not think, however, that there is any contrariety between these two facts, when the circumstances attend. ing them are duly considered.

Tertullian lived in Africa, where there seems to have been a greater inclination for the unitarian doctrine than there was at Rome, as we may collect from the remarkable popularity of Sabellius in that country, and other circumstances. Athanasius also, who complains of many persons of low understanding favouring the same principles, was of the same country, residing chiefly in Egypt, though he had seen a great part of the christian world, and was no doubt well acquainted with it*.

We should likewise consider the peculiarly violent character of Victor, who was capable of doing what few other persons would have attempted; being the same person who excommunicated all the Eastern churches because they did not observe Easter at the same time that the Western churches did; for which he was much censured even by many bishops in the

West.

Such an excommunication as this of Theodotus was

* I think it very probable that in the Western parts of the Roman empire in general, there were always fewer unitarians than in the Eastern parts; because the gospel was not preached so early in the Western parts, perhaps not to any great extent till the greater part of the clergy were infected with platonism. This might have been the case, especially in so remote a country as Gaul, where Irenæus resided, and may account for his treating the doctrine of the Ebionites with more severity than Justin, who lived in the East, where they were more numerous. On the same principles we may account for the prevalence of Arianism in all the barbarous nations bordering on the Roman empire. They had been converted to christianity chiefly by persecuted Arians. But Arianism was at length suppressed by the influence of the church of Rome, which also began to excommunicate the proper unitarians in the person of Theodotus.

by no means the same thing with cutting a person off from communion with any particular church with which he had been used to communicate. Theodotus was a stranger at Rome, and it is very possible that the body of the christian church at Rome did not interest themselves in the affair, the bishop and his clergy only approving of it. For I readily grant that, though there were some learned unitarians in all the early ages of christianity, the majority of the clergy were not so.

Theodotus, besides being a stranger at Rome, was a man of science, and is said by the unitarians to have been well received by Victor at first; so that it is very possible that the latter might have been instigated to what he did by some quarrel between them, of which we have no account.

Upon the whole, therefore, though Victor excommunicated this Theodotus, who was a stranger, and had perhaps made himself conspicuous, so as to have given some cause of umbrage or jealousy to him, it is very possible that a great proportion of the lower kind of people, who made no noise or disturbance, might continue in communion with that church, though they were known to be unitarians.

I am not disposed to take any advantage of Dr. Horsley's supposition, that Theodotus might hold the unitarian doctrine in some more offensive form than that of the ancient Ebionites, and therefore might be more liable to excommunication; because both Tertullian and Theodoret say that he believed the miraculous conception, and it is only Epiphanius (who lived long after the time of Tertullian) who asserts the contrary. It is indeed pretty certain that the opinion of * Tillemont's Memoirs, vol. vii. p. 116.

Jesus being the son of Joseph began soon to give way to the authority of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and that it became extinct long before the doctrine of the simple humanity of Christ.

V.

Of Justin Martyr's Account of the Knowledge of some Christians of low Rank.

It is likewise said that the testimony of Tertullian is expressly contradicted by Justin Martyr *, who, in giving an account of the circumstances in which the platonic philosophy agreed, as he thought, with the doctrine of Moses, but with respect to which he supposed that Plato had borrowed from Moses, mentions, the following particulars; viz. " the power which was after the first God, or the Logos," assuming the figure of a cross in the universe, borrowed from the fixing up of a serpent (which represented Christ) in the form of a cross in the wilderness; and a third principle, bor rowed from the spirit which Moses said moved on the face of the water at the creation; and also the notion of some fire or conflagration, borrowed from some figurative expressions in Moses relating to the anger of God waxing hot. "These things," he CC says, we do not borrow from others, but all others from us. With us you may hear and learn these things from those who do not know the form of the letters, who are rude and barbarous of speech, but wise and understanding in mind; and from some who are even lame and blind so that you may be convinced that these things are not said by human wisdom, but by the power of God."

*Edit. Thirlby, p. 88.

But all that we can infer from this passage is, that these common people had learned from Moses that the world was made by the power and wisdom (or the Logos) of God; that the serpent in the wilderness represented Christ; and that there was a spirit of God that moved on the face of the waters; in short, that these plain people had been at the source from which Plato had borrowed his philosophy. It is by no means an explicit declaration that these common people thought that the Logos and the Spirit were persons distinct from God. Justin was not writing with a view to that question, as Tertullian was; but only meant to say how much more knowledge was to be found among the lowest of the christians than among the wisest of the heathen philosophers.

Besides, Justin is here boasting of the knowledge of these lower people, and it favoured his purpose to make it as considerable as he could; whereas Tertullian is complaining of the circumstance which he mentions so that nothing but the conviction of a disagreeable truth could have extorted it from him. The same was the case with respect to Athanasius.

That the common people in Justin's time should understand his doctrine concerning the personification of the Logos, is in itself highly improbable. That this Logos, which was originally in God the same thing that reason is in man, should at the creation of the world assume a proper personality, and afterwards animate the body of Jesus Christ, either in addition to a human soul, or instead of it, is not only very absurd, but also so very abstruse, that it is in the highest degree improbable, à priori, that the common people should have adopted it. The scriptures, in which they

were chiefly conversant, could never teach them any such thing, and they could not have been capable of entering into the philosophical refinements of Justin on the subject. Whereas, that the common people should have believed as Tertullian and Athanasius represent them to have done, viz. that there is but one God; and that Christ was a man, the messenger or prophet of God, and no second God at all, the rival as it were of the first God, is a thing highly credible in itself, and therefore requires less external evidence,

VI.

Of the Passage in Justin Martyr concerning the Unitarians of his Time*.

I think myself possessed of so much evidence in favour of the unitarian doctrine having been maintained in the first ages of christianity, that I have no occasion to be solicitous about trifles with respect to it; and even with regard to the much-contested passage in

* Και γαρ εισι τινες απο του ημετέρου γενους ὁμολογουντες αυτον Χριστον είναι, ανθρωπον δε εξ ανθρωπων γενομενον αποφαινομενοι οἷς ου συντιθεμαι, ουδ' αν πλειστοι ταυτα μοι δοξάσαντες ειποιεν, επειδη ουκ ανθρώπειοις διδαγμασι κεκελευσμεθα ὑπ' αυτου του Χριστου πείθεσθαι, αλλα τοις δια των μακαρίων προφητών κηρυχθεισί, και δι' AUTOU didaxtεioi. Edit. Thirlby, p. 234.

Thus rendered by my opponent the Monthly Reviewer:

"There are some of our profession who acknowledge him to be the Christ, and yet maintain that he was a man born in the natural way; to whom I could not yield my assent, no not even if the majority of christians should think the same; because we are commanded by Christ himself not to rely on human doctrines, but to receive those which were published by the blessed prophets, and which he himself taught us."

By my Vindicator, more literally:

"There are some of our race [viz. Gentiles] who acknowledge him to be the Christ, and yet maintain that he was a man born