The changes that have taken place in this doctrine are innumerable. The Unitarian Tracts mention forty particulars, in which the orthodox still differ from one another.-Vol. II. 8.

The Nicene Fathers supposed the three persons to be inseparable. Cyril held them to be three distinct beings. The Lateran Council maintained a singularity of substance. These were all reckoned orthodox at different times; and a fourth hypothesis can hardly be conceived. So the Pseudo-Athanasians, (Athanasian creed) that they may be sure of being in the right somewhere, maintain them altogether, though absolutely contradictory to one another; and the last of them is particularly condemned by Athanasius himself, as being the doctrine of Sabellius.

South, Wallis, Hooker, &c. believe the three persons to be only names, attributes, states, or modes of acting. Bishops Tillotson, Bull, Fowler; Drs. Cudworth, Sherlock, How, Clarke, Waterland, &c. believe them to be different subsistences, minds, or spirits. Sherlock says "they are as distinct as Peter, James and John." (Vindic. of the Trinity, p. 105.) The University of Oxford (Nov. 25, 1695) decreed this to be false, impious, and heretical. Their opponents maintain, that it is the very Catholic faith; and that this decree censures the Nicene faith, and the church of England, and exposes both to the scorn and triumph of the Socinians. The church of England has not yet settled this important article.-See Ben Mordecai. p. 68, &c.

Three persons, that is, three intelligent individual beings, bearing certain relations to each other; two of them unacquainted with the designs of the third; deriving their existence from him, and acting by his power and authority; and all taking different parts in creation, providence and redemption, cannot be one and the same. A son cannot be coeval with his father; and the spirit, proceeding from both, must have a more recent origin than either.

The creed of Athanasius (falsely so called) is too long for insertion. The reader is referred to the book of Common Prayer. It is a curious string of palpable contradictions.

The doctrine is unintelligible, and consequently inexplicable: but Bishop Beveridge assists us in the best manner of speak. ing of it, without understanding or explaining it. "If we speak of it, how hard is it to express it! If I say, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three, and every one distinctly God, it is true; but if I say they are three, and every one distinct Gods, it is false. I may say, the divine persons are distinct in the divine nature; but I cannot say, the divine nature is divided into the divine persons. I may say God the Father is one God, and the Son is one God, and the Holy Ghost is one God; but I cannot say that the Father is one God, and the Son another God, and the Holy Ghost a third God. I may say, the Father begat another, who is God; yet I cannot say he begat another God: and from the Father and the Son proceedeth another, who is God; yet I cannot say, that from the Father and the Son proceedeth another God. So that, though the Father be the first person in the Godhead, the Son the second, and the Holy Ghost the third; yet the Father is not the first, nor the Son the second, and the Holy Ghost the third God. So hard is it to word so great a mystery aright."—"This is a mystery, which we are all bound to believe: yet must have great care how we speak of it; it being both easy and dangerous to mistake in expressing so mysterious a truth."-(Beveridge, Private Thoughts, ii. 48.) I suppose the easiest and safest way is to let it alone altogether. Again :-" This, I confess, is a mystery which I cannot pos sibly conceive, yet it is a truth which I can easily believe; yea, therefore, it is so true that I can easily believe it, because it is so high that I cannot possibly conceive it; for it is impossible any thing should be true of the infinite Creator, which can be fully expressed to the capacities of a finite creature; and for this reason I ever did, and ever shall, look upon those apprehensions of God to be the truest, whereby we apprehend, him to be most incomprehensible; and that to be the most true God, which seems to be most impossible to us.”—Ibid.

"This doctrine, that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, are

of one and the same individual and numerical essence, seems to burlesque the Holy Scriptures, or give them an uncouth and absurd sense, from the beginning of the Gospel to the end of the Epistle.”—Whitby's Last Thoughts, p. 510.

"I cannot but conceive it to be both unnecessary and presumptuous to say, that except every one do keep them (the Athanasian faith) whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly."-Bp. of Lincoln, Elem. of Theology, ii. 222, 228.-Month. Rep. iii. 276.

Archbishop Tillotson, writing to Bishop Burnet, says of the Athanasian creed: "I wish we were well rid of it." (Burnet's life, p. 719.) and Archbishop Sharpe, going to church with the Minister, who was to officiate, the Minister took notice, that it was one of the days appointed for reading the Athanasian creed; and, said he, “I had like to have forgotten it:" upon which the Archbishop replied, "and why could not you have forgotten it?" intimating, that he would have been as well pleased, if he had.-Emlyn's Life, p. 58.

On the 2d of February, 1756, Dr. Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, made a speech in the Irish House of Lords, which is reviewed in the Monthly Review for July, 1757, and moved, that the Nicene and Athanasian creeds should be omitted out of the liturgy. Upon a division the proposal was laid aside, as an improper mode of proceeding; the house being of opinion, that such a plan should rather be laid before his Majesty by humble remonstrance.

Bishop Smalridge is reported to have said to W. Whiston "I dare not examine; I dare not examine; for if we should examine and find, that you are in the right, the church has then been in an error for many hundred years."

The scriptural professions of faith, were calculated to comprehend and unite all who believed in Christ; human creeds and texts, to exclude and disperse. The Nicene was the first. The Arians were so pliable, or their heresy so minute, that it exercised the ingenuity of the Council to find a word, that would effect the desired schism. They, at last accomplished

it by the smallest letter in all the alphabets, proverbially used by our Lord to denote minutest points of doctrine; and found a shiboleth and sibboleth in homoousian and homoiousian. From that time the true point of orthodoxy has been varying like the tremulous magnetic needle, or the shifting weather cock.

"I like not," says Calvin, this prayer, 'O holy, blessed, i and glorious Trinity;' it savours of barbarity. The word Trinity is barbarous, insipid, profane, a human invention, grounded on no testimony of the word of God: the popish God, unknown to the prophets and apostles."-Calvin, Admon. I. ad Polon.

Extracts on the Generation and Eternity of the Son.

When the Son is said to be the first born of every creature, and the beginning of the creation of God, nothing can be more evident than that God, of his own will, created or generated, or produced the Son before all things, endued with the Divine nature, (divina natura præditum.)-Milton's C. D. p.

127.

Him, who was begotten from all eternity, the Father cannot have begotten, at any time, (nunquam;) for what was from all eternity, was never in the act of being made: him, whom the Father begat from all eternity, the Father still begets: he, whom he still begets is not yet begotten, and, therefore, is not yet a son: for an action, which has no beginning, can have no completion.Milton's C. D. p. 133.

The Supreme God is self-existent: but he, who is not selfexistent, but was begotten, is not the first cause, but the effect, and therefore is not the Supreme God. He, who was begotten from all eternity, must have been from all eternity: but if he can have been begotten, who was from all eternity, there is no reason, why the Father himself should not have been begotten, and have derived his origin also from some paternal essence, (& habuerit patrem.)-Milton's C. D. p. 135.

Ait (Eusibius) Filium προ χρόνων εί προ παντων αι wwwv, id est, ante sæcula productum: nam sæcula & tempus omne cum mundo cœpisse, cum multis aliis veteribus, arbitratur: nec vox alio apud Eusebium pro æternitate ante creationem usquam sumitur: nam hujusmodi æternitatem in Filio evidenter negat.-Montfaucon in Eusebium. Apud Jortin. Almost all the old philosophers, who held the eternity of the world, did not thereby mean, that it was self-existent.→ Dr. Clarke upon Jostin's Remarks, ii. 52.

"The notion of the eternity of the Son is not clearly revealed in Scripture: but it seems most probable, that God, ὁ Παντοκρατωρ, did always exercise in some manner or other, his eternal power and will."—Dr. Clark. (Weak ground for such a doctrine.)

It is not pretended, that the doctrine of the Trinity is expressly declared in any passage of Scripture: and the Roman Catholic Doctors deny, that it can be proved from the Sacred Writings: e. g. Cardinal Hosius, Gordonius Huntlæus, Grotserus, Fanrerus, Vega, Possevin, Wickus, and others. "Longe ergo sincerius facerent, si cum Pontificiis faterentur istam distinctionem ex Scriptura non posse probari, sed tantum ex traditione." Curcellæus.-Sumner's Note on Milton's C. D. p. 80.

On the Holy Ghost.

When the phrase, the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, occurs in the Old Testament, it sometimes signifies God the Father himself, as Gen. vi. 3: sometimes the power or virtue of the Father, and particularly that Divine breath or influence, by which every thing is created and nourished: sometimes an angel, Isaiah xlviii, 16; Ezek. iii. 12, 14, 24, &c.: sometimes Christ, who, according to the common opinion, was sent by the Father, to lead the Israelites into the land of Canaan, Isaiah lxiii. 10, 11; that is, the angel to whom Jehovah transferred his own name, namely Christ, whom they