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THERE IS ONE GOD,
AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN,
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS.
A LECTURE,

DELIVERED IN

PARADISE STREET CHAPEL,

LIVERPOOL,

ON TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 183!).

REV. HENRY GILES. it*
BEING THE FOURTH OF A SERIES, TO BE DELIVERED WEEKLY, IN ANSWER TO A
COURSE OF LECTURES AGAINST UNITARIANISM, IN CHRIST CHURCH, LIVERPOOL,
BY THIRTEEN CLERGYMEN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

IIVERPOOL:
WILLMER AND SMITH, 32, CHURCH STREET.
LONDON:
JOHN GREEN, 121, NEWGATE STREET.
1839.

WILLMER AND SMITH,
32, CHURCH. STREET, LIVERPOOL.

LECTURE IV.

' THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND
MEN, THE IAN CHRIST JESUS."
BY BEV. HENRY GILES.

THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE
MAN CHRIST JESUS."— 1 Tim. ii. 5.

The passage I have read suggests the subject of my lecture,
the position in which we stand to our opponents will sug
gest the tendency of the commentary. The text announces
the two great truths on which our entire system of Chris
tianity is based, and ours in all essential points, we think,
coincides with simple, with evangelical Christianity. The
truths propounded in the text are, the Unity of God, and the
Unity of Christ. — A unity in each case absolute and perfect,
without division of nature or distinction of person. We
believe that God is one, — that he is one being, one mind, one
person, one agent. And this belief, and no other, we can
deduce from the works of creation, and the teachings of the
Scriptures. That God is one universally and absolutely. We have im
pressed upon us from the order of creation ; that he is great,
we learn from the magnitude of his works ; and that he is
good, we learn from their blessedness and beauty. This
sublime truth is iUustrated in every region of existence, so
far as we know it, and every illustration is an argument. It
is written on the broad and immortal heavens in characters
of glory and light ; it is manifested in that mighty law which
binds atom to atom into a world, and world to world in a
A 2

4 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
system, and system to system, until from that wonderful
universe which science can traverse, we arise to him, whom
no knowledge can fathom, whom no limits can bound, and in
contemplating whom science must give place to faith.
The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament
showeth his handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and
night unto night showeth knowledge — and that God is one, is
proclaimed in this speech, and manifested in this knowledge. It
gleams in the light, it breathes in the air, it moves in the life
of all created nature ; it is the harmony of creation, and the
spirit of providence, the inspiration of reason, and the con
sistency of wisdom. The existence of one Supreme In
telligence is the Testimony of Nature, and to the same im
port are the testimonies of Scripture. We are told, and told
it in every variety of tone, that to believe one God in three
persons is absolutely needful to Salvation, yet we may read
from Genesis to Revelations without finding such a doctrine
either as a statement of truth, or a means of sanctity : but
the simple and unqualified declaration that God is one, with
out any of these dogmatical distinctions which men of later
ages have invented, I need not tell a Bible-reading audience,
are interwoven with the whole texture of revelation. It
was that for which Abraham left his home, and went forth
a wanderer from his family and his nation ; it was that for
which Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter, and for which he chose rather to suffer affliction
with the people of God ; it was that over which he had long
thought in his shepherd-life in an Arabian wilderness ; it was
that with which he was more deeply inspired in the solemn
retirements of Mount Horeb ; it was that to which all his
laws and institutions pointed. Our Saviour took the doc
trine as a known maxim — and in this his disciples followed
him. We have then the truth brought down to us through
Scripture, in patriarchal tradition, in Mosaic legislation, in
the poetry of prophets, in the words of Christ, in the preach-

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 5
ing of apostles, — and we have it brought down to us without
one of those distinctions with which it has been since sur
rounded by theological ingenuity. We are zealous in the
assertion of it, not for its mere metaphysical correctness, but
for its moral power and its moral consistency. It does not
divide our hearts, and it does not confuse our heads. It
leads our minds up to one spirit, infinite in power, infinite
in wisdom, and infinite in goodness. Without confusion or
perplexity we can trace God in aU and all in God : in the
atom that trembles in a sunbeam, as in the planet that moves
in boundless light, from the blush of a flower to the glory
of the heavens — from the throb of an insect to the life of an
immortal. The Unitarian faith in the universal father is
clear, simple, and defined ; inflicting no violence on our
understandings, and raising no conflicts in our affections. One,
and one in the strictest sense, is our parent, one is our sove
reign, one is our highest benefactor, one is our protector and
our guide, one is our deliverer and sanctifier ; one has be
stowed all we possess, one alone can give all we hope for :
one is holy who demands our obedience ; one is merciful who
pities our repentance ; one is eternal in whose presence we
are to live, and therefore whether we present our adorations
in dependence, or bow down in submission, or send forth
our praises in gratitude, there is one, and but one, to whom
our aspirations can ascend, and to whom our hearts can be
devoted. Thus impressed, we must feel united to one Father
in filial obedience, and to all men in a common and fraternal
relationship; we cannot look upon some as selected, and
upon others as outcasts; we cannot look upon some as
purchased, and upon others as reprobate; we cannot look
upon some as sealed with the spirit of grace for ever unto
glory everlasting, and upon others as abandoned, unpitied,
and unprotected, the victims of an everlasting malediction.
We regard men as bound in a community of good, conse
quently as bound in a community of praise ; we regard them

Ct THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
as struggling in like trials, and therefore indebted to each
other for mutual sympathy ; we regard them as heirs of the
same glory, and on the level of their heavenly hopes, standing
on a basis of sacred and eternal equality. If these sentiments
are false, they are at least generous, and it is not often that
generosity is found in company with falsehood. Alas, how
many heart-burning enmities, how many deadly persecutions
have been caused by different apprehension of God's nature
or God's worship ; how often have these differences broken
all the fraternal bonds of humanity, made man the greatest
enemy to man, — more savage and cruel than the beast, yea,
and cruel in proportion to the zeal he pretended for his God.
But never could this have been, had men believed in God,
had men believed in Christ — had they believed in God as an
impartial and universal Father, had they believed in Christ as
an equal and universal brother. — Then we could have all sent
our mingled prayers to the skies, and with a Christianity as
broad as our earth, and as ample as our race, and generous as
the soul of Jesus, we could have taken all mankind to our
heart. We maintain it not in mere abstract speculation, but
because we consider it a positive and a vital truth. Were
the point metaphysical and not moral, we conceive it would
be little worthy of dispute — and in that sense I for one would
have small anxiety, whether God existed in three persons
or in three thousand. In like manner we hold the simple
and absolute unity of Christ ; a unity of nature, a unity
of person, and a unity of character. But as this topic is
to occupy so large a space in the present lecture, I shall here
forbear from further comments.
The statement of our subject in a text, was alluded to by
the Christ Church Lecturer, in a tone that at least approached
to censure. But we consider it amongst our privileges, that
we can express our main principles in the simple and obvious
language of Scripture ; and if in this case deep scholarship
and acute criticism be needed to give it to common minds

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 7
a meaning different from that in which we understand it, the
fault certainly is not ours. — Neither, indeed, is ours the blame,
if a similar phraseology pervades the whole Christian Scrip
tures ; that in every page we read of God and Christ, and
never of God in three persons, or of Christ in two natures.
To find out such distinctions, we leave to Scholastic inge
nuity ; to give them definition and perpetuity, we consign to
the framers of creeds and articles — and to receive and reve
rence them we turn over to the admirers of Athanasian per
spicuity. We take the New Testament as the best formulary;
we are satisfied with a religion direct and simple in its prin
ciples, and we long not for a religion of deducibles. We
have been accused of tortuous criticism ; and although we
desire not to retort the accusation on our opponents, so far^
I mean, as it implies moral delinquency, we cannot forbear
observing that the intellectual sinuosities by which some
of these deductions have been drawn from the New Testa
ment is to us, certainly, a subject of not a little admiration.
Our motive in selecting this text was the best of all which
governs men in the use of language, simply that with greatest
brevity and greatest perspicuity, it enunciates our opinions.
Our opponents, however, have no right to complain ; the
advantage of being first in the field was on their side, and
the struggle was not provoked on our part but on theirs :
they of course selected their own subjects, and they suggested
ours. They could, therefore, have had no uncertainty either
as to our views or interpretation of the text. I would not
aUude to a matter so small, were it not for the contradictory
delinquencies with which Unitarians are accused — one time
they are charged with dreading an appeal to Scripture, and
when by the very title of their subject, they tacitly appeal to
Scripture, there is wanting still no occasion to blame.
What, in Unitarian views, is Christ the Man, and what
is Christ the Mediator, shall make the subject of the present
Lecture.

8 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
I. — First, I beg your attention to the enquiry as to what
we beUeve of Christ as man. To this we answer, that in his
nature we think him simply and undividedly human ; that in
his character we regard him morally perfect. We cannot
recognize in Christ a mixture of natures, and we wonder that
any who read the gospel's records can. That he was simply
and merely human, is a conclusion which meditation on these
Records but fixes more profoundly on our understandings,
and makes more precious to our faith. We derive the con
clusion from Christ's own language — " Ye seek to kill me," he
says, " a man — which hath told you the truth, which I heard
of God." — Again, when a worldly and ambitious individual,
mistaking the true nature of this kingdom, desired to become
his disciple : " The foxes, said Jesus, have holes, and the birds
of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not whereon
to lay his head." Instances, too many to repeat, might be
enumerated ; but the only other I shall adduce is that in
which Christ's human nature speaks from its deepest sorrows,
and its strongest love : when Jesus, as he hung upon the
Cross, saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved
standing by, he saith unto his mother, " Woman, behold thy
son." It is vain to teU us of an infinite God veiled behind
this suffering and sweetness, the mind repels it, despite of all
the efforts of theology.*
The impression of a simple humanity was that which he
left on the mind of his countrymen. What other impres
sion could they have of one whom they daily saw amongst
them as of themselves ? who came weary to rest in their
habitations ; who came hungry to sit at their boards ; whom
they met in their streets sinking with fatigue ; whom they
might see upon their wayside asking drink from a well ; one
whom they saw weep over their troubles and rejoice in their
gladness. Nay, the very intenseness of his humanity became
• See Note on John xii.

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 9
a matter of accusation. To many it seemed subversive of
religion. That spirit which sympathized with human beings,
in their joys and woes, which not only loved the best, but
would not cast out the worst, was what those of strait and
narrow hearts could not understand. He came eating and
drinking, and they caUed him a man gluttonous and a wine-bib
ber. Had he said long prayers at the corners of their streets,
and been zealous for the traditions of the fathers, they would
have revered him as a saint. Those who were panoplied
in their own spiritual sufficiency knew not how he could be
the friend of sinners; how he could associate with the
deserted and the excommunicated ; how he could take to his
compassion the weary and the heavy-laden. The pharisee
who proudly asked him to his house, but gave him no salute,
no oil for his stiffened joints, and no water for his parched
feet, had nothing within him whereby to interpret the feeling
of Jesus towards her who anointed his head with ointenent,
washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs
of her head. Yes, it was this truth and fulness of humanity
which made Jesus hateful to the pharisees, but loved and
blessed by the poor ; it was this that made the common people
hear him gladly, and gave his voice a power which they never
felt in the teachings of the scribes; which drew crowds
around him, in wilderness and mountain, that hung raptured
on the glad tidings which he preached. The flatterers of
Herod on a particular occasion cried out, " It is the voice of
a god and not of a man ;" but no one ever thought of insulting
Jesus with such an exclamation.
The guilt of the Jews in crucifying Christ has been aUuded
to in the present controversy. But this is only an additional
proof that Jesus left no other conviction on the minds of his
countrymen than that he was simply a man. That our views
diminish this guilt has been urged as a powerful objection
against us ; but, with reverence I say it, the objection turns
more against Christ himself. Either then he was simply man.

10 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
or being Deity, he suppressed the e^'idence which would prove
it, and allowed this people to contract the awful guilt of killing
a God-man. If the first be true, the guilt asserted has no
existence ; if the second, I leave you to judge in what light it
places the sincerity and veracity of an incarnate Deity.
There is neither declaration nor evidence afforded by Christ
by which the Jews could think him more than man. On the
contrary he disclaims expressly the far lower honour at which
they thought his presumption aimed, by a quotation from
their own Scriptures : " It is written in your law," he ob
serves, " I said ye are Gods. If he called them Gods, unto
whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be
broken), say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and
sent into the world, thou blasphemest, because I said I am
the Son of God." * There is then no declaration, nor yet is
there evidence. Miracles were not such : for the Jewish mind
and memory were filled with instances of these, and to the
performers of which they never thought of attributing a
nature above humanity. If Christ was more, the fact should
have been plainly manifested, for the idea of a God in a
clothing of flesh was one not only foreign but repugnant to
every Jewish imagination. The difference between the Jews
and pagans in this particular is not a little striking. Jesus
raised the dead before their eyes, and yet they thought him
but a man having great power from the Creator. Paul, in
company with Barnabas, healed a cripple at Lystra, and the
populace cried out, " The Gods are come down to us in the
likeness of men." When Paid in Melita shook without harm
the viper from his hand, the spectators who at first con
sidered him a murderer, changed their minds, and said that
he was a God.. In proportion then to the natural and re
ligious repugnance which the Jews had to humanize the
divinity, should there have been clearness in the proof of it
on the part of Jesus. No such proof was given.
» John X. 34—36.

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 11
The greatest miracles of Jesus disturbed not the conviction
of the Jews in his simple human nature. The woman of Sa
maria, wondering at once at his charity and his knowledge,
called her neighbours to see a man who told her all things what
soever she did. She asked them, then is not this the Christ ?
The blind man awakened by his touch from thick darkness into
the marvellous light of God's creation describes him but as
a man who anointed his eyes. The Jewish officers struck
dumb before his wisdom, declare that never man spake like
this man. The Jews who stood around him and saw Lazarus,
whose body had been already dissolving, come forth quick
ened from the grave, beheld in him but the powerful and the
loving friend. The multitudes of Judea, who in desert and
city were amazed at his wonderful works, simply " glorified
God who had given such power unto men."
Similar was the impression which he left upon his intimate
friends. What would have been their emotions had they a
belief that continuaUy they were in the bodily presence of the
incarnate God? How would they not have bowed themselves
in the dust, and stopped the familiar word as it trembled on
their lips ? Instead of a:pproaching with unfearing hearts, how
would they not have stood afar off and apart, and gazed with
awe upon a being who was pacing a fragment of the world
he created, instead of clinging to him as one of themselves?
Whenever they saw his mysterious appearance, would they
not call on the mountains to fall upon them, and the hills
to cover them ? But not so was it. The lowly, the humble,
and the poor rejoiced to see him, and were glad when he en
tered their habitations. They were consoled by the benedic
tion of peace with which he sanctified his approach and his
departure. For him was the gratulations of loving friends,
and for him were the smiles of httle children. In Bethany,
Martha, when he came, was busy in much serving, and the
meek and gentle Mary sat at his feet to drink in his heavenly
wisdom. At the last supper John leaned upon his bosom,

12 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
At the cross, when the head of Jesus bent heavily in anguish,
and solitary torture was wearing away his life, there again we
meet the same disciple, there also we meet the mother of
Jesus and the grateful Magdalene, aU three oppressed with
darkest affliction and despair. Some of them we again be
hold at the sepulchre in utmost alarm. Now this grief at the
cross and this perplexity at the tomb is consistent with no
other supposition than that they regarded him simply as a
man. Why else should they have been afflicted? What
though his enemies were strong, if knowing him to be God,
they must also have known that his power was boundless and
his triumph certain. This sorrow and uncertainty, I repeat,
can have no other foundation than a belief in his simple hu
manity. And surely if his mother had only such impression,
it is hard to expect that the Jews at the time, and many
Christians since, could have had any other.
I anticipate the objection that the glories of his deity were
concealed, and that this concealment was necessary to his me
diatorial work. I answer then, that when he had departed, and
when such a secresy was no longer needful, his apostles on some
of the most solemn occasions merely asserted his humanity, on
occasions, too, when, if he were God as weU as man, the whole
truth were to be expected. Paul,* in announcing him as the
great and final judge of the world, calls him no more than man.
Nor does his language assume a higher import when he speaks
of him as the pattern and pledge of immortality.t No other
conclusion is to be drawn from the address of Peter to Corne
lius ; and if a belief of Christ's deity be necessary to salvation,
the centurion might, for anything Peter asserted, have gone
direct to perdition. J Still more remarkable is it, that in this
apostle's first public address after the departure of his master
to the skies, we have nothing more than the same declaration.
The occasion and the circumstances not only justified, but
demanded the highest announcement that could be made
•Acts xvii. 30, 31. f 1 Cor. xv. 21, 47. % Acts. a.

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 13
respecting Christ. The disciples had just seen him taken
up into heaven, and the awe of the ascension was yet
upon their hearts. He who had trod this weary earth
in many sorrows was taken from their sight. They who
had recently seen his blood streaming warmly on Cal
vary, had come fresh from the glory of Olivet. He who
had been their suffering companion and instructor was
now their blessed and triumphant master. Alone in the
midst of a gainsaying and persecuting world, with gladness
solemnized by reverence, and victory tempered by grief, they
had assembled to await the promised Comforter. After that
event they were to be separated, and each was to take his
own path in the moral wilderness that stretched far and
desolately before him. The Spirit of Promise came. The
cloven tongues of fire fell upon them : that beautiful emblem
of the eloquent spirit of the gospel that was to carry light
and heat to the hearts of all generations, and through every
language of earth ; that beautiful emblem of a Christianity
which might exist in many forms, but be at the same time
enlightened and enflamed by the soul of a common charity.
Multitudes from all nations were collected in the Holy City; —
under the influence of recent and solemn events Peter rises
to address them. The tragedy of Calvary was yet fresh in
the general imagination, the stain of a slave and malefactor's
death was still dark on the forehead of Christianity, This
surely was the time to cover the ignominy that lay on the
humanity of Jesus by proclaiming the resplendent glory of
his godhead. This was especiaUy to be expected from Peter.
He had on a preceding occasion spurned the idea of such a
shameful death, though coming from Christ's own lips ; now
was the time to pour the glory of the God over the humilia
tion of the man ; he too, who in an hour of weakness denied
his master, was the one who in the time of his strength and
repentance would be most ready to vindicate and assert his
highest honour. It is said that the apostles were not

14 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
thoroughly inspired, and did not fully know Christ before
tlie day of Pentecost. But this was the day of Pentecost.
If, besides, it was the speaker's object — as indeed it must
have been — that Christ should be rightly and widelj' known,
now was the opportunity to send forth his name and nature
through every kingdom and in every tongue. If, according
to the doctrine some time since propounded in Christ Church,
the sin of the Jews was dark in proportion to the grade of
being in which we place the Saviour, now was the time, while
the event was recent, to strike their hearts with terror and
compunction. Contrast, then, these natural, these fair and
unexaggerated expectations, with the actual speech of Peter,
and without a word of comment the contrast is itself the
strongest argument. " Ye men of Israel hear these words :
Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by
miracles, and wonders, and signs which God did by him in
the midst of you, as ye yourselves know : him being delivered
by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have
taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain : whom
God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, be
cause it was not possible that he should be holden of it."
(Acts ii. 22, 24.) Had you been listeners to this address, I
ask your candour, I ask your intellect, could you conceive
that the apostle was speaking, not of a glorified man, but of
an incarnate Deity ? No, certainly.
The testimony of Peter thus clearly given, is more and
more confirmed as we look upon the Ufe of Jesus. In every
stage of that life we see him human, and though in all moral
purity and moral grandeur, yet simply human. We are not
ashamed of our beUef. No, we glory in it, and we re
joice in it. We glory in it, for it is the proof that the ele
ments of our nature can be moulded into such beauty ; and
we rejoice in it, for it is the proof that he who left a religion
for the immortal heart of man was himself purely and simply
of the nature he would sanctify. We see him as the infant

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 15
cradled in Bethlehem, the nurseling hanging on a mother's
care, and we escape the moral and intellectual confusion of
joining the omnipotence of a God with the feebleness of a
babe. We see him in maturer years in his social relations
and social intercourse casting a holy light around him,
and spreading the influence of all that is most blessed in
human affections. We destroy not the virtue of the man by
absorbing it in the glory of the God. Human, and only
human, we see him in goodness, in duty, and in suffering.
Even in his most marvellous works of mercy, so harmonious
is his power with our common nature, that we feel as if they
were merely ordinary acts of kindness. When he compas
sionated the widow's anguish and restored her son ; when
pitying the blind, he opened their eyes to the joy and beauty
of light ; when to the ears of the deaf he gave an inlet to
the music of nature and the voice of friendship ; when he
cast out the dumb spirit and unclosed sealed lips in hymns
of gratitude and praise; when he fed multitudes on the
mountain's brow ; when lepers went clean from his presence
to their fellows and their homes ; when parents clung to their
restored children, and friends who had separated in despair
met again in hope, — wonderful as are all these events, we
connect them with the man Christ Jesus, the real, simple,
holy, and perfect man.
The lecturer in Christ Church stated three peculiarities
which distinguished the Unitarian from the orthodox belief
in Christ's humanity. The third of these was his pre-exist-
ence. The Lecturer defined with admirable accuracy the es
sentials of humanity, one of which, as would be universaUy
admitted, was to be born. I was therefore not prepared to
hear the proper humanity of Christ before he was born most
zea;lously defended. I look upon it, however, as a mere over
sight, and no doubt it will be corrected in the printed lec
ture. The main point is, however, that of Christ's pre-existence.

16 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
which independently of mistake in arrangement or expression
is a fair topic of argument and discussion. The Lecturer
quoted a number of texts from the evangeUst John, — from any
other of the gospel-writers he could not have taken the shadow
of a proof: these he seemed to think invincible evidence.
Good scholars, however, and candid critics, aye, and honest
Christians, have found such explanations of these expressions
as satisfied both their inteUects and their conscience. Ortho
dox commentators are aware that the idiom of the New
Testament frequently uses the tense grammatically past to
signify events which are actuaUy future. I ask those critics
what they have urged, what they usually urge, against Roman
Catholic controversialists, who, in proving the doctrine of
transubstantiation, quote the text, " This is my body which
is "broken for you." What says the Protestant opponent ?
Oh, it is a mere idiomatic expression, by which an event is
represented as complete which is yet to be accomplished. In
like manner and with a like interpretation, we hear the or
thodox use the phrase, " The lamb slain from the foundation
of the world." They have in this case no scruple to speak
of that as actuaUy existing which was merely contemplated in
eternal foreknowledge. If it be said that aU events are
present to the mind of God, so we answer are aU persons ;
and so was Christ. This view of the subject has satisfied
many reflective, and whatever our opponents may think,
many able and honest minds. But I avail myseK of this
opportunity to state distinctly and plainly, that though chal
lenged by our opponents in the title of their subject to dis
cuss this point, it is one on which Unitarians have great
differences of opinion, but one which would not disturb a
moment's harmony in Unitarian Churches. Personally the
Lecturers in the present controversy, on our side, do not be
lieve the pre-existence of Christ ; but there are congregations
and individuals amongst us, with whom we hold, and wish to
hold, kindly, brotherly, and Christian communion, who cling

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 1?
to this doctrine most sacredly and most reverently. We aU
agree in maintaining the absolute unity of God, and if I may
so speak, the creatureship of Christ. We desire to bind
our charity to no dogmas, and we simply say, with the
Apostle, " Let eve^man be persuaded in his own mind."
On this point, and indeed in this discussion generally, I
have observed with great pain a disposition on the part of
our opponents to connect the venerable name of Priestley
with odium. It is an unworthy office for men of education
in the nineteenth century. We take not the authority of
Priestley, nor of any other, except Jesus. One is our Master,
even Christ: and aU we are brethren. But in venerating
Priestley, yea, and in loving his memory, we are guilty of no
Sectarianism, we but agree with the generous, the excellent,
the enlightened of the earth : we but agree with Robert Hall,
a stern but eloquent Trinitarian, who in allusion to the Bir
mingham riots, deprecated in glowing language the insults
offered to philosophy in " the first of her sons." Both his
critical and his religious opinions are fair subjects for investi
gation and opposition. But great sacrifices and honourable
consistency should render his moral character sacred, if any
thing could melt the stony heart of polemical austerity.
When we hear, as lately we did hear, that Priestley sought
not for truth, but for arguments to sustain a system, we are
not only impelled to ask, with Pilate, ''What is truth?"
but also to inquire, " Who are those who seek it?" One
thing we do know, that if he gave himself to a system, it
was a devotion to one which had little wherewith to recom
pense him ; and we know also that as far as the good things
of this world is concerned, that he might have turned his
devotion to a far better purpose. Instead of having his home
and his aU shattered in the storm of popular turbulence,
instead of being left houseless in the land of his nativity, he
might have been great amongst the heads of colleges, or
first upon the bench of Bishops; instead of being expatriated

18 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
amidst vulgar execration, he might have spent his life fa ring
sumptuously every day, clothed in purple and fine linen,
with a dignified hypocrisy ; instead of burying his later sor
rows in a foreign land, -and dropping there his last and most
bitter tears, and leaving there his venerable dust, and his
stiU more venerable memory, to the shame of England, and
to the immortal honour of his most generous and hospitable
entertainers, we might now have had proposals for a na
tional monument to him, long lists of subscribers' names,
and loud clamours of exulting praise. One consolation at
least was left: his right hand was clean, and had he been
dragged to the stake he need never have thrust it in the
flame for having been the instrument to give signature to a
lie, from a beggarly, a dastardly, and a cowardly fear of death.
If he could look from where he lives in heaven, he would
have a stiU. nobler consolation, in being aware that, despite of
bigots, his name is treasured in venerated recollection with
the pious and philosophical of all sects and parties — that to
give him due and most beautiful praise* was amongst the last
earthly acts of a kindred spirit, but of another soU,— that
fanatics may rant and rage, but the good will love. — ^That
when this-, with such controversies in general, sink into the
common and obHvious grave to which aU polemical divinity
is doomed, the good his inventionshave given to mankind
will survive, and the witness he has left of an upright con
science wiU be an everlasting example.
The comiction of his reason, it is true, was so strong
against the pre-existence of Christ, that he would suppose
the apostle misunderstood the Saviour's words, or the ama
nuensis mistranscribed the apostle's language. This was urged
as a mighty accusation, as a most blasphemous transgression.
There are here an opinion and an alternative. The opinion
is the belief in Christ's simple humanity ; the alternative
is merely to suppose the want of memory in an evangelist,
* Cuvier. See Note 1.

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 19
or the want of accuracy in a copyist. Place in contrast to this
Coleridge as quoted by our opponents. He has also an
opinion and an alternative — ^his opinion is, that Christ was
God, and his alternative is, that if not God he was a deceiver.
If Dr. Priestley was wrong, he left not only Christ but his
apostles morally blameless — ^if Coleridge mistook, he attri
buted directly and without compromise the want of even
common honesty to the Author of our reUgion: I leave
you to judge between the two cases. I do not wish to dis
parage erring and departed genius ; but when the name of
Coleridge is called up in my mind in connection with that of
Priestley, it is not in human nature to avoid comparison.
The one steeped the best part of his life in opium, the other
spent it in honourable toil ; the one squandered his brilliant
and most beautiful genius in discursive efforts and magical
conversations, the other with heroic self denial shut himself
up in dry and laborious studies for the physical good, and the
moral wants of mankind; the one wrote sweet and wild
and polished poesy for their pleasure, the other has left
discoveries for their endless improvement. Yet orthodoxy
builds for one the shrine of a saint, — but like those who in
other days dug up the bones of Wickliff to be burned, drags
forth the memory of the other from the peaceful and for
giving past, to inflict an execution of which we might have
supposed his lifetime had a sufficient endurance. Tranquil in
the far-off and quiet grave be the ashes of the Saint and
Sage : his soul is beyond the turmoils and battles of this
fighting world. When these who are now in strife shall be
at last in union, his will not be the spirit to whom that blessed
consummation will give least enjoyment.
The preacher in Christ Church made some lengthened obser
vations on the two-fold nature of Jesus. This topic wiU more
properly be included in another lecture. I only mention it
here for the purpose of making a passing remark. The
preacher's language implied that among our reasons for re-
b2

20 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
jecting the doctrine is, that it is a mystery. Now we main
tain that a mystery is properly no doctrine, for it can be neither
affirmed or denied. The lecturer observed that there are
mysteries in life and nature. If by such he meant facts
which we do not fuUy comprehend, or ultimate facts beyond
which we cannot penetrate, he is right. But of these we
assert nothing, of these we deny nothing. Intellectually or
spiritually they are in no sense subjects of contemplation.
The preacher, if my memory deceives me not, maintained
that philosophy has also mysteries. The principles or phe
nomena of Philosophy are not mysteries — and so far as they
are mysteries they are not philosophy. We reject not the
doctrine proposed to us on any such ground. We reject it,
not because we do not understand the terms in which it is
expressed, but because we do understand them, and find
them equally repugnant to reason and to Scripture. We re
ject it because it does equal violence to faith and intellect;
we reject it, not only from the want of consistency, but the
want of evidence.
The apology for mystery made by the defenders of the
incarnation has been as often, as ably, and as successfully
used by the advocates of Transubstantiation. Among other
questions, we are asked by both parties — it is a favourite
iUustration — if we know how a grain of wheat germinates
and fructifies ! Without hesitation we reply — no. And not
only do we not understand this how, but many others which
might seem very much simpler. But where, I ask, is the
analogy ? A grain of wheat is buried in the earth, and the
spirit of Universal Life prepares it for reproduction, and
in the harvest it comes forth abundantly multiplied, to make
glad the hearts of men. On this point I am equally willing
to confess my ignorance and my gratitude. All the facts are
not known to me, but such as I do know are perfectly con
sistent with each other. If I am told that I know not how
a grain of wheat germinates, I admit it without hesitation ;

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 21
but I should certainly be startled if I were also told, that
besides being a grain of wheat it was also, by a mysterious
compound of natures, the Planet Herschel, or the arch
angel Michael. And yet this does not amount by infinite
degrees of self-contradiction to the assertion, that the same
being is God and man ; that one part of the nature is weary,
and hungry, and thirsty, bowed down by every want and
grief, while the other is resting in peace and blessedness —
that in the same person there is one mind which is ignorant
of that which is to come in a day, and another in which
reside the secrets of the universe, of time, and of eternity.
The preacher, in speaking to Unitarians specially, com
menced his address to us in a tone of exhortation, and closed
it in that of rebuke. And what was the ground and subject
of rebuke ? Why, the smaUness of our numbers. He ex
horted us on our want of humihty, of modesty, in opposing
the whole Christian world. I wondered, if I were in a place
of Protestant worship, or if I heard an advocate for the right
of private judgment. My mind, as by a spell, was thrown
back upon the early and infant history of Christianity ; I saw
the disciples going forth on that opposing world, of which
their master had given them no enticing picture; I saw Peter
at Antioch, and Paul harassed and toil-worn at Rome and
Athens ; I heard the cry of the vulgar, and the sarcasms
of the philosophical, going forth in prolonged utterance in
condemnation of the strange doctrine ; I visioned before
me the little knots of Christians, bound to each other in love,
holding their own faith, despite of multitudes and despite of
antiquity, fronting the world's scorn and the world's perse
cution. I thought of Luther, standing, as he confessed,
against the world, an admission which was made one of the
strongest arguments against him, — an argument that there
are piles of divinity to maintain on the one side, and to repel
on the other. I thought on the persecution of the Waldenses
and the Albigenses ; I saw them, few, and scattered, and

22 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
shivering, and dying, in their Alpine solitudes: for perse
cution, like the sun, enters into every nook. I thought of
the early struggle of Protestantism in this country, — of La
timer, of Cranmer, and of Ridley; I thought of these
honest and right-noble beings given, by a barbarous bigotry,
to a death of infamy ; delivered over to the fires of Smithfield ;
perishing amidst vulgar yells ; not only abandoned, but con
demned, by episcopal domination. I remembered having
read, in the Life of Saint Francis Xavier, precisely similar
objections made against him by the bonzas of Japan. I also
considered how many societies at present send missionaries to
the Heathen, I considered that, amidst the populousness of
India, the Brahmins might make a similar objection with
much greater force. Our fathers, they might say, never
heard these things ; our people repudiate them.
But notwithstanding such general objections, we do not
withhold our admiration from Xavier and such self-denying
men who were willing to spend and be spent so that they might
make known the glory of Christ ; we rejoice in seeing men
thus forget their persons in love to their principles, and in
Doctor Carey standing alone, preaching under a tree opposite
to Juggernaut — we recognize with joy the impersonation of
Christian sincerity and Christian phUanthrophy. If numbers
were the proof of truth, what changeful shapes might not truth
assume to meet the humour of the multitude ! And we hear
the immortal Chillingworth — the first of logicians, the most
charitable of polemics — thus replying to one of his assailants :
" You obtrude upon us," says he, " that when Luther
began, he being yet but one, opposed himself to all, as weU
subjects as superiors. If he did so in the cause of God it was
heroically done of him. This had been without hyperbolizing,
Mundus contra Athanasium et Athanasius contra mundum,.
Neither is it so impossible that the whole world should so far
lie in wickedness (as St. John speaks,) that it may be lawful
and noble for one man to oppose the world. But yet were

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 23
we put to our oaths, we should not surely testify any such
thing for you ; for how can we say properly that he opposed
himself to all unless we could say also that all opposed them
selves to him ?" The same noble writer goes on to say " that
though no man before him lifted up his voice as Luther did,
yet who can assure us but that many before him both thought
and spake in the lower voice of petitions and remonstrances
in many points as he did ?"— One fact at least must be con
ceded, and we are entitled to any advantage it implies, that
it is more painful and self-sacrificing to be of the few than of
the many, that there is far mor^Ss^j^ endure in being a little
flock, than of the great multitude ; and that in maintaining
with all honesty our opinions in the face of the world's
odium and the world's revilings, in despite of popular outcry
and theological accusation, if no other virtues, we can surely
claim those of sincerity and fortitude, of moral courage and
moral consistency.
The preacher alluded to the ransom which Christ paid for
sinners, and comjDared it to that which anciently was given in
exchange for slaves. The question is, to whom were man
kind slaves ? To whom or what was the purchase-ransom to
be paid ? Was this slavery to sin, to Satan, or to God ?
Whosoever or whatsoever held the captive, must, of course,
receive the price of redemption. To which of these was it
due, and how holds the analogy ? I leave the subject with
the lecturer.
I now turn to what is greatly more agreeable in this dis
cussion, the statement that we hold Christ to have been
morally perfect. To this we assent with all our conscience,
with aUour hope, and with all our hearts. We regard him
as pure and perfect in every thought and word. We see him
with a holy piety iUuminating his whole character and con
duct. We see him, in solitude and society, holding com
munion with his Father and our Father, his God and our
God. We see him in darkest moments, in periods of

24 THERE is ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
deepest anguish, maintaining a hopeful and a trustful spirit ;
in every affliction holding true to his love for God and man.
We see him with a patience that toiled for all, and never
tired. We see him plodding through every thankless labour,
which here can find no recompense, except it be that wherein
the act itself is a blessing to the Spirit. We see him in vex
ation and sorrow; and, whilst we gaze upon his tranquil
brow, we feel our stormy passions silenced into peace. We
see him in his struggles and temptations, and we feel how
poor and pitiful are our deepest griefs op sorest trials com
pared with his. We regard him in the greatness of his bene
volence, and we hear from his lips such words as never man
spake before. We behold him, whose soul was never tainted
with sin, turn most mercifully on the repentant sinner,
striking the heart with rending anguish, yet filling the eye
with sweetest and most hopeful tears. We see him with a
bosom throbbing with all human charities, and an ear open
to every cry of woe and wretchedness. We see him in all
unselfish sacrifices, and aU generous labours ; and regarding
our nature in him as most lovely, most glorious, and most
triumphant, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
We see him as the most perfect image of his Father ; and the
first, among all his brethren, filled with the inspiration of
God, and spreading it forth abundantly on the souls of
men. Amongst other wrongs to Christ, we are accused of taking
away all motives of love to him. It may be fair, then, to ask,
for what do Trinitarians love him ? 'And it may be also fair
to ask, what is it in him that moves their affections which may
not equally move ours ? They cannot love Christ the God in
the same sense or on the same grounds on which they love
Christ the man. For what, then, do they love Christ the
man, or Christ the mediator, for which, in that aspect, we may
not love him as deeply and as truly ? Is it for his many and
great labours ? On even the orthodox doctrine, these were the

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 25
toils of the manhood and not of the godhead. Is it for his suf
ferings ? The God could not suffer, could not be weary, could
not be persecuted, could not die, could neither be hooted nor
crucified ; if, therefore, aU the strongest motives of love to
Christ be founded in his humanity, then I assert we have all
these motives. On any supposition, it was not the second
person of the godhead that bent his bleeding head on Cal
vary, it was the man Christ Jesus. If it be said that Unita
rian views do not move the heart, we have only with sorrow
to confess, that no views of Christ's nature or character move
us practicaUy as they ought ; and for the small results which
his doctrines have produced amongst us, we, with others,
have reason to bend down our heads in deepest humiliation :
but we solemnly deny that our convictions about Christ
have any tendency to produce such an effect. In the case of
wrong, the fault is in ourselves, and not in our doctrines.
II. Having thus explained our views on Christ as a man,
I shall occupy the remaining part of this discourse by stating,
as briefly as I can, the difference between Trinitarians and
ourselves on his character as a mediator.
What are the religious needs of man ? says the Trinitarian.
Consequently, What is the office of the Messiah ? If we
take the Calvinistic scheme, and at present that is the most
popular, the reply would be, or should be, thus : — There is a
decree of eternal election and reprobation by which miUions,
before the foundation of the world, were destined to be saved
or lost. The numbers were fixed, and could neither be en
larged or diminished. For the salvation of the elect, and
these only, the second person in the godhead became in
carnate : them he purchased with his blood, and the rest
were left to perish. The elect entered into life with the seal
of predestination on their birth, redeemed, to be justified, to
be sanctified, and finally to be glorified. The remainder
came into the same life burdened with the imputation of a
sin committed centuries previous to their existence. Fore-

26 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
doomed to perdition, overpassed by the Fatlier, and disre
garded by the Son, and unvisited by the Holy Spirit, they
die in their sins, enter on their predetermined destiny, and,
to use the tremendous language of the Athanasian Creed,
" perish everlastingly."
In this statement, I do no wrong to Calvinism, and scarcely
justice. It might CEisily be made more dark, and without a
whit of controversial exaggeration. But if this be a true idea
of Christianity, it is a system of terror and not of mercy, an
anathema and not a blessing, the fiat of universal wrath and
not the words of universal mercy, the proclamation from an
austere and angry Deity and not a remedy for a weak and
erring humanity. Orthodoxy in this scheme, instead of en
dearing Christ to the human heart, alienates and removes him
from it ; instead of making him an encouragement, renders
him a terror ; instead of placing him before us as the imper
sonation of almighty clemency, through him proclaims an
almighty vindictiveness ; places Jesus out of the sphere of
human affections, and wrenches him from the worn and suf
fering heart of man. On the orthodox principle, he is out
from us, £md not of us. He is alone in his own mysterious
nature. Our affections are perplexed, and our heads are be
wildered. To offer our sympathy, or to look for his, would
be the very climax of presumption. He is in no proper sense
identified witii us, or aUied to us. His example is more an
accident than an essential of his work. The substance of liis
work, on the orthodox scheme, might have taken place in the
most secret recesses of the universe ; and God would be sa
tisfied, and the elect would be redeemed.*
What, says Unitarianism, are the moral wants of man ?
Consequently, what is the mediator he requires ?
Rehgion, we maintain, was made for man, and not man
for religion, Tlie mediator, therefore, which we require, is
one who would guide and not confound our nature; who
• See Note 2.

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 27
would ennoble but not perplex it. We would look for a
mediator by whom we should receive the light and truth of
God and heaven to our souls. We need to see the capa
cities, the duties, and the destinies of our kind, in one
who is perfectly, but yet simply, of ourselves. Our sor
rows, our sufferings, and our darkness, we regard as but so
many reasons why our Redeemer and Saviour should be
entirely of our own kind. We require one who would mani
fest to all that God is really interested in us. We require
one who would show that we are not shut out from com
munion with the infinite, the invisible, and the future. We
require one who would correct our evils, and yet resolve our
doubts. We require one who could sympathize with our
weakness. We require one who would show us of what our
nature is capable, and thus flash upon us the guilt of our de
ficiencies, or inspire us with the hope of advancement. We
are feeble, and need strength ; we are tempted, and need sup
port. Jesus proves to us that the strength is in us, if we use
it ; and that the support is at hand, if we choose to apply it.
In our transgressions, we are but too much inclined to yield
to, or justify ourselves with, a guilty sophistry ; but our views
of Jesus leave us no room for such delusion. Whilst Trini-
tarianism places most of our religious wants afar off and out
side us, Unitarianism fixes them within us. Whilst Trini-
tarianism demands a Christ which shall reconcile God to us,
Unitarianism holds a Christ which shall conform us to God :
— to us his word and work is a spirit of life, his word and
work to them but dogma or mystery.
Upon our views, Christ is properly a mediator ; on those
of orthodoxy, he can bear no such character : compounded
of Deity and humanity, he is truly of neither. It is said
that we have no need of Christ ; that, in fact, he has no pur
pose in our system ; that he might be taken from it without
creating any loss. We maintain the contrary. We main
tain that Christ is our all in all ; that he is the impersonation

28 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
of our rehgion, that he is bodUy our Christianity. Whilst
others principally regard him in the retrospect, we have him
as a present and a hving reahty. Whilst others trust him
for what he has done, we love him for what he was. Whilst
others make his nature the subject of hard and abstruse dog
mas, we hold it forth as the subject of affectionate contem
plation. Whilst others propose faith, we propose imitation
as the greatest virtue. We look upon him as the Instructor
in our moral doubts ; the enlightener of our ignorance,
which, in so many cases, press down our hearts respecting
the general course of Providence and our future destiny ; of
our ignorance respecting God, and aU that belongs to the
future, the Past, and the Invisible.
The Past, yea, and the present also, is fiUed, we confess,
with difficulties that alarm our fears, and call forth our sor
rows. And it is only when we look to Christ as really and
simply human that we have any tangible consolation, or any
solid support. The trials or temptations or sufferings of a
God are not only repugnant to our reasons, but foreign to
our hearts. Such ideas can create no confidence, and there
fore can afford no ground of sympathy — and no ground of
hope, of strength, or of consolation. If one who is a God
— were temptation to such a being possible — overcomes
temptation, on what grounds can any other conclude he
can resist it ? — If one who is a God resists indignity with
quietude and calmness, on what ground can another make
such conduct an example ? — If one who is a God meets
agony and death with confident and fearless mind — know
ing that his life is safe in eternal beatitude — on what possible
principles of reason or expectation can this be a conso
lation or hope to feeble mortals ? — If a God by his own
inherent power rise from the dead, by what logic of faith or
inteUect are we to conclude man as man is to live for ever ?
It is only then upon our principles that I think he can pro
perly fulfil the offices that pertain to his character as Me-

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 29
diator, that he can be our Teacher, that he can be our Ex
emplar, that he can be the Discloser of our duties and our
destinies, that he can be at the same time a revealer and a
revelation, that he can be the foundation of our hope and the
source of our str.-jngth : — that he can, I say, be our Teacher ;
for what is necessary to the position of a moral instructor ?
not merely to be able to announce truth, but to announce it
with living effect. The being who suffered no pain would
have no power in preaching fortitude. Sympathy is neces
sary to confidence, and confidence is necessary to moral in
fluence. Christ in his simple humanity has a power which
we could not give to him, supposing he was of a compound
constitution. Without this belief that he was simply and
naturally man, his instructions have small effect, and his
actions have no reality. — Moreover, I assert it is only in
this view he can be our exemplar, I mean the ideal, or re
presentative of what we ought to be, or of what in a more
perfect condition we will be : for it is utterly and outrage
ously absurd to propose as the pattern of human conduct or
human hopes, one who had in the same person the might
and security of a Deity with the dangers and the trials of a
man : and in truth it is outrageously absurd to say he could
have such dangers and trials at all, — it would not be a
.idystery but a mockery : — and, lastly, I contend, that it is
our views — weakly I have expressed them — ^which bring to the
human spirit most of strength and most of comfort. They give
consistency and sublimity to his communion with God, and to
his revealings of another world. They give immeasurable value
to his miracles. They put the seal of divine confirmation on
his resurrection as the pledge of human immortality. He is
then our Instructor in every doubt ; our Consolation in every
sorrow ; our Strength in the griefs of Hfe, and our Support
in the fears of death. We see him in his own ennobling
and sanctifying human nature, and by his impressive and vital
energy sending out from him the power for its redemption.

so THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
The character of God, as revealed in Christ's teaching,
and manifested by Christ's life, in the Unitarian faith, is not
only discerned vrith a clearer light, but commands a more
sacred reverence, as well as a more willing love. He that
hath seen me, says the Saviour, hath seen the Father, Now
we beHeve this expression to be fuU of profoundest truth, if
we receive it as a moral revelation ; but orthodoxy reduces it
to a mystical enigma, and robs it of meaning and of value.
We discern God through Christ as a Father, universal, mer
ciful, good, holy, and all-powerful. This we collect from
the teachings of Christ ; we could never deduce it from the
teachings of Calvinism. If we turn to the teachings of
Christ, we hear of a Father impartifd and unbounded ; if we
turn to the teachings of Calvinism, •we read of a God that,
in any benignant sense, is but father to a few, and these few
purchased by the agonies of innocence ; if we turn to the
teachings of Christ, we are instructed of a Father who is
merciful, and that mercy is proposed to us as the most per
fect object of imitation; if we turn to the teachings of
Calvinism, we are told of a Father who properly cannot be
merciful at all, for the good he gives has been purchased,
and is the equivalent of a price ; a Father, I repeat, whose
good-win is paid for ; the primary element in whose character,
as drawn in many popular creeds and formularies, is a stem
wrath, falsely called justice ; the imitation of which, in the
creature, would turn earth into a darker heU than ever theo
logy visioned. If we turn to the teachings of Christ, we find
in them a Father supremely good, holding towards aU his
creatures a benignant aspect; who, when his children ask
for bread will not give them a stone, — who casts with equal
hand the shower and the sun-shine ; who rules in the
heavens with glory, and in earth -with bounty; who hears
the raven's cry as well as the Seraph's song. If we turn to
Calvinism we are informed of a Deity who has seen the ruin
and the wreck of his own workmanship, and pronounced a

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 31
curse over that which he did not choose to prevent; we are
told that all creatures sicken under that original curse ; that
earth feels it to her centre; that it spreads a frown over
heaven, and roars with a voice of destruction in the thunder
and the tempest ; that living creatures throughout all their
countless tribes, suffer by it ; that it pursues man from the
first tears of infancy to the last pang of death. If we turn
to the teachings of Jesus, we are taught that God is most
holy; we are placed before that invisible Being who searches
the heart, and sees it in its last recesses. Thus piercing to
the very source of action, Christ makes guilt and holiness in
ward and personal, inflicts on the criminal the full penalty,
and secures to rectitude its great reward: covering the
one with moral hideousness, and the other with exceeding
beauty. If we turn to the teachings of Calvinism, sin is con
tracted by imputation, and righteousness is acquired by im
putation also. The lost endure the penalty of guilt in their
own persons, the elect endure it by substitution, in the person
of another. If we turn to the teachings of Jesus, we have a
Father whose power is infinite as his goodness, in which we
trust for the redemption and perfection of the universe. If
we turn to the teachings of Calvinism, we see God consigning
a vast portion of his rational creation to eternal sin and mi
sery, and therefore, if we would save his benevolence we
are constrained to sacrifice his power. Christ, Saint Paul de
clares, is the image of God ; but if the Father be the avenger,
and Christ the victim, he is not his image, but his contrast,
and then our souls, instead of ascending to God in love, turn
from him, and fix all their sympathies on Christ. As Unita
rians apprehend him, we conceive him in perfect union with
the Father, imaging, with resplendent sweetness, the attri
butes of his Father's character. In the compassion, in the
benevolence, in the purity, and in the miracles of Christ, we
have revealed to us the goodness, the holiness, and the power

32 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
of God; upon the cahn and gracious countenance of Jesus we
may read the glory of God, and, as in a stainless mirror, be
hold the scheme of his providence.
Place these views side by side with common experience
and human feehng, and which, I ask, is the most consistent ?
Who, in a healthy state of mind, has any compunction because
Adam sinned — but who, with his moral emotions awakened, is
not anxious to know what is the duty of man here, and what
his destiny hereafter ? By which scheme, I inquire, are these
momentous problems best resolved ? Testing these views by
the common experience to which I have appealed, taking its
ordinary convictions as the standard, I may fairly inquire,
whether our principles are not consistent in their hopes, and
high and pure in their consolations ? Comparing each with the
history and life of Christ, I have no doubt of what would
be the result, if system or dogmatism did not interfere with
our convictions. Regarding Christ as our perfect, im
mortal, but human Brother, we have the Uving evidence that
God is our Father, and Heaven is our Home. — Our views
of Christ makes his history of most precious value to us —
his life, his death, his crucifixion and his resurrection — Christ
becomes to us the great interpreter of Providence, equally
of its fears and hopes. He becomes to us the symbol
of humanit}', equally of its grief and glory — near his cross
we weep over death, and at his tomb we rejoice in the cer
tainty of hfe. In Christ crucified, we see our nature in
its earthly humiliation; in Christ glorified, we behold it in its
immortal triumph. As Jesus on the cross sets forth our sorrow,
so Jesus from the tomb sets forth our hope. Identified with
Jesus in the one, we are also identified with him in the other.
We behold " the man," and in that man we behold the two
solemn stages of our nature, the struggle of affliction and
the glory of success. — We see the man of sorrow and the man
of joy — the man of earth, and the man of heaven — the man of
death and the man of immortality. We are made more

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 33

assured of that doctrine to which we fly in every painful turn
of life — and in which we seek a deeper and kinder refuge as
years and troubles gather over us. Without this persuasion
we feel ourselves creatures weak and desolate ; when our
pleasures here have sunk, when our hopes here have long
since died, how much would we, in this wilderness, desire to
lay our heads, as Jacob did, on a cold stone, if like Jacob
we beheld an opened heaven ; but how much more sweetly
may we look upon the risen and the living face of Jesus. He
was of ourselves. He was identified with us. I see then in
Jesus, not the illustration of an argument or of a theory.
I see in him the embodiment of human goodness, human
affections, and human hopes, and human capacities, and
human destinies. When, especially, I think of human suf
fering, some necessary and some blameless, — when I behold
the ignorant and the vicious, the ignorant and the wretched
pining away in a crowded solitude, — when I see the man of
weary years and many adversities, seeking at last but some
spot in which to die, — when I see a sickened wretch, tired
of existence, poor, indigent, cold and naked, the victim of
almost every want and grief, toiling through life and shivering
into death, — when I see laborious age, after few enjoy
ments of either soul or sense, lying at last on the bed where
the weary are at rest, where at last the still small voice of
Christ is more desired than all the logic of polemics, — when
I see multitudes with dead, or dormant, or perverted energies
— benevolent ardour wasted, or most honourable philan
thropy defeated, — when I consider the thousands, and the
tens of thousands of human beings chained to a dark fatality
in the destiny of moral and physical circumstances — the igno
rance, the bondage, the cruelties, the unrevealed wretched
ness without a name heaped on the heads of myriads, gene
ration after generation, — when 1 think of unspeaking and
unspeakable agonies lurking in every corner of civihzed
society — hereditary penury, unavoidable ruin, unforeseen
c

34 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
misfortune, the pangs of noble minds struggling in vain
against dependence ; the writhings of dying hearts, concealing
their last sighs from watching friends, the stifled laments
of honest virtue cast forth on over-grown cities and popu
lations, where sufferer after sufferer sink unheard in the
noise of indifferent miUions, — when I remember unrewarded
toil, fine spirits crushed, and fair names blighted, — ^when I
see the enjoyment of the worthless and the prosperity of the
vicious, the success of the worst passions, and the basest
plans, the triumph of wickedness over truth and virtue, —
when I reflect seriously and solemnly on the strange sights
which this world has seen — the persecutor on the throne
and the martyr at the stake, the patriot on the scaffold and
the tyrant on the bench — the honest man ruined, and the vil
lain the gainer, — I have before me, I admit, a dark and startling
problem. In the dying Christ I have the difficulties : in the
risen Christ I have their solution. In Christ on the cross I
see our crucified humanity — in Christ risen and ascending
I see the same humanity glorified ; at the cross of Jesus my
heart would sink, but at his empty grave my hope is settled
and my sold at ease. I go to that vacant tomb, and there I
am shown that the bands of death are loosed, and the gates
of glory are lifted up. Near Jesus on the cross, I have
but thick clouds and darkness ; in Jesus risen the shadows
are melted, and the gloom is lost in brightness, and the sun
which burst it shines forth more resplendent — the blackness
of the sky breaks forth into light, and the wrath of the
ocean softens into peace, the curtain of mist is folded up,
and a lovely world bursts upon my gaze. When I stand
at the cross I have man imaged in fears, in struggles and
in death. I have around me our nature in its crimes
and passions; but when I see the ascending and glorified
Christ, I behold humanity in its most triumphant hopes : —
When I stand over the silent tomb of Jesus, and would weep,
as if aU beneath and beyond the skies were hopeless, a light

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS, 35
shines out from the darkness, and throws a halo of peace
about the desponding soul. In Christ crucified, believing
him human, simply human, I feel around me the right of
man — in Christ risen, believing him also human, I exult in un
clouded and unsetting light : — near Christ crucified, I tremble
with exceeding fear; near Christ glorified, I am comforted
with exceeding joy — and in each case because I feel he is
truly and simply human.
In both parts of his life and history we have opposing
aspects of Providence. But if in his sufferings we have the
pillar of cloud, in his glory we have the pillar of fire ; and in
this wilderness pilgrimage we are saddened and solemnized
by the one, — enlightened and guided by the other. Christ
crucified and Christ glorified, united in our faith and feelings,
identified with our natufe, our history, and our race, opens
views to the Christian's soul, not only of consolation but of
triumph, that defy expression. It pours light and hope and
dignity on universal destiny and on every individual condi
tion. In analogy with God's material creation in its work
ings, it shows glory arising out of humiliation, and renovated
beauty from apparent destruction — it shows in man as in
nature; — the world of grandeur, of purity, and of softness —
born in the throes of chaotic formation ; the streams of
spring filled with the year's rejoicing gushing out of the
frozen fountains of winter; the fresh, and bright, and peaceful
morning generated in the midnight storm. If these views of
Christ are seated in our hearts and faith : if we truly identify
ourselves with one as with the other : feeling that in each
case Christ is simply and perfectly our brother, — what can
deaden our hope, and what can sever us from duty? Though
friends be absent and enemies be fierce, and pain wreck our
frames and poverty lay bare our dwellings, and disappoint
ment wait on our struggles, and grief thicken heavily on our
souls, in Christ suffering there is our worst extremity ;
in Christ glorified there is that worst extremity redeemed
c 2

36 THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR
into the fulness of salvation; in Christ we see personified
our entire humanity, except its sins; in him we behold
its subjection and its triumph. View its pains in his
humiliation, and its future prospects in his victory, and
what a glory does it not spread upon our race ? Is there a
single track of the past on which it does not rain showers of
light — on which it does not leave the persuasion of immortal
and universal existence ? By Christ's doctrines and his life
we are led to the conclusion that no human existence has
been ever spent in vain ; that of all the vast ocean of intelli
gent beings with which generations have flooded the earth ;
that in that vast universe of life, one heart has never panted
without a purpose ; that no thought ever started into being,
not a throb of misery, not a solitary charity, not a silent prayer,
not an honest effort, not a fervent wish or desire, not a single
good intention, not a single instance of sacrifice or worth,
ever existed to be destroyed, but that on the contrary they have
been transferred to more genial scenes in another world, and
left seeds for better fruits in this. Believing on Christ the cru
cified and the glorified, and still regarding him as the image
of God, it is pleasant to dwell equally upon the past and
upon the future ; to think of the good and true who suffered
here for virtue, collected hereafter in all the unity of peace,
having escaped the fightings of earth, settled in the joys of
heaven. But why confine ourselves to the excellent and the
great ? The glory of Christ proclaims life to all ; it attracts
to itself whosoever lived or suffered on earth, all that ever
will live or suffer. Into what a glory has Christ then not
entered : go to the most seclusive church-yard : worlds there
moulder in the smallest space ; within its range as many
sleep as might have peopled an empire, and in a few steps we
may walk over miUions. Beneath those pacings what parents
and children, and companions, have mouldered ? What
friendships, and hopes, and energies have melted in this
simple dust ?

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 3?
But why say a Church-yard ? AU earth is a grave. The
world is sown with bodies: is futurity as fiUed with souls ? Is
this spot on which we breathe for a moment a mere speck be
tween two eternities of infinite nothingness ? Have the ge
nerations as they vanished, sunk into eternal sleep, so that
" It is finished" should be the proper epitaph of aU departed
humanity ? Christ alone gives the full solution of this awful
problem ; and this solution is clear and consolatory, as we
feel him to be of ourselves. He is thus the great type of our
death and of our life, throwing light over the grave, and open
ing to our faith a growing and everlasting future, — where all
exist, the great and good to^more perfect, and the evil to be
redeemed, — and where every stream that flows on to eternity
wiU bear along with it a fresh burden of joy and beauty.
Jesus the crucified, and Jesus the glorified, of simple but holy
humanity, is the great interpreter of the past and the future,
and by him interpreted, how glorious are the words, all our
memories on earth and our hopes in heaven.

APPENDIX.

I THINK it right to state here that one or two passages are printed in
the lecture, which, as time was failing, I passed over in the delivery.
They affect in nowise the general import or argument. I thought it
possible that one sentence in reference to Mr. Jones's lecture would
require to be expunged ; but having now read the lecture in print, I
see the sentence may stand. Mr. Jones defined with clearness and
accuracy his belief in Christ's humanity — ^that Christ was really a
man, " that he had a corporeal and mental existence like our own,"
" that he possessed a body of flesh and blood, such as is common to
our race," " that in that body dwelt a rational soul, to whose voli
tions it was subject,'' " that he was conceived in the womb, and born
a helpless infant, and dependent on the care of his parents through
the whole of his childhood and youth."* Here, then, we have a set
of qualities in the man Christ Jesus, which from their very nature
must have commenced with his earthly life. Thus defined, the lecturer
afterwards goes on to say that " though there was nothing in his cor
poreal or mental powers essentially dififerent from other men, yet were
there certain peculiarities connected with his perfect manhood, which it
is of momentous consequence that we should know and believe. "f
" First, he possessed moral perfection." On this all Unitarians are
agreed. Secondly, the lecturer noticed the miraculous conception. On
this we have differences amongst us. Now a fAirrfpecuharity was also
marked, which by the order of the lecturer's argument we are entitled
to rank with the others as belonging to the manhood of Christ. Mr.
Jones is still speaking of the man Christ Jesus, and yet the third pecu
liarity is alleged to be his pre-existence. But if to have been bom of a
woman, if to have had a corporeal and mental existence like our own,
were essentials of his humanity, then this is a flat contradiction ; if this
attribute were meant to apply to him as God, we should have been told
• Lect. pp. 219, 220. f Lect. p. 222.

APPENDIX. 3^
SO ; and even then, the distinction would be wholly powerless, for
no one thinks of comparing other men with Jesus as God. Mr.
Jones does not introduce that portion of his subject until we have
passed over several pages.* The analogy of body and soul in man
is incessantly used to illustrate a two-fold nature in Christ. Nothing
can be more fallacious. It breaks down at every step; for if it be
used to signify the possible union of two different elements in one
being, then Christ is not two-fold but three-fold, there are in his person
the divine soul and the human soul, and in addition to all, the human
body. If it be used to signify the miion of two natures in one person,
the soul and body are not two distinct natures, in the sense required,
and therefore can neither illustrate nor prove thedogmaticalcomplexity
ascribed to Christ. Every nature that we know is composite, but it is
one thing to be compounded of various qualities, and another to be a
union of in-econcileable ones. If man had two souls in one body,
so perfectly united as to make a single person, and yet that one
should be ignorant of what the other knew, then we should have an
illustration that would be correct and intelligible. Mr. Jones uses
the following illustration, to shew that we distinguish between the
body and the soul when we do not express the distinction in words.
" If we say,'' he observes, " that a neighbour is sick, or in pain, or
hungry, or thirsty, or in want, we mean that his body is sick, or in pain,
or hungry, or thirsty, or in want, and no one for a moment supposes
that we refer to his soul. And if, on the other hand, we say that a
man is learned, or ignorant, wise or unwise, happy or miserable,
humble or proud, it is equally obvious that we refer to the soul, and
not to the hody."\ No such distinction is known either in grammar or
philosophy, and the laws of thought as well as those of language
equally repudiate it. A man may be healthy or sick by means of the
excellence or defect of his body, but the assertion is made of the
man as a person. He may in like manner be wise or ignorant by
means of the excellence or defects of the faculties of his soul ; but
again, the assertion is of the person. And, indeed, if we were to
speak with severe and metaphysical precision, every instance which
the preacher has adduced should be predicated of the Soul, for so far
as they are sensations, they belong properly to the soul ; and the body
is but their medium or instrument. By the laws, then, both of
thought and language, whatever Christ affirms of himself, he affirms
* Lecture, p. 233. f Lecture, p. 244.

40 APPENDIX.
of his person, be the elements what they may that enter into its
constitution. But how are we to think of the dogma for which such
hair-splitting distinctions are adduced ; distinctions which, had not
the solemnity of the subject forbidden the use of ridicule, might be
shown by all forms of speech to be as incongruous as they are
puerile, and as ridiculous as they are false.
Note on John xii. See page 8.
On the supposition of our Lord's simple humanity, this chapter
exhibits a most sublime revelation of his nature. On any other hy
pothesis it loses all its moral beauty, and leaves us nothing but in
consistency. The belief of his simple human nature gives a more
sacred awe to the circumstances in which he was placed, explains to
us those struggles and workings of his inmost soul, which were deep
ening the bitterness of his hour of travail. We can then appreciate
the grandeur with which, in the spirit of duty, he arose to meet the
approaching storm ; and we can also appreciate the tenderness and
sensibihty with which he shrunk for a moment from the anguish that
awaited him. To say that the godhead withdrew its support from
him is a solution unintelligible in any sense. For through every
moment of his existence he must have been conscious of his proper
Deity, or he was not ; if he was, why tremble ? if not, then during
that period his godhead was virtually extinguished, and he remained
simply man. But every utterance of his in this profound chapter is
truly human, — breathings of that nature from its inmost recessse,
strong in duty, but struggling with fear and grief.
There is no period of our Lord's mission in which we see so
profound a solemnity around him. He had come from the quiet and
hospitable home of his friends in Bethany, had made his public and
triumphant entry into Jerusalem, but the awful close and consumma
tion was at hand ; he knew that these hosannahs would scarcely have
died on the ear, before their change into hootings and revilings ; and
the hands which spread the palm were ready to drag him to the
cross. The next day was big with sorrows and tortures. The mys
teries of death and the grave were to be resolved ; and it is no
dishonour to our Lord to suppose such a prospect should fill his heart
with trouble ; for the most finely constituted nature is ever the most
sensitive, and those who perceive clearly and vividly, apprehend cir
cumstances which it never enters into coarser minds to discern. In
proportion as our personal sensations are acute, is the victory of dutv

41
APPENDIX. ^*
noble that overcomes them, in the same proportion also is the
strength of submission, or the beauty of patience. With these
views, we can well interpret for our consolation and example the
anguished exclamation of Christ, — " Now is my soul troubled, and
what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this
cause came I to this hour."
If Christ were God as well as man, words like these are abso
lutely unaccountable ; and as we cannot be so profane as to think
that Christ spoke for mere effect, we have only to conclude that it was
the fervent and simple exclamation of a being who felt he needed
help from Heaven. This were impiety of the darkest die, if Jesus in
one portion of his ovsm person was infinite and omnipotent.
Note 1, see page 18.
" Priestley, loaded with glory, was modest enough to be
astonished at his good fortune, and at the multitude of beautiful
facts which nature seemed to reveal to him alone. He forgot
that her favours were not gratuitous, and that if she had so
well explained herself, it was because he had known how to con
strain her by his indefatigable perseverance in questioning her, and
by a thousand ingenious means of wresting from her her answers.
Others carefully conceal what they owe to accident. Priestley seemed
to wish to ascribe to it all his merit. He records, with unexampled
cjindour, how many times he had profited by it without knowing it,
how many times he was in possession of new substances without
having perceived them ; and he never concealed the erroneous views
which sometimes directed his efforts, and which he renounced only
from experience. These confessions did honour to his modesty,
without disarming jealousy. Those whose views and methods had
never led them to discovery, called him a mere maker of experiments,
without method, and without an object : — " It is not astonishing,"
they added, " that among so many trials and combinations he should
find some that were successful. But real natural Philosophers were
not duped by these selfish criticisms." — After some remarks on
Priestley's changes in religious opinions, and tracing rapidly his
progress from fiercest Calvinism to simple humanitarjanism, he thus
beautifully describes the close of his laborious life : — " His last mo
ments were full of those feelings of piety which animated his whole
life, and the improper controul of which had been the foundation of
all his errors. He caused the gospel to be read to him, and thanked
God for having allowed him to lead an useful life, and granted him

42 APPENDIX.
a peaceful death. Among the list of the principal blessings, he
ranked that of having personally known almost all his contempo
raries. ' 1 am going to sleep as you do,' said he to his grand-chil
dren, who were brought to him, ' but we shall wake again together,
and, I hope, to eternal happiness ;' thus evincing in what belief he
died. These were his last words. Such was the end of that man,
whom his enemies accused of wishing to overthrow all morality and
rehgion, and yet whose greatest error was to mistake his vocation,
and to attach too much importance to his individual sentiments in
matters when the most important of all feelings ought to be the love
of peace."*
The Edinburgh Review, f from which this extract is taken, intro
duces it with the following liberal and generous remarks : —
" We cannot pass unnoticed the Eloge of Dr. Priestley, which
brought his biographer into the field of theological discussion, and
which deserves to be studied in a country where the Character of that
extraordinary man, both as a Philosopher and a Christian, has been
so greatly misrepresented.
The conclusion of the following extract is earnestly recommended
to the consideration of those pious men who have been misled by the
intolerant spirit of the day; and who, awJending their aid, without
being conscious of what they are douig, to break the cords of affection
which ought to unite the professors of our common Christianity.
Note 2, see page 26.
A great mass of the rehgious world, in the orthodox meaning of that
phrase, is now called evangelical, and although that term, I admit, does
not necessarily imply absolute Calvinism, yet, in point of fact, the
greater number of those whom it designates are Calvinists. The
opponents of Calvinism are often accused of misrepresenting it. For
this reason I have endeavoured here to malce it speak for itself — bysome
of its principal formularies, by one or two of its popular writers, and
by the author of it himself, in his own words, — Many will say they
hold no such sentiments : for the sake of human nature 1 sincerely
believe them ; if I thought such a faith (the terms being understood)
could be extensively entertained, confidence in my species would be
turned into fear. But, notwithstanding, many opinions which they
do hold, logically pursued, lead directly to the conclusions contained
* Cuvier's Eloge on Priestley. ^ No. 126 1836.

APPENDIX.

43

in the extracts, the writers of which were perfectly consistent with
their system. Numbers who are called Calvinists, I am aware, not
only do not believe its worst doctrines, but do not understand
them. In the statement, however, of opinionsj we cannot be guided
by individual feelings, except in cases where we have individual pro
test to the contrary. The members of the Church of England may
object to the Westminster confession of Faith, not being a formulary
of their Church : it is, however, the sworn authority of a large body
of clergy with whom, when purpose needs, they refuse not to hold
friendly communion. It is, however, an accurate digest of Cal
vinism : in that relation I have used it, — to such of the English clergy
as are not Calvinists it can have no reference. I wish to quote it as
a theological, and not as an ecclesical authority. But the seventeenth
article of the English Church, though softened in expression, is the
same in sense. Burnet I know has made the unsuccessfiil effort to
suit it to both sides for the sake of tender consciences ; but that
must be a most convenient and comprehensive latitude of phreiseology
which can sound all the notes of the theological scale, from high
Calvinism down to low Arminianism. That the meaning of the article
is properly Calvinistic, is plain from the times in which it was composed,
from the opinions of the men who drew it up, and from the terms in
which it is expressed. Yet many thousand ministers with all varieties
and shades of opinions, solemnly affirm they believe it, although the
law demands that the articles shall be taken in their plain and gram
matical sense. This is one proof of the consistency of creeds. I
quote one author, Boston, who seems actually to feast and luxuriate
amidst the dark monstrosities which he pictures ; his spirit appears to
bound, and his heart to exult within him, at the sound of the dread
ful trumpet which calls the wicked to their final doom ; and one can
almost imagine the rapture of his eye, as in fancy he saw the flame
kindling, and the smoke of torment arising in which they were to
burn for ever. In his description of hell he displays no ordinary
degree of graphic and geographical talent, and when he comes to
paint the sufferings of damned bodies, he is so accurate and anato
mical, that as Paley at 60 learned anatomy, to write on natural the
ology, you would suppose that Boston learned it to enlarge with cor
rectness on the physical tortures of the lost. I wish not to fix his
opinions upon any man or body of men ; substantially, however, they
are no raoie than Calvinism, though some might object to his mode
of expressing them. This I may fairiy say to any of those who do

44 APPENDIX.
not agree with Boston in their Calvinism, and would yet fix the
Improved Version on us, that they are as bound to receive the one
as we the other. Nay, more so, inasmuch as Boston's work is in
a wider circulation, and with the evidence of most extensive ap
proval. It is published by the London Tract Society, and I have an
edition before me as late as 1838; it is sold by every evangelical
bookseller, and it is to be found on the shelves of every evangelical
circulating library. We are accused of rebeUion against God and
Christ ; but let any one read dispassionately the extracts contained in
this, and reflect on the sentiments to be deduced from their collective
testimony, and then let him say whether deeper injury was ever done
to God, or Christ, or man, than is inflicted by these repulsive dogmas.
By these descriptions, if God is a being of love or justice, then lan
guage has no meaning, or we are to interpret the terms by their con
tradictories. If you were only to disguise the words, but preserve
the sentiments, and attribute the character implied in them to the
parent of the most zealous of Calvinists, he would spurn the asper
sion with honest indignation. And, if we mean not by goodness in
God, something analogous to goodness in man, what is it that we
can mean ? The abstractions in which these dogmas are involved by
scholastic mysticism, blinds the mind to their ordinary import. But
let us suppose an illustration. Take the case of a human father, who,
granting he had the power, should pre-ordain his child to misery ;
should attribute a guilt to him, he never knew; should require
from him what he had no power to accomplish, and condemn him be
cause he had not fulfilled it ; should place him in circumstances in
which he was sure to grow worse, and yet withhold the help that
could make him better ; should, as the son sunk deeper in iniquity,
heap heavier malediction on the wretch he abandoned ; should see
without pity the ruin that continually grew darker, and gaze ruthlessly
on the suffering that was finally to be consummated in despair.
— Suppose further, and you render the picture complete, that such
conduct was defined as the vindication of parental dignity, the very
glory of justice ; and he who practised it as a father of exceeding love.
But we will go further, and suppose this father has the power to
cast his child into misery everiasting, and that he does it ; must we
close the analogy here? No: we can carry it one step higher:
swell out this being into infinite existence, make him omnipotent
and omniscient, place him on the throne of the universe, and put all
creatures within his boundless control, he is then the God of Calvin's

APPENDIX.

45

theology. This view I give nnt ra«hly, nor without foundation ;
it is more than justified by the quotations that I bring forvrard.
Our faith is characterized as a blasphemous heresy : we employ no
epithet, but we are not afraid to have it contrasted with Calvinistic
orthodoxy. Character of God.
" Predestination is the everlasting purpose of God ; whereby (be
fore the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly de
creed by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damna
tion those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to
bring them to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour." —
From the 1 1th Article of the Church of England.
" By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some
men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others fore
ordained to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predes
tined and fore-ordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed;
and their number is so certain and definite, that it cannot be either
increased or diminished."
" The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the un
searchable counsel of his own will ; whereby he extendeth or with-
holdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power
over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonour and
wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice."
" As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God, as a righteous
judge, for former sins doth blind and harden, from them he not only
withholdeth his grace, whereby they might have been enlightened in
their understandings, and wrought upon in their hearts, but some
times also withdraweth the ^fts which they had, and exposeth them
to such objects as their conception makes occasion of sin ; and
withal, gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the
world, and the power of Satan ; whereby it cometh to pass, that
they harden themselves, even under those means which God useth
for the softening of others." — Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. iii,
§ 3, 4, 7 ; ch. V. § 6.
" God, in his providence, permitted some angels wilfully and irre
coverably to fall into sin and damnation, limiting and ordering that
and all their sins to his own glory ; and established the rest in holi
ness and happiness, employing them all, at his pleasure, in the admi
nistrations of his power, wisdom, and justice."- £«»-s-er Catechism,
q. 19.

46 APPENDIX.
"I grant, indeed," says Calvin, "that all the children of Adam
fell, by the will of God, into that misery of state whereby they be now
bound ; and this is it that I said at the beginning, that at length we
must alway return to the determination of the will of God, the cause
whereof is hidden in himself. The angels which stood fast in their
uprightness, Paul calleth the elect. If their steadfastness was grounded
on the good pleasure of God, the falling away of the others proveth
that they were forsaken ; of which thing there can be no other cause
alleged than reprobation, which is hidden in the secret counsel of
God." — Inst, note, b. iii, ch. 23, § 4.
" Predestination, whereby God adopteth some into the hope of
life, and adjudgeth some to eternal death, no man, that would be ac
counted godly, dare deny." " Predestination we call the eternal de
cree of God : he had it determined with himself what he willed to
become of every man. For all are not created to like estate; but to
some eternal life, and to some eternal damnation, is fore-appointed.
Therefore every man is created to one or the other end. So we say
he is predestinated to life or to death." — Ibid. b. iii, ch. 21, § 5.
" The Scripture crieth out that all men were in the person of one
man made bound to eternal death. Since this cannot be imputed to
nature, it is plain it proceeded from the wondrous counsel of God.
But it is too much absurdity that these, the good patrons of the
righteousness of God, do so stumble at a straw and leap over beams.
Again I ask, how came it that the fall of Adam did wrap up in eternal
death so many nations, with their children, being infants, without
remedy, but because it so pleased God ? Here their tongues, which
are otherwise so prattling, must be dumb. It is a terrible decree, I
grant ; yet no man shall be able to deny but that God foreknew what
end man should have ere he created him, and therefore foreknew be
cause he had so ordained by his decree." — Ibid. b. iii, ch. 23, § 7.
These quotations, did space permit, or the patience of my readers.
might be multiplied to a much greater extent ; and might do some
thing, perhaps, to illustrate the character of the persecutor of Ser-
vetus. His actions, as a man, were not inconsistent with his ideas of
God as a theologian.
" Who can fully describe," asks Boston, " the wrath of an angry
God ? None can do it." " Wrath/' he says, " is a fire in the affec
tions of man, tormenting the man himself ; but there is no pertur
bation in God. His wrath does not in the least mar that infinite re
pose which he hath in himself." Then, speaking of man generally,

APPENDIX.

47

he says, " There is a wrath in the heart of God against him ; there
is a wrath in the word of God against him ; there is a wrath in the
hand of God against him." We have here his statement of wrath
in God as an agent ; and, through pages of gloomiest description, he
makes man its unsheltered object. " There is a wrath on his body.
It is a piece of accursed clay, which wrath is sinking into, by virtue
of the first covenant. There is a wrath on the natural man's enjoy
ments. Wrath is on all he has : on the bread he eats, the liquor he
drinks, and the clothes he wears." — Boston's Fourfold State.
Character and Condition of Man.
" With such bondage of sin then as will is detained, it cannot
move itself to goodness, much less apply itself." — Calvin Inst., b. ii.
ch. 3, § 5, London Edition, 634.
" Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of
them they may be things which God commands, and of good use
both to themselves and others, yet because they proceed not from a
heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner, according to
the word, nor to a right end, the glory of God, they are therefore
sinful, and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace
from God : and yet their neglect of them is more sinful and dis
pleasing unto God." — Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. xvi. § 7.
" Man in his depraved state is under an utter inability to do any
thing truly good." — Boston.
The same doctrine is taught more leniently in the 13th article of
the Church of England, so that amongst the theologians, "the natural
man," as they call him, is in a sad condition, for act as he will he
cannot but sin : if he does good works, he commits sin, and if he
neglects them he is guilty of still greater sins. Quotations in the
spirit of those already adduced might be swelled into volumes from
the vast treasures of Calvinistic divinity. But I shall close these by
an extract from the author I have before mentioned and quoted from,
an author, as I have said, highly popular and largely circulated ; and
here is a passage of his on Christ and the last judgment. — "The
judge will pronounce the sentence of damnation on the ungodly mul
titude. Then shall he say also to them on the left hand, ' Depart
from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his
angels :'  The Lamb of God shall roar as a lion
against them ; he shall excommunicate and cast them out of his pre
sence for ever, by a sentence from the throne, saying, ' Depart from

48 APPENDIX.
me, ye cursed.' He shall adjudge them to everlasting fire, and to
the society of devils for evermore. And this sentence also we sup
pose, will be pronounced with an audible voice by the man Christ.
And all the saints shall cry, ' Hallelujah ! true and righteous are his
judgments !' None were so compassionate as the saints when on
earth, during the time of God's patience : but now that time is at
an end ; their compassion for the ungodly is swallowed up in joy in
the Mediator's glory, and his executing of just judgment, by which
his enemies are made his footstool. Though when on earth the
righteous man wept in secret places for their pride, and because they
would not hear, yet he shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance ;
he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked (Ps. Iviii. 10). No
pity shall then be shown them from their nearest relations. The
godly wife shall applaud the justice of the judge in the condemnation
of her ungodly husband : the godly husband shall say Amen to the
condemnation of her who lay in his bosom ; the godly parent shall
say Hallelujah at the passing of the sentence against their ungodly
child ; and the godly child shall, from the bottom of his heart, ap
prove the condemnation of his wicked parents, — the father who begat
him, and the mother who bore him. The sentence is just, they are
judged according to their work." — Rev. xx. 12.
It were surely preferable to labour under the blindest mistakes con
cerning the essence of God, or the person of Christ, than be guilty
of believing such atrocious representations as these of their moral
character. The zealous may scout us if they choose, as infidels ; but
if Calvinism and Christianity were identical, infidelity would be
virtue, it would be but the righteous rebellion of human nature
against creeds, in vindication of the truth of its own affections, and
the rectitude of its God.

Errata to the Fourth Lecture. — " There is one God, and one
Mediator between God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus."

Page 17, line 30, for is read are.
34, — 5, for sink read sinks,
35, — 3, /or right rearf night.
37, — ]2,for to read to be.

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