pular even in our own Church, viz. that "God manifest in the flesh" is "the visible moral image" of God, let us hear the judgment of one who was a Trinitarian, and has lately avowed Socinianism. He thus relates the change in his own religious profession : "In my anxiety to avoid a separation from the Church by the deliberate surrender of my mind to my old Unitarian convictions, I took refuge in a modification of the Sabellian theory, and availed myself of the moral unity which I believe to exist between God the Father and Christ, joined to the consideration that Christ is called in the New Testament the Image of God, and addressed my prayers to God as appearing in that Image. I left nothing untried to cultivate and encourage this feeling by devotional means. But such efforts of mere feeling (and I confess with shame their frequency on my part for the sake of what seemed most religious) were always vain and fruitless. Sooner or later my reason has not only frustrated but punished them. In the last mentioned instance, the devout contrivance would not bear examination. Sabellianism is only Unitarianism disguised in words: and as for the worship of an image in its absence, the idea is most unsatisfactory. In this state, however, I passed five or six years; but the return to the clear and definite Unitarianism in which I had formerly been, was as easy as it was natural.”— Heresy and Orthodoxy, p. viii. This passage proves thus much, not that the philosophising in question leads to Socinianism, but that it is one under which Socinianism may lie hid, even from a man's own consciousness; and this is just the use I wish to make of it against Mr. Abbott. He ends as follows: "The substance of the view, which I have been wishing to im. press upon your minds, is, that we are to expect to see Him solely through the manifestation He makes of Himself in His works. We have seen in what way some of the traits of His character are dis. played in the visible creation, and how at last He determined to mani. fest His moral character, by bringing it into action through the medium of a human soul. The plan was carried into effect, and the mysterious person thus formed appears for the first time to our view in the extraordinary boy, &c." pp. 15, 16. In these passages it seems to be clearly maintained that our Lord is a Manifestation of God in precisely that way in which His creatures are, though in a different respect, viz. as regards His moral attributes, a Manifestation, not having any thing in it essentially peculiar and incommunicable, and therefore "a Manifestation," as he in one passage expresses himself, not the Manifestation of the Father. Further he expressly disclaims any opinion concerning the essential and superhuman relation, or (as he calls it) the "metaphysical" relation of the Son to the Father, in a passage which involves a slight upon other doctrines of a most important, thought not of such a sacred character. of God's moral character, and a motive to practice; 115 "Another source of endless and fruitless discussion, is disputing about questions which can be of no practical consequence, however they may be decided; such as the origin of sin," does this mean original sin? "the state of the soul between death and the resurrection, the salva. tion of infants," is it possible he should thus talk? "The precise metaphysical relationship of the Son to the Father." p. 323.* Why called metaphysical, I do not understand, but we have been already introduced to this word by Mr. Erskine, whose original fallacy also, be it observed, is faithfully preserved in this passage:-"questions which can be of no practical consequence," as if we have any warrant thus to limit, or to decide upon, the gracious revelations of God. He continues, "We have said they are of no practical consequence: of course an ingenious reason can contrive to connect practical consequences with any subject whatever, and in his zeal he will exaggerate the import. ance of the connexion;" I interrupt the reader, to remind him that the subjects spoken of in this careless self-satisfied way, are those which from the first have been preserved in Creeds and Confessions as the most necessary, most solemn truths; "in fact every subject in the moral world is more or less connected with every other one; nothing stands out entirely detached and isolated, and consequently a question which its arguers will admit to be merely a theoretical one, will never be found." pp. 32, 4. But if so, who shall draw the line between truths practical and theoretical? Shall we trust the work to such as Mr. Abbott? Surely this passage refutes his own doctrine. We also say that there are no two subjects in religion but may be connected by our minds, and therefore, for what we know, perchance are connected in fact. All we maintain in addition, is, that evidence of the fact of that connexion is not necessary for the proof of their importance to us, and further, that we have no right to pronounce that they are revealed merely with a view to their importance to us. He disposes of the Catholic doctrine of Christ's eternal Sonship by calling it metaphysical: how he escapes from the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation we have already seen,-he resolves it into a moral Manifestation of God in the person of Christ. But his view requires a few more words of explanation. First he speaks of God in pantheistic language, as an Anima Mundi, or universal essence, who has no known existence except in His works, as an all-pervading power or principle not external to the • Vide also p. 197. 116 and Christ merely as the moral and personal image of God. created world, but in it, and developed through it. He goes on to say that Almighty God, who is thus illimitable and incomprehensible, is exhibited in personal attributes in Christ, as if all the laws and provisions in which He energizes in nature impersonally, were condensed and exemplified in a real personal being. Hence he calls our Lord by a strange term, the personification of God, i. e. (I suppose) the personal image, or the manifestation in a person. In other words God, whose person is unknown in nature, in spite of His works, is revealed in Christ, who is the express image of His person; and just in this, and (as I conceive) nothing more, would he conceive there was a difference between the manifestation of God in Christ and the manifestation of Him in a plant or flower. Christ is a personal Manifestation. Whether there be any elements of truth in this theory, I do not 'concern myself to decide; thus much is evident, that he so applies it as utterly to explain away the real divinity of our Lord. The passages are as follow: -- "It is by Jesus Christ that we have access to the Father. This vivid exhibition of His character, this personification of His moral attributes, opens to us the way. Here we see a manifestation of divinity, an image of the Invisible God, which comes as it were down to us; it meets our feeble faculties with a personification," &c. P. 40. "We accordingly commenced with His childhood, and were led at once into a train of reflection on the nature and the character of that eternal and invisible essence, whose attributes were personified in Him." p. 192. "The human mind.., reaches forward for some vision of the Divinity, the great unseen and inconceivable essence. Jesus Christ is the personification of the divinity for us, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person." p. 200. Next, as to his opinions concerning the doctrine of the Atonement. I will not deny that some of his general expressions are correct, and taken by themselves, would be satisfactory; but they are invalidated altogether by what he has at other times advanced. It may be recollected that Mr. Erskine, in his treatise on Internal Evidence, lays such a stress upon the use of the Atonement as a Manifestation, as to throw the real doctrine itself in the shade. Viewed in itself, Christ's death is, we believe, a sacrifice acting in some unknown way for the expiation of human sin; but Mr. Erskine views it, (as indeed it may well be viewed, but exclusively as it should not be viewed,) as a mark and pledge of God's love to us, which it would be, though it were not an Expiation. Even though Christ's incarnation issued in nothing more than His preaching to the world and sealing His doctrine with His blood, it would be a great sign of His love, and a pledge now of our receiving blessings through Him; for why should He die except He meant to be merciful to us? but this would not involve the necessity of an expiation. St. Paul died for the Church, and showed his love for it in this sense. When then the view of the Christian is limited, as Mr. Erskine would almost wish it to be, to the Manifestation of the Atonement, or the effect of the Atonement on our minds, no higher doctrine is of necessity elicited than that of its being a sign of God's mercy, as the rainbow might be, and a way is laid, by obscuring, to obliterate the true doctrine concerning it. So far Mr. Erskine proceeds, not denying it (far from it) but putting it aside in his philosophical evidence: Mr. Abbott upon the very same basis, is bolder in his language, and almost, if not altogether gets rid of it. In the following passage he applies Mr. Erskine's doctrine of the moral lesson, taught in Christ's death, of the justice and mercy of God: and he will be found distinctly to assert that the virtue of it lay in this, viz. that it was a declaration of God's hatred of sin, the same in kind as the punishment of the sinner would have been, only more perfect, a means of impressing on us His hatred of sin; not as if it really reconciled us to an offended Creator. "The balm for your wounded spirit is this, that the moral impression in respect to the nature and tendencies of sin, which is the only possible reason God can have in leaving you to suffer its penalties," one should think the reason might be that "the wages of sin is death," "is accomplished far better by the life and death of His Son ;-" surely it is a greater balm to know that Christ has put away the wrath of God, as Scripture says, than to theorize about "moral impressions" beyond the word of Scripture. Observe too he says "the life and death," excluding the proper idea of Atonement, which lies in the death of Christ, and so tending to resolve it into a Manifestation. "God never could have wished to punish you for the sake of doing evil;" how unspeakably bold; when God says He does punish the sinner, not indeed for the sake of evil, but as a just and holy God! "and all the good which He could have accomplished by it, is al. ready effected in another and a better way." p. 179.* Here is the same assumption which was just now instanced from the writings of Mr. Scott, of Aston Sandford, that God cannot inflict punishment except for the sake of a greater good, or, (as Mr. Abbott himself has expressed it just before) "because the welfare of His government requires" it, which is an altogether gratuitous statement, Again: Vide also p. 173. "A knowledge of the death of Christ, with the explanation of it given in the Scriptures, touches men's hearts, it shows the nature and tendencies of sin, it produces fear of God's displeasure, and re. solution to return to duty; and thus produces effects by which justice is satisfied," observe, not by an expiation, but by the repentance of the offender in consequence of the "moral impression" attendant on the "Manifestation" of Christ's death, "and the authority of the law sustained far better in fact, than it would be by the severest punishment of the guilty sinner." p. 174. "Look at the moral effect of this great sacrifice, and feel that it takes off all the necessity of punishment, and all the burden of your guilt." p. 190. The necessity of punishment is (according to Mr. Abbott,) the well being of the Universe: and the virtue of the great sacrifice is, not expiation, atonement in God's sight, but the moral effect of Christ's death on those who believe in it. So again, in a passage lately quoted for another purpose: "It is by Jesus Christ that we have access to the Father. This vivid exhibition of His character, this personification of His moral attributes, opens to us the way." p. 40. Lastly, we have the same stress laid upon the facts of the Gospel as in Mr. Erskine's work, with this difference, that Mr. Erskine supposes the orthodox doctrine, or what he considers such, to be conveyed in the facts; Mr. Abbott, with the liberalism to which his predecessor leads, but which is more characteristic of this day than of fifteen years ago, seems to think that various theories may be raised about the facts, whether orthodox or otherwise, but that the facts alone are of consequence to us. "Such are the three great Manifestations of Himself to man, which the one Unseen All-pervading Essence has made, and exhibited to us in the Bible, and in our own experience and observation,”— -This sentence, be it observed in passing, savours strongly of Sabellianism; he has spoken of what he calls three Manifestations of Almighty God, as our natural Governor, as influencing the heart, and as in Jesus Christ, without there being any thing in his way of speaking to show, that he attributed these Manifestations respectively to Three Persons. He proceeds: "Though there have been interminable disputes in the Christian Church about the language which has been employed to describe these facts, there has been comparatively little dispute among even nominal Christians about the facts themselves." p. 39. Such is the theology to which Mr. Erskine's principle is found to lead in the hands of Mr. Abbott; a theology, (so to name it,) which violently robs the Christian Creed of all it contains, except those outward historical facts through which its divine truths were fulfilled and revealed to man. |