the Father, but of a like nature (ὁμοιούσιος) and therefore individually separate—separate in will, and capable of differing.  This is a direct assertion of two Gods.  Socinus on the contrary strenuously asserts the unity of the Deity to the extent of denying the pre-existence of Christ: which Arius though acknowledging that there was a time when he began to exist, nevertheless refers to a period remote beyond human calculation.  Thus upon their characteristic doctrines, the two sects are diametrically opposed to each other.

Having now given you the real opinions of Socinus, from his own works, for the book is lying beside me as I write, I shall pursue my plan of examining how far they accord with what was taught by those who certainly ought to be best informed on the subject, namely, Christ himself, his Apostles, and their immediate successors; as well as with the deductions of reason.  The unity of the Deity is so frequently and so decidedly asserted in Scripture, that it is impossible to consider any man as unorthodox who professes to make this the groundwork of his belief—so far therefore the Socinian is in accordance both with Scripture and the general voice of the Christian church, for the early Apologists for Christianity, who had to address polytheists, are full of declarations that they worship One only Deity, who by various manifestations has made himself, at different times, known to mankind. [39a]  There is not a writer of the first and second centuries who does not anxiously assert the one-ness of the God whom the Christians worship: but then they as anxiously assert the identity of their Teacher and Lord with that God.  From Christ himself, who says, “Before Abraham was, I am;” [39b] “I and the Father are one;” [39c] “He who hath seen me hath seen the Father;” “the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works;” [39d] to St. Paul, who tells us that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,” [39e] down to the fathers of the early church, to whom I may refer passim for the same doctrine; all have distinctly asserted that the message of peace to man was delivered by God himself, making use of a human form as the mode of communication with his creatures, and dwelling in “the man Christ Jesus,” [39f] as in a temple built up for his especial use; the human nature, to use the expression of the church, “having been taken into God,” not the Godhead circumscribed in man.  I will not swell the length of my letter with quotations from the fathers which may be found elsewhere; I think the texts I have quoted with many more of the same purport, which you will readily call to mind, suffice to prove that when Socinus asserted the Christ to be merely a man, he erred; for though Jesus “the Carpenter’s son,” as his contemporaries called him, was to all intents and purposes a man “of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting;” [40] and though this may be proved from numberless passages in the Scripture, where the man Jesus speaks of his inferiority to the Father and bestower of his human frame and spirit,—yet if we do not entirely distort the meaning of words, that man at times uttered declarations of divine power which could only have proceeded from the indwelling Deity, otherwise they must have been the assertions of imposture, which Socinus by no means teaches to have been the case.  I know not, therefore, how the believer in the Gospel can avoid acknowledging that Christ was a compound being:—perfectly a man, and speaking as such on some occasions; but, at the same time, the temple of the Ever-living God, whose words flowed from his lips like the answer from the Mercy seat: “Heaven and the heaven of heavens” no doubt “cannot contain” the Infinite; and no true believer will assert that God can be circumscribed in a human body—but, if so mean a comparison may be permitted—as the crater of the volcano is but the mouthpiece of the mighty agents operating within for the fashioning of the earth,—so the manifestation of the Deity in the form, and from the lips of a man, is but that spot of the material creation where the ever blessed Divinity allows himself, as it were, a vent; and gives forth a visible and tangible sign of his existence.

“He that has seen me has seen the Father,” says the Christ.  “I can of my own self do nothing” [41] says the man: and this distinction which the Christ who necessarily knew something of the composition of his own nature so frequently asserts, has probably been the groundwork of the mistaken views of this class of Christians, and we may well look with charitable indulgence on the errors of men, who dreading lest they should incur the penalty of giving the incommunicable glory of the Mighty God to another, have not allowed their due weight to the passages, which assert that Mighty God to have undertaken the task of bringing his creature man back to Himself.

Having thus given you a fair account of the creed of Socinus, I must next notice the modern Unitarians, who on some points differ from him.  Where there is no acknowledged creed or catechism, [42] which may be quoted as authority, it is difficult to give the doctrines of a sect with any precision; but as far as it is possible to judge from the writings most in repute among the Unitarians, they disclaim the notion of the miraculous conception, and believe Christ to have been to all intents and purposes a mere man.  At the same time they allow him to have been so inspired and guided by God, that it is difficult to see where they draw the line between their own creed and that of the church, which allows the perfect humanity of Jesus, but asserts that “God and man make one Christ,” namely, that the message of peace was that of God speaking by human lips, and that the Anointed prophet who declared it, was, when so anointed,