my reason has not only frustrated but punished them. In the last mentioned instance, the devout contrivance would not bear examination. Sabellianism is only Unitarianism disguised in words: and as for the worship of an image in its absence, the idea is most unsatisfactory. In this state, however, I passed five or six years; but the return to the clear and definite Unitarianism in which I had formerly been, was as easy as it was natural."—Heresy and Orthodoxy, p. viii.
This passage proves thus much, not that the philosophising in question leads to Socinianism, but that it is one under which Socinianism may lie hid, even from a man's own consciousness; and this is just the use I wish to make of it against Mr. Abbott. He ends as follows:
"The substance of the view, which I have been wishing to impress upon your minds, is, that we are to expect to see Him solely through the manifestations He makes of Himself in His works. We have seen in what way some of the traits of His character are displayed in the visible creation, and how at last He determined to manifest His moral character, by bringing it into action through the medium of a human soul. The plan was carried into effect, and the mysterious person thus formed appears for the first time to our view in the extraordinary boy, &c." pp. 15, 16.
In these passages it seems to be clearly maintained that our Lord is a Manifestation of God in precisely that way in which His creatures are, though in a different respect, viz. as regards His moral attributes,—a Manifestation, not having any thing in it essentially peculiar and incommunicable, and therefore "a Manifestation" as he in one passage expresses himself, not the Manifestation of the Father.
Further he expressly disclaims any opinion concerning the essential and superhuman relation, or (as he calls it) the "metaphysical" relation of the Son to the Father, in a passage which involves a slight upon other doctrines of a most important, though not of such a sacred character.
"Another source of endless and fruitless discussion, is disputing about questions which can be of no practical consequence, however they may be decided; such as the origin of sin,"
does this mean original sin?
"the state of the soul between death and the resurrection, the salvation of infants,"
