thus by their example confirmed and authorized this method of interpretation. Did the Jews of ancient times, then, discover in their sacred records, and recognize, a certain plurality in the Godhead, and the true divinity of the Messiah? Christian writers who have devoted themselves to the pursuit of Jewish literature, and obtained the most enlarged acquaintance with it, assure us, that this is the fact; and they gather from the most ancient Jewish writings, particularly from the Chaldee Translations of the books of the (ld Testament, and from the Talmud itself, many very striking proofs of the correctness of their assertion. Still, we are willing to abide by testimony which is better known. From the books of the New Testament, we may plainly draw the conclusion, that a belief in the plurality of the Godhead, and the divinity of the Savior, was by no means uncommon among the Jews, who were the contemporaries of Jesus. The disciples of Christ exhibit no surprise at the most striking assertions of their Master, on this subject; not even at those assertions, when all the Jews, who rejected his Messiahship, cried out, "Blasphemy," because he made himself equal with God, and when the same Jews concerted measures to punish him with death. The disciples hear him ascribing divine attributes, works, and hon. ors to himself; they hear him speak of his Father, as of a person different from himself, and of the Holy Spirit as another person, whom he would send from the Father; they hear his command to baptise into the

name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and yet these very disciples, accustomed to find something striking in things of far inferior consequence, and to ask many questions respecting such things; these true and strenuous Unitarians, find nothing particularly striking in all this. From the moment when they are convinced that Jesus is the true Messiah, it becomes a settled truth that he is the Son of God: and from the same moment, they confide to his power what God Almighty alone can perform; they think of his attri butes as of the attributes of God the Father; they find no honor too great or excessive for him; and never doubt in the perform ance of any work unequivocally divine, if he but promises to perform it. They stand in no need of the proof which Jesus adduces against a part of the Pharisees, from the Old Testament, to shew that the Messiah must be more than merely an eminent man; that he must not only be David's son, but a personage who is an independent king, lord, and ruler.

Caiaphas joins together Messiah or King of Israel, and Son of God. Certainly not because Son of God, in the Jewish idiom, meant merely a king; for then he could not have explained, as he did, the assertion of Jesus, "I am he," as being blasphemy according to the laws. It was because he, and the Jews of his time, from well known passages of the Old Testament knew and believed, that the promised Messiah, agreeably to his nature and dignity, must le the Son of God. When Christ asserted, that the Messiah must

be more than a mere man, and put to shame and reduced to silence the Pharisees by a passage out of Psalm cx, these Pharisees do not manifest any evidence of regarding this doctrine as alto. gether new, unheard of, and strange.

As soon as a view of the glorified Savior had convinced Paul of his actual resurrection and exaltation; as soon as his doubts, respecting those things which formed the dividing line between his former and subsequent beJief, were removed; this apostle finds the doctrine of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-the doctrine that Christ is God over all, (which he from this time clearly and expressly acknowledges,) not a new doctrine in opposition to his former religious creed; he receives it as a doctrine already known, and as a proposition which stands in a necessary and inseparable connexion with the proposition, that Jesus is the true Messiah. The Apostles baptised thousand of Jews, no doubt according to the injunction of Jesus, into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, without finding it necessary previously to instruct them in the doctrine that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were God, as a doctrine of which they were previously ignorant. In their In their letters to those who were Jews, and to whom it was exceedingly hard to renounce even their lor mer ceremonies, they wrote in such terms respecting Jesus and his exalted nature, that if they had been as strange and offensive to the Jews of that day, as they are to modern Jews, they must have been abundantly cor. rected, or explained, to avoid ill

will, vehement contradiction, or even persecution unto blood.

Now these facts can be explained only in two ways. First, that in all these expressions of Christ, and the Apostles, nothing is said respecting a plurality of persons in the Godhead, or the divinity of Jesus; and this is abundantly contradicted as we shall see in the sequel: or secondly, that the great body of Jews, at that time, were acquainted with the doctrine of the Trinity, and acknowledg ed it.

The scattered remains of this creed may be found probably in the Cabbalistic Sephiroth, and in the fiction of the Angel Metatron, to whom are ascribed attributes that belong to God alone. The modern ideas of the Jews respecting the person of the Messiah were undoubtedly in the time of Jesus not only new, but peculiar to only a part of the Pharisees. It was probably the fact, that the Ebionites and Cerinthians arose from this portion of the Pharisees, who embraced Christianity.

That the contemporaries and disciples of the Apostles understood them to speak of the true divinity of Christ, and hence received the doctrine of the Trinity as a doctrine asserted by their teachers, is capable of proof, from other sources, beside the fragments which remain of the writings of primitive Christians. Proof is drawn from the evidence, supported by historical testimonies, that John wrote his Gospel in opposition to those sects, who denied the infinite divinity of Christ. It is drawn from the fact, that the names of several men of little conse

quence are still preserved, as the names of those who doubted in regard to the divinity of Christ in the first age of Christianity. No one takes the trouble to record and perpetuate the names of insignificant men, who believe nothing different from the creed of all, or the great body of, their contemporaries. Had it been a common thing, in the first ages of the Christian religion not to acknowledge Jesus as God in the highest sense of the word; had the doctrine of the Trinity been first broached and introduced by the council of Nice, and forced upon the churches, as some Antitrinitarians pretend; then I desire to know how it came to pass, that we at the present day should know, that_in the second century, a certain Artemon, and more. particularly a certain leather dresser, by name Theodorus, denied the divinity of Jesus, and maintained that he was a mere man? and how the latter, on account of his opinions, was excommunicated from the church? How came Noetius, Sabellius, or Paul of Samosata, in the third century, ever to think of explain ing the doctrine of the Trinity and of the union of two natures in Christ, in a novel way, and in words which they thought were more intelligible? How came they to draw upon themselves so much and violent opposition, even to that degree, that the help of a heathen emperor was sought and obtained to expel Paul from his bishopric? If a doctrine be not at all believed, or not generally, or be not regarded as weighty and essential, the names of its opposers are not marked. Still less are the

opposers treated, as the Antitrinitarians were treated; and that, before the council of Nice. This makes it very clear, that the opinion of these men must have been different from the common, predominant opinion, and therefore singular, strange, and offensive to the rest of Christians.

The sum of the foregoing observations is briefly this: The holy Scriptures so speak, that we at the present time, so far removed from the times in which the Bible was written, are led by their assertions to suppose a certain plurality of persons in the Godhead; more especially so when one person is so described, as no person unless truly divine can be represented. We stand not alone in our interpretations of the Scriptures. The contemporaries of those who composed the sacred books, and those who lived soon after them, and who must have been acquainted with their customa ry idioms, understood the expressions in question as we understand them.

It was, then, the design of those who composed the Scriptures either to teach a plurality of persons in the Godhead-the true divinity of persons describ ed by them in such lofty terms; or not to teach it? In the first case, every one who regards the Scriptures as the authentic source of religious knowledge, must believe the doctrine of which we are speaking. In the last case, one cannot help regarding the authors of the sacred books, as men who had so little understanding, consideration, or sense of propriety, that they have directly opposed

the very object they had in view-they have written books on purpose to prevent idolatry, or to destroy it where it already existed, and yet in these very books have taught and occasioned this same idolatry. One must consequently cast away the Bible with contempt and indig. nation, and rank it below the most wretched of all the ordinary productions of authors.

One more remark I shall premise, before I pass on to exhibit the proofs for the doctrine of the Trinity, drawn from the Holy Scriptures. It is this: The proofs which will be drawn from the Old Testament do not equal in plainness and definiteness those with which the New Testament presents us. Most of the former are of such a kind, that one could not perfectly withstand an opposer of the doctrine of the Trinity by their aid, nor model the believers of this doctrine entirely by them.

From this, some are accustomed to draw the following conclusion: 'If no real and direct proofs in favor of this doctrine can be drawn from the Old Testament, then no one should undertake to draw proofs from it; and whoever does undertake it, renders himself ridiculous.' Thus Antitrinitarians. Others, who themselves assent to the testimony of the New Testament, find a stumbling block in the following objection. This doctrine is said to be a very weighty and essential part of the Christian religion. Now there can be no important difference between Revelation before the time of Christ, by him, and afterwards by his disciples: there must be a strict and perfect har

mony. And yet I find this doctrine, represented to me as important, either not at all revealed in the Old Testament, or so darkly that I could scarcely believe it, if the Old Testament alone were put into my hands.'

To these doubts and objections I answer: When I commit to writing general and oral information, with a view to future times, I know that the substance of this oral information will not be forgotten; or, when I speak or write for those persons, who I know will catch at the least hint in my speaking or writing, and explain it by careful study; then it is not an erroneous method of instruction, if I only throw out hints here and there instead of copious dissertations, but a method of teaching quite appropriate.

Now it is certain from history, that the ancient Jews found in the books of the Old Testament many doctrines, which some of our modern interpreters are not satisfied can be found there; for example, types of the Savior, prophecies respecting the Redeemer, &c. Now either the prophets of God explained the more obscure parts of their writings by word of mouth to their contemporaries, and this explanation was preserved among their nation by tradition, so far at least that long afterwards, with respect to these obscurities, clear representations were made of their meaning as it had been orally explained; or, (which is more certain from history,) the interpretations of the Jews, before the time of Christ, were altogether different from those, which many in our times defend. In fact, a Jew