been with him in this business. I do not think, however, that there is any contrariety between these two facts, when the circumstances attending them are duly confidered.

Tertullian lived in Africa, where there feems 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. Athanafius also, who complains of many persons of low understanding favouring the fame principles, was of the fame country, residing chiefly in Egypt; though he had feen a great part of the chriftian world, and was no doubt well acquainted with it *.

We should likewife confider the peculiarly violent character of Victor, who was capable of doing what few other perfons would have attempted;

• 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 fo 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 fo remote a country as Gaul, where Irenæus refided, and may account for his treating the doctrine of the Ebionites with more severity than Juftin, who lived in the Eaft, where they were more numerous. On the fame principles we may account for the prevalence of Arianifm in all the barbarous nations bordering on the Roman empire. They had been converted to chriflianity chiefly by perfecuted Arians. But Arianifm was at length fuppreffed by the influence of the church of Rome, which alfo began to excommunicate the proper unitarians, in the person of Theodotus.

being the fame perfon who excommunicated all the Eastern churches, because they did not observe Eafter at the fame time that the Western churches did; for which he was much cenfured, even by many bishops in the West.

Such an excommunication as this of Theodotus was by no means the fame thing with cutting a perfon off from communion with any particular church, with which he had been used to communicate. Theodotus was a ftranger at Rome, and it is very poffible that the body of the chriftian church at Rome did not intereft themselves in the affair; the bishop, and his clergy, only approving of it. For I readily grant that, though there were fome learned unitarians in all the early ages of chriftianity, the majority of the clergy were not fo.

'Theodotus, befides being a stranger at Rome, was a man of science, and is faid by the unitarians to have been well received by Victor at first; fo that it is very poffible that the latter might have been inftigated to what he did by fome quarrel between them, of which we have no account.

Upon the whole, therefore, though Victor excommunicated this Theodotus, who was a ftranger, and had perhaps made himself confpicuous, fo as to have given fome caufe of umbrage or jealousy to him, it is very poffible that a great proportion of the lower kind of people, who made no noife or difturbance, might continue in communion

with that church, though they were known to be

unitarians.

I am not difpofed to take any advantage of Dr. Horfley's fuppofition, that Theodotus might hold the unitarian doctrine in fome more offenfive form than that of the ancient Ebionites, and therefore might be more liable to excommunication; because both Tertullian and Theodoret fay that he believed the miraculous conception, and it is only Epiphanius (who lived long after the time of Tertullian) who afferts the contrary*. It is, indeed, pretty certain that the opinion of Jefus being the fon of Jofeph began foon to give way early to the authority of the gofpels of Matthew and Luke, and that it became extinct long before the doctrine of the fimple humanity of Christ.

V.

Of Juftin Martyr's account of the knowledge of fome chriftians of low rank.

It is likewife faid that the testimony of Tertullian is exprefsly contradicted by Juftin Martyr, who in giving an account of the circumstances in which the platonic philofophy agreed, as he thought, with the doctrine of Mofes, but with respect to which he supposed that Plato had borrowed from Mofes, mentions the following particulars, viz. "the power which

■ Tillemont's Memoirs, vol. vii. p. 116. +Edit. Thrilby, p.88.

“ was

"was after the firft God, or the Logos," affuming the figure of a crofs in the univerfe, borrowed from the fixing up of a ferpent (which reprefented Chrift) in the form of a crofs in the wilderness;: and a third principle, borrowed from the Spirit! which Mofes faid moved on the face of the water at the creation; and also the notion of fome fire, or conflagration, borrowed from fome figura-tive expreffions in Mofes relating to the anger. of God waxing hot. "These things," he fays,

we do not borrow from others, but all others "from us. With us you may hear and learn "these things from thofe who do not know the "form of the letters, who are rude and barbarous "of fpeech, but wife and understanding in mind; " and from fome who are even lame and blind; fo "that you may be convinced that these things are not faid by human wisdom, but by the power of God."

"

But all that we can infer from this paffage is, that these common people had learned from Mofes that the world was made by the power and wisdom (or the Logos) of God; that the ferpent in the wilderness represented Chrift; and that there was a spirit of God that moved on the face of the waters; in fhort, that these plain people had been at the fource from which Plato had borrowed his philofophy. It is by no means an explicit declaration that thought that the Logos, fons diftinct from God.

thefe common people and the fpirit, were perJuftin was not writing

with a view to that question, as Tertullian was; but only meant to fay how much more knowledge was to be found among the loweft of the chriftians than among the wifeit of the heathen philofophers.

Besides, Juftin is here boasting of the knowledge of theie lower people, and it favoured his purpose to make it as considerable as he could; whereas Tertullian is complaining of the circumftance which he mentions, fo that nothing but the conviction of a dilagreeable truth could have extorted it from him. The fane was the cafe with refpect to Athanatus.

That the common people in Juftin's time should understand his doctrine concerning the perfonification of the Logos is, in icelf, highly improbable. That this Logos, which was originally in God the fame thing that reafon is in man, thould at the creation of the world affume a proper personality, and afterwards animate the body of Jefus Chrift, either in addition to a human foul, or inftead of it, is not only very abfurd, but also fo very abftrufe, that it is in the highest degree improbable, a priori, that the common people should have adopted it. The fcriptures, in which they were chiefly converfant, could never teach them any fuch thing, and they could not have been capable of entering into the philofophical refinements of Juftin on the fubject. Whereas, that the common people fhould have

believed