The phraseology which is peculiar to the doctrine of the Trinity is chiefly the following:--Trinity, Triune, Triad, God the Son, God the Spirit, God the Holy Ghost, Jehovah-Jesus, God-man, God-mediator, incarnate God, first person, second person, third person, three in one, one in three, three equal persons in the Godhead, three-one God, The Sacred Three, Eternal Three, two natures, double nature, human and divine nature, very God and very man, coequal, coeternal, coessential, eternally begotten, eternally proceeding, eternal Son of God.
Not one of these terms or phrases is in the Bible. But without the words necessary to teach the doctrine of the Trinity, how can it be taught? How can any doctrine be taught without the use of appropriate words? If neither the word faith, nor trust, nor belief, nor any of their derivatives, nor any other word of similar import, could be found in the Bible, who would assert that the doctrine of faith is a doctrine of the Bible? If neither the word one, nor the word unity, nor any other word of similar import, could be found in connexion with God, or any name or title of God, who would pretend that the Unity of God is taught in the Bible? And yet the word one is found in such connexion in a multitude of passages, both in the Old Testament and the New; while the word three is nowhere to be found in such connexion in the Bible. There is no pretence, I believe, that the numeral three is found in the Bible, (I John v. 7, excepted) in such connexion with God, or any name or title of God, as to be thought to relate to the doctrine of the Trinity.
I can imagine but two possible reasons why any intelligent writer, in teaching any doctrine, should not use the proper words and terms. He may omit them in order to render his meaning unintelligible; as when Jesus spake to the incorrigible Jews in parables, lest they should understand and be converted. Or else the appropriate words and terms may not be familiarly known to the writer at the time. But neither of these reasons could have existed in relation to the subject under consideration. It must have been a prime object with every writer and translator of the scriptures to be clearly understood. The appropriate words, too, were in familiar use. The word three is connected with a hundred other subjects; and it might as easily have been connected with God, as the word one, had there been the same need of it. Nay, if it were as true that God is three, as it is that he is one, we might reasonably expect to find the word three much more frequently, in such connexion, than the word one; because it is far more difficult to believe God to be three than one. All analogy, throughout the whole universe, so far as human knowledge extends, is in favor of the Unity of God, but opposed to the Trinity. God is the only Being, of whom we have any knowledge, that was ever suspected of being three persons. Now the care and pains, which a writer or translator will take to be clearly understood, will bear some proportion to the importance and difficulty of his subject. If the doctrine of the Trinity be true, and if all who do not believe it “shall perish everlastingly,” (as says the Athanasian creed) its importance is infinite. That the belief of it is far more difficult than that of the Unity of God, will be seen in the following quotations from celebrated Trinitarian authors. Lord Bacon describes the faith of a christian thus:
“He believes a Virgin to be the Mother of a Son; and that very Son of hers to be her MAKER. He believes HIM to have been shut up in a narrow room, whom heaven and earth could not contain. He believes HIM to have been born in time, who was and is from everlasting. He believes HIM to have been a weak child and carried in arms, who is the Almighty; and HIM once to have died, who only hath life and immortality in himself”—Lord Bacon's character of a believing christian.
Bishop Hurd, in a sermon on the Trinity, speaks thus: “In this awfully stupendous manner, at which reason stands aghast and faith herself is half confounded, was the grace of God to man at length manifested.”—Sermons, Vol. ii. p. 289.
Dr. South, in a sermon for Christmas day, speaks thus: “Men cannot persuade themselves that a Deity and Infinity should lie within so narrow a compass as the contemptible dimensions of a human body: That Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence should be ever wrapt in swaddling-clothes, and abused to the homely usages of a stable and a manger: That the glorious Artificer of the whole universe, who spread out the heavens like a curtain, and laid the foundations of the earth, could ever turn carpenter, and exercise an inglorious trade in a little cell. They cannot imagine, that He who commands the cattle upon a thousand hills, and takes the ocean in the hollow of his hand, could be subject to the meannesses of hunger and thirst, and be afflicted in all his appetites. That he who created, and at present governs, and shall hereafter judge the world, shall be abused in all his concerns and relations, be scourged, spit upon, mocked, and at last crucified. All are passages which lie extremely cross to the notions and conceptions that reason has framed to itself, of that high and impassible perfection that resides in the divine nature.”—South's Sermons, Vol. iii. p. 299, 6th ed. 1727.
Dr. Watts describes the difficulty of believing the doctrine of the Trinity, thus:
“Reason could scarce sustain to see
The Almighty One, the Eternal Three,
Or bear the infant Deity;
Scarce could her pride descend to own
Her Maker stooping from his throne,
And dressed in glories so unknown.
A ransomed world, a bleeding God,
And heaven appeased by flowing blood,
Were themes too painful to be understood.”
This is an extract from a poem written by Dr. Watts after the death of Locke, on his Annotations, in which, on account of ‘the wavering and cold assent,’ which Watts supposed Locke to have given to ‘themes divinely true,' he invokes the aid of charity that he may see him in heaven. What were the themes divinely true,' appears in the lines quoted.—See Norton's Statement of Reasons, p. 82–85.
Dr. Watts in one of his hymns says:
“This infant is the Mighty God,
Come to be suckled and adored.”—B. i. 13th h.
A doctrine that quite confounds reason, and half confounds faith; that proclaims an infant Deity and a bleeding God; that asserts that the unchangeable Jehovah turned carpenter; and that God came to be suckled, must be admitted, if at all, with inconceivable difficulty. That the difficulty of believing such a doctrine, if true, should never have occurred to any of the inspired penmen, is incredible. Why, then, did they not plainly state it, as they did the easy and analogous doctrine of the Unity of God? Why did they not, somewhere, expressly state that God is Three, or that he is Triple, or Trinity, or Triune, or Triad, or Tri-something, by which our faith might be assisted in embracing the doctrine! I can assign no reason but this most important one, that no inspired writer ever believed the doctrine of the Trinity.
There is no example in the Bible of God's being worshiped in Trinity.
There is not a doxology, or prayer, or any other form of worship, recorded in the Bible, addressed to Father, Son, and Spirit, or to a Trinity in any form. The custom of singing doxologies, and of concluding prayers, by ascriptions to Father, Son, and Spirit, is without a shadow of support from Scripture, either by precept or example.
In some churches, the manner of the verbal address in prayer, is regarded as the test of orthodoxy. If a stranger whose tenets are not known, addresses prayer to the Father only, as Jesus commanded, he is suspected of being unsound in the faith. But if, contrary to the express injunction and example of the Saviour, and his Apostles, and of all the Prophets of the Old Testament who have left us either precept or example, the minister offers prayer to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, his hearers are satisfied that he is orthodox. I have often heard prayers objected to, because the manner was scriptural — because the verbal address was like that of our blessed Saviour and his Apostles. To pray in a scriptural manner is indicative of heresy; to pray in an unscriptural manner is indicative of orthodoxy!
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