Unitarians consider charity an essential part of religion. They delight to think well of all men, who give the Scripture test of a holy and blameless life. Articles of belief may exhibit themselves in an infinite variety of forms. They may deceive and mislead. Treachery may be concealed under fair pretences, falsehood may be entwined with the most solemn protestations, and deeds of the blackest die may lurk in the folds of a capacious faith. Holiness is single, always the same, and always to be seen. Unitarians

make this the criterion of a truly religious character. They are told, that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord," but they are not told, that they must suffer this penalty, unless they believe in a particular dogma, which they cannot understand, but which the fond partiality of some devotee may desire to impose on them.

While they pray to have their minds enlightened, and humbly submit to the guiding counsels of the Almighty, they feel secure in his kind protection, and do not fear, that he will make their humility and confidence the instruments of their ruin. They have charity for all christians, who show themselves sincere, and whose religion shines out in the brightness of a good life. Piety and virtue are with them the convincing test of a saving faith, and those articles of belief, which produce these in the highest degree, and to the greatest extent, will have the largest portion of their charity. Whoever thinks this an evidence of the defective faith, and the immorality of Unitarians, must be left to enjoy his opinion.

PART III.

TRINITY AND ATONEMENT.

LETTER I.

Various Opinions concerning the Trinity.

SIR,

As the doctrines of Trinity and Atonement are considered of so much importance by their advocates, and as Unitarians and Calvinists are supposed to differ more widely on these doctrines, than on most others, I shall no doubt be pardoned, if I beg your attention to a somewhat extended view of them. Not that I shall touch on the arguments by which they are believed to be supported, or advance any direct proofs of their falsehood. My inquiries will be turned to the meaning and nature of these doctrines, to their value as simple articles of faith, to their authority as supposed plain truths of Scripture, and especially to their influence as instruments of practical piety and goodness.

We are perpetually told, that the trinity and atonement are the essence of all true christianity, that without a firm faith in them no one has the least claims even to the name of christian, nor any well grounded hope of the mercy of God, and the rewards of salvation. To deny the trinity and atonement is represented to be the same thing as to deny the Saviour himself, to reject the Gospel, to renounce the authority of divine revelation, to cast off the laws of God, to be a heretic, infidel, deist, atheist, anything, in fact, but a good man, and a sincere inquirer after truth. If a denial of these doctrines be fraught with consequences so alarming, it must be an object of the very first magnitude to ascertain what the doctrines themselves are. It is impossible, that any articles of faith should have such power over the character and destiny of men, unless they are truths of the most obvious and positive kind, approving themselves instantly to the understanding, and written with beams of heavenly light on every page of the Gospel.

At all events, it would seem absolutely necessary, that they, who profess to have the true and saving faith, should agree in reporting and explaining what they believe. If any faith in a trinity be essential to salvation, must not this faith be the same in all? In the nature of things there can be only one true faith, and if there be not an agreement, how is it known that any person has this true faith? Or, in other words, how is it known, that any one has the faith by which he may hope to be saved? If a hundred persons have each a separate opinion, which they re

spectively call the trinity, it is evident, that only one opinion out of the hundred can be true, and even this may be false. Are all these persons orthodox, and blessed with a saving faith, because they embrace a set of notions, in many respects contradictory, to which they give the name of trinity? If not, who out of the hundred is truly orthodox; who has the fundamental doctrine; who is in the way of salvation?

A proper method of testing the accuracy of the assumption, which has been made with so much confidence, respecting the value of the doctrines named trinity and atonement, as articles of faith, is to ascertain the fact, whether the persons themselves, who have been most zealous in believing and defending them, have harmonized in their belief. If it shall appear, that the same thing, which one calls a trinity, or atonement, is the trinity, or atonement of all the rest, I allow, that it will make an argument strongly in favour of the assumption. But if, on the contrary, it shall turn out, that there are no uniform and fixed principles by which the professed believers of these doctrines are guided, that they break into parties and form systems radically different from each ether, and that no two persons will agree in defining their own conceptions, it will follow, that no such importance as has been pretended can be attached to a faith in certain dogmas, to which any one may at pleasure give the names of trinity and atonement. Whether the dogmas themselves are true or false, the consequence will be the same, and will prove,

that the importance with which some persons would clothe a mere faith in them is imaginary.

Let us proceed to this inquiry, and, in the present letter, employ ourselves with the question, What is the trinity? What are the conceptions, or ideas either separately or combined, which form the object of faith, to which this appellation has been given? For the sake of form, this question may be asked, but no one, who has attended to the subject, will flatter himself that it can be answered. To bring together a small number of the leading opinions of those professing themselves Trinitarians, is all that will be attempted. It would be no difficult matter, perhaps, to determine in some general sense how the trinity is set forth in particular creeds, and the notions of individuals; but to find out any thing like a system in which all Trinitarians would unite, or to enumerate the parties into which the advocates of this doctrine have been divided, from its origin to the present day, and the opposing schemes invented to bring it within the compass of the human faculties, would be as impossible in itself, as fruitless in the attempt.

Trinitarians themselves have not yet approached so near to a similarity of views, as to agree in a definition, notwithstanding many of them profess to regard faith in this undefinable doctrine as absolutely essential to salvation. One of the heaviest censures affected to be passed by the orthodox on Unitarians, is, that they do not agree in explaining their own opinions. Before this point is insisted on any further,