again and again. This assurance of final success is indicated in Mr. Goldsmid's remarkably judicious and very able pamphlet. Its tone is singularly calm and quiet. There is no exaggeration, no complaint, but, on the contrary, an air of superiority which is even graceful in the oppressed-contempt of the adversaries of religious liberty. The objection to which the author has first directed his attention is, in fact, the only one in which there is the least plausibility, viz., "That the Jews are in constant expectation of their return to Palestine; that they regard themselves as a separate nation; and that their religion forbids their political identification with the State of which they are the natives." He boldly appeals to history, which shews that the Jews have been patriots whenever they have been permitted to feel that they have a country; and as to their supposed looking towards Palestine, why many Christians look forward to the second advent of the Messiah as to what would destroy all national distinctions; and as neither the belief in the millennium, nor the certainty of an end to the human race, is found to have any practical effect on the most pious Christian believers, so is it with the Jews. The answer is complete. There is one other objection, which, being miserably insincere-in a word, sad cant, viz., that this is a Christian nation, &c. &c., Mr. Goldsmid has answered, as it merited, with mingled reasoning and scorn. The reasoning lies in drawing attention to a double sense in the phrase, Christian nation. If it be meant that the great majority of the nation are Christians, then the admission of half-a-dozen Jews into the House of Commons (a large allowance), will leave the House in the same sense a Christian body. It cannot be meant that, in fact, every individual is a Christian; that would be a gross falsehood. Mr. Goldsmid has skilfully availed himself of his professional knowledge as a lawyer, and shewn, however, that the English law has in no instance recognized the Christian as opposed to the non-Christian. The penal laws that have disgraced our Statute-book have been framed, not against the enemies of Christianity, but the Christian Dissenters (Romanist and Protestant) from the Church of England. He also shews, by a citation of the 3 and 4 William IV., c. 85, § 87, that the law does admit to civil rights as well the Mahometans as the Hindoos, where only there are any, in India. He remarks, that they who believe neither in the Old Covenant nor the New, have seldom scrupled to take an oath on the faith of a Christian, the sole remaining bar at which the Jew is allowed to be stopped in the attainment of political power, and shews a further notable inconsistency on the part of the opponents of the Jew Bill, who, on the several occasions of the Catholic Emancipation and the Dissenters' Chapels Bill, declared that Unitarians are not really Christians, and Roman Catholics idolaters; yet "now maintain that the feelings of the country would be outraged, if that assembly should cease to be purely Christian. Are we then to under

* The tone of this argument reminds us of that exquisite poem by Wordsworth, the Jewish Family, which thus characterizes the beauty that is so frequently found in their race, especially among their women:

"Such beauty hath the Eternal poured

Upon them not forlorn

Tho' of a lineage once abhorred,

Nor yet redeemed from scorn.

Mysterious safeguard, that, in spite

Of poverty and wrong,

Doth here preserve a living light,

From Hebrew fountains sprung;

That gives this ragged group to cast

Around the dell a gleam

Of Palestine, of glory past,

And proud Jerusalem."

Works, II. 220.

The writer of this note once read this poem to a party of Jew ladies. He thought that they sat more erect and looked taller at the end of the reading than they did at the beginning.

stand that Roman Catholics are idolaters and Unitarians are infidels, when the immediate purpose is to deny them some privilege; but that they are fellowchristians when the object is to shut out the Jews? Is this respect for Christianity?" Mr. G. has here, by an inadvertence, written privilege where he meant right. He concludes by an appeal to Christian principles, and closes his pamphlet by the precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," which he quotes as the morality of the Old Testament, citing Lev. xix. 18, adopted as the foundation of the New. We leave to Biblical critics the interpretation of the word neighbour in both Testaments. These words have brought to our recollection an incident of some thirty years past. At an assize town we heard one of the judges, long since departed, exclaim, ore rotundo, "Christianity is one part and parcel of the law of England;" on which a young barrister, now one of the most highly esteemed of our judges in Westminster Hall, whispered to his neighbour, "Did you ever draw an indictment against a man for not loving his neighbour as himself?" H. C. R.

A Review of Trinitarianism, chiefly as it appears in the Writings of Pearson, Bull, Waterland, Sherlock, Howe, Newman, Coleridge, Wallis and Wardlaw; with a brief Notice of sundry Passages of the New Testament bearing on this Controversy. By John Barling. 12mo. Pp.. 240. LondonChapman. 1847.

THIS is a work of very considerable merit and value; but it may be expected that Unitarians in general will take a greater interest in it when they have learnt more of the character and position of the author than they can gather from the title-page. To them, the mere name as there inscribed as yet gives no idea; and the volume comes before them with no further external and accessory recommendations than if it had been altogether anonymous. We cannot but anticipate a great change in this respect, and would gladly hope to receive hereafter other productions of the author's pen, when the name will carry its own recommendation along with it to every Unitarian reader, as that of a well-known friend to religious truth, who has made no inconsiderable sacrifices in its cause, and whose talents and learning well prepare him to be an effective labourer in its service.

Mr. Barling was educated for the ministry among the Independents, and was for several years the acceptable minister of a numerous and respectable society of that denomination at Halifax. He quitted that station on the ground of ill-health, and spent several years in the South, from whence he returned with views greatly altered by the inquiries and reflections in which his leisure had been employed, on most of the points on which professing Christians are accustomed to differ. He now resides at Halifax in studious retirement, but has been for some time a regular member of the Unitarian congregation at that place.

It is justly remarked in the Preface to this work, that there is and has been for some time a growing disinclination on the part of orthodox divines to discuss the doctrine of the Trinity properly so called. The minor questionsif we may call them so-of the Deity of Christ and the separate Personality of the Holy Spirit, are often brought forward; but the notions (if any) conveyed by the expressions, Trinity, Triune God, &c., are for the most part studiously withheld from examination. The whole subject is retained as far as possible in the obscurity which may seem most suitable to its acknowledged insuperable difficulties, and which is naturally suggested by the apprehension, or perhaps secret consciousness, that it involves consequences which a severe and searching inquiry must prove to be not only irrational in themselves, but utterly inconsistent with the character which its votaries are still anxious to maintain, of worshipers of the only living and true God. These consequences, however, are somewhat too serious to be safely left in this vague and unexamined position; and Mr. Barling accordingly thinks it desirable again to

draw them forth into the light, and to subject them to the test of a close and logical analysis of the language used by several of the most distinguished Trinitarian writers. Of this language he proves, we think very successfully, that, when not utterly devoid of meaning, it involves either Tritheism or Sabellianism, or both. Strange to say, this last alternative is far from uncommon; when, in the vain attempt to walk steadily along the narrow ridge, they are repelled by the appalling abyss of heresy on one side, into an equally frightful propinquity to the no less formidable dangers on the other.

There is another reason why the doctrine of the Trinity, as distinguished from the subordinate questions to which we have already referred, has not been a favourite subject with the majority of polemical theologians. It is unavoidably a thorny and abstruse question, and offers but few attractions to the lovers of controversial excitement. It is in fact, in a great measure, a question, not of theology, but of metaphysics, and involves in its discussion a multitude of minute and dry metaphysical distinctions, in which the acuteness and subtlety of the practised logician may find more scope than the eloquence of the rhetorical declaimer addressed to the feelings or the passions. Barling's strength lies in the clearness with which he has followed out and unravelled the mazes in which former writers have involved their doctrine,in detecting and exposing the nothingness of the pretended distinctions by which they have sought to protect themselves from the charges of heresy on the one hand, or of absurdity and contradiction on the other. In many instances he has very effectually convicted them of both; but the argument, however acute and subtle, is often of a nature little inviting to the general reader.

Mr.

In the first chapter we have a comparison of the Nicene doctrine on this subject with the views brought forward by some of the schoolmen. The phrase "consubstantial" in the Nicene Creed, as is generally admitted, properly signifies a specific union; that is, such a union as exists between distinct individuals agreeing in the possession of certain properties, by virtue of which they receive a common name, and are viewed as one only by an abstraction of our minds. But this sort of union implies a numerical diversity, and the notion thus described appears, therefore, to involve Tritheism.

"For three objects which are of the same substance specifically, must be numerically three in substance; because their unity, in so far as it is specific, consists only, as we have seen, in close resemblance, and can therefore be no more than ideal. But now, if the three Divine persons are supposed to have each his own particular substance and attributes, distinct from those of the other two, they must be accounted three distinct beings, three Divine beings,-that is three Gods,-if we are able to say what are three Gods."-P. 2.

In order to get rid of this objection, it was customary to contend for a certain mutual penetration, or intercommunication, styled by the Greeks emperïchoresis. If, however, this supposed penetration was complete, they must coincide and become one and the same; if not, they must be in certain respects different, and the objection remains. Peter of Lombardy, supported by the Lateran Council, maintained, on the other hand, that the three persons were or constituted one thing or being, "Summa Res," at the same time contending that each one of the persons is as much the "Summa Res" as all of them together. "This," says Mr. B., "is intelligible (if it were meant to be intelligible) only on the supposition of what is called the numerical unity of the Divine essence; that is, the principle that the Divine essence, with its glorious attributes, is but one in number; or, in other words, that there is but One Almighty Agent or Being, whatever may be the mysteries belonging to his nature, and however variously he may be presented to our contemplation." But if so, what is this more than a trinity of modes, aspects or relations,— that is, a trinity only in name, though stamped by the authority of the Church with the character of orthodoxy? Nevertheless, the systems of the various writers who have presumed to speculate upon this subject appear to be redu

cible, for the most part, to one or the other of these views. Bishops Bull and Sherlock symbolize most nearly with the former, Wallis and South with the latter, though adopting somewhat different language, and animated by a very different spirit; while Waterland would seem to have aimed at combining the two, and, in spite of the subtlety and acuteness by which he was distinguished in no ordinary degree, involved himself only the more deeply in the inconsistencies and contradictions which beset this doctrine on every side.

Mr. Barling devotes a chapter to the analysis of this writer's doctrine, tracking him through all the mazes and intricacies of his perplexed argument with great ability and success. The exposure hardly admits of being so abridged as to be brought within our limits; but we recommend it as no bad intellectual exercise to those who have a taste for such exhibitions of logical skill, to examine it in detail as presented in the author's own pages. Such readers, if impartial and attentive, will, we think, acquiesce in the result as summed up in the concluding paragraph :

"Here, then, we come at once upon contradiction-bald, downright contradiction. There is but one Divine will, and there are three Divine wills; one Divine intellect, and three Divine intellects. As the Divine substance is one, the will, the intellect of God is one also. As that substance is distinguished into three supposita, agents or subjects, each having his own will and understanding, there are three almighty wills, three all-comprehensive understandings. Where is the use, where is the honesty, of disputing about the words person, substance, suppositum, hypostasis, and the like, when this plain contradiction lurks beneath them? We spurn from us these weapons of deceit, these instruments of disguise, these great swelling words of vanity,' and ask, does the unity of substance which the Trinitarian contends for issue in, or does it imply, a unity of will and intelligence? Is not the Divine will, is not the Divine intelligence, as much one as the substance is one? We challenge the Trinitarian world to deny it. These are essential attributes, and, we repeat, as much one as the essence or substance is one. There is, therefore, but one Divine will, one Divine intellect; and the Persons cannot be three intelligent agents, subjects or supposita, having each his own will and intellect."-P. 69.

We pass over the review of Sherlock, whose doctrine, it will be recollected, was condemned as rank Tritheism by the University of Oxford, but is yet, we apprehend, in substance that which is virtually, if not in words, received by a large majority in all Trinitarian churches. We entirely concur in our author's concluding remark, that the only apology for exercising our patience on the vacillations and crudities of such a writer, is their being exhibited in defence of a system around which the religious sensibilities of so many are entwined. In the fourth chapter, our attention is directed to an eminent theologian of our own time-no less noted a person than Mr. Newman, till lately a leader of what is called the Puseyite party at Oxford. Mr. B. dresses up his account of this writer's view of the Trinity in the form of a sort of meditation which is conceived to be occupying his mind when engaged at the altar in his new capacity of a Romish priest, and contrives very ingeniously to interweave a number of passages selected from different parts of Mr. Newman's writings, connected together by as many sentences of his own as are necessary to give an air of continuity to the whole. By suitable marks of quotation he has enabled the reader to distinguish Mr. Newman's words from those connecting portions which serve to introduce them; and, on the whole, we are disposed to think that the impression conveyed is tolerably correct; but the form in which it is presented is singular, and apt to excite suspicion and distrust of unfairness, though it is cleverly managed, and not ill adapted to relieve and diversify a discussion which was in danger of growing too dry and abstracted for the reader's patience. Mr. Newman seems plainly to acknowledge that his doctrine involves a contradiction; "not merely a verbal contradiction, but an incompatibility in the human ideas conveyed. We can scarcely make a nearer approach to an exact enunciation than that of saying that one thing is two things." But then it is contended that the idea of number has no

proper relation to the Divine nature, and therefore names of number are, strictly speaking, inapplicable to the subject.

"His plurality is as real as his unity; and yet he has no plurality, because of his perfect unity. Here is the mystery. Reason, cease thy clamours. I seek not a 'consistent' creed. The mystery is attained. I were a Tritheist, were I not a Sabellian. I were a Sabellian, were I not a Tritheist. I am neither, because I am both. With me, as with St. Paul, there is but one God, the Father. And with me also, there is another God, the Son; who yet is not another, because one and one do not make two in the inconceivable nature of God."

This, however, it must be remembered, is not Mr. Newman, but Mr. Barling speaking for him. This writer is well known to have made the remarkable concession, not a little startling to a consistent Protestant, that the Trinity and other related doctrines are not to be learnt from the Scriptures; that is, that no one would find them there who did not go to his Bible prepared to seek only what he had already been taught by the Church.

In the next chapter, twenty-seven pages are devoted to the lucubrations on the Trinity of Mr. Coleridge,—a larger allowance, in our judgment, than either the man or his doctrine deserved. That Mr. Coleridge was a man of genius no one will deny; but even in this respect he was surely much overrated both by his admirers and the public. And as to his theological speculations, it would be difficult to suggest an excuse for the offensive dogmatism with which he was accustomed to propound the most paradoxical extravagances as maxims not to be disputed. Notwithstanding his high pretensions, many of these have not the recommendation of orthodoxy; corresponding most nearly, as our author observes, to the visionary notions ascribed to some of the ancient Gnostics.

We shall have some further remarks to offer on this valuable contribution to Unitarian literature in our next number, and conclude for the present with cordially recommending it to the attention of our readers.

PERIODICALS.

The British Quarterly Review, No. XIII.-We have so frequently had occasion to express our interest in Dr. Vaughan's able periodical, and have so often enriched our pages with extracts from it, that our readers will, we trust, join with us in regretting that there are indications of its continued existence being in danger. The Editor's "Address to Protestant Nonconformists" is clearly a flag of distress. We shall rejoice if his appeal is answered by increased support, and the threatened "change from one line of service to another" prevented. It will indeed be a discredit to the numerous and wealthy body of orthodox Nonconformists if they allow incomparably the best periodical they have ever had, to fall after a brief but brilliant course of three or four years. The Editor seems to apprehend that his independent course on the Education question has prejudiced his work. In these gentle words is the gross intolerance of the democratic party of the Dissenters rebuked:

"Our appeal, however, is to men who, when they boast of truth as having nothing to fear from discussion, really mean what they say-to men who would blush not to cede a full and candid hearing even to an enemy, much more to a friend who has chanced to differ from them in one point, while agreeing with them in almost every point beside."

The current No. is varied in its subjects, and most of them are ably discussed. The Editor's hand appears (we think) in three of the articles. The No. opens with a dissection of the argument for Church and State of Mr. Birks, an evangelical Rector. The Rector's plea for a State Church is a rechauffement of Mr. Gladstone's noted argument, garnished with some texts most resolutely misunderstood. The reviewer is quite at home with the scriptural part of the subject, and with the aid of Mr. Macaulay's sharp and polished instrument hews the Rector's borrowed arguments to pieces. The