developed form in the Scriptures; but it is supposed to be clearly revealed in its elements in the New Testament, and also to be indicated in many of the statements and revelations of the Old Testament==. It is generally conceded, however, that the Christians of the second, and even of the third century, were far from having a clearly understood and recognized doctrine on this high subject. They were content for the most part to use Scriptural expressions in speaking of the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, without defining articulately their relation to one another," etc.

In view of such significant facts, is it right, is it Christian, is it decent for trinitarians to decry as heretics all that do not believe what is nowhere positively taught, except in silly human creeds, and what can be, at best, only believed at the expense of common-sense and free-inquiry? Who has made these conceited Shibboleth-worshippers masters in Israel? Or, in the pertinent language of St. Paul, "who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth: yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand!" I add, that if God designed uniformity of faith among mankind, he could doubtless have made all minds alike, and not of diverse capacities and inclinations as we now find them. A fact, agreeably corroborated by the same intelligent and liberal teacher of evangelical truth, in the words contained in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, vii. 7: "Every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that." Finally, this "servant of Jesus Christ," whose sentiments we find thus embraced in the preceding quotations, lays down as the highest axiom of faith, this grand proposition: "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind!"

CHAPTER II.

The Trinity, founded upon Platonic Ideas.

In order more readily to understand the ancient and widely extended doctrine of Emanation or Procession, upon which Trinitarianism is mainly founded, it is necessary to introduce the reader to an acquaintance with the nature or meaning of Platonic Ideas, and then to define and illustrate them by a reference to the manner in which the NewPlatonists and the later Gnostics have practically applied them in their respective theological and cosmical systems. A concise but accurate and complete exhibition of these important subjects, is given in the excellent and trustworthy Encyclopædia, already noticed in these pages, and I shall, therefore, instead of uselessly casting about for something better, or of going directly to the original sources of information upon this interesting branch of inquiry, venture to put myself under new obligations to its learned Editors, in enriching this chapter with its timely and appropriate contents on the subject.

Down to the seventeenth century, the word Idea, retained the signification which was given to it by Plato, and accordingly denoted the doctrine of the eternal forms, existing in the Divine mind, according to which the world and all sensible things were framed. Plato made a grand distinction between the intelligible, or what occupied the intellect, and the sensible; the one represented the eter nal, the immutable, and the certain; the other, the mu

table and fleeting part of the universe. The forms preceded the matter; the actual circles occurring in nature, were produced from a pre-existing ideal circle holding a place in the Divine intelligence; the actual men were generated from an ideal man. The word was used in this sense in literature as well as in philosophy, down to the seventeenth century, as appears, for example, in Spenser, Shakespeare, Hooker, and Milton. Thus in Paradise Lost, we find the expressive couplet:

"God saw his works were good,
Answering his fair idea," etc.*

From the preceding disquisition and elucidation, the reader will be prepared intelligently to judge and to appreciate the famous dogma of the Logos. This term is derived from the Greek lego, I speak, and, in its widest sense, signifies the natural process, necessary to be observed, with the view to the formation of speech; in short, all the attributes and operations of the soul, implied by the spoken word. Theologically, the word logos, as occurring at the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, was early taken to refer to the "second person of the Trinity, that

The Trinity of the Neo-Platonists is more remarkable for its extravagant metaphysics than for its coherent and lucid ratiocination, and may be thus summed up: There is a unity of existence-pure esse, without accident, thought, or will: the primordial source of all things. From it emanates nous-the absolute intelligence; and from it as the central factor of a Triad of forces or substances, predicated by these mystic and dreamy creed-makers, proceeds pysche tou pantos—the soul of the world, etc.

There is at least some sense in the conception of this trinitarian chimera, in as much as it teaches diversity of ranks and independent entity, instead of a sameness and equality of substance and power, as is the case in the orthodox dogma of the Christian Trinity.

is, Christ." Yet what was the precise meaning of the Apostle, who alone makes use of the term in a manner which allows of a like interpretation, and only in the introductory part of his Gospel: whether he adopted the symbolizing usage in which it was employed by the various schools of his day; which of their widely differing significations he had in view, or whether he intended to convey a meaning quite peculiar to himself, these are some of the innumerable questions to which the word has given rise in divinity, and which, though most fiercely discussed ever since the first days of Christianity, are far from having found a satisfactory solution up to this moment. The fact, however, is, that the notion of a certain manifestation or revelation out of the centre of the Godhead, as it were, and considered as a more or less personified part of the Deity, stands between the realms of the infinite and the finite, of spirit and matter, has from times immemorial been the common property of the whole East, and is found expressed in the religions of the primitive Egyptians, as Iwell as in those of the Hindus and the Parsees. This notion of an embodiment of divinity, as "Word" or "Wisdom," found its way, chiefly from the time of the Babylonian exile, into the heart of Judaism, which in vain endeavored to reconcile it with the fundamental idea of the Divine Unity. The apocryphal writers chiefly pointed to the "Wisdom," of which Solomon, Proverbs, viii. 22, says that it has dwelt with God from the beginning, and Job, xxviii. 20, that it has assisted in the creation-as the emanation of God, which emanation was supposed to be bodily to a certain, however, minute degree. Thus, Ecclesiasticus or Jesus the Son of Sirach, xxiv. 1, 23, understands the

"Spirit of God," Genesis, i. 2, to be a kind of veil or mist, and speaks, i. 1, 9, of the "wisdom that is of the Lord and is with the Lord," as being everlasting, and that "it was created before all things, and known unto Him," etc.*

In the earlier Platonic schools, again, the Logos or Wisdom of God, was the common term for " Plan of the Cosmos or Divine Reason," inherent in the Deity. The later schools, however, more prone to symbol and allegory in philosophical matters, called Logos a "Hypostasis of Divinity," a substance, a divine corporeal essence, as it were, which became outwardly visible-a separate Being, in fact, which, created out of the Creator, became "the Son of the Creator."

* The pertinent remarks of Gillies in reference of the second and third persons in the Trinity, in his admirable "History of Ancient Greece, its Colonies, and Conquests," etc., is at once interesting and instructive, and, therefore, deserves a notice in this place: "Of all the absurdities embraced by philosophers" he writes, "This doubtless would be the greatest, to believe eternal, unchangeable patterns of the various genera and species of things, existing apart, and independent of the mind by which these abstract notions are conceived. It is not extraordinary, therefore, that many writers of the Alexandrian school, whose extravagant fancies could fix and embody metaphysical abstractions and realize intellectual ideas, should animate and personify the logon ton theon, the divine intellect, in which, according to Plato, these ideas resided, and from which they were communicated to other intelligences. The same visionary fanatics who discovered, in the logos of Plato, the second person of the Trinity, recognized the Holy Spirit in the Soul of the World: but as this irrational principle of motion ill corresponded to the third person of the Godhead, they invented a hypercosmian soul, concerning which Plato is altogether silent." Behold the orthodox Trinity in its embryo!

I will only add, that Plato's soul of the world, was an irrational soulan irregular principle of motion, which from eternity had ever animated, rude, indigested matter, and is the principle of all the physical and moral evil in the universe.