"men deceive themfelves, and that direct preva"rication, with which those who are engaged in "debate are too ready to charge one another, as "if their adverfaries knowingly concealed, or oppofed the truth. This is a crime of fo heinous "a nature, that I fhould be very unwilling to "impute it to any perfon whatever." therefore unwilling to charge it on you, or Mr. Badcock, notwithstanding fome appearances might feem to justify me in it.

I am the most puzzled to account for the strange and improbable hiftory that you, Sir, have given of a church of orthodox Jews at Jerufalem, after the time of Adrian, and the series of historical falls, as you have the affurance to call them, for which it is not poffible that you should have any authority, in ancient or even in modern writers; and yet had you yourself been present at the furrender of the place, and had drawn up the terms of capitulation, you could not have given a more diftinct and pofitive account. But the fact, I believe, was, that, without any examination of your own, you took it for granted, from the authority of Mofheim (who had no authority for it himself) that one leading circumftance was true, and then concluded that the other circumftances, which you have added, and therefore knew that you added, must have been fo too. On this you have not hesitated to relate the whole in one continued narrative, just as if you had been copying from fome historian of the time; and Origen, who lived in those

times, and in the very country, and whofe veracity was never queftioned before, is treated, without ceremony, as a wilful liar, because he has given a different account of things.

As it has been very much my object to trace effects to their caufes, and I confider the human mind, and confequently all human actions, to be fubject to laws, as regular as those which operate in my laboratory (for want of knowing or attending to which Mr. Gibbon has egregiously failed in his account of the caufes of the fpread of christianity, and you in this controverfy) I had framed an hypothefis to account for Mr. Badcock's cenfure of what I faid concerning Eufebius; but not being quite fatisfied with it, I rejected it. However, notwithstanding strong appearances, I am still willing to hope, that the mifrepresentation, though exceedingly grofs, was not directly wilful.

I am, &c.

LETTER

LETTER XIX.

Mifcellaneous articles, and the Conclufion.

REV. SIR,

DISPOSED as you are to make the most of every trifling overfight that you can discover in my Hiftory, and of every conceffion that I make to you, I still have no objection to acknowledge any real mistake that I have fallen into, important or unimportant; and I fhall certainly correct all fuch in any future edition of my work; and likewife, as far as I am able, in the translations that are making of it into foreign languages. I fhall now make two acknowledgments, and let our readers judge of their importance; and how little my Hiftory lofes for want of being perfectly correct in those particulars.

I had faid that "Valefius was of opinion that "the hiftory of Hegefippus was neglected and "loft, because it was obferved to favour the uni"tarian doctrine," whereas I fhould have said, "on account of the errors which it contained, and "that those errors could not be supposed to be any

other than those of the unitarians;" and if I had confulted the paffage at the time, I certainly should have expreffed myself in that more cautious manner.

But

But of what confequence is this circumftance to my great argument? Mr. Badcock, having looked for the paffage to which I refer, and not being able to find it, feems to have imagined that I had no fuch paffage to produce. He therefore after his infolent manner, challenges me to produce it, and to put him to shame. That I believe to be impoffible, otherwise it would have been effectually done in my Remarks on the Monthly Review; at least, by my notice of his most shameful conduct with respect to my censure of Eufebius, p. 21, of which he fays nothing at all in his Letter to me. I suppose he thought it not to be regarded. However the paffage which I refer to, and which fufficiently answers my purpose, is as follows: "Moreover, those books of Clement contained "a fhort and compendious expofition of both "the testaments, as Photius in his Bibliotheca "witneffes; but on account of the errors with "which they abounded, being negligently kept,

they were at length loft; nor was there any "other reason, in my opinion, why the books "of Papias, Hegefippus, and others of the ancients are now loft *."

You, Sir, however have observed this paffage, and you say, p. 4. "Valefius has indeed ex

Porro ii Clementis libri continebant brevem & compendiariam utriufquæ teftamenti expofitionem, ut teftatur Photius in Bibliotheca. Ob errores autem quibus fcatebant, negligentius habiti, tandem perierunt. Nec alia, meo quidem judicio, caufa eft, cur Papiæ & Hegefippi, aliorumque veterum libri, interciderint. In Eufeb. Hift. Lib. v. cap. 11.

preffed an opinion that the work of Hegefippus "was neglected by the ancients, on account of "c errors which it contained. But what the erron might be which might occafion this neglect is a point upon which Valefius is filent. And "what right have you to fuppofe that the unita"rian doctrine was the error which Valefius "afcribed to Hegefippus more than to Clemens "Alexandrinus, upon whofe laft work of the Hypotypofes he paffes the fame judgment."

I answer, that there were no errors of any confequence afcribed to that early age befides thofe of the Gnoftics, and of the unitarians. The former certainly were not thofe that Valefius could allude to with respect to Hegefippus, because this writer mentions the Gnostics very particularly as heretics, but makes no mention of unitarians at all; though they certainly exifted, and I doubt not conftituted the great body of unlearned christians in his time; which is one circumftance that, together with his being a Jewish christian (all of whom are expressly faid to have been Ebionites, and none of them to have believed the divinity of Chrift) leads me to conclude that he was an unitarian himself. Though Clemens Alexandrinus was not an unitarian, yet he never calls unitarians heretics; and fince in his accounts of beretics in general, which are pretty frequent in his works, he evidently means the Gnoftics only, and therefore virtually excludes unitarians from that defcription of men; it is by no means improbable but that, in those writings of