the meaning of the sacred scriptures: for who are those witnesses? They are, in the first place, the first age of the Church, consisting chiefly of Christians who were saints, and, for the greater part, martyrs. These Christians received the sacred volumes immediately from the very hands of the Apostles, together with the true and genuine meaning of them. They lived with them, conversed with them, listened to their preachings, in which they more diffusely explained, what they had consigned to their writings; in short, they had every opportunity afforded them to be informed by the Apostles of the true and genuine sense of the sacred scriptures. This first age, thus instructed and formed in the very school of the Apostles, faithfully delivered to the succeeding generation the faith of the above doctrines, once delivered to them, and so from age to age down to this present day.

LXIV. Thirdly. The second class of witnesses produced by Christians in vindication of their contested doctrines, consists of the most illustrious characters that ever adorned the church of God, I mean the Holy Fathers who either lived in or closely followed the age of the Apostles, down to the fourth century, both in the Greek and Latin church. This long succession of apostolical men, the greater part of whom sealed their faith with their blood, and all of whom have not less illustrated the church of God by the lustre of their sanctity, than by the admirable productions of their genius, all, with one voice, depose in favour of the Christian dogmas against the Unitarians.

LXV. Fourthly and lastly. They have in their behalf the solemn judgments, and public decisions, which have been rendered in synods and councils, held at different times, and in various countries, and by which the Christian faith has been solemnly confirmed. They add to this the perfect agreement of the present Greek church with the Latin church, with regard to the doctrines under consideration, which perfect concordance must assuredly be considered of decisive importance, when we reflect, that the Greek schismatical church, having been now divided upwards of eight or nine hundred

years, cannot be supposed to have borrowed her faith from the rest of the Christian world, on whom she looks with a jealous eye, as her rivals. The Greeks, then, have received the above doctrines from their ancestors.

LVI. But what do the Unitarians offer, in reply to all this? Any thing like argument? By no means; for that is impossible. Why, such answers as would be rejected with feelings of contempt, mingled with indignation, in any court of justice. They tacitly reply: We cannot, indeed, deny, but the Christians have the immemorial possession of the above doctrines, in their favour, and that such was the uniform and constant belief of all Christendom, through all past ages, at least from the third century;* but the whole Christian world, and all past ages, were in error; we only are right; we are wiser than the whole world, and all preceding generations; we understand matters better, although but a few men, although but the offspring of yesterday, although

*If our Unitarian friends should happen to deny that such was the constant and uniform belief of all former ages, let them turn their attention to the irresistible arguments, by which this public and solemn fact is substantiated, in this and the following numbers. But from a slight acquaintance with the Unitarian writings every one may satisfy himself, that our opponents, in general, are very little concerned about the belief of past ages, and that all they oppose to the weight of authority, is that they are not to be ruled by the creeds of others, but by their own reason. The answer, therefore, which we have placed here in the mouth of our opponents, is correct, and in perfect conformity with their general principles and professions.

+ Although Unitarians in general do not seem to pay much regard to number and authority, still, from the anxiety which they manifest in their writings, of exaggerating the number of their followers, it is clearly perceivable that they would consider it no small recommendation for their system, to count a great number of votaries. Hence the frequent mention made of their Congregations, Bible Societies, Colleges, and other public institutions. But notwithstanding all this, they will not, I trust, consider me disrespectful or incorrect, when I maintain, that, in every respect, they are still but few: few, if contrasted with the whole Christian world; few, if compared even with other religious Societies severally taken: few, if viewed in regard to the number of those that seem to profess their principles; for as there exists so close an alliance between the process of the Unitarians and the Deists in the investigation of religion, and as unrestrained reason, their only guide, leads them nearly to the same result or creed, which consists in admitting but one single dogma, which is even known

at a distance of eighteen hundred years, we understand matters better than those primitive Christians who lived so near

by the light of reason alone, viz. the unity and supremacy of one only God, it will not be easy, even for the Unitarians themselves, to discern with accuracy to what class numbers of those belong that frequent their assemblies, whether to that of the Unitarians, or to that of the Deists. True it is, that the Unitarian professes to revere revelation, and to receive the sacred Scriptures, and the Deist does not: but allow once the Deists, as the Unitarians do, to reason away all the mysteries of revelation, and they will, believe me, make very little dif ficulty to believe all the rest, and even to show some respect for the moral precepts of the Gospel, a circumstance which we read to have been observed by the Pagans themselves. Indeed, when we hear Unitarian preachers break out in loud censure upon the courts of justice for their endeavouring to stop the circulation of Deistical works; when we are told "to listen to the Deist's arguments, when he argues against the holiest doctrines of faith, and if they be valid, to allow their force;" when, in fine, we see sermons eulogized, in which sentiments like these are boldly expressed, we can scarce refrain from suspecting that there exists a more than ordinary friendship between the Unitarians and the Deists. See a Sermon preached at the Unitarian Chapel, on the Duties of Christians towards Deists, by W. T. Fox, in the Christian Disciple, 3d num ber, vol. 3, page 202.

But suppose the number of Unitarians as large, or even much greater, than they would fain make it appear, would this be a test of the truth of their system? If so, then Deism will have strong claims to truth, for it is a fact, that in this pretended age of reason, the number of Infidels far exceeds that of our Unitarian friends. Number, indeed, is a test of truth, when that number is composed of enlightened and sanctified characters, when the doctrines professed are as humiliating to the pride of reason as they are repugnant to all the darling inclinations of man, and when the professors of those doctrines are at all times ready to seal them with their blood. Such was the multitude of the faithful, who, during the three first ages of the church, bled and died for the Christian law, a law incomprehensible in its mysteries, and most severe upon flesh and blood in its morality. But when a religion is held out which proclaims the reason of man to be independent, which tells man that he has an inalienable right to think and to act for himself as he pleases, and which at once frees him from all restraint, from painful duties, from humiliating exer cises, and leaves him complete master of his faith, both as to the theory and practice; such a religion is too congenial to all the passions and feelings of corrupt nature, not to be cordially received by numbers, who will naturally prefer a plain and easy road to heaven, to a strait and rugged one. Such, we all know, was the baneful effect of Mahometanism, a religion of flesh and blood, upon the effeminate inhabitants of the East. Number, in such cases, proves nothing in favour of the system, but only becomes an additional proof of the depravity of human nature.

the apostolic age. They were all wrong; for us only it was reserved to discover the truth: our single individual reason sees better than the general and collective reason of all former ages. As to the Fathers of the Church, both Greek and Latin, whose testimonies you cite against us, we reject them all in a lump, as "men subject to error and prejudice." Let the world revere them, as it always did, for their sanctified character, let it extol and admire their genius: those great men were involved in darkness with the rest of the world. We are the only true illuminati; and our authority we conceive to be greater than that of the whole Christian world through eighteen centuries!!! All this is, and must be, at least virtually, implied, in the answers which they return to the arguments which fall upon them with the overwhelming weight of the whole Christian world, and all past generations. Surely I need not advert any further to the inconsistency of such a reply, on which, I am confident, every reader has already passed his judgment.

LXVII. However, before I dismiss this matter, I cannot refrain from making a supposition, which will make my reader touch, as it were, with his hand, the folly of the Unitarian pretensions. Suppose, therefore, that, at some very remote period, say eighteen hundred years hence, a handful of men should rise all on a sudden in these United States, and gravely tell the American nation: Hitherto you have been totally mistaken in the true meaning of the American Constitution; all past generations understood nothing at all of it; it must be taken in a sense quite opposite to that, in which our forefathers hitherto took it. Pray, in what light would the then existing American generation look upon this new and strange kind of political demagogues? How would they treat this unheard of parodox? Why, their plain good sense would make them reply with one voice: What! gentlemen, you mean assuredly to insult both our reason and our feelings. No one hitherto understood the American Constitution! No, not the very generation which was coeval with the very first establishment of our Federal Government, nor the Americans that

lived and conversed with the very framers of the Constitution, nor all the national councils which were annually held for these eighteen centuries past, and who, in their deliberations, in their debates, and in the exercise of their legislative power, were eternally guided by the Constitution as by their polar star; nor all the tribunals of judicature throughout the Union, whose solemn decisions were constantly based on the Constitution; nor all the learned men that have preserved in their works the precise and determinate meaning of it given by the very framers of it; nor, in fine, all the American States, which have constantly understood them exactly as we do at this very day!! No; no man, to this present age, understood them rightly; the American Constitution signifies the reverse of what was hitherto believed: we, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, come to inform you, that we are the first, and the only men, that have unravelled its true meaning, the meaning intended by those who framed it!! What would be the surprise of any future generation if such language were to be held out to them? and what then ought to be our feelings, when we behold a small number of men, in the eighteen hundredth year after the Christian æra, gravely tell the world, that hitherto they did not understand the Scriptures relative to the dogmas in question, and that they are the first and only ones, that have discovered their right sense? Never were there two cases more parallel than that which I have just now supposed, and that of the Unitarians against Christians at large. The mode of reasoning and proceeding is identically the same on both sides; whether equally absurd or equally correct, let the reader determine.

Nothing could have induced the author of these sheets to give a more than ordinary length to the above digression, but its great importance towards the complete vindication, not only of the dogma of original guilt, but also of the Trinity, Divinity of Christ, and all other doctrines which are at issue between Christians and Unitarians. For once for all, let it be remembered, that the same ancient possession and prescription of eighteen hundred years, the same divine and au