respondence between the preceding and subsequent parts of one and the same dispensation, and the whole is as a mutilated and unfinished work, full of startling inconsistencies and monstrous disproportions. This is much in itself; but this, all this, sinks into nothing by comparison. The climax of evil is, that unless the New Testament be a tissue of perversions and interpolations, Jesus Christ represents himself to have been, in nature, and origin, and office, what he was not, and could not be. Less true to God than Moses or Elijah, equivocal at least in action and utterance, he exceeds his commission and betrays his trust; he gives occasion to error, and lays a snare for the religion of mankind. How vain is it to say that his words, which sound ambiguous in our ears, were only metaphors and figures intelligible and familiar to his immediate hearers, when his immediate hearers, nevertheless, mistook them for literal affirmations! Instead of submitting to be worshipped, should he not, like Paul and Barnabas, have forbidden the worshippers, by crying out and saying, "Sirs, why do ye these things? we also are men of like passions with you. We can discern sufficient reason why he should sometimes have kept back the assertion of his divinity, although he was divine: we can conceive no legitimate reason why he should have pretended to be divine, if he was merely human. Nay, of all inconceivable things, if there can be degrees in such a matter, it would appear the most inconceivable, that the completion of predictions, and the development of a religious system, should be wholly centred in one, who, being a mere man, "thought it not robbery to be equal with God;" that the Almighty, in his infinite prescience, should have conferred the power of working miracles, of raising the dead, and controuling the elements, upon one who should usurp a portion of his sovereignty, and strip him of his glory as the Lord of the Universe; or intrusted the revelation of his will, and the manifestation of his splendours, to one who should involve the globe in a bewildering darkness, and plunge it again into an almost universal idolatry.

Yet is not this the result, upon the supposition which we are assuming? And is not the moral character of Jesus Christ impeached in the sight of earth and heaven? He stands convicted of an ambition, illimitably more gigantic than all the blended aspirations of conquerors and legislators, of a pride, before which all other pride shrinks into the tamest humility,—of a fanaticism, which divests all his precepts of every atom of authority, or of an imposture which confounds all virtue and all religion in one common ruin.

This form, then, of Unitarianism is the most untenable of all theories. It cannot, we emphatically repeat, it cannot be the final

religion of mankind. It can hardly, we think, be the final creed of any single individual. It cannot be a resting-place; too often, we apprehend, it will scarcely be a halting-place. It adds a thousand difficulties to natural religion, without bringing in return any accession of strength. Yet it is to this form that Unitarianism is driven, after its previous stages have been passed, and its other phases have been exhibited and condemned:-such shapes, for instance, as the belief, that Christ is a subordinate and secondary God, or a mysterious, unintelligible, pre-existent being, neither God, nor angel, nor man, or a compound of two natures, neither of which is strictly divine :-shapes, which, while they render the doctrine of the atonement almost null and void, are hedged and beset by other manifold and insuperable objections. The tendency of Unitarianism in general is towards the Humanitarian scheme; but the Humanitariau scheme, as stated by Mr. Norton, then becomes itself but a half-way, or middle passage, from which man is handed over to yet thornier regions of entanglement, pushed as it were from the extreme border of positive and revealed religion into the trackless wastes of unassisted reason or conjecture. Mr. Norton would recognise nothing beyond humanity in the nature of Jesus Christ; but yet he admits that he was a messenger from God, and still seems inclined to maintain the inspiration of Holy Writ. But latitudinarianism, when it has travelled so far, has strong temptations to advance farther. Therefore the German expositor steps forward: he assures us that plenary inspiration is out of the question; that Christ is a human teacher and therefore fallible: that the Bible, after being well weighed and sifted, is to be taken with certain qualifications and allowances; for that its truths are not immutable and eternal, but meant to be accommodated to the progressive changes of society; and, at last, we suppose, to drop off one after another, until the peculiar hues of Christianity melt and vanish into the pure colourless light of matured and perfected science, and its essential forms and tenets evaporate into the calm ether of some universal and philosophical theology. When some can begin to talk of Jesus Christ as only a purer Confucius, a wiser Zoroaster, a better Socrates, others will venture to doubt whether he was as wise, as pure, or as good: and thus Unitarianism and unbelief will be merged and fused together, and nothing will survive but an undistinguishable chaos of perplexity.

If Mr. Norton should be still disposed to object, that we have mis-stated the facts of the case, we can only appeal from him, and men like him, who have placed themselves by their preconceived theories beyond the pale of conviction, to any impartial, dispassionate, unbiassed peruser of the sacred writings. To them, indeed,

what is it, that the Trinitarian argument is a collective and cumulative proof, not resting upon a single passage, but upon the number, the multiplicity, the curious harmony and concordance of many passages; progressively rising, as we believe, in strength and clearness, but all concurring, as the Unitarian must think, in being so strangely metaphorical, and so extraordinarily loose, as almost of necessity to blind the understanding and entrap the credulity of millions? What is it to them that the Jews took up stones to cast at the Messiah, for ascribing to himself the prerogative of divinity? What is it to them that the Athenians looked upon St. Paul as a setter forth of strange Gods, because he preached Jesus and the resurrection? What is it to them that the early Christians were derided and persecuted, because they worshipped as God a malefactor who was crucified? What is it to them that the disciples adored Christ, and that he accepted their adoration? There runs, we are told, for there must run, a wide and general error through the whole account. The transactions must be falsified, as the several parties who were addressed must have misconceived the words of the Son of Man. Mr. Norton, it is true, is at issue with both the disciples and the Pharisees; and the words recorded in the Scripture have been differently understood in the streets of Jerusalem at the moment and on the spot, and in the state of Massachussets after the lapse of eighteen centuries. But what then? The inhabitants of Judea were unacquainted with the true principles of interpretation; the light of modern criticism had not shone upon their heads; they had not the key of a Socinian hypothesis to the signification of terms in their native tongue. God forbid that we should speak with irreverence upon subjects so sacred! But we may add, in self-defence, that if any ridiculous associations are thus connected with religion, they are attributable, not to our representation of the matter, but to the astonishing incongruities of Unitarian expositors.

But there is still another point of view in which the controversy must be placed, if we would thoroughly understand the dilemma in which Mr. Norton and his coadjutors are involved. Trinitarianism exists-nay, it is almost universally prevalent, wherever Christianity is known. The Unitarians are and have been, in comparison, an exceedingly small and uninfluential minority. The testimony of Mr. Norton himself is decisive as to the fact.

"It is from the public professions of nations calling themselves Christians, from the established creeds and liturgies of different churches or sects, and from the writings of those who have been reputed orthodox in their day, that most men derive their notions of Christianity. But the treaties of European nations still begin with a solemn appeal to the "Most Holy Trinity;" the doctrine is still the professed faith of every Established

Church, and, as far as I know, of every sect which makes a creed its bond of communion; and if any one should recur to books, he would find it presented as an all-important distinction of Christianity by far the larger portion of Divines. It is, in consequence, viewed by most men, more or less distinctly, as a part of Christianity. In connexion with other doctrines, as false and more pernicious, it has been moulded into systems of religious belief, which have been publicly and solemnly substituted in the place of true religion."-Pref. p. v. vi.

Now, in what way are we to account for this phenomenon? The diffusion of Christianity itself has been reputed a miracle, quite incapable of achievement by the incommensurate power of the human agents, without the special favour of the Almighty inspiring the propagators, and resting upon the faith. But are we to conceive that the spiritual favour of God has rested upon a perversion of the Gospel, and sanctified a delusion, by which, according to the Unitarian, God himself is debased and dethroned? The supposition is almost blasphemy. We must look, then, simply and entirely to the human means. But we are told that the Trinitarian schemes were all unknown to the primitive believers; "these systems," says Mr. Norton, in the words which immediately succeed our last extract, "have counteracted the whole evidence of divine revelation;" while they outrage the Deity, they insult the understanding of man; and they are as repugnant to reason, as they are at variance with the written word. Still, however, the change has actually been wrought. The undeniable event starts up in our sight from every quarter of the Christian world. The question, therefore, returns upon us-this change, which, as all parties must agree, was most unlikely to be gratuitously received, or to occur in the common progress of thought;-this change, which completely alters the whole character of the Christian religion, which transmutes it from a mere code of moral institutes, either into a plan of redemption and salvation for mankind, wonderous, stupendous, glorious, beyond expression or conception, or into a new and degrading form of idolatry and polytheism :-how has it been wrought? Why, if the Unitarian assumptions are correct, this creed-which is grounded and rooted in an utter obvious impossibility, which is so monstrous as to involve a contradiction in terms, which is either an incomprehensible jargon, or a naked phrensy, which disgraces piety and puts philosophy to the blush,--has been introduced in spite of Scripture, in spite of tradition, in spite of usage; has been borrowed from the Pagan theories, with which the Gospel expressly rejects all communion or alliance; has been imposed upon men whose feelings, habits, and professions must all have been adverse to the innovation; engrafted upon a stock which it could only tend to destroy, and in

corporated with a faith professedly jealous, exclusive and unaccommodating, amidst the triumphant progress of that faith, and withs carcely a murmurof remons trance or dissent. We know,-for Popery and many other systems present the melancholy example, -that some abuses and corruptions may creep into a religion which comes from God, and by degrees intermix, although not amalgamate, themselves with the truth; but we unequivocally deny, that they afford anything like a parallel or precedent for the universal usurpation of Trinitarianism, if the other statements of our opponents be correct. We confidently affirm that the result, under such circumstances, would be an effect without a cause, or rather, an effect directly in opposition to all the operating causes, whether human or divine.

According to Mr. Norton, that form of Christianity which has been deemed orthodox for ages, has sprung, like noxious reptiles from the mud of the Nile, from a mere congeries of mysticisms and sophisms. After pretending to describe the confusion of ideas produced by the confusion of the meanings of the word "Logos," he subjoins, "It was from the shapeless, discordant, unintelligible speculations which have been described, ex tantá colluvie rerum, that the doctrine of the Trinity drew its origin." EX TANTA COLLUVIE RERUM! Let our readers think again of the result, as well as the supposed source; of the streams which have flowed from fountains represented as so hideous and impure. For our own parts, if the tenets which the noblest beings, who have ever worn the garb of our erring mortality, cherished in life and death; if "the virtue which has gone out" of the Trinitarian system; if the comfort, which the orthodox Christian experiences in his belief, that the Deity has for his sake humbled himself to humanity, has borne the burden of his sins, and is always at hand to succour and sustain him; that God so loved him, that he has not withheld from him his only begotten Son;-if these, the first articles of Faith, are, after all, the dreams of the enthusiast, the delusions of the fanatic, and must be exchanged for a cold jejune emasculated exhibition of the Gospel, a meagre and fleshless skeleton of Christianity; if they are only Platonic superstitions, and the Unitarians have reason on their side, still we might almost be ready to exclaim, in a new application of the words, " Mallem, mehercle, errare cum Platone, quam cum istis rectè sentire!" But is it possible to attach a moment's credit to any thing so preposterous? Mr. Norton, we perceive, half hopes to enlist even Bishop Horsley under his banners. But that learned prelate, as might be expected, directly contradicts his theory. His words are, as quoted by Mr. Norton,

"I am very sensible that the Platonizers of the second century were