"And in their days, even of those kings, the God of heaven shall set up A KINGDOM which shall never perish, and A DOMINION that shall not be left to another people. It shall grind to powder and bring to an end all these kingdoms, and itself shall stand for ever."—DANIEL.

JOHN THOMAS, Editor. NEW YORK, JUNE, 1854—

Volume 4—No. 6

In the loyal capital of Nova Scotia there is edited by the Rev. J. C. Cochran, and published by W. Gossip, an organ of the United Church of England and Ireland, which rejoices in the headship of Queen Victoria, styled The Church Times. A friend in Halifax has been kind enough to send me No. 8 of volume 7, containing a communication from one Alumnus Vindesoriensis, in which, in the true spirit of Athanasianism, he denounces me to all the admirers of State ecclesiasticism for "as decidedly an uncircumcised and infidel Unitarian Jew, as ever were the men who reviled the Saviour upon the cross!" Now if such a sentence had been pronounced upon me by an apostle, or by one having any scriptural pretension to an understanding of the gospel the apostles preached, I should indeed be much grieved and take it much to heart; but seeing that it is enunciated only by an alumnus, a nurseling, and that of one of the daughters of the Old Mother, it is no more than might be expected; and, therefore, I accept it as quite a compliment and a blessing, inasmuch as the accusation of "Unitarianism" is not according to truth. The following is the article

From The Church Times.

"For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou being a man makest thyself equal with God."—John 10: 35.

Notwithstanding the plain and unavoidable testimony of the Jewish Scriptures, that the Jews stoned the Lord of Life, and put him to the ignominious death of the cross, for asserting his equality with Jehovah, we still find this fatal root of Antichristian Rationalism putting forth its rank shoots most vigorously with the other heresies of the age. For the Unitarian still persists in regarding Jesus as a man! We would not stone him for a good work, but "that thou being a man makest thyself equal with God." Is it not here that the Jew stumbled—and shall the Gentile stumble upon this "rock of offence" also? Were the Jews cast out of God’s vineyard for this very disbelief of his Emmanuelship, and shall they in their turn witness the fall of the Gentile into the self-same memorable predicament of ruin? Can there be then at the present juncture in the Christian Church, a subject more deserving our solemn and anxious inquiry than this? What shall we do to be saved from the wrath that must fall upon the ungodly, and upon all who hold "the truth in unrighteousness?" Was Jesus "the way"—and "the truth"—and "the life?" He expressly informed the Jew that he was. And it is just as plain that the Jews understood him to say this, and that they crucified him for so saying. The same Jesus that was so crucified addresses the same language to the Gentile of the present period, saying, "I am the way and the truth and the life!" The Unitarian confronts him with the Jew’s denial and the Jew’s contumely. Jesus says to his Gentile auditory, that although a man after the outward flesh, yet that he is "very God" with men, and that he is committing no robbery "in making himself equal with God!"—that "he and the Father are one!" And yet, now again must "the despisers wonder and perish"—here is the Unitarian Gentile of the nineteenth century, after all the light, warning and experience manifested in the history of those ancient people—here is the uncircumcised Unitarian denying "the Lord that bought him"—reiterating the infidelity of those "blind leaders of the blind"—those Unitarian scribes and Pharisees who exasperated the people against him. Our Unitarian scribes still transmit, approve, and endorse the language and violence of their Jewish predecessors, the ancient Regicides: — "We stone thee not for a good work, but for blasphemy, and that thou being a man makest thyself equal with God!" Much as we have been struck with the originality of the "Elpis Israel"—its surprising subtlety of thought—striking and ingenious, and indeed highly interesting exposition of prophecy; it requires no very profound etymological acumen to detect the thoroughly Jewish Unitarianism pervading every line or passage having any emphatic reference to "the Being" or "Divine Essence" of the Saviour. Upon this all-momentous and fundamental "key-stone" of the building not made with hands; upon this all-comprehensive and quickening, yet simple and resolvable "Alpha and Omega" of all that "the Prophets have written and said"—"the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world"—as the trespass-offering for all sin in all time; —upon this central point, the focal theme and touchstone of "Moses and the Lamb," the song in heaven of "harpers harping with their harps;"—as for all that has been written with the sunbeam of Scripture by the finger of God in the light of "his Son;" into this illuminated centre where all the divine rays of Revelation converge, the author of "Elpis Israel" is as decidedly an uncircumcised and infidel Unitarian Jew, as ever were the men who reviled the Saviour upon the cross, wagging their heads at him, and saying, "If he be the Son of God, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him." It is to very little purpose indeed that Dr. Thomas would tell us about the "Elohim" whom he makes "creature delegates and messengers for the work of creation,"—to lay down the foundations of the world, and then erect, build up, and put in order the vast fabric. It is in vain that he teaches us, that Jesus was but a preferential, a Joshua select from the Elohim—to take up the theme and purpose of Revelation, just where the other Elohim and Moses and the prophets left it; —that the Saviour of mankind, in short, is nothing more than the great captain and commander in chief of the Israelites, to lead them on to temporal conflict and to victory. It may be all very true that the Emperor and Empire of the Russe may be about to be the Russo-Assyrian lever of Providence, for the final development and consummation, the closing scene of the stupendous "millennial" drama. But when Dr. Thomas, in a deliberate and elaborate exercise of his literary powers through the Press, gravely tells us that the Saviour of mankind, in the full meaning of the words, abstract and concrete, is, though in an enlarged sense, limited and circumscribed as a creature, so that it may be said of Emmanuel, There has been when he was not! —into this nut-shell it is, that like a gnawing worm at the kernel, the arch-heresy of the Unitarian infidel lies, and which the eye of faith, when taught by the simple letter of the word, detects at a glance as the fatal point where the Jew stumbled and fell. To which her no less simple yet truly majestic reply is: Man has sinned and God has suffered! No sin-offering—no pardon. No lamb—no sin-offering! No God—no lamb!

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THE POINTS STATED.

In the above the writer in effect charges me with denying—

THE AUTHOR’S DEFENCE.

Put these all together and they make quite a formidable indictment, to some of the counts of which I respectfully beg leave to plead "Not Guilty." In relation to the first count I rejoin, that I admit the equality of Jesus in the same sense in which he affirmed it. All he said and all he claimed was true and only true, for he was "the truth" incarnate. This admission, however, does not necessitate my assent to the unintelligible foolishness of the Athanasian creed, which is the symbol of Romish and Church of England orthodoxy on the divinity of Christ. Such a creed well became the times of its origination—times in which the factions of Athanasius and Arius with their several blind guides had forsaken the Word, and given themselves over to the wild speculations of the carnal mind.

Athanasian divines, like the old Scribes and Pharisees, "err" in their ideas of Jesus, "not knowing the Scriptures." Nor will they ever come to know them while as nurselings they receive the traditions of their fathers, and, for the sake of the loaves and fishes of "the Church," blindly seek to prove them by scraps of Scripture wrested from their appropriate contexts.

The Jews sought to kill Jesus because he made himself equal with God in saying that God was his Father—John 5: 18. He made himself God in claiming to be the Son of God. "Thou being a man," said they, "makest thyself God." They called this blasphemy or evil speaking. Jesus, however, rebutted the charge, and argued, that in the Psalms Israelites are styled "gods," as, "I said, Ye are gods;" now, said he, if the Spirit styled them gods unto whom the word of God came, "how say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?"—John 10: 33-36.

The Spirit speaking through Jesus said, "I and the Father are one;" "He that seeth me seeth him that sent me;" "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;" but when Jesus speaks as of himself alone he says, "The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works"—"My Father is greater than I."

That which was born of Mary is styled in the Psalms, "a body prepared;" and the Spirit of God there says through David to the Father, "A body hast thou prepared me." This prepared body was the medium of God-manifestation, and divinely named "Jesus" or "Joshua." It was the Cherub in which the Father took up his temporary abode when he anointed it at its baptism in the Jordan. At its crucifixion the Father forsook it, as was foretold—Psalm 22: 1. It was laid in a cave. The Father was not entombed in death; for he is deathless. The Father did not suffer, but the prepared body, which the Father forsook while it was expiring—Matthew 27: 46. On the third day the Spirit of God returned to the body, and in filling it formed an indissoluble union with it; and at that crisis it became "the Son of God with power according to the holy spiritual nature by its resurrection from the dead." The Father who dwells in light, "whom no man hath seen nor can see"—1 Timothy 6: 16, shines through the resurrected Jesus by his Holy Spirit. "No man," said John, "hath seen God at any time"—John 1: 18; but many had seen Jesus both before and after his resurrection; therefore Jesus is not God in the Athanasian sense; nor in the sense in which "God" is used to designate Him who dwells in unapproachable light, and who only hath deathlessness or immortality. "Divines" do not understand the Scripture doctrine of God-manifestation; hence the foolishness wrapped up equally in Trinitarianism, Arianism, and Unitarianism. "God is a spirit," not human flesh, mortal or immortal; this is but the medium of his manifestation to terrestrials, who unveiled would be too intensely glorious for their beholding.

The second count charges me with regarding Jesus as a man. To this I plead "guilty." But in pleading thus I do not affirm that he is "a mere man." I reject the idea of his being the son of Joseph in any other sense than by adoption. He was Son of God by creation as was Adam the First; and therefore he is styled Adam the Second. Luke styles Adam "Son of God," and as to the origin of the "prepared body," it was Son of God in the same sense. Jesus was also Son of God in a sense in which Adam was not; and that is by resurrection from the dead, as it is written, "Thou art my Son: today have I begotten thee." I believe with Paul in the manhood of Jesus; for that apostle styles him "the man Christ Jesus;" and he styled himself the Son of Man, being "made of a woman, under the law," and therefore of necessity a man.

After what I have said under the first count, no one at all rational will believe me guilty of denying the Immanuelship of Jesus. Certainly when in Judah, he was God with them; and when he reigns upon the throne of David in the Age to Come, Israel will then acknowledge him in the full scriptural sense Immanuel, or God with us; for then God-manifestation through Jesus will be complete.

About holding the truth in unrighteousness I can truly say, I am unconscious of the offence. I have not hypocritically sworn to thirty-nine articles, more or less, contrary to my conscience, for the sake of the loaves and fishes. I do not funereally trade "in bodies and the souls of men;" neither do I squeeze tithes out of parishioners by law or force of arms, under pretence of "curing their souls." I do not write complaints to governments, as the Bishop of Nova Scotia did, because soldiers do not present arms on passing me. I seek no honour of men, but repudiate all their ecclesiastical honours. I do not wring "rascal counters" from rich or poor for reading other men’s prayers out of stereotyped books, and

"Grind divinity of other days

Down into modern use; transform old print

To zigzag manuscript, and cheat the eyes

Of gallery critics by a thousand arts."

I do not pander to royalty, or court the favour of the rich under pretence of being an ambassador of Christ, and a successor of the apostles, and treat the poor as if they were made of other blood, and only planted in the earth as a medium for the manifestation of the pietism of hypocrites, and of the ostentatious charity of proud and lordly reverences. I do not denounce heresy and heretics to turn men’s minds from my own errors, and to conceal from their view my own ignorance of the gospel I profess. I do not hypocritically swear to renounce the Devil and all his works, and to eschew the pomps and vanities of this vain and wicked world, and at the same time serve him, and seek his honours and riches with all the might of body, soul, and spirit! I do not make merchandise of the truth to clothe myself in purple and fine linen, and to fare sumptuously every day. These things, and many more equally reprehensible, practised by the clergy and dignitaries of the "United Church of England and Ireland"—the Anglo-Hibernian Daughter of the Old Mother—I do not do; but I the rather exercise myself in reading and studying the Word, that, coming to the understanding of it myself, I may show to men of ingenuous minds and honest hearts what the "great salvation" so intensely darkened by thirty-nine article theology is, as revealed on the page of holy writ. Being sustained by no sect, Protestant or Papal, I am free; and being free, I call no man Rabbi but Christ; and prove all things, and hold fast what appears to my own mind, and not another’s, to be good. Believing, then, with full assurance, that I understand Moses, the prophets, and apostles; and because no two truths or systems of truth can possibly be antagonistic; and seeing that there is an antagonism between my understanding of those writings and the theological systems endorsed by the multitudinous divisions of "Christendom" in nearly all their generalities and details—I therefore of necessity repudiate as intense and outer darkness the Act of Parliament and Nonconformist theology of our day. It is a conviction ascending from the bottom of my heart that the most "orthodox" theology of "Christendom" is but a form of that departure from the goodness of God, and of the faithlessness of the gospel, which Paul foretold would overspread the Gentiles, and on account of which God would cut them off judicially—Romans 11: 20-22. "They receive not the love of the truth, that they may be saved. And for this cause God sends them Strong Delusion that they should believe a lie; that they all might be condemned who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness." This strong delusion continues until the appearing of Christ, who consumes it with the Spirit of his mouth, and destroys it with the brightness of his coming: for, as Isaiah testifies with Paul, when he shall reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem before his ancients gloriously, "he will destroy the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory."

Convinced, then, with full assurance that this is descriptive of the present state of American and European "Christendom," and that there will be a remnant for Christ at his appearing who will have believed and obeyed the truth, and be patiently waiting for him; and that their being brought to this acceptable position will result from the assistance they may obtain for understanding the scriptures through the press, and the reasonings of those who know the truth; and recognising it as an apostolic precept binding on all believers to "contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints" according to their ability, and the means placed at their disposal—swayed by these considerations, I exercise myself as I am wont to do. I visit Halifax to arouse the people from that intellectual and moral torpor into which they are thrown by the word-nullifying traditions of its State-Church and nonconformist clergy. Hitherto my endeavours have been crowned with some success. By opening the scriptures to the people with scarcely an allusion to their spiritual guides, their astonishment has been excited at the utter destitution of scriptural information characteristic of the ministrations of their pulpit incumbents. They "go to church" from week to week, and with the exception of a few minutes’ dissertation upon a "text" of a few words, or a verse, they hear prayers read for the ten-thousandth time which they nearly know by heart—prayers composed hundreds of years ago; so that as far as the church’s teaching is concerned, the clerical flocks are no further advanced in spiritual knowledge than they were 300 years ago! The clergy know that stagnation pervades their system; and with a very few exceptions, they feel their absolute inability to do more than to try and prevent the dead and corrupting stillness of their whitened sepulchres from being disturbed. They can give their flocks no light, a call for which even is highly inconvenient. Their policy therefore is to raise the old cry of "heresy" and "infidelity" against every disturbing influence; so as that, by creating a prejudice in the minds of their as yet unenlightened nurselings they may be deterred from hearing things dangerous to the hoodwinking ascendency over the public mind they have hitherto enjoyed. This is the policy of The Church Times. Its conductors are ignorant of the truth; and experiencing some inconvenience from Elpis Israel, the Herald, my lectures there, and the continued endeavours of our friends, all they can do is to "rail lustily," in the hope that "some" of their raillery "will stick."

I claim then that I am not guilty of "holding the truth in unrighteousness." I suspect, however, Alumnus Vindesoriensis in this accusation admits more than he intended. If I am charged with holding the truth in unrighteousness, it is at the same time an admission that I hold the truth; but that I make an unrighteous use of it. I do hold the truth then, Alumnus himself being judge; and because I hold the truth, I know that his church is a harlot, and do not fear to proclaim it in Britain and British America. Its institutions are defiling, and those who are the subject of them are defiled, and without part with the "redeemed from among men"—Revelation 14: 4. The sprinkling of unconscious babes in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is a mark upon his church’s forehead, that proclaims her to all who know the word, a Defiling Woman of the Roman Family. She calls this "baptism!"—and it is the only baptism she practises. But it is no baptism; for no use of water is baptism, where there is no faith, or a wrong faith, in the subject. The Anglo-Hibernian woman is therefore a communion of unbaptised errorists; and being unbaptised, not buried with Christ, but dead in their sins and the uncircumcision of their flesh, not being circumcised in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Jesus Christ—Colossians 2: 13, 11. Talk of my being "an uncircumcised and infidel Unitarian Jew!" The charge of uncircumcision recoils upon Alumnus, and upon those who nursed him. They stone me, they say, for blasphemy, because I do not shibbolise the Trinitarianism of their god Athanasius; but what greater blasphemy can be conceived than that of hiring Lambeth cabmen or watermen at a shilling apiece at Easter, to stand godfathers to babes they never saw before and may never see again, to enter into lying covenants to train up the children in the way they should go, preparatory to the priest sprinkling them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! This is notoriously practised under the shadow of the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, and its ecclesiastical dependencies! If this be not blasphemy, then blasphemy is an impossible offence. It is only the ignorance of the people of what Christianity consists in that enables the Anglo-Hibernian woman to pass current among the respectabilities of the time. We may grant that she does not hold the truth in unrighteousness, for the very obvious reason, indeed, that she does not hold the truth at all; but that she is full of all unrighteousness and abomination every one must admit who knows her history, her constitution, her practices; and is not spoiled by the philosophy of her deceit.

As an alleged Unitarian, I am charged with denying the Lord that bought me. After what I have said under 1, 2, and 3, no one will believe this. Here again Alumnus makes a fatal admission. He admits that the Lord has bought me at some previous time, for if he had not, I could not have denied such a Lord. He purchased me knowing what my faith concerning him would be; and hitherto I have received no intimation that he does not approve it. But when I consider that the charge is made against me by an organ of the Anglo-Hibernian woman, I am the more strengthened in my belief that he approves it; for I am satisfied I shall never stand at his bar with her testifying for his truth against me. Jesus and that woman will never combine against me. He knows that while I refute her foolish interpretations, I heartily believe all the scriptures testify of him in the obvious sense of their words scripturally explained, and without any mental reservation in behalf of any theory previously conceived.

I never affirmed that Jesus was a "Joshua select from the Elohim." They are angels who do not belong to our race. Jesus does, though now in relation to terrestrials far above them—Hebrews 1: 4. Paul and David say that in the days of his flesh he was inferior to them—Psalm 8: 5; Hebrews 2: 9; but now he is so much better than they, as the name "Son" is more exalted a title than the name "angel." He and the saints will be the Elohim of the kingdom and age to come, to whom the angels, now superior, will be subject. They, as the God Manifestation of "the Hour of Judgment," will be the commanders of Israel, and the God Jesus their Commander-in-Chief, to direct their operations in the conquest of the world. I have nothing to withdraw from this, but much to add by way of illustration at a more convenient season.

The last count charges me with holding that there was a time when Jesus was not. The Church Times theology takes the opposite ground; that is, that there never was a time when Jesus was not. But this is contrary to the scripture, which teaches indeed that there never was a time when the Father and his Spirit were not; but that until the birth of the babe in Bethlehem, that babe had no rudimental existence, save as Judah existed in the loins of Abraham, or Abraham in Adam; and therefore the babe in Adam from whom Luke traces its descent.

There was no Word made flesh until the birth of Mary’s son, who in the Psalms is styled by the Spirit, "the Son of thine handmaid." The babe was created as Adam was created; the latter by the Spirit from the dust direct; the former by the Spirit from Mary’s substance; and therefore from the dust indirectly. These are facts testified to by the Word unmixed with superstitious inferences and speculations. Adam the First was created for reproduction; Adam the Second for God-Manifestation to the posterity of the first. There having been a time since the foundation of the world during which there was no God-manifestation through Adamic flesh, there was consequently a time when the Adamic Medium called Jesus was not. In attentively considering Jesus, however, we know him only as Son of God and Mary. For thirty years he lived among men as a mechanic, working at his father-in-law’s trade, being in favour with all his acquaintances, and without reproach. During all this time there was no manifestation of God through him. He cast out no demons, performed no miracles, and delivered no message to the people before his immersion in the Jordan, and the trial of his faith in his wilderness probation of forty days. But when he had fulfilled the righteousness typified in the law in being immersed of John, the Spirit of the Father descended upon him in the form of a dove; and having driven him into the desert to be tempted of the Devil and brought him thence again approved, he began from that time to manifest himself to Israel as the El Shaddai who dealt with Abraham, and the Jehovah who by his angel talked with Moses in the bush. From this the anointing of "the Holy One of Saints," the Spirit-manifester, the manifesting medium, and the manifested Father, concentred in Jesus. This being understood, the reader will know how to interpret the words "before Abraham was, I am," and many others of a similar description.

Who Alumnus Vindesoriensis may be, I know not: he is evidently one, however, who has a zeal for the traditions of his fathers. Perhaps it is the editor corresponding with himself. But it matters not. Not a stone thrown by the writer has hit me. May all the stonings inflicted upon me be as harmless, and easily dodged! One thing I would suggest as particularly worthy of the Rev. Mr. Cochran’s attention, and that is, when he next feels a disposition for fun at my expense, let him first examine well his own tenement, ever remembering that they who live in glass houses should not throw stones!

EDITOR.

April 4^th, 1854.

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