CHAPTER VI.

THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY.

In an age which above all things prided itself upon its reasonableness,

it would have been strange indeed if that doctrine of Christianity which

is objected to by unbelievers as most repugnant to reason, had not taken

a prominent place among the controversies which then abounded in every

sphere of theological thought. To the thoughtful Christian, the question

of questions must ever be that which forms the subject of this chapter.

It is, if possible, even a more vital question than that which was

involved in the Deistical controversy. The very name 'Christian' implies

as much. A Christian is a follower of Christ. Who, then, is this Christ?

What relation does He bear to the Great Being whom Christians, Jews,

Turks, Infidels, and Heretics alike adore? What do we mean when we say

that He is the Son of God Incarnate? That He is still present with his

Church through his Holy Spirit? These are only other forms of putting

the question, What is the Trinity? The various answers given to this

question in the eighteenth century form an important part of the

ecclesiastical history of the period.

The subject carries us back in thought to the earliest days of

Christianity. During the first four centuries, the nature of the

Godhead, and the relation of the Three Persons of the Trinity to each

other, were directly or indirectly the causes of almost all the

divisions which rent the Church. They had been matters of discussion

before the death of the last surviving Apostle, and the three centuries

which followed his decease were fruitful in theories upon the subject.

These theories reappear with but little alteration in the period which

comes more immediately under our present consideration. If history ever

repeats itself, it might be expected to do so on the revival of this

discussion after an abeyance of many centuries. For it is one of those

questions on which modern research can throw but little light. The same

materials which enabled the inquirer of the eighteenth century to form

his conclusion, existed in the fourth century. Moreover, there was a

tendency in the discussions of the later period to run in an historical

direction; in treating of them, therefore, our attention will constantly

be drawn to the views of the earlier thinkers. With regard to these, it

will be sufficient to say that their speculations on the mysterious

subject of the Trinity group themselves under one or other of these four

heads.

1. The view of those who contend for the mere humanity of Christ--a view

which, as will be seen presently, is often claimed by Unitarians as the

earliest belief of Christendom.

2. The view of those who deny the distinct personality of the Second and

Third Persons of the Blessed Trinity. This was held with various

modifications by a great variety of thinkers, but it passes under the

general name of _Sabellianism_.

3. The view of those who hold that Christ was something more than man,

but less than God; less than God, that is, in the highest, and indeed

the only proper, sense of the word God. This, like the preceding view,

was held by a great variety of thinkers, and with great divergences, but

it passes under the general name of _Arianism_.

4. The view of those who hold that 'there is but one living and true

God,' but that 'in the Unity of this Godhead there are three Persons, of

one substance, power, and eternity--the Father, the Son, and the Holy

Ghost.' This view is called by its advocates _Catholicism_, for they

hold that it is, and ever has been, the doctrine of the Universal Church

of Christ; but, inasmuch as the admission of such a name would be

tantamount to giving up the whole point in question, it is refused by

its opponents, who give it the name of _Athanasianism_.

In England, the Trinitarian question began to be agitated in the later

half of the seventeenth century. Possibly the interest in the subject

may have been stimulated by the migration into England of many

anti-Trinitarians from Poland, who had been banished from the country by

an Order of Council in 1660. At any rate, the date synchronises with the

re-opening of the question in this country. It is probable, however,

that under any circumstances the discussion would have arisen.

Before the publication of Bishop Bull's first great work in 1685, no

controversial treatise on either side of the question--none, at least,

of any importance--was published in this country, though there had of

course been individual anti-Trinitarians in England long before that

time.

A few words on the 'Defensio Fidei Nicænæ' will be a fitting

introduction to the account of the controversy which belongs properly

to the eighteenth century. Bishop Bull's defence was written in Latin,

and was therefore not intended for the unlearned. It was exclusively

confined to this one question: What were the views of the ante-Nicene

Fathers on the subject of the Trinity, and especially on the relation of

the Second to the First Person? But though the work was addressed only

to a very limited number of readers, and dealt only with one, and that a

very limited, view of the question, the importance of thoroughly

discussing this particular view can scarcely be exaggerated for the

following reason. When, the attention of any one familiar with the

precise definitions of the Catholic Church which were necessitated by

the speculations of Arians and other heretics is called for the first

time to the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers, he may be staggered by

the absence of equal definiteness and precision in them. Bishop Bull

boldly met the difficulties which might thus occur. He minutely examined

the various expressions which could be wrested into an anti-Trinitarian

sense, showing how they were compatible with the Catholic Faith, and

citing and dwelling upon other expressions which were totally

incompatible with any other belief. He showed that the crucial test of

orthodoxy, the one single term at which Arians and semi-Arians

scrupled--that is, the Homoousion or Consubstantiality of the Son with

the Father--was actually in use before the Nicene Council, and that it

was thoroughly in accordance with the teaching of the ante-Nicene

Fathers. This is proved, among other ways, by the constant use of a

simile which illustrates, as happily as earthly things can illustrate

heavenly, the true relation of the Son to the Father. Over and over

again this is compared by the early fathers to the ray of light which

proceeding from the sun is a part of it, and yet without any division or

diminution from it, but actually consubstantial with it. He fully admits

that the early fathers acknowledged a certain pre-eminence in the First

Person, but only such a pre-eminence as the term Father suggests, a

pre-eminence implying no inequality of nature, but simply a priority of

order, inasmuch as the Father is, as it were, the fountain of the Deity,

God in Himself,[431] while the Son is God _of_ God, and, to recur to the

old simile incorporated in the Nicene Creed, Light _of_ Light.[432]

Bishop Bull's two subsequent works on the subject of the Trinity

('Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ' and 'Primitiva et Apostolica Traditio')

may be regarded as supplements to the 'Defence.' The object of the

'Judicium' was to show, in opposition to Episcopius, that the Nicene

fathers held a belief of Our Lord's true and proper divinity to be an

indispensable term of Catholic communion; his latest work was directed

against the opinion of Zuicker that Christ's divinity, pre-existence,

and incarnation were inventions of early heretics.[433]

It is somewhat remarkable that although in the interval which elapsed

between the publication of these and of his first work the Trinitarian

controversy in England had been assuming larger proportions and

awakening a wider interest, Bull never entered into the arena with his

countrymen. But the fact is, his point of view was different from

theirs. He confined himself exclusively to the historical aspect of

the question, while other defenders of the Trinity were 'induced to

overstep the boundaries of Scripture proof and historical testimony,

and push their inquiries into the dark recesses of metaphysical

speculation.'[434] Chief among these was Dr. W. Sherlock, Dean of St.

Paul's, who in 1690 published his 'Vindication of the Trinity,' which he

describes as 'a new mode of explaining that great mystery by a

hypothesis which gives an easy and intelligible notion of a Trinity in

Unity, and removes the charge of contradiction.' In this work Sherlock

hazarded assertions which were unquestionably 'new,' but not so

unquestionably sound. He affirmed, among other things, that the Persons

of the Godhead were distinct in the same way as the persons of Peter,

James, and John, or any other men. Such assertions were not unnaturally

suspected of verging perilously near upon Tritheism, and his book was

publicly censured by the Convocation of the University of Oxford. On the

other hand, Dr. Wallis, Professor of Geometry, and the famous Dr. South,

published treatises against Dr. Sherlock, which, while avoiding the

Scylla of Tritheism, ran dangerously near to the Charybdis of

Sabellianism. Like all his writings, South's treatise was racy, but

violently abusive, and such irritation and acrimony were engendered,

that the Royal authority was at last exercised in restraining each party

from introducing novel opinions, and requiring them to adhere to such

explications only as had already received the sanction of the Church.

Chillingworth, in his Intellectual System, propounded a theory on the

Trinity which savoured of Arianism; Burnet and Tillotson called down the

fiercest invectives from that able controversialist Charles Leslie, for

'making the Three Persons of God only three manifestations, or the same

Person of God considered under three different qualifications and

respects as our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier,' while Burnet argued

that the inhabitation of God in Christ made Christ to be God.

Thus at the close of the seventeenth century the subject of the Trinity

was agitating the minds of some of the chief divines of the age. It must

be observed, however, that so far the controversy between theologians of

the first rank had been conducted within the limits of the Catholic

Faith. They disputed, not about the doctrine of the Trinity itself, but

simply about the mode of explaining it.

Still these disputes between English Churchmen strengthened the hands of

the anti-Trinitarians. These latter represented the orthodox as divided

into Tritheists and Nominalists, and the press teemed with pamphlets

setting forth with more or less ability the usual arguments against the

Trinity. These were for the most part published anonymously; for their

publication would have brought their writers within the range of the

law, the Act of 1689 having expressly excluded those who were unsound on

the subject of the Trinity from the tolerated sects. One of the most

famous tracts, however, 'The Naked Gospel,' was discovered to have been

written by Dr. Bury, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, and was burnt by

order of the Convocation of that University. 'A Historical Vindication

of the Naked Gospel,' was also a work of considerable power, and was

attributed to the famous Le Clerc. But with these exceptions, the

anti-Trinitarians, though they were energetic and prolific in a certain

kind of literature, had not yet produced any writer who had succeeded in

making his mark permanently upon the age.

Thus the question stood at the commencement of the eighteenth century.

In one sense the controversy was at its height; that is to say, some of

the ablest writers in the Church had written or were writing upon the

subject; but the real struggle between the Unitarians (so called) and

the Trinitarians had hardly yet begun, for under the latter term almost

all the disputants of high mark would fairly have come.

The new century found the pen of that doughty champion of the Faith,

Charles Leslie, busy at work on the Socinian controversy. His letters on

this subject had been begun some years before this date; but they were

not finally completed until the eighteenth century was some years old.

Leslie was ever ready to defend what he held to be the Christian faith

against all attacks from whatever quarter they might come. Deists, Jews,

Quakers, Romanists, Erastians, and Socinians, all fell under his lash;

his treatise on the last of these, being the first in order of date, and

by no means the last in order of merit among the eighteenth-century

literature on the subject of the Trinity, now comes under our notice.

Although his dialogue is nominally directed only against the Socinians,

it is full of valuable remarks on the anti-Trinitarians generally; and

he brings out some points more clearly and forcibly than subsequent and

more voluminous writers on the subject have done. For example, he meets

the old objection that the doctrine of the Trinity is incredible as

involving a contradiction, by pointing out that it rests upon the

fallacy of arguing from a nature which we know to quite a different

nature of which we know little or nothing.[435] The objection that the

Christian Trinity was borrowed from the Platonists he turns against the

objectors by asking, 'What is become of the master argument of the

Socinians that the Trinity is contradictory to common sense and

reason?--Yet now they would make it the invention of the principal and

most celebrated philosophers, men of the most refined reason.'[436]

On the whole this is a very valuable contribution to the apologetic

literature on the subject of the Trinity, for though Leslie, like his

predecessors, sometimes has recourse to abstruse arguments to explain

the 'modes' of the divine presence, yet he is far too acute a

controversialist to lay himself open, as Sherlock and South had done, to

imputations of heresy on any side; and his general method of treating

the question is lucid enough, and full of just such arguments as would

be most telling to men of common sense, for whom rather than for

profound theologians the treatise was written.

About the same time that this treatise was published, there arose what

was intended to be a new sect, or, according to the claims of its

founders, the revival of a very old one--a return, in fact, to original

Christianity. The founder or reviver of this party was William Whiston,

a man of great learning, and of a thoroughly straightforward and candid

disposition, but withal so eccentric, that it is difficult sometimes to

treat his speculations seriously. His character was a strange compound

of credulity and scepticism. He was 'inclined to believe true' the

legend of Abgarus' epistle to Christ, and Christ's reply. He published a

vindication of the Sibylline oracles 'with the genuine oracles

themselves.' He had a strong faith in the physical efficacy of anointing

the sick with oil. But his great discovery was the genuineness and

inestimable value of the Apostolical Constitutions and Canons. He was

'satisfied that they were of equal value with the four Gospels;' nay,

'that they were the most sacred of the canonical books of the New

Testament; that polemical controversies would never cease until they

were admitted as the standing rule of Christianity.' The learned world

generally had pronounced them to be a forgery, but that was easily

accounted for. The Constitutions favoured the Eusebian doctrines, and

were therefore repudiated of course by those who were interested in

maintaining the Athanasian heresy.

Whiston had many missions to fulfil. He had to warn a degenerate age

against the wickedness of second marriages; he had to impress upon

professing Christians the duty of trine immersion and of anointing the

sick; he had to prepare them for the Millennium, which, according to his

calculations when he wrote his Memoirs, was to take place in twenty

years from that time. But his great mission of all was to propagate

Eusebianism and to explode the erroneous notions about the Trinity which

were then unhappily current in the Church. His favourite theory on this

subject may be found in almost all his works; but he propounded it _in

extenso_ in a work which he entitled 'Primitive Christianity revived.'

Whiston vehemently repudiated the imputation of Arianism. He called

himself an Eusebian, 'not,' he is careful to tell us, 'that he approved

of all the conduct of Eusebius of Nicomedia, from whom that appellation

was derived; but because that most uncorrupt body of the Christian

Church which he so much approved of had this name originally bestowed

upon them, and because 'tis a name much more proper to them than

Arians.' Whiston formed a sort of society which at first numbered among

those who attended its meetings men who afterwards attained to great

eminence in the Church; among others, B. Hoadly, successively Bishop of

Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury and Winchester, Rundle, afterwards Bishop of

Derry, and then of Gloucester, and Dr. Samuel Clarke. But Whiston was a

somewhat inconvenient friend for men who desired to stand well with the

powers that be. They all fell off lamentably from the principles of

primitive Christianity,--Hoadly sealing his defection by the crowning

enormity of marrying a second wife.

Poor Whiston grievously lamented the triumph of interest over truth,

which these defections implied. Neither the censures of Convocation nor

the falling off of his friends had any power to move _him_. He still

continued for some time a member of the Church of England. But his

character was far too honest and clear-sighted to enable him to shut his

eyes to the fact that the Liturgy of the Church was in many points sadly

unsound on the principles of primitive Christianity. To remedy this

defect he put forth a Liturgy which he termed 'The Liturgy of the Church

of England reduced nearer to the Primitive Standard.' It was in most

respects precisely identical with that in use, only it was purged from

all vestiges of the Athanasian heresy. The principal changes were in the

Doxology, which was altered into what he declares was its original form,

in the prayer of St. Chrysostom, in the first four petitions of the

Litany, and one or two others, and in the collect for Trinity Sunday.

The Established Church was, however, so blind to the truth that she

declined to adopt the proposed alterations, and Whiston was obliged to

leave her communion. He found a home, in which, however, he was not

altogether comfortable, among the General Baptists.

The real reviver of modern Arianism in England was Whiston's friend, Dr.

Samuel Clarke. It has been seen that hitherto all theologians of the

highest calibre who had taken part in the Trinitarian controversy would

come under the denomination of Trinitarians, if we give that term a

fairly wide latitude. In 1712 Dr. Clarke, who had already won a high

reputation in the field of theological literature,[437] startled the

world by the publication of his 'Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity.'

This book was long regarded as a sort of text-book of modern Arianism.

The plan of the work was to make an exhaustive collection of all the

texts in the New Testament which bear upon the nature of the Godhead--in

itself a most useful work, and one which was calculated to supply a

distinct want in theology. No less than 1,251 texts, all more or less

pertinent to the matter in hand, were collected by this industrious

writer, and to many of them were appended explanations and criticisms

which bear evident marks of being the product of a scholar and a divine.

But the advocates of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity had no need to

go further than the mere headings of the chapters of this famous work to

have their suspicions justly awakened respecting its tendency. Chapter

i. treated 'of God the Father;' chapter ii. 'of the Son of God;' chapter

iii. 'of the Holy Spirit of God.' The natural correlatives to 'God the

Father' would be 'God the Son' and 'God the Holy Ghost;' there was

something suspicious in the change of these expressions into 'the Son of

God' and the 'Holy Spirit of God.' A closer examination of the work will

soon show us that the change was not without its significance. 'The

Scripture Doctrine' leads substantially to a very similar conclusion to

that at which Whiston had arrived. The Father alone is the one supreme

God; the Son is a Divine being as far as divinity is communicable by

this supreme God; the Holy Ghost is inferior both to the Father and the

Son, not in order only, but in dominion and authority. Only Dr. Clarke

expresses himself more guardedly than his friend. He had already made a

great name among theologians, and he had no desire to lose it.

We may take the appearance of Dr. Clarke's book as the commencement of a

new era in this controversy, which after this time began to reach its

zenith. Various opponents at once arose, attacking various parts of Dr.

Clarke's scheme. Dr. Wells complained that he had taken no notice of the

Old Testament, that he had failed to show how the true sense of

Scripture was to be ascertained, and that he had disparaged creeds,

confessions of faith, and the testimony of the fathers; Mr. Nelson

complained, not without reason, of his unfair treatment of Bishop Bull;

Dr. Gastrell pointed out that there was only one out of Dr. Clarke's

fifty-five propositions to which an Arian would refuse to

subscribe.[438]

These and others did good service on particular points; but it remained

for Dr. Waterland to take a comprehensive view of the whole question,

and to leave to posterity not only an effective answer to Dr. Clarke,

but a masterly and luminous exposition, the equal to which it would be

difficult to find in any other author, ancient or modern. It would be

wearisome even to enumerate the titles of the various 'Queries,'

'Vindications,' 'Replies,' 'Defences,' 'Answers to Replies,' which

poured forth from the press in luxurious abundance on either side of the

great controversy. It will be sufficient to indicate generally the main

points at issue between the combatants.

Dr. Clarke then, and his friends[439] (who all wrote more or less under

his inspiration), maintained that the worship of God is in Scripture

appointed to one Being, that is, to the Father _personally_. That such

worship as is due to Christ is the worship of a mediator and cannot

possibly be that paid to the one supreme God. That all the titles given

to the Son in the New Testament, and all powers ascribed to Him, are

perfectly well consistent with reserving the supremacy of absolute and

independent dominion to the Father alone. That the highest titles of God

are never applied to the Son or Spirit. That the subordination of the

Son to the Father is not merely nominal, consisting in the mere position

or order of words, which in truth of things is a _co_-ordination; but

that it is a _real_ subordination in point of authority and dominion

over the universe. That three persons, that is, three intelligent

agents in the same individual, identical substance, is a self-evident

contradiction, and that the Nicene fathers, by the term Homoousion, did

not mean one individual, identical substance. That the real difficulty

in the conception of the Trinity is _not_ how three persons can be one

God, for Scripture nowhere expresses the doctrine in those words; and

the difficulty of understanding a Scripture doctrine ought not to lie

wholly upon words not found in Scripture, but _how_ and in what sense,

consistently with everything that is affirmed in Scripture about Father,

Son, and Holy Ghost, it is still certainly and infallibly true that to

us there is but 'one God the Father' (I Cor. viii. 6). That as to the

claims of the Holy Ghost to be worshipped on an equality with the

Father, there is really no one instance in Scripture of any direct act

of adoration or invocation being paid to Him at all.

Such is the outline of the system of which Dr. Clarke was the chief

exponent. The various arguments by which it was supported will be best

considered in connection with that great writer who now comes under our

notice--Dr. Waterland. Among the many merits of Waterland's treatment of

the subject, this is by no means the least--that he pins down his

adversary and all who hold the same views in any age to the real

question at issue. Dr. Clarke, for example, admitted that Christ was, in

a certain sense, Creator. 'Either, then,' argues Waterland, 'there are

two authors and governors of the universe, _i.e._ two Gods, or not. If

there are, why do you deny it of either; if not, why do you affirm it of

both?' Dr. Clarke thought that the divinity of Christ was analogous to

the royalty of some petty prince, who held his power under a supreme

monarch. 'I do not,' retorts Waterland, 'dispute against the notion of

one king under another; what I insist upon is that a great king and a

little king make two kings; (consequently a supreme God and an inferior

God make two Gods).' Dr. Clarke did not altogether deny omniscience to

be an attribute of Christ, but he affirmed it to be a relative

omniscience, communicated to him from the Father. 'That is, in plain

language,' retorted Waterland, 'the Son knows all things, except that He

is ignorant of many things.' Dr. Clarke did not altogether deny the

eternity of the Son. The Son is eternal, because we cannot conceive a

time when He was not. 'A negative eternity,' replies Waterland, 'is no

eternity; angels might equally be termed eternal.'

One point on which Waterland insists constantly and strongly is that the

scheme of those who would pay divine honours to Christ, and yet deny

that He is very God, cannot escape from the charge of polytheism. 'You

are tritheists,' he urges, 'in the same sense as Pagans are called

polytheists. One supreme and two inferior Gods is your avowed doctrine;

that is, three Gods. If those texts which exclude all but one God,

exclude only supreme deities, and do not exclude any that are not

supreme, by such an interpretation you have voided and frustrated every

law of the Old Testament against idolatry.' Dr. Clarke and his friends

distinguished between that supreme sovereign worship which was due to

the Father only, and the mediate, relative, inferior worship which was

due to others. 'What authority,' asks Waterland, 'is there in Scripture

for this distinction? What rules are there to regulate the intention of

the worshipper, so as to make worship high, higher, or highest as

occasion requires? All religious worship is determined by Scripture and

antiquity to be what you call absolute and sovereign.' 'Scripture and

antiquity generally say nothing of a supreme God, because they

acknowledge no inferior God. Such language was borrowed from the Pagans,

and then used by Christian writers. So, too, was the notion of

"mediatorial worship" borrowed from the Pagans, handed on by Arians, and

brought down to our own times by Papists.'

But Dr. Clarke and his friends maintained that they were not Arians, for

they did not make Christ a creature. 'Impossible,' replies Dr.

Waterland; 'you assert, though not directly, yet consequentially, that

the Maker and Redeemer of the whole world is no more than a creature,

that He is mutable and corruptible; that He depends entirely upon the

favour and good pleasure of God; that He has a precarious existence and

dependent powers, and is neither so perfect in His nature nor exalted in

privileges but that it is in the Father's power to create another equal

or superior. There is no middle between being essentially God and being

a creature.' Dr. Clarke cannot find a medium between orthodoxy and

Arianism. He has declared against the consubstantiality and proper

divinity of Christ as well as His co-eternity. He cannot be neutral. In

condemning Arians he has condemned himself. Nay, he has gone further

than the Arians. 'Sober Arians will rise up in judgment and condemn you

for founding Christ's worship so meanly upon I know not what powers

given after His resurrection. They founded it upon reasons antecedent to

His incarnation, upon His being God before the world, and Creator of the

world of His own power.'

Waterland showed his strength in defence as well as in attack. He boldly

grappled with the difficulties which the Catholic doctrine of the

Trinity unquestionably involves, and his method of dealing with these

difficulties forms not the least valuable part of his writings on the

subject.

Into the labyrinths, indeed, of metaphysical speculation he distinctly

declined to follow his opponents. They, as well as he, acknowledged, or

professed to acknowledge, the force of the testimony from Scripture and

the fathers. He is ready to join issue on this point, 'Is the Catholic

doctrine true?' but for resolving this question he holds that we must

have recourse to Scripture and antiquity. 'Whoever debates this question

should forbear every topic derived from the _nature_ of things, because

such arguments belong only to the other question, whether the doctrine

be _possible_, and in all reason possibility should be presupposed in

all our disputes from Scripture and the fathers.' He consistently

maintains that our knowledge of the nature of God is far too limited to

allow us to dogmatise from our own reason on such a subject. 'You can

never fix any certain principles of individuation, therefore you can

never assure me that three real persons are not one numerical or

individual essence. You know not precisely what it is that makes one

being, one essence, one substance.' There are other difficulties in the

nature of the Godhead quite as great as any which the doctrine of the

Trinity involves. 'The Omnipresence, the Incarnation, Self-existence,

are all mysteries, and eternity itself is the greatest mystery of all.

There is nothing peculiar to the Trinity that is near so perplexing as

eternity.' And then he finely adds: 'I know no remedy for these things

but a humble mind. If we demur to a doctrine because we cannot fully and

adequately comprehend it, is not this too familiar from a creature

towards his Creator, and articling more strictly with Almighty God than

becomes us?'

Is the Trinity a mysterious doctrine? 'The tremendous Deity is all over

mysterious, in His nature and in His attributes, in His works and in His

ways. If not, He would not be divine. If we reject the most certain

truths about the Deity, only because they are incomprehensible, when

everything about Him must be so of course, the result will be Atheism;

for there are mysteries in the works of nature as well as in the Word of

God.'

If it be retorted, Why then introduce terms and ideas which by your own

admission can only be imperfectly understood? Why not leave such

mysteries in the obscurity in which they are shrouded, and not condemn

those who are unable to accept without understanding them? The reply is,

'It is you and not we who are responsible for the discussion and

definition of these mysteries. The faith of the Church was at first, and

might be still, a plain, simple, easy thing, did not its adversaries

endeavour to perplex and puzzle it with philosophical niceties. Early

Christians did not trouble their heads with nice speculations about the

_modus_ of the Three in One.' 'All this discourse about _being_ and

_person_ is foreign and not pertinent, because if both these terms were

thrown out, our doctrine would stand just as before, independent of

them, and very intelligible without them. So it stood for about 150

years before _person_ was heard of in it, and it was later before

_being_ was mentioned. Therefore, if all the objection be against these,

however innocent, expressions, let the objectors drop the name and

accept the thing.' It was no wish of Waterland to argue upon such

mysteries at all. 'Perhaps,' he says, 'after all, it would be best for

both of us to be silent when we have really nothing to say, but as you

have begun, I must go on with the argument.... It is really not

reasoning but running riot with fancy and imagination about matters

infinitely surpassing human comprehension. You may go on till you

reason, in a manner, God out of His attributes, and yourself out of your

faith, and not know at last when to stop.' These are weighty and wise

words, and it would be well if they were borne in mind by disputants on

this profound mystery in every age. But while deprecating all

presumptuous prying into the secret nature of God, Waterland is

perfectly ready to meet his adversaries on that ground on which alone he

thinks the question can be discussed.

Summing up and setting in one compendious view all that the modern

Arians taught in depreciation of Christ, Waterland showed that in spite

of their indignation at being represented as teaching that Christ was a

mere creature, they yet clearly taught that He was 'brought into

existence as well as any other creature, that He was precarious in

existence, ignorant of much more than He knows, capable of change from

strength to weakness, and from weakness to strength; capable of being

made wiser, happier, and better in every respect; having nothing of his

own, nothing but what He owes to the favour of His lord and governor.'

By the arguments which they used to prove all this, they put a most

dangerous weapon into the hands of Atheists, or at least into the hands

of those who denied the existence of such a God as is revealed to us in

Holy Scripture. 'Through your zeal against the divinity of the Son, you

have betrayed the cause to the first bold Marcionite that shall deny the

eternal Godhead of the Father and the Son, and assert some unknown God

above both. The question was, whether a particular Person called the

Father be the Eternal God. His being called God would amount to nothing,

that being no more than a word of office. His being Creator, nothing;

that you could elude. His being Jehovah, of no weight, meaning no more

than a person true and faithful to his promises. Almighty is capable of

a subordinate sense. The texts which speak of eternity are capable of a

subordinate sense. The term "first cause" is not a Scriptural

expression.'

Waterland boldly faces the objection against the Catholic doctrine of

the Trinity which was derived from certain texts of Scripture which

taken by themselves might seem to favour the Arian view. How, for

example, it was asked, could it be said that all power was _given_ unto

Christ (Matt, xxviii. 18), and that all things were put under His feet

after His Resurrection (Eph. i. 22), if He was Lord long before? 'The

Logos,' replies Waterland, 'was from the beginning Lord over all, but

the God man ([Greek: Theanthrôpos]) was not so till after the

Resurrection. Then He received in that capacity what He had ever enjoyed

in another; He received full power in both natures which He had

heretofore only in _one_.'[440] The passage on which the Arians insisted

most of all, and which they constantly asserted to be by itself decisive

of the whole question, is 1 Corinthians viii. 6. There, they asserted,

the Son is excluded in most express words from being one with the

Supreme God. Dr. Clarke told Waterland in downright terms that 'he

should be ashamed when he considered that he falsified St. Paul, who

said, "To us there is but one God, the Father."' 'But,' replies Dr.

Waterland, 'do we who make the Son essentially the same God with that

one, and suppose but one God in all, or you who make two Gods, and in

the same _relative_ sense, God _to us_, falsify St. Paul? _We_ can give

a reason why the Son is tacitly included, being so intimately united to

the Father as partaker of the same divine nature, but that any creature

should not be excluded from being God is strange.'

To turn now from Scripture to antiquity. The question as to what was the

opinion of the ante-Nicene fathers had been so thoroughly handled by

Bishop Bull, that Waterland (his legitimate successor) had no need to

enter upon it at large over again. But Bishop Bull had done his work too

well to suit the theory of Dr. Clarke and his friends. Although the

latter professed to find in the early fathers a confirmation of their

views, yet from a consciousness, perhaps, of the unsatisfactoriness of

this confirmation they constantly depreciate the value of patristic

evidence. In connection, therefore, with the subject of the Trinity,

Waterland clearly points out what is and what is not the true character

of the appeal to antiquity. The fathers are certain proofs in many cases

of the Church's doctrine in that age, and probable proofs of what that

doctrine was from the beginning. In respect of the latter they are

inferior additional proofs when compared with plain Scripture proof; of

no moment if Scripture is plainly contrary, but of great moment when

Scripture looks the same way, because they help to fix the true

interpretation in disputed texts. Waterland, however, would build no

article of faith on the fathers, but on Scripture alone. If the sense of

Scripture be disputed, the concurring sentiments of the fathers in any

doctrine will be generally the best and safest comments on Scripture,

just as the practice of courts and the decisions of eminent lawyers are

the best comments on an Act of Parliament made in or near their own

times, though the obedience of subjects rests solely on the laws of the

land as its rule and measure. To the objection that interpreting

Scripture by the ancients is debasing its majesty and throwing Christ

out of His throne, Waterland replies in somewhat stately terms, 'We

think that Christ never sits more secure or easy on His throne than when

He has His most faithful guards about Him, and that none are so likely

to strike at His authority or aim at dethroning Him as they that would

displace His old servants only to make way for new ones.' But this

respect for the opinion of antiquity in no way involved any compromise

of the leading idea of all eighteenth-century theology, that it should

follow the guidance of reason. Reason was by no means to be sacrificed

to the authority of the fathers. Indeed, 'as to authority,' he says, 'in

a strict and proper sense I do not know that the fathers have any over

us; they are all dead men; therefore we urge not their _authority_ but

their testimony, their suffrage, their judgment, as carrying great force

of reason. Taking them in here as lights or helps _is_ doing what is

_reasonable_ and using our own understandings in the best way.' 'I

follow the fathers,' he adds, 'as far as reason requires and no further;

therefore, this _is_ following our own reason.' In an age when patristic

literature was little read and lightly esteemed this forcible, and at

the same time highly reasonable, vindication of its importance had a

value beyond its bearing upon the doctrine of the Trinity, in connection

with which the subject was introduced by our author.[441]

Here our notice of the points at issue between Dr. Waterland and the

modern Arians, so far as they concerned the truth of the Catholic

doctrine of the Trinity, may fitly close. But there was yet another

question closely connected with the above which it concerned the

interests of morality, no less than of religion, thoroughly to sift. It

was no easy task which Dr. Clarke and his friends undertook when they

essayed to prove from Scripture and antiquity that the Son and Holy

Ghost were not one with the supreme God. But they attempted a yet

harder task than this. They contended that their views were not

irreconcilable with the formularies and Liturgy of the Church of

England. The more candid and ingenuous mind of Whiston saw the utter

hopelessness of this endeavour. It was, he says, an endeavour 'to wash

the blackmore white,' and so, like an honest man as he was, he retired

from her communion. Dr. Clarke could not, of course, deny that there was

at least an apparent inconsistency between his views and those of the

Church to which he belonged. One of the chapters in his 'Scripture

Doctrine of the Trinity' is devoted to a collection of 'passages in the

Liturgy which may seem in some respects to differ from the foregoing

doctrine.' But he and his friends were 'ready to subscribe any test

containing nothing more than is contained in the Thirty-nine Articles;'

their avowed principle being that 'they may do it in their own sense

agreeably to what they call Scripture.' In his 'Case of Arian

Subscription' Dr. Waterland had no difficulty in showing the utter

untenableness of this position. He maintained that 'as the Church

required subscription to _her own_ interpretation of Scripture, so the

subscriber is bound to that and that only.' 'The rules,' he says, 'for

understanding what her sense is are the same as for understanding oaths,

laws, &c.--that is, the usual acceptation of words, the custom of speech

at the time being, the scope of the writer from the controversies then

on foot,' &c. It is but a shallow artifice for fraudulent subscribers to

call their interpretation of Scripture, Scripture. The Church has as

good a right to call her interpretation Scripture. Let the Arian sense

be Scripture to Arians; but then let them subscribe only to Arian

subscriptions.

The case of Arian subscriptions was really part of a larger question.

There were some who, without actually denying the _truth_ of the

doctrine of the Trinity, doubted whether it was of sufficient

_importance_ or clearly enough revealed to make it a necessary article

of the Christian faith. These were sometimes called Episcopians, a name

derived from one Episcopius, an amiable and not unorthodox writer of the

seventeenth century, who was actuated by a charitable desire to include

as many as possible within the pale of the Christian Church, and to

minimize the differences between all who would, in any sense, own the

name of Christians. The prevalence of such views in Dr. Waterland's days

led him to write one of his most valuable treatises in connection with

the Trinitarian controversy. It was entitled, 'The Importance of the

Doctrine of the Trinity Asserted,' and was addressed to those only who

believed the _truth_ of the doctrine but demurred to its importance.

Waterland concludes this work, which is rather a practical than a

controversial treatise, with some wise words of caution to those

persons of 'more warmth than wisdom,' who from a mistaken liberality

would make light of heresy.

It is now time to close this sketch of the method in which this great

writer--one of the few really great divines who belong to the eighteenth

century--handled the mysterious subject of the Trinity. Not only from

his profound learning and acuteness, but from the general cast of his

mind, Waterland was singularly adapted for the work which he undertook.

To treat this subject of all subjects, the faculties both of thinking

clearly and of expressing thoughts clearly are absolutely essential.

These two qualifications Dr. Waterland possessed in a remarkable degree.

He always knew exactly what he meant, and he also knew how to convey his

meaning to his readers. His style is nervous and lucid, and he never

sacrifices clearness to the graces of diction. His very deficiencies

were all in his favour. Had he been a man of a more poetical temperament

he might have been tempted, like Platonists and neo-Platonists, to soar

into the heights of metaphysical speculations and either lose himself or

at least render it difficult for ordinary readers to follow him. But no

one can ever complain that Dr. Waterland is obscure. We may agree or

disagree with his views, but we can never be in doubt what those views

are. Had Waterland been of a warmer and more excitable temperament he

might have been tempted to indulge in vague declamation or in that

personal abusiveness which was only too common in the theological

controversies of the day. Waterland fell into neither of these snares;

he always argues, never declaims; he is a hard hitter in controversy,

but never condescends to scurrilous personalities. The very completeness

of his defence of the doctrine of the Trinity against Arian assailants

furnishes, perhaps, the reason why this part of his writings has not

been so widely and practically useful as it deserves to be. He so

effectually assailed the position of Dr. Clarke and his friends that it

has rarely been occupied by opponents of the Catholic doctrine in modern

days.

It has been thought desirable to present the great controversy in which

Drs. Clarke and Waterland were respectively the leaders in one

uninterrupted view. In doing so the order of events has been

anticipated, and it is now necessary to revert to circumstances bearing

upon the subject of this chapter which occurred long before that

controversy closed.

Dr. Clarke's 'Scripture Doctrine' was published in 1712; Dr. Waterland

did not enter into the arena until 1719; but five years before this

latter date, Dr. Clarke was threatened with other weapons besides those

of argument. In 1714, the Lower House of Convocation made an

application to the Upper House to notice the heretical opinions of Dr.

Clarke on the subject of the Trinity. They submitted to the bishops

several extracts, and also condemned the general drift of the book. The

danger of ecclesiastical censures drew from Dr. Clarke a declaration in

which he promised not to preach any more on such subjects, and also an

explanation which almost amounted to a retractation; this he immediately

followed by a paper delivered to the Bishop of London, half recanting

and half explaining his explanations. These documents appear to have

satisfied nobody except perhaps the bishops. The Lower House resolved

'that the paper subscribed by Dr. Clarke and communicated by the bishops

to the Lower House doth not contain in it any recantation of the

heretical assertions, &c., nor doth give such satisfaction for the great

scandal occasioned by the said books as ought to put a stop to further

examination thereof;' while his outspoken friend, Whiston, wrote to him,

'Your paper has occasioned real grief to myself and others, not because

it is a real retractation, but because it is so very like one, yet is

not, and seems to be penned with a plain intention only to ward off

persecution,' and told him face to face that '_he_ would not have given

the like occasion of offence for all the world.' However, the bishops

were satisfied and the matter proceeded no further.

Subsequently Dr. Clarke was taken to task by his diocesan, the Bishop of

London, for altering the doxology into an accordance with Arianism. He

was neither convinced nor silenced by Waterland; and though his

influence may (as Van Mildert tells us) have perceptibly declined after

the great controversy was closed, he was not left without followers, and

maintained a high reputation which survived him. He was for many years

known among a certain class of admirers as 'the great Dr. Clarke.' Among

those who were at least interested in, if not influenced by the doctor

was Queen Caroline, the clever wife of George II.

Nor was the excitement caused by the speculations of Dr. Clarke on the

doctrine of the Trinity confined to the Church of England alone. It was

the occasion of one of the fiercest disputes that ever arose among

Nonconformists. Exeter was the first scene of the spread of Arianism

among the Dissenters. Two ministers gave great offence to their

congregations by preaching Arianism. The alarm of heresy spread rapidly,

and there was so great an apprehension of its tainting the whole country

that--strange as it may sound to modern ears--the judge at the county

assize made the prevalence of Arianism the chief subject of his charge

to the grand jury. Among Churchmen, some were alarmed lest the heresy

should spread among their own body, while others rather gloried in it

as a natural result of schism. A statement of the case was sent to the

dissenting ministers in the metropolis. The Presbyterian ministers at

Exeter, in order to allay the panic, agreed to make a confession of

faith, every one in his own words _vivâ voce_. This caused a revival of

the old discussion as to whether confessions of faith should be made in

any but Scripture language. The matter was referred to the ministers in

London, and a meeting was held at Salters' Hall, at which the majority

agreed to the general truth that 'there is but one living and true God,

and that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are that one God.' Numbers,

however, of the Presbyterians, and some of the Baptists, adhered to

Arianism, and thence drifted into Socinianism or rather simple

Unitarianism.

This, indeed, was the general course inside as well as outside the

Church. The very name of Arian almost died out, and the name of Socinian

took its place. The term Socinian is, however, misleading. It by no

means implies that those to whom it was given agreed with the doctrine

of Faustus Socinus. It was often loosely and improperly applied on the

one hand to many who really believed more than he did, and on the other

to many who believed less. In fact, the stigma of Socinianism was tossed

about as a vague, general term of reproach in the eighteenth century,

much in the same way as 'Puseyite,' 'Ritualist,' and 'Rationalist' have

been in our own day. This very inaccurate use of the word Socinian may

in part be accounted for by remembering that one important feature in

the system of Socinus was his utter denial of the doctrine of the

atonement or satisfaction made by Christ in any sense. 'Christ,' he

said, 'is called a mediator not because He made peace between God and

man, but because He was sent from God to man to explain the will of God

and to make a covenant with them in the name of God. A mediator (_a

medio_) is a middle person between God and man.'[442] Now there is

abundance of evidence that before and at the time of the Evangelical

revival in the Church of England, this doctrine of the atonement had

been, if not denied, at least practically ignored. Bishop Horsley, in

his Charge in 1790, complains of this; and in the writings of the early

Evangelical party we find, of course, constant complaints of the general

ignoring of these doctrines. Now it is probable that the term Socinian

was often applied to those who kept these doctrines in the background,

and not, indeed, applied altogether improperly; only, if we assume that

all those who were termed Socinians disbelieved in the true divinity or

personality of the Son and the Holy Ghost, we shall be assuming more

than was really the case.

On the other hand, many were called Socinians who really believed far

less than Socinus and the foreign Socinians did. It is true that Socinus

'regarded it as a mere human invention, not agreeable to Scripture and

repugnant to reason, that Christ is the only begotten Son of God,

because He and no one besides Him was begotten of the divine

substance;'[443] but he also held that 'Scripture so plainly attributes

a divine and sovereign power to Christ as to leave no room for a

figurative sense.'[444] And the early Socinians thought that Christ must

not only be obeyed but His assistance implored, and that He ought to be

worshipped, that 'invocation of Christ or addressing prayers to Him was

a duty necessarily arising from the character He sustained as head of

the Church;' and that 'those who denied the invocation of Christ did not

deserve to be called Christians.'[445]

Let us now return to the history of our own Socinians, or, as they

preferred to be called, Unitarians; we shall soon see how far short they

fell in point of belief of their foreign predecessors. The heresy

naturally spread more widely among Nonconformists than it could in the

Church of England. As the biographer of Socinus remarks, 'The

Trinitarian forms of worship which are preserved in the Church of

England, and which are so closely incorporated with its services, must

furnish an insuperable objection against conformity with all sincere and

conscientious Unitarians.'[446] If the common sense and common honesty

of Englishmen revolted against the specious attempts of Dr. Clarke and

his friends to justify _Arian_ subscription, a much more hopeless task

would it have been to reconcile the further development of

anti-Trinitarian doctrines with the formularies of the Church.

At the same time it must be admitted that the cessation or abatement of

anti-Trinitarian efforts in the Church after the death of Dr. Clarke is

not to be attributed solely to the firmness and earnestness of

Churchmen's convictions on this subject. It arose, in part at least,

from the general indisposition to stir up mooted questions. Men were

disposed to rest satisfied with 'our happy establishment in Church and

State;' and it was quite as much owing to the spiritual torpor which

overtook the Church and nation after the third decade of the eighteenth

century, as to strength of conviction, that the Trinitarian question was

not further agitated.

Among the Nonconformists, and especially among the Presbyterians, the

case was different. The Arianism which led to the Salters' Hall

conference drifted by degrees into Unitarianism pure and simple. Dr.

Lardner was one of the earliest and most distinguished of those who

belonged to this latter school. He passed through the stage of Arianism,

but the mind of the author of 'The Credibility of Gospel History' was

far too clear and logical to allow him to rest there, and he finally

came to the conclusion that 'Jesus Christ was a mere man, but a man with

whom God was, in a peculiar and extraordinary manner.' This is not the

place to refer to the various Nonconformists, such as Caleb Fleming,

Hugh Farmer, James Foster, Robert Robinson, John Taylor, and many others

who diverged more or less from the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. But

the views of one Nonconformist whose name is a household word in the

mouth of Churchmen and Dissenters alike, and some of whose hymns will

live as long as the English language lives, claim at least a passing

notice.

Isaac Watts belonged to the Independents, a sect which in the first half

of the eighteenth century was less tainted with Socinianism than any of

'the three denominations.' His 'Treatise on the Christian Doctrine of

the Trinity,' and that entitled 'The Arian invited to the Orthodox

Faith,' were professedly written in defence of the Catholic doctrine.

The former, like most of Dr. Watts's compositions, was essentially a

popular work. 'I do not,' he writes, 'pretend to instruct the learned

world. My design here was to write for private and unlearned Christians,

and to lead them by the fairest and most obvious sense of Scripture into

some acquaintance with the great doctrine of the Trinity.'[447] In some

respects his work is very effective. One point especially he brings out

more forcibly than almost any other writer of his day. It is what he

calls 'the moral argument' for the Trinity. There is real eloquence in

his appeal to the 'great number of Christians who, since the Apostles,

under the influence of a belief in the Divinity of the Son and the

Spirit, have paid divine honours to both, after they have sought the

knowledge of the truth with the utmost diligence and prayer; when they

have been in the holiest and most heavenly frames of spirit, and in

their devoutest hours; when they have been under the most sensible

impressions of the love of the Father and the Son, and under the most

quickening influences of the Blessed Spirit himself; in the devotions of

a death-bed, and in the songs and doxologies of martyrdom.' 'Now can

we,' he asks, 'suppose that in such devout and glorious seasons as

these, God the Father should ever thus manifest His own love to souls

that are degrading Him by worshipping another God? That Christ Jesus

should reveal Himself in His dying love to souls that are practising

idolatry and worshipping Himself instead of the true God?'

But there are other passages of a very different tendency, in which Dr.

Watts virtually gives up the whole point at issue, and apparently

without being conscious that he is doing so. On the worship of the Holy

Ghost, for example, he writes. 'There is great silence in Scripture of

precepts or patterns of prayer and praise to the Holy Spirit.'

'Therefore,' he thinks, 'we should not bind it on our own consciences or

on others as a piece of necessary worship, but rather practise it

occasionally as prudence and expediency may require.'[448] On the famous

question of the Homoousion, he thinks 'it is hard to suppose that the

eternal generation of the Son of God as a distinct person, yet co-equal

and consubstantial or of the same essence with the Father, should be

made a fundamental article of faith in the dawn of the Gospel.' He is

persuaded therefore 'that faith in Him as a divine Messiah or

all-sufficient and appointed Saviour is the thing required in those very

texts where He is called the Son of God and proposed as such for the

object of our belief; and that a belief of the natural and eternal and

consubstantial sonship of Christ to God as Father was not made the

necessary term or requisite of salvation;' neither can he 'find it

asserted or revealed with so much evidence in any part of the Word of

God as is necessary to make it a fundamental article of faith.'[449] And

once more, on the Personality of the Holy Ghost, he writes: 'The general

and constant language of Scripture speaks of the Holy Ghost as a power

or medium of divine operation.' Some places may speak of him as

personal, but 'it was the frequent custom of Jews and Oriental nations

to speak of powers and qualities under personal characters.' He can find

'no plain and express instance in Holy Scripture of a doxology directly

and distinctly addressed to the Holy Spirit,' and he thinks the reason

of this may be 'perhaps because he is only personalised by idioms of

speech.'[450]

Now anyone who has studied the course of the Trinitarian controversy

will see at once that an anti-Trinitarian would require no further

concessions than these to prove his point quite unanswerably. The

amiable design of Dr. Watts's second treatise was 'to lead an Arian by

soft and easy steps into a belief of the divinity of Christ,'[451] but

if he granted what he did, the Arian would have led him, if the

controversy had been pushed to its logical results.

To return to the Church of England. About the middle of the eighteenth

century there was a revival of one phase of the Trinitarian controversy.

A movement arose to procure the abolition of subscription to the

Articles and Liturgy. The spread of Unitarian opinions among the clergy

is said to have originated this movement, though probably this was not

the sole cause. One of the most active promoters of this attempt was

Archdeacon Blackburne; he was supported by Clayton, Bishop of Clogher,

who boldly avowed that his object was to open the door for different

views upon the Trinity in the Church. His own views on this subject

expressed in a treatise entitled 'An Essay on Spirit' were certainly

original and startling. He held that the Logos was the Archangel

Michael, and the Holy Spirit the angel Gabriel!

This treatise and that of Blackburne, entitled 'The Confessional,'

called forth the talents of an eminent Churchman in defence of the

received doctrine of the Trinity--Jones of Nayland. His chief work on

the subject was entitled 'The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity,' and was

drawn up after the model of Dr. Clarke's famous book, to which, indeed,

it was partly intended to be an antidote. It was written on the

principle that Scripture is its own best interpreter, and consisted of a

series of well-chosen texts marshalled in order with a brief explanation

of each, showing its application to the doctrine of the Trinity. On one

point Jones insists with great force, viz., that every article of the

Christian faith depends upon the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity; and

he illustrates this by applying it to 'our creation, redemption,

sanctification, resurrection, and glorification by the power of Christ

and the Holy Spirit.'[452] Jones did, perhaps, still more useful if less

pretentious work in publishing two little pamphlets, the one entitled 'A

Letter to the Common People in Answer to some Popular Arguments against

the Trinity,' the other 'A Preservative against the Publications

dispersed by Modern Socinians.' Both of these set forth the truth, as he

held it, in a very clear and sensible manner, and at a time when the

Unitarian doctrines were spreading widely among the multitudes who could

not be supposed to have either the time or the talents requisite to

grapple with long, profound, and elaborate arguments, they were very

seasonable publications.

But the most curious contribution which Jones made to the Trinitarian

controversy was a pamphlet entitled 'A Short Way to Truth, or the

Christian Doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, Illustrated and Confirmed from

an Analogy in the Natural Creation.' He shows that the powers of nature

by which all natural life and motion are preserved are three--air, fire,

and light. That these three thus subsisting together in unity are

applied in Scripture to the Three Persons of the Divine Nature, and that

the manifestations of God are always made under one or other of these

signs. These three agents support the life of man. There is a Trinity in

the body (1) the heart and blood-vessels; (2) the organs of respiration;

(3) the nerves, the instruments of sensation; these three departments

are the three moving principles of nature continually acting for the

support of life. 'Therefore,' he concludes, 'as the life of man is a

Trinity in Unity, and the powers which act upon it are a Trinity in

Unity, the Socinians being, in their natural capacity, formed and

animated as Christians, carry about with them daily a confutation of

their own unbelief.'[453]

In the year 1782, the Trinitarian controversy received a fresh impulse

from the appearance in it of a writer whose eminence in other branches

of knowledge lent an adventitious importance to what he wrote upon this

subject. In that year, Dr. Priestley published his 'History of the

Corruptions of Christianity,' which, as Horsley says, was 'nothing less

than an attack upon the creeds and established discipline of every

church in Christendom.' Foremost among these corruptions were both the

Catholic doctrine of our Lord's divinity and the Arian notion of His

pre-existence in a state far above the human.

The great antagonist of Dr. Priestley was Dr. Horsley, who, first in a

Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of St. Albans, and then in a

series of letters addressed to Priestley himself, maintained with

conspicuous ability the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity.

An able modern writer[454] says that the Unitarian met at the hands of

the bishop much the same treatment as Collins had received from Bentley.

But the comparison scarcely does justice either to Horsley or Priestley.

From a purely intellectual point of view it would be a compliment to any

man to compare him with 'Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,' but the brilliant

wit and profound scholarship displayed in Bentley's remarks on Collins

were tarnished by a scurrility and personality which, even artistically

speaking, injured the merits of the work, and were quite unworthy of

being addressed by one gentleman (not to say clergyman) to another.

Horsley's strictures are as keen and caustic as Bentley's; but there is

a dignity and composure about him which, while adding to rather than

detracting from the pungency of his writings, prevent him from

forgetting his position and condescending to offensive invectives.

Priestley, too, was a more formidable opponent than Collins. He was not

only a man who by his scientific researches had made his mark upon his

age, but he had set forth Unitarianism far more fully and powerfully

than Collins had set forth Deism. Still he unquestionably laid himself

open to attack, and his opponent did not fail to take advantage of this

opening.

Horsley distinctly declines to enter into the general controversy as to

the truth or possibility of the Christian Trinity. Everything, he

thinks, that can be said on either side has been said long ago. But he

is ready to join issue with Priestley on the historical question. This

he feels it practically necessary to do, for 'the whole energy and

learning of the Unitarian party is exerted to wrest from us the argument

from tradition.'[455]

He shows, then, that so far from all the Church being originally

Unitarian, there was no Unitarian before the end of the second century,

when Theodotus, 'the learned tanner of Byzantium,' who had been a

renegade from the faith, taught for the first time that His humanity was

the whole of Christ's condition, and that He was only exalted to Heaven

like other good men. He owns that the Cerinthians and Ebionites long

before that had affirmed that Jesus had no existence previous to Mary's

conception, and was literally and physically the carpenter's son, and so

asserted the mere humanity of the Redeemer, 'but,' he adds, 'they

admitted I know not what unintelligible exaltation of His nature upon

His Ascension by which He became no less the object of worship than if

His nature had been originally divine.'[456] He acknowledges that the

Cerinthian Gnostics denied the proper divinity of Christ, but, he adds

very pertinently, 'if you agree with me in these opinions, it is little

to your purpose to insist that Justin Martyr's reflections are levelled

only at the Gnostics.'[457]

Like Waterland, and indeed all defenders of the Catholic doctrine,

Horsley fully admits the difficulties and mysteriousness of his subject,

'but,' he asks, 'is Christianity clear of difficulties in any of the

Unitarian schemes? Hath the Arian hypothesis no difficulty when it

ascribes both the first formation and perpetual government of the

Universe not to the Deity, but an inferior being? In the Socinian scheme

is it no difficulty that the capacity of a mere man should contain that

wisdom by which God made the universe?'[458]

Horsley rebukes his opponent in severe and dignified language for

presuming to write on a subject on which, by his own confession, he was

ignorant of what had been written. In reply to a passage in Horsley's

'Charge,' in which it was asserted that Priestley's opinions in general

were the same as those propagated by Daniel Zuicker, and that his

arguments were in essential points the same as Episcopius had used,

Priestley had said that he had never heard of Zuicker, and knew little

of Episcopius; he also let slip that he had only 'looked through' the

ancient fathers and the writings of Bishop Bull, an unfortunate phrase,

which Horsley is constantly casting in his teeth.[459] On the positive

proofs of his own position, Horsley cites numerous passages from the

ante-Nicene fathers. He contends that in the famous passage of

Tertullian on which Priestley had laid so much stress, Tertullian meant

by 'idiotæ,' not the general body of unlearned Christians, but some

stupid people who could not accept the great mystery which was generally

accepted by the Church. He shows that the Jews in Christ's time _did_

believe in a Trinity, and expected the Second Person to come as their

Messiah. He maintains that when Athanasius spoke of Jews who held the

simple humanity of Christ, he meant what he said, viz., Jews simply, not

Christian Jews, as Priestley asserted.

There is a fine irony in some of his remarks on Priestley's

interpretations of Scripture. 'To others,' he says in his 'Charge,' 'who

have not the sagacity to discern that the true meaning of an inspired

writer must be the reverse of the natural and obvious sense of the

expressions which he employs, the force of the conclusion that the

Primitive Christians could not believe our Lord to be a mere man because

the Apostles had told them He was Creator of the Universe (Colossians i.

15, 17) will be little understood.'[460] In the famous text which speaks

of Christ as 'come in the flesh,' for 'come _in_ the flesh' Priestley

substitutes 'come _of_ the flesh.' 'The one,' says Horsley, 'affirms an

Incarnation, the other a mortal extraction. The first is St. John's

assertion, the second Dr. Priestley's. Perhaps Dr. Priestley hath

discovered of St. John, as of St. Paul, that his reasoning is sometimes

inconclusive and his language inaccurate, and he might think it no

unwarrantable liberty to correct an expression, which, as not perfectly

corresponding with his own system, he could not entirely approve. It

would have been fair to advertise his reader of so capital an

emendation, an emendation for which no support is to be found in the

Greek Testament or any variety of manuscripts.'[461] In a similar tone,

he trusts 'that the conviction of the theological student that his

philosophy is Plato's, and his creed St. John's, will alleviate the

mortification he might otherwise feel in differing from Dr.

Priestley.'[462]

One of the most important and interesting parts of Horsley's letters was

that in which he discussed the old objection raised by Priestley that

the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was borrowed from Plato. There is,

and Horsley does not deny it, a certain resemblance between the Platonic

and the Christian theories. The Platonist asserted three Divine

hypostases, the Good Being ([Greek: tagathon]), the word or reason

([Greek: logos] or [Greek: noys]), and the Spirit ([Greek: psychê]) that

actuates or influences the whole system of the Universe (_anima mundi_),

which had all one common Deity ([Greek: to theion]), and were eternal

and necessarily existent.[463] Horsley can see no derogation to

Christianity in the resemblance of this theory to that of the Christian

Trinity. He thinks that the advocates of the Catholic Faith in modern

times have been too apt to take alarm at the charge of Platonism. 'I

rejoice,' he says, 'and glory in the opprobrium. I not only confess, but

I maintain, not a perfect agreement, but such a similitude as speaks a

common origin, and affords an argument in confirmation of the Catholic

doctrine for its conformity to the most ancient and universal

traditions.'[464] For was this idea of a Triad peculiar to Plato? or did

it originate with him? 'The Platonists,' says Horsley, 'pretended to be

no more than expositors of a more ancient doctrine which is traced from

Plato to Parmenides; from Parmenides to his master of the Pythagorean

sect; from the Pythagoreans to Orpheus, the earliest of Grecian

mystagogues; from Orpheus to the secret lore of Egyptian priests in

which the foundations of the Orphic theology were laid. Similar notions

are found in the Persian and Chaldean theology; even in Roman

superstition from their Trojan ancestors. In Phrygia it was introduced

by Dardanus, who carried it from Samothrace.' In short, 'the Trinity was

a leading principle in all ancient schools of philosophy and

religion.'[465]

Not, of course, that Horsley approved of the attempts made at the close

of the second century to meet the Platonists half-way by professing that

the leading doctrines of the Gospel were contained in Plato's writings.

He strongly condemned, _e.g._, the conceit of the Platonic Christians

that the external display of the powers of the Son in the business of

Creation is the thing intended in Scripture language under the figure of

his generation. 'There is no foundation,' he thinks, 'in Holy Writ, and

no authority in the opinions and doctrines of preceding ages. It

betrayed some who were most wedded to it into the use of very improper

language, as if a new relation between the First and Second Persons took

place when the creative powers were first exerted.' He condemns 'the

indiscretion of presuming to affix a determinate meaning upon a

figurative expression of which no particular exposition can be drawn

safely from Holy Writ.' 'But,' he adds, 'the conversion of an attribute

into a person, whatever Dr. Priestley may imagine, is a notion to which

they were entire strangers.' On the main question of the Trinity he

asserts, in opposition to Dr. Priestley, that they were quite sound.

Adopting the same line of argument which Leslie had used before him,

Horsley dexterously turns the supposed resemblance between Platonism and

Christianity, which, as has been seen, he admits, into a plain proof

that the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be such a contradiction as the

Unitarians represented it to be.

The controversy between Priestley and Horsley brings us nearly to the

close of the eighteenth century. There had been a considerable secession

of English clergymen to the Unitarians,[466] and Horsley's masterly

tracts were a very opportune defence of the Catholic doctrine. On one

point he and his adversary thoroughly concurred--viz., that there could

be no medium between making Christ a mere man and owning Him to be in

the highest sense God. Arianism in its various forms had become by this

time well-nigh obsolete in England. It was a happy thing for the Church

that this point had been virtually settled. The alternative was now

clearly set before English Churchmen--'Choose ye whom ye will serve; if

Christ be God, follow him; if not, be prepared to give up all notions of

a creature worship.' The Unitarians at the close of the eighteenth

century all took their stand on this issue. Such rhapsodies as those

which were indulged in by early Socinians as well as Arians were now

unheard. The line of demarcation was strictly drawn between those who

did and those who did not believe in the true Godhead and distinct

personality of the Second and Third Persons of the Blessed Trinity, so

that from henceforth men might know on what ground they were standing.

Here the sketch of this famous controversy, which was certainly a

marked feature of the eighteenth century, may fitly close. But a few

general remarks in conclusion seem requisite.

And first as to the nomenclature. The name claimed by the

anti-Trinitarians has, for want of a better, been perforce adopted in

the foregoing pages. But in calling them Unitarians, we must do so under

protest. The advocates of the Catholic doctrine might with equal

correctness be termed, from one point of view, Unitarians, as they are

from another point of view termed Trinitarians. For they believe in the

Unity of God as firmly as they believe in the Trinity. And they hold

that there is no real contradiction in combining those two subjects of

belief; because the difficulty of reconciling the Trinity with the Unity

of the Godhead in reality proceeds simply from our human and necessary

incapacity to comprehend the nature of the union. Therefore they cannot

for a moment allow to disbelievers in the Trinity the title of

Unitarians, so as to imply that the latter monopolise the grand truth

that 'the Lord our God is one Lord.' They consent reluctantly to adopt

the term Unitarian because no other name has been invented to describe

the stage at which anti-Trinitarians had arrived before the close of the

eighteenth century. These latter, of course, differed essentially from

the Arians of the earlier part of the century. Neither can they be

properly termed Socinians, for Socinus, as Horsley justly remarks,

'though he denied the original divinity of Our Lord, was nevertheless a

worshipper of Christ, and a strenuous asserter of his right to worship.

It was left to others,' he adds, 'to build upon the foundation which

Socinus laid, and to bring the Unitarian doctrine to the goodly form in

which the present age beholds it.'[467] Indeed, the early Socinians

would have denied to Dr. Priestley and his friends the title of

Christians, and would have excommunicated them from their Society.

'Humanitarians' would be a more correct designation; but as that term is

already appropriated to a very different signification, it is not

available. For convenience' sake, therefore, the name of Unitarians must

be allowed to pass, but with the proviso that so far from its holders

being the sole possessors of the grand truth of the unity of the

Godhead, they really, from the fact of their denying the divinity of two

out of the three Persons in the Godhead, form only a very maimed and

inadequate conception of the one God.

The outcry against all mystery, or, to use a modern phrase, the spirit

of rationalism, which in a good or bad sense pervaded the whole domain

of religious thought, orthodox and unorthodox alike during the

eighteenth century, found its expression in one class of minds in Deism,

in another in anti-Trinitarianism. But though both disavowed any

opposition to real Christianity, yet both in reality allow no scope for

what have been from the very earliest times to the present day

considered essential doctrines of the Gospel. If the Deist strikes at

the very root of Christianity by questioning the evidence on which it

rests, no less does the Unitarian divest it of everything

distinctive--of the divine condescension shown in God taking our nature

upon Him, of the divine love shown in God's unseen presence even now in

His Church by His Holy Spirit. Take away these doctrines, and there will

be left indeed a residuum of ethical teaching, which some may please to

call Christianity if they will; but it differs as widely from what

countless thousands have understood and still understand by the term, as

a corpse differs from a living man.

J.H.O.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 431: [Greek: autotheos].]

[Footnote 432: [Greek: phôs ek phôtos].]

[Footnote 433: See Van Mildert's _Life of Waterland_, § 3, p. 29.]

[Footnote 434: Id.]

[Footnote 435: 'We cannot charge anything to be a contradiction in one

nature because it is so in another, unless we understand both natures.

Because a nature we understand not, cannot be explained to us but by

allusion to some nature we do understand.'--Leslie's _Theological

Works_, vol. ii. p. 402, 'The Socinian Controversy.']

[Footnote 436: Leslie's _Theological Works_, ii. 405.]

[Footnote 437: By his famous 'à priori' arguments for the Being and

Attributes of God, and by his answers to the Deists generally.]

[Footnote 438: Potter also, subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury,

entered into the lists against Clarke.]

[Footnote 439: Dr. Whitby (already favourably known in the theological

world by his commentary on the Bible), Mr. Sykes, and Mr. Jackson, Vicar

of Rossington and afterwards of Doncaster, &c.]

[Footnote 440: He proceeds to explain S. Matthew, xxiv. 36, S. Luke, ii.

52, and S. John, v. 19, in a sense consistent with the Catholic

doctrine.]

[Footnote 441: See vols. i. ii. and iii. _passim_ of Waterland's

_Works_, edited by Van Mildert.]

[Footnote 442: Toulmin's _Memoirs of Faustus Socinus_, p. 191.]

[Footnote 443: Toulmin's _Memoirs of Faustus Socinus_, p. 180.]

[Footnote 444: Id. 211.]

[Footnote 445: Id. p. 467.]

[Footnote 446: Toulmin, p. 281. See also on this point Thomas Scott's

interesting account of his own religious opinions in the _Force of

Truth_, and in his biography by his son.]

[Footnote 447: 'The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity,' by Isaac Watts,

vol. vi. of _Works_, p. 155.]

[Footnote 448: 'The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity,' by Isaac Watts,

vol. vii. of _Works_, p. 196.]

[Footnote 449: Watts, p. 200.]

[Footnote 450: 'The Arian Invited to an Orthodox Faith.'--_Works_, vol.

vi. p. 348.]

[Footnote 451: Id. 225.]

[Footnote 452: Address to the Reader, p. viii. prefixed to _The Catholic

Doctrine of the Trinity._]

[Footnote 453: Jones of Nayland's _Theological Works_, vol. i. p. 214,

&c.]

[Footnote 454: Hunt's _History of Religious Thought_, iii. 349.]

[Footnote 455: _Charge_, p. 67.]

[Footnote 456: Id. 43, &c.]

[Footnote 457: _Letter X. to Dr. Priestley_, p. 183.]

[Footnote 458: _Letters to Dr. Priestley_, p. 249.]

[Footnote 459: _Letters_, &c. p. 91, &c.]

[Footnote 460: _Charge_, p. 14.]

[Footnote 461: _Charge_, p. 17.]

[Footnote 462: Id. p. 73.]

[Footnote 463: See Maimbourg's _History of Arianism_, i. 6, note 3.]

[Footnote 464: _Letters_, p. 215.]

[Footnote 465: _Charge_, p. 43. Horsley rather lays himself open in this

passage to the charge of confounding history with mythology; but

probably all he meant was to show the extreme antiquity of Trinitarian

notions.]

[Footnote 466: Evanson, Disney, Jebb, Gilbert Wakefield, &c.]

[Footnote 467: _Letters_, &c. 243.]

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