You ask me my views of the _Trinity_. I accept the doctrine, not as deduced from human reason, in its grovelling capacity for comprehending spiritual things, but as the clear revelation of Scripture. But perhaps it may be said, the Socinians do not admit this doctrine as being taught in the Bible. I know enough of their shifts and quibbles, with their dexterity at explaining away all they dislike, and that is not a little, but though beguiled once by them, I happily for my own peace of mind, escaped from their sophistries, and now hesitate not to affirm, that Socinians would lose all character for honesty, if they were to explain their neighbour's will with the same latitude of interpretation, which they do the Scriptures.
I have in my head some floating ideas on the _Logos_, which I hope, hereafter, to mould into a consistent form; but it is a gross perversion of the truth, in Socinians, to declare that we believe in _three gods_; and they know it to be false. They might, with equal justice affirm that we believe in _three suns_. The meanest peasant, who has acquired the first rudiments of Christianity, would shrink back from a thing so monstrous. Still the Trinity has its difficulties. It would be strange if otherwise. A _Revelation_ that revealed nothing, not within the grasp of human reason!--no religation, no binding over again, as before said; but these difficulties are shadows, contrasted with the substantive and insurmountable obstacles, with which _they_ contend who admit the _Divine authority of Scripture_, with the _superlative excellence of Christ_, and yet undertake to prove that these Scriptures teach, and that Christ taught his own _pure humanity_.
If Jesus Christ was merely a man, if he was not God as well as man, be it considered, he could not have been even a _good man_. There is no medium. The SAVIOUR _in that case_ was absolutely _a deceiver_! one, transcendantly _unrighteous_! in advancing pretensions to miracles, by the "Finger of God," which he never performed; and by asserting claims, (as a man) in the most aggravated sense, blasphemous. These consequences, Socinians, to be consistent, must allow, and which impious arrogation of Divinity in Christ, according to their faith, as well as his false assumption of a community of "glory" with the Father, "before the world was," even they will be necessitated completely to admit the exoneration of the Jews,[9] according to their law, in crucifying one, who "being a man," "made himself God!" But in the Christian, rather than in the _Socinian_, or _Pharisaic_ view, all these objections vanish, and harmony succeeds to inexplicable confusion. If Socinians hesitate in ascribing _unrighteousness_ to Christ, the inevitable result of their principles, they tremble, as well they might, at their avowed creed, and virtually renounce what they profess to uphold.