BE IT REMEMBERED, That, on the twelfth day of September, in the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the forty-sixth, Anthony Kohlmann, of the said district, has deposited in the office of the Clerk of the District Court, for the District of Columbia, the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as author, in the words following, to wit: "Unitarianism Philosophically and Theologically examined: in a series of periodical numbers; comprising a complete refutation of the leading principles of the Unitarian system." In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled "An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned;" and also to the Act, entitled "An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching, historical and other prints." [L. S.] IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand, and affixed the public seal of my office, the day and year aforesaid. EDMUND I. LEE, Clerk of the District Court for the District of Columbia. INTRODUCTION TO THE WHOLE WORK. A Religion always attacked, and always victorious: a Religion, that gathers strength from the very means which, in the nature of things, ought to annihilate it, I mean, from cruel persecutions, heresies, and schisms: A religion, in fine, that has withstood the most violent assaults and combined efforts of paganism, libertinism, and of the powers of the earth, for no less than eighteen hundred years; such a religion is incontestibly and eminently the work of God. Adorned with the accumulated trophies of so many ages, she solemnly proclaims her divine origin, and compels even her inveterate foes to acknowledge, in her native and invincible strength, the finger of God, and to exclaim, with the Magi of Egypt, " Digitus Dei est hic." The finger of God is here.* Now, such is the Religion of Jesus Christ. It no sooner appeared upon earth, but it met with universal contradiction. The jealous Synagogue began this cruel war with an unparalleled fury, and cut off, within a few years, some of its chief -supports next sprang up a whole swarm of proud and selfconceited innovators, who successively attacked all its sacred dogmas. These, again, were succeeded by the most virulent writers of Paganism, the Celsuses, the Porphyriuses, the Plotins, the Julians, &c. who, armed with all the resources of genius and the subtleties of philosophy, took the field against it, with the frantic determination not to retreat till the Christian name should be utterly exterminated; whilst, on the other hand, the masters of Rome were employing all the force of their empire against the infant church of Christ: fire, sword, gibbets, boiling caldrons, slow-fire, wild beasts, racks, maiming of limbs, &c. all were made use of against the professors of the Christian name. Vain efforts! Useless undertakings! This work comes from God-the power of men cannot stop it: "the blood of martyrs is indeed flowing over Exod. viii. 19. all the provinces of the Roman empire, and that for the space of three hundred years;" but, as Tertullian elegantly observes,* "that very blood becomes the seed of new Christians:" for one martyr that is cut off, ten new Christians rise around him; like the tree that is pruned, it shoots out in new luxuriancy. All that savage barbarity can possibly contrive, is resorted to by Pagan Rome, to hinder "the stone that was cut out of the mountain without hands,"† (I mean, the infant church of Christ,) from increasing, and this tender plant from spreading its roots. But we learn from Tertullian, that, as early as the second century, that stone, so small in its beginning, had already grown into a mountain that covered the whole civilized earth, and that tender plant had become a tree, that extended its roots from sea to sea, and afforded shade to all the polished nations of the world. So little can men do against the designs of Heaven. When, after the unavailing efforts of three hundred years, the Roman emperors were convinced of the impossibility of arresting the progress of this work, which all the power of men could not arrest, they thought it wisdom to bow down their haughty necks to the sweet yoke of Jesus-it was nanatural, it seems, to expect that no one afterwards would be tempted to make war against God and against his Christ; but no: Christ, who had bequeathed to his church all that was dear to him, his divine doctrine, his sacraments, his promises, and perpetual assistance, would likewise have it so, that du ring her militant state upon earth, she should share with him in struggles, trials, and sufferings, in order to enter like him-self into his eternal kingdom of rest. He would have it so, that, as she was altogether supernatural and divine in her primitive establishment, so 'she should announce to all future generations, by the very state of her trials of every description, and of her glorious victories, that she continued to be altogether supernatural, heavenly, and divine. He, accordingly, "Semen est sanguis christianorum," in Apolog. Matth. xiii. 32. permitted that, as soon as Pagan Rome had laid down her arms against the spouse of Christ, a new and much more alarming war should break out against her from within, by a host of most powerful enemies, succeeding each other in close array, by the Arians, the Nestorians, the Monothelites, the Pelagians, Donatists, Macedonians, &c. ; in the eighth century, by the Iconoclasts, and in the ninth, by Photius and the abettors of the Greek schism: enemies, courted, patronized, and supported by all the power of the Roman emperors. But the kingdom of Christ, that perpetual empire which shall not be given over to another people, and which itself shall consume all other empires*-the church, I say, unprotected, abandoned, and left to her own native vigour and firmness, triumphed most gloriously over them all; they had no other effect but to make men sensible of her superior virtue, of her divine efficacy. She saw them all rise, she saw them rage, but she saw them likewise die away; and so die away, that, had it not been for the care of Christian writers, their very names would have been for ever lost to us; so that she may truly say of her numerous and powerful enemies, what the Angel affirmed of the enemies of her divine founder, "Defuncti sunt qui quærebant animam pueri." They are dead who sought the life of the child. They, indeed, at times, seem apparently to triumph, and in the paroxysm of their phrenzy, to exclaim, "We have devoured her: we have devoured her!" But, before long, she casts around her majestic look, and says, "I have seen the wicked highly exalted and lifted up like the cedars of Libanus: And I passed by, and lo! he was not: and I sought him, and his place was not found." What a striking illustration of this her divine strength, has not the French revolution furnished us with? When iniquity like an impetuous torrent threatened to spread over the whole world, and to banish the very name of Christ from the earth, behold that same religion, hitherto in chains and dungeons, abandoned, persecuted, and destitute of all human succour, resum *Daniel, ii. 44. + Matth. ii. 20. Psalm xxxvi. 35, 36. ing, "without the hands of men," her native dignity; seeking around for "those that sought her life, and lo! they are not;" and sitting herself on the throne of her venerable pontiffs, appears to the astonished world more venerable, more vigorous, more august than ever. "Who has done all this? Is it not visibly the hand of the Most High?" Such, therefore, being the exalted and glorious destiny of the church of Christ upon earth, to be always attacked and to be always victorious, she does not fear, whatever calamities may rush upon her, or whatever enemies may rise up against her; for, confiding in the glorious promises made to her, she knows, that all the power of men cannot pull down what God has set up; and that the gates of hell cannot prevail against her, because she is built on a rock, by the same mighty hand, which has laid the foundation of the universe. Thus, if religion deeply mourns at the rise of new errors, it is not, because she fears for her own preservation, but, because she apprehends lest some of her children be seduced by the charm of novelty, and thus suffer shipwreck of their faith. Unitarianism, whose confutation we have undertaken, will, no doubt, share the fate of all former sects, and of other human inventions, for the oracle of Christ will, at all times, be literally verified: "Every plant, which my heavenly Father has not planted, shall be rooted up."* Still, as this new sect intrudes itself on the public under the seducing cloak of religion, although it evidently saps the very foundations of Christianity, the author of these numbers thought, it would be rendering service to the uninformed and unsuspecting part of the community, to lay before them the unshaken principles, on which the edifice of the Christian religion is based, and the palpable inconsistencies, into which those must inevitably run, that dare attack so grand, so noble, and so majestic an edifice. To reclaim some from error, and to caution others against seduction, is the only object of the author, who will deem himself amply rewarded for his labour, if he be but happy enough to succeed in saving one immortal soul, which, Matth. xv. v. 13. |