who deny THE LORD that bought them.' The original allusion is probably to those Gnostics, who denied that THE FATHER of Jesus Christ was either the maker of the world, or the author of the Jewish dispen sation."-Pp. 156, 157.

There is, (p. 175) a strong, we wish we could say an over-wrought, deseription of the anti-moral effects of the doctrine of Satisfaction, when it is not counteracted by the true doc-. trines of Christianity, which no system is able wholly to subvert. The author then institutes a comparison between the spurious orthodoxy of the day, and the "simplicity that is in Christ," and here he is animated by his subject to a rich strain of elo

quence:

"But the prominent feature of the doctrine, in the sense of substitution and satisfaction, is the mystic idolatry which it involves, and the necessary connexion with a denial of the supremacy of the only true God,' and with the falling away' from the worship of Gon, even THE FATHER; the GoD and FATHER' of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is now a reproach to worship HIM whom CHRIST Worshiped.

"It was the faith of Moses, that God should in the Messias raise up a prophet like to himself;' it was the faith of Peter, that Jesus of Nazareth was a MAN approved of God by signs and wonders, which God did by him ;' it was the faith of Paul, that there is One God, and one Mediator between God and men, the MAN Christ Jesus.' It was the declaration of Christ, that he was a MAN who had told them the truth which he had heard from GOD.' Yet they who represent Christ, as Moses and Peter and Paul represented him, and as he declared himself, are accused of degrading Christ! What shall be thought of degrading Gon?

6

"Who degrade Christ? They that behold in him a man in all respects like his brethren,' tempted as they are,' and therefore peccable, yet WITHOUT SIN;' made perfect by suffering;' despising the shame for the glory that was set before him; yielding up his life with assured faith in the promises of God that he should receive it again; and giving to all an example of sinless purity and unfainting obedience to the will of God?-Or they who regard him as himself a Divinity or a super-angelic nature, superior to suffering, superior to temptation, INCAPABLE OF SIN; whose sinlessness had therefore no merit, whose devotion had no heroism, whose perseverance unto death was no proof of fortitude, no test of faith; whose resurrection is in itself no demonstration that man will be raised from the grave; whose

life and martyrdom, whose actions and sufferings, are too supernatural for example, can awaken no admiration, can excite no sympathy?

"Who degrade God? They who believe the assurances of his holy prophets, that he will abundantly pardon those who and perfect benevolence and goodness, and return unto him; they who see in him pure regard his justice as only a modification of his benevolence; they who worship him as Moses and the prophets worshiped him, in the character of the ONE JEHOVAH, who 'stretched out the heavens by himself;' as Christ and the Apostles worshiped him, in the character of Gon even the FATHER;' the God and Father of us and of our Lord and ONLY POTENTATE, who ALONE hath Jesus;' THE ONLY TRUE GOD; the blessed immortality; they who adore him as their mighty SAVIOUR and REDEEMER; their merciful and compassionate FATHER, who saw them when they were afar off;' the sole Author and original Fountain of all blessings temporal and eternal, all gifts and graces and influences, which He shed upon us of his own FREE MERCY in Christ, the Son whom HE had sent to be the Saviour of the world?-Or they who see in his justice only vengeance; who deny his glorious attribute of rich unpurchased mercy; who make him gracious on conditions which violate justice by substituting the innocent for the guilty; who transfer their gratitude for the work of redemption from him, 'the only SAVIOUr," to him whom he hath sent; from the author to the instrument; who refuse to him supreme homage; who libel his justice, limit his beneficence, divide his unity, contract his power, snatch the very work of creation out of his hands, and leave him amidst the darkness of unapproachable mystery and terror, a God who, of himself, is unable to bless and to save, and who is alone able to curse and to destroy?

"If all love and gratitude are to be concentered in the Son of God, which is early inculcated into the tender minds of children, and which must be the case if he interposed between men and God, to avert vengeance and bribe compassion, the heart is shut up from those high and boly consolatious which the Scripture teaches us to expect from the Father of mercies and God of comfort.' If the God and Father of his creatures were to retire from the universe, with awful reverence be it spoken, what void would be left in the hearts of the worshipers of Christ ?”—Pp. 175-177.

The "Appeal" concludes with a lively anticipation, expressed in beautiful scriptural figures, of the final success and universal prevalence of Unitarian Christian truth.

"The prejudice of habit and the zeal of ignorance must give way before the progress of knowledge. The MYSTERY of THE MASS was supported by the letter of Scripture; was defended by ecclesiastical learning; was assented to by men of erudition, talent and piety; was undoubtingly received by the people; but before the progress of knowledge it has disappeared. Like this strong delusion,' every device of human understanding, which has sown its tares in the gospel field, must be rooted out. The faith which was preached at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, preached at Athens on the hill of Mars, delivered to the saints,' transmitted through the first ages, retained by the people, sophisticated by philosophising converts, and confounded in the Great Apostacy on whose forehead is written MYSTERY, was a faith in the ONE GOD THE FATHER,' and the one Mediator' of his grace, THE MAN Christ Jesus; whom Goo had raised from the dead.' This was the faith of which CHRIST is the corner stone, and which is built upon the foundation of APOSTLES and PROPHETS.' Although these witnesses' may have been slain and rejoiced over, the spirit of life from God shall enter into thein, and they shall stand upon their feet.' Before the fulness of the Gentiles be come in,

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ART. III.-Stephen's Prayer: a Sermon preached at the opening of the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, October 13th, 1818. By John Hodgson, M. D. Minister of Blantyre (near Glasgow). Ogles and Co.

TH

HIS discourse has been pompously pronounced by the Edinburgh Christian Instructor to be replete with sound logic and biblical learning. The author, a man of respectable character and attainments, has chosen his subject with a view to a direct and very obvious attack upon the Unitarian scheme; the argument of his sermon bringing into controversy the leading principle upon which the worship of Unitarian societies is conducted; viz. that there is but one object of religious adoration, and that this object is the Father of Jesus. The preacher does make some pretension, it is true, to logical accuracy, and in one respect we give him credit for discernment; for he has not encumbered his defence of orthodoxy with the introduction of arguments which others of his party might, without hesitation, denounce as fallacious. He has rested the whole question concerning the object of religious worship (than which a more important one cannot be embraced) upon two clauses of a verse in the 7th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. He has thrown the argument of his discourse into the syllogistic form, which our readers fully understand may be adopted in many cases where no proof whatever is effected; if the premises be themselves in any respect inaccurate, the conclusion, though it follow naturally from the premises, is not therefore valid, nor does in the least advance the interests of truth. We present our readers with this boasted syllogism:

"By the unvarying tenor of the Christian doctrine and of Scripture authority, prayer cannot be made or offered up to any person or being, except the true God.

"But in the case of Stephen, prayer made or offered up to the Lord Jesus Christ.

is

"Therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is truly God, the second person of the ever-blessed and mysterious Trinity."

The first of the premises we are so far from denying, that it appears to us to afford the most direct refutation possible of the conclusion which the

preacher has drawn, and of the whole argument of the discourse before us. We object to, however, and totally deny the second premise in this syllologism, and maintain that, in the strict sense of the expression prayer, as the word is used in the first premise, the Lord Jesus Christ is never made the object of prayer and religious worship in the sacred Scriptures. The preacher's conclusion, therefore, though accompanied with all the pride of logical subtilty, and guarded round with a pompous reference to the authority of Griesbach, where Griesbach has nothing in the world to do, we hesitate not to say, is a mere dead letter, containing not even a vestige of scriptural truth, and perfectly incapable of defending or promoting the interests of sacred literature. That God is one, or, in equivalent words, that there is but one object of religious worship, is the plain and certain dictate of the natural creation. We refer for a detail of the interesting evidence on this head to Clark's Demonstration, Paley's Natural Theology, and the early part of Yates's Vindication. It is in the highest degree satisfactory to the seeker after moral and religious truth, that the voice of nature so completely harmonizes with the authoritative and often-repeated language of the Jewish Scriptures: "I am God, and there is none else." "I am God, and there is none like me." "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, is our God, Jehovah alone:" and that of the decalogue, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before (or besides) me." Now one of the most proper methods of using the Bible, which, as containing the mind and will of God, must be consonant with the unequivocal dictates of nature, arises from our conviction, that one part does not contradict auother part; and that if in the Old Testament one object only of religious worship is proposed, with the severest penalties, denounced in case of wilful disobedience, the scheme of the Gospel, as unfolded in the New Testament, can never imply the belief and worship of three separate persons, such as are undeniably to be met with in the Athanasian liturgies. Again, if according to the general tenor of the Bible, to the very spirit and texture of the Bible Theology, God be an immortal and invisible Spirit, no pas

sages of that same Bible, if it have any claim to a consistent record, can describe the same God as visible by our mortal eyes, and himself partici pating in the agonies of death!-Our pages have often contained the proofs from New-Testament Scripture, for the position that the Father is the only true God, and the only proper object of religious worship; and we can at present do no more than state the divisions under which they may be conveniently reduced. 1. The prac tice of our Saviour in the whole course of his ministry. 2. The commands and directions which he gave to his disciples. And 3. The practice of the apostles and first Christians, so far as we can learn this from the Book of Acts and the Epistles. Under each of these heads we can produce the most striking and incontrovertible evidence, that in the primitive age, the age of the apostles, the Lord Jesus Christ was not accounted the true God, much less the only true God, and the object of religious worship. He who said, "Now ye seek to kill me, a man, who hath told you the truth which I have heard from God;" he who said, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God;" he who invariably directed his disciples to the benevolent Parent of the universe, by the name of Father, and who, after his resurrection, commanded Mary Magdalene to go to his brethren, and say to them, “I ascend to my Father, and your Father, to my God, and your God;" he, surely, would have startled at the presumption and folly of his remote disciples in elevating him to an equality with the God that made him. And again, those very apostles who had eaten and drunk with Jesus of Nazareth, who had talked with him familiarly as a friend, who were indebted to him, indeed, for an abundance of knowledge, which he pro fessed to have received from God, and who revered him as a prophet of the Most High, could not, without sur rendering every prejudice as Jews, and every conception as men, have come to regard this same Jesus as the King Eternal, Immortal and Invisible.

We recommend the perusal of Dr. Carpenter's judicious pamphlet on this subject.

But where does their history describe any such remarkable change? See 1 Cor. viii. 6; 1 Tim. ii. 5; Acts xvii.

$1.

Now in the case under our present consideration, to grant the preacher all for which he has contended, the evidence for the sole religious worship of the Father, as the only true God, compared with that for the worship of Christ, may be fairly enough represented by the fractional expression

, in which the denominator, at a moderate calculation, will represent the evidence for the worship of the Father, and the numerator, the contrary evidence for the worship of Christ. The preacher, in his defence, has referred to nothing more than the single case of Stephen, which he considers to be demonstrative of his position, and to contain a clear revelation of the mystic triad, to use his own anti-scriptural expression. Now upon the first principles of moral evidence, a proportionate degree of attention should have been bestowed upon the hundred contrary arguments to which we allude. But such is not the case; not a word is bestowed upon any such arguments. The whole question seems to the preacher to turn upon the verses which conclude the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles! And with a most unfortunate employment of Griesbach, precisely where he yields neither .to the Unitarian nor to the Trinitarian any assistance whatever, (for the commonest Greek Testament will inform us that the word God ought not to be in the text,) he imagines that he has satisfied every scholar, and he certainly has succeeded in throwing dust in the eyes of the indiscriminate vulgar. He seems to think that he has placed the question of Christian worship for ever at rest; and with the full conviction of the justness of his argument, he calls upon his brethren in the Scottish establishment to resume the employment of that "Directory for Worship," which, by his own confession, is generally "allowed by them to remain unopened, amidst the dust and cobwebs of their shelves." While the rest of the Christian world, forsooth, are emulating each other in their commendation and circulation of the Bible, the displeasure of this divine is excited by the now prevalent and praiseworthy custom of the established clergy

in Scotland, (in which they enjoy a privilege which those in the sister country know not,) of confining their public devotions to the Father only. He would have them retrace their steps, and recur to what we should consider the darkness of ignorance, and the imperfection which naturally attached to the early Reformers who had but just emerged from the puerile absurdities of the Church of Rome. May God be graciously pleased not thus to retard, but to accelerate the work of Reformation! May every addition in doctrine and in discipline which the Gospel has sustained, be soon swept away! And may the pure religion of Jesus issue from the ruins of Calvinistic orthodoxy, with renovated and recruited power, to go forth among the nations conquering and to conquer!-The case of Stephen has naturally come under the frequent review of Unitarian writers;* because, we hesitate not to acknowledge, it supplies an apparent inconsistency with the doctrine and example of other parts of the New Testament. Yet we are fully persuaded that it is appear. ance only.

From vers. 55 and 56, we find that. Stephen was favoured with a vision, illustrating the exalted state and extensive dominion of Christ. It is by far the most probable supposition, that this vision was continued while this proto-martyr was enduring from his brutal enemies the agonies of a death by stoning. The vision was evidently afforded him in order to confirm his faith, and to support his spirits. God he could not see: "No man hath seen God at any time." No representation of God could he see, for it is contrary to the second commandment. Jesus he did see in vision; and not to have addressed him, in such circumstances, would, we own, appear to us most unnatural and unaccountable. All that he does say, is, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" or, accept of my life. I will lay down my life in thy service. Receive me to thyself, as thou didst promise while on earth. But it is to be observed, that Stephen

sham's Calm Inquiry, Dr. Carpenter's See Hayues on the Attributes, BelUnitarianism, Priestley's Notes in loc., and Lindsey's Apology, notwithstanding the criticisms of Magee, which, on this head especially, are both flippant and contemptible.

was not at this time in the attitude of devotion. It is expressly said after wards, that he changed his position, and kneeling down, prayed with a loud voice, not Lord Jesus-Stephen was too well informed to consider Jesus the supreme and universal Judge, but "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge," -a prayer, which an attentive examination of the Scripture usage in this and other parts of the original, will authorize us to believe, is offered up to none other than the God and Father of Jesus; and therefore so far from destroying, it abundantly justifies and confirms the doctrine by which Unitarian societies regulate their worship. The sense of Lord (Acts vii. 60) as equivalent to Jehovah, is coufirmed, (1,) by the constant employment of the same word (Kupios) to express the Supreme Being, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, made before the time of Christ, and in common use then by those who understood Greek. (2,) By the employment of the same word in Stephen's speech in the 49th verse, in quoting from the Old Testament, "Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool; what house will ye build me, saith the Lord, (Kupios,) or what is the place of my rest?" (3,) By the change in the appellation bestowed by Stephen upon Jesus, when he was standing, from the expression which he employed when he assumed the posture of devotion; in the one case Kupie Inσou, and in the other simply KupIE. As Stephen spoke in Syro-Chaldaic, it becomes the more probable that this difference of expression was intended; otherwise the Greek historian would have written the same in both instances; and (4thly,) by the similarity of the sentiment expressed by our Saviour on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;" where it is absurd to suppose that the Lord Jesus was both the offerer and the object of the prayer. This similarity the preacher himself has discovered in the other instance, "Lord Jesus receive my spirit," which he compares with the words, "Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit;" where, unintentionally of course, our Saviour's word, Father, exclusively applicable to the only true God, is exchanged for the ambiguous word Lord, Kupe; which may be the Greek translation of two very different He

brew words, Jehovah and Adonim; the former of which, as a whole, is never given to Jesus, or to any created intelligence; the latter, simply des criptive of authority, is capable of the most extensive and varied signification.

The Orthodox Reviewer we before noticed has flattered the preacher of this sermon, by the expression of his entire satisfaction, and intimation of his success as an author. We would conclude by urging him to attend less to the established doctrines of former days, and more to the genuine doctrines of revelation; to be less solicitous about defending mysterious and unaccountable tenets, and more desirous of exhibiting Christianity in that native simplicity, which will gain the admiration and approve itself to the judgment of man. Thus only will he have a fair claim to the character of a Scriptural critic; thus only can he share the reputation of a well-informed Christian and a useful divine.

M.

ART. IV. — Unitarianism__vindicated from the Imputation of tending to Infidelity. In a Letter to the Rev. Richard Lloyd, M. A. Vicar of Midhurst, occasioned by his Account of the Recent Conduct and Present State of the Rev. Robert Taylor. By John Fullagar, Minister of the Unitarian Chapel, Chichester. 8vo. pp. 38. Hunter and Eaton, 1819.

"TH

HE Rev. Robert Taylor" is the gentleman whose singular recantation of infidelity was inserted in our last volume, XIII. 754. He was curate to Mr. Lloyd, who has published an account of his "Conduct" and "State." With strange ignorance or bigotry, the vicar of Midhurst has attributed his unbelief in Christianity to such infidel writers as Hume and Gibbon, Priestley and Belsham. With great gravity too, he relates that the young unbeliever was invited by "the Unitarians and Socinians" "to come among them, as they would gladly admit him, if he would only admit the resurrection of Christ into his creed." (See Lloyd's Reply to Letters, &c. p. 62.) This was rather a hard condition for infidels to impose upon a brother infidel. What trash will not bigotry feed upon?

Mr. Fullagar, who is acquainted with Mr. Taylor's history, contradicts