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    a special consideration of it tbay not be unacceptable . It is very promptly applied to rebut the objections of cotnmoa sense to the doctrine of the Trinity 5 and a pretty summary answer , in the absence of a better , and a very convenient one it is .

    1 feel myself on tender ground , but ave an humble trust that it will not il me . No doctrine can lack a foundation pen scriptural expressions , wrested l their primary and absolute seiise , 3 the Catholics , to come no nearer ,

    ave well exemplified . Jesus said , * If ye have faith * as a grain of musurd " seed , nothing shall be * impossible i you . " This will be acknowledged , presume , as equivalent to the Vantage of the text . But who will be i > mid to stickle for the literal

    contruction of such a passage ? I can believe implicitly many things , ipon bath divine and human authoity , which my reason cannot reach , ttut none which contradict it . With God , though I admit that all things are possible , yet it is in the restrictive sense of all possible things * Many are not possible to Him .

    He himself , in the plenitude of his omnipotence , cannot contravene what his own laws and constitutions have once ordained immutable . Nor can He , in any instance , betray versatility . It has been assumed that God . could

    not pardon the sins of mankind ^ except his Justice were satisfied by an atontnunt ; such as confounds the human intellect , and makes depreciated reason stand aghast *— which , indeed , might come in a parenthesis , as an orthodox impossibility with

    God . Out of which , however , in the form of a negation upon it , arisen the moral impossibility that God could , upon thht as&ttifrption * exact from his creatures a virtue transcending what his own nature is capable of , namely , the forgi vfcmjss of all offences and injuries without atonement .

    God cannot be unjust . He cannot visit limited sill with unlimited punishment . Having decla * ed > t I ***** the Lord : that is my name } and ray glory will * ftlfct * . xvii . 2 fr . -f Isaiah xliis . 8 .

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    I not give to another , ** he cannot give his gk > i , y to another . And that * ^ Before me there was no God formed , neither shall there be after mef and f " 1 > even I , am be * and there is no God witfi mef hecannot have an associate in his divinity .

    And havitfg promulgated } " There shall be one Lord , and his nameon *;" he cannot make it three .

    ( These are but selections from a host of corresponding passages . ) He is not efficient to make two and two five , or two and three hut four . He is incapable of the attempt .

    So , by parity of statement , not even by any presumable operation of the Divine will or power , which are synonymous , could three persons , each of them God , be one God , and cmiv

    one * The proposition , involving a numerical contradiction , states an impossibility , in the face of that irreversible system of order and consistency which has the Supreme Being fo * its author . §

    So impossible is it eveil for . their Creator to realize the conceits and gratuitisms of his creatures . If any one should oppose , to my view of this momentous subject , God ' s

    power to work miracles * or disturb his own establishments ,. I would simply ask htm whether he would have the Trinity considered as a standing miracle , and whether his orthodox brethren would thank him for such a

    concession ? I presume that none , but a fanatic , will tax the language I have used , for the aake of perspicuity , with

    irreverence . That any mathematician should avow himself a Trinitarian , is , of all strange things , perhaps , the strangest . Yet how many have believed in witchcraft I How many in the existence of

    an evil spirit , possessing the divine attribute of ubiquity , and busy i » the seduction of every human being from the allegiance due to lii * Creator ! What , in such cases , wherein we «« e minds of the sublimeat capacity

    pros-? , . ' h '!' . "'* ' > ' ' ¦ . *> - '•! ' ¦¦ < fi "*<» fj ffi « m * H'tmMM'l ' llWf , " .- 'I .. * VJ- ' ?*¦ - m * Isaiah xliii . 10 , f Deut . ** xir . & f Zach . xiv . & , fc See my «* « nity of CM * , " *• P

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    726 Brief Notes on the Bible * No . IX *

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    ? tf .-IV . p / -806 .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1819, page 726, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1779/page/10/