three Gods, after all the unavailing attempts to prove them one God.

The doctrine of the Trinity has had baneful effects, by impeding the progress of Christianity in the world, and preventing the conversion of Deists, Jews, Mahomedans, and Pagans. The Deists in our own country, taking their notions of Christianity from the creeds, articles, and confessions of our national establishments, and not giving themselves the trouble to examine the New Testament with critical care and skill, have taken it for granted that this tenet is contained in that incomparable book; and have assigned it as one of their reasons for rejecting the Christian faith.

The Jews are really a standing reproach to Christians. The doctrine of the Trinity is one of their principal objections against Christianity. They look upon it with the utmost abhorrence, as an impious, idolatrous system, inculcating the belief of more divine persons than one; and raising the creature to the dignity of the Creator. Let a Trinitarian endeavour to convert a Jew to the belief of his own

tenets, and he will tell him that the law of God, the revelation of the Almighty in the Old Testament forbids it. He will tell him, that he will never give up the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of Moses and the prophets, the one adorable Jehovah, the God of Israel, who was the God of his ancestors, for this new God, this triune Deity, that Christians have devised.

The

The Mahomedans have also testified the strongest aversion to the doctrine of the Trinity; and have severely reproached Christians for their adherence to it. general prevalence of that doctrine gave Mahomed the greatest advantages in propagating and establishing his new religion.

Nor can the conversion even of Pagans be expected, while this doctrine continues to be held and taught by Christians. Every argument by which we would attempt to convince them of the absurdity of a multiplicity of Gods, will be found to militate equally strong against a Trinity of divine persons.

About the beginning of the present cen

tury, the King of Denmark sent some Lutheran divines, as missionaries, to the province of Malabar in the East Indies, in order to convert the inhabitants of that country from idolatry to the belief of Christianity. These missionaries had many conferences with the natives, on various theological topics; and were at very great pains to shew them the absurdity of their own religion; and induce them to change it.

The following quotation is part of a conference betwixt a Malabarian physician from Nagapatnam, and one of these missionaries. "Missionary, God does not appear in bodily shape, said I; for he is a spirit: but he has appeared and revealed himself by his Son Jesus Christ, who clothed himself with the garments of mortality, to the end that he might suffer for our sins, reconcile us to God, and bring us to him, and do his will; which is our salvation. If you believe in Christ, the Redeemer of mankind, your mind will be more and more enlightened in the knowledge of the Supreme Being." "Who is his Sou?" said he, (viz. the physician) “and is

he also God?" I answered, "He is 'God, blessed for ever."" "But pray Sir, recollect yourself," said he, "have not you been just now inveighing against plurality of Gods? And now I find And now I find you have yourselves more than one; the Father is God, and the Son is God; then you have two Gods." I answered, "We do not believe two Gods, but one only God; though at the same time we firmly believe, that there are three persons in one divine essence; and yet these three persons are not three, but one God: and this we believe as a great mystery, transcending our weak, finite faculties We are satisfied, that it is a revealed truth in scripture; and God who knows himself, has enjoined us to believe a Trinity of persons in one divine essence; which we call Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." "If God has a Son, said he, "then your God, as well as some of ours, must have a wife, and is, by con"God is a sequence, a material being." spirit," said I, and, therefore, has no bodily shape, and consequently, could not have a Son in the ordinary way, but he created his Son from eternity: and from

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the Father and Son proceeds the Holy Spirit, the third person in the blessed Trinity." "I find," said he, "that you with subtle ways of arguing can make a Trinity consistent with Unity; and if your explication is absolutely necessary to make others understand what you mean, pray allow us the same advantage of explaining the doctrine of our religion, and putting it in the favourablest light we can for excluding of the absurdities imputed And this once granted us, it will follow that our plurality does not destroy the Unity of God, no more than your Trinity does."*

to us.

ABRIDGMENT OF COOPER'S SUMMARY OF. UNITARIAN ARGUMENTS.

1, Whatever God be, from the Trinitarian positions, he cannot be an intelligent agent; for if it be possible to express in language a contradiction, a contradiction

Thirty-four Conferences between the Danish Missionaries and the Malabarian Bramans; translated from the High Dutch, by Mr. Phillips, London, 1719.