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Divinity of Christ; and 6. Atonement for Sin by the Death of Christ." To which in the last editions has been added, "A concise History of those Doctrines;" shewing when and how they came to be adopted by Christians. There is also subjoined to it "An Account of the Trial of Mr. Elwall," for writing against the divinity of Christ, at Stafford assizes, before Judge Denton.* The last edition was printed by Pearson and Rollason, and is sold for fourpence, and "the Trial of Mr. Elwall" is printed separately by Mr. Swinney, and sold for two-pence. I would also recommend to your notice another small tract of mine entitled, "A general View of the Arguments for the Unity of God, and against the Divinity and Pre-existence of Christ, from Reason, from the Scriptures, and from History,"† of which the third edition is now selling, price two-pence. If you wish to know more particularly what I have to say of those texts of Scripture, of which the Trinitarians avail themselves as favourable to their doctrine, consult another cheap tract of mine, entitled, "A familiar Illustration of certain Passages of Scripture," relating to the subjects above-mentioned, price four-pence.

If you have leisure, peruse my larger "History of the Corruptions of Christianity,"§ and also my "History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ," in which is clearly described the rise of the doctrine of the Trinity, and where I prove that the great body of primitive Christians were strict Unitarians; but that the philosophizing Christians, offended at the humiliating idea of having a crucified man at the head of their religion, after some time adopted the opinion of his being of a nature higher than the human; and that this exaltation of him went on, till they made him to be God equal to the Father; but that this was a work of time, and not accomplished in less than about four hundred years after Christ.

You may, in some measure, perceive the progress of men's opinions on this subject in "the three creeds" which are adopted by your church. The first, called "the Apos tles' Creed," is Unitarian;** for in it "God the Father

* See Vol. II. pp. 381-429. See Vol. II. pp. 430—488.

¶ See Art. VIII.

+ See Vol. XVIII. pp. 513-516, 527–535.
§ Vol. V.
Vols. VI. VII.

** Yet Augustin professed to discover in it his whole system: "Vel de Deo ingenito, vel ex Deo Dei unigenito, vel de Spiritu Sancto,-vel de suscipiende hominis;" (Tom. X. Serm. (131) de Temp. p. 406,) or, as Lord King freely translates the passage, "concerning the blessed Trinity and the mystery of our Saviour's incarnation." See Crit. Hist. 1758, Ed. 5, p. 4.

Almighty," is spoken of as quite distinct from "Jesus Christ our Lord." In the second, called the "Nice Creed," composed A. D. 325,* Christ is called "God of God, Light of Light," the meaning of which is, that Christ, though truly God, is not God of himself, (avTODEOS,) which the Father alone was then called, but that he derived his divinity from the Father, and therefore was subordinate to him. But in the third, or "Athanasius's Creed," (composed nobody can tell when, or by whom, but certainly after the time of Athanasius, who did not believe any such thing,) all idea of subordination is entirely taken away; and of all the three persons it is declared, that "none is afore or after other none is greater or less than another."

These three creeds, you clearly see, are inconsistent with each other, though a common reader may not perceive it, and therefore the same church ought not to retain more than one of them.

You may now, my friends, judge in some measure for yourselves, whether there be any reason for the violent clamour that your clergy are raising against the Unitarians in general, and myself in particular, as if, possessed by a contaminating demon, we held some strange, unscriptural, and damnable doctrine; and whether, on the contrary, we do not speak the words of truth and soberness. In my Appeal, to which I referred you before, you will find reasons equally plain and convincing for the truth of the other doctrines which offend your clergy so much, because they are contrary to those which make part of their system.

All I wish is, that you would think and judge for yourselves, and then say whether some reformation of your public services might not be very easy and practicable. Do you, for example, think that your Liturgy would be a worse, that is, a less edifying service, if such things as those I quoted above, and that are so offensive to pious Unitarians, were left out? It is only in a few places that such things as these occur; and if the rest of the service, which has nothing of this kind, give you no offence, why might not the whole be made uniform, all the prayers being addressed to God the Father, as the greater part of them actually are? Then, notwithstanding all our differences of opinion, we might all worship together, like brethren and fellow-christians, and even the difference of Unitarian and Trinitarian, not ap

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pearing in the public forms, would give no offence in private.

If you chose to have an establishment, that is, if it was thought proper that the state should make provision for religion out of the public funds, and give salaries to the ministers of it, it would be a truly Christian establishment, in opposition to a Heathen, a Mahometan, or a Jewish one; and not, as it now is, a Trinitarian establishment, in opposition to an Unitarian one.

LETTER XVIII.

I am, &c.

Of Mr. Burn's Letters, in Answer to mine.

MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS,

AFTER waiting a considerable time from the promise of their speedy publication, I have received, and you, no doubt, have seen, Mr. Burn's Letters to me, in answer to mine; and as I informed you of what I thought of Mr. Madan's Letter, I will now tell you as plainly what I think of these. They discover a temper extremely chagrined and fretful. The writer is evidently embarrassed in his argument, unwilling to retract his accusation, evidently false and injurious as it was; and without any regard to evidence, either from reason, or from fact, he still avows the worst opinion of myself and my tenets. It is really painful to see a Christian, and a clergyman, persisting as he does in the great crime of calumniating his neighbour, without the least sign of repentance or remorse, so that, according to the rule of the Gospel, he is at present in a state of mind which disqualifies him for receiving forgiveness of God or man. Let us hope, however, that in time he will see his conduct in its true light, and make the public acknowledgment that his case requires; and then no person will be more ready to forgive an offending brother than myself. It will be a sad thing indeed if, like Cardinal Beaufort in the play,* he should die without giving any sign of repentance, or hope of mercy!

"To the continuance of our correspondence, two things," he says, "are indispensable; the one, that I confine myself to the question, and the other, that whatever I may

• Hen. VI. Pt. ii. "He dies and makes no sign." Act iii. Scene iii.

think proper to advance on the subject, it be addressed to himself personally."* With respect to the former rule, I shall observe it more strictly than he has done; but with regard to the latter, I strongly suspect that I shall oblige him the most by not observing it at all. For then he will have an excuse for discontinuing a correspondence, which you may perceive is unpleasant to him, and which it is said that his friends, if not himself, wish that he had never begun.

The professed object of his original Letter to me was to prove that I" rejected the apostolic testimony concerning the person of Christ." In answer to this, I shewed him that, so far from rejecting this authority, all my writings on the subject proved that I considered it as being infallible, that I had constantly appealed to it, and had endeavoured to ascertain what the opinion of the apostles really was, as desirous to discover and abide by it. Was not this keeping to the question, and did not he ramble very wide from it, when he entered upon the discussion of the doctrine of inspiration in general?

Now, however, he says, that "my idea of inspiration does, in fact, set aside the infallibility of their testimony, and by consequence renders all appeal to them in this controversy useless and absurd."+ But with what reason he can say this, do you judge. If the apostles had no means of knowing what kind of being Christ was except by inspiration, and I had denied their inspiration, my appeal to their testimony would, indeed, be absurd; because, in that case, they would be left unable to give me any information on the subject. But if, without any inspiration at all, they were naturally competent to judge in the case, their testimony is as decisive as if they had been inspired for the purpose, and an appeal to it is consequently proper. Can it be said that, because I admit their testimony, without supposing them to be inspired, (and they neither say that they were inspired for this purpose, nor do I see any occasion for it,) I reject their testimony?

In my opinion, the apostles, who conversed with Jesus, were as capable of judging whether he was a man, as whether John the Baptist was one; and as they always called them men, I take it for granted that they supposed them to be so, and nothing more; though men inspired of God. This reasoning would be just, even if I denied the † Ibid. p. 15. (P.)

* Letters, p. 71. (P.)

apostolic inspiration altogether; but this I admit as well as Mr. Burn himself; and he does not pretend to admit this universally, but only in certain cases, viz. when the object of their mission required it. In this also we entirely agree, and only differ with respect to the articles included in their

mission.

Though Mr. Burn seems to take it for granted that the testimony of the apostles is of no value, unless it be founded on inspiration, our Saviour himself evidently considered it in a different light, when, speaking of the evidences of his divine mission, he says, (John xv. 27,) "And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning,' "and not because you are, or will be, supernaturally inspired to bear witness of me. If inspiration had been the proper foundation of their testimony, what occasion was there for their being with him "from the beginning"? A perfect stranger to the person of Jesus might have been inspired to bear witness of him; and if their intimate knowledge of him, acquired by long converse with him, was sufficient, what occasion was there for inspiration?

What is the end of testimony, but to secure belief? If, therefore, the ground of it be naturally sufficient for this pur pose, nothing farther can be necessary. Now, the historical evidence of the miracles, of the death, and of the resurrection of Christ, on which the whole of Christianity depends, is, of itself, a sufficient ground of our belief in them. And indeed, whatever inspiration we may suppose to belong to the writers of the evangelical history, our faith in them must rest on historical evidence at last, unless all mankind, to the end of the world, were equally inspired. We of this day, who have no pretensions to inspiration, can have nothing more than historical evidence for our faith in the inspiration of others. There was, therefore, no real occasion for it in the first instance. The evidence of seeing and hearing was quite sufficient for the purpose of those who actually saw the miracles, and common historical evidence is all that we can now pretend to have, that they did see and hear what they relate.

It is to such evidence as this, and to no other whatever, that the apostle John appeals for the truth of what he so confidently declares concerning the person of Christ, in answer to the Gnostics of his age, who held that he had not a real body, consisting of flesh and blood, but only the

• See Vol. XIII. pp. 322, 325.

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