"Still more completely than the provisions of nature fall in with our bodily state, and supply our temporal wants; still more properly than the air agrees with the functions of the lungs, and the light with those of the eye, does the Gospel of our Redeemer suit the spiritual condition of man. We are a fallen race, alienated from God by our sins, justly liable to his wrath: in the Gospel, we have pardon, peace, and restoration. 'Christ made all things new,' says Grotius, ' and the latter creation is more divine than the former.' If then the first creation of mankind and all the bounties of nature are the result of Love, that attribute is far more gloriously displayed in the scheme of redemption, and in the works of grace,-The love of God the Father is ever represented in Scripture as the origin of all our hopes,-as the eternal, unfathomable spring of the waters of life and salvation, and this love is plainly described as extending to the whole world. 'God so loved the world, &c.* God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself'+-'God would have all men to be saved,' &c. Do we ask for an overwhelming evidence of the love of God? Let the apostle satisfy our inquiry. In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live by him. Herein is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'§ Do we ask whether God thus loved the whole or only a part of the world?— Let the same apostle answer: He tasted death for every man-He gave himself a ransom for all,' &c. Even the Gentiles, who were without the benefit of an outward revelation, were by no means destitute of an inward knowledge of the law of God, and some of them showed 'the work of the law written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness.' Christ is the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'T Hence we may reasonably infer that as God appointed * John iii. 16. 1 Tim. ii. 4. 1 John iv. 9, 10. † 2 Cor. v. 19. Rom. ii. 15. ¶ John i. 9. See also 1 John ii. 1, 2. 2 Heb. ii. 9. the death of Christ to be a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, so all men receive through Christ a measure of moral and spiritual light, and all have their day of gracious visitation. If the light in numberless instances be extremely faint, if the darkness fail to comprehend it, we may rest in the conviction that God is not only just but equitable, and that those who know not their Master's will and do it not shall be beaten with few stripes.'* The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, as it is revealed in the Holy Scriptures, is intended for the benefit of the whole world: it is adapted to men of every condition, clime, and character: all are invited to avail themselves of its benefits: all who will come may come, and 'take the water of life freely.'" *Luke xii. 48. LETTER III. SOCINIANS AND UNITARIANS. WHEN the first great movement which led to the reform of a large part of the Christian Churches in Europe, awakened men's minds from the lethargy in which they had slept whilst learning was confined to the cloister, the questions with regard to the nature of the Deity which had distracted the early church began again to be mooted; and as early as the year 1524, "the divinity of Christ was openly denied by Louis Hetyer, one of the wandering and fanatical Anabaptists, who was put to death at Constance." He was succeeded by Michael Servede or Servetus, a Spanish physician; who, for his wild notions on the same subject, was apprehended on his road through Switzerland, at the instigation of Calvin, accused of blasphemy, and condemned to the flames.† But doctrines were never yet crushed by persecution, unless indeed it were so wholesale as to exterminate all who held them; and though these opinions were thus fatal to their professors, the main points were reproduced by others; and finally assumed form as a sect, under the titles above named. The term Socinian was taken from two of its most distinguished promoters, Lælius and Faustus Sozinus, or Socinus. They were of an illustrious family at Siena in Tuscany, and Lælius, the uncle of Faustus, having taken a disgust to popery, traveled into France, England, &c., to examine into their religious creed, in order, if possible, to come at the truth. He was a man distinguished for his genius and learning, no less than for his virtuous life; he settled at last at Zurich, embraced the Helvetic confession of faith, and died at Zurich in 1562, before he had reached his fortieth year. * Mosh. Ecc. Hist., Cent. XVI., Sect. iii. † Ib. His sentiments, or rather doubts as to certain points, were embodied, and more openly propagated by his nephew Faustus; who, as is supposed, drew up from his papers the religious system afterwards known under the name of Socinianism. There is however a considerable degree of obscurity hanging over the rise of this sect, and no one has given a satisfactory history of it. The first appearance of Unitarians, as a distinct congregation, was in Poland, where they obtained a settlement in the city of Cracow in the year 1569; and in 1575 they published at Cracow the "Catechism or Confession of the Unitarians;"* but Faustus Socinus having settled among them in the year 1579, soon obtained so much influence as finally to remodel the whole religious system of the sect, and a new form drawn up by Socinus himself, was substituted for the old Catechism. The following is an abstract of the doctrines taught in this Catechism. After affirming that the Christian religion is "a road for arriving at eternal life, divinely made known," the pupil is told that the will of God on points essential to salvation was revealed by Jesus Christ. The Catechism then goes on to affirm the entire unity of the Deity; since, if he is one essence, then must he also be individually one,† and therefore Christ cannot be truly said to be a separate person or individual, partaking of the essentia of the Deity, since that essentia is necessarily one. That the Spirit of God, being an essential part of the Deity, cannot be a separate individual (for in this sense the Catechism interprets the word persona‡), any * Some of the passages of this Catechism are quoted by Mosheim, which differ very little from the doctrine of the primitive church; all that can be noticed is, that they omit a distinct recognition of the divinity of Christ. "Fausti Socini Senensis Opera omnia," vol. i. p. 561. These works form a part of the "Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum qui Unitarii appellantur." Irenopoli post anno dom. 1656. It is remarkable that persona should so often be confounded with individual. Persona in its original sense was the mask of the actor, through which the sound came. The same actor might wear many persona. If Socinus had recollected this, he might have spared himself the trouble of controverting a notion more than his wisdom or his goodness is a separate individual, and that therefore the manifestations of the Spirit of God are manifestations of the Deity himself. "Christ," says the Catechism, "is a man, according to Rom. v. 15, conceived by a virgin, through the power of the Divine Spirit, without the intervention of man in the ordinary course of generation. He was first subject to suffering and death-afterwards impassible and immortal, Rom. vi. 9. It is in the sense of his existence derived immediately from God, that he, though man, is called the Son of God-as Adam is so termed from the same cause. Jesus Christ was the immediate instrument of God's communications to man; and being, whilst on earth, the voice of God, he is now the anointed King, or Christ, over the people of God." The passages where he is said to have existed from the beginning; to have created all things, &c., are laboriously explained away, as referring to the regeneration, or new state of things introduced by Christ's mission on earth and in this part there is much forced interpretation. I shall annex some of the passages in the language of the original,* as a proof that I have given a fair account of the real Socinian doctrine, which is very little understood at present. Writers from whom we might expect greater accuracy, have very generally confounded Socinians and Arians, although Faustus Socinus was at the pains to write a labored refutation of the Arian doctrine, and although a reference to the doctrines of the two sects would show that they are the antipodes of each other. Arius taught that Christ was not of the same nature (oμo8otos) with the Father, but of a like nature (ouoisoios), and therefore individually separate-separate in will, and capable of differing. This is a direct assertion of two Gods. Socinus on the contrary strenuously asserts the unity of the Deity to the extent of denying the pre-existence of Christ; which Arius, though acknowledging that there was a time when he began to exist, nevertheless never maintained by the orthodox, i. e., that the Deity was individually divided. * Vide Appendix. |