, I was certainly a Unitarian ; and this point, I informed you, had been settled, in my own mind, for the space of two months or more. I am not so settled in any EARLY OPINIONS. 65 opinion, that I am not willing to hear and candidly to weigh any arguments which may be presented for a dif- ferent belief. You say, " it is but too evident that you have had before you the entire strength of one side of the ques- tion, the ablest productions of the most powerful minds which have been embarked in this discussion. So far, at least, as human authors have been your resource, one side has had immensely and overwhelmingly the advan- tage of the other. If your mind had not been made up, as you seem to say it has, I should like you to have read Dr. Miller's Letters on Unitarianism, and Pro- fessor Stuart's Letters to Dr. Channing. In the former of these, I am inclined to think, you will meet with a different exhibition of the opinions of early and primi- tive Christians, from that to which you have been recently listening, and to which you have, perhaps, acceded as correct." You have accordingly, since writing what I have quoted above, sent me a copy of Miller's Letters, which I have carefully read. I do not find that his " exhibition of the opinions of early and primitive Christians " at all overthrows the opinion which I have seen, as I think, established by other writers, — namely, that the early Fathers did not believe that the Trinity was taught in the Scriptures, and that those who be- lieved in and contended for this doctrine themselves, did not receive it as it is received at the present day. I have neither time nor strength to enlarge upon this point, but will only say, that Priestley's History of Early Opinions contains very satisfactory evidence in 6* 66 BIBLE PHKASEOLOGT. favor of my position, taken from the writings of the early Fathers thenaselves. You seem to be offended because Unitarians insist that such a doctrine as that of the Trinity ought to be explicitly stated in the Bible before we can be required to receive it, and much more, before we can regard it as fundamental. But if Unitarians feel in this way, as I confess they do, it is precisely as your favorite, Dr. Watts, felt. For proof of this, read again his prayer to the Deity, as quoted in my last letter. But I will quote from your letter. " Unitarians are right," you observe, "in saying that important doctrines will be frequently inculcated in the Scriptures, but," you ask, " are they not wrong in insisting that they must be pre- sented precisely in that form which they choose to pre- scribe, and that their phraseology must be used ? " Now this is by no means what Unitarians insist upon. They only insist that every fundamental doctrine must be capable of being stated in Bible phraseology. Any proposition, that is of merely human origin, and which cannot be explicitly stated in the words of the inspired volume, they would not consider authoritative ; let such a proposition emanate either from a Unitarian or a Trin- itarian source. Again, you say: " If worship to Christ is com- manded, — if men and angels are represented (and who can doubt that they are?) as worshipping him, — if the titles, or the attributes, or the works ascribed to God are attributed to him, is it not tantamount to what they profess to want ? " I acknowledge that it might be so if the word wor- EXPLANATIONS. 67 ship was always used in one sense, or if Trinitarians and Unitarians always used it in the same sense. But both of them acknowledge that in the Bible it is not always used in the same sense, that is, to denote supreme homage. There is then no other way than for each one to determine the sense in which the word is used in each particular instance, by other portions of Scripture about which there can be no doubt or difference of opinion. There remains, then, the second part of your question, " if the titles, &c." And here again we differ as to our premises, and cannot, of course, come to the same conclusion. Unitarians do not believe that the " titles," "attributes," or " works ascribed to God are attributed to Christ," in the same way or in the same sense. I will not enlarge upon this point here, because it has been fully discussed elsewhere. In another part of your letter you make the follow- ing inquiries. " Have you become so far acquainted with the productions of Unitarians, as to satisfy your- self that, the Trinity excepted, in all other respects they and we are, and ought to be, one people ? If you have, I most heartily rejoice at it, and I long to partake of the discovery. Do they believe, as you have been accustomed to hear from paternal and other lips, and accustomed, as I suppose, to believe and feel too, — do they believe in the lost and depraved condition of human nature, in the necessity and nature of the atonement, in the constituents and evidences of regeneration, in the cross of Christ, in self-denial and sacrifices, in non-con- formity to the world, and in heavenly-mindedness and other kindred subjects, as you have been accustomed 68 CERTAIN INQ,UI1UES. to regard these matters ? If so, it is high time we should come together, high time for Trinitarians to confess that they have injured and slandered their Uni- tarian brethren. I, for one, shall have very much to repent of, to ask God's and their forgiveness for, and to forsake. And I am ready to do all these things, and to do so with cheerfulness, if any of them can con- vince me that I have wronged them. I have condemned them in days past, but not, as one of their writers ex- presses it, ' without a hearing,' nor ' from the unfriendly representations of others.' If I have (and I certainly have) borne testimony against them, it has been ' with a good conscience.' But I think I have ever been, and still am, ready to do them ample justice." My dear father, no one, vvho knows you as I do, would doubt this for a moment. And yet while men make their particular views of the doctrines taught in the Bible necessary to salvation, I do not see how those who differ in their views can come together. The Uni- tarian is willing to give the name of Christian to all who acknowledge Christ as their divinely commissioned Teacher and Head. " We may safely affirm," says a Unitarian writer, "that the Scriptural sense of the term Christian, to which it might be wise for Christians to adhere, is neither more nor less than that of a disciple of Christ, — of one who, from a sincere belief in Christ's divine commission and Messiaship, chooses him for his instructor and his Lord." But others are not willing to use the term Christian as it is used in the Bible. In regard to the inquiries you make concerning Uni- tarians, namely, whether I have found out that there is THE DIFFERENCE. 69 no difference between them and Trinitarians upon cer- tain doctrinal points, I answer that I think there is a great difference ; but differences are to be expected while nnen's minds are so variously constituted. Upon fundamental points, that is, those points, a belief in which is necessary to salvation, I do not think there can be any difference of opinion, because I believe they are so plainly revealed that no honest inquirer can mistake them. In regard to all the points mentioned by you in the extract I have made from your letter, Unitarians have a certain belief ; it is rather a different belief from yours, but they think, as you do of your views ; namely, that they are sustained by the Bible. " We think," says the Rev. Orville Dewey, " that they (that is, Trinitarians) ought to listen to us, when we make the plea, once their own," — he had been al- luding to the fact that all Protestants had once to defend themselves from charges of heresy ; — "that we be- lieve, according to our honest understanding of their import, all things that are written in the Holy Scrip- tures. " There is one circumstance which makes the state- ment of this defence peculiarly pertinent and proper for MS. And that is, the delicacy which has been felt by our writers and preachers about the use of terms. When we found, for instance, that the phrase, ' Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,' and that the words atonement, regeneration, election, with some others, were appro- priated by the popular creeds, and stood in prevailing usage, for orthodox doctrines, we hesitated about the free use of them. It was not because we hesitated 70 EXTRACT FROM DEWEy's SERMONS. about the meatiing which Scripture gave>to them, but about the meaning which common usage had fixed upon them. We believed in the things themselves, we be- heved in the words as they stood in the Bible, but not as they stood in other books. But, finding that, when- ever we used these terms, we were charged, even as our great Master himself was, with ' deceiving the people,' and not anxious to dispute about words, we gave up the familiar use of a portion of the Scriptural phraseology. Whether we ought, in justice to ourselves, so to have done, is not now the question. We did so ; and the consequence has been, that the body of the people, not often hearing from our pulpits the contested words and phrases, not often hearing the words propitiation, sacri- fice, the natural man, the new birth, and the Spirit of God, — hold themselves doubly warranted in charging us with a defection from the faith of Scripture." You will perhaps recollect, my dear father, express- ing your alarm, when I told you, after hearing a Uni- tarian sermon upon regeneration, that I thought it a faithful and Scriptural one, only I missed some of the technicalities, to which I had been accustomed. The substance, I thought, was there, though presented in a new shape ; the solid truth I discovered, though divested of its orthodox and popular dress and drapery. But further, after asserting the firm belief of Unita- rians in the Scriptures, Mr. Dewey says, " in the first place, we believe ' in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost.' This was the simple, prim- itive creed of the Christians ; and it were well if men had been content to receive it in its simplicity. As a THE ATONEMENT. 71 creed, it was directed to be introduced into the form of baptism. The rite of baptism was appropriated to the profession of Christianity. The converts were to be baptized into the acknowledgment of the Christian religion ; ' baptized into the name,' that is, into the acknowledgment ' of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' " After enlarging upon this baptismal form, he says, secondly, " We believe in the atonement. That is to say, we believe in what that word, and similar words, mean in the New Testament. We take not the respon- sibility of supporting the popular interpretations. They are various, and are constantly varying, and are without authority, as much as they are without uniformity and consistency. What the divine record says, we believe according to the best understanding we can form of its import. After declaring that Unitarians believe the death of Christ was an atonement, a sacrifice, a propitiation, he says : " But now the question is, what is an atone- ment, a sacrifice, a propitiation ? And this is the diffi- cult question, — a question to the proper solution of which much thought, much cautious discrimination, much criticism, much knowledge, and especially of the ancient Hebrew sacrifices, is necessary. Can we not ' receive the atonement,' without this knowledge, this criticism, this deep philosophy ? What then is to be- come of the mass of mankind, of the body of Chris- tians .' Can we not savingly ' receive the atonement ' unless we adopt some particular explanation, some peculiar creed, concerning it ? Who will dare to 72 HUMAN DEPRAVITY. answer this question in the negative, when he knows that the Christian world is filled with differences of opinion concerning it ? . . . . The atonement is one thing ; the gracious interposition of Christ in our behalf; the doing of all that was necessary to be done, to pro- vide the means and the way for our salvation — this is one thing ; in this we all believe. The philosophy, the theory, the theology (so to speak) of the atonement, is another thing." " In the third place," says he, " we believe in hu- man depravity ; and a very serious and saddening belief it is,' too, that we hold on this point. We believe in the very great depravity of mankind, in the exceeding depravation of human nature. We believe that ' the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately w.icked.'" Then, after assenting to several of the strongest texts upon this point, he says : " We believe that this was not intended to be taken without qualifica- tions, for Paul, as we shall soon have occasion to observe, made qualifications First, it is not the depravity of nature, in which we believe. Human nature — nature as it exists in the bosom of an infant — is nothing else but capability ; capability of good as well as evil, though more likely, from its exposures, to be evil than good Secondly, it is not in the un- limited application of Paul's language, that we believe. When he said 'No, not one,' he did not mean to say that there was not one good man in the world. He believed that there were good men Neither, thirdly, do we believe in what is technically called ' total depravity ' ; that is to say, a total and absolute destitu- tion of everything right, even in bad men." REGENERATION. 73 " From this depraved condition, we believe, in the fourth place, that men are to be recovered, by a process, which is termed in the Scriptures, regeneration. We believe in regeneration, or the new birth. That is to say, we believe, not in all the ideas which men have affixed to those words, but in what we understand the sacred writers to mean by them. We believe that, ' except a man be born again, he cannot see the king- dom of God ; ' that ' he must be new created in Christ Jesus ; ' that ' old things must pass away, and all things become new.' We certainly think that these phrases applied with peculiar force to the condition of people, who were not only to be converted from their sins, but from the very forms of religion in which they had been brought up ; and we know indeed that the phrase ' new birth ' did, according to the usage of the language in those days, apply especially to the bare fact of proselytism. But we believe that men are still to be converted from their sins, and that this is a change of the most urgent necessity, and of the most unspeak- able importance " We believe, too, in the fifth place, in the doctrine of election. That is to say, again, we believe in what the Scriptures, as we understand them, mean by that word The truth is, that the doctrine of elec- tion is a matter either of scholastic subtilty, or of pre- sumptuous curiosity, with which, as we apprehend, we have but very little to do. Secret things belong to God. We believe in what the Bible teaches of God's infinite and eternal foreknowledge We believe in election, not in selection. We believe in fore- knowledge, not in fate 7 74 ON THE FUTURE STATE. " In the sixth place, we believe in a future state of rewards and punishments. We believe that sin must ever produce misery, and that holiness must ever pro- duce happiness But there has been that at- tempt to give definiteness to the indefinite language of the Bible on this subject, to measure the precise extent of those words which spread the vastness of the unknown futurity before us ; and with this system of artificial crit- icism, the popular ignorance of Oriental figures and metaphors has so combined to fix a specific meaning on the phraseology in question, that it is difficult to use it vyithout constant explanation. ' Life everlasting,' and ' everlasting fire,' the mansions of rest, and the worm that never dieth, are phrases fraught with a just and rea- sonable, but, at the same time, vast and indefinite im- port We believe, then, in a heaven and a hell. We believe there is more to be feared hereafter than any man ever feared, and more to be hoped than any man ever hoped. " Once more, and finally, we believe in the supreme and all-absorbing importance of religion The soul's concern is the great concern, &c." But I must bring these extracts to a close, for I find I cannot do, justice to Mr. Dewey without occupying more space than my limits will allow. I must refer you to the work itself,* where you will find much that must interest you. It is a delightful book. I will only add, that the senti- ments contained in these extracts are such as I have met with in every Unitarian work which I have read. * Dewey's Controversial Sermons, published in 1840. LETTEK VIII. INQUIRIES ANSWERED. Mv DEAR Father: I HAVE arisen at the hour of four to indite a brief reply to that part of the letter you are writing me which has been received. I feel so much exhausted from the amount of reading and writing in which I have been engaged for the last two months, that my strength soon fails ; and therefore, my dear father, you must excuse me if I do not write as fully as you might expect or wish. In reply to the argument on your second page, commencing with — " what if they are worshipping three Gods," — let me refer you to an essay by James Foster, on " Fundamentals in Religion," contained in " Sparks's Collections " for May, 1825. It conveys a better answer than I have ability or strength to give you. Again, you ask, " where have you seen a great many exemplary Christians, according to what you have been taught, and what you believed you had felt of vital, experimental Christianity .' " In this sense, in view of certain points of doctrine which I had been taught, and which I believed that every one must receive before he could be a Christian — I will answer, that I have not 76 MORALITY OF UNITARIANS. seen them. But I have long ago learned to judge of a tree by its fruits ; it is our only means of judging ; it is the rule which our Saviour has given us, and must therefore be a correct rule. In this sense I have seen them. When I behold a person doing justly, loving mercy, and, as it seems to me, vcalking humbly with God — wherever I can thus recognise what appears to me God's image in my felloio creatures — my soul feels fellowship with such an one, however I may deem him mistaken in points of doctrine. It may be they are, as I have been, ignorantly wrong. Now it is con- ceded on all hands, sO far as I have known — and I have heard the opinion often expressed by Trinitarians — that, as a body, the Unitarians are a remarkably moral people.* But, they say, that is their religion ; they cultivate a high tone of moral feeling. Well, all will be inclined to acknowledge that this elevated tone of morality is an excellent thing, so far as it goes. Now^ when I hear them aver, and when I read from the works of all their writers to whose pages I can get access, that this morality is the fruit of a sincere and living faith — by living faith I mean a faith which brings forth fruit — in the Lord Jesus Christ as one who comes to them with an almighty commission ; with credentials from his Father and our Father, from his God and our God ; with the same authority as if Jehovah himself had appeared on earth ; I am ashamed and confound- ed that I have, without giving them even a hearing, without the slightest examination, been guilty of the *See Appendix L. INVOLUNTARY ERRORS. 77 grossest injustice towards them. I am, I solemnly- repeat it, ashamed and confounded ; may God forgive me. Such uncharitableness, however involuntary, the fruit of mistaken and narrow minded opinions, I feel has been a shade upon my character, a degradation to tny soul ; and I bless God for my. great deliverance. My first feeling, after reading some little tracts con- taining information concerning their faith, and written with a spirit of heavenly love and meekness, was an inexpressible relief to find I had been mistaken in regard to a numerous and respectable class of my fellow men ; that they were not, even in theory, what I had thought them ; and, though mingled it may be with self- upbraiding, a discovery like this cannot but be delight- ful, I will not merely say to any liberal and enlightened Christian, but to any humane mind, or human heart. You ask me, my deaV father, if I now embody in what I term Ghristianity only the naturally amiable tempers and correct deportment of persons, who have no savor of devotion, who deny, and some of them even almost jridicule, that change taught by Christ to Nicodemus, and which I for a number of years have professed to believe in, and moreover to feel, not merely as an outward and moral, but as an inward, radical, and spiritual change. In answer to this I say no, my father. Those cannot be Christians who deny what Christ came to teach. Those are by no means my ideas of Chris- tianity ; and you will see, if you are willing to read what I send you, that these are not the views of Unita- rians. I will refer you now to the following articles. In " Burnap's Expository Lectures," the article on 7* 78 UNITARIAN WRITINGS, " Saving faith in Christ ; " an article of Dr. Channing's, entitled " Objections to Unitarian Christianity con- sidered ; " the tract on Christian Salvation ; the article " On the nature of a Heavenly Conversation," in the number of " Sparks's Collections " for May, 1825 ; the tract entitled " The Unitarian's Answer ;" the one Bntitled " The Doctrine of Religious Experience ; " and " Mr. Whitman's Discourse on Regeneration." If, my beloved father, you should feel that by any step I may feel myself bound to take, I am showing you personal disrespect, such a fact would add exquisitely and infinitely to my sufferings, but it could not alter my views of duty. This matter is between me and my ■God ; and, at my age, and under my circumstances, I am responsible to God alone for my actions. As the Almighty sees my heart, he knows, my father, how I love and venerate you ; he sees lliat you are the apple of mine eye ; but, in a case like the present^ prayer- fully considered under all its aspects, I will remember ray Master's charge to his disciples, and call no man my father on the earth, for one is my Father, which is in Heaven. Matt, xxiii. 9. I have gathered the opinions of a great many Unita- rian writers from their books ; it is now ray intention to hear the preaching of Dr. Oilman and such other Unita- rians as may fall in my way, that I may judge of his and their opinions for myself. I consider that I am acting for eternity, and 1 could tell you of feelings which ought to rejoice your heart ; but I forbear, being afraid that you will ascribe them all to the strength of what you deem my strange delusion. Perhaps my LINES ON LUKE XVIII. 29, 30. 79 future life will prove, better than any tbing I can say, whether the doctrines I now espouse will or will not bear fruit to the glory of God. I have decided to go on next Sabbath morning to the Unitarian Church, and have thought it honest and right to tell you so. I have read carefully, and, I would add, prayerfully, the books which you have placed in my hands ; but they have only served to strengthen me in the opinions I now hold. You will find in the two books — " Norton's Statement of Reasons," and " Burnap's Expository Lectures," — explanations of most of the texts you brought before my mind ; and I would remark that, I did not obtain those books till after my views were changed and my letters written. " May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God. and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with us all." Amen. LINES ON tUKE XVIII. 29, 30. " There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the Kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting." V Father ! I can leave them all, At my much loved Master's call ; He refused not, for my sake. Sorrow's bitter ciy) to take, That to me he might commend Love like thine, Almighty Friend ! 80 LINES ON LUKE XVIII. 29, 30, He, who fainting thousands fed, Had not where to lay his head; He, of all thy sons the chief, Lived a life of pain and grief; He, the Lamb thou didst provide, Willingly — to save us — died. Come then, suffering ! Welcome scorn Doubly blest are they who mourn ! Blessed while on earlh they roam — Blessed when they reach their home — Welcome, loneliness and grief! There's a hand can bring relief. Fear and doubt, away, away ! See ! the dawn of heavenly day Brightens in the eastern skies ! There, O let me fix mine eyes ! See ! that Sun brings perfect day ! Fear and doubf, away, away ! LETTER IX AN OVERFLOW OP FEELING. My BEI.OTEU Friend : I HAVE received, perused, and reperused your affec- tionate letters, and thank you for them. They were dictated, I know, by the most ardent love for me, and zeal for the honor and glory of the dear Redeemer. But they are altogether an appeal to my feelings, and are founded, I think, upon incorrect premises. And I will tell you why I say so. You write thus : " Crushed and almost heart-broken, my beloved friend, I have just risen from my knees, where, if ever my soul was poured out in prayer, it has been now for you, that God would, in bis great mercy, for his dear Son's sake, and especi- ally for your own soul's sake, even now arrest your hand before it tears the crown from the head of our glorious and exalted Saviour. O, how my heart clings to him when I see him thus sorely wounded in the house of his friends." My dear friend, the strength of your feelings has misled you. What an expression ! " Tears the crown ! " I speak the truth, and I weep while I write it, when I declare that I would sooner die than rob the blessed Saviour — my once crucified, but now 82 LOVE TO JESUS CHRIST. risen and glorified Lord, my Advocate, my Inter- cessor with the Father — of one particle of the honor and glory which is his due. Every word that the Bible speaks concerning him I believe to be true. I believe that " God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." I love my Lord and Master in sincerity and in truth — "whom having not seen, I love; in whom, though now I see him not, yet believing, I re- joice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory." I go to the Father only through him, because I believe that He is " the way, and the truth, and the life," and that "other foundation can no man lay." And when I arrive at Heaven, which I shall certainly do if I heartily strive to do the will of my Father which is in Heaven, 1 expect to unite with rhy dear sainted husband and son, and with "many angels round about the throne, and the beasts and the elders — ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands — saying with a loud voice. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to re- ceive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing ! " We read in 2 Pet. i. 17, that he " received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice from the excellent glory, (there is, we know, a glory that excelleth,) this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Why may we not say to that Son of God, " Thou art worthy to receive, &c. .' " It is hard, my dear friend, to accuse me of tearing CHRIST A KING. 83 the crown from my glorious Redeemer's head ; and yet I know that the expression is dictated by your love to that Redeemer, and so I freely forgive it. Aye, more ; I rejoice that you love him so well ; but do not take it for granted that I do not love him, because I cannot render him the supreme homage which I honestly think belongs to God alone. The crown is still upon his head ; be is at the head of the mediatorial king- dom, and will be there until that hour when " cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power. For he must reign till he hath put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. And when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that He is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." It must take a very explicit statement of the doctrine that there are three equal persons in one God, to set aside a text so full, so unqualified, so clear as this ; given, as it seems to me, in consideration of our weakness and want of knowledge. My friend thinks that I have not acted with due respect to my beloved parents in not going to them at first with my doubts and fears. At first sight it may appear so, but I see from the manner in which my first communication, which I meant should be kind and respectful, has been received by you all, except my 84 MISTAKES CORRECTED. father, that I was right to take the course I have. Now do not misunderstand me — lam a reasonable being — I feel that I have been an honest, sincere, and indus- trious inquirer after truth, notwithstanding the insinuation that I have gone with my doubts to ^^ professed friends on the other side." I know you will believe me when I declare that this is not true. In the spirit and letter of the declaration, it is not time. In the solitude of my own chamber, the Holy Scriptures, my own mind, and, I trust, the Spirit of God, have done the work. You have not received my communication in anger, but has any one a right to take it for granted that I have relied on my own strength ; have been under individual influ- ence ; have been taken advantage of by Satan, or any other adversary ; have been given up to believe a strong delusion ; have tried to reason myself into a belief of Unitarianism ; have yielded to the pride of intellect ; have in heart wandered away from God ; have followed the leadings of my naturally proud and independent spirit ; have rejected a doctrine because it is incompre- hensible .'' Have / ever made this last assertion .' Did. I say I rejected the doctrine of the Trinity because it was incomprehensible } No, dear friend, I have not said so. I have rejected it because I cannot find it in ■ the Bible. If I could satisfy myself that it was there, I would instantly receive it, however incomprehen- sible.* Were I disposed to retort, I might say that those * The modern doctrine of the Trinity is, to me, bo plainly a contradiction, that I deem it impossible it could be found in a revelation from God. HUMAN REASON. 85 who receive the doctrine of the Trinity are the persons who are depending upon human reason. It appears to me they fall into two strange and opposite errors. They first construct the doctrine upon inference and human reason, and then prostrate reason to receive it. I do not take it for granted that those who differ from me must of necessity be wrong, and in a soul-ruining error ; I only say that I cannot see as they do. What fallible creature should dare to say that he knows he is right .' You all lay more stress upon the consequences of my change than upon anything else. Consequences should be considered fully, fairly, intently, and deliber- ately ; but are they of ihe first importance ? And are you sure that I lose sight of them altogether .' I leave these questions with you ; your answer to them I know - will.be right. I wish you to place every argument before me ; I want to be tested ; I bless God for the late singular and providential occurrences in our immediate family circle ; they came just at the right time. These cir- cumstances, and a consideration of the consequences to which you have so feelingly and justly alluded, will doubtless lead me to caution ; but you must go further before I can give up my opinions. You must convince me that they are unscriptural and untenable, and I will honestly and instantly renounce them. But when all you say amounts to this, we are right, and you are wrong — you are blind, but we can see; I acknowledge that I am not in a fair way to be con- vinced. 8 86 TALENTS. My friend says : "I bless God that I have not talents which lead me to reject all that I cannot un- derstand." I have already said that this is not my reason for rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity, but I bless God that he has given me talents which render me capable of judging for my seU what is revealed ; and for the right use of those talents I am accountable to God. I could comment on one or two texts in your letter — one of which is misquoted — and tell you in what light I view them, but you do not seem to wish any approach to argument, so I forbear. I believe that for a long time 1 have been a fol- lower of God, as a dear child, though not always a dutiful one, and often I have had occasion, like Peter, to weep bitterly over my sins. I believe that I have been in a doctrinal error all my life, but it was an involuntary one. I hope and believe that, as a true worshipper, I " worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seeketh such to worship him." I believe that I am Christ's, and "Christ is God's." I believe that " we are not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot j who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for us, who by him do believe in God, that raised him from the dead, and gave him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God." I believe that Jesus is gone into Heaven, and is " on the right hand of God, (how can he be God, and be also on God's right hand .') angels, and authorities, and powers being made subject to. him." EXPRESSION OF SENTIMENTS. 87 My friend begs me not to attempt to shake the faith of others. My friend ought to know me better. They have their Bibles, and I have mine. If they and I fol- low the directions therein contained, we shall all arrive at H^eaven, where we shall see the Saviour as he is, and be forever with the Lord. But sooner than feel that I am an object of suspicion and fear in this respect, I would prefer to exile myself to the ends of the world, and live and die alone. And this reminds me that my friend uses this expression, " now more alone, if you persist." "Persist" in what, my dear friend .' You have chosen an unfortunate word. It sounds as if you thought that I was merely taking this course because it was right in my own eyes. Is it wrong for me to "per- sist " in adhering to what are are my honest opinions ? But I meant principally to turn your attention to the word alone. If I persist, who will be most alone, you or I'? I know you do not do me the injustice to believe that I am without natural affection, and all these expressions I overlook, regarding them as an evidence of your love, though I could not in candor do otherwise than mention them. Dear friend, I want your prayers ; I want your faithfulness ; I want every test which you can give me ; but judge not me, nor any one else, " that ye be not judged." O my Heavenly Father ! If I have done dishonor to thy beloved Son, in whom thou art well pleased, I beseech thee to convince me of it by the illuminating influences of thy Holy Spirit. Thy Son has taught us how to pray, and has told us that whatever we shall ask the Father in his name, he will do it — in thy Son^s 88 A PRATER. name I ask thee for direction at this most momentous era of my life. And while I pray to be made meek and lowly of heart, I thank thee, that, as I humbly hope, thou hast not given me the spirit of fear, " but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." And may the talents which thou hast given me, be consecrated to thine honor and glory, and to the spread of the Redeem- er's kingdom ; these things I ask in thy dear Son's name. Amen and Amen. LETTER X. UNITARIANS DO NOT DENY CHRIST. Mr DEAR Sib, You profess to have taken your pen in hand out of personal regard and concern for me ; in this assertion I certainly believe you sincere, and therefore I thank you for your kind intentions. But your letter has been, on many accounts, very unsatisfactory and unpleasant. You take the broad ground that Trinitarians are the only believers in Christ's divinity and atonement. Now the truth or falsehood of this assertion depends entirely upon the ideas vvhich are attached to the terms divinity and atonement. You use them in one sense. Unitarians in another ; and their sense is as correct to them as yours is to you. And you go on to say — " Some, it is clear, loere foretold as to be distinguished by this trait — denial of the Lord; and denial of Him as having bought them. Can you think of a party to whom such a phrase is equally applicable as that of the Unitarians, if their leading tenets be false .'' It does not say what men shall affirm, but only what they shall deny. Unitarianism is particularly distinguished, as you know, for its negations. It is not technically nor com- 8* 90 ADDITIONS TO TRUTH ERRORS. monly used to express what any body does believe, so much as what they do not believe. It, by the usage of all religious society, (?) means those who reject evan- gelical doctrine.* Here then is something of a prima facie reason to suspect that you may be going wrong in joining them." If, my dear Sir, Unitarians believe as much as the Bible reveals, they believe enough. This they profess to do. Ml additions to the doctrines taught in the word of God, are errors which ought to be abandoned ; and Unitarians cannot find the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible, nor the doctrine of legal substitution, nor the other doctrines peculiar to Galvanism. So far as their system, in comparison with yours, is a system of negations, they rejoice in the fact ; because they believe that your faith is encumbered with doctrines of human invention, not sanctioned by the word of God. Bear in mind then, that their system is one of negations only when compared with your creed, and not when com- pared with the Bible. They have as much right to assert that their system is the scriptural one as you have ; and, as no human being is infallible, the question still remains a question, which each individual must der cide for himself, according to his opportunity and ability to examine and understand the infallible word of God. But Unitarians by no means admit that they do not believe in Christ's divinity and atonement. It is true that their belief on these points is different from yours, but it is just as real and valuable. They believe in the divinity of the Son of God, because God gave to his * See Appendix, M. VIEWS OF ATONEMENT. 91 Anointed bis Spirit without measure.* They believe in bis atonement, because it is declared tbat " God so loved tbe world that be gave his only begotten Son, * On this point one of them, the Rev. A. B. Mazzey, thus writes : " The popular theology tells us that Jesus Christ is ' both God and man,' that he has accordingly 'two distinct natures.' In on^aspect, this representation is correct. It is true, that two natures, a human and a divine, met in our Saviour. But it is not true, that they constituted one being. Christ, the man, was not united with a Christ, who is God, but with God, a separate, inde- pendent being, one who, unlike himself, is eternal, omniscient, and almighty. He was in God, and God was in him. The apos- tle Paul incites tAe Christian to become a partaker of the divine nature. Christ, in this sense, did partake of the divine nature. God was manifested in him ; he was gifted with his Spirit with- out measure; it is his connection with God that makes him our Saviour ; destroy that, and we have no Saviour left. So is it that two natures met in Christ." The following remarks are from an article from the pen of Dr. Channing, entitled, " Objections to Unitarian Christianity considered." He says: " It is objected to us that We deny the divinity of Jesus Christ. Now what does this objection mean ? What are we to understand by the divinity of Christ.'' In the sense in which many Christians, and perhaps a majority, interpret it, we do not deny it, but believe it as firmly as themselves. We believe firmly in the divinity of Christ's mis- sion and ofiice ; that he spoke with divine authority, and was a bright image of the divine perfections. We believe that God dwelt in him, manifested himself through him, and communicated to him his Spirit without measure. We believe that Jesus Christ was the most glorious display, expression, and representative of God to mankind, so that in seeing and knowing him, we see and know the invisible Father ; so that when Christ came, God visit- ed the world, and dwelt with men more conspicuously than at any former period. In Christ's words we hear God. speaking ; in his miracles we behold God acting ; in his character and life we see an unsullied image of God's purity and love. We believe, then, in the divinity of Christ, as this term is often and properly used." 92 ILLUSTRATION. that whosoever beheveth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Nor do they deny the Lord as having bought them, any nnore than they deny that God redeemed the Israelites out of the hand of Pharaoh by providing the means for their escape. They believe that they are " bought with a price " — even the pre- cious blood of Christ, as a Lamb without blemish and without spot. They believe that the sinner is " recon- ciled to God by the death of his Son." And they believe with St. Paul, that if, when they were enemies, they were reconciled to God by jhe death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, they shall be saved by his life. I will give an illustration of my meaning. Sup- pose a civil community to be in a state of rebellion against their lawful sovereign. It would be just in that King to visit them with summary vengeance ; but he is a compassionate King, and is not willing that any should perish. After trying various means to reconcile them to his government, last of all he sends his Son ; saying, " They will reverence ray Son." The Son willingly undertakes this mission of mercy. It is the aim and object of his life to persuade the rebellious subjects of his kind and gracious Father to be reconciled to him, and submit themselves to his just and reasonable author- ity. Many and various are the proofs he gives them of his Father's long sufiering and tender love ; and in his own person he gives them a wonderful example of filial veneration and obedience. Such an example of filial devotion, of patience under sufiering, and of un- wearied compassion, the world has never seen. The same untiring love which fills the bosom of the King, ILLUSTRATION. 93 his Father, dwells in his own. To these rebellious subjects he represents his Father as their Father, long suffering, slow to anger, ready, upon certain reasonable conditions, to forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin. Some are touched by this exhibition of his own and his Father's love, and willingly resign themselves to his authority, and follow his guidance ; for he comes with " all power " to fulfil the objects of his mission. But the great majority reject his authority, and will not even credit the genuineness of his credentials. The more he presses his claims upon them, the more vio- lent becomes their opposition. Finally, their madness and fury rise to its height, and they put to death, in the most shameful and painful manner, the only and well beloved Son of their merciful King — him who came only to do them good, and reconcile them to his Fa- ther's kind and reasonable rule. This bitter cup he drinks ; this dreadful death he meekly endures for the enemies of his Father and himself, crying in his agony, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." At this wonderful consutlimation, men stand amazed. One exclaims, " truly this was a righteous man ; " and all the people that came together to that sight, behold- ing the things that are done, smite their breasts, and return. Those who would not listen to him in life, now become reconciled by his death. And, being reconciled, they will naturally remember his wonderful example, his precepts, his commands, and thus be saved by his life. In after ages the story of his death will be read with wonder and gratitude, and will still be 94 CHRIST OUK FOUNDATION. efficacious for the reconciliation and salvation of man- kind. Those who had been appointed by the Son to spread the glad tidings of pardon, and to carry on the Father's benevolent design — the work of reconciliation — would now naturally preach the cross ; would know nothing among men, but the Son and Him crucified. This would be, emphatically, their theme. In this would they glory. For this, in imitation of their Master, would they rejoice to suffer and to die. By believing in the cross, as held up to view by its ministers, all could still be rescued who are willing to be saved on the terms proposed by their sovereign. Other foundation can no man lay. This is to save us. The death of Christ reconciles us to God, and his life teaches us how to live. Therefore we. Unitarians as well as Trinitarians, belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, who has bought us with his blood. Eternal life is the gift of the Father, through him. Oh, what a price He paid for us ! Herein is love ! Now hath the Father given Him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as he hath given him.* If Christ, under God, hath given to us eternal life, to Christ, un- der God, we belong. We are Christ's, and Christ is God's. Christ says to his Father, " all mine are thine, and thine are mine." Now, my dear Sir, is it correct to say that Unitarians reject the atonement, only be- cause they do not admit your view of it f If they believe that the death of Christ is efficacious in pro- curing their salvation, in this sense they believe that it John xvii. 2. Christ's death ouk life. 95 was thereby purchased. They believe that his death was necessary to produce such a change in us, that our Heavenly Father could pardon our sins according to his promise. Without the death of Christ we should not be so likely to be wrought upon to repent and re- form, and without repentance and reformation we could not be pardoned. Thus is our redemption purchased by the blood of Christ, who, in a sense, and by a fig- ure, bore our sins in his own body on the tree ; just as, in a sense, and by a figure, he took the infirmities, and bore the sicknesses of those whose maladies he removed while he sojourned among men. Thus, my dear Sir, I have answered your question by affirming, that, whether the leading tenets of Uni- tarianism be true ov false, they cannot be characterized by the fact of denying the Lord that bought them. Nor can they be said to reject Christ's divinity and atonement. Though you and they entertain very dif- ferent views about these matters, they rejoice in the be- lief that their system is by far the most Scriptural and rational one. LETTER XI. THE SCRIPTURES HONOR CHRIST. My DEAR SiK : You ask me to " consider deeply whither the whole strain of the JVew Testament, and of a great mass of passages in tlie Old, do not seem constructed on the principle of honoring Christ as much as possible. One," you say, " calls him ' Rabbi ;' one, the Son of God, and King ; another, ' one who knew all things ; ' another, his Lord and his God. There seems," you continue, " to have been no fear of overcharging the epithets of honor, or the ascriptions of power bestowed. Now the charge of Unitarianism is, plainly, that we think too much of Christ, and honor him too highly. But to honor him very highly is the spirit of all the New Testament." I freely grant that epithets of honor and ascriptions of power, are, throughout the Bible, lavished upon our blessed Master ; but that is no reason why we should confound him with the Supreme God, who is constantly spoken of as a distinct Being from the Messiah. How can the Son be the Father f We are no where told that they are two distinct persons in one Being. It is TRINITARIANS DISHONOR CHRIST. 97 true that Christ says, " I and my Father are one ; " but he also, in prayer to his Father, explains his mean- ing by these remarkable words ; " and the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one." And how could this be i Let our Lord reply ; " that they all may be one, as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be " — not one in each other, but — " one in us."* Further, Unitarians do not charge their orthodox brethren with giving too much honor to Christ ; they charge them with mistaking altogether the declarations of the Bible concerning him. The Christ in whom Unitarians believe ; who is a distinct being from the Supreme God ; the Son, and not the Father ; you do not sufficiently honor ; therefore the charge made against you, by Unitarians, is just the reverse of the one you have put into their lips. What you call the human nature of Christ you certainly do not honor as the Unitarian honors his Master. When Christ declares, without qualification, that there was a certain day and hour of which he knew nothing, we, who are Unitarians, believe him. You, on the contrary, make him prevari- cate, and, in one nature, deny what he certainly must have known in the other ; and yet these two natures you declare to have been in constant and intimate union. You continually make him contradict himself. This is, in my view, sadly to dishonor him. It is very natural that the Scriptures should seem to labor to honor Christ. It was to reveal the way of •Johnxvii. 21, 23. 98 AN EXTRACT. salvation by Christ that they were written. Patriarchs, prophets, evangelists, apostles, all hold up the Messiah to the view of a suffering, sinful world. In the glowing language of the east, they reveal the promised Saviour of mankind. Now, all that the Scriptures say of Christ Unitarians joyfully receive. They are not afraid of honoring their Master, but they are afraid of assigning to him that place which belongs to God alone. You go on to say, " had I heard of some great un- natural attack of my friend's upon her venerable parents, personally, it could not have surprised me more. She virtually attacks our common Lord and Redeemer, as I must testify, by this retrocession from her allegiance to Him ; lessens infinitely his claims on her ; lowers his title to her confidence — his right to command — her motives to love him. He did not leave His divine throne for her, she has discovered ; did not take upon himself her nature ; did not condescend to be a man. She has no duty to Him as ' Lord of all ; ' discards and repudiates all zeal for Him as once relinquishing and now wielding all power in Heaven and on earth. Is this my once pious friend ? The whole character, tone, and depth of her piety, how changed, if these tidings be true ! " My dear Sir, why should you seek to make my heart sad, when the Lord has not made it so ? I thank God that such assertions cannot deprive me of that peace of conscience which I feel at this moment ; but such allu- sions to my venerable parents as the one you have made above, do make me sad indeed. God knows how it has wrung my heart to give them pain ; but He also UNITARIANS CHRISTIANS. 99 knows that I could not conscientiously act otherwise than I have done. And what right have you to say that I have given up my allegiance to our common Lord ? You require, before you will allow to me the title of Christian, far more than Christ or his apostles — the establishers of this religion — ever required. Now what right has any one to do this ? In the New Testament I con- stantly find that men were commanded to believe that the Messiah was the Son of God ; but in the present day a very different faith is required of us. Instead of saying, " I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," men are required to say, " I believe that thou art the living God himself." The former is the Unitarian faith, the latter the Trinitarian ; which of them is the more scriptural belief, it appears to me is very plain. You cannot produce one passage of Scripture in which the primitive teachers of Christianity required a belief in Jesus as the Supreme Being. They called upon men to believe and confess that Jesus was the Christ ; that is, the Anointed ; he who was to come ; who was typified and promised throughout the Old Testament, as the great Mediator between God and man. He was to be received as the glorious Saviour of the world — anointed and sent of God for this pur- pose, and therefore clothed with the authority of God himself. A knowledge of his original nature was never made a requisite before men could receive the salvation he came to bring. It was enough that they recog- nized his divine authority, and joyfully submitted to it. 100 SCKIPTUEE TESTS OF FAITH. And what right have modern divines to require more than their Master ever did ? Should a father send a messenger to a child in a dis- tant country, v^ould it be absolutely necessary for that child to discover the original standing and respectability of the messenger before he would receive and honor his father's message ? Would not his chief inquiry be, does he really come from my father, with full power and authority to deliver and enforce his will ? This point once satisfactorily ascertained, would not the mes- sage have equal weight whether the chosen messenger were originally rich or poor, honored or unknown ? I do not mean to say that the original dignity and importance of the messenger would be a matter of no consequence. Far from it. But I do mean to assert that his original character would not affect the abstract question of his authority, and of the child's duty impli- citly to obey what he is convinced is his father's mes- sage.* Now Christ comes to us as the messenger of God. Through Him God was manifested in the flesh. He came^o usher in the Christian dispensation. Well, if I acknowledge his authority — let it proceed from what source it may — let it be original, or derived from the Father, as he expressly teaches us it is — the effect upon me is just the same ; and you have no right to take it for granted that I am no Christian, and that the whole character, tone, and depth of my piety are * The Trinitarian Bishop Watson says, " His (Christ's) author- ity as a teacher, is the same, whether you suppose him to have been the Eternal God, or a being inferior to Him, but commis- sioned by Him." 101 changed, when I acknowledge Christ as my spiritual Head and Lord just as fully and heartily as ever I did. " Who art thou that judgest another man's servant ? To his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up ; for God is able to make him stand." LETTER XII INSTABILITY. My DEAR Sir : You have pronounced me "unstable," and perhaps there are many of my other relatives and friends who are at this very moment applying to me the same injuri- ous epithet. But my experience and observation, during my journey through life thus far, have convinced me that the possession of an inquiring, honest, inde- pendent mind — especially^f such a mind be connected with an ardent temperament — will nearly always bring upon its possessor, at some time or other of his life, the charge of instability. Progress is emphatically the law of such a man's being. Now, if, in childhood, he, as most others do, receives his opinions upon trust, in all probability the time will come when he will change those opinions. If, unfor- tunately, from the ardor of his feelings, or some peculiar circumstances of his life, he makes them known to the world before he has sufficiently examined and compared them with other and opposite opinions, he has the mor- tifying task before him of acknowledging himself to have been in error. But the truly honest mind will not be OPINIONS SOMETIMES TO BE TRIED. 103 deterred, by any feelings of mortification, from avowing any change, which, after mature deliberation, may have taken place ; especially when it is considered that such a change is not always a mark of folly. There is an old Italian saying, which has passed into a proverbj with which such a man may comfort himself — il sabio inuda conscio, il nescio no.* It is often the case that a man may never have occa- sion to suspect his opinions, till providential circumstan- ces place them before him in a new and startling light, and he sees defects and errors which had always re- mained hidden before. Then, if he be a man of the right stamp, he will march boldly up to the difficulty, and stare it in the face. Perhaps, upon close inspec- tion, what appeared to be spots and blemishes will turn out to be only shadows upon a bright surface — shadows created by some external objects, which will disappear when those objects are removed, and leave the surface unsullied and glorious as before. Or, it may be, he will find that they are stains which cannot be removed ; indicative of unsoundness in the material itself. Free inquiry is, in general, no friend to old ideas and associations. And it behoves us to be cautious how, with ruthless hands, we remove the old landmarks, and lose sight of the natural boundaries and limits set for the human mind. But, on the other hand, those who have fettered themselves with human pledges, and imprisoned themselves within the boundaries of human creeds and systems, will find it extremely difficult, nay, almost * A wise man changes his mind, a fool never. 104 IMPORTANCE OF INVESTIGATION. impossible, to burst those fetters, however galling, or overstep those boundaries, however narrow and uncom- fortable. They will even find it difiicult to give due credit to the motives of those who can no longer remain thus fettered and imprisoned — who have made the effort, and freed themselves from bondage. And here I cannot too earnestly enforce upon those who are intrusted with the training of youthful minds, the vast importance of giving them every opportunity and assistance in the candid and thorough examination of the various systems of Theology, professed through- out the world. Such a course will, at least, teach them caution in the formation and expression of their views, and it may save them from much future trouble and per- plexity. Such an examination, taking place in early life, beneath the watchful eye of pure affection, will ever be a source of satisfaction to all concerned, pro- vided that examination has been a thorough and candid one. Let every system of faith be brought to the test of Scripture, and not alone the faith professed by our progenitors. If parents do not even allow their children to hear the opinions of those who differ from them ; if, on the contrary, they anxiously and sedulously keep them in the dark ; if, more especially, they ever let it be discovered that they dread and fear any freedom of inquiry — they may rest assured that they are likely to defeat the very ends at which they aim. They cannot always hold the veil before their children's eyes. The parent bird cannot always keep its offspring in the nest. The human mind loves freedom, and will not always AN EXTRACT. 105 consent to be fettered. The time may come when opin- ions, which are merely the result of education, which have been taken upon trust, which have never stood the test of free inquiry, and comparison with other opinions, — the time, I say, may come, when these opinions shall be shaken. Then, a strong and unyield- ing foundation may be absolutely necessary to keep the lohole fabric of faith from falling like the house which was built upon the sand. Oh, it will then be a great mercy if the entire struc- ture do not crumble into absolute ruin, never to be built again. It will be a great mercy, if, amid the general wreck, enough of the pure, uncrumbled material can be saved for the erection of another, and a more enduring structure. Such a result would be happy indeed. The new edifice of faith would perhaps be less imposing, because more simple, than the former one, but it would be not the less beautiful and valuable. On the contrary, no mind could estimate, no words could express its su- perior value. Its beautiful simplicity and unusual sym- etry would never cease to delight its fortunate possessor. Built of solid stone, and founded upon a rock, the rains might descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow, and beat upon that house, and it would not fall, because founded on a rock. You remark : " Yours is not the first, nor the second, nor even the third case in which I have been called to mourn the fulfilment of God's awful prophecy in the persons of my own friends. Some valued friends have already proved that they were ' given up to strong delu- sion, to believe a lie,' by professing that other form of 106 WHO HAS THE HOLY SPIHIT ? Anti-Christ more suited to the constitution of their minds — called Popery. Widely as they seem to dif- fer, they are, when sifted, varied developments of the same enmity to God's wonderful yet simple way. My own mode of accounting for it is, that it has not pleased God to enlighten them with his Holy Spirit." To what " awful prophecy " do you allude in the first part of this extract .-' Is it that of being given over to strong delusion, to believe a lie ? I suppose it must be. A little further on you say, that " it has not pleased God to enlighten them," that is, those who do not think as you do, " with his Holy Spirit." This is quite a flattering unction for a man to lay to his soul, I am willing to acknowledge. It would be a very con- venient mode of settling differences of opinion, if we could only be certain who has the Spirit, and who has not. But there is the rub. If we could only decide upon some one living human being like ourselves, who, we were very sure, was under this special influence, whom we could consult, to whom we could explain the minutest shade of difference in our opinions — who could patiently listen to all we have to say, and give us precise answers, not to be mistaken — our differences might all be speedily and satisfactorily adjusted. Not one of us would object to making him the umpire be- tween us. We could appeal to this infallible guide upon every topic which has ever divided the Christian world, and he would settle the matter at once. None of us would then object to having a " Pope." How delight- ful it would be to have such a guide at every step of our progress ! He would tell us exactly what our Lord NO INFALLIBLE HUMAN GUIDE. 107 meant when he said, " My Father is greater than I," and " of mine own self I can do nothing." If we differed concerning any of his own sayings, he would at once tell us precisely what his meaning was, and say to one, you are right, — and to another, you are wrong. But, unfortunately, such a thing cannot be. We are not living in the times of the apostles. There is no Paul to whom a Christian church can write for informa- tion upon any particular point. The miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost to certain favored individuals are no longer to be expected. In regard to this, all of us are upon a perfect equality. Therefore it becomes not any man to say, that such and such a person has not the Holy Spirit. It is an arrogant claim, which I, for one, am not willing to admit ; nor will it, I venture to say, be admitted by others who differ from you. When I plainly perceive the fruits of the Spirit — "love, joy, peace, long suffering, goodness, faith, meekness, tem- perance " — I joyfully acknowledge its existence. So far as we, frail and erring creatures, can venture to judge from evidence, I judge from what I see. But, in regard to matters of opinion, the case is altered. Of all the millions in the world who differ in opinion, what one man possesses the greatest share of the Holy Spirit ? All equally claim it ; whose claims are the best ? Why may not I have it as well as you ? I ask for it, I wait for It, why may I not possess it .' The bare assertion of another that my neighbor is not enlightened by the Holy Spirit, is, in my view, a poor reason for believing it to be so. Because your neigh- 108 NO INFALLIBLE HUMAN GUIDE. bor cannot see as you do, you insist upon it, that God has blinded his eyes, that seeing he may see, and not perceive, &c. Ought any one but the Searcher of hearts himself to attempt the application of such a text ? Ought a mortal to presume to apply it to his fellow mor- tal ? If the actions of the life give evidence of the dominion of evil principles, we cannot help forming a judgment of the state of the heart — we are allowed to judge of men by their fruits. But with the religious opinions of others we have nothing to do in the way of judgment and condemnation. Our business lies with ourselves. We may think others wrong, but let us take care how we judge them harshly, and without hesitation declare that they belong to "Anti-Christ." Lotus see to it that we are in the right ; let us strain every nerve to arrive at the right spot ; and " let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." LETTER XIII MENTAL FREEDOM. Mv D£AK Sir: You are right in the supposition that what you are pleased to denominate one " form of Anti-Christ " — meaning Unitarianism — suits better the " peculiar con- stitution" of my mind, than "that other form" you call " Popery." I dolove Unitarianism for the liberty it gives to every man to form his own opinions from the Bible, and, when he has formed, to express them. Nothing so little suits the " constitution " of an active mind as any kind or degree . of mental thraldom. Nothing is so apt to weaken, to disease, to break down any constitution, physical or mental, as close and pro- tracted confinement. There is no mental progress where there is mental slavery ; and the active mind loves progress. It must be free, it must be at work, it must advance, or it will chafe and fret, and prey upon itself, as the newly imprisoned bird sometimes struggles till it dies. The mind, too, which thinks for itself, is the only mind which understands and feels its own responsibility to God. And where this responsibility is felt, care 10 110 GENERAL IGNORANCE. will be taken to avail itself of every assistance within its reach for the formation of correct opinions. The habit of assenting to the dictation of others in matters of religion is very much calculated to deaden our sense of responsibility, and to produce listlessness and inat- tention as to what we really do believe. I speak from my own knowledge, when I affirm it to be very generally the case in our orthodox churches, that the mass of pri- vate members are exceedingly ignorant of the specu- lative and peculiar points of their faith. This is the natural consequence of multiplying minor and unneces- sary articles of belief. The few great fundamental articles of religion, such as all Christians can draw from their Bibles, the majority understand and appreciate, and, in general, can boldly and successfully advocate ; but of the peculiar points of difference between the various sects of Christendom they are wofully ignorant. In some respects this circumstance is not without, its advantages. The practical, and what I would call fun- damental doctrines of -their religion exert their salutary influence upon their characters, while those speculative and metaphysical points, a belief in which wc consider injurious to the character, lie comparatively inert and harmless. But, on the other hand, what we consider error is perpetuated from generation to generation, be- cause its unsightly features are so generally hidden beneath a veil of ignorance, or altogether lost sight of through inattention and apathy. In former days, when I have had the doctrines of Calvinism pressed home upon me, I have insisted that such were not, and could not be, the doctrines of my church. But an attentive Ill study of the writings of Calvin himself have taught me otherwise. If I had known what I was doing — if I had real- ized to what I was binding myself when I united with a branch of Christ's church holding the Calvinistic creed, I could never have done it. I do not say these things by way of apology for myself ; I only mention them as facts — as not uncommon facts. I knew the Assembly's Catechism by heart at a very early age ; it was faith- fully taught me, with all its notes and references ; but I was too young, light-hearted, and thoughtless, to receive from it any very definite ideas ; and the words which were engraved upon my memory were mere sounds, conveying, to my mind, very little sense. It is now my business and my aim to forget them, though they often haunt me like phantoms of the past. It was impossible that I could then understand, and fully receive, what has puzzled, and will ever continue to puzzle, older and wiser heads than mine. But I sincerely hope and trust that the unfortunate peculiari- ties of the system will, after a time, become entirely obsolete. May the period soon arrive ! It will be a joyful day for Christendom, and I devoutly believe it will occasion joy in Heaven. But, my dear Sir, I have unconsciously broken the connection of my thoughts by giving way to a bright anticipation, and I will now re- sume my subject. Once indoctrinated, and received within the pale of the church, the practical, useful part of my religion especially occupied my attention, and a blessed source of comfort and support I have found it, and do still find 113 CALVINISTIC DOCTRINES. it ; and especially, now that it is stripped of its incum- brances, and I hold a rational, beautiful, and simple faith, it is far more dear to me than ever. When my mind began to act for itself, I often felt perplexed about some of the doctrines of Calvinism. My friends can bear me witness, how, especially, the Calvinistic ideas of election and reprobation distressed and puzzled me at various periods of my life. The speculative portions of iKy faith were essentially op- posed to my tastes and feelings ; in a word — for you have supplied me with the exact idea — to the ^'■con- stitution " of my mind. A want of harmony between my creed, and what, I am sure, were the best feelings of my heart, has always been a source of undefined unea- siness ; so that, in order to enjoy my religion, which, from the pressure of exceedingly severe domestic afflic- tions, was necessary for me, I clung to the harmo- nious, practical, and true, and managed to keep out ■ of sight those doctrines in which I could never fully acquiesce. The hearing of doctrinal, metaphysical sermons invariably created an indescribable uneasiness, jarred the sensitive framework of my mind, confused my intellect, and put all my feelings out of tune. And all this was not the less trying, because I never knew certainly what troubled me, or what had created the discord within. On the contrary, practical sermons, or those recognizing mainly the universally acknowledged, the fundamental doctrines of our holy religion, have ever been ray solace and delight. My life has thus been one of inward conflict. I have spent my years in struggling to believe what was INWARD CONFLICTS. 113 revolting to my common sense, but what my creed, when at length I did comprehend it, plainly told me I must believe, or he lost forever. I say my creed told me this ; for that the majority of Calvinists practically hold- such a shocking, exclusive faith — a faith which shuts out from Heaven all except themselves — I do not, will not, cannot believe. Thus it will be seen that I have not suddenly arrived at the spot where I now stand. My friends have often been startled at what they deemed my temerity, when I would occasionally venture to express my suspicions that such and such doctrines might be erroneous. You yourself tell me that you confess you are not sur- prised at my change. You thought me some time ago " too prone to embark upon a sea for which," you assert, I " was not ballasted ; " and you also remark, "that you saw my leaning, when you discovered my tendency to Arminianisra." I remind you, my dear Sir, of all these circumstances, to shield myself from the charge of haste in changing my opinions, which has been so often, so industriously laid at my door ; aye, and so harshly too. Now the doctrine that, in consequence of the sin of another, man is brought into the world with a nature so totally depraved that he cannot possibly do anything that is right, his understanding so darkened that he can- not discern the plainest truths in the Bible, and yet that he is held responsible for the commission of sin — threatened with the pains of Hell unless he does what he has no power to do, and understands what he has no ability to understand — is a doctrine which never 10* 114 INWARD CONFLICTS. seemed to me quite right. Not more right did the doc- trine seem that one portion of the human race were elected to eternal misery, and the other portion to eter- nal happiness by a special, unconditional decree of God : and it also seemed strange to me that all man- kind were exhorted to repent and be saved by the atone- ment of Christ, when that atonement was made only for a very small number. These and their kindred doctrines it has often seemed to me, in years gone by, could only be received by dethroning reason and com- mon sense ; and I have not been surprised to notice the curl upon the lip of the scorner, when these and similar doctrines have been held prominently forth from some of the pulpits of our land. No, I repeat it, I have not suddenly arrived at my present position. Many years of dissatisfaction pre- pared the way for the change which has appeared to electrify my relatives and friends. Your superior dis- cernment probably saved you from experiencing a simi- lar shock. The powerful impressions of childhood, the strong cords of education and early association which held the system together, have not, I can assure both you and them, been sundered in a moment. One knot after another has been untied. I have felt the framework loosening, and trembling, and parting joint after joint, till, at length, it has fallen asunder. The fall seems, to others, sudden and woful. This is be- cause the struggle through which I have for years been passing, could be known only to myself. Indeed, it can scarcely be said to have been known to myself ; at any rate, I did not certainly know to what the con- flict was tending. INWARD CONFLICTS. 115 It has been severe and disheartening. My best and brightest days have been sacrificed to what I now deem an erroneous creed ; yet I scarcely know whether to regret that this has been the case. In one view of the subject, I can thank God for it all. It makes me char- itable and forgiving towards those who hold this dreadful faith ; who are not willing to grant me the name of Christian ; who rank me with the adherents of "Anti- Christ," though I still regard Christ as my spiritual head, my master, and my Lord, and still recognise, with all my heart, his divine authority. It makes my present foundation like the solid rock, my present views definite and strong, my hopes firm and bright, my joys calm and enduring, my sufferings useful ; and it makes me prize unspeakably that liberty wherewith Christ has made me free. LETTER XIV. CALVINISM. My DE4R Sir : I NOT long ago heard two orthodox divines of the Calvinistic school* congratulating thenaselves upon the perfection of their system, remarking that they prized it because all the parts of it " dovetailed " together so nicely. Yes, Sir, it is certain they do dovetail in a beautiful manner, but it is only as a system of hu- man invention that they do so ; they certainly do not harmonize with human reason, nor, it is plain to me, with Scripture ; certainly not with the character of God as it is revealed to us in the Bible. But it gratifies me to observe that the Calvinists, with whom I am acquainted, are quite solicitous to soften down the rigid features of their system. It is an evi- dence that in the present age of the world it cannot be received in all its harshness, as Calvin himself taught it, nor as it has since been taught by some of the lead- ing divines in this and other countries. What would the stern reformer say, could he know the modifications of his system common at the present day .'' A short time since I heard a very intelligent lady attempting to CALVINISM. 1 17 shield it from reproach, and she avowed that she had DO sympathy with "Calvinism run mad," as she termed the view of it which had been presented to her mind. But that insane Calvinism is by no means as insane as it was when Calvin gave it to the world. The truth is, Calvinists shrink with horror when the legitimate con- sequences of their system are portrayed before them ; they are unwilling to admit the truth of the exhibition. Such persons, I take it, are Calvinists only in name. I hear frequent remonstrances against pushing these doctrines to extremes, but I cannot see that these ex- tremes reach even as far as Calvin pushed them, or as far as they were carried by the Westminster divines, or President Edwards.* Those who oppose Calvinism are generally charged with misrepresenting its doctrines ; but a few extracts from the standard Calvinistic writers will suffice to show that this is not the case ; that is, if language conveys the same meaning upon this subject that it does upon others. It is difficult to portray the horrors of Calvin- ism in stronger language than its own advocates have used. The Westminster Assembly's Catechism speaks of " the corruption of his (man's) nature, whereby he is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continually." Calvin says, " even our very natural faculties are all depraved and contaminated. Whence it is that we are moved from within by no thought to do well. Where- fore," he goes on to say, " I detest those who ascribe * See Appendix N. 118 CALVINISTIC DOCTRINES. to US any freedom of will, by which we may prepare ourselves to receive the grace of God, or by which we may of ourselves co-operate with the Holy Spirit, which may be given us." Then there is nothing which we can do ; and what becomes of our responsibility .' And is the last remark quoted from Calvin consistent with the benign spirit of Christianity .' Where has our Master ever given us leave to detest those who differ from us in mere opinion f Oh, my dear Sir, let it be our aim to follow our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and not Calvin. President Edwards says : " So long as men are in their natural state, they not only have no good thing, but it is impossible that they should have or do any good thing." Do you say they are to blame for being in this state, or even for remaining in it } How are they to get out of it .'' President Edwards says that, while in this state, which is their natural state, it is impossible for them to do any good thing. How are they to blame for what it is, in the nature of things, impossible for them to do .' If you insist that they are to blame, pray tell me how. According to Calvinism, they cannot help themselves. They cannot repent and turn to God, as the Scriptures command "all men, everywhere," to do. What a mockery does this system make of the precious invita- tions which the gospel gives to " every creature ? " If they are " utterly indisposed, disabled, and made oppo- site to all that is spiritually good," how can God entreat, aye, command them to become so ? It is a bitter CALVINISTIC DOCTRINES. 119 mockery to press the claims of the gospel upon those who are so utterly helpless. The God who will punish men for being and remain- ing in the condition in which they were born, and from which they have no ability to free themselves, cannot be the God of the Bible, who, we are told, is Love. To make the case still more desperate, they are, ac- cording to Calvin, the subjects of an absolute decree of the Almighty ; a decree which he declared, at some moment when the horrible deductions from his premises stared him in the face, to be "a dreadful one." He informs us that the reprobate were created for this very purpose — that they might be examples of God's sever- ity. He declares that " they cannot avoid the neces- sity of sinning, especially as this necessity is imposed upon them by the ordinance of God." The Assembly's Catechism says, " the rest of man- kind (that is, the non-elect) God was pleased, accord- ing to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice." And President Edwards asserts that God " decrees all sins." Now if we are under such a government as this, how can God, even consistently with his attribute of jus- tice, punish or reward us for anything we do ? But the Catechism says, " the punishment of sin in the world to come is everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments, in soul 120 CALVINISTIC DOCTRINES. and body, without intermission, in Hell-fire forever." This punishment is the consequence of sin growing out of what Edwards calls the dreadful condition of natural man. He says that " natural men are held in the hands of God over the pit of Hell ; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it ; and God is dreadfully provoked ; his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the execution of the fierceness of his wrath in hell."- " The devil is waiting for them ; hell is gaping for them ; the flames gather and flash about them, and wpuld fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up." Addressing the unconverted, he says, " the God who holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spi- der or some loathsome insect, abhors you and is dread- fully provoked ; his wrath towards you burns like fire ; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire ; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his si^ht ; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venom- ous serpent is in ours." I ask, my dear Sir, is this the God who is represented by the father in the beau- tiful parable of the prodigal son ? Calvin says, that " even infants bring their damnation with them from their mother's womb; for, although they have not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity, they have the seed of it enclosed within them. Nay, their whole nature is, as it were, a seed of sin, so that it cannot be otherwise than odious and abominable to God." And yet our Saviour said of little children, " of such is the kingdom of Heaven ! " CALVINISTIC DOCTRINES. 121 I could easily go on, my dear Sir, and quote page after page of such dreadful sentences, but you know as well as I do where they are to be found, and I long to turn my thoughts away from the sickening subject. It brings dark pictures of the past afresh to my mind — it recalls hours of anguish which I would forever forget. But I wished to do my part in shielding from the charge of exaggeration those who oppose Calvinism, and among these I now rank myself. With how much reason the charge is made, let the foregoing extracts decide. 11 LETTER XV. GOD OUR FATHER. My dear Sir : If the doctrines of Calvinism are contrary to all our ideas of justice, at what an infinite remove are they from any idea of benevolence ! Yet how benevolent is the character of God as it is represented to us in the Bible. He is there exhibited as our Father. And the love of a father to his child is but a faint emblem of the love of God to us. Our Saviour says, "if ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your chil- dren, how much more will your Father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask him." What thoughts of love, what sweet associations rush in upon the heart when we call our God by the tender name of Father ! How could God more forcibly have impressed his love upon us .' What child of a kind earthly father does not understand in a moment the en- dearing, the intimate relation he sustains to God, when he allows us to view Him as a Father .'' But, more- over, the Bible certainly reveals the Creator as a being of infinite justice and goodness. Nor is he merely just to Himself and to his law, he is just to his creatures. CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. 123 But, you will say, the same Bible also reveals the truth that man, in consequence of Adam's sin, comes into the world totally depraved, and that he is liable to everlasting punishment in consequence of that heredita7'y depravity . We answer that such a doctrine cannot be taught in the same book which reveals God as good and just, because it is contrary to all our ideas of justice and goodness. You will tell me that no estimate can be formed of the character of God from our knowl- edge of these attributes as they exist in ourselves. But our conceptions of the attributes of God can be formed in no other way. The Bible is a special revelation to us, and its language must be in accordance with the principles of our nature. The only ideas we can form of moral and spiritual attributes, must be from ourselves. Why else were they revealed to us at all ? We have no other means of judging. Because in us they are finite, and in God they are infinite, it does not follow that their nature may not be precisely the same.* I acknowledge that the man who has so debased himself that he has no honor, no integrity, no justice, no benevolence, can know but little of such things in others — can form scarcely any idea of those attributes as they exist in the character of God or of his fellow men. But men so totally devoid of every correct feel- ing are not often found. Most men possess a share of these attributes, and some possess them in a very high degree. The things around us take their complexion very much from the state of our own minds. If there be * See Appendix O. 124 CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. beauty within, we shall be very apt to discover beauty without ; if there be loathsomeness and deformity with- in, everything around us will seem loathsome and de- formed. A discontented mind sees no fitness nor beauty in anything, while a contented one gives its possessor "a continual feast." If we apply this law of the mind to our conceptions of God's character, we must acknowledge that the more perfect our character is, the more exalted will be our ideas of God's glori- ous attributes. If then, our ideas of the character of God, so far as it has been revealed to us, must be founded upon those of our own nature, a system which does violence to these natural ideas is a system of doubt and confu- sion, and is apt to lead, on the one hand, to blind su- perstition, or, on the other, to thorough infidelity. That these results are not more universal, I ascribe to the fact that the practical truths which are mingled with such speculative errors, are all-powerful to preserve the majority of those who profess them from dangerous ex- tremes. I have had the pleasure of knowing a great number of Calvinists who were cheerful, spontaneous, practical Christians ; not, as I think, in consequence of their creed, but in spite of it. There are a great many persons in whom natural good sense, sound judgment, and the kindly influences of surrounding circumstances have operated to render inert and harmless the evil ten- dencies of their speculative belief Many are theoreti- cally wrong, while they are practically right. You have told me also that " you cannot understand how, with my eyes about me, I can doubt the natural NATIVE DEPRAVITY. l25 and total depravity of all the human race. It is indeed very true that I see all around me too many convincing evidences of depravity not to believe in its existence. But that it is innate or totals I do not believe. I have made up my mind, after a diligent search for the Cal- vinistic doctrine of original sin, that such a doctrine is not to be found in the Bible, and that those passages which seem to teach it have been misapplied and mis- understood. They speak of the fact of its existence, not of its origin. I think also that such a belief fosters immorality, and is exceedingly debasing to the mind. If we are taught from our earliest years that we are by nature. entirely disposed to evil, and unable to do good, we shall be very apt to feel that we must content ourselves with a state of things which we cannot possibly remedy ; and, on other subjects certainly, this would seem to be real philosophy. Naturally enough, we should conclude that any effort of ours to alter our miserable condition, would be entirely superfluous and useless. It appears to me also that our incessant notice of the prevalence of evil arises from the fact that vice attracts this notice more than virtue. It strikes us, because it is unnatural. It interrupts the natural harmony of things, and introduces discord and confusion. Thus we notice vice because it disturbs us, and because it disturbs the course of moral nature, while virtue is in harmony with the general and common feeling — with the moral world around us. Vice attracts our notice because we do not expect it, while virtue is what we seem naturally to ex- pect. Vice excites our surprise and reprehension, 11* 126 NATIVE DEPRAVITY. while virtue, except, it may be, in some uncommon and splendid cases, is passed by as a matter of course. In short, virtue is the rule, and vice the exception. Now if men are in the corrupt and helpless condition in which Calvinism places our unfortunate race, the ex- hibition of the smallest virtue would naturally be a matter of unbounded surprise. Yet how common, how almost universal, are the delightful domestic virtues ! Where they do not exist, we feel that our nature has been outraged, and its principles violated. We call such cases unnatural. But if men are prone to evil, and only evil, and that continually, and so prone to it that they are entirely disabled from doing any good thing at all, why is there any redeeming trait .'' Why are not all men just as bad as they can be .'' Why are there any restraints upon society .' If all are totally depraved, why are not all alike } Unless it be, as some person once remarked, that all are totally depraved, only some are more totally so than others. And what possible good can degrading views of our nature do us .'' Surely they are not calculated to teach us humility ; for he who regards himself as naturally degraded, has no reason to be humbled because of his degradation. He cannot help it, he is the victim of inexorable fate. He is driven on to his own ruin by a power which he cannot resist. He is a mere machine, performing faithfully the work for which he was created. If any one says that this is not Calvinism, I ask him to read the works of Calvin, and see. Surely there is no room for humility when a man is only fulfilling, by com- pulsion, his destiny. But, on the contrary, if he who NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 127 knows himself to be capable of great and noble things falls far short of fulBUing his glorious destiny, has he not cause to be humbled in the very dust ? In the former case, the man's want of ability is certainly an excuse ; in the latter, his ability affords strong ground for the deepest self-condemnation and humility. LETTER XVI. CONTEMPLATION OP VIRTUE BENEFICIAL. My dear Sir : Degrading views of our nature are certainly debas- ing to the mind. It is a natural law that we are apt to assimilate most thoroughly with those things which we contemplate most frequently. The contemplation of virtue is calculated to inspire the love of virtue, and to prompt to virtuous deeds ; while he, who, even specu- latively, becomes familiar with vice, is in danger of contamination and practical debasement. I believe no one will deny that this is a fundamental law of the mind ; while some even go so far as to apply this law to our physical nature, and assert that the contemplation of the beautiful will produce beauty. Taking, however, for granted, the existence of this mental law, I remark, that he who is constantly on the watch for evidences of human depravity, does himself a serious injury. In his anxiety to establish the truth of a theory, he may become, in his own person, its most conspicuous example. His theory may be, in himself, reduced to practice. But he who gladly hails every trait of God's image in his brother man — who feels a TRIUMPHS OF VIRTUE. 129 thrill of joy when he hears of any action of generous self-sacrifice for the good of another — whose pulses throb at the recital of noble deeds ; he who most watches for, and most gladly hails such delightful de- velopments of human sympathy in others, is most sure to glow with sympathy himself, and to reflect the image of his benevolent God and Father. Such a person illumines and rejoices all around him. And how comes it that there is always such a general burst of generous human feeling at the news of any great act of virtue, even if it come to us from the remotest corners of the earth .'' The first shout of joy and triumph is ever swelling higher and higher, and waxing louder and louder as it rolls onward towards the most distant lands. Through raging oceans, over rugged mountains, the tide of human feeling rolls, a pure and undivided stream, gathering tribute, and swelling as it goes. Thus, the world over, heart meets heart ; and virtue receives, sooner or later, a sure reward. But, if men are totally depraved, they would naturally rejoice only in the triumph of vice. What a pealing anthem of joy resounded through every land when the tidings came that, for conscience' sake, the ministers and people of the Free Church of Scotland had given up their beloved altars, and gone forth, poor and unsheltered, beneath the broad canopy of Heaven ! What meant that universal shout .'' Of what was it a sign .-' Why did the heart beat quicker than was its wont, and the tear of emotion suffuse the eye ? It was because the motive which impelled those men — let it even have been, as some suppose, a mistaken one 130 THE GOOD FENELON. — found a glad response in every human breast. It was because they gave up all for conscience' sake. In the life of the great and good Fenelon, a circum- stance is related which gives an appropriate and capital illustration of the power of goodness to reach and soften the hardest hearts. The circumstance is thus narrated : " The diocese of Cambrai was often the theatre of war, and experienced the cruel ravages of retreating and conquering armies. But an extraordinary respect was paid to Fenelon by the invaders of France. The English, the Germans, and the Dutch, rivalled the inhabitants of Cambrai in their veneration for the Arch- bishop. All distinctions of religion and sect, all feelings of hatred and jealousy that divided the nations, seemed to disappear in the presence of Fenelon. Military escorts were offered him for his personal security, but these he declined, and traversed the countries desolated by war, to visit his flock, trusting in the protection of God. In these visits, his way was marked by alms and benefactions. While he was among them the people seemed to enjoy peace in the midst of war." Here is a beautiful illustration of the sovereign power of goodness. Enemies are made friends ; the evil passions engendered and fostered by war are changed into mildness and kind regard. And all this because of the inspiring presence of a good man ! " The virtues of Fenelon," says his biographer, " give his history the air of romance ; but his name will never die. Transports of joy were heard at Cambrai when his ashes were discovered, which, it was thought, had been scattered by the tempest of the revolution ; HOKBOB OF CALVINISM. 131 and to this moment the Flemings call him ' the good Archbishop.'" After all that I have said, my dear Sir, after plainly stating to you how Calvinism appears to me now, you will not wonder that I dread and fear it. I regard it almost as I would some venomous serpent, from whose fangs I have but narrowly escaped. Too long has it been coiling itself around my struggling spirit. That its poisonous fangs have not reached my vitals, I owe to that wonderful Providence of God which has protected me from harm, and, at length, provided a way of escape. He has given me strength to struggle on, till, at length, I have thrown the monster from me. I bless God for my escape. You will perhaps think that this is unreasonably strong language ; but if you only knew how I have sufi'ered — how my whole life has been clouded over by this gloomy faith — how, even in moments when I have been joy- fully welcoming the pure beams of the Sun of Right- eousness, its dark cloud has frightened me from afar, its low, muttered tones of thunder have reached my ears, like a sound foreboding evil — you would not think my language too impassioned. Be it so or not, it is just as I feel. My religion is my all. Without it, what should I be, or what should I do .'' Without it, how, in my early years, could I have borne the changes and sorrows which have fallen to my lot ? I love my religion dearly, for it has been emphatically my friend. Then, if I have been able conscientiously to give up all that was dark and debasing about it, while I keep all that is bright 132 MT FOEMER FAITH. and elevating, how can I be too thankful ? How can I speak too strongly ? I sometimes wonder why, before I had proved the all-sustaining power of religion in my own experience, I did not give way to skepticism, and become the victim of infidelity. I cannot but remem- ber the shocking doubts which sometimes found their way into my mind ; doubts which sometimes made me miserable for weeks together. Rebellious and unworthy thoughts of God, my heavenly Father and Friend ; how they used to haunt and torture me ! They grew out of my creed. To a person of my " mental constitution," if I thought about it at all, it could not be otherwise. I could not teach myself to reconcile contradictions. I could not school myself to receive, what always seemed to me absurdities. I never examined them deeply. I tried to believe them, but tried without success ; or, at most, it was a strange sort of belief, against my better judgment. It was an extorted faith. I feared to believe other- wise. And soon the time came, when, under the pres- sure of deep affliction, religion became absolutely necessary to me. I clung. therefore to the practical and truthful, shutting my eyes upon all the rest. I have, indeed, endeavored to indoctrinate myself — to under- stand what I thought I must believe, and to fill my mind with arguments for that belief ; but I never before now thoroughly examined the question, whether those opinions were true. I never myself, and I confess it with sorrow, brought them meekly to the law and to the testimony, to judge, by my own reason, whether they could be found there. I was afraid to doubt. And in regard to the Trinity, I did not doubt till lately. MT FORMER FAITH. 133 And I verily thought that Unitarians had scarcely any religion at all . I shrank with fear at the idea of attending one of their Churches on the Sabbath day. It seemed almost immorality to read one of their books. I knew and loved some of them, but I pitied their delu- sions, and wondered how they could be so blinded. The subject of our religious differences was generally carefully avoided, or I might have discovered that I was doing them sad injustice. I fear my inclination was to say to every Unitarian, " stand by thyself, for I am holier than thou." I fear I often prayed in my heart the prayer of the Pharisee, saying, " God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, or even as this poor Unitarian." This is the legitimate result of Calvinism. I find that all rigid Calvinists are exceed- ingly exclusive in their creed, if not in their natural feelings. Ah, my dear Sir, I have endured the tyranny of this faith too long not to dislike it now. I have heard of those who had, endured captivity so long, that it had become a second nature to them, and was preferred to liberty. I have heard of the captive, who, when re- leased, sighed for his bonds again. The glorious light of the unclouded sun was painful to his eye ; the free air of Heaven seemed to visit his cheek too roughly ; the noise and turmoil of the busy world oppressed and distracted him. Poor, pitiable wreck of humanity ! Who would wish to be like him ? In consequence of suffering, to become so inured to it as actually to prefer it to ease, and to restraint, as to prefer it to liberty ! I do not thus love my chains. God made us for freedom 12 134 BLESSING OF FKEEDOM. — G od made us for happiness ; and sadly to be pitied is he who does not prize his liberty and happiness. He has lost the image of his God. He is scarcely a man. He is but little better than the brutes that perish. For my part, I thank God that / am free. I breathe the air of religious liberty, and it revives my soul. I raise my unshackled hands in gratitude to Heaven, and sing aloud for joy. But still I remember the struggle — the conflict between light and darkness — the de- spairing avowal of a belief which was revolting to my very soul ; it was wormwood and gall ; my soul hath it in remembrance. My eyes are now opened to behold the truth, and beauty, and symmetry, of another faith than yours, and not all your declarations and bold assertions can turn what I behold, into what you assert it to be. Show me another scheme of faith, and let me compare it with the Bible, but do not attempt to frighten me by hard names and dark pictures of your own creation. It is easy to dress up a hideous figure, and call it Dnitarianism, but those who are choosing for eternity will not be very readily deceived by any such imaginary creation. LETTEE XYII. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. Mr DEAR SiK : I PERFECTLF agree with you when you remark that " the world is uneasy," that " the spirit of God moves upon the troubled waters of life." It is even so. The world is indeed uneasy, and I am glad of it. We ought to be uneasy, there is cause enough for it. Light has been breaking in upon us, every science has been ad- vancing, the civilized world has made rapid strides in every kind of knowledge, the all-important science of biblical criticism has received special attention, and new light has been thrown upon various passages of the sacred word, and yet our minds are to be fettered and tied down to the creeds and formularies given to our ancestors long, long ago. An alarm is sounded the moment men begin to interpret the Bible for themselves. Let them be ever so conscientious, let them be ever so anxious to avoid error, let them love the Bible ever so well, they are denounced the moment they presume to read the Bible with their own eyes. In what respect does this differ from that religion which entirely with- holds the Bible from the people ? I do not want the 136 SIGNS OF THE TIMES. Bible, unless I can read and understand it for myself. Why should I take the trouble to " search the Scrip- tures," when others are to decide for me just what they mean, and just as they please .' But it is too late in the day for this. People will think for themselves, let it be ever so dangerous to themselves, let it be ever so disagreeable or alarming to others. And whenever a disposition is shown to curb this spirit of free inquiry, it is time to be uneasy. I am rejoiced that the human mind is awaking from the sleep of ages. Very gradually has it beqn arousing itself from its lethargy ; like the sluggard it has said, " a little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep ; " but now, to some ex- tent, it seems thoroughly awake. Let us all strive to give this awakened intellect a right direction. Let those who value the Bible as the greatest of their bless- ings, teach others to value it also. Let us all go to that fountain of truth, and earnestly endeavor to fill ourselves with its spirit and with its truth. Let us cling to that blessed book as to our only hope. But Oh, let us not endeavor to lull the human mind to sleep again by that old monotonous cry which you are sounding even DOW in my ears — the cry of mystery — mystery. You remark that, " the minds of few persons are unexer- cised ; those whom God has chosen are strengthened and built up in the great mystery of godliness ; God man- ifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." Now, I say, let each mind judge for itself what is that mystery of godliness, of I TIM. 111. 16. 137 which the Bible speaks. Let each one gather from the Bible how it was that God was manifested in the flesh. That this was the fact, y/e all alike believe. You are perhaps aware, that the text just quoted should not read " God manifest in the flesh," but that Griesbach, whose authority is universally acknowledged by Trinitarians as well as others, has decided that the word God, in this passage, is not to be found in the best ancient manuscripts. In his edition of the New Tes- tament, he expresses it, " great is the mystery of god- liness ; He who was manifest in the flesh, &c." In regard to this text. Sir Isaac Newton says, " what the Latins have done to the foregoing,* the Greeks have done to that of St. Paul. 1 Tim. iii. 16. For by Chang- s' into ©c, the abbreviation of @cbg, they now read, ' Great is the mystery of godliness ; God manifested in the flesh.' Whereas all the churches for the first four or five hundred years, and the authors of all the ancient versions, Jerome, as well as the rest, read, ' Great is the mystery of godliness, which was mani- fested in the flesh.' * * * With the ancienter versions agree the writers of the first five centuries, both Greeks and Latins. For they, in all their discourses to prove the deity of the Son, never allege this text, that I can find, as they would all have done, and some of them frequently, had they read ' God manifested in the flesh,' and therefore they read "• * * * In all the times of the hot and lasting Arian controversy, it never came into play ; though now those disputes are over, they * Alluding to that well known interpolation, 1st John, v. 7. 12* 138 MTSTERT. that read ' God manifested in the flesh,' think it one of the most obvious and pertinent texts for the business." (Sir Isaac JVewion's History of Two Corruptions of Scripture.) But why, my dear Sir, are you such a friend to mystery ? Why do you not endeavor to enforce it upon the minds of all that the religion of the gospel is so -plain and simple, that the " wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein ? " It is because men have not been contented with what is plain and simple in religion, but have constructed an elaborate system of perplexities which they wish to force upon all mankind, upon the peril of losing their title to the name of Chris- tian. Religion, as it is taught by Orthodox creeds, is anything but plain and simple. It cannot be under- stood ; and the only remedy I ever heard prescribed for those whose perplexities have made them sick at heart, is to receive it all as a sacred mystery, not to be rashly inquired into, or rather, not to be inquired into at all.* Orthodox Christianity is full of perplexities and metaphysical distinctions, utterly incomprehensible to plain unlettered men ; this, it appears to me, is not the religion of the Bible. I have scarcely received a letter in which this text concerning the mystery of godliness, incorrectly trans- lated as it is, has not been strenuously urged upon me ; and after quoting it yourself, you thus proceed : " But there are those who will not believe that God has any mystery which cannot be fathomed by their finite reason, * See Dehon's Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 99, 100. See also Appen- dix P. AN EXTRACT. 139 and who plunge without compass or rudder into that ocean which is boundless, and where, losing all land- marks, they are driven either to the abject submission of the Romanists, or else abandon themselves to the delusive fancies of the German Neologists, and the thousand forms of skepticism which are as various as the human countenance; in fact, to that natural religion, which is indeed no religion at all, but the mere fancies of unguided imagination, or the borrowed light of gos- pel morality." This is severe enough. But because I cannot be- lieve some things which you call mysteries, and which you say are revealed in the Bible, but which I call con- tradictions, and which I think are not revealed in the Bible, why should you take it for granted that I am not willing to receive anything which my finite understand- ing cannot perfectly fathom ? I protest also against the common method of confounding contradictory proposi- tions with mysteries, which only mean secret things — things which we, from some cause or other, do not or can- not know. I am very willing to admit, that there are mysteries — secret things — which I cannot comprehend, and which yet, as matters of fact, I fully believe. It has been revealed to me that my soul is to exist here- after ; in this fact I fully believe. Even the fact was once a mystery, but the secret is revealed ; as a matter of fact, it is a mystery no longer. What became of the soul after death, we well know was a most perplexing mystery till life and immortality were brought to light in the gospel. But the exact mode of its existence — where it will be, how it will be engaged — is still a mystery. 140 MYSTERIES NOT CONTRADICTIONS. Because it has not been revealed, it must therefore re- main a mystery till experience or some further revela- tion teaches each individual soul hov? and where it will exist hereafter. Now, so far as God has revealed anything to us concerning his Son, so far the mystery is removed. What he has not revealed, we should not attempt to explain. It is revealed to us that Jesus Christ was sent into the world to save sinners ; that he was sent by the Father ; and that he was the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person. But it is not revealed that he who sent and he who leas sent are the same Being ; that there are three distinct persons in one God ; that one of these persons pos- sessed tioo distinct natures ; none of these things are told us in the Bible, and they are directly opposed to all our ideas of individual identity. They are some- thing more than mysteries ; to us, they are contradic- tions ; and they ought to be distinctly laid down in the Bible before we can be expected to believe them. But such a thing, I believe, cannot be ; for a revela- tion from God cannot contain contradictions. It is very much the practice of Trinitarians, when pressed with the consequences of their doctrines, con- stantly to place things which are above human compre- hension, and things contrary to human reason and experience exactly on the same level. It is the never failing resort ; but it must be a weak and credulous mind, indeed, which cannot perceive the difference. I do not think this is right, I do not think it fair. In this way you strive to narrow down my mind, to restrain it EXTKACT FROM ROBINSON. 141 within the limits of your creed, when it seeks enlarge- ment, and longs to feed itself upon the word of God, to attain to one degree of light after another. On the subject of mysteries, the excellent Robert Robinson, who wrote towards the close of the last cen- tury, thus remarks : " Christianity, say some, is often called a mystery, or a secret ; even the text calls it so. (Eph. iii. 4.) True, but the same text says, Paulifcncw) this secret, and the Ephesians might understand what he knew of it, if they would read what he wrote to them. When ye read, he says, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ." So Paul, in speaking of the mystery of godliness, in the text on which we have been commenting, was con- ferring with Timothy in regard to the great secret, the good news, the mystery of the faith, which they both knew, and which Timothy was to reveal to those to whom he was sent to preach. But this great secret was simple, was plain, when it was revealed — so plain, that he who runs may read ; the gospel was for the poor, the ignorant, as well as the learned. But, says Robinson, " we perceive a wonderful in- clination in Christians towards something in religion, so sublime as not to be understood ; whereas the true sub- limity of religion lies in its plainness, as the true excel- lence and dignity of man consist in his becoming such a plain man as Jesus Christ was. This inclination is a remnant of the old education given by monks and priests, whose majesty stood in the credulousness of their fol- lowers. They made creeds, or articles to be believed, and gave them to our forefathers to say over. You 421 ON MTSTERIES. do not understand them, said they, but we do ; and, while they were doing that, the creed-makers ran away with their houses and lands. Let us renounce this dis- position, and let us believe nothing but what we under- stand." "Alas!" he exclaims, "we are not employed now-a-days in examining and choosing religious princi- ples for ourselves, but in subscribing and defending those of our ancestors." LETTER XVIII. AN EXTRACT. Mr DEAR Sm : I BELIEVE that you speak the real feelings of your heart when you say, that you " sincerely and prayerfully mourn" that I should be " a victim" to v?hat you deem a " strong delusion " and " a lie." And you say, " I mourn the more that your constitutional romance of disposition seems to make your case the more hopeless. You pursue with martyr spirit the abstract idea of Truth, or else you would be in no hurry to proclaim your ad- herence to Anti-Christ, when you know you must har- row the feehngs of all your friends, and are taking a step which may bring your honored and aged father in sorrow to his tomb, or to exclaim with the Psalmist, ' O that I had died for thee.' " I am deeply pained and grieved, my dear Sir, that any of my friends should be offended with me for ven- turing to follow the dictates of my conscience ; but my grief and pain are entirely unmixed with any feelings of self-reproach. If, when we appear together at the bar of God, they could assume my responsibility ; if I were very sure of this, I might feel willing to subscribe to just 144 ABSTRACT TRUTH. what my friends assert to be the truth of the Bible. But I am afraid to do this. Who, of all my numerous friends, will take the responsibilty .' Who will ensure my safe- ty, if I give up my own opinion, and subscribe to theirs } Will you do it ? Alas ! I fear I shall find no such convenient friend. God knows that I am able to form some opinion for myself ; he likewise knows that I think it wrong not to do this to the extent of the abil- ities he has given me ; and he certainly will, and he certainly ought to punish me if I do it not. In regard to truth, you go on to say ; " Truth in its abstract has always been an idol with visionaries. The unclouded mind views it as a good only by its conse- quences. When you speak of the Truth of God as necessary to eternal happiness, I can understand it ; when truth is divulged which will add to our temporal ease 1 can appreciate its value ; but if I hear a man proclaim and devote himself to a truth in physics which he acknowledges can be of no practical value, or an atheist worshipping as an idol his ideal creed, while ad- mitting that at the worst the Christian will suffer no more than he, I place them both in the same category of vis- ionary and senseless dreamers. Now, let me ask you, if you believe any soul ever went to hell, or ever will, for believing Christ to be God .-' Supposing it then a delusion, what good will you effect by a hasty avowal of sentiments which can add no security to a soul, and may shake the safety of some, and will turn the joy of many into mourning, their smiles into tears ? How many ' passing under the rod,' and soothed and com- forted by your muse, will feel they have tasted but the ERRONEOUS PREMISES. 145 bitter ashes of the fabled fruit ; have been lured from their grief by a falsity, and comforted by a fraud ! To return to that word Truth. If Paul had died to prove his faith in Christ with the noble hope of saving souls, that would indeed be an object worthy of the sacrifice. But suppose he had died to prove what is equally true, that Prussic acid is poison, and for no other end than the establishment of the fact ; he would have been justly called a madman. Do you take my illustration and distinction .' Such is your case in avowing your new creed." I am no metaphysician, and very little of a logician, and therefore, for the life of me, I cannot appreciate the soundness of your argument, or the justness of the parallel you have drawn between Paul's supposed case, and my real one. If St. Paul bad been required to subscribe to a creed asserting that Prussic acid was no poison ; if he felt that he was tacitly acknowledging be- fore the world what he believed to be untrue every time he joined in a prayer or sang a hymn, every time he took his seat with his brethren as a member of their fraternity, every time, especially, he sang a doxology ; if, moreover, he was of the opinion that the general belief in regard to Prussic acid was producing general evil ; then I think our cases would have been parallel cases, and it clearly seems to me it would have been his duty to do as I have done. If he had joined a society whose fundamental article of faith was that Prussic acid was no poison ; if he had been generally and prominently known as a member of that society, and if he discovered that Prussic acid was 13 146 ERRONEOUS PREMISES. a poison, and thought, moreover, that the society were doing harm, then he would have been bound to leave them, and to say why he did it ; especially if they would not allow him to withdraw quietly, which the members of such societies, and communities in general, are not very apt to do. If, on the other hand, there had been no such society in the worlds and the general belief that Prussic acid was no poison had been perfectly harmless, Paul would indeed have been a fool and a madman to volunteer to die for such a fact ; but I do not see how there could have been the least occasion for his death. It is only when tests are required of men that they are in any danger of losing their lives for opinion's sake. Your argument is founded upOn what I deem exceed- ingly erroneous premises, and therefore it is no argument to me. In the first place, you take it for granted that a belief in the doctrine of Christ's supreme divinity, and consequently in that of the Trinity, is, if a delusion, & perfectly hiarmless one ; to this I do not agree. I think, as I have before said, that the habit of assenting to contradictory propositions, such as that three are one, and that the finite and the infinite meet in the same individ' ual, is a habit most injurious to the mind, and leads either to credulity or infidelity. It opens a spacious door for every absurdity. These doctrines are as con- tradictory to reason as the doctrine of transubstantia- tion. They are quite as contrary to our experience. So far, then, we do not agree in the premises from which we start. You make no distinction, in the second plac«, be- tween one who is ignorantly subscribing to an error, HUMAN CREEDS. 147 an done who does it, knowing or believing it to be an error. Here is a radical distinction, which ought not to have been lost sight of. If ray mind had never been turned to the subject, and I had lived and died worship- ping Christ as the Supreme God, I should have been perhaps guiltless ; my error would have been involunta- ry ; but the moment my attention has been awakened to the point, and, upon thprough investigation, I have de- cided that it is an error, my moral attittide is changed* If, under my new circumstances, I still remained con- nected with a church which I kqew would not receive me if they imagined what was my belief in regard to Christ ; if I still continued to sit with them at the Lord's table when I was certain they would shut me out if they knew my sentiments, should I not be acting the part of a hypocrite ? I leave the decis- ion to every candid mind. If you do not agree to this, I can only say yqgr code of ethics is very different from mine. If there were no human creeds in the world — if church- es would only require a belief in the only infallible creed, the one which our Master left us, which is contained in the Holy Bible, and not an assent to this or that inter- pretation of the original one, — then we might keep our opinions to ourselves. But as the church of my fathers, to which I belonged, has a human creed, and I find I cannot conscientiously assent to it, how could I remain there, and feel that I was pursuing an honest, independ^ ent course .'' Unless, indeed, they would have allowed me to remain there after a candid confession of my * See Appendix Q. 148 DANGER OF COMBINATION, change of sentiments, and this they could not have done consistently with their confession of faith. JVo creed but the Bible, is now my motto, and I hope it will be till 1' die. And I am becoming more and more attached to the simple, congregational mode of church government. On this point I am rejoiced to know that you and I perfectly agree. I am learning to stand more and more aloof from any extensive combination of my fellow men for feligious, or for any other purposes. To single churches and single societies I do not object ; their organization is simple, and abuses are easily cor- rected ; but the moment their leaders begin to combine, I am afraid of them. They wield a power that is dan- gerous. Too much consolidation is never to be desired, where imperfect man is at the head of affairs. It is not best to pledge ourselves to bodies, which, almost without our knowledge, may carry us whither we would not wish to go. I am well aware that "union is strength ; " but I am by no means certain that the strength resulting from union will always be well direct- ed. If I were sure of this, I would rejoice at the spirit of combination, which is a striking feature of our times. But, as things are, such combinations are to be approached with caution, and always narrqwly watched. They are too often under the entire control of a few leading spirits, whose love of power grows in proportion to its acquirement, and increases with their success.* I have seen melancholy proofs that very * That this was emphatically the case in the general councils of the church in former ages, and that it ia also true of the general assemblies, conveetions, indeed of all religious combinations of BELIEF NOT VOLUNTARY. 149 large bodies sometimes go wrong with an impetus that is perfectly irresistible and overwhelming, crushing the feeble arms which are raised to impede their progress, and carrying with them even those who oppose themj in one general, headlong, hurrying mass. Nor can they always stop where they themselves intended. But to return from this digression. I was speaking of human creeds. A man who subscribes to a creed en- ters into a solemn covenant. I have been accused of breaking my covenant engagements. I have brpken my covenant, it is true. I entered into a solemn engage- ment to support and defend the doctrines held by the church with which I became united. But, when a person can no longer believe what he once believed, what is he to do ? Is belief a voluntary thing ? Can a person believe just what he chooses ? How can I help believing that which I am convinced is true ? The moment a man is convinced of the truth of any opinion, or set of opinions, they are his opinions. Persecution, torture, may compel him to retract them, but they are his opinions still, if be still remains convinced of their truth. Fire and the sword may make him a hypocrite, but they cannot change his opinions. When I have before me evidence which convinces me that what I once thought true is not true, can I still modern times, no one who is much acquainted with their hiatory will probably deny. Thus the creeds which we are now required to subscribe, — such as the five Calvinistic points, which were drawn up at the famous Synod of Dort, were composed under the influence of party spirit, and adopted by the Church in conse-; quence of the votes of an excited majority. 13* 150 AN EXTKACT TROM SPARKS. believe it ? And if I cannot still believe it, ought I still to profess it ? Alas for the man who binds himself to support a human creed ; a creed prepared by nnin- spired men ! He may be placing himself in a melancholy position. I cannot more vividly portray his situation than by quoting the words of the Rev. Jared Sparks. He says: " Those persons who have bound themselves to a written system of faith, in the shape of a creed or con- fession, which they are resolved never to forsake, or which they engage by a solemn covenant always to sup- port, as in the case of many clergymen, church-mem- bers, and professors in theological institutions ; such persons cannot possibly expect or hope to gain any- thing by examining their opinions, and comparing them with those of others, and with the standard of the Scriptures. To change a single sentiment would be a violation of their covenant, and a crime. What con- scientious man will allow the suspicion, to enter his mind that anything can be wrong in a faith, which, in the most solemn manner, he has pledged his veracity to cherish and support ? He may defend his adopted creed, and rally round the system to which he is chained, but he cannot go a step further. He cannot open his mind to a new truth, nor suffer himself to concede, that an opponent's argument can have any weight, or his opinions any claim to respect. This would be to dis- trust the grounds of his own faith, and to betray the guilt of doubting, where he has made a sacred engage- ment never to doubt. What advantage can a person, thus bound and cramped, derive from an examination of religious subjects .'' The public may be benefitted by ON VOWS. 151 knowing his sentiments, and his mode of explaining and defending them ; but, as for himself, his journey will be a circle, he will end where he began." Is it a question what one who has thus bound himself, perhaps inadvertently, and who afterwards changes his opinions, is to do .-' Can it be a question whether he ought to break his vow, or act the hypocrite ? Is not a vow, which we find to be a bad one, better broken than kept ? Each man must decide this question for himself. This fact is certain, that such vows are too often taken without sufBcient thought. Such vows are fear- ful things. Would to God I had never taken them ; and I would sound a note of warning in the ears of ali those who are still free. I beseech them to take care how they promise to maintain and defend any creed that is not expressed in the very words of the Bible, the only infallible standard. LETTER XIX. TRUTH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Mr DEAR Sir : I CONFESS I have not sufficient mental acumen to understand your meaning when you attempt to separate Truth from its consequences. How can the conse- quences of Truth, in a moral point of view, be bene- ficial to us, unless we possess the Truth itself ? How can there be effects without a cause ? It is very evi- dent that somebody must possess the knowledge of a truth before it can affect anybody. You will grant that, perhaps. But I may discover, by some chance or other, that somebody is mistaken ; and then I can no longer say that I believe that person's opinions to be true. I know that I may be exposing to you my want of metaphysical acuteness, but I cannot help it. I have been in the habit of thinking that Truth itself — Truth in the abstract — was essentially important ; but this may be one of those old fashioned notions which are now nearly obsolete. You have not yet convinced me, however, that I was mistaken in this old fashioned adherence to truth. VOLUME OF POEMS. 153 You have alluded to my volume of poems, written especially for the afflicted, or I would not allude to them myself. You say that those whom they have comforted will find that " they have been lured from their grief by a falsity, and comforted by a fraud ! " How can that be .■' The blessed truths which gave them comfort are there still. The volume consists of a detail of the real experience of one on whom the hand of God was heavily laid ; and I do not see how any change of opinion can affect the fact that such was my experience then. My change does not affect the truth of God. He has promised to be with the afflict- ed ; I was afflicted, oh how severely ! and He was with me iu a most remarkable manner. His promise is still held out to the afflicted, and the record of my experience is still there. It was no falsity ; it was no fraud ; and no change of mine can naake it so. This is a delicate subject ; I will pass it by after a moment's consideration. It does seem strange to me that people should not be able to see that Unitarians have, and profess to have, an Almighty Saviour. God is their Saviour, through Christ. Whatever God does for us, he does for us through Christ. He is the chosen medium of communication. Trinitarians prac- tically exalt Christ above the Father. Unitarians go to the Father, as the Supreme Being, through Christ. ■ Another friend, speaking of the volume called " The Parted Family," writes : " I do not see how you can say that the alteration of a few expressions would make the volume agree with your present views. It was the Saviour, God, who was near you in your affliction ; at 154 GOD, OUR SAVIOUR* least you thought so." Yes, I thought so then, and I think so now. God, who is emphatically my Saviour, was near me by the blessed influences of his Holy Spirit — that Comforter, whom Christ promised his disciples that the Father would send in his name. Christ prayed to the Father for this Comforter for his beloved disciples, and his prayer was granted. We cannot know exactly the manner in which God com- forts us ; but if he does it, that, to us, is all-sufficient. God says to his people, " besides me there is no Saviour." The same friend writes, " I read your book of poems through one night witb many tears ; read it yourself, and believe !" Another writes, " Once let it be known that the author of ' The Parted Family ' has become a Unita- rian, and all is lost." Another says, " how little did I think, when reading your touching account of the wonderful manner in which you were sustained and comforted in your hour of need, and with what sweet reliance you leaned upon the promises of the Saviour, and found peace ; that you would ever wish to take from him any of his glory, or deny him his divinity." Do my friends think that the delightful promises which Jesus made to his disciples are now expunged from my Bible .'' And if I believe that he came from the Father with divine power and authority, are not those promises the same to me as the promises of the Father himself ? Assuredly they are. Christ said expressly to his disci- ples, " the words that I speak unto you / speak not of myself;" — " all things that I have heard of the Father I have made known unto you ; " — "the word which ye Christ's wokds those of the father. 155 hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me ; " — " I have not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent me ; he gave me a commandment what I should say, and lohat I should speak ; " — " as the Father hath taught me, I speak these things ; " — " I have many things to say — I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him." Can any declarations be more ' explicit ? Christ over and over again denies speaking anything of himself. The promises of Christ, then, came from the Father. But have I become an Atheist, that the promises of God should be of no account to me ? How can any one say, until he knows me to be an infidel, that those very promises which supported me then, do not support me now ? My pen trembles while I quote what you next write, but I must do it, to convince you that your appeal has not been overlooked. You say : " Remember those whom you have seen die, knowing their Saviour to be their eternal God ; think well, for you are about taking a fearful step. Let memory turn her steps to the dying bed of your beloved and noble husband, and pause ere you tread a road that may not reach his resting-place. Think of your child, now in his Saviour's arms, and be sure, ere it be too late, that that Saviour will have room for the mother who would make him but an equal. Think of that holy man who has just gone to his God * — think of his life of faith — his path of purity — his holy walk — his peaceful death, and pause before you set all these down to mere delusion." * My venerable grandfather, Mr. Job Palmer, who died recently in Charleston, S. C, at the advanced age of ninety-seven years. 156 A REPLY. You take for granted, my dear Sir, many things which I utterly deny and repudiate. God forbid that I should set down " to mere delusion " what I have seen of the life and death of that venerable patriarch, who has left behind him so bright and holy an example — the best and noblest legacy he could have bestowed on his descendants. He was a conscientious, holy man ; his faith in Christ led him closely to imitate Christ. However mistaken I may suppose him to have been in regard to the metaphysical question of Christ's original nature, I know that he considered him as com- ing with divine authority, and that he yielded the most cheerful and implicit obedience to the requirements of his gospel. His faith in Christ then was no " delusion ;" it was real ; it was an active, living principle, which, I devoutly pray, that all his descendants may possess. If, as he did, we receive Christ as the Messiah, as a teacher sent from God — and if we live the life that he lived, we shall with him sit down at the right hand of God, where our " Forerunner " has gone before us. I cannot trust myself to dwell upon the other cases to which you have so touchingly alluded ; but I hope you will believe me when I say, that I have thought seriously and painfully upon my change of opinions in connection with their memory, and feeling and knowing as I do, how conscientious I have been — how anxious for the right — how fearful of the wrong — I firmly and joyfully believe that T shall not be separated from them when I come to die.* * See Appendix R. EXTRACT AND REPLY. 157 Your letter thus proceeds : " I may write in vain ; argument is tiie very vanity of man's carnal, petty pride ; I know it will not avail. God's Spirit alone can teach the wondrous truth which is no mere abstraction, but in which are the issues of life and death." I am very well aware that this is generally the ground that is taken by my friends. Very few of them appear to think it is a matter which can be argued, if I am to judge from the means which they have used to influence me to give up the views I now entertain. But how can I give them up till I am convinced they are untrue .' If you will convince me, I will joyfully renounce them. In taking the steps I have recently taken, I have had everything to lose, and nothing to gain ; that is, in the eye of the world. I have embraced an unpopular faith ; I have placed myself in the minority ; I have grieved my friends ; I have almost broken the hearts of my revered parents. If I could believe just what I please, I would choose to believe as all my friends do ; that would be far more pleasant to me than this wide difference of opinion. And if, without falsehood and deceit, I could profess to believe what I do not regard as true, then all this would not have taken place. But while the human mind remains what it is — while conviction and belief go together, and belief and profession miist correspond as they ought ever to do — I do not see what is to be done, but to let every one believe and profess what his conscience dictates. Moreover, as long as you take it for granted that the truth in regard to the Son of God can be discovered only through the special agency of the Holy Spirit 14 158 THE HOLT SPIRIT. operating on each individual mind ; and furthermore, that this truth has certainly been revealed to you, and those who think as you do ; and that all those veho differ from you are thereby proved to be without the Holy Spirit ; I do not see how those who are not wil- ling to concede these things exclusively to you and your sect, can be influenced by your assertions as to what is truth and what is not. / also believe that these things are taught us by the Holy Spirit, as that Spirit has revealed them to us in the Scriptures ; and I be- lieve that God gives his Spirit to each individual who asks for it in the right way ; not to discover to such an individual any new truth, not revealed in the Bible, but to help him to discern what is there taught. Therefore, each individual must, with all the aids he can procure, go to the Bible on his own responsibility, and discover, as well as he is able, what is contained therein. This doctrine of the special illumination of certain individuals, at the present day, when miraculous gifts are no longer bestowed as our infallible guide, is full of danger. A man may teach the most monstrous errors, and say he is under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and that we ought to give him credit for truth in a matter of which we cannot possibly judge. But I say, let us depend upon no uninspired fallible'man like ourselves ; let each one depend upon the Bible, devoutly and honestly seeking assistance from God. LETTER XX ELECTION. Mr DEAR Sir : If I held, as you do, the Calvinistic views of the doctrine of Election, I should consider any strenuous efforts for the spiritual welfare of my friends as a useless waste of time, and a profitless expenditure of strength. I cannot but believe that those who hold the doctrines of unconditional election and reprobation, are inconsistent, when they mourn over, labor, and pray for those whose fate is irrevocably fixed. But on this point, as on many others, the Orthodox theory and practice are essentially different. The doctrine too, of the final perseverance of saints, as it is called, seems to give you, as well as some others among my friends, a good deal of comfort. My mother says, that she is consoled by the thought that I " have heretofore given good evidence of piety ; " and therefore she believes that I will be recovered from what she deems my backslidden state. She thus ex- presses herself; "while I am writing I am comforted by the reflection that you have given evidence that you were born of God. If so, and God grant it, he will bring you safely to his kingdom of glory." And you 160 FINAL PERSEVERANCE OF SAINTS. also remark, " if you are one of his children, he will yet pluck you out of the miry clay, and out of the hor- rible pit ; and, if not, all we dare say is to pray earnest- ly that he may yet make you the real recipient of his gracious gift. I will not, cannot believe he will aban- don one of the offspring of his children to the deceit- ful delusions of human reason, and I cannot think a descendant of that holy man who has just gone to his rest will be left to perish." 1 can easily perceive, my dear Sir, how the habit of depending for salvation entirely upon the merits of another, without regard to any actions of our own, has tinctured your whole mind. You evidently place much dependence upon the fact of my pious ancestry, which, in my view, so far from being any safeguard to me, adds fearfully to my responsibility. Their dedication of me to God in infancy, their prayers, their efforts, can do nothing for me unless I exert myself. All piety is strictly personaZ ; and my anxious friends, while they pray for me, must persuade me to live a holy, Chris- tian life, or all their prayers will be of no avail. I thank them for their solicitude, and I hope they will ever set me such an example of love to God and love to man, of charity, meekness, and forbearance, that I may be perfectly safe in following their footsteps close- ly, as they follow Christ. But what example of meekness is there in the extracts from your letter which follow ? I can see nothing but a self-righteous spirit, mingled with a great degree of zeal against what you deem error. You call yourself, and those who agree with you in merely metaphysical EXTRACTS. 161 and speculative opinions — " God's own people," and all others you specify as belonging to " Anti-Christ." This is what you say : " I am deeply and fearfully impressed with the dreadful truth of that prophecy which denounces a woe upon those who deny their Saviour as God,* and seek in by-paths to avoid the simple way of salvation, so opposed to their carnal na- tures only because it is the way of God's appointment. ( t) Anti-Christ totters to her fall ; but, alas ! her declining years are too truly gilded with the blood of many erring souls, and her final ruin will bury numbers dear to God's own people ; so that the very triumph of their Master will be a heavy cross to their natural affections. But God's ways are not as our ways. Once I read the inspired book with unalloyed pleasure at the evident promise of his coming ; little did I then think the foretold precursors would be among kindred and friends. I thought to see Anti-Christ triumphing in the distance, gathering a short-lived strength from abroad, and finally yielding to the mighty hand stretched out against it, with a struggle we might see from afar, but never feel. But his strides are hitherward, and we have the worm- wood and the gall as well as the high consolations and hopes they may embitter and tarnish, but cannot over- throw." All this is very glowing, and would be quite alarming to me if I were conscious that I had gone over to the enemies of Christ ; but my conscience acquits * If by Saviour you mean Christ — for God is sometimes in tlie Bible called our Saviour — will you tell me where the prophecy to which you have alluded may be found ? 14* 163 ANTI-CHRIST. me of the charge, so your arrows fall harmless to the ground. The next quotation I shall make is, if possible, in still stronger language ; and you include in your anathe- mas the whole body of those who hold Arminian senti- ments. Speaking of Arminianism, you say, that " he who woi