From this passage, it is evident that the primitive Church of Smyrna, the very flock of the Apostolic Polycarp, positively adored Christ, while they simply loved the holy martyrs as his disciples. For not only are the two expressions, ADORE and LOVE, industriously placed in avowed contradistinction: but likewise the worship paid to Christ is systematically made to rest upon the circumstance of his being The Son of God; a title, the ascription of which was, by the early believers, deemed equivalent to an ascription of proper and essential divinity 1.

From the same passage, it is further evident: that the practice of the Smyrnèans was so familiarly notorious, as to be well known to their ad

ρίας παθόντα, ἄμωμον ὑπὲρ ἁμαρτωλῶν, οὔτε ἕτερόν τινα σέβεσθαι. Τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ, Υἱὸν ὄντα τοῦ Θεοῦ, προσκυνοῦμεν· τοὺς δὲ μάρτυρας, ὡς μαθητὰς καὶ μιμητὰς τοῦ κυρίου, ἀγαπῶμεν αξίως, ἕνεκα εὐνοίας ἀνυπερβλήτου τῆς εἰς τὸν ἴδιον βασιλέα καὶ διδάσκαλον· ὧν γένοιτο καὶ ἡμᾶς κοινωνούς τε καὶ συμμαOnràs yevéolai. Epist. Eccles. Smyrn. § xvii. in Patr. Apost. Cotel. vol. ii. p. 201, 202.

· Τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ, Υἱὸν ὄντα τοῦ Θεοῦ (quippe qui sit Dei Filius), προσκυνοῦμεν.

The perfectly clear and intelligible principle, on which the primitive Church deemed the ascription of the title of The Son of God to Christ equivalent to an ascription to him of real and proper divinity, was this.

Proper Sonship inevitably imports Consubstantiality with the Father and Consubstantiality with the Father no less inevitably imports Essential Divinity. See below, append. ii. numb. 10,

versaries both Jews and Gentiles. For, otherwise, it is clear that, when they wished to pay the rites of decent sepulture to the scorched remains of their martyred Bishop; no opposition could have been made to them on the expressly specific ground, that any permission to that effect might lead to the worship of Polycarp instead of the worship of Christ. Accordingly, in reply, the Smyrnèans, we see, while they acknowledged and vindicated their worship of Christ, renounced with horror and indignation the very idea of similarly worshipping Polycarp.

Such, then, was the practice of the Church of Smyrna only forty-seven years after the death of St. John: a practice, manifestly inculcated in that Church by Polycarp himself, who had learned his theology from the beloved Apostle, and who by immediate apostolic authority had acted as the chief pastor of that same Church during the uninterrupted term of more than half a century.

XIII. The conversion of Justin Martyr to Christianity must have occurred about the year

130.

For it took place at some indefinite time before his conference with Trypho: and, as we may gather from the Dialogue itself, that conference was held in the precise year 1361.

Hence, although his first Apology was written,

1 See above, book i. chap. 3. § III.

as some think, in the year 140; or, as he himself apparently intimates, in the year 150: both the doctrine and the practice, which it sets forth, will obviously be the doctrine and the practice of a much earlier date '.

Not knowing that certain beings were evil demons, the ancients called them gods.-We, however say: that the perpetrators of the enormities ascribed to them, so far from being upright agents, are absolutely very demons most wicked and most unholy; for they perform actions unlike those of even mere men who delight in virtue. On this account, we are called Atheists. And truly we confess that we are indeed atheists, in regard to such beings as these who are reckoned gods: but we are not atheists, in regard to the true God, who is the parent of justice and temperance and all other virtues. For HIM, MOST

ASSUREDLY; AND HIS SON, WHO CAME FORTH FROM

HIM (and who, respecting these things, instructed both us and the army of the other good angels that follow him and that are made like unto him); AND

THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT: THESE WE WORSHIP AND WE

ADORE, honouring them in word and in truth, and, to every person who wishes to learn, ungrudgingly delivering as we ourselves have been taught 2.

1 Ἵνα δὲ μή τινες ἀλογισταίνοντες εἰς ἀποτροπὴν τῶν δεδι δαγμένων ὑφ' ἡμῶν εἴπωσι, πρὸ ἐτῶν ἑκατὸν πεντήκοντα γεγεννῆσθαι τὸν Χριστὸν λέγειν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ Κυρηνίου. Apol. i. Oper.

2

Μὴ ἐπιστάμενοι δαίμονας εἶναι φαύλους, θεοὺς προσωνόμα

From the plural form of this passage, we distinctly learn : that, about the year 130 when Jus

ζον.—Τοὺς ταῦτα πράξαντας δαίμονας, οὐ μόνον μὴ ὀρθοὺς εἶναί, φαμεν, ἀλλὰ κακοὺς καὶ ἀνοσίους δαίμονας, οἳ οὐδὲ τοῖς ἀρετὴν ποθοῦσιν ἀνθρώποις τὰς πράξεις ὁμοίας ἔχουσιν. Ἐνθένδε καὶ ἄθεοι κεκλήμεθα· καὶ ὁμολογοῦμεν τῶν τοιούτων νομιζομένων θεῶν ἄθεοι εἶναι, ἀλλ' οὐχὶ τοῦ ἀληθεστάτου, καὶ πατρὸς δικαιοσύνης καὶ σωφροσύνης καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀρετῶν, ἀνεπιμίκτου Θεοῦ. ̓Αλλ ̓ Ἐκεῖνόν τε, καὶ τὸν παρ' αὐτοῦ Υἱὸν ἐλθόντα (καὶ διδαξε άντα ἡμᾶς ταῦτα καὶ τὸν τῶν ἄλλων ἑπομένων καὶ ἐξομοιουμένων ἀγαθῶν ἀγγέλων στρατὸν), Πνεῦμά τε τὸ προφητικὸν, σε βόμεθα καὶ προσκυνοῦμεν, λόγῳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ τιμῶντες, καὶ παντὶ βουλομένῳ μαθεῖν, ὡς ἐδιδάχθημεν, ἀφθόνως παραδιδόντες. Justin. Apol. i. Oper. p. 43.

I. It is a curious circumstance, that Cardinal Bellarmine and Dr. Priestley, whether consciously or not on the part of the latter, should have concurred in their translation or rather perversion of the leading sentence in this passage.

Through the grammatical mechanism of making the substantive στρατὸν depend upon the verbs σεβόμεθα and προσκυνοῦμεν, instead of depending (which is its true construction) upon the participle διδάξαντα, they bring out the unexpected result, that Justin, almost at the beginning of the second century and while the prohibitory words of the angel to St. John (Rev. xix. 10. xxii. 8, 9.) were still as it were ringing through the Church Catholic, attested the universal worship of the holy angels on the part of himself and of the whole collective body of Christians.

Him, and the Son that came from him, says Justin, as interpreted by the Cardinal and the Historian, and the host of other good angels who accompany and resemble him, and the prophetic Spirit, we adore and venerate; in word and in truth honouring them.

II. But, while these two divines thus concur in perverting

tin was instructed in the peculiarities of Christianity, the Catholic Church of that period, having

the very intelligible Greek of Justin, their respective objects, as will readily be supposed, are widely different.

The Cardinal, from the alleged testimony of Justin, would prove; that the worship of the holy angels, conjointly with that of the Father and the Son and the Spirit, was the practice of that very early generation of the primitive Church which immediately succeeded the age of the Apostle St. John: the Historian, through a process by no means equally intelligible, would demonstrate; that Justin and his contemporaries did not acknowledge the divinity of the Holy Ghost.

III. With respect to the perversion before us, as Scultet and Bp. Bull have well remarked, its utter untenability is at once shewn by the circumstance of its making Justin contradict himself. Scultet. Medull. Patr. in synth. doctr. Just. Mart. c. xviii. Bull. Defens. Fid. Nic. sect. ii. c. 4. § 8.

In this summary manner, so far as its general merits are concerned, we may well be content to dismiss it: yet the reader may be curious to know, how, through its medium, Dr. Priestley contrives to demonstrate, that the divinity of the Holy Ghost was not acknowledged by Justin and his contemporaries.

1. Justin Martyr, observes the Historian, never says, in express words, that the Spirit is God in any sense: and, when he mentions worship as due to the Spirit, it is in the same sentence in which he speaks of it as due to angels. Hist. of Corrupt. part. i. sect. 7. Works vol. v. p. 59.

Then follows, in proof of this statement, the perversion, which is the joint property of himself and Cardinal Bellar

mine.

(1.) Such is the not very clear argument of Dr. Priestley. He means, however, I suppose, that, since Justin, according to the perversion of his words, maintains the joint adoration of good angels and of the prophetic Spirit; and since, confessedly,