space of upwards of eighteen hundred years, the public, no doubt, expects that we should take some notice of the arguments, by which Unitarians pretend to overturn this dogma. I shall first advert to what I find advanced against the divinity of the Holy Ghost, by a recent Unitarian journalist in his abstract of Unitarian belief.

"That the Holy Ghost is not a person, is evident from the various characters, attributed to it in the Scriptures. It is said to be poured out, shed forth, given without measure, and in portions. Men are said to drink into it, and it is at one time represented, as being taken away, and at another as quenched; but none of these things are applied to a person, and at the same time God, these characteristics would be absurd and impossible. You cannot say of God, that he is "shed forth, taken away, or quenched." Men are often said, also to be

"filled with the Holy Spirit." But how can a man be filled with a person as with God? There is one text very decided on this subject. "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him."* But how would this be true, if the Holy Ghost were a person, equal with the Father and the Son? Would not the Spirit know both the Father and the Son, and this without any revelation? In short, we think if the Scriptures prove any thing, it is, that the Holy Ghost so often mentioned in them, is a supernatural influence, communicated to men by the power and agency of God."

Mighty arguments, indeed, and worthy of those superior esprits-forts, who, armed with their vaunted reason, come in the eighteenth century to instruct mankind and to teach them what they are to believe or to reject: and who have modesty enough equivalently to tell all christendom: For these eigh teen hundred years, all Christians were nothing more, neither are you at present, any thing more than a pack of dunces: all preceding ages, all the Fathers of the church, all ecclesiastical historians, all the councils held to this day, the Jus

*The Unitarian Miscellany, &c. No. 1. p. 17.

† Matth. xi. 27.

tins, the Athenagorases, the Dionysiuses of Rome, or Alexandria, the Origens, the Tertullians, the Irenæuses, the Cyprians, the Athanasiuses, all the holy Martyrs, &c. had either no reason, or did not know how to make use of it: from a want of good sense they were all idolaters, in adoring as true God, the Son and the Holy Ghost, who, in the teeth of all past and present generations, we tell you, are not God.

The Christian world had assuredly time enough to see and to weigh these miserable quibbles; they saw them and despised them, as the silly fancies of an extravagant reason that is only fit to beget monsters when left to itself. Do our new teachers piously believe that it would be reasonable for us to prefer the reason of a few individuals to the general and united reason of the past and present Christian ages? Were it given to the Roman bard to listen to this, would he not in his usual mirth exclaim, "Risum teneatis Amici ?"

"It is

Now let us examine in detail the above extract. said to be poured out, shed forth, given without measure and in portions-to be taken away, to be quenched. But none of these things are applicable to a person and at the same time God, these characteristics would be absurd and impossible. You cannot say of God that he is shed forth, taken away or quenched."

This mode of reasoning is exactly like this: The true God of heaven and earth, the Lord of Hosts, the Jehovah, is described in the Scriptures as "repenting, and being touched inwardly with sorrow of heart."*"As jealous, full of anger, and incensed with wrath," but none of these characteristics are applicable to a divine person; these characteristics would be absurd and impossible. You cannot say of God that he is repenting, jealous, angry, &c. as little as you can say that he is poured out, shed, &c. Therefore the eternal Father, (the only Lord of Hosts, and Jehovah, according to the Unitarians,) is not true God, and, of course, there is no God at all. Is it not wiser for Christians to keep piously the

Genesis, vi. v. 6.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, than to be with the Unitarians without God at all? Again: The eternal Father in the Scriptures is said to have limbs, a heart, eyes, feet, arms, and bowels, but this cannot be said of a divine person, of God, therefore, it follows again, that the eternal Father is not God, and that, of course, there is no God at all. What will the Uni

tarian answer in reply to this reasoning? He will, and must answer, no doubt, that, when the eternal Father is said to be repenting, sorrow inwardly, or to have limbs like us, these passages must be taken in a mystical or metaphorical sense, so as to make the sorrow signify the displeasure or disapprobation of the Lord, and the arms, for instance, his power, the eyes, his knowledge and providence, &c. after the same manner, we reply, that, when the Holy Ghost is said "to be poured out, shed forth," &c. &c. all these expressions must be taken, not in their natural, but spiritual meaning, that is to say, not spoken of the Person of the Holy Ghost himself, but of the communication of his divine gifts, which the apostle mentions, 1 Corinth. 12. and which are "poured forth," given with measure, &c.

The Unitarian will add that it is not from these passages, in which the eternal Father is said to be sorry, or to have limbs, &c. that he proves him to be a divine person, or to possess the divine nature, but from other clear and unquestionable texts, so likewise answer the Christians to the above objection, viz. that it is not by the texts, in which the Holy Ghost is said to be poured out, to be shed," &c. that they prove the divinity and consubstantiality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son, but from other clear and most unequivocal passages, such as those which we have adduced,* and which are so decisive and so peremptory, that it will require more than all the Unitarian ingenuity to metamorphose the divine person of the Holy Ghost into "the mere power and agency of God." The world has understood them so hitherto, and sound logic teaches us that the authority of a world is greater than that of a few new teachers. Let us proceed.

*Pages, 197-199.

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"Men are often said, also, to be "filled with the Holy Spirit," but how can a man be filled with a person or with God?""

If a man cannot be filled with a person or with God, then it necessarily follows again that there is no God at all; for if the eternal Father be true God, then it is an article of faith as certain in philosophy as theology, that we are filled with him, and that there is not the smallest point in us, with which God does not co-exist, which he does not thoroughly penetuate, and with which he is most intimately present not only by his power, but also by his divine essence: "do I not fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord ?""*"For in him we live, we move and are." True it is, that, when we are thus filled with God, we do not circumscribe or confine his immensity to our being; but whoever told the Unitarian that, when we “are filled with the Holy Ghost," we contain him within ourselves so as to hinder him from being present every where else? And by the bye, I wish the Unitarian who denies that the Holy Ghost, with which we are filled, is a divine person, would explain to me this mystery which the light of reason alone sets beyond all doubt, viz. how one and the same most simple and indivisible substance of God can thoroughly penetrate and pervade every point of our being, and there exist whole and entire, without being divided or circumscribed, and so exist whole and entire in every imaginable point of the universe. This is a natural and most undoubted truth, but a truth, too, which all the Unitarian ingenuity will never reach to explain.

"There is one text very decided on this subject “No man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whom soever the Son will reveal him?" But how would this be true, if the Holy Ghost were a person, equal with the Father and the Son? Would not the Spirit know both the Father and the Son, and this without any revelation ?”

This text is decided on this subject in the eye of the Uni

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tarian, because he is sure never to find in the Scriptures but what he wishes to find. But these strange interpreters are of too late a date, for their new interpretation to prevail against the authority of eighteen centuries, which with St. Ambrose in his first book on the Holy Ghost, chap. iii. have always understood, that in the above text all created persons, indeed, such as men and angels are excluded, but by no means the divine Persons, or else the sacred Scripture would contradict itself; because the Apostle, 1 Corinth. ii. 10. writes of the Holy Ghost," But to us God hath revealed them by his Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, even the profound things of God," and verse 11. "The things that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God." It is therefore to be observed, that it is the custom of the Scripture to speak now of one person only, now of two, now of all three together, according as opportunity offers, and a particular reason may require, that the divinity of one person should be in a particular manner inculcated. As, therefore, because the Scripture often makes only mention of Christ, as in this text to the Galatians, iii. "For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ," or of the Holy Ghost as in the Book of Wisdom I. "The Spirit of the Lord has replenished the whole world," and I. Corinth. xii. "All these things one and the same spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will," it does by no means follow, that in baptism we do not put on the Father, or that the Father and the Son are not immense, or do not work the things which the Holy Ghost is said to work, so likewise because express mention is not made somewhere of the Holy Ghost, it does not follow, that the Scriptures exclude the Holy Ghost from the Godhead or the divine operations.

In a periodical Magazine,* I find an article of some length on the use and meaning of the phrase, Holy Spirit," the purport of which is to show that the phrase "Holy Spirit" signifies any thing else, except what the christian world al

*The Christian Disciple, and Theological Review, No. 4. vol. 1. p. 260272.