Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/174

150 the crude structure which fanaticism and ignorance raised up in the first centuries.

You will assuredly find in it three persons, but not three persons in one God. Read with all the acuteness of your mind, the only treasure that your tyrants have left you, the common prayer which the Christians, by the mouth of their bishop, offered in their meetings in the second century:

"O all-powerful, unengendered, inaccessible God, the one true God, father of Christ thy only son, God of the paraclete, God of all, thou hast made the disciples of Christ doctors, etc."

Here, clearly, is one sole God who commands Christ and the paraclete [ Holy Ghost]. Judge for yourselves if that has any resemblance to the trinity and consubstantiality which were afterwards declared at Nicæa, in spite of the strong protest of eighteen bishops and two thousand priests.

In another place (III., xvi.) the author of the Apostolic Constitutions, who is probably a bishop of the Christians at Rome, says expressly that the father is God above all.

That is the doctrine of Paul, finding expression so frequently in his epistles. "We have peace in God through Our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans v., 1). "If through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many" (Romans v., 15). "We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans viii., 17).