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UNITARIANISM

PHILOSOPHICALLY AND THEOLOGICALLY EXAMINED.

NO. V.

SUBJECT CONTINUED.

CHAPTER III.

CXIV. The adorable Mystery of the Blessed Trinity established, 1st. By plain Scriptural evidence. 2dly. By the concurrent and uniform testimonies of the Fathers of both the Greek and Latin church, especially of those that flourished before the general Council of Nice. 3dly. By the authority of Councils and Symbols of Faith. 4thly. By the constant and perpetual practice and belief of the church of Christ.

SECTION 1.

The Mystery of the Blessed Trinity established by plain Scriptural Evidence.

CXV. Here we might adduce the plain and unanswerable passages from the sacred writings of the old law, by which divines make it solidly appear, that the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity was revealed to the Patriarchs, Prophets, and to the other Saints of the old dispensation,* and, at least, obscurely insinuated to the people of God; but as the above discus

*This is inferred from the following passages, which seem to imply the revelation of the Mystery of the Incarnation. Matt. xiii. v. 17, "Amen I say to you, many prophets and just men have desired to see the things that you see, and have not seen them; and to hear the things that you hear, and have not heard them." And St. John, viii. chap. v. 56, "Abraham, your Father, rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and he was glad."

+ Here belong those passages, in which God speaks in the plural number, aud, as it were, to another, and seems to hold council with himself, as Genesis No. V.

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sion has already taken up much of our time, and as this mystery is so clearly set down in the books of the new law, we have thought proper to confine ourselves to a few, but peremptory passages of the sacred writings of the New-Testament, the more so as we shall treat of the divinity of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Ghost, in a more special manner, in their proper places.

First Proof, derived from the Baptism of Christ.

CXVI. The history of the baptism, which Christ received in the Jordan, is related in St. Matthew, iii. v. 13, St. Mark, i. v. 10, St. Luke, iii. v. 22. Now, in the said baptism, three distinct persons are manifestly made known to us: Christ, or the Son who is baptized; the Father, who said: "This is my beloved Son, (¿ ¿yaπnтos,) in whom I am well pleased;" and "the Holy Ghost, who descended in a bodily shape as a dove upon him." Luke iii. v. 22.

Second Proof, from the form of Baptism instituted by Christ. CXVII. In St. Matthew, xxviii. v. 19, Christ addressing his Apostles, said, "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

Here the three persons are clearly distinguished, as well as the one name, that is to say, the one authority, power, and nature of them. In the name, (not in the names,) says Christ; in order to designate the unity of nature in the three persons, to whom, when we receive baptism, we enlist our name, and promise our allegiance and worship.

It must be observed, that in baptism three things occur, which only become the true Supreme God; and, as these three

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"Come ye,

cap. 1, v. 26, "Let us make man to our own image and likeness." And cap. iii. v. 22, "Behold, Adam is become as one of us." Cap. 11, v. 7, therefore, let us go down, and there confound their tongues. Next those psalms, in which manifest mention is made of the Father who begets, and the Son who is begotten. Psalm ii. v. 7, "The Lord hath said to me: thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee;" and psalm cix. v. 1, "The Lord hath said to my Lord: sit thou at my right hand," &c.

things are equally ascribed to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as to the Father, it is undeniable that the Son and the Holy Ghost are one and the same God with the Father. The first is the authority of God in instituting baptism, and in confirming with his sacrament as with his seal the covenant which he makes with us. But, to institute a sacrament, belongs to God only; for to the source and author of grace it only belongs infallibly to annex invisible grace to sensible and material signs, as it falls out in sacraments. The second is the promise of grace which belongs to him only who can grant the remission of sins, that is to say, to God, who says of himself, "I am, I am He, that blot out thy iniquities for my own sake." Isaiah, xliii. 25. The third, in fine, is the stipulation of the worship which is due to God, and to which those that are baptized are bound by the bond of the covenant. Now supreme worship is due to the supreme God only.

But that these three things belong to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as well as to the Father, is thence manifest, because we are baptized without any difference whatever, in the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, as well as in the name of the Father. Other proofs are not wanting, by which it is incontrovertibly demonstrated, that the Son and the Holy Ghost possess one and the same power with the Father of instituting sacraments, of annexing grace to them, and of exacting divine worship from those that consecrate themselves to God by baptism; but we abstain from producing them, lest these sheets should swell to a bulk much beyond our original design.

Third proof, from the Mission of the Holy Ghost.

CXVIII. In St. John, xiv. chap. v. 1, 6. Christ promises to send the Holy Ghost, "I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever." And xv. 26, " But when the Paraclete shall come, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me."

Here again we have the three persons clearly pointed out : The Son, asking as man, "I shall ask ;" the Father, whom he asks, "I will ask the Father ;" and the Holy Ghost, who is to be sent," and he shall give you another Paraclete."

Fourth proof, from the 1st Epistle of St. John, 5th chapter,

7th verse.

CXIX. "For there are three that give testimony in Heaven; the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one;" that is to say, one substance and one nature.

But as this text is so very decisive, the Unitarian will, no doubt, join with the Socinians, and reply that this passage is, by no means, genuine or authentic, because it is not to be found in several ancient manuscripts; and that, of course, no argument can be drawn from it.

To this we answer, that although the passage under consideration is missing in some manuscripts, it is extant in most of the ancient copies. It exists in the Britannic Manuscript, the authority of which, on account of its antiquity, was so great with Erasmus, who at times spoke but ambiguously of the Divinity of Christ, that in the third and fourth editions which he gave of the New-Testament, he restored the text in its proper place, which in his two former editions he had omitted: The same passage was read in the copies, of which the learned authors of the edition of Alcala made use in the year 1517; in the manuscripts of Laurentius Valla, of Robert Stephanus, and of the Divines of Louvain, who, in the year 1580, after the collocation of a great number of manuscripts, published a new edition of the Bible; it was extant likewise in those Bibles of which the most ancient Fathers of the church made use; for the words alluded to are quoted by St. Cyprian, lib. de Unitate Ecclesiæ, and in his epistles to Jubajanus; by the author of the books on the Trinity, which are commonly ascribed to Vigilius of Tapsa, lib. 1, towards the end, and lib 7; by Victor Vitensis, lib. 2, de persecutione Africana; by St. Fulgentius, lib. de Trinitate, cap. 4. lib. de fide, et lib. 2, contra Arianorum responsiones; by St. Jerom, or whoever is the

author of his prologue to the canonical Epistles, by Eugenius of Carthage towards the end of the fifth century in the year 484, in the profession of faith, which was signed by at least four hundred African Bishops, and presented to Huneric, the Arian king of the Vandals; lastly, the same passage is found in a work, which Cassiodorus, a learned Senator, composed in the fifth and sixth century under the title-Cassiodori senatoris complexiones in Epistolas et acta Apostolorum, and which the learned marquis Scipio Maffei rescued from the dust of the Library belonging to the chapter of Verona, and published in the year 1721; where we must remark that Cassiodorus, as appears from the 8th chapter of the divine Institutions, spared neither labour nor expense to procure from every quarter sacred manuscripts, which he compared with incredible trouble, with each other, and corrected; and that, in that difficult undertaking, he made use of no other version, than that of the Vetus Itala, which before St. Jerom's time was in use; this 7th verse of the Epistle of St. John was, therefore, likewise read in the more ancient copies of the Italic version.

But what reason can you assign for so notable an omission in some old manuscripts?

There are several ways of accounting for that omission and among others, it may be said, 1st, that this omission happened by the neglect of some ignorant copyists, who, after having written the first words of the 7th verse "there are three, that give testimony," by a mistake of the eyes, skipped over the remaining part of the text, and passed on to the immediately following text, where the same words recur; for such mistakes often take place in transcribing, especially when the two verses and the two periods begin and end with the same words. Another reason of this omission is given by the author of the prologue to the seven Catholic epistles; for he thus writes of the first epistle of St. John, "We find by the truth of faith, that a great mistake was committed in this epistle by unfaithful translators, in putting down the words of three only in their edition, viz. of the water, the blood, and the spirit, and in omitting the testimony of the Father, and of

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