Amongst the opponents of creeds, none have so pertinaciously signalized themselves as the Unitarians. The iniquity of their formation-the tyrannical despotism of their adoption by different churches-their tendency to annihilate the right of private judgment--their arrogant assumption of scriptural authority--their opposition to the usages of the primitive church-their power of fostering hypocrisy—and their pretended assumption of infallibility, have furnished subjects for the fertile imaginations of Unitarian writers and preachers to expatiate upon, so extensive and apparently so delightful, that hundreds of pamphlets, and thousands of sermons, may yet be written without any visible exhaustion of the material of their composition. It is truly ludicrous, were it not that the feeling is repressed by sorrow, to hear sabbath after sabbath, the same hacknied subject forced upon the attention of our few Unitarian congregations, to the utter neglect or partial exclusion of the glorious doctrines of the Gospel of the blessed God. Unitarian congregations must certainly be possessed of a degree of patience, to which very few of their neighbours can possibly lay claim, in thus being able to endure, day after day, the delivery of the same monotonous harangues against Orthodoxy, bigotry, and creeds. We have said that we give the palm of patient endurance to the Unitarian people, so far as the hearing of sermons against creeds is concerned; and in like manner do we grant to the preachers of that sect an unrivalled and superabundant fecundity of imagination, in being able to extract from the same subject such an exhaustless supply of material for their short and flippant discourses. A Unitarian preacher, who is a candidate for popularity, has only to denounce in bombastic phrase and lofty intonation, the unhallowed imposition of creeds upon the candidates for the ministry in any church, and at once he is applauded as a man of talent and eloquence, and is regarded as a champion of the rights of conscience. No wonder, then, that the people, who are generally but very ill-informed upon such subjects, should retail that which has been so thoroughly beaten into them, and that they should look with utter abhorrence and ineffable disdain upon all creeds and creed-makers.

But let us examine the subject a little more seriously. All Unitarians of whose opinions we have ever known any thing, have manifested a most virulent hostility to creeds and confessions;-but we would be sorry to charge all with Unitarianism who feel conscientiously opposed to the principle of their

adoption-it is quite probable that some of them may not differ in their sentiments from the doctrinal propositions which are expressed in many of them. These, however, can be but few in number; the great majority of those who resist creeds, oppose them not merely in the abstract, but also because the doctrinal principles which are contained in them, are at variance with their own opinions of revealed truth. The nature of creeds, or of confessions of faith, appears to be but ill understood in general by those who write or speak against them. They are frequently regarded as additions or supplements to the word of God, which fallible men have framed and placed upon an equal level with his eternal and immutable truth. No such place, however, is assigned to them in any Protestant Church; they are no more supplements to revelation than sermons or commentaries are; and the same arguments which would prove, if such could be devised, the pernicious character of creeds, would also prove the same of all expositions of Scripture. Creeds are merely the declared belief of an individual, or of a number of individuals, of what in his, or their understanding, the word of God contains. When we read that word, is it of any use in enlightening our reason, or in influencing our practice, unless we can comprehend its meaning?-can we benefit by it in any way, if we do not understand what is expressed in the passage or passages which 'may form the subject of our study? But when we think we have discovered what that meaning is, can there be any impropriety-can there be any abominable evil in our declaring it fearlessly to the world? Nay, would we not appear to be undervaluing what we conscientiously believed to be the truth; would we not be liable to the charge of pusillanimous cowardice, were we to hide it, as if we were ashamed of it, from others-were we not to avow it to mankind around us? The words of Scripture contain a truth, for instance; but that truth is the declaration, in human language, of the Spirit of God to man, of some principle of the economy of grace: if a man have any idea of the meaning of this supposed passage of Scripture, he must attach some acceptation to the phraseology in which it is conveyed, and the conception which he forms through this medium, is the mental creed of that man upon that point. Let him declare what he believes that truth to be; in order to be understood, he must express it in different language from that of Scripture, and this is his oral creed. Let him again announce in writing the same truth, and then it becomes his written or publicly declared creed. If another person should agree with the senti

ment or sentiments there expressed, then it becomes the creed of that person; and should a church see reason to adopt the same, then it stands as the creed or confession of that particular church. Is there any thing wrong; is there any thing deserving of opprobrium or reproach in this ?-surely not. Should an individual be asked what meaning he attaches to John i. 1, it would not be considered that he had answered the question were he merely to quote the text, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God;" this would only show that he had the passage committed to memory, but nothing more. Would we not, to obtain an answer, ask him still farther what he believed the doctrine to be which was there taught? and when he would be induced to answer this question directly, then would he, if he were an honest man, have given his creed upon the particular doctrine revealed in that text. Let it be particularly observed here, that the language of his answer must necessarily be different from the language of Scripture, otherwise we have no evidence that he comprehends the meaning of the passage, or has formed any conception of it. From this, these two legitimate conclusions are manifest: first, that every man who understands the Scriptures in any sense must have a creed; and second, that this creed must be expressed in other language than that of Scripture. Thus is it evident that Unitarians as well as Trinitarians, notwithstanding their violent hostility to all such compositions, must necessarily have a creed, if they attach any meaning whatever to the language in which the revelation of the will of God is communicated to Their creed or creeds may not be formally announced to us as such, yet, in reality, each individual of every church has as much his confession of faith as any ecclesiastical body has. A confession of faith, then, is just simply the declared formula of the opinions of an individual, or of a number of individuals, concerning what he, or they, may believe to be the truths taught in the Sacred Scriptures. This, then, surely. cannot be a supplement or an addition to the word of God, or if it be, there are just as many supplements and additions as there are professing Christians, including Unitarians themselves. The Bible alone is said to be the religion of Protestants, and we admit that it must be the basis of all true religion; we regard its possession as our greatest and noblest heritage; but can it be so without being understood, and can it be understood without a creed being the necessary consequence of that understanding? The hacknied shout, then,

us.

of the insult which is put upon the Bible by the adoption of a creed, is as utterly without rational foundation, as if it were asserted that a man put an insult upon the principia of Newton by studying it until he became acquainted with its theories, and understood its sublime truths. The Bible is not, and cannot be the creed of any man; it is the source from which he derives it-the basis upon which he rests it ;-the understanding which he attaches to its declarations is his creed. The Bible is a dead letter unless understood; but that understanding is not the Bible; and if a man's understanding of it be his creed, as we have already shown, then the Bible is not and cannot be the creed of any man or of any church. When Unitarians aver that the Bible is their creed, they use language without attaching a definite meaning to it, and, besides, they state what is not the fact. Where, then, is the difference between the Unitarians and us? We reply that it consists simply in this theirs is hidden, secret, and undeclared as such,-ours is openly, candidly, and honestly avowed. Let Unitarians, then, endeavour to understand the subject aright, before they again charge us with dishonouring the Sacred Scriptures by the adoption of a creed,-let them try to comprehend what the nature of a confession of faith is, before they deal forth the random assertion, that every such composition is an addition to the word of God. Were they to do this, they would be saved from writing or delivering so much of this frothy declamation, which appears to be so frequently the favourite ingredient of their popular harangues.

As I have before observed, the difference between the opponents of creeds and us is, that our creed is openly and honestly avowed-theirs is kept secret, as if they were afraid to let it meet the gaze of the world, or were unwilling to let it be compared with the declarations of Scripture, so that men might know whether its meaning were accordant with that expressed in them or not. This surely is not very consistent with that chivalrous heroism in the cause of truth to which they lay claim--this is not like the fearless intrepidity of conduct manifested by those dauntless champions of truth-the early fathers of Protestant religious freedom. But it may be asked, has this publication of creeds been of any utility-has it served any really good and valuable purpose-and has the adoption of them by various sections of the Christian Church really been a benefit to the cause of evangelical christianity? We answer these questions at once in the affirmative; and we trust we will shortly be able to show, that the advantages of such a

line of conduct have been incalculable to those churches by which it has been adopted. In all cases where churches or worshipping societies have publicly acknowledged creeds, the consequence invariably has been, that the misrepresentations of gainsayers, and the voice of calumny, have been at least partially silenced; or if uttered, have been shown to be unfounded, by an appeal to the adopted standards of the communion, which has in such a manner been subjected to attack or annoyance. When Luther first stood forth as the fearless champion, not only of the principles of the reformation, but of the doctrines of the everlasting Gospel, were not his opinions misrepresented, were they not blackened by every device which inveterate hatred could adopt,-were they not represented as opposed to every thing that was sacred, and hostile to all that was divine? And were not these statements proved to be calumnious and false, so soon as the truths which he and his followers maintained, were publicly avowed in the form of a confession of faith? And was not this the means of spreading, not only throughout Germany, but throughout Europe, the doctrines of the reformation, and of inducing men, fearless and intrepid as himself, to avow and to defend them? This must be acknowledged, by all who claim the name of Protestants, to have been an advantage of paramount importance to the interests of religion and of truth. In later years like advantages have resulted from a like mode of conduct; and even in the present day, and amongst ourselves, we have frequently been obliged to appeal to the Westminster Confession of Faith, for the purpose of exhibiting to the world the unfounded nature of the charges preferred against our doctrinal sentiments and opinions. Have we not been frequently represented as Tritheists, the worshippers of three separate independent existences; and when we flung back the foul calumny, have we not found the advantage of possessing a creed to which we could direct the attention of our accusers, in which no such doctrine was contained, and from which we could prove that the imputation was untrue? Nay, although we have thus scrupulously guarded against misrepresentation, has not the Westminster Confession of Faith been charged with containing doctrines and principles which never formed a part of it; and which by all the torturing of ingenuity, could not be deduced as consequences from any one or all of its doctrines? Had, we not possessed such a standard, our opinions would have been represented as vile in the extreme-antiscriptural in the highest degree, and thousands of absurd, contradictory, and even