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A GENERAL VIEW

OF THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE

UNITY OF GOD;

AND AGAINST THE

DIVINITY AND PRE-EXISTENCE

OF

CHRIST;

FROM REASON, FROM THE SCRIPTURES, AND FROM HISTORY.

A

GENERAL VIEW.

Ì. ARGUMENTS FROM REASON AGAINST THE

TRINITARIAN HYPOTHESIS.

THAT the doctrine of the trinity could ever have been suggested by any thing in the course of nature (though it has been imagined by fome perfons of a peculiarly fanciful turn, and previoufly perfuaded of the truth of it) is not maintained by any perfons to whom my writings can be at all ufeful. I fhall therefore only addrefs myfelf to those who believe the doctrine on the fuppofition of its being contained in the fcriptares, at the fame time maintaining, that, though it is above, it is not properly contrary to reafon; and I hope to make it fufficiently evident, either that they do not hold the doctrine, or that the opinion of three divine perfons conftituting one God is strictly speaking an absurdity, or contradiction; and that it is therefore incapable of any proof, even by miracles. With this view, I fhall recite in order all the diftinct modifications of this doctrine, and fhew that, upon any of them, there is either no proper unity, in the divine nature, or no proper trinity.

If, with Dr. Waterland, and others who are reckoned the ftricteft Athanafians, (though their opinions were not known in the time of Athanafius himfelf,) it be fuppofed that there are three perfons properly equal, and that no one of them has any

fort

fort of fuperiority over the reft, they are, to all intents and purposes, three diftin&t Gods. For if each of them, feparately confidered, be poffeffed of all divine perfections, fo that nothing is wanting to complete divinity, each of them must be as properly a God as any being poffeffed of all the properties of man must be a man, and therefore three persons poffeffed of all the attributes of divinity must be as properly three Gods as three persons poffeffed of all human artributes must be three men. These three perfons, therefore, must be incapable of any strict or numerical unity. It must be univerfally true, that three things to which the fame definition applies can never make only one thing to which the fame definition applies. And when by the words thing, being, or perfon we mean nothing more than, logically speaking, the fubject, or fubftratum of properties or attributes, it is a matter of indifference which of them we make use of.

Each of these three perfons may have other properties, but they must be numerically three in that respect in which the fame definition applies to them. If, therefore, the three perfons agree in this circumftance, that they are each of them perfect God, though they may differ in other respects, and have peculiar relations to each other, and to us, they muft ftill be three Gods; and to say that they are only one God is as much a contradiction, as to fay that three men, though they differ from one ano

ther

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