Church-street, Paddington.
Sir,A copy of your letter is sent to me, by which it appears that you are a Sabellian. You inform Mr. W. "your views are not exactly alike in all points." No, Sir, nor never will be, until God the Father by a sense of his eternal love shed abroad in thy soul, says, "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love:" until Christ manifests himself to thy conscience, by an application of his atonement, that speaketh better things than that of Abel: and until the Holy Ghost cries, Abba, Father, in thee. When thou hast received these three that bear witness in the earth, thou wilt believe in the three persons that bear record in heaven, but not till then.
Mr. W. uses the term three persons, but you use the words, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which is the language of scripture; but then if Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be not three persons, what are they? Names? Characters? Emanations? Non-entities; Or what? I know of none, I know of nothing by the law of God, that is capable, or can be allowed to bear record, or bear witness against any, or for any, but persons, much less worshipped. God the Father is a person, Heb. i. 3; and then what can God the Son be? Why, " The express image of his person." If the Father be a person, the Son must, or he cannot be the express image of his person.
But perhaps you suppose, that Christ is a Son only by office, as magistrates are, or in covenant character; in neither of which senses can be be the only-begotten Son of God.
But you may object to this, and say, Christ is the Son of God by his miraculous conception in Mary's womb; but in that sense. he had no Father. His human nature was the woman's seed, and the Holy Ghost declares, that as man he is without father, and as God without mother. Both the Father and the Son, are called persons, as in Heb. i. 3; 2 Cor. ii. 10; Matt. xxvii. 24.
And as personal existence, working, and operation, bearing record, and bearing witness, counsel, will, power, understanding, law-giving, writing laws, qualifying persons for the work of the ministry, distributing gifts to them according to his own will, giving orders to separate Barnabas and Paul to the work whereunto the personal pronoun, I, have called them, dwelling in the saints, quickening their dead bodies, and fashioning them according to the glorious body of Christ at the great day; besides the act of blaspheming, and sinning against him, incurring the greater damnation; I say, if all these accounts of personal existence, and personal properties, can be applicable to any thing, or any name, character, office, or emanation, under heaven, but to a divine person, it will be impossible to fix the grammatical sense of any one word either in the book of God, or any code of human laws, so as to know substance from shadow, or persons from things.
You think the word, us, Gen. i. 26; and Isaiah vi. 8, is explained in John xiv. 23; holding forth the divine and human natures in inseparable union, John x. 30.
These are your thoughts, but God knows that the thoughts of men are vain, therefore he calls upon men to forsake their thoughts. The word, us, in Genesis you say, respects the human and divine nature, but the word, us, the objective case of We, respects persons, We, or us, is the plural of I, and means persons. But is Christ divided? Is his human and divine nature two persons? No, nor is his human nature a person at all, nor is ever once called so in all the book of God; for his human nature never had personal existence; it never existed of itself, but in union with the person of the Son of God, and therefore you must find a better meaning fur the word, us: for Christ's human nature is not called a person but a thing, "A new thing in the earth." And again, " That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Here is one person, and a thing assumed or taken into union with that person, and both natures is Immanuel, God with us, one person.
You darken counsel by words without knowledge, instead of speaking in the language of scripture; and you do err, not knowing the scriptures and the power of God. You are in a perilous path, may a good God stop you. You must lay aside Mr. Elliot, and all like him, and sit down at the Saviour's foot and receive of his words; for all your lessons must be learned over again. If you are not subverted so as to be hardened in your heresy, you are welcome to write to me, and to any instruction God shall give you by me. But until you are better taught, I charge you in the name of God, no more to enter into my pulpit at Deptford.
Your's in the verity and power of the everlasting gospel,
W. HUNTINGTON.
P. S. You would have had a full refutation from me of every branch of damnable heresy that appears in your's, were it not for my deep engagement with a work now in the press; for as the Lord liveth, there is but one truth in all your letter, that is, "Our views are not alike." But in a few days shall be disengaged, and then will attend to you, either as a correspondent, or an antagonist.
*