CHAPTER XV.

Objections to the preceding State of Things

confidered.

Page 295

SECTION I.

Of the Teftimony of Eufebius to the Novelty of the Unitarian Doctrine.

SECTION II.

,ibid

Of the Excommunication of Theodotus by Victor.

SECTION

III.

303

Of the Part taken by the Laity in the Excommunication of the early Unitarians, and other Confiderations relating to the Subject.

Of the State of the Unitarians from the Time * of the Council of Nice, to the fixth Century.

CHAPTER XVII. Of Philosophical Unitarianisin Page 376

CHAPTER XVIII. Of the Principles and Arguments of the ancient Unitarians.

399 SECTION I. Their Zeal for the Divine Unity, and their Sense of the Word Logos.

ibid. SECTION II. Arguments of the ancient Unitarians from Reafon.

415 SECTION III. Arguments of the ancient Unitarians from the Scriptures.

423 CHAPTER XIX. Of the Practice of the Unitarians with respect to Baptism.

439

THE

THI

HISTORY OF OPINIONS

CONCERNING

CHRIST.

воок III.

THE HISTORY OF THE UNITARIAN DOC

TRINE.

A

INTRODUCTION.

FTER the view that has been given of the rife and progrefs of the

doctrine of the trinity, which fprung from the abfurdity and myftery of Platonism, and terminated in a mystery still more unintelligible and abfurd, in which every thing that is fimple and excellent in christianity was wholly fwallowed up and loft, and a polytheism little better than that VOL. III. 'B

of

of the heathens took its place (for the worfhip of Christ led to that of the virgin Mary, and a thousand other persons, cailed saints) it is with peculiar fatisfaction that I proceed to give an account of the doctrine of the divirie unity, or the History of Unitarianism.

If I had not given what I imagine will appear to be a satisfactory account of the rise of christian idolatry, it might have appeared a very extraordinary and unaccountable thing; considering that the Jews, from whom the christians sprung, were all zealous unitarians in the time of our Saviour, and that they have continued fuch to this day. It even appears to have been the great object of the Jewish religion, as contained in the books of Moses, to preserve in the world the knowledge and worship of the one true God, notwithstanding the univerfal, tendency to polytheism among all nations, in the early ages.

The doctrine of one great omnipresent being, the maker, and the immediate governor of all things,' was too great and sublime, I do not only say, to have been dif

covered by mankind, but even to be retained by any of them, after it was revealed, without particular provisions for that purpose. Though, I have no doubt, but that the first parents of the human race were instructed in the knowledge of the divine unity, their posterity soon adopted the notion of different gods, to whom they imagined the government of the world was delegated ; and their attention to these inferior deities, on whom they thought that they more immediately depended, withdrew their attention, as it naturally would, from the supreme God, under whom they at first supposed that these lesser gods had acted. Then, being left to their own imaginations with respect to the characters of these gods, and having no models by which to frame them besides beings like themselves, they presently conceived them to be of very different dispositions, some of them cruel and base, and others lewd ; and of course delighting in cruel, base, and lewd actions. To procure the favour, or to avert the displeasure, of these gods, they

B 2

would,