The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor (Volume 4) - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1823. Excerpt: ... THE CHRISTIAN MONITOR. No. XXIX. MAY, 1823. Vol. IV. The Ecclesiastical Doctrine of Trinity. A Dream. Mr. Editor, Some of your readers may think, perhaps, that the phrase at the head of this article is a strange one, and may pardon me for stopping to explain what is meant by the ecclesiastical doctrine of Trinity. That the doctrine is not founded on the positive authority of Scripture, is getting very fast to be allowed even by many who yet believe in it; but no one disputes that it has been the orthodox, that is the prevailing, doctrine of the church, from a very early period, and that successive leaders have moulded it into the various forms, which it has from time to time assumed. The most that any learned protestant can say of it is, that it may be fairly inferred from the Scriptures, by comparing together certain passages; while the Catholic thinks it enough, that it was voted to be true by the infallible council of Nice. The episcopal faith in our own country is sufficiently popish, I cannot help adding, in this particular. I heard a learned bishop, three years ago, declare in the presence of a great congregation assembled at St. 's church in Philadelphia, that error on such a point in the council of Nice, so near the time of the apostles, was a moral impossibility. Now this unerring council, we all know, was held as "near the time of the apostles" as the year 325 of our era, after extravagance had succeeded extravagance so long in the minds of christians, that there hardly seemed room for one absurdity more. It was made up of ecclesiastics, who had more zeal than good sense or good manners, who were glad enough to travel into Bithynia at the public expense, and to meet the emperor of the world, in whose very presence the first thing they did was to...