“Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations; baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. ” Matt. xxviii. 19.
1 That in some real sense the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are They whom we are bound to serve and worship, from whom comes the Gospel of grace, and in whom the profession of Christianity centres, surely is shown, most satisfactorily and indisputably, by the words of this text. When Christ was departing, He gave commission to His Apostles, and taught them what to teach and preach; and first of all they were to introduce their converts into His profession, or into His Church, and that by a solemn rite, which, as He had told Nicodemus at an earlier time, was to convey a high spiritual grace. This solemn and supernatural ordinance of discipleship was to be administered in the Name—of whom? in the Name (can we doubt it?) of Him whose disciples the converts forthwith became; of that God whom, from that day forward, they confessed and adored; whom they promised to obey; in whose word they trusted; by whose bounty they were to be rewarded. Yet when Christ would name the Name of God, He does but say, “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” I consider, then, that on the very face of His sacred words there is a difficulty, till the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is made known to us. What can be meant by saying, in the Name, not of God, but of Three? It is an unexpected manner of speech.
Now even if it were merely said, “of the Father and the Son,” there would surely be a difficulty in the terms of His command. We might indeed suppose that He meant thereby to denote the Supreme Lord of all, and the instrument and mediator of His mercies in the Dispensation then commencing (as we read of the Israelites “believing God and His servant Moses,” and “worshipping the Lord and the king,” David); but surely even then it would be strange and inexplicable that Christ should say, “the Father and Son,” and not “God and the Son,” or “God and Christ,” or the like; whereas the Name of God does not occur at all, and the two words used instead are what are called correlatives, one implies the other, they look from the one to the other. There is no mention of a Fount of mercies and a channel, and that, towards man the recipient; but it is like the statement of some sacred doctrine which has its meaning in itself, independently of man or of any economy of mercy towards him. And the force of this remark is increased by our Lord’s making mention, in addition, of the Holy Ghost, which much confirms this impression that the Three Sacred Names introduced have a meaning relatively to each other, and not to any temporal dispensation. Did the text run, “in the Name of God, Jesus Christ, and the Comforter,” I do not say that this would have overcome the difficulty, or that it would be satisfactory to interpret it of an Author of grace and His instruments; but at all events there is far more difficulty, or rather an insuperable difficulty in such an interpretation of the text, taken as Christ actually spoke it. And then, considering that if there was one boon above another which a convert might naturally claim of an Apostle, it was to know whom he was to worship, whose servant he was to become, who was to be his God, now that he had abandoned idols—(as, for instance, Moses said, “When I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is His Name? what shall I say unto them?” and Almighty God acknowledged that the request was right by granting it; and as Jacob said, “Tell me, I pray thee, Thy Name?” and as Manoah said, “What is Thy Name?” and as, in accordance with these instances, St. Paul said to the Athenians, “Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you”);—I say, with these considerations before us, we might have expected that there would have been in the Baptismal form a clear and simple announcement of the Christian’s God, such as this, “In the Name of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” that is, unless the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity be true. If indeed so it be, as the Church has ever taught, that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are the One God into whose service Christians are enrolled, then good reason that They should be named upon the convert on his initiation. In that case there is no difficulty; the sacred form of words precisely answers to the worshipper’s question, “What is Thy Name?” to the Apostle’s promise, “Him declare I unto you:” but on the supposition, which impugners of the doctrine maintain, that by “Son” is meant a man, and that the Holy Spirit is not God and not an intelligent person at all, certainly a great and unexpected, and (I may say, humanly speaking) unnecessary obscurity hangs over the first act of the Gospel teaching.