Though in the highest degree Christocentric, Samuell Gorton’s theology was not in harmony with the prevailing Trinitarianism of his day. The doctrine “received from the schoole men of the church of Roome, that hold and teach a trinitie of persons in one simple and divine essence, without having respect for the humane nature of Christ,” he characterizes as “a most dangerous and pernicious doctrine.” It is, he says, “most derogatory to the glory of the son; for in that time he is deprived of the glory of a saviour; for without man’s nature hee is not Jesus; hee is no saviour but in man; hee is not the anointed nor the redeemer but in man’s nature; and if wee deprive him of that glory for a time it is to late to give it to him afterwards, because hee ever remains one and the same.” The scriptural references to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit he interprets as recognitions of “spirituall distinctions in the nature of Christ.” They are not separate persons of a god-head, but distinctions of the divine activity, having a unity “not found elsewhere, but only in Christ.”[74] With Channing, Samuell Gorton also taught the essential divinity of human nature—the equal nearness of the divine spirit to the sinner and to the saint. He recognizes a divine spark in every human soul, and to this he made his appeal.[75] He also, however, accepted the eternal antagonism of good and evil as an unquestionable fact both in scriptural teaching and in human experience. The tendency of the one is to eternal life; of the other to eternal death. He therefore taught a conditional immortality, wholly dependent upon the character of the individual. “Neither can any salvation hold proportion with the son of God,” he says, “but freedome from sin.” This saved him from the errors of Antinomianism.[76] The doctrine of imputed sin and imputed righteousness he denounces as unworthy of the divine character. “God was in Christ reconciling men unto him selfe, not imputing their sins.” Nor is this work of reconciliation limited to any historical period. “God is eternally a creator, eternally a redeemer, eternally a conservator of peace.”