The following is an abstract of the doctrines taught in this Catechism. After affirming that the Christian religion is “a road for arriving at eternal life, divinely made known,” the pupil is told that the will of God on points essential to salvation was revealed by Jesus Christ. The Catechism then goes on to affirm the entire unity of the Deity; since if he is one essence, then must he also be individually one, {35b} and therefore Christ cannot he truly said to be a _separate_ person or individual, partaking of the _essentia_ of the Deity, since that _essentia_ is necessarily one. That the Spirit of God, being an essential part of the Deity, cannot be a separate individual (for in this sense the Catechism interprets the word _persona_ {36}), any more than his wisdom or his goodness is a separate individual, and that therefore the manifestations of the Spirit of God are manifestations of the Deity himself. “Christ,” says the Catechism, “is a man, according to Rom. v. 15, conceived by a virgin, through the power of the Divine Spirit, without the intervention of man in the ordinary course of generation. He was first subject to suffering and death—afterwards impassible and immortal, Rom. vi. 9. It is in the sense of his existence derived immediately from God, that he, though man, is called the Son of God—as Adam is so termed from the same cause. Jesus Christ was the immediate instrument of God’s communications to man; and being, whilst on earth, the voice of God, he is now the anointed King, or Christ, over the people of God.” The passages where he is said to have existed from the beginning: to have created all things, &c. are laboriously explained away, as referring to the regeneration, or new state of things introduced by Christ’s mission on earth: and in this part there is much forced interpretation. I shall annex some of the passages in the language of the original, {37} as a proof that I have given a fair account of the real Socinian doctrine, which is very little understood at present. Writers from whom we might expect greater accuracy, have very generally confounded Socinians and Arians, although Faustus Socinus was at the pains to write a laboured refutation of the Arian doctrine, and although a reference to the doctrines of the two sects would show that they are the antipodes of each other. Arius taught that Christ was not of _the same_ nature (ὁμοούσιος), with the Father, but of _a like_ nature (ὁμοιούσιος) and therefore individually separate—separate in will, and capable of differing. This is a direct assertion of two Gods. Socinus on the contrary strenuously asserts the unity of the Deity to the extent of denying the pre-existence of Christ: which Arius though acknowledging that there was a time when he began to exist, nevertheless refers to a period remote beyond human calculation. Thus upon their characteristic doctrines, the two sects are diametrically opposed to each other.