It were well, if before we made up our minds on this intricate article of faith, we were carefully to read Dr. Watts's Essay on the Impotence of any Human Schemes to explain the Doctrine of the Trinity. This essay shews, first, that no such scheme of explication is necessary to salvation; secondly, that it may yet be of great use to the Christian church; and, thirdly, that all such explications ought to be proposed with modesty to the world, and never imposed on the conscience.

Bishop Burnet tells us, that before the Reformation it was usual in England to have pictures of the Trinity. God the Father was represented in the shape of an old man with a triple crown, and rays about his head! The Son, in another part of the picture, looked like a young man, with a single crown on his head, and a radiant countenance. The blessed Virgin was between them, in a sitting posture; and the Holy Ghost, under the appearance of a dove, spread his wings over her! This picture, he tells us, is still to be seen in a prayer book printed in the year 1526, according to the ceremonial of Salisbury. Skippon also tells us, there is at Padua a representation of the Trinity, being the figure of an old man with three faces and three beards! And, lately reading Throsby's History of Leicester, I met with a curious representation of the Trinity copied from an ancient painted window, the date of which was not ascertained. How contrary are these absurd repre

sentations of the Deity to the sublime declaration of our Saviour! John iv. 24. "God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

SABELLIANS.

he

THE Sabellian reduces the three persons in the Trinity to three characters or relations. This has been called by some a modal Trinity, and the persons who hold it Modalists. Sabellius, the founder of the sect, espoused the doctrine in the third century. Of his tenets, the accounts are various. Some say, taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, were one subsistence, and one person, with three names; and that in the Old Testament the Deity delivered the law as Father, in the New Testament dwelt among men as the Son, and descended on the apostles as the Holy Spirit. This opinion gains ground in the principality of Wales. "The Sabellians (says Mr. Broughton), made the Word and the Holy Spirit to be only virtues, emanations, or functions of the Deity. They held, that he who in heaven is the Father of all things, descended into the Virgin, became a child, and was born of her as a Son; and that having accomplished the mystery of our salvation, he diffused himself on the apostles in tongues

of fire, and was then denominated the Holy Ghost. They resembled God to the sun, the illuminative virtue or quality whereof was the Word, and its warming virtue the Holy Spirit. The word they taught was darted like a divine ray, to accomplish the work of redemption; and that being re-ascended to heaven, as the ray returns to its source, the warmth of the Father was communicated after a like manner to the apostles. Such was the language of Sabellians."

Mosheim says likewise, that "Sabellius maintained that a certain energy only proceeded from the Supreme Parent, or a certain portion of the divine nature was united to the Son of God, the man Jesus, and he (that is Sabellius), considered in the same manner the Holy Ghost as a portion of the everlasting Father."

These various explications are given that the reader may have a consistent view of the subject. It is a curious circumstance with respect to this system, that whilst one party pronounce Sabellianism to be no other than Unitarianism in a fog, another party charges it with confounding the persons of the everblessed Trinity.

Between the system of Sabellianism, and what is termed the Indwelling scheme, there appears to be a considerable resemblance, if it be not precisely the same, differently explained. The Indwelling scheme is chiefly founded on that passage of the New Testa

ment, where the Apostle, speaking of Christ, says-"In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Dr. Watts, towards the close of his life, became a Sabellian, and wrote several pieces in defence of it. His sentiments on the Trinity appear to have been, that "the Godhead, the Deity itself, personally distinguished as the Father, was united to the man Christ Jesus, in consequence of which union or indwelling of the Godhead, he became properly God." The Rev. Mr. Palmer, in his edition of Johnson's Life of Watts, observes that Dr. Watts conceived this union to have subsisted before the Saviour's appear ance in the flesh, and that the human soul of Christ existed with the Father from before the foundation of the world: on which ground he maintains the real descent of Christ from heaven to earth, and the whole scene of his humiliation, which he thought incompatible with the common opinion concerning him. See Dr. Watts' Last Thoughts on the Trinity, in a pamphlet republished by the Reverend Gabriel Watts. It was printed by the doctor in the year 1745, three years only before his death. It is on this account valuable, and ought, in justice to that great and good man, to have been inserted in the late edition of his works. Indeed the reader is referred to a recent piece published by the Rev. S. Palmer, entitled Dr. Watts no Socinian, in reply to the Rev. T. Belsham, who, in his Life of the Rev. T. Lindsay, had intimated that Dr. Watts had become a modern Uni

tarian. There can be no doubt, however, that Doctor W. had discarded the common notion of the Trinity, though he was not an Unitarian in the modern sense of the word. Dr. Doddridge also is supposed to have been a Sabellian, and also Mr. Benjamin Fawcett, of Kidderminster, who published a valuable piece, entitled Candid Reflections concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity. It is a pity that this work is not republished and widely circulated throughout the religious world.

ARIANS.

THE Arian derives his name from Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, who flourished about the year 315, and the propagation of whose doctrine occasioned the famous council of Nice, assembled by Constantine, in the year 335. The origin of Arianism has been thus curiously accounted for. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, discoursing one day too curiously concerning the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity in the presence of his presbyters and the rest of his clergy, Arius, one of the presbyters, supposed his bishop to advance the doctrine of Sabellius, and disliking that, he went into a directly opposite opinion. However, whatever may have been the opinion or conduct of Arius, the system widely spread, and violent efforts