laudable Practice

Daniel Waterland was the champion of Trinitarian orthodoxy in the early- and mid-18th century Church of England, challenging those divines promoting non- and anti-Trinitarian theologies. Despite what we might assume, his weighty theological works in defence of Trinitarian doctrine do provide evidence of what I have inelegantly termed 'Trinitarian minimalism'. For example, in his The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity Asserted (1734) he stated that " the right faith in the Trinity is short, and plain "; he praised "common Christians" on the matter of the Trinity, contrasting them with " the bolder and more inquisitive, because they are content to rest in generals "; and declared that belief in the Holy Trinity is one of those " Scripture Verities, prime Verities " which, for Christians, "is under Precept, is express Duty". In other words, the Trinitarian confession is not a matter of scholastic speculation but of Scriptur...

A third and final extract from Waterland's  The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity Asserted  (1734), in which he contrasts the "common Christians" rightly "content to rest in generals" regarding the doctrine of the Trinity, with those who, by "prying too far" obscure and lost sight of the doctrine. In the face of the anti-Trinitarian attempts of the early- and mid-18th century to dilute and undermine the Church of England's commitment to Trinitarian orthodoxy, Waterland was - in the words of Holtby's study - "the champion par excellence of orthodoxy in the first half of the eighteenth century". The extracts offered from The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity Asserted give some indication of the significance of Waterland's teaching and witness. He rightly presented the doctrine of the Trinity as so fundamentally interwoven with, and inherent to, the worship, creeds, teaching, and thought of the catholic Christianit...

A second extract from Waterland's  The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity Asserted  (1734), in which he refutes anti-Trinitarian claims that the doctrine of the Trinity has no practical significance in Christian life.  Waterland emphasises how the Trinity shapes Christian worship, is "interwoven" with the whole narrative of redemption, and is inherent to - using a Pauline phrase - the "obedience of faith" (Romans 1:5 and 16:26).  Here is the practical significance of the doctrine of the Trinity: to be Christian is necessarily to be Trinitarian. And therefore, if Worship be a practical Matter, this Doctrine also is practical, and not a Point of mere Speculation. That Worship is a practical thing, I suppose, no Man of Sense will dispute; or if any one does, it must be a Dispute only about Words, and not affecting the main thing: Wherefore, it must be altogether wrong to imagine, that the Doctrine of the Trinity is purely notional, or has no Connexion with P...

From Daniel Waterland's The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity Asserted (1734), responding to an anti-Trinitarian claim that orthodoxy regarded as essential for salvation a knowledge of Trinitarian dogmatic terminology. Waterland's robust rejection of this and his affirmation that "the right faith in the Trinity is short, and plain" contributed to a significant defence of Trinitarian orthodoxy in the 18th century Church of England.  The doctrine of the Trinity is not, Waterland declared, scholastic speculation but a basic truth of Christianity to be confessed by "common Christians" in its "native simplicity". It is horrible misrepresentation of the Case, to pretend as if we taught, that "the eternal Interest of every Plowman or Mechanick hangs on his adjusting the Sense of the Terms, Nature, Person, Essence, Substance, Subsistence, Coequality, Coessentiality, and the like". No; those are technical Terms, most of them, proper to Di...