Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/32

26 hundred years ago, that there are three Divine Persons existent in and constituent of the one God. And a different character was ascribed and a different office assigned to each of these Persons. And this tripersonalism entered into the whole system of the then reigning theology. It moulded the entire faith of the church into strict conformity with itself. It shaped and colored all its doctrines. The accepted "scheme of redemption," or "plan of salvation," grew by strict logical sequence out of the tripersonal theory. The same may be said of the doctrine of "vicarious atonement," the most important factor in this "scheme." And the mental confusion and distraction produced by this theory, have been frankly confessed by competent witnesses; and the angry controversies to which it has given rise, constitute no mean part of ecclesiastical history. One of the profoundest thinkers on Theology that our country has produced, as well as one of the noblest and saintliest of men—himself a prominent and esteemed minister in an orthodox church—writing upon this subject some thirty years ago, said:

"Our properly orthodox teachers and churches, while professing three persons, also retain the verbal profession of one person. They suppose themselves really to hold that God is one person. And yet they most certainly do not; they only confuse