of the Trinity is proved from the Scriptures is this. It is asserted, that three Persons are there spoken of, who possess divine attributes. The natural inference from this would be, that there are three Gods, or that God acts in three characters; but another inference is drawn from it, different from either, that each of these Persons is God, the one God, and yet are different from each other. Now it is true, that God subsists either in one person, or in three persons. If the Scriptures assert both sides of this proposition, then the Scriptures contradict themselves, and it is impossible to ascertain the truth from them. If the Scriptures are true, the advocates of one doctrine or the other misinterpret them. Here then are the texts on both sides, those which seem to teach a Trinity, and those which seem to teach the Unity. If the Trinity is true, then all those texts which seem to teach the Unity must be capable of being explained, so as to agree with it, for they are so many objections to it. If the Unity is true, then all those texts which seem to teach the Trinity, must be capable of an explanation consistent with the Unity. Then the question would be, supposing them both to be equally possible and probable in themselves, whether it is easier to explain those passages, which seem to teach a Trinity in consistence with those which teach the Unity, or to explain those which teach the Unity in consistence with those which teach the Trinity. And this seems to me to be a fair statement of the question. All the arguments in favor of one, are difficulties in the way of the other. It is a balance of opposite arguments and opposite difficulties. Every

text in the Old and New Testaments, in which God is spoken of without any distinction of Persons, or as one Person, is an argument for the Unitarian faith, and presents a difficulty to the Trinitarian, which must be explained away. A reason must be given, why God in that particular case, did not speak, or was not spoken of as three Persons, but did speak, or was spoken of, as one Person. In short, those passages of Scripture must be reasoned away. Of the thirteen hundred places in the New Testament alone, in which the word God appears, there is not one, which necessarily implies three Persons. In the Old Testament there are above two thousand places, in which the word God appears, without any intimation of a distinction of Persons. There are seventeen places in the New Testament, in which the Father is called the one, or the only God. Now all these, more than two thousand passages, the Trinitarian must explain, that is, show by reasoning, how each individual case is consistent with the supposition of a Trinity of Persons in God. The Unitarian is accused of explaining away Scripture; but what are the few texts which he has to explain, when compared with two thousand ?

I would begin then by saying, the very terms in which the Trinity is expressed, contain a refutation of the doctrine, "There are three Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." The terms Father and Son, contradict the very hypothesis. So far as these terms express the relation between the two Persons, they assert that one is derived from the other. An eternal Son is a contradiction in terms,

and the very definition given of God is, that he is eternal and unchangeable. The Son then, so far as the word Son expresses his attributes, cannot by any possibility be God. No derived or dependent being can be God. The question immediately occurs, Of whom is he the Son? The Scriptural answer is, "The Son of God." The Son of God cannot be God, because he must be another, and be derived, and because the attributes, which are necessary to Deity cannot be communicated, eternity and self-subsistence. It is true, theologians have invented a hypothesis to cover up this difficulty, and said that the Son is derived by an eternal generation. But this is only substituting one difficulty for another. Eternal generation is just as much a contradiction, as eternal Son. Then as to the third Person, the Holy Ghost, the very phrase shows that it is not only not a Person of the Godhead, but not a person at all. Ghost is an obsolete word, meaning the same thing as spirit. Now the Holy Spirit is not a proper name; it is the name of a thing. As such, it is in the neuter gender in English, and so it was in Greek. A thing is generally the property of some person. We ask, whose the Holy Spirit is? And the Scriptural answer is, that it is the Spirit of God. And if it is the Spirit of God, it can no more be a person, separate from God, than the spirit of a man can be a person, separate from the man himself. And this agrees precisely with the representation of Scripture.

"For

what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no one but the Spirit of God."

Of what elements is the Trinity made up, according to the very terms in which it is expressed, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? The first Person is God, the second the Son of God, and the third the Spirit of God. And what sort of a Trinity is this, made up of the Deity, a person derived from the Deity, and the spiritual essence of the Deity? I here might close the discussion with a simple analysis of the terms of the proposition, laid down to be proved. But it will be proper, in order more fully to develope the subject, to go into it more at large, and explain those texts of Scripture, which are thought to justify such a conception of God.

I commence therefore the argumentative part of my discourse by saying, that not only is the doctrine of the Trinity not proved by those texts, which are alleged in its support, but is always invalidated by something in the text itself, or in immediate connexion. with it.

We will begin with the exclamation of Thomas to Jesus after his resurrection: "My Lord and my God." This is often alleged as an irresistible argument in favor of the Trinity. But a glance is sufficient to show, that it has no bearing upon the subject. There is nothing said in it concerning a Trinity, or three Persons in the Godhead. If we suppose Thomas, in this case, to use the word God in its highest sense, it would only prove Thomas to have believed the person, who stood before him, to be the Jehovah of the Jews, but without the least intimation that Jehovah had in himself three persons or distinctions, but rather

the contrary, for he says, " My Lord and my God," both nouns in the singular number, and applicable to only one person instead of three.

But to my mind, it seems more probable, that he did not regard the person who stood before him as the Supreme Jehovah, but used the word God in a lower sense, in the same sense in which it is used in the Old Testament, as a term of the highest reverence to persons of exalted character or station, to kings and magistrates, to Moses and to David. And the reasons which lead me to think so, are the very circumstances of the case. Thomas doubted what? that Jesus had risen from the dead. And what was the proof which he demanded ? "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and thrust my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe." Jesus gave him the evidence which he demanded; he felt his hands and his side.

What he said

Was

then, was an exclamation of satisfaction on the point which he had disbelieved, that he had risen. touching his wounds any evidence that he was the infinite Jehovah? The infinite Jehovah risen from the dead! Impossible. In three verses farther on, John, the historian of this interview, writes, " And these were written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ," or the Messiah, not Jehovah, but "the Son of God."

There is another passage of nearly the same nature in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, ninth chapter, which I shall now consider. As given in our common version, it stands thus: "Whose are the fathers, and of