to Him, are perfectly well consistent with reserving the supremacy of absolute and independent dominion to the Father alone.  That the highest titles of God are never applied to the Son or Spirit.  That the subordination of the Son to the Father is not merely nominal, consisting in the mere position or order of words, which in truth of things is a co-ordination; but that it is a real subordination in point of authority and dominion over the universe.  That three persons, that is, three intelligent agents in the same individual, identical substance, is a self-evident contradiction, and that the Nicene fathers, by the term Homoousion, did not mean one individual, identical substance.  That the real difficulty in the conception of the Trinity is not how three persons can be one God, for Scripture nowhere expresses the doctrine in those words; and the difficulty of understanding a Scripture doctrine ought not to lie wholly upon words not found in Scripture, but how and in what sense, consistently with everything that is affirmed in Scripture about Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it is still certainly and infallibly true that to us there is but ‘one God the Father’ (I Cor. viii. 6).  That as to the claims of the Holy Ghost to be worshipped on an equality with the Father, there is really no one instance in Scripture of any direct act of adoration or invocation being paid to Him at all.

Such is the outline of the system of which Dr. Clarke was the chief exponent.  The various arguments by which it was supported will be best considered in connection with that great writer who now comes under our notice—­Dr. Waterland.  Among the many merits of Waterland’s treatment of the subject, this is by no means the least—­that he pins down his adversary and all who hold the same views in any age to the real question at issue.  Dr. Clarke, for example, admitted that Christ was, in a certain sense, Creator.  ‘Either, then,’ argues Waterland, ’there are two authors and governors of the universe, i.e. two Gods, or not.  If there are, why do you deny it of either; if not, why do you affirm it of both?’ Dr. Clarke thought that the divinity of Christ was analogous to the royalty of some petty prince, who held his power under a supreme monarch.  ‘I do not,’ retorts Waterland, ’dispute against the notion of one king under another; what I insist upon is that a great king and a little king make two kings; (consequently a supreme God and an inferior God make two Gods).’  Dr. Clarke did not altogether deny omniscience to be an attribute of Christ, but he affirmed it to be a relative omniscience, communicated to him from the Father.  ’That is, in plain language,’ retorted Waterland, ’the Son knows all things, except that He is ignorant of many things.’  Dr. Clarke did not altogether deny the eternity of the Son.  The Son is eternal, because we cannot conceive a time when He was not.  ‘A negative eternity,’ replies Waterland, ’is no eternity; angels might equally be termed eternal.’