is the same being as the Father; and again it must be inferred, that the Holy Spirit is the same being as the Father, and also the same being as the Son. We are now arrived at what is called a trinity in unity, and the point has been gained by building up inference on inference with very little aid from the express words of Scripture.

It is now time to ask on what authority such a doctrine is set up as a fundamental article of faith, without believing which, no man can be entitled to the christian name, or received into fellowship. In what part of the Bible are we encouraged to dictate our inferences to others, as rules of faith, and guides to salvation? And if we have any such authority, why stop with the inference of the trinity? Surely proof will not now be demanded, that all truths necessary to salvation are taught with the utmost explicitness and perspicuity in the Scriptures. The trinity is not thus taught; many persons perceive no vestiges of it; others see it but darkly; to others it is enveloped in absolute mystery; and even the most sagacious are obliged to content themselves with drawing it out by induction and inference. To impose such an article on others, as a condition of christian privileges, is an outrage on religious liberty and right, which is met with an ample rebuke in the instructions and example of the Saviour. Whoever commits this outrage may well be said, in the language of Whitby, "to be plainly guilty of adding to the word of God, and making that necessary to

salvation, which our one lawgiver never made so.”* Let the trinity be believed by those, who think it true, but let it not be enforced as a stumbling block to the weak, an apple of discord to the strong, and a root of bitterness to all.

Jeremy Taylor speaks well to this purpose. He grants, that any man has a right to extend his creed as far as he chooses, and that individuals and churches may draw inferences from established articles for their own edification, but "no such deduction," he adds, "is fit to be pressed on others as an article of faith, and every deduction which is so made, unless it be such a thing as is at first evident to all, is but sufficient to make a human faith, nor can it amount to a divine, much less can be obligatory to bind a person of a different persuasion to subscribe, under pain of losing his faith, or being a heretic." And again, "if the sense be uncertain, we can no more be obliged to believe it in a certain sense, than we are to believe it at all, if we are not certain that God delivered it. But if it be only certain that God spoke it, and not certain to what sense, our faith of it is to be as indeterminate as its sense, and it can be no other in the nature of the thing, nor is it consonant to God's justice to believe of him, that he can or will require more." These views are rational; they accord with the nature of God, with common sense, and with Scripture.

* Discourse V, appended to the Last Thoughts, p. 179.

Liberty of Prophesying, Sec. I. On the Nature of Faith, p. 18, 19.

All moral action is voluntary; force may produce acquiescence, but not conviction; the bugbear of heresy and the terrors of excommunication may make a weak man a hypocrite, but will never convert a bad one from the error of his ways; to compel a man to assent to a trinity, which he cannot believe, may hold him in the ranks of orthodoxy, but will never reconcile him to the dominion of virtue; to convince him that faith in a mystery is essential to salvation may easily incite him to be a credulous bigot, but will not add light or warmth to his piety, nor activity to his benevolence. The trinity has a mischievous tendency by being clothed with a factitious importance, and raised to a place among christian doctrines to which it has no claims; that is, if we are to judge of the importance of a doctrine by the clearness and solemnity with which it is taught in the Gospel. If true, as Trinitarians believe, the peace and prosperity of the church require, that it should be kept as much out of sight as in the days of the Saviour and the Apostles. Instead of promoting conciliation, harmony, and good fellowship, it is made a source of ceaseless division and discord; and such has always been its consequence from the time it was first publicly introduced as an article of christian faith.

As to the origin of the trinity, it can be ascertained with as much precision as almost any historical fact of the primitive ages of christianity. It sprung from several causes, and many incidental events conspired to bring it to maturity. Nearly all the early

converts had been heathens, educated in the worship of deified men, as well as of gods of a higher order. We know, that the greatest scandal, which was thought to rest on the religion of Jesus, was the low origin and ignominious death of its author; this scandal would be removed by making him a god; and his extraordinary works, and the purity of his life, gave him as high a claim to this distinction, in the opinion of the heathens, as others who had been deified. It is certain, that some did consider him in this light before their conversion, and it was quite natural, that their prejudice should continue afterwards. History tells us, that Tiberius proposed to enrol him among the gods of Rome, and was prevented only by the opposition of the senate.*

Nor is it to be forgotten, that when the council of Nice decreed, that the Son was consubstantial with the Father, a very large portion of the christian world were gentile converts. The celebrated Hindoo reformer, Rammohun Roy, whose name is never to be mentioned but with the highest respect for his character and learning, has examined this subject with acuteness. He concludes his inquiry by saying, "If some of the heathens, from the nature of their superstitions, could rank Jesus among their false gods, it is no wonder if others, when nominally converted to christianity, should have placed him on an equality with the true God, and should have passed a decree, constituting him one of the persons of the God

*Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Part I. chap. IV. sec. 7.

head."* When the deity of Christ had become es tablished, the philosophers easily constructed a trinity out of the three principles of Plato, by yielding to their well known propensity to make as many parts as possible of the new religion conform to their old opinions; and it is not a matter of surprise, that within a century after the council of Nice, another council should decree the deity of the Holy Spirit,

LETTER III.

Moral Tendency of a Belief in the Trinity,

SIR,

As the doctrine of the trinity embraces no moral precepts, nor immediate rules of action, its good or evil tendency must depend on the power it exerts in giving a tone and bias to the mind favourable or unfavourable to just notions of the Deity, to the reception of moral truth, a reverence for the known laws of God, a respect for the voice of conscience, and a habitual frame of piety and benevolence. It has a very remote bearing, if any at all, on the clearness and obligation of the preceptive and practical part

*Second Appeal to the Christian Public, in Defence of the Precepts of Jesus, p. 170; printed at the Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta, 1821.