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    Christians , and as such scandalized , frightened , and terrified at the innovations of the learned few . * The evidence of the Unitarianism of the primitive Church is riot confined to a few passages . The general character of the earliest productions of the Christian writers is in favour of the alleged fact . To so great an extent is this remark true , that

    critics judge of the antiquity of writings by their freedom from language implying or declaring the deity of Christ , and the doctrine of the Trinity . This rule of criticism is generally received , and the learned , therefore , have , however unintentionally , given their suffrage in favour of the Unitarianism of the early believers . They have in another way , not the less valuable , because undesigned , afforded evidence of this fact . You can scarcely look into any one who with competent knowledge has written on the

    early ages of the Church , but you find assertions respecting the simplicity of the faith of the primitive believers , which are tantamount to an admission that their creed had not as yet been extended beyond the essential principles of Unitarianism . The words of Cave may be taken as the representative of their several statements . * ' The truth is , their creed in the first ages was short and simple , their faith lying then ( as Erasmus observes ) , not so much in nice and numerous articles , as in a good and holy life . "

    From other writers on the faith of the early Christians we have fen admission extorted by the vexation that they felt . From an early period of the Christian era down to modern days , those have existed who complained of the poverty and defects which , with their sentiments , they thought characterized the creed of the primitive believers . No language can better express the feelings which such complaints are fitted to excite than that which Lardner used on recording some of the murmurs to which we have alluded . Lardner—than whom no one has existed better

    acquainted with primitive Christianity , and whom , if the clearness of the case did not supersede the necessity of the patronage of great names , we should place at the head of a list of worthies , sharing with us the assured conviction that Unitarianism was the faith of the earliest and best followers of Christ— " Poor ignorant primitive Christians 1 " he observes , ' I wonder how they could find the way to heaven 1 They lived near the times of Christ and his Apostles . They highly valued

    and diligently read the Holy Scriptures , and some wrote commentaries upon them ; but yet it seems they knew little or nothing of their religion ; though they embraced and professed it with the manifest hazard of all earthly good thingsr-r-and many of them laid down their lives rather than renounce it . Truly we of these times are very happy in our orthodoxy ; but I wish that we did more excel in those virtues which they and the Scriptures recommend ad ( he distinguishing properties of a Christian . A » 4

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    18 . Rise and Progress of the Doctrine of the . Trinity

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1832, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1804/page/18/