Christ himself always prayed to this one God, as his God and Father.  He always spoke of himself as receiving his doctrine and his power from Him, and again and again disclaimed having any power of his own, John 5.19, "Then answered Jesus and said unto them, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself." Chaldeans 14.10, "The words which I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doth the works," Chaldeans 20.17, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and unto my God and your God."  It cannot, surely, be God who uses such language as this.

            The apostles to the latest period of their writings, speak the same language, representing the Father as the only true God, and Christ as a man, the servant of God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him all the power of which he is possessed, as a reward of his obedience, Acts 2.22, Peter says, "Ye men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him, etc., whom God has raised up." Paul also says, I Timothy 2.5, "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."...

            It will be seen in the course of this history that the common people, for whose use the books of the New Testament were written, saw nothing in them of the doctrines of the pre-existence or divinity of Christ, which many persons of this day are so confident that they see in them...Why was not the doctrine of the trinity taught as explicitly, and in as definite a manner in the New Testament at least, as the doctrine of the Divine Unity is taught in both the Old and New Testament, if it be a truth?  And why is the doctrine of the unity always delivered in so unguarded a manner, and without any exception made in favour of a trinity, to prevent any mistake with respect to it, as is always now done in our orthodox catechisms, creeds, and discourses on the subject?...Divines are content to bind the strange and inexplicable doctrine of the trinity upon mere inferences from casual expressions, and cannot pretend to one clear, express, and unequivocal textual source.

            There are many, very many, passages of scripture, which inculcate the doctrine of the divine unity in the clearest and strongest manner. Let one such passage be produced in favour of the trinity.  And why should we believe things so mysterious without the clearest and most express evidence.

            There is also another consideration whcih should be recommended to those who maintain that Christ is either God, or the maker of the world under God.  It is this:  The manner in which our Lord speaks of himself, and of the power by which he worked miracles, is inconsistent, according to the common construction of language, with the idea of the being possessed of any proper power of his own, more than other men have.

It must be acknowledged that the proper object of prayer is God the Father, who is called the first person in the trinity.  Indeed, we cannot find in the scriptures either any precept that will authorise us to address ourselves to any other person, or any proper example of it. The sort of thing that can be alleged to this purpose, like Stephen's short address to Christ after he had seen him in vision, is very inconsiderable.  Jesus himself always prayed to his Father, and with as much humility and resignation at the most dependent being inthe universe could possibly do; always addressing him as his Father, or the author of his being; and he directs his disciples to pray to the same being, the One, he says, we ought to serve.

            Accordingly, the practice of praying to the Father only was long universal in the Christian church. The short addresses to Christ, as those in the Litany, "Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us," being comparatively of late date.

            In the Clementine liturgy, the oldest that is extant, contained in the Apostolical Constitutions, which were probably composed about the fourth century, there is no trace of any such thing.  Oregen, in a large treatise on the subject of prayer, urges very forcibly the propriety of praying to the Father only, and not to Christ; and as he gives no hint that the public forms of prayer had anything reprehensible in them in that respect, we are naturally led to conclude that, in his time, such petitions to Christ were unknown in the public assemblies of Christians.

Let us now attend to some particulars in the history of the apostles.  When Herod had put to death James, the brother of John, and imprisoned Peter, we read, Acts 12.5, that "prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God," not to Christ, "for him."  When Paul and Silas were in prison at Philippi, we read, Acts 16.25, that they "sung praises to God," not to Christ.  And when Paul was warned of what would befall him if he went to Jerusalem, Acts 21.14, he said, "the will of the Lrd be done."  Thus, it must be supposed, was meant of God the Father, because Christ himself used the same language in this sense, when praying to the Father, he said, "Not my will, but Thine be done..."

            It has been shown that there is no such doctrine as that of the Trinity in the scriptures.  To doctrine itself, as has been clearly demonstrated, has proved impossible for reasonable men to accept or even hold in their minds, as it implies contradictions which render it meaningless.

            The Athanasian doctrine of the trinity asserts in effect that nothing is wanting in either the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, to let any one of them truly and properly be God, each of them being equal in eternity, and all divine perfections, and yet these three are not three Gods, but only one God.  They are therefore both one and many in the same respect - in each being perfect God.  This is certainly as much a contradiction, as to say that Peter, James, and John, having each of them everything that is requisite to constitute a complete man, are yet all together not three men, but only one man. For the ideas annexed to the words "God"' or "man", cannot make any difference in the nature ofthe two propositions.  After the Council of Nice, there are instances of the doctrine of the trinity being explained in this very manner. The Fathers of that age being particularly intent on preserving the full equality of the three persons, eneitrely lost sight of their proper unity.  Thus no mattetter-spacing: -.15pt"> 

The great objection to the doctrine of the trinity is that it is an infringement of the doctrine of the unity of God, as the sole object of worship, which it was the primary design of Divine Revelation to establish. Any modification of this doctrine, therefore, or any other system whatever, ought to be regarded with suspicion, in proportion as it makes a multiplicity of objects of worship, for that is to introduce idolatry.⁶⁰

            The Unitarian movement in England had a profound effect in America.  It started as an off-shoot of Calvinism, but by the seventeenth century, the different foundations gradually changed into religous covenants and there was not so much empohasis placed on dogma.  Thus the way was opened for gradual theological change.  Charles Chaauncy, (1705-1757), of Boston, gave a definite direction to the establishment of belief in the Divine Unity.

If Christ was the maker of the world...he could not...have said that of himself he could do nothing, that the words which he spoke were not his own, and that the Father within him did the works.  For if any ordinary man, doing what other men usually do, should apply this language to himself, and say that it was not he that spoke or acted, but God who spoke and acted by him, and that otherwise he was not capable of so speaking or acting at all, we should not hesitate to say that his language was either false or blasphemous...

            It would also be an abuse of language..if Christ could be supposed to say that his Father was greater than he, and yet secretly mean his human nature only, while his divine nature was at the same time fully equal to that of the Father.  There is nothing that can be called an account of the divine, or even the super-angelic nature of Christ in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, or Luke; and allowing that there may be some colour for it in the introduction to the gospel of John, it is remarkable that there are many passages in his gospel which are decisively in favour of his simple humanity.

            Now these evangelists could not imagine that either the Jews or the Gentiles, for whose use their gospels were written, would not stand in need of information on a subject of so much importance, which was so very remote from the apprehensions of them both, and which would at the same time have so effectually covered the reproach of the cross, which was continually subject to the Christians of that age.  If the doctrines of the divinity, or pre-existence of Christ are true, they are no doubt in the highest degree important and interesting.  Since, therefore, these evangelists give no certain and distinct account of them, and say nothing at all of their importance, it may be safely inferred that they were unknown to them.

            It must also be asked how the apostles could continue to call Christ a man, as they always do, both in the book of Acts, and in their epistles, after they had discovered him to be either God, or a super-angelic beings, the maker of the world under God.  After this, it must have been highly degrading, unnatural, and improper, notwithstanding his appearance in human form...Let us put ourselves in the place of the apostles and first disciples of Christ.  They certainly saw and conversed with him at first on the supposition that he was a man like themselves.  Of this there can be no doubt.  Their surprise, therefore, upon being informed that he was not a man, but really God, or even the maker of the world under God, would be of the same nature as ours on discovering that a man of our acquaintance was supposed to be in reality God, or the maker of the world.  Let us consider then, how we should feel, how we should behave towards such a person, and how we should speak of him afterwards. No one, I am confident, would ever call any person a man, after he was convinced he was either God, or an angel.  He would always speak of him in a manner suitable to his proper rank.   Had Christ, therefore, been anything more than man before he came into the world, and especially had he been either God, or the maker of the world, he never could have been considered as being a man, while he was in it; for he could not divest himself of his superior and proper nature.  However disguised, he would always in fact have been whatever he had been before, and would have been so styled by all who truly knew him.  

            Least of all would Christ have been considered as a man in reasoning, and argumentation, though his external appearance should have so far put men off their guard, as to have led them to give him that appellation...

            It must strike every person who gives the least attention to the phraesology of the New Testament, that the terms "Christ" and "God:, are perpetually used in contradistinction to each other, as much as "God" and "man~; andif we consider the natural use of words, we become satisfied that this would not have been the case, if the former could have been predicted of the latter, that is, if Christ had been God.

            We say "the prince and the king", because the prince is not a king.  If he had been, we should have had recourse to some other distinction, as that of "greater and less", "senior and junior", "father and son"' etc.  When therefore the apostle Paul said, that the Church at Corinth was Christ's, and that Christ was God's, and that manner of distinghishing them is recurrent in the New Testament, it is evident that he could have no idea of Christ being God, in any meaningful sense of the word.

            In like manner, Clemens Romanus, calling Christ the "sceptre of the Majesty of God", sufficiently proves that in his idea the sceptre was one thing, and the God whose sceptre it was, another. This, I say, must have been the case when this language was first adopted.

            Having shown that the general tenor of the scriptures, and several considerations that obviously may be deduced from them are highly unfavourable to the doctrine of the trinity, or to those of the divinity or pre-existence of Christ, there arises another consideration, which has been little attended to, but which seems very strongly to go against either of these doctrines having been known in the time of the apostles, and therefore against their being the doctrine of the scriptures.  That Jesus was even the Messiah, was divulged with the greatest caution, both to the apostles and to the body of the Jews. For a long time our Lord said nothing explicit on this subject, but left this disciples, as well as the Jews at large, to judge him from what they saw.  In this manner only he replied to the messengers that John the Baptist sent to him.

          &n a man. Matthew 9.8, "When the multitude saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, who had given such power unto men."  At the time that Herod heard of him, it was conjectured by some that he was Elias, by others, a prophet, and by some that he was John risen from the dead; but none of them imagined that he was either the most high God himself, or the maker of the world under God.  It was not so much as suggested by any person that Jesus performed his mighty works by any power of his own.  If the doctrine of the divinity of Christ had been actually preached by the apostles, and the Jewish converts in general had adopted it, it could not but have been well known to the unbelieing Jews.  And would they, who were at that time, and have been ever since, so exceedingly zealous with respect to the doctrine of the divine unity, not have taken the alarm, and have urged this objection to Christianity, as teaching the belief of more Gods than one in the apostolic age?  And yet no trace of anything of this nature can be perceived in the whole history of the book of Acts, or anywhere else in the New Testament.  To answer the charge of holding two or three Gods, is a very considerable article in the writings of several of the ancient Christian Fathers. Why then do we find nothing of this kind in the age of the apostles?  The only answer is, that then there was no occasion for it, the doctrine of the divinity of Christ not then having been put forward.

            What was the accusation against Stephen (Acts 6.13) but his speaking blasphemous things against the temple and the law?  If we accompany the apostle Paul in all his travels, and attend to his discourses with the Jews in their synagogues, and their perpetual and inveterate persecution of him, we shall find no trace of their so much as suspecting that he preached a new divinity, as the godhead of Christ must have appeared, and always has appeared to them.

            Is it possible to give due attention to these considerations, and not be aware that the apostles had never been instructed in any such doctrines as those of the divinity or pre-existence of Christ?  If they had, as the doctrines were quite new, and must have appeared extraordinary, we should certainly have been able to trace the time when they were communicated to them.  They would naturally have expressed some surprise, if they had intimated no doubt about the truth of the information.  If they received them with unshaken faith themselves, they would have taught them to others, who would not have received them so readily.  They would have had the doubts of some to encounter, and the objections of others to answer.  And yet, in all their history, and copious writings, we perceive no trace of their own surprise, or doubts or of the surprise, doubts, or objections of others.