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by the Nicene Fathers , should be added to the creed of Christian men . Mosheim has said that the council gave the finishing touch to the doctrine of three persons in one God . He ought to have remembered that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son , and the hypostatic union , were yet undiscovered . The merits of this council , which did so much for the Christian world
as to add to its creed an object of worship , we think it proper to set down in the words of a member and a Trinitarian : — * The bishops were seen raging like furious horses in battle , and like madmen casting dust into the air ; and under their several banners fulfilling their own contentions , and becoming men of wicked ambition and magnificence , and unrighteous and absurd judges of matters submitted to them / Intercourse with them he
held perilous to a man ' s honesty . What , however , they wanted in character they made up in creed . The many hardly ever keep pace with the few ; they are wedded to their prejudices and indocile in their rugged intellects . And so we find that the multitude not only did not adopt with becoming readiness , but opposed with guilty ardour , the recent improvements in the Trinity . It had been customary to ascribe * Glory to the Father , through
the Son , in the Holy Ghost / This antiquated doxology may have suited the Apostles ;—hardly the newly enlightened Athanasians . The learned sang Glory to the Father , and the Son , and the Holy Ghost / The people , too , tenacious of what they had been used to , affirmed that thus it was not ' in the beginning , ' and declared they would sooner cut out their tongues than say * Glory to the Holy Ghost / And here it would be easy to add
to what has been set down , many testimonies of the existence in great numbers of that troublesome body of misbelievers the Unitarians . The same in spirit then as now , they required a reason for every tenet , and opposed every improvement in doctrine under the invidious name of innovation * It was , perhaps , owing to their blind and pertinacious opposition that we are not now in the enjoyment of another object of worshi p * As Jesus was
determined to be God , what conclusion was more obvious than that his mother was the mother of God ? Accordingly in the beginning of the fifth century the claims of the Virgin were propounded , and so far admitted by many , that she was honoured with the designation of Mother of God . Nestorius , however , about the year 428 , degraded Christ by degrading his mother ; for Surely the honour of one could not be withheld without affecting
the character of the other ! ror this Nestorius we have no great affection . Too burning was his zeal against heresy to be a man after our heart . Thus he bespoke the Roman emperor , —* Give me , O Emperor ! the earth free from heretics ; and I , in return , will give you heaven . Conquer the heretics for me , and I will conquer the Persians for you / This man , however , with all his bad temper , had some sense about hitfju How , he asked , could
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S 2 $ > Rise and Progress of the Doctrine of the Trinity *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 320, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/32/
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