ART. III.-A_Statement of Reasons for not believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians concerning the Nature of God and the Person of Christ. By Andrews Norton. Cambridge: Brown & Co. Boston: Hilliard & Co.

66

1833. 12mo. pp. 331.

It is not long since we took occasion to pass some strictures upon the modern Unitarianism of England, in connection with the religious lucubrations of Miss Martineau-a young ladysince, by courtesy " at least, as Lord Brougham has it, she is entitled to be called young-the exhalation of whose celebrity seems vanishing almost as fast as it arose. Possessed of considerable talents, and industry still more considerable, she is yet eventually destined, in common with the hecatomb of other victims, to suffer from the ruinous honours of absurd, because excessive, eulogy. She is no longer the lion, or lioness, of literary and fashionable coteries: we are no longer very gravely told that the mantle of Scott has fallen upon her shoulders, or that every single one of her multitudinous Tales has done more good to the country than the publication of " Paradise Lost:" her " fame" has been of "hasty growth and blight:" the readers have dropped off from her illustrative stories at the sixth, or the twelfth, or the eighteenth, according to their several degrees of patience; and she is gradually subsiding from a prodigy of genius into a clever, and pains-taking, and prolific writer, who has added to facility and skill in composition, a superficial and undigested knowledge of political economy-an acquisition only remarkable because it happens to be feminine. For ourselves, we are quite as anxious that her real merits should be acknowledged, and that the public should not rush from one extreme to the other, as we are glad that the nauseating trash has passed away, which at one time turned a lady of a certain age into an oracle upon the abuses of charity and the theory of population; and we trust that all due praise will still be awarded, when the extravagant outcry of admiration, which made a marvel and a monster of Miss Martineau, shall have been quietly blended with Mr. Bulwer's secretary, and Sir Samuel Whalley's notice of motion to abolish the hereditary peerage, and all other things that are exquisitely ridiculous.

But the subject before us requires a more serious tone. If, however, our levity should appear misplaced or indecorous, let it be remembered as something which may render raillery allowable, and which it is quite applicable to our purpose to state, that the modern Socinians attach great weight to what they consider the authority of celebrated names upon their side; and that we have known it urged as an argument in favour of Unitarianism,

that the wonderful Miss Martineau was supposed to be an Unitarian!

With the exception of this lady's productions, we have not lately seen any English work, professing the same religious tenets, which could deserve a careful and separate examination. Many, indeed, have met our eyes; but some of them have borne a nearer resemblance to the incoherent ravings of a lunatic, than the sober inquiries of a Christian; and the rest have been filled with malignant invectives-assertions at once virulent and unfounded, at once disingenuous and fool-hardy-and misapprehensions or misrepresentations of the plain text of Scripture, upon which criticism would be wasted.

The American work, which we now bring before our readers, is written, we think, with more candour and more ability; in a better spirit, and with at least something like an approximation to legitimate reasoning. There are also extrinsic considerations which induce us to bestow upon it a few remarks. The author, Mr. Andrews Norton, as we are informed by a correspondent, upon whom we place implicit reliance, is " a man of large property, of very amiable manners, and great benevolence; and his influence has given his book an extensive circulation in the state of Massachussets, particularly at Boston and Cambridge, where modern Socinianism is dominant." Very few copies of the work have, we understand, arrived in London, and even these have not been sold; so that the different fate of the publication on the different sides of the Atlantic is a circumstance which may well detain our attention for a minute at the close of our observations. In the first place, however, let us look at the volume itself-a volume not powerful enough, we may safely premise, to become dangerous to the stability of our faith; yet noticeable as showing the kind of Christianity which has sprung up, and is flourishing with but too wide a prevalence, among our brethren of the United States.

As to the origin of his publication, Mr. Norton informs us, in a preface of some pretensions :

But

"In the year 1819, I published an article in a periodical work, of which a number of copies were struck off separately under the title that I have given to this volume. I have since been requested to reprint it, and some years ago undertook to revise and make some additions to it for that purpose. Being, however, interrupted, I laid by my papers, and had given up the intention, at least for an indefinite time. having lately received an application from a highly esteemed friend, strongly urging its republication, I resumed the task; and the result has been that I have written a new work, preserving, indeed, the title of the former, and embodying a great part of its contents, but extending to three times its size."-p. iii.

Notwithstanding, however, this augmentation of its bulk, the present treatise, viewed as an exposition of Unitarianism, is singularly incomplete. In the way of direct reference, it is silent about the existence of angels, or the fall of man, or the miraculous incarnation of our Lord, or the great doctrine of atonement by his blood; and it is only from the briefest and most casual allusions, we are enabled to collect that Mr. Norton's sentiments on all these momentous topics are diametrically in opposition to the tenets of orthodox believers. In consequence of the narrow limits to which he has confined himself, the subjects with which he deals are not always carried out to their proper extent; and a mist of confusion and obscurity rests upon the mind, just where it would most wish for a full and precise development of the particular system which the author is disposed to maintain. But we must take his production as it is, rather attending to the positions which he would attack or defend, than to the other portions of the controversy with which he has declined to grapple.

Mr. Norton states, in his first section, as the "purpose of this work:"

"I propose, in what follows, to give a view of the doctrines of Trinitarians respecting the nature of God and the person of Christ; to state the reasons for not believing those doctrines; and to show in what manner the passages of Scripture urged in their support ought to be regarded."-p. 1.

The dispute between Trinitarians and anti-Trinitarians has been, from time immemorial, a discussion partly metaphysical, partly critical, and partly historical. Mr. Norton treats it in these three ways, and, like most other champions of the same cause, feeling probably its utter weakness in the two other departments, puts his metaphysical arguments in the front of the battle. His main force is expended in attempting to show, from à priori considerations, that the Trinitarian doctrine is repugnant to reason; and, after going over in review the different shapes which it has assumed, and making quotations from Waterland, Bull, Sherlock, and Howe thus sums up his analysis of Trinitarian opinions.

"This then is the state of the case. The proper modern doctrine of the Trinity is, when viewed in connection with that of the unity of God, a doctrine essentially incredible. In endeavouring to present it in a form in which it may be defended, one class of Trinitarians insist strongly upon the supremacy of the Father, and the subordination of the Son and the Spirit. These, on the one hand, must either affirm this distinction in such a manner as really to maintain only a very untenable form of Unitarianism; or, on the other hand, must in fact retain the common doctrine, incumbered with the new and peculiar difficulty

which results from declaring, that the Son and Spirit are each properly God, but that each is a subordinate God. Another class, the nominal Trinitarians, explain away the doctrine entirely, and leave us nothing in their general account of it, with which to contend, but a very unjustifiable use of language. A third class, those who maintain three distinctions, and deny three persons, have merely put a forced meaning upon the terms used in its statement; and have then gone on to reason and to write, in a manner which necessarily supposes that those terms are used correctly, and that the common form of the doctrine which they profess to reject, is really that in which they themselves receive it. And a fourth class have fallen into plain and bald tritheism, maintaining the unity of God only by maintaining that the three Gods of whom they speak are inseparably and most intimately united. To these we may add, as a fifth class, those who receive, or profess to receive, the common doctrine, without any attempt to modify, explain, or understand it. All the sects of Trinitarians fall into one or other of the five classes just mentioned. Now we may put the nominal Trinitarians out of the question. They have nothing to do with the present controversy. And if there be any who, calling themselves Trinitarians, do in fact hold such a subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, that their doctrine amounts only to one form of Unitarianism, we may put these out of the question likewise. After having done this, it will appear from the preceding remarks, that the whole body of real Trinitarians may be separated into two great divisions; namely, those who in connection with the Divine Unity hold the proper doctrine, either with or without certain modifications, which modifications, though intended to lessen, would really, if possible, add to its incredibility; and those who, maintaining the unity only in name, are in fact proper believers in three Gods. Now we cannot adopt the doctrine of those first mentioned, because we cannot believe what appears to us a contradiction in terms; nor the doctrine of those last mentioned, because neither revelation nor reason teaches us that there are three Gods."-p. 15-17.

In the same strain Mr. Andrews Norton proceeds from the nature of the Deity to the person of Jesus Christ.

"With the doctrine of the Trinity is connected that of the HYPOSTATIC UNION, as it is called, or the doctrine of the union of the divine and human natures in Christ, in such a manner that these two natures constitute but one person. But this doctrine may be almost said to have preeminence in incredibility above that of the Trinity itself. The latter can be no object of belief when regarded in connection with that of the Divine Unity, for these two doctrines directly contradict each other. But the former, without reference to any other doctrine, does in itself involve propositions as clearly self-contradictory as any which it is in the power of language to express. It teaches that Christ is both God and The proposition is very plain and intelligible. The words God and man are among those which are in most common use, and the meaning of which is best defined and understood. There cannot (as with regard to the terms employed in stating the doctrine of the Trinity) be

man.

each other.

any controversy about the sense in which they are used in this proposition; or, in other words, about the ideas which they are intended to express. And we perceive that these ideas are wholly incompatible with Our idea of God is of an infinite being; our idea of man is of a finite being; and we perceive that the same being cannot be both infinite and finite. There is nothing clear in language, no proposition of any sort can be affirmed to be true, if we cannot affirm this to be truethat it is impossible that the same being should be finite and infinite; or, in other words, that it is impossible that the same being should be man and God. If the doctrine were not familiar to us, we should revolt from it as shocking every feeling of reverence toward God; and it would appear to us, at the same time, as mere an absurdity as can be presented to the understanding. No words can be more destitute of meaning, so far as they are intended to convey a proposition which the mind is capable of admitting, than such language as we sometimes find used, in which Christ is declared to be at once the Creator of the universe, and a man of sorrows; God omniscient and omnipotent, and a feeble man of imperfect knowledge.

"I know of no way in which the force of the statement just urged can appear to be evaded, except by a sort of analogy that has been instituted between the double nature of Christ, as it is called, and the complex constitution of man, as consisting of soul and body. It has been said or implied, that the doctrine of the union of the divine and human natures in Christ does not involve propositions more self-contradictory than those which result from the complex constitution of man; that we may, for instance, affirm of man, that he is mortal, and that he is immortal; or of a particular individual, that he is dead, and that he is living, (meaning by the latter term, that he is existing in the world of spirits). The obvious answer is, that there is no analogy between these propositions and those on which we have remarked. The propositions just stated belong to a very numerous class, comprehending all those in which the same term is at once affirmed and denied of the same subject, the term being used in different senses; or in which terms, apparently opposite, are affirmed of the same subject, the terms being used in senses not really opposed to each other. When I say that man is mortal, I mean that his present life will terminate; when I say that he is immortal, I mean that his existence will not terminate. I use the words in senses not opposed, and bring together no ideas which are incompatible with each other. The second proposition just mentioned is of the same character with the first, and admits, as every one will perceive, of a similar explanation. In order to constitute an analogy between propositions of this sort and those before stated, Trinitarians must say, that when they affirm that Christ is finite and not finite, omniscient and not omniscient, they mean to use the words finite and omniscient in different senses in the two parts of each proposition. But this they will not say, nor do the words admit of more than one sense.

"A being of a complex constitution like man, is not a being of a double nature. The very term double nature, when one professes to use it in a strict philosophical sense, implies an absurdity. The nature of a