the boundless universe than that God | creature, for the purpose of using it as he might feel disposed? According to the creed of Mr. Belsham, Jesus was a man like himself; a "fallible and peccable man;" and according to the same creed, Almighty power belongs to God alone. Does, then, Mr. Belsham really mean to say, that Almighty power is transferable to a weak and peccable human creature? and, is he really serious, when he would have us believe that such a creature is capable of sustaining the weight of universal government, of exercising all power in 4. If, as Mr. Belsham seems to suppose, in perfect consistency with his views of the character and person of the Lord Jesus, the time is coming, “After which, the official character of the Redeemer will terminate, and he will, as it were, retire into the ranks of the blessed, to enjoy the fruits of his labours and sufferings;”—how, after this period, will the eternal Jehovah manifest himself to his creatures? and who, on this supposition, are we to under stand by that other Being who, in the book of Revelation, is called, "The Lamb," and is represented as the Source of the everlasting felicity of the blessed, and to whom they are said to ascribe every divine honour? who dwelt bodily, or in all his fulness, in the MAN CHRIST JESUS. We are perfectly well aware that such a statement as this must be very offensive to the delicate taste of a modern Socinian; but it is no part of our intention to trim or accommodate matters with those who tell us, that what we consider as the most glorious and astonishing fact, is only a fable; and, that the Being whom we worship, as the ONLY LIVING AND TRUE GOD, is nothing more than such a creature as Mr. Belsham, or Doctor Priestley. As, however, we are abso-heaven and on earth? Once more, lutely obliged to leave this part of the subject that we may pass on to another, we must sum up what we wished to have discussed at length, in the form of an inquiry, which we hope Mr. Belsham will not think altogether beneath his notice. 1. then, If the doctrine of the union of two distinct natures in the person of Jesus Christ be a “fable”— and if Jesus Christ was really and truly a man, and nothing more, what did he mean when he said to Philip "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father;-believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" 2. If Jesus Christ be not really and truly the manifested form or image of the true and invisible God;-if, "In him," the very essence or fulness of the Godhead does not dwell bodily; then where are we to look for the accomplishment of all those predictions of the manifestation of JEHOVAH in human nature with which the Old Testament abounds? Is Jesus Christ he that was to come? or are we to look for another? and, if Jesus be not the true God, are not Christians, at the present day, as ignorant of him as the Athenians were, when Paul beheld them addressing their devotions to the unknown God? 3. If the fulness that is said to dwell in Jesus Christ was, as Mr. Belsham inti-idea which his language, i. e. Paul's, namates, merely a fulness of divine communications, made to him as to a mere man; and, if this fulness consisted in the power of working miracles, in confirmation of his doctrine; if, as he also intimates, this is the sense in which Jesus Christ is said to be rich at the same time that he became poor for the benefit of his followers;-will Mr. B. shew how it is possible that the power of working miracles, which is neither more nor less than Almighty power, could ever have been bestowed upon a mere We come now to take some notice of Mr. Belsham's views of the death of Jesus. This circumstance, according to what we have seen of our author's views of the nature of the person of Christ, must, at the very most, have been a thing of comparatively small importance. He was a man in all respects like other men; and although distinguished as an eminent Prophet of God, yet the sufferings which he endured were such as the other prophets had endured before him, and such as Paul and the other apostles completed in their bodies. For "The turally conveys to us is this: that a great deal of suffering was necessary to establish the christian church. That of Christ was one part, but not the whole; that of the apostles and other christians must be added to it." This is a subject to which, of course, the author must often refer in an Exposition of the Epistles of the apostle Paul; and it is obvious from the nature of the frequent references which he makes to it, particularly in the Notes, that his mind is wholly car ried away by the bias of his own system, even so much so as not to allow him an | Paul should be a MAN OF SORROWS and opportunity of calm reflection on the im- acquainted with grief? that he should port of some of the most express decla- pour out his soul unto death for the rerations of Scripture. We are very well demption of the transgressors? that he persuaded that Mr. Belsham and our- should be, or that he was bruised for our selves differ widely as to the end accom- iniquities that the chastisement of our plished by the sufferings and death of peace was upon him, and that by his the Lord Jesus Christ: this must of ne- stripes we are healed? "It really seems cessity be the case while we entertain as if the apostle had foreseen and was views so diametrically opposite respect actually providing against the absurd ing the nature of his person, and the doctrines of modern times when he exend of his mission into the world; yet claimed, Was Paul crucified for you?"" notwithstanding this difference, we can- It is not however necessary to multiply not avoid expressing our astonishment proofs on this head; there is nothing that, with the Bible in his hand, and more evident, than that between the sut possessing the full use of his under- ferings of Jesus Christ and those of his standing, he should speak as he does of apostles and other christians, there is no the nature of those sufferings: his lan- comparison. It is a remarkable_fact, guage, indeed, furnishes an awful proof that in the prospect of death, and that of the baneful effect of hypothesis over too in a form equally painful, lingering, the judgment, and its powerful influence and shameful, as that in which Jesus in darkening the human mind to the encountered it, we find the apostles, plainest truths of revelation. The pecu- some of them at least, and every one adliarly intense nature of the sufferings of mits that the same has been the case Christ, whatever was the cause of them, with a great cloud of witnesses to the formed the subject of ancient phrophecy, truth of the gospel, hailing it with joy, as might plainly be proved from nume- and even with rapture embracing the rous passages of the Old Testament: instruments that were to torture them in hence it is said that "the Spirit of Christ the most excruciating manner; whereas which was in the prophets testified when the awful moment drew nigh in before hand of the sufferings of Christ, which the Son of Man was to yield himand the glory which should follow," self up to the death of the cross, we find and our Lord himself appeals to the ac- him when retired for the purpose of quaintance which his own disciples had prayer, overwhelmed with amazement; with the letter of Scripture, in the way his soul exceedingly sorrowful even unto of reproving them for their slowness of death; thrown into an agony; and prayheart to believe all that Moses and the ing that if it were possible the cup of other prophets had written of him, say- sorrow might pass from him; and in the ing, "Ought not Christ to have suffered moment of his greatest extremity utterthese things, and to enter into his glory?" ing the bitter and piercing cry: "My But where are such predictions as these God, my God, why hast thou forsaken to be found in reference to the apostles me.' and other christians? We are aware that the afflictions of the church are often mentioned in phrophecy; but it is always in a manner totally different from that in which the sufferings of Christ are spoken of: the former are invariably mentioned as a consequence resulting from the attachment of the church to her great Head: but the latter are represented as altogether unparalleled and fraught with beneficial consequences to the human race. Of the apostles it was indeed predicted that, for Jesus' sake they should be killed all the day long; that they should be accounted as sheep for the slaughter; and of christians in general it is said, that through much tribulation they shall enter the kingdom of God; but is it any where written that Will Mr. Belsham say that Jesus, as a martyr, was inferior to Stephen, to Paul, to Peter, and to others, in point of fortitude in suffering? They had the certain prospect of an exceeding great and an eternal weight of glory as the reward of their sufferings and fidelity; but what mind can conceive the extent of the joy that awaited HIM? Either, therefore, his sufferings were altogether different from theirs, or he was, in all respects, as a martyr far inferior to them. Whence then is the difference? for a most marked and striking difference there is. Has this ever been satisfactorily accounted for on the Socinian hypothesis? No, never; and what is more, it never can be: the most acute reasoner among the body called by that name, dare not undertake the task. The only rational account that can be given of the matter is, that the sufferings of Jesus were substitutional, were vicarious, or in the emphatic language of the prophet, "for the transgression of my people was he stricken to death;" but to admit the plain import of this is to give the death blow to Socinianism! those passages of Scripture which speak of the agency of evil spirits. They think they have completely settled the point when they have resolved the whole into what they term, the personification of the abstract principle of evil. But, we ask, to what purpose is it that such glosses as this are either invented or propagated? for evil, we should conceive, is evil, whether it be personified or not; and, we should be glad to know by what process of intellect it is possible to form any idea of what evil in the abstract is. Besides, we hope that Mr. Belsham has not yet forgotten that, even in the "Improved Version" of the New Testament, he has represented this abstract principle of evil as exerting a variety of active powers, which can belong only to an organized being. These gross and glaring inconsistencies may pass among those who boast of being swayed by the bias of system, and with such as are too indolent to reflect on their received religious creed; but, Unitarian expositors, may depend upon it, that, merely talking about rationality, will no longer do; and, that the WORLD expects them either to lower their pretensions, or to support, by proof, their bold assertions. But to enlarge on this part of the subject, would lead us far beyond the bounds we have Now we are confident enough that this matter is very clearly accounted for in the New Testament, and by our blessed Lord himself, whose authority, in our opinion, is the highest to which an appeal can be made. He expressly declares in reference to his last sufferings that, when they should take place, then should be the judgment of this world, and that then should the Prince of this world be cast out. It was in reference to the same momentous hour that he said, "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." The simple question then here is, to what did Jesus refer when he thus spake? was it a visible or an invisible power of which he spake? was the approaching conflict to be maintained with natural or with spiritual beings? If, as Mr. Belsham affirms, those passages which speak of the god of this world; the ruler of the darkness that pervades it; the prince of the power of the air; the spirit that worketh in the children of dis-prescribed for our notice of the work obedience; the spiritual wickedness in high places, with others of similar import, are to be understood of the Jewish hierarchy; then, it was the fear of encountering that power that produced such an overwhelming effect on the soul of Jesus, in which case he but ill | exemplified his own doctrine; “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul." Let those receive such puerile interpretations, who are able to receive them; for our own parts, we have not a single doubt, that our Lord was speaking of his combat with infernal powers; of his last and triumphant conflict with him, who had the power of death, but who was to have it no longer; of his swallowing up death in an eternally decisive victory; and of securing to mankind a deliverance from Satanic influence, which, till then, was unknown since the time it first subjugated the human race. We are well acquainted with the clumsy method of interpretation by which such men as Mr. Belsham, and Russell Scott, endeavour to evade the force of all before us, and would necessarily involve an examination of the important doctrine of human redemption, by the death of Christ. And, indeed, important as this part of the controversy is, we are the less anxious to enter upon it, because there are already before the Unitarians many volumes of unanswered arguments on the subject, into which, they are either afraid to look, or to which, at all events, they are unable to reply. These observations remind us of another particular which struck_us forcibly in going through Mr. Belsham's exposition. From our earliest days we have believed, on what we considered the authority of divine revelation, in the real existence of such places as heaven and hell, and of spiritual beings inhabiting those places, according to their respective natures;that the soul of man is immortal; and that, on its leaving the body, it passes from the natural into the spiritual world, where it exists in a state of happiness or misery, according to the state of life which it led in the natural world. | bare mention of this gloomy theory, will chill the minds of many of our readers with horror; we shall rejoice if the case be so; for it will afford them an opportunity of proving the strength of the only consolation which Socinianism offers under such a prospect, namely, that the interval of thousands of ages is in reality nothing, an evanescent point hardly worthy of notice. It seems, however, that in entertaining these sentiments, we have only been deluding ourselves; for, according to Mr. Belsham, and some of his friends whom he quotes, all this is merely imaginary, an idle tale;--there can be no state of conscious existence between death and the resurrection, otherwise, the apostle would have mentioned it; nor, can it be conceived of what use it would be to reveal to us any thing relating to the spiritual world, even supposing such a world to exist!! All this we were in some measure prepared to expect, after reading the author's preface; but, we must confess, we did not think that any man, professing to admit the necessity, or even the utility of a revelation, could have carried the sentiment of the ancient Sadducees to the extent Mr. Belsham does. Like them however, he is often extremely inconsistent with his own system. He speaks, for instance, of Jesus being exalted to a state of glory; but, if he is exalted to a state of glory, that state of glory must exist somewhere; yet, we are quite at a loss to conceive where this state can be, unless it be in what we have been accustomed to call the spiritual world. Besides, although on Mr. Belsham's view of the doctrine of a resurrection from the dead, Jesus was raised from that state; yet, being nothing more than a man like ourselves, the state of glory to which he is exalted, must, of course, be the same as that to which all the blessed shall be exalted at a future period; and, indeed, Mr. B. fully admits this, when he intimates that after the consummation of all things, Jesus will retire from his mediatorial office, and take his station among the ranks of the blessed. According, then, to this hypothesis, wherever this state of glory may be, it is possessed by Jesus as a solitary individual: for although thousands of years have already elapsed since death began to cut off the human race, not one individual of the myriads that have been committed to the dust has yet been raised to enjoy the felicity of being with Christ; for this, says Dr. Priestley, can only take place at his second coming. "For Christ himself has said, that he would come again, and that he would take his disciples to himself; which clearly implies, that they were not to be with him before that time." We are persuaded, that the This, to be sure, is a very soothing thought; but we beg that it may be particularly noticed at what an expense this remedy is provided." The idea of duration ceases while thought is suspended." Here is the grand secret; here at last stands before you, reader, the absolutely atheistical doctrine of MATERIALISM, presented to you with all the decorations and winning graces of modern Unitarianism : a doctrine which teaches you to believe, that what you call your soul, is the mere result of the organization of the gross particles of matter of which your body is formed: a doctrine which allows that your life is from God, but that, after all, it is nothing more than an attenuated configuration of atoms; and that all your mental operations, are nothing but the mechanical motions of rarefied matter: thus actually making the principle of life, and the operations of the understanding to be only the modes of existence of that which has in itself, nothing vital or intelligent; and, in one word, ascribing more to the effect than there is in the cause to bestow, as might easily be demonstrated. Well, indeed, may Mr. Belsham suggest his doubts as to the existence of the spiritual world; for, as God creates nothing in vain, it would be absurd to suppose, that he has created a world for spirits when there are no spirits to inhabit it. Human beings, therefore, must be the only spirits that have existence; for death, it seems, is the suspension of thought, and we can form no idea of the existence of a spirit deprived of consciousness or thought. And here we would remind the advocates of this doctrine, in case it may not have occurred to themselves, that the absolute annihilation of the soul, during thousands of ages, is the only consistent form in which their sentiment can be expressed; for if the celebrated proposition of Des Cartes be correct, "I think, therefore, I am;" the converse must be correct," I think not, therefore I am not." useless tale;" but, what is there in those visions that is less credible than the circumstances described in the visions of the prophets, or, in fact, that is not of equal utility, and, in every respect, equally applicable to the church ?—and if the testimony of the prophets be admitted, the testimony of John may be admitted also. But we strongly suspect Mr. Belsham's willingness to admit even the testimony of the prophets on this subject; for, although he professes to receive their writings as genuine, it by no means follows that he is satisfied as to the reality of their visions: no, the aim of Mr. B. in the work before us, is to set forth the genuineness of Paul's epistles; but, we are not to suppose from that, that he is satisfied as to all the apostle said and did, far from it; he finds many faults and imperfections in the apostle Paul; and indeed, chooses to differ with him, whenever he seems to contradict his favourite system; then Paul is either fanciful, or he is no profound metaphysician, or his argument is defective, or probably an error has crept into the text; and if the reader is not satisfied with these assertions, then he may see Mr. Locke, or Rosenmuller, or Slichtingius, or Pierce, or Priestley, or Whitby, or Newcome, or Wakefield, or the venerable Bishop Law, or Macknight, or Grotius, or Doddridge, and a goodly company of others We are unwilling to leave this sub-account given in the Apocalypse of the ject without throwing out a hint or two revolutions which John witnessed pasfor the consideration of Mr. Belsham sing in the "Celestial hierarchy," as a and his admiring readers. And first, as to the reality of the existence of the spiritual world, we would remark, that, it is clear from the visions of the prophets, as Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and also from those of John mentioned in the book of Revelations, not only that there is such a world, but that it exists immediately around us. We have no reason to suppose, that when the sublime visions of the prophets were presented before them, they were removed from this earth to some inconceivable distance beyond our system. The contrary we know was the case: we are expressly informed in what particular place of this earth they were at the very moment when they were gazing on the unutterable glories of another state of existence. This effect was produced by what they uniformly term, being " in the Spirit," which plainly implies, that they were under an extraordinary degree of spiritual influence, by which they were enabled to see the realities of the spiritual world, which cannot be discerned by the gross organs of bodily vision. This expression also seems to be synonymous with another often used in reference to this subject, viz., opening the eyes :-thus we are told, that in answer to the prayer of Elisha," the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and that he saw: and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." The same thing is stated as the reason" in loc. ;" and if all these are insuffi why the disciples did not recognize Jesus on their way to Emmaus; "their eyes were holden, that they should not know him:"-but during the conversation of Jesus with them, we are told, that "their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight," or in other words, their eyes were shut. All, therefore, that is necessary to be done, in order to our discerning the realities of the spiritual world, as clearly as we do those of the natural world, is the opening of the eyes of our spirit; and this, surely, the divine Being can do at his pleasure. Mr. Belsham treats with ridicule, the idea of our having any thing communicated to us by Revelation respecting the spiritual world. But we would ask him, what is the whole of Revelation but a communication from that world? We are aware, that he sets aside the cient to produce conviction in the reader's mind, that Unitarianism is the doctrine of Christ and his apostle, he must be an unreasonable man indeed! Mr. B. admits, that Paul may have had several interviews with Jesus Christ, during which, he received from him instruction relative to the discharge of his ministry; but he has not attempted to specify any one instance of such interviews. Jesus appeared to Paul at the time of his conversion, and appointed him to the apostolic office, promising to appear to him again to instruct him more fully. But we do not read of any such appearance having taken place afterwards, yet, doubtless it did take place; and the only event, to which we can refer the accomplishment of this promise, is one which Mr. Belsham pronounces as of very doubtful autho rity, we mean Paul's being caught up |