principles, however, survived him, and started up at different periods in Switzerland, Poland, and England; in which last country two Arians suffered death under the writ De Heretico comburendo, in the reign of James I.* The controversy was revived in the eighteenth century by the Churchmen, Whiston and Clarke; and more recently among the Dissenters by Price and Harwood. Taylor, author of Mordecai's Apology; Cornish, who wrote on the pre-existence of Christ; Carpenter, of Stourbridge; Emlyn, Chandler, Benson, Pierce, Grove, Sykes, Hopkins, and Bishop Clayton, were all either Arians or partially tinctured with the heresy. The co-eternal Trinity has been supported against this impeachment by an innumerable army of learned divines, among whom Calamy, Jones, Simpson, Randolph, Scott, have written expressly on the Trinity; and Abbadie, Waterland, Hey, Robinson, Eveleigh, have confined themselves to the divinity of Christ. Granville Sharp and Bishop Middleton have illustrated the subject by dissertations on the Greek article, and Mr. Maurice by his Treatise on Oriental Trinities,

* The extensive prevalence of this doctrine not long after the Reformation, occasioned an order, in 1560, that incorrigible Arians should be sent to some castle in North Wales or Wallingford. (Strype, vol. ii. p. 214.)

XII. Of Arianism there are three degrees; comprehending the Semi-Arians, the High Arians, and the Low Arians., Christ, according to all of these, pre-existed before his incarnation; but he is inferior to the Father as touching his Godhead. The Semi-Arians reject the word oμoxios, as applied to Christ; for which they substitute μ18105, declaring him to be of like, not one substance with the Father; and only LIKE the Father in all things *. An inferior degree of dignity is assigned to him by the High Arians; who conceiving the Father alone to be the one supreme God, yet regard the Son as the first derived Being, and next in dignity to the Father, though not retrospectively coeternal. They hold, that under the Father he exercises the offices of Creator, Preserver, and Governor of the world. Some High Arians offer Christ an inferior worship; others deny him worship altogether. Some confine his providence under the Old Testament to the Jews; others, resting on Hebrews, i. 2, and ii. 3, regard him as the constant and universal Ruler, the Jehovah, the Logos, the Angel of the Covenant. According to the Low or more modern Arians, Christ was only a superangelic, pre-existing spirit of high dignity and transcendent perfection: they not only refuse him

* Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiast. Hist. vol. ii. p. 51,

every species of adoration, but even deny his concern in the creation and government of the world.

The ancient Arians worshipped Christ; and seem to have been justly accused of idolatry in adoring a being whom they affirmed and allowed to be no more than a creature. Whiston, Clarke, Emlyn, and others, patrons of Arianism, whether Churchinen or Dissenters, likewise offered homage to the first-begotten and only Son of God: but among the Arians in general, since the time of Dr. Price, this inferior worship has been more consistently discontinued. With respect to the Holy Ghost, they deny his divinity; affirming him to have been created and begotten by the Son, and inferior to both the Son and the Father. In their doxologies, they ascribe "Glory to the Father through the Son." In Carpenter's Creed, it is stated that Christ died for our sins: but in what sense or degree he is held as a propitiatory sacrifice, is left to the congregation to discover.

Dr. Clarke drew up a body of amendments in the Book of Common Prayer, striking out all passages in which the second or third Person is called God, or personally addressed in adoration. This book was never published; but it may be seen in the British Museum, and an abstract of it is found in Mr. Lindsey's Apology for resigning the Living of Catterick. Car

penter, in his Liturgy, introduces hymns of praise to Christ; though he prays only to the Father in the name of the Son. There is a natural descent from Arianism into Socinianism, and thence, as experience shows, to a refined Deism. The term Unitarians is now confined to Socinians; for, according to Belsham, it cannot belong to Arians, who acknowledge a greater and a lesser God. Since, generally speaking, it is the doctrine of a triune God which is disputed in every branch of the Arian heresy, all that seems necessary, in the investigation now proposed, is an endeavour to establish that great article of faith *.

Among several ancient Heathen nations may be traced a faint notion of a Trinity in the divine nature: and as this is a doctrine by no means likely to have been discovered by the unaided powers of reason, or fabricated by human artifice, its prevalence can only be explained by believing it to have been at first revealed by the Almighty himself to the early

* Sincerity is venerable, even in its errors; and when we compare the honourable sacrifice made by Mr. Lindsey with the contemptible baseness of Mr. Stone, who a few years ago reviled the established Creed, and publicly recanted his faith, without losing his hold of ecclesiastical preferment till compelled to forego it, we cannot avoid paying to the former gentleman the tribute of well-merited respect.

patriarchs, and thus spread abroad with the dispersion of mankind; until recollection of the source from whence it proceeded was lost, and it became debased with fabulous intermixtures. If we examine the creeds of Persia, Egypt, India, Phrygia, and Rome, we shall find this setting forth of the Deity in triads to be a very remarkable feature which pervades them all. For the most enlightened Paganism is only the twilight of Revelation, after the sun of it was set in the posterity of Noah *. The oracles of the Persian Zoroaster are allowed to be the genuine source of both the Persian and Egyptian, and consequently of the Greek theology. From the ancient Chaldaic language in which they were originally written, they were translated into Greek by Berosus, Julian the Philosopher, or Hermippus, and have descended to posterity in detached fragments. In one of these it is stated, that where the paternal Monad (or unity) is, that Monad amplifies itself, and ge nerates a duality:

Οπε πατριχη μονας ἐστι

Ταναη εστι μονας ή δυο γεννα.

Here, in the word Tarpin (generates, not creates), is implied a son, the very notion of Christianity. The Duad thus generated, it is

* Preface to Dryden's Religio Laici.