the subjective sense of that word) of all true Christians. It is the unconscious, or unformed faith, even of those of God's people who are unable to understand the term by which it is expressed. They all believe in God, the Creator and Preserver against whom they have sinned, whose justice they know they cannot satisfy, and whose image they cannot restore to their apostate nature. They, therefore, as of necessity, believe in a divine Redeemer and a divine Sanctifier. They have, as it were, the factors of the doctrine of the Trinity in their own religious convictions. No mere speculative doctrine, especially no doctrine so mj'sterious and so out of analogy with all other objects of human knowledge, as that of the Trinity, could ever have held the abiding control over the faith of the Church, Avhich this doctrine has maintained. It is not, therefore, by any arbitrary decision, nor from any bigoted adherence to hereditary beliefs, that the Church has always refused to recognize as Christians , those who reject this doctrine. This judgment is only the expres sion of the deep conviction that Antitrinitarians must adopt a radi- cally and practically different system of religion from that on which the Church builds her hopes. It is not too much to say with Meyer,^ that " the Trinity is the point in which all Christian ideas and interests unite ; at once the beginning and the end of all insight into Christianity."
This great article of the Christian faith may be regarded under three different aspects : (1.) The BibHcal form of the doctrine. (2.) The ecclesiastical form, or the mode in which the statements of the Bible have been explained in the symbols of the Church and the writings of theologians. (3.) Its philosophical form, or the attempts which have been made to illustrate, or to prove, the doctrine on philosophical principles. It is only the doctrine as presented in the Bible, which binds the faith and conscience of the people of God.
§ 2. Biblical Form of the Doctrine.
A. What that Form is. The form in which this doctrine lies in the Bible, and in which it enters into the faith of the Chui'ch universal, includes substan- tially the following particulars.
1. There is one only living and true God, or divine Being. The religion of the Bible stands opposed not only to Atheism, but to all forms of polytheism. The Scriptures everywhere assert that 1 Lehre von der Triniiat, vol. i. p. 42.
444 PART L — THEOLOGY. [Ch. YI — The Trinity
Jehovah alone is God. (Deut. vi. 4.) " The Lord our God is one Lord." " I am the first, and I am the last ; and besides me there is no God." (Is. xliv. 6.) " Thou believest that there is one God ; tliou doest well." (James ii. 19.) The Decalogue, which is the foundation of the moral and religious code of Christianity, as well as of Judaism, has as its first and greatest commandment, "Thou shalt have no other God before me." No doctrine, there- fore, can possibly be true which contradicts this primary truth of natural as well as of revealed religion.
2. Li the Bible all divine titles and attributes are ascribed equally to the Father, Son, and Spirit. The same divine worship is rendered to them. The one is as much the object of adoration, love, confidence, and devdtion as the other. It is not more evi- dent that the Father is God, than that the Son is God ; nor is the deity of the Father and Son more clearly revealed than that of the Spirit.
3. The terms Father, Son, and Spirit do not express differ- ent relations of God to his creatures. They are not analogous to the terms Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor, which do express such relations. The Scriptural facts are, (a.) The Father says I ; the Son says I ; the Spirit says I. (5.) The Father says Thou to the Son, and the Son says Thou to the Father ; and in like manner the Father and the Son use the pronouns He and Him in reference to the Spirit, (c.) The Father loves the Son ; the Son loves the Father ; the Spirit testifies of the Son. The Father, Son, and Spirit are severally subject and object. They act and are acted upon, or ai-e the objects of action. Nothing is added to these facts when it is said that the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct persons ; for a person is an intelligent subject who can say I, who can be addressed as Thou, and who can act and can be the object of action. The summation of the above facts is expressed in the proposition. The one divine Being subsists in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. This proposition adds nothing to the facts themselves; for the facts are, (1.) That there- is one divine Being. (2.) The Father, Son, and Spirit are divine. (3.) The Father, Son, and Spirit are, in the sense just stated, distinct persons. (4.) Attributes being inseparable from substance, the Scriptures, in saying that the Father, Son, and Spirit possess the same attributes, say they are the same in substance ; and, if the same in substance, they are equal in power and glory.
4. Notwithstanding that the Father, Son, and Spirit are the same in substance, and equal in power and glory, it is no less true,