refers to a period remote beyond human calculation. Thus upon their characteristic doctrines, the two sects are diametrically opposed to each other.

Having now given you the real opinions of Socinus, from his own works, for the book is lying beside me as Í write, I shall pursue my plan of examining how far they accord with what was taught by those who certainly ought to be best informed on the subject, namely, Christ himself, his Apostles, and their immediate successors; as well as with the deductions of reason. The unity of the Deity is so frequently and so decidedly asserted in Scripture, that it is impossible to consider any man as unorthodox who professes to make this the groundwork of his belief-so far therefore the Socinian is in accordance both with Scripture and the general voice of the Christian Church, for the early Apologists for Christianity, who had to address polytheists, are full of declarations that they worship One only Deity, who by various manifestations has made himself, at different times, known to mankind.* There is not a writer of the first and second centuries who does not anxiously assert the oneness of the God whom the Christians worship: but then they as anxiously assert the identity of their Teacher and Lord with that God. From Christ himself, who says, "Before Abraham was, I am;" "I and the Father are one;" "He who hath seen me hath seen the Father;" "the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works;"§ to St. Paul, who tells us that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself," down to the fathers of the early church, to whom I may refer passim for the same doctrine; all have distinctly asserted that the message of peace to man was delivered by God himself, making use of a human form as the mode of communication with his creatures, and dwelling in "the man Christ Jesus," as in a temple built up for his especial use; the human nature, to use the expression of the church, "having been

taken into God," not the Godhead circumscribed in man. I will not swell the length of my letter with quotations from the fathers which may be found elsewhere; I think the texts I have quoted, with many more of the same purport, which you will readily call to mind, suffice to prove that when Socinus asserted the Christ to be merely a man, he erred; for though Jesus "the Carpenter's son,' as his cotemporaries called him, was to all intents and purposes a man "of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting; and though this may be proved from numberless passages in the Scripture, where the man Jesus speaks of his inferiority to the Father and bestower of his human frame and spirit,-yet if we do not entirely distort the meaning of words, that man at times uttered declarations of divine power which could only have proceeded from the indwelling Deity, otherwise they must have been the assertions of imposture, which Socinus by no means teaches to have been the case. I know not,

therefore, how the believer in the Gospel can avoid acknowledging that Christ was a compound being:—perfectly a man, and speaking as such on some occasions; but, at the same time, the temple of the Ever-living God, whose words flowed from his lips like the answer from the Mercy seat: "Heaven and the heaven of heavens" no doubt "cannot contain" the Infinite; and no true believer will assert that God can be circumscribed in a human body-but, if so mean a comparison may be permitted-as the crater of the volcano is but the mouthpiece of the mighty agents operating within for the fashioning of the earth,-so the manifestation of the Deity in the form, and from the lips of a man, is but that spot of the material creation where the ever blessed Divinity allows himself, as it were, a vent; and gives forth a visible and tangible sign of his existence.

"He that has seen me hath seen the Father," says the Christ. "I can of my own self do nothing," says the man: and this distinction which the Christ, who necessarily knew something of the composition of his own nature,

* Athanasian Creed.

† John v. 30.

so frequently asserts, has probably been the groundwork of the mistaken views of this class of Christians, and we may well look with charitable indulgence on the errors of men, who, dreading lest they should incur the penalty of giving the incommunicable glory of the Mighty God to another, have not allowed their due weight to the passages which assert that Mighty God to have undertaken the task of bringing his creature man back to Himself.

Having thus given you a fair account of the creed of Socinus, I must next notice the modern Unitarians, who on some points differ from him. Where there is no acknowledged creed or catechism, which may be quoted

* The following are extracts from the "Book of Common Prayer reformed," professing to have been a selection made by "the late Rev. Theophilus Lindsey for the use of the congregation in Essex Street"-and as a liturgy is generally allowed to be a fair exponent of the doctrines of those who use it-perhaps we may assume that the violent and reprehensible expressions made use of by some few persons of this persuasion, are not such as would be acknowledged by the congregations of Unitarians in general.

Form of baptism. "I baptize thee into (i) the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

"Almighty and ever blessed God, by whose providence the different generations of mankind are raised up to know thee and to enjoy thy favor for ever; grant that this child now dedicated to thee as the disciple of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, may be endued with heavenly virtues......and that we may daily proceed in all virtue and goodness of living, till we come to that eternal kingdom which thou hast promised by Christ our Lord."

Have

Order for the administration of the Lord's Supper. Confession, the same as in the liturgy of the English church as far as "we do heartily repent and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings, the remembrance of which is grievous unto us. mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; forgive us all that is past and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life to the honor and glory of thy name." The absolution is the same with the trifling change of us for you. The sentences following are the same till Hear also what St. John saith," where the text 1 John i. 8, 9, is substituted.

:

Prayer before the minister receives the communion. "Al

as authority, it is difficult to give the doctrines of a sect with any precision; but as far as it is possible to judge from the writings most in repute among the Unitarians, they disclaim the notion of the miraculous conception, and believe Christ to have been to all intents and purposes a mere man. At the same time they allow him to have been so inspired and guided by God, that it is difficult to see where they draw the line between their own creed and that of the church, which allows the perfect humanity of Jesus, but asserts that "God and man make one Christ," namely, that the message of peace was that of God speaking by human lips, and that the Anointed prophet who declared it, was, when so anointed, the temple and place of manifestation of the living God. They disclaim the doctrine of atonement, and believe that the mission of Christ had for its object the reform of the world, and the restoration of man to a sense of his true relation towards God, and even here Scripture and the early church speak a language which differs not very

mighty God, our heavenly Father, by whose gracious assistance and for our benefit, thy beloved Son our Lord Jesus Christ, was obedient even to the death upon the cross; who did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memorial of his death until his coming again; hear us, we most humbly beseech thee; and grant that we may receive this bread and wine in grateful remembrance of his death and sufferings, and of thy great mercy to mankind in sending him, thy chosen messenger, to turn us from darkness to light, from vice to virtue, from ignorance and error, to the knowledge of thee, the only true God, whom to know is life everlasting."

Form of administration. "Take and eat this bread in remembrance of Christ"-"Take and drink this wine in remembrance of Christ."

In the daily service many prayers are omitted, so as to make the service much shorter. The exhortation and confession are the same; for the absolution is substituted "Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; purify the thoughts of our hearts that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord."-It would be useless to multiply extracts-enough has been given to show the doctrine of the Unitarian congregations who use this liturgy.

greatly from theirs. For the language in which our redemption is spoken of, is that of a master purchasing a slave, as will be seen on a reference to Rom. vi. in the original. The ransom by which man was purchased to be the servant of holiness instead of that of sin, was paid to his former master, sin, by the purchaser; and the purchaser is God. "I speak after the manner of men," says St. Paul, "because of the infirmity of your flesh;" i. e., I adopt the phraseology of a common transaction because your minds are not sufficiently accustomed to the contemplation of higher things to understand them without a metaphor; but the Unitarian forgets, when asserting that the ransom was not paid to God, that it was paid by God; and that man, the slave, was bought from sin, the master, at no less a price than the condescension of the Deity himself to the infirmity of our flesh, by making himself visibly and tangibly known to his creatures, through the medium of a human form.

I have now endeavored to give a dispassionate view of the doctrines of these sects, hitherto so much misunderstood, and having marked the points wherein they appear to me to recede from Christian truth, I have the pleasanter task before me, of showing by extracts from their writings, how large a portion of the religion which we all profess, they still retain, and I may say from experience, on most occasions conscientiously act upon.

"If, with the Apostle, we glory in the cross of Christ, or in that religion which could not have been confirmed without his death, let us not only be careful to govern our lives by the precepts of it in general, but more particularly be prepared to suffer what the strictest profession of it may call us to. Let us remember that our Saviour hath said, if any man will be his disciple, he must 'take up his cross, and follow him.' That is, he must be ready to do it rather than abandon the profession of the Gospel, or whatever the strictest purity of it may require. A true Christian is no more of this world than his Lord and Master was of it. With him everything here below is but of secondary consideration, &c.-but this we must remember for our consolation, that if, in time of persecution,