SECT. II.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY NOT REVEALED BEFORE

THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, AND UNKNOWN TO THE JEWS.

Before the coming of Christ, the mystery of the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was generally concealed; for the world, in its infancy and youth, being very carnal, was not capable of receiving that doctrine. RUPERTUS TUITIENSIS: Op. tom. ii. p. 720.

It is evident that, from the authorities of the Old Testament, sufficient and clear proof cannot be drawn either for the Trinity, or for a plurality of divine persons. BISHOP TOSTAT: Op. tom. xii.; De Sanct. Trin. p. 14.

The mystery of the Trinity was not explicitly and openly revealed till the days of Christ, because the Jews were prone to idolatry. – GALATINE: De Arcanis Catholicæ Veritatis, fol. 41.

The Old Testament is designedly silent concerning the Trinity, lest the Jews, who were prone to idolatry, should hence take occasion to - STEUCHUS EUGUBINUS: Op. tom. i. p. 113, D.

err.

The mystery of the most Holy Trinity had never at any time penetrated the mind, however excellent, or inquisitive as to divine matters: nor could it; but to the gospel alone the disclosure and preaching of that mystery were reserved..... That article was not laid down in the Old Testament as an object of belief, because the people as yet were incapable of receiving it. The unity of God was, however, inculcated in the law, in opposition to idolatry; whence this first command, "Hear, O Israel! the Lord our God is one God," Deut. vi. 4. SALMERON: Comm. tom. i. pp. 201-2; Prolog. xi. can. xxv.

The mystery of the most holy Trinity was not yet [at the time of Christ] divulged, so that the Jews could expressly believe, that he was by nature the Son of God, God of God, of one substance, power, and glory with God the Father. This doctrine Jesus reserved to himself to promulgate; though he did not at the beginning expressly teach it to his disciples, but led them to it by degrees. LUCAS BRUGENSIS on John i. 49.

.....

There is nothing urged for the Trinity out of any book or books of the Old Testament, but mere umbrages and shadows.-J. SALABERT: Hæres. Domita; apud Socinian Tracts, vol. ii.

The doctrine of the Trinity was not propounded expressly to the Jews in the Old Testament, because they were incapable of it, &c. CARDINAL BELLARMINE: De Christo, lib. ii. cap. 6.

[So Roman Catholic commentators, perhaps almost universally.]

The glorious mystery of the Trinity came hereby to be unfolded more clearly, if not the first discovery made of the three persons hereby, there being scarce the footsteps of them distinctly and clearly to be seen in the works of the creation or in the law. But now when the gospel came to be revealed, &c. DR. GOODWIN: Works, vol. i. part iii. p. 65.

The great mystery of the Trinity, though it be frequently intimated in the Old Testament, yet it is an hard matter rightly to understand it without the New; insomuch that the Jews, though they have had the law above three thousand, and the prophets above two thousand years amongst them, yet to this day they could never make this an article of faith; but they, as well as the Mahometans, still assert, that God is only one in person, as well as nature. BISHOP BEVERIDGE:

Private Thoughts, part ii. p. 66.

I think that it [the doctrine of the Trinity] was a thing not only locked up from the researches of reason amongst those that were led only by reason, I mean the Gentiles, but that it was also concealed from, or at best but obscurely known by, the Jewish church. ... That God did so [conceal it], the Old Testament, which is the great ark and repository of the Jewish religion, seems sufficiently to declare; there being no text in it that plainly and expressly holds forth a Trinity of persons in the Godhead. Several texts are, indeed, urged for that purpose; though, whatever they may allude to, they seem not yet to be of that force and evidence as to infer what some undertake to prove by them; such as are Gen. i. 1, 26. Isa. vi. 3. ....... I conclude that it is very probable, that the discovery of this mystery was a privilege reserved to bless the times of Christianity withal, and that the Jews had either none, or but a very weak and confused knowledge of it. — DR. SOUTH: Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 296-301.

Take the Old Testament without the New, and it must be confessed that it will not be easy to prove this article [that of the Trinity] from it. BISHOP BURNET: Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, Art. i. p. 37.

Though the general belief of the Jews at that time [when Jesus was on earth] was, that the Messiah would be a much greater man than David, a mighty conqueror, and even a universal monarch, the sovereign of the kings of the earth, who was to subdue all nations, and render them tributary to the chosen people; yet they still supposed him to be a mere man, possessed of no higher nature than that which he derived from his earthly progenitors. - DR. CAMPBELL: The Four Gospels, Dissert. vii. part i. § 9.

No one can take from the Jews those traditions of the Trinity, which the Holy Spirit hath scattered here and there in the Scripture. It was by these that God prepared the minds of men to receive that incomprehensible mystery. At the same time he conducted the people slowly, step by step; and the knowledge of that great truth was proportioned to an economy, covered with shadows and figures. If, in spite of the light which the evangelists have shed upon it, and the accomplishment of prophecy, which of all commentaries is the clearest and most intelligible, we still can with difficulty discover the Trinity in the Old Testament,—one may presume, that the Jews paid but little attention to it, and that, with all their research, they had but a very obscure perception of this dogma. There is reason to fear, that these men, who do not see the Trinity in the New Testament, where it is clearly expressed, will have still greater difficulty in discovering it in the Old, where it is only obscurely intimated. BASNAGE: History of the Jews, b. iv. c. 5; apud Blomfield's Dissert. p. 168.

....

Dr. Allix undertakes to prove [in the Judgment of the Jewish Church, 66 a work which," Dr. PYE SMITH says, "is not remarkable for accurate statement or judicious reasoning"], that the Jews, before the time of Christ, according to the received expositions of the Old Testament, derived from their fathers, had a notion of a plurality of persons in the unity of the divine essence; and that this plurality was a Trinity; that, according to the doctrine of the old synagogue, the Jews apprehended the Word as a true and proper person; and held that the Word was the Son of God that he was the true God. - that he was to be Jehovah indeed. I confess that I am not prepared to go to the full length of these positions. I think it in the highest degree probable,.... that the Jews expected a Messiah who should be a sharer in the divine nature, but not one who should be equal with God. We cannot easily believe, that even the more enlightened of their nation had such a knowledge of the nature of their Christ, as we derive from the recorded testimony of our Saviour and his apostles; nor, if it be granted that they looked for a divine Redeemer, does it necessarily follow, that they thought him equal to, much less united with, the Supreme God. .... That they should have expected their Messiah to have been very and perfect God, of one substance with the Father, is, I think, more than we are warranted in asserting. This I believe to have been one of those sublime doctrines which were reserved for the fuller disclosure of the great mystery of godliness. High and majestic as were the titles which the prophets had applied to the Messiah, titles importing nothing less than his being invested with the most

striking attributes of the Deity, yet they were qualified by many descriptions which implied that he was to be subject to the accidents of human nature; so that in all likehood the Jews expected, that he who was described in their Scriptures both as Son of God and Son of man, was to be a divine being, of transcendent power and dignity, yet acting with delegated authority, and shining with imparted light.— BISHOP BLOMFIELD: Dissert. pp. 96-98. [In his Preface, p. iv. the learned prelate acknowledges that the Jewish commentaries have been corrupted from the impure fountains of heathen philosophy.]

I cannot but look upon it as unfortunate, that Picus of Mirandula, and other writers, should have quoted these cabbalistic forgeries [the Rabbinical and Talmudical writings] as supporting the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, &c. - DR. BURTON: Bampton Lectures, p. 301.

This argument [derived from the apocryphal book of Enoch discovered in Abyssinia by James Bruce], in proof that the Jews, before the birth of Christ, believed the doctrine of the Trinity, appears to me much more important and conclusive than that which has been indeed frequently, but to my mind, I confess, not satisfactorily, deduced from the philosophical principles of the ancient Cabbala. Cabbalistical theology, I well know, has its aziluth, or emanations of Deity; but these, I am convinced, notwithstanding the persuasions of many Christians upon the subject, were at no period ever contemplated by the Jews themselves as distinct persons, but merely as distinct energies, in the Godhead. Indeed, if the argument has any force at all, it is calculated to prove more than its advocates wish; for it goes to demonstrate, that the Jews believed in ten, not in three, personal emanations of Deity; for such is the number of the Sephiroth. Imagination is always ready to discover resemblances where none in reality exist; but sober reasoning can never surely approve the indiscreet attempt of representing Christian truth as arrayed in the meretricious garb of the Jewish Cabbala. That singular, and, to those perhaps who penetrate its exterior surface, fascinating system of allegorical subtleties, has no doubt its brighter as well as its darker parts, its true as well as its false allusions; but, instead of reducing its wild combinations of opinion to the standard of Scripture, we shall, I am persuaded, be less likely to err, if we refer them to the ancient and predominant philosophy of the East; from which they seem to have originally sprung, and from which they are as inseparable as the shadow is from its substance. ARCHBISHOP LAWRENCE: Preliminary Dissertation; apud Smith's Script. Test. vol. i. pp. 544–5.

SECT. III. -THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY, AND OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST, NOT REVEALED BY JESUS BEFORE THE DAY OF PENTECOST; AND NOT EXPRESSLY MENTIONED IN THE GOSPELS, PARTICULARLY IN THOSE OF MATTHEW, MARK, AND LUKE.

Christ did not receive testimony from the evangelists, that he was God.. ALPHONSO SALMERON: Comm. in Evang. Prolog. xxvi.

tom. i. p. 394.

.

As it was our blessed Lord's Divinity which, we have seen, he studiously concealed, but wished all men to come to the knowledge of; &c.OXFORD DOCTORS: Tracts for the Times, vol. iv. No. 80, p. 38.

The system of morality to be gathered out of the writings or sayings of those ancient sages [the heathen philosophers] falls undoubtedly very short of that delivered in the gospel, and wants, besides, the divine sanction which our Saviour gave his. Whatever is further related by the evangelists contains chiefly matters of fact, and consequently of faith; such as the birth of Christ, his being the Messiah, his miracles, his death, resurrection, and ascension; none of which can properly come under the appellation of human wisdom, being intended only to make us wise unto salvation.-DEAN SWIFT: Letter to a Young Clergyman; Works, vol. ii. p. 203. [The Dean here says nothing of the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Deity of Christ, as having been "delivered in the gospel," and "intended to make us wise unto salvation."

It would be unreasonable to expect, that this doctrine [the Trinity in Unity] should have been fully revealed till the day of Pentecost. .... In the histories, therefore, written by those evangelists who confine themselves exclusively to a recital of some leading discourses of our Lord, and to an account of some of his principal miracles, I should expect to find fewer traces of these higher doctrines. In Mr. Belsham's own words, I would ask, "When our Lord was so very cautious in discovering himself to be the Messiah, would he, at the same time, make no hesitation in declaring himself to be the very eternal God'? What would have been the effect upon the apostles," says he again, "the instant the amazing truth was communicated to them? Their faculties would be absorbed in terror and astonishment; no more free conversation, no more asking of questions, no more attempts to impose upon him, or to rebuke him; the greatest awe and distance would instantaneously take place, and all the endearing and familiar relations of master, instructor, companion, and friend, would at once