Confider alfo the conduct of the Jewish chriftians, who had strong prejudices against Paul, as we find in this part of his history; and according to the teftimony of all hiftorians, they retained those prejudices as long as they had any name, and after the deftruction of Jerufalem, which was not long after the close of the hiftory of the Acts, no trace can be found of their believing any such doctrine as the divinity of Chrift. Now, though their enmity to Paul continued, and they never confidered his writings as canonical fcripture, yet to the very laft, their objections to him amounted to nothing more than his being no friend to the law of Moses.

The refemblance between the character of the Ebionites, as given by the early chriftian fathers, and that of the Jewish chriftians at the time of Paul's laft journey to Jerufalem, is very striking. After he had given an account of his conduct, to the more intelligent of them, they were fatisfied with it; but they thought there would be great diffi culty in fatisfying others. "Thou seest, brother," fay they to him, Acts xxi. 20. " how many thou"fands of Jews there are who believe, and they "are all zealous of the law. And they are in"formed of thee, that thou teacheth all the Jews "who are among the Gentiles, to forfake Mofes; "faying that they ought not to circumeife their "children, neither to walk after the cuftoms. "What is it therefore? The multitudes must needs "come together, for they will hear that thou art

come

come.

Do therefore this, that we fay to thee. "We have four men who have a vow on them. "Them take and purify thyfelf with them, and "be at charges with them, that they may shave "their heads, and all may know that those things "whereof they were informed concerning thee "are nothing, but that thou thy felf alfo walkeft "orderly and keepeft the law." So great a refemblance in fome things, viz. their attachment to the law, and their prejudices against Paul, cannot but lead us to imagine that they were the fame in other refpects alfo, both being equally zealous obfervers of the law, and equally strangers to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. And in that age all the Jews were equally zealous for the great doctrine of the unity of God, and their peculiar cuftoms. Can it be fuppofed then that they would fo obftinately retain the one, and fo readily. abandon the other?

These confiderations (and much more might be added to enforce them) certainly affect the credibility of Chrift having any nature fuperior to that of man; and when they are fufficiently attended to (as I fufpect they never have been) must shake the Arian hypothefis; but they must be particularly embarraffing to those who, like you, maintain the perfect equality of the Son to the Father.

Confiderations of this kind, if they occur to him, no perfon, who thinks at all, can abfolutely neglect,

neglect, fo as to fatisfy himself with having no hypothefis on the fubject. You certainly find the apostles, as well as the reft of the Jews, without any knowledge of the divinity of Chrift, with whom they lived and converfed as a man; and if they ever became acquainted with it, there muft have been a time when it was either discovered by them, or made known to them; and the effects of the acquifition, or the communication of extraordinary knowledge, are in general proportionably confpicuous.

Had we had no written hiftory of our Saviour's life, or of the preaching of the apostles, or only fome very concise one; ftill fo very extraordinary an article as this would hardly have been unknown, or have paffed unrecorded; much lefs when the history is fo full and circumftantial as it is.

Had there been any pretence for imagining that the Jews in our Saviour's time had any knowledge of the doctrine of the trinity, and that they expected the second perfon in it in the character of their Meffiah, the question I propose to you would have been needlefs. But nothing can be more evident than that, whatever you may fancy with respect to more ancient times, every notion of the trinity was obliterated from the minds of the Jews in our Saviour's time. It is, therefore, not only a curious, but a ferious and important queftion, When was it introduced, and by what Steps? I have answered it on my hypothefis of its

being an innovation and a corruption of the chrif tian doctrine; do you the fame on your idea of its being an effential part of it.

.

I

LETTER

VI.

Of the perfonification of the Logos.

DEAR SIR,

AVING confidered all that you have

Hadvanced concerning the antiquity of the

unitarian doctrine, I proceed to attend to what you obferve concerning the perfonification of the Logos by the platonizing christians: for, that many of them did platonize your are far from denying. "If," you fay, p. 50," he hath fucceeded no "better in the proof of his third affertion, con"cerning the platonic chriftians of the fecond age, "the inventors, as he would have it, of our Lord's "divinity; that the divinity which they fet up

was only of the fecondary fort, which was "admitted by the Arians, including neither eternity nor any proper neceffity of existence; having "the mere name of divinity, without any thing of "the real form: if the proof of this third affertion fhould be found to be equally infirm with that " of

F

of the other two, his notion of the gradual "progrefs of opinions from the mere Unitarian "doctrine to the Arian, and from the Arian doc "trine to the Athanafian faith, must be deemed a "mere dream or fiction in every part."

In the first place I muft fet you right with respect to my own idea, which you have totally mifconceived, though you have undertaken to refute it, and this ftrange mistake of your's runs through the whole of your work. Those platonizing christians who perfonified the Logos were not Arians; for their Logos was an attribute of the Father, and not any thing that was created of nothing, as the Arians held Chrift to have been. It is well known, as Beaufobre obferves, that they were not Arians, but the orthodox, that platonized. Conftantine, as I have obferved, vol. ii. p. 488. in his oration to the fathers of the council of Nice, fpeaks in commendation of Plato, as having taught the doctrine of a fecond God, derived from the fupreme God, and fubfervient to his will.

Among the proofs of the origin of the Son, according to the early orthodox writers, I first quoted a paffage in Athenagoras, which you tranflaté fomewhat differently from me; but not fo as to affect my conclufion from it. For he evidently afferts that the Logos was eternal in God only because God was always ayın‡, rational, which entirely excludes proper perfonification. See Athenagoras, p. 82. Can reafon, as it exifts