which is in accordance with the soundest dictates of the human understanding;-a proposition which is in complete harmony with that primary revelation, the revelation of nature, on which the revelation of the Bible is founded: for if the heavens declare the glory of God, they declare the glory of One God only; if the firmament showeth forth his handy-work, it certainly reveals the handy-work of none besides. Whereas the second of these mutually-destructive propositions announces a second person in the character of Deity, of whom reason says nothing, and of whom, in this capacity, Scripture is silent. The first proposition declares, that "there is ONE GOD, JEHOVAH, who is God only, to the entire exclusion of the alleged godhead of every creature;"-a proposition which is distinctly stated over and over again, as I shall abundantly prove, in every part of the Sacred Volume, with every copious variety of phrase, of emphasis, and connexion, that can give it weight. The latter announces, that "the LORD JESUS CHRIST, the Mediator, is perfect God and perfect man;" —a statement which I defy him to produce any one passage of Scripture to prove ;-to prove, not by inference, nor deduction, nor wire-drawn conclusion, nor by arbitrary meaning placed upon words contrary to their known tenor and signification in other places; but by plain, downright, unequivocal assertion, such as I shall bring forward, if he does not, to establish his first proposition. Let him name to us one single text in which it is plainly declared, that "the Lord Jesus Christ, the Mediator, is the Word made flesh, perfect God and perfect man,”—or words to that effect,--and the controversy between us is at an end. The first proposition declares a truth which all can understand, and all can heartily embrace, that "there is ONE GOD, JEHOVAH, who is God only;-a truth which is no mystery and no contradiction. But the latter, which asserts that the same being is perfect God and perfect man, asserts what Mr. Bagot may and will and must affirm to be a mystery; but which, I do declare, appears to me to be nothing but a contradiction and an absurdity. that the same being and the same person is perfect God and perfect man,-what is this but to affirm, that he is almighty, at the same time that he is weak; that he is omniscient, at the same time that he is ignorant; that he is omnipresent, at the same time that he is limited in extent; that he is eternal, at the same time that he is limited in duration; that he is supreme and independant, at the same time that he is inferior and dependant ?-Call this a mystery!-say that it is above human reason! It is not above human reason! I know the meaning of every term in the proposition. I know the force of every connecting particle or phrase employed. I see and know that the two sets of attributes, the divine and human, are perfectly incompatible ;-that the proposition which asserts they both belong to the same person, is irreconcilable with itself, and is self-destructory. No such proposition is contained in Scripture !

To say

I am aware that those who argue on this hypothesis tell us, they are compelled to resort to it, in order to get rid of a contradiction. They say that one set of qualities appear to be ascribed to our Lord Jesus Christ in one set of passages, and another in other places; and thus they are obliged to have recourse to the supposition of two natures

as united in one person, in order to get rid of a contradiction! And how do they get rid of this contradiction? How does their theory help them out of the difficulty? Verily, it leaves them just where it found them! It gets rid of the contradiction, by leaving it still staring them broadly in the face! Asserting the union of two natures, the divine and the human, in one person, is just asserting the same proposition in other words, which is allowed by the argument itself, to be contradictory and absurd! I shall prove, when these supposed contradictory texts come before me in the discussion, that it is by no means necessary to have recourse to this extravagant and unheardof supposition, in order to understand the passages referred to. I shall show, if I have time, that there is not one of them which may not be explained on the supposition, that our blessed Lord is what he always spoke of himself as being, one separate and distinct person and being; like other created intelligences. In the mean time I would just beg to state or to repeat to you, what is the nature and kind of that evidence, which, if this doctrine be the doctrine of Scripture, must be required to support it.

For this purpose, let us place ourselves in the situation of one of the Evangelists; MATTHEW, for instance, who had known, and personally accompanied our Lord. He knew that this illustrious teacher was not only the long-expected Messiah, for whom the nation of the Jews anxiously looked, but a personage infinitely more exalted than the race of Abraham had ever exalted in their most ardent moods of anticipation; he was no less than THE ETERNAL AND OMNIPOTENT JEHOVAH, who created, sustains, and governs the wide universe of nature, clothed with the attributes of humanity. Under the veil of human infirmity was concealed the awful majesty of the Eternal King! With this sublime and mysterious being, MATTHEW had himself lived in habits of intimacy and familiarity. He had been invited to become his follower, and had accepted the call; be had entertained him in his house-had accompanied him on his journeys through the land of Judea-had witnessed his dangers, and shared his privations; and had seen him weep over the grave of Lazarus; and had heard him affectingly deplore the blindness and infatuation of the Jews in obstinately rejecting him; and had beheld him shed tears over the city of Jerusalem, while he foretold the ruin and desolation which the perverseness of its inhabitants was bringing down upon it. Nay, more, he had beheld him seized like a malefactor by a band of infuriate zealots; dragged before a bigoted highpriest and a cruel magistrate; condemned to death by a sentence extorted by threats from an unwilling but guilty judge; and, at last, crucified on Golgotha, with every circumstance of insult and aggravated cruelty and knowing all this, and knowing that this being, thus treated, was no less a being than THE DREAD AND AWFUL MAJESTY OF HEAVEN,-that Great and Eternal Being, whose very name was deemed by the Jews too sacred ever to be pronounced, save once in each year, by the high priest when alone, in the holy of the holies;-MATTHEW, knowing all this, sits down to write a history of his life and labours for the instruction of his countrymen. He begins with the commencement of his earthly existence; he con

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tinues his narrative through the intermediate stages of his life and ministry; he ends with his resurrection from the tomb. He seems to have taken particular pains to make his narrative as full and minute as possible; yet, wondrous to relate! the one circumstance, which, if true, formed the most astonishing and wonderful of all the wonders connected with our Saviour's character-the miracle of miracles, which, if true, eclipsed all other miracles that ever were wrought-the doctrine of doctrines, which, if true, threw all other facts and doctrines completely into the shade-the transcendant fact, at which, as a modern believer in its reality has declared, reason stands aghast, and faith itself is half confounded," THIS TREMENDOUS DOCTRINE, which, had it been true, and had it been known to the Apostle MATTHEW, would have engrossed all his thoughts, concentrated all his feelings in itself, and its own mysterious awfulness, and put all his faculties into requisition, in order to express, in a worthy manner, the overwhelming truth,-this all-engrossing, all. concentrating, and all-mysterious fact, is passed over by MATTHEW, without being once mentioned by him in his history! He had lived in habits of intimacy and familiarity with Almighty God. He writes, for the instruction of his countrymen, the history of his incarnation; and, strange to say! not one word does the historian drop, as from himself, on the subject of the real nature of that being whose history he records. Read over the Gospel of MATTHEW from beginning to end; you will find many facts recorded which are, to say the least, very hard to reconcile with the hypothesis of the "Proper Deity of the Word." But of the "Proper Deity of the Word" itself, the historian says not a single syllable; nay, the term Word-which we are now told is the accurate and descriptive phrase to denote the Divine Being who thus lived, laboured, and died among men-is not found in this sense in the whole Gospel of MATTHEW. And the only two passages in the book which are supposed to have any reference to the doctrine, are the name "EMMANUEL" applied to Christ in the same sense as it was given to a child born in the lifetime of Isaiah; not by the historian, but by an angel: and a clause in the baptismal commission, which no more proves the " Proper Deity of Christ," than a precisely similar phrase in the Epistles of St. PAUL proves that Moses had also a Supreme and Proper Deity of his own. I have looked into the writings of several Trinitarian divines and expositors, both before the present discussion was talked of and since; and I have not found, that any other passage in the Gospel of MATTHEW that is supposed to contain any thing like a direct assertion of the "Proper Deity of Christ." We have seen that neither of these assertions, or supposed assertions, is direct; and neither of them is given in the words of the historian himself. How are we to account for this wonderful silence of the holy Apostle? Are we to suppose with ATHANASIUS,-that renowned champion of orthodoxy,-that the venerable Evangelist wilfully concealed the truth, lest it might offend the prejudices of his countrymen, as well as of the Gentiles? If so, we give to his discretion what we take from his veracity and historical credit.

But our astonishment is increased, when we find that MARK

who made MATTHEW's Gospel the foundation of an independent narrative-observes an equal silence; that LUKE, who evidently had the works of his predecessors before his eye, when composing his narrative, is equally reserved; and that JOHN only mentions, or is supposed to mention, the doctrine in his own words, in one passage of his Gospel,-the commencement of it,-to which Mr. Bagot's second Proposition obviously refers, and to which I shall probably address myself in some remark, before this discussion closes.

Now, my Christian friends and brethren, I ask you is this probable? Is this the way you would have conveyed a knowledge of this unspeakably important and interesting truth, had you been in the situation of the evangelists? Put yourselves for a moment in the place of these illustrious disciples. Assume to yourselves the feelings of warm, affectionate, and grateful attachment to your Saviour, with which his personal friends must have been animated. Add to their veneration for his character, and their respect for his authority, and their regret for his sorrows, their exultation and transport at witnessing his resurrection and ascension. Add to all these the sentiments which they must have cherished for their Lord and Master, if they knew the statement in Mr. Bagot's proposition to be true. Suppose all these feelings yours; and that, with all these feelings strong upon you you sat down to write his history. Would you, I ask, would you have passed over this wonderful and awful event as they have done? I fearlessly pronounce, that you would not, and could not have done so. It is not in human nature. The doctrine, therefore, unless it be supported by testimonies far more numerous in quantity and far more explicit in kind than these usually adduced out of the evangelical records, cannot be true. If it had been true, it would not have been left to be gathered, or inferred, or collected, from hints, inuendoes, allusions, from minute criticism, and the doctrine of the Greek article. If it had been true, it would have shone forth in every page; it would have adorned every paragraph; it would have illuminated every line. But so far is this from being the case, that I am willing to rest the whole cause on an examination of any one of the Evangelists. Let us begin with the beginning, -go through every passage from the commencement to the close; let us consider seriatim the different statements made respecting our Saviour in the order in which they occur; and it will then be speedily seen, on which side the weight of scriptural testimony lies. I venture to affirm, that Mr. Bagot will not have adduced three hints or allusions to the doctrine of the Supreme Deity and Perfect Manhood of Christ as united in one person, until I shall have quoted three hundred direct proofs to the contrary. On such a regular and orderly examination of any one Evangelist throughout, I am willing to rest the cause.

The arguments which it will be my duty to bring forward, will be very different from those which have hitherto been adduced on the other side. In place of the hints, allusions, and forged texts which are so often paraded as proofs of the Trinity, I will bring forward a class of texts, plain, direct, and unimpeachable, directly affirming the doctrine which I defend, and from which I take my

designation as a Unitarian-namely, the Divine Unity: affirming it not with exception and reservation of a threefold distinction of persons, subsistences, or hypostases; but plainly, directly, absolutely, and unreservedly. And I shall, for this purpose, quote such texts

as

DEUT. vi. 4. Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, is One LORD [i. e. JEHOVAH our God is One JEHOVAH].

ISA. xxxvii. 16. O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, thou art the God, even thou alone of all the kingdoms of the earth. [20.] Now therefore, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD, even thou only.

ZECH. xiv. 9. JEHOVAH shall be king over all the earth. In that day there shall be ONE JEHOVAH, and his name ONE.

NEHEM. ix. 6. Thou, even thou, art JEHOVAH alone: thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host; *** and thou preservest them

all..

MARK Xii. 29. Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD! [30.] And thou shalt love the LORD thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. **** [32.] And the scribe (with whom he had been conversing) said unto him, Well, Master! thou hast said the truth: for THERE IS ONE GOD, and there is none other but He. *** [34.] And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God!

GAL. iii. 20. ✶✶✶ GOD IS ONE!

I shall next bring forward plain, downright, and intelligible assertions, that the "FATHER" alone is the one Being, who is asserted to be God alone, to the entire exclusion of all others. I challenge Mr. Bagot to bring forward any similar declarations respecting God the Son, or God the Word, if the phrase pleases him better;-to say nothing of God the Holy Ghost ;-whom, indeed, it is quite customary to pass over in silence, in the present argument: why this is the case I do not know; for if he be God as much as either of the other two, he has surely as good a right to be put prominently forward as they. Under this division of my subject, I shall adduce such authorities as

MATT. xxiii. 9. One is your Father who is in heaven.

1. COR. viii. 4—6. *

There is none other God but One: for though there be that are called Gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be Gods many and Lords many,) yet to us there is but One God, THE FATHER, of whom are all things, and we in him, &c.

EPH. iv. 6. There is ONE GOD AND FATHER OF ALL, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

MATT. X. 29-31. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without YOUR FATHER!

LUKE x. 21. In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O FATHER, LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. * * * Even so, FATHER, &c.-See MATT. xi. 25.

I shall then advert to a number of passages in which our Lord Jesus Christ is expressly distinguished from the one God, in such a manner, as to prove that his alleged Deity is entirely excluded by those passages which assert the sole Supremacy of the Father. With this view I shall refer to such texts as

C