There are serious objections to the distinctive tenets of this sect, yet, in justice to them, it must be allowed that the unguarded language of some preachers does so split up the Deity into separate individuals as to make the doctrine so taught a complete tritheism, and that a serious mind returning to the express declaration of the Scripture, that God is One, may be so far shocked by such unmeasured expressions, as to run into the extreme which I have condemned. Unitarianism on the one hand, and the doctrine of Swedenborg on the other, have equally sprung from a want of proper caution when speaking of the different manifestations of the Deity, and an unmeasured itch for the definition of things too far beyond the reach of our finite faculties to admit of any precision of terms. _Words_ were formed for the things pertaining to earth; how then can they ever exactly express the nature of the Deity?
Notwithstanding the faith professed by this sect, their teaching, nevertheless, returns to the doctrine of the Gospel. In a tract “on the true meaning of the intercession of Jesus Christ,” published at Manchester by their own religious tract society, we have the following passage: “The Humanity named Jesus is the medium whereby man may come to God, because the Father, _heretofore invisible_, is manifested and made _visible_ and _approachable_ in him. This is meant by _our coming unto God by him_;” and elsewhere, as we cannot obtain this “light of life” without following the Lord, and doing his will, as he did the will of the Father, agreeably to his own saying, “If ye keep my commandments, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love;” so neither can we obtain that divine food by which our spiritual life is to be sustained, unless we labour for it, as the Lord himself instructed us when he said “Labour for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life”; and is it not of the greatest importance clearly to understand what this labour implies? Let the reader be assured that he must labour in that spiritual vineyard which the Lord desires to plant in his soul, in order that it may bear abundant fruits of righteousness to the glory of his heavenly father.” { 84} Thus we see again that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity _will_ find their way, however men may speculatively disclaim them. Why then do we differ outwardly, when at heart we agree?