well as doctrinal matters, did not sometimes confound the actual with the imaginary, and that the fancy of these pious writers never stood in the place of their recollection?

"It has been assumed, at the outset, it would seem, with no sufficient reason, without the smallest pretence on its writers' parts, that all of its authors were infallibly and miraculously inspired, so that they could commit no error of doctrine or fact. Men have been bid to close their eyes at the obvious difference between Luke and John; the serious disagreement between Paul and Peter; to believe on the smallest evidence, accounts which shock the moral sense and revolt the

reason.

"Hence the attempt which always fails, to reconcile the philosophy of our times with the poems in Genesis, written a thousand years before Christ; hence the attempt to conceal the contradiction in the record itself. Matters have come to such a pass, that even now, he is deemed an infidel, if not by implication an atheist, whose reverence for the Most High forbids him to believe that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, a thought at which the flesh creeps with horror; to believe it solely on the authority of an oriential story, written down nobody knows when, or by whom, or for what purpose; which may be a poem, but cannot be the record of fact, unless God is the author of confusion and a lie.

"On the authority of the written word, man was taught to believe fiction for fact; a dream for a miraculous revelation of God; an oriental poem for a grave history of miraculous events; a collection of amatory idyls [love songs] for a serious discourse touching the mutual love of Christ and the Church.'

"No doubt the time will come when its true character will be felt. Then it will be seen, that, amid all the contradictions of the Old Testament; its legends so beautiful as fictions, so appaling as facts; amid its pre

dictions that have never been fulfilled; amid the puerile conceptions of God which sometimes occur, and the cruel denunciations that disfigure both Psalm and Prophecy, there is a reverence for man's nature, a sublime trust in God, and a depth of piety rarely felt in these cold northern hearts of ours.'

Such is the language of Unitarian divines. We will now present the reader with an extract from the pen of Rosseau, a noted French infidel, and then leave him to judge which has the greatest claim to the name of Christian, Rosseau, an avowed skeptic, or the gentlemen from whose writings the above extracts have been taken.

"I will confess to you that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction: how mean, how contemptible they are compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of a man ? Is it possible that the sacred personage whose history it contains, should be a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or the ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity in his manners! What an affecting gracefulness in his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims! What presence of mind in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die, without weakness and without ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary good man with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he described exactly the character of Jesus Christ: the resemblance was so striking that all the Christian Fathers perceived it.

"What prepossession, what blindness must it be to compare the son of Sophronicus (Socrates) to the son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion is there be tween them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy,

easily supported his character to the last and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was any thing more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precept. But where could Jesus learn among his competitors that pure and sublime morality, of which he only has given us both precept and example? The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blest the weeping executioner who gave it; but Jesus, in the midst of excrutiating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes! if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction; on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty, without obviating it; it is more inconceivable, that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction and strangers to the morality. contained in the gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing man than the hero."

The reader now has before him the language of Unitarianism and the language of infidelity; and in view of the contrast, we think he will justify us in saying that the language of Unitarianism is not so becoming the Christian religion as the language of Rosseau, an open

and avowed skeptic; and, with the editor of the Western Christian Advocate, "That Unitarianism is not only diametrically opposed in its principles to Christianity, but that its very forces are arrayed against it. When we speak of Christianity we mean Christianity: we do not mean a few statements extracted by a conceited rationalism from the word of God, and then compounded with metaphysical imagining and philosophical suppositions: we mean that vast and comprehensive system of divine things which was shadowed forth under the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations of grace, and which burst forth in the fullness of splendor during the ministry of Christ and his Apostles. We receive as an eternal and unchangeable truth, direct from the throne of the Supreme himself, 'ALL Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.' We believe in the Bible-the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible; and we tremble for the future destiny of those who trifle with its solemn contents when we read its closing words: 'If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.'

"It seems strange, unprecedentedly strange, that after Hobbes, and Shaftsbury, and Hume, and Paine, and Volney, and Voltaire, and a host of others, should have expended the energies of their nature in opposing the Christian revelation, and all to no effect, its professed friends should turn round and blaspheme its momentous truths-should proclaim, in the assumed capacity of ministers of the gospel, that it contains puerile conceptions of God,' and that 'cruel denunciations disfigure both Psalm and Prophecy.'

III. If Unitarianism be true, then the Mahometan religion is an essential reformation of Christianity.

"That there is an infinite distance between the Creator and the creature, is a principle of natural religion. God cannot, therefore, without the most hateful impiety, be treated as a creature; nor can a creature, without the grossest idolatry, be treated as a God. If, then, Jesus Christ be the Creator, he cannot be said, without impiety, to be a mere creature: and, if he be a mere creature, he cannot, without idolatry, be acknowledged as God. Consequently, if we who consider him, as of one essence with the Father, and the eternal God, be under a mistake, we cannot be cleared from a charge of idolatry, since it is as such that we worship him.

"We can not justify our conduct by saying, 'we sincerely believe him to be God; so that though there is an error in our judgment, yet there is no infidelity in our hearts, our worship being directed to God only. For the same reason might serve to excuse all idolaters past, present, and future. The Heathens, who worshipped their Jupiter, really believed him to be God, and their acts of worship were intentionally referred to the Supreme Being; yet they were not the less idolatrous on that account.

"Nor ought we to imagine that a creature, on account of its superior excellence, may become the object of worship, which it would not be lawful to give to one of an inferior order. For they who worship the stars are as really idolaters as those that worship wood and stone; and they who worship angels, as those that worship the stars because idolatry does not consist in rendering divine honors to a creature that is comparatively low in the scale of dependant existence; but in addressing them to a mere creature.”—(Abbadie.) But, says one, "we have no scruples in worshipping Christ, for God has commanded us to worship him.' Very true; but this must forever stand as an irrefraga