ARTICLE I.

Of Faith in the Holy Trinity.

THERE is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in the unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

De Fide in Sacrosanctam Trinitatem.

UNUS est vivus et verus Deus, æternus, incorporeus, impartibilis, impassibilis; immensæ potentiæ, sapientiæ, ac bonitatis; Creator et Conservator omnium, tum visibilium, tum invisibilium. Et in unitate hujus divinæ naturæ, tres sunt Personæ, ejusdem essentiæ, potentiæ, ac æternitatis; Pater, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus.

THIS

SECTION I.

HISTORY.

HIS Article is evidently concerned with two somewhat distinct subjects.

FIRST. The Nature and Essential Attributes of God in

the general.

SECONDLY. The Doctrine of the Trinity in Unity.

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The FIRST part is common to natural and revealed religion, and requires less either of illustration from history or demonstration from Scripture; it having been the universal Creed, both of Jews and Christians, that God is one, living and true, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible.'

There have, however, been two classes of speculators against whom we may suppose these words to be directed.

1 The obscure sect of the Anthropomorphites is reckoned as a heresy of the fourth century, and is said to have reappeared

in the tenth, in the district of Vicenza in Italy1. Their opinion, as expressed by their name, was that God was in form as a man, material, and with body and members like our own.

2 The more important and dangerous error of the Pantheists may not be directly alluded to in the Article, but is plainly opposed by it.

Pantheism has been the prevailing Esoteric doctrine of all Paganism, and, with various modifications, the source of a great part of ancient philosophy2. The Orphic Hymns have evident traces of it. Thales and the Eleatic School expressed it distinctly, and in the definite language of philosophy3. There can be little doubt that it was the great doctrine revealed in the mysteries. The Egyptian Theology was plainly based upon it. It was at the root of the Polytheism of the Greeks and Romans, and their gross idolatry was probably but an outward expression of its more mystic refinements5. The Brahmins and Buddhists, whose religious systems still prevail amongst nearly half the human race, though also, exoterically, gross Polytheists, are yet, in their philosophy, undisguised Pantheists. The Jewish Cabbala is thought to have drunk deep of the same fountain".

1 See Suicer, s. v. ȧvôршжоμорpiral, and Mosheim, Ecclesiast. Hist. Cent. x. Pt. II. ch. v. § 4.

2 Cudworth, Int. Syst. ch. IV. passim, especially §§ 29, 32, 33, 34.

3 Cudworth, B. 1. ch. IV. §§ 30, 31, Tennemann's Manual of Philosophy, pp. 59, 70. (Oxf. 1832.)

4 Εγὼ εἰμι πᾶν τὸ γεγονὸς, καὶ ὂν, καὶ ἐσόμενον, καὶ τὸν ἔμον πέπλον ovdeís πw OvηTòs ȧTekáλv¥ev: 'I am all that hath been, is, and shall be, and my veil hath no mortal ever uncovered.'-Inscription on the Temple of Sais, ap. Plutarch, de Iside. Again, тóν πрŵтоν Đeòv tậ távti tòv aửTòv voμítovo. Plutarch, from Hecatæus, de Isid. et Osiri. See Cudworth, ch. IV. Vol. I. pp. 170, 175. All that Cudworth adduces, and it is well worth reading, shews that the Egyptians were genuine Pantheists.

5 See Faber, Pagan Idolatry, B. 1. ch. iii.

6 See Sir W. Jones's Works, Vol. 1. p. 252; Maurice's History of Hindostan and Indian Antiquities, passim. Faber, as above; Mill's Pantheistic Theory.

7 Burton's Bampton Lectures, note 16.

When the Christian faith came in contact with Eastern philosophy, it is probable that Pantheistic notions found their way into its corruptions. Gnostics and Manichees, and possibly some of the later heretics, such as the Paulicians, had some admixture of Pantheism in their Creeds. Simon Magus himself may possibly have used its language, when he gave himself out as the great power of God.'

Its leading idea is, that God is every thing, and every thing is God1. All personal character of the Deity is lost. The supreme being of the Hindoos is therefore neither male nor female, but neuter2. All the numberless forms of matter are but different appearances of God; and though he is invisible, yet every thing you see is God3. Accordingly the Deity himself becomes identified with the worshipper. He, who knows that Deity, is the Deity itself. Hence, as all living beings are manifestations of, and emanations from, the Deity; the devout Brahmin or Buddhist, while he believes that by piety man may become more and more truly God, looks forward, as his final consummation and bliss, to Nirwana, or absorption in the Deity.

This system of religion or philosophy, which has prevailed so extensively in heathendom, and found favour with the early philosophic heretics, and probably with the brethren of the free spirit in the twelfth century, was taught in the seventeenth century by Benedict de Spinosa, a Portuguese Jew, and has been called from him Spinozism. Some of the philosophic

1 Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quocumque moveris, Lucan. Ix. 580. See also Virg. Eclog. 11. 60, Æn. vi. 724, Lucret. II. 61.

2 Sir W. Jones's Works, Vol. I. p. 249.

3 Sir W. Jones's Works, Vol. 1. p. 252; Ward's Religion of the Hin

doos, Vol. IV. p. 274.

4 Mill's Pantheistic Theory, p. 159.

5 Mosheim, Cent. XII. Pt. II. ch. v. § 10.

• Mosheim, Cent. xvII. § 1, 24, Tennemann, p. 324. Giorduno Bruno, in the sixteenth century, a Dominican, was burnt at Rome as a heretic, A.D. 1600, for holding opinions very similar to Pantheism. See Tennemann, p. 283.

divines of Germany have revived it of late, and have taught it as the solution of all the Christian mysteries; so that with them the Christ or God-man is not the individual personal Jesus: but mankind is God made man, the miracle-worker, the sinless one; who dies and rises, and ascends into heaven, and through faith in whom man is justified.

The history of the SECOND part of this Article, that is, of the doctrine of the Trinity, may be considered as almost equivalent to the history of Christianity.

I. What degree of knowledge of it there may have been previously to the coming of Christ, is a question of great interest, but of great difficulty. This question as regards Scripture must be deferred to the next section; here it is considered by the light of history alone.

It has been thought, with considerable reason, that there are distinct intimations of it (1) in the Jewish writings, (2) in the mythology of most ancient nations, (3) in the works of Plato and other philosophers.

1 The Jewish Targums, and Philo-Judæus both speak frequently of the Word of the Lord. The latter may possibly

This can hardly be

have been indebted to philosophic sources. conjectured with probability of the former; and although they are none of them much earlier than the Christian Era, there is no doubt they speak the language and contain the tradition of former ages. Passages, such as that in the Targum, in Psalm cx., where 'the Lord said unto my Lord' is rendered the Lord said unto His Word,' and many like it, seem, at first sight at least, very clearly to indicate a notion of Personal plurality in the Divine Unity'. Yet, of late, a different opinion has prevailed concerning the signification of the term

1 See Allix's Testimony of the Ancient Jewish Church against the Unitarians, Bryant's Opinions of Philo-Judæus, Bull, Fid. Nic. Def. 1. 1. 16-19.

Memra or Word („7 No2) used in the Targums; it being contended that the phrase means not a distinct and separate Person, but is, in fact, only another form of the pronoun 'Himself1.' Both views have found able advocates and may be supported by considerable arguments, and therefore the question concerning the Jewish opinions on the Trinity must be considered as one, which is not fully decided.

2 In the mythology of almost all nations, it is plain that the number three has been a sacred number. The triads of classical mythology (e. g. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades; or again, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva in the Capitol) are well known2. More remarkable by far is the Trimourti of Hindostan, in which Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Siva, the Destroyer and Regenerator, are the three expressions or manifestations of the great Universal Deity, and are represented as one, and yet distinct. It is true, the mythological signification of this triad is vastly different from the meaning of the Christian Trinity; but when we consider especially, that, as the first person is the Creator, and the third the Regenerator, so the second is the person, who is incarnate for the preservation of mankind, and that in one of his incarnations a most remarkable prophecy of Christ in Scripture is evidently applied to him'; it seems hard to doubt that some ancient patriarchal tradition

1 Burton's Bampton Lectures, Lect. vII. p. 221, and note 93. 2 Cudworth, B. 1. ch. IV. § 27, p. 319, $32, p. 470. The Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva of the Capitol were, of course, the same as the three great gods, Tinia, Cupra, and Menrva, who had temples in every Etruscan city.

3 See the engraving which faces the title-page of the first volume of Maurice's Indian Antiquities, also Ward's Religion of the Hindoos, Vol. II. p. 177, Sir W. Jones's Works, Vol. 1. pp. 249, 250.

4 Vishnu is represented with a serpent curled round him, which at one time bites his heel, and he appears to be suffering; at another time its head is crushed beneath his foot. See Maurice's Hist. of Hindostan, Vol. II. frontispiece, &c.