In preparing this Lecture for the press, after an examination in its printed form of that to which it is a Reply, I do not find that the Trinitarian argument has been strengthened by additional evidence, or by a more logical statement, so as to require any modification of my impressions of its weight and character.

Mr. Bates has in his Appendix drawn out some of his scriptural evidence, and I can only require any one to examine it, in order not only to estimate its cogency in reference to this particular question, but also to obtain a very accurate idea of the peculiar genius of Trinitarian interpretation. I shall select two passages as perfectly descriptive of the manner in which the believer in a verbal and logical revelation draws doctrinal conclusions from the mere words of scripture.

Here is one of the Trinitarian Scriptural proofs of Three Persons in the Unity of the Godhead.

“2 Thess. iii. 5. ‘The Lord direct your hearts into the love of GOD, and into the patient waiting for Christ.’

“In these passages the Three Persons are distinguished. The Lord to whom the prayer is in both instances directed; God, even our Father; and our Lord Jesus Christ. That the Lord thus distinguished from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and addressed in prayer, is the Holy Ghost, is evident from the analogy of Scripture, which teaches that sanctification, for which the Apostle prays, is the peculiar work of the Holy Ghost.”—Mr. Bates’ Appendix, p. 590.

Now, using the same description of logic, we have only to quote a passage in which sanctification is ascribed not to the Holy Ghost, but to God our Father, in order to overthrow the whole of this verbal and mournful trifling with the sublime and vast purport of revelation.

“Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.... Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”—John xvii. 11, 17.

The second descriptive specimen I select, of the genius of Trinitarian interpretation, is the following alleged scriptural proof of the separate Deity and Personality of the Holy Spirit.

“Rev. i. 4. ‘John to the seven Churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne.’”

The seven Spirits, we are told, is a symbolical designation of the One Spirit. Nothing however can be more clear, even on the verbal principle, than that the seven Spirits are the seven Messengers, Angels, or Ministers, which, partaking themselves of God’s Spirit, were His instruments of communication with the seven Churches of Asia enumerated by the Author of the Apocalypse, and which are represented as being before his throne, deriving their own inspiration from Him.—“The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven Churches.”—Rev. i. 20.

On this, the last opportunity, perhaps, which I may have, of saying any thing in connexion with these Lectures, I cannot but express my own regret, and point it out to public notice, that we have been necessitated by circumstances, not to prepare merely and deliver as pulpit addresses, but to print and fix in a permanent form, dissertations upon most important and agitated questions, within a period of time altogether insufficient to do any justice, I will not say to the subjects, but even to our own ideas of the subjects. The accidental advantage, in this respect, obtained by the Lecturers on the Trinitarian Theology, with ample time and undivided strength to bring out a single Lecture on a single topic, ought to be included as an element of judgment, if the real value of the contrasted views is to be estimated by any, by the results of the present controversy. For myself, it is with great pain that I think of so much written, in the most sacred cause, almost extempore. That this necessity has occasioned any defects except such as have been an injury to our own views of Truth, by failing to bring out its full strength, I am not aware. I am not aware that, in any respect, we have, through haste, overstated our case. I am aware, for my own part, that it might have been much strengthened by additional force of evidence, and clearness of statement. I may be allowed to state, that in the course of three months I have been obliged to write and print to the extent of an octavo volume of nearly four hundred pages. It is impossible that such an exposition of our views should not be crowded with imperfections, and indefinitely feebler than it might be. May we ask that this consideration will be taken into the account by all those who are now forming an opinion of the merits of the Trinitarian and Unitarian Theology, from this discussion of it. May we ask those who, in the love of the Truth, and in confidence in the God of Truth that no Truth can injure them, wish the real evidence to be presented to their minds, to read the original sources, the New and the Old Scriptures, afresh, without fear, without an unfair and biassing horror of what they have been cradled to dread as heresy, without the intellectual infidelity of studying a revelation from God with the previous interpretations of men, colouring all their associations with the very words of the document, and preventing their ever receiving a pure impression from the original evidence unmixed with the whispers and suggestions of some self-authorized Interpreter who is in terror lest they should miss the essentials of the revealed religion, and derive from it some ideas that would destroy.

Liverpool, April 1839.