suppose these to be christians." Had he considered the unitarians, with whom he appears to have been well acquainted, as heretics, would he not have mentioned or alluded to their tenets also in those passages in which he speaks, and pretty largely, of the Christian heretics in general? It is impossible, I should think, to read those passages, as they stand in the original, introduced as a fulfilment of our Saviour's prophecy, that there should be false Christs, and false prophets, who should deceive many, and not be satisfied that (like the apostle John) Justin Martyr had no idea of there being any heretics in the christian church, in his time, besides the Gnostics*. How little is it that Irenæus says of the Ebionites, and with how little severity, in his large treatise concerning hercsy! It is little more than one page out of four hundred, while all the rest. is employed on the different branches of Gnosticisms. The harshest epithet that he applies to them is that of vani, which,considering the manner of the ancients, is certainly very moderate. Vani autem et Ebionæit. He says, indeed, that "God will judge them," and "how can they be saved, if it be not God that worked out their salvation upon earth?" But this is no sentence of damnation passed upon them in particular for holding their doctrine, but an argument used by him to refute them; and is the same as if he had said, Mankind in general could not be saved, if Christ had not been God as well as man. There is no instance, I believe, of any person having been excommunicated for being an unitarian before See Dialog. edit. Thirlby, p. 208, pars secunda, p. 311. + Lib. 5. cap. i. p. 394. Lib. 4. cap. lix. p. 358. Theodotus, by Victor bishop of Rome, the same that excommunicated all the eastern churches because they would not celebrate Easter on the day that he prescribed. Whereas had the universal church been trinitarian from the beginning, would not the first unitarians, the first broachers of a doctrine so exceedingly offensive to them, as in all ages it has ever been, have experienced their utmost indignation, and have been expelled from all christian societies with horror? What makes it more particularly evident, that the doctrine of the simple humanity of Christ was not thought deserving of excommunication in early times, is, that though the Ebionites were anathematized, as Jerom says, or excommunicated, it was not on account of their denying the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, but only on account of their rigid observance of the Mosaic law*. Had you, Sir, been appointed to draw up a form of excommunication for Socinus, would you have confined your charge of heresy to his refusing to baptize infants, or his maintaining the unlawfulness of bearing arms? The principal article would certainly have been his believing, with the Ebionites, that Christ was nothing more than a man. Such a doctrine as that of the simple humanity of Christ, in a church universally trinitarian, must necessarily have given greater alarm, and have roused the orthodox to exert more vigorous measures than the same doctrine could do in the time of Calvin, when it was far from being novel; and yet hc, though ex * Si hoc verum est, in Cherenti et Hebionis hæresim dilabimur, qui, credentes in Christo, propter hoc solum a patribus anathematizati sunt, quod legis cæremonias Christi evangelio miscuerunt, et sic nova confessi sunt ut vetera non amitterent. Hieronymus Augustino, Ep. 89. vol. i. p. 634, posed to persecution himself, thought it to be a crime for which burning alive was no more than an adequate punishment; and almost all the christian world justified his using that rigour with respect to Servetus. Now, since the minds of men are in all ages similarly affected in similar circumstances, we may conclude, that the unitarian doctrine, which was treated with so much respect when it was first mentioned, was in a very different predicament then, from what it was at the time of the Reformation. The difference of majority and minority, and nothing else, can account for this difference of treatment. You will say, if the great majority of christians in early times were unitarians, why did not they excommunicate the innovating trinitarians? I answer, that the doctrine of the trinity was not, in its origin, such as could give much alarm, as I have explained in my Reply to the Monthly Reviewers, p. 11; and before it became very formidable there was a great majority of the learned and philosophizing clergy on its side. However, that it did give very great alarm, as it began to unfold itself, I have brought undeniable evidence. What words, in any language, can express more alarm or dislike than expqvescere and scandalizare, by which Tertullian describes their feelings on this subject? And Origen has some equally strong in Greek, as τaраσσε, &c. Had the unitarians in those times been writers, we should probably have heard more of their complaints. At present we know nothing of them besides what we are able to collect concerning them from their adversaries, who thought it necessary to make frequent apologies to them. On the other hand, there is indisputable evidence that the unitarian doctrine, and even in its most obnoxious form, existed in the very time of the apostles. The Jewish christians in general, not only thought that Christ was a mere man, but even that he was the son of Joseph; and the gradation that you speak of, from the doctrine of the Ebionites in the time of St. John, to that of Theodotus in the time of Victor, has no existence but in your own single imagination. And yet these unitarians were respected, and not expelled from christian societies, by the orthodox of that age. Explain this fact, in consistence with their not being the majority of christians, if you can. At this day, as the unitarian doctrine happily gains ground among christians, the horror with which it has been considered is manifestly very much abated. Your treatment of me, and of all who hold the same opinion, is rather extraordinary, considering the times in which we live; but it is mild and moderate compared with the usual treatment of the same doctrine, even in this tolerant country, a hundred, or even fifty years ago. At the time of the Revolution it was made blasphemy by act of parliament openly to avow what I now openly defend, and was punishable with confiscation of goods and imprisonment for life, if persisted in; and the law still remains unrepealed. But it is seen to be so arbitrary and unjust, (as directed against those who conscientiously believe in one God only, without acknowledging three persons to be that one God, that no one dares to put it in execution; and the state, I am confident, only waits for that application which, I trust, will be made to relieve them, and to wipe off such a disgrace from our statutes. LETTER IV. Of the Inference that may be drawn from the Passage of Athanasius, concerning the Opinion of the early Jewish Christians relating to Christ. DEAR SIR, As one argument that the primitive church of Jerusalem was properly unitarian, maintaining the simple humanity of Christ, I observed, that "Athanasius himself was so far from denying it, that he endeavoured to account for it by saying that all the Jews were so firmly persuaded that their Messiah was to be nothing more than a man like themselves, that the apostles were obliged to use great caution in divulging the doctrine of the proper divinity of Christ." This I maintain to be a short but true state of the case. Athanasius both expressly allowed that the Jewish christians were at first of the opinion that Christ was no more than a man ; and he accounts for the apostles conniving at it, without saying how long that prudent connivance continued. In my Appendix you will find a somewhat fuller state of the argument. I shall now distinctly consider all that you have advanced to invalidate the inference that I have made from this remarkable passage. I shall afterwards show that it was not Athanasius only, but Chrysostom also; and, as he says, the ancients, and the most distinguished fathers of the church, who gave the same representation of the state of things in the apostolical age. You say, p. 22, that Athanasius is here speaking of the unbelieving Jews. The expression is οἱ τοτε Ιουδαιοι, |