the only meaning which the phrase can convey. Thus the Creed really
teaches polytheism, but saves orthodoxy by forbidding any one to call
it by its true name. Or to put the matter otherwise: it teaches three
Divine Persons, and denies three Gods; and leaves us to guess what
else is a Divine Person but a God, or a God but a Divine Person. Who,
then, can deny that this intolerant creed is a malignant riddle?

That there is nothing in the Scripture about Trinity in Unity and
Unity in Trinity I had long observed; and the total absence of such
phraseology had left on me a general persuasion that the Church had
systematized too much. But in my study of John I was now arrested by
a text, which showed me how exceedingly far from a _Tri-unity_ was the
Trinity of that Gospel,--if trinity it be. Namely, in his last prayer,
Jesus addresses to his Father the words: "This is life eternal, that
they may know _Thee, the only True God_, and Jesus Christ, whom thou
hast sent" I became amazed, as I considered these words more and more
attentively, and without prejudice; and I began to understand how
prejudice, when embalmed with reverence, blinds the mind. Why had I
never before seen what is here so plain, that the _One God_ of Jesus
was not a Trinity, but was _the First Person_, of the ecclesiastical
Trinity?

But on a fuller search, I found this to be Paul's doctrine also: for
in 1 Corinth, viii., when discussing the subject of Polytheism, he
says that "though there be to the heathen many that are called Gods,
yet to us there is but _One God_, the Father, _of_ whom are all
things; and _One Lord_, Jesus Christ, _by_ whom are all things." Thus
he defines Monotheism to consist in holding the person of the Father
to be the One God; although this, if any, should have been the place
for a "Trinity in Unity."