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do describe the one only God under the three-fold character of Father , Son and Spirit , " though , as he brings forward no evidence in justification of his
so thinking , I am at a loss to know whether he grounds his notion of a God who is three and one , on the spurious text , 1 John v . 7 , ( which , however , Calvin admitted had relation to
agreement of testimony , and not unity of nature ;) on the baptismal form , Matt , xxviii . 19 , which is just as little to the purpose ; or on the plural nouns of dignity in the Hebrew , by which Joseph might also be proved to be
more lords than one , and Behemoth be made to enjoy a plurality of being . To the writer ' proposition I should not object , provided the Word and Spirit were considered , as I think the Scriptures do consider them , in the light of qualities or attributes of the
Divine Mind $ but I cannot assent to their being each God within God , or to Christ having pre-existed as the personified Word in God , any more than I can assent to the Arian hypothesis of the Word being a secondary God out of God .
I presume the writer intends that the Father , Son and Spir it , existing as God , form together that infinite Being whom we understand by the term God . Now if the Father was " infinitely worthy to be loved by us / ' was not
the Word or Son also infinitely worthy ? Was not also the Spirit infinitely worthy ? Was not the infinite fault of sin committed , therefore , equally against the Son and Spirit ? And does not reason , on this principle , require that an infinite atonement should be made
to each of these persons or subsistences that altogether make up the whole idea of God ? How , then , came the second person onl y to make this satisfaction , or why did he make it to the Father only , and not also to the Spirit ? And how happened it that he required no atonement to be offered to himself , if he also were the infinite God ?
Further , if the Word be only one of those divine persons or characters which together compose one infinite Being , he was himself only a third part of infinity ; how then could he render an atonement of infinite value ? If Mr . H .
reply * jflwrt each character ia the Godhead is by himself alike infinite , he then makes three Infinites : and three
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infinite beings are three Gods . If he pronounce that there is only one infinit e being , then it was not the Word or Son only , but the Father , Son and Spirit that made this infinite atonement , otherwise an infinite atonement could not have been made , and if made , to whom did they make it ?
But the great argument of Mr . H . is grounded on the literal meaning of expressions , viewed in reference to modern usage and association , and on the position of words in the English translation of the Scriptures ; and he seems to suppose that what strikes an
English reader as the meaning of a word or sentence , must necessarily have struck a Jewish reader in precisely the same manner ; that what was plain to the Hebrews must be plain to the English , and that what appears obscure to the English , must have been equally obscure to the
Hebrews . But the most curious particular in this notable argument , is his assertion , that no passage of inspired writ can admit but of one meaning , and that meaning the one that consists with the opinion of his own sect—the alternative being the rejection of the authority of Scripture altogether . It is unreasonable , he thinks , that God
should suffer the writers of the bcnptures to convey to all future generations descriptions of the person , character , offices , &c . of the Messiah in such ambiguous terms as would admit of their being understood to describe a divine person , if he were not in fact the true God . This reasoning supposes that the Jewish writers should have
been inspired to adopt modes of phraseology and habits of mental association , not only foreign to the custom of their own age and tongue , but exactly suited to all future generations , however distant in climate or differing in language to
it supposes also that we are obliged decide ovlt faith by isolated p hrases and sentences , and are to open the Bible as if in # earch of the sortes mrgiliance , instead of attending to its general tenor , and comparing <> scripture with another AVJkA
. c fc # ^>* > &B * rWV » 4 \^/ V V *^ P »»^ - * VAJkV- '* * mm Mr . H . observes , that Ephes . v . & > Tit . ii . 13 , 2 Peter i . 1 , may be translated so as to bear a direct and positive testimony to the deity of Jesus Christ : ., M covetous man , ' who is an wo-
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518 Examination of Mr . Darnel Harwood's
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1820, page 518, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2492/page/18/
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