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by Justin Martyr, the first who taught the divinity of the Logos, plainly indicates that their numbers were not to be despised. In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, his opponent says: "This doctrine,-that Christ was a God existing before the ages, and then born a man,-is not only extraordinary, but ridiculous." Justin replies: "I know that this doctrine appears strange, and especially to those of your race (Jews): but it will not follow that he is not the Christ, though I should not be able to prove that he pre-existed as God, and that he became a man by the Virgin. It will be right to say that in this only I have been mistaken; and not that he is not the Christ, though he should appear to be a man born as other men are, and to be made Christ by election. For there are some of our race (Gentiles) who acknowledge him to be Christ, but hold that he was a man born like other men. With them I do not agree, nor should I do so, though ever so many being of the same opinion should urge it upon me 14; because

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14 σε Οἷς, 8 συντιθεμαι, εδ' αν πλείσοι, ταυτα μοι δοξασαντες, ειποιεν. Quibus ego non assentior, neque, etiamsi multo plures essent, assentirer." Thirlby, p. 235, not.-"To whom I could not yield my assent; no, not even if the majority of christians should think the same:" Badcock, in the Monthly Rev. for June 1783, who considers it as a declaration that the majority of christians coincided in opinion with Justin himself."To whom I do not assent, though the majority may have told me that they had been of the same opinion:" Mr. Cappe, who in his vindication of Dr. Priestley contends, that the words properly express that the majority of christians held opinions contrary to those of the writer.--At any rate, and whatever be the meaning of Justin, how different the language of this virtuous and candid, though mistaken writer, from that of the angry opponents of the same doctrine in modern times! "If your opinion is true," said one of Dr. Priestley's early and zealous antagonists, "I will throw my Bible into the fire." But what says the venerable martyr in a similar case?" If your doctrine be true, it only follows that I am mistaken as to the preexistence and deity of Jesus; but he is still the Christ, though he became so only by election." What occasions this remarkable difference between Mr. Venn and Justin Martyr? The true reason is this: Mr. Venn wrote in an age when Trinitarianism was triumphant, and Unitarianism in disgrace; Justin Martyr wrote at a time when Unitari→

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because we are commanded by Christ himself not to obey the teachings of men, but what was taught by the holy prophets and himself." This is plainly the language of one who wishes to conciliate regard to a novel and offensive opinion, which might possibly be erroneous; and not of one who advocates the cause of a triumphant majority.

The testimony of Origen, who wrote in the beginning of the third century, to the proper Unitarianistn of the body of Jewish christians in his time, is direct and full. "The word Ebion," says he, "in the Jewish language signifies poor and those of the Jews who believe Jesus to be the Christ are called Ebionites." And in his Commentary upon Matthew, he introduces a distinction among the Jews who believed in Christ; "some thinking him to be the son of Joseph and Mary, and others of Mary only and the divine Spirit, but not believing his divinity.' And in another passage he speaks of the Ebionites of both sorts, as not receiving the Epistles of Paul 55.

Eusebius, who wrote a century afterwards, confirms the testimony of Origen concerning the Ebionites. "Those by the ancients called Ebionites, think meanly," says he,

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concerning Christ: for they think him to be merely a

anism was held in honour, and the pre-existence and divinity of Christ were novel and obnoxious opinions. After all, I must confess that I am not quite satisfied with any one of the translations of these learned writers. The true version of this celebrated passage appears to me to be the following: "With whom I do not agree: nor should I, even though the majority, who are of the same opinion with me, ταυτα μοι δοξασαντες, had affirmed it.”. - Ταυτα δοξάζειν αλληλοις, eandem habere opinionem." Xenoph. ap. Constantin. Lex. in Verb. -It is probable that Justin here particularly alludes to the fact of the miraculous conception, which was at that time pretty generally credited by the Gentile christians. And this was the subject last mentioned, that Christ was a man born as other men. He can hardly be supposed to refer to the pre-existence and divinity of the Logos, which he had just acknowledged to be a strange doctrine, παραδοξος ὁ λογος, both to Jewish and Gentile believers, though principally to the former. 15 Origen in Cels. lib. ii. p. 56. Comm. in Matt. vol. i. p. 427. Edit. Huet. in Cels. lib. vi. p. 274. Priestley, ibid. vol. iii. p. 166.

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man like other men, but approved on account of his virtue, being the son of Mary's husband. Others, called by the same name, do not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit; but, disallowing that he pre-existed as God, the Logos, and wisdom, they were perverted to the impiety of the former." He adds, that "they observed the Jewish Law, and used only the Gospel according to the Hebrews 16"

To this argument it has been objected, that the Ebionites were merely a sect of Hebrew christians; that they coincided with the Nazarenes in their adherence to the Law, for which both sects were deemed heretical by the Gentile christians; but that the orthodoxy of the Nazarenes in other points, and particularly concerning the person of Christ, was unimpeached. Also, that both the sects united constituted but a small part of the body of Jewish christians 17.

It is alleged in reply, that a church of orthodox Jewish christians, distinct both from Nazarenes and Ebionites, is a thing unknown to ecclesiastical antiquity; that Nazarenes was a title of contempt applied by unbelieving Jews to christians in general, and to those of their own

16 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. lib. iii. c. 27. Priestley, ibid. p. 168. I have a little altered Dr. Priestley's translation, to what appeared to be both more literal and more pertinent.

17 See Huet. in Origen. Comment. not. p. 74. Mosheim de Reb. Christ. ante Constant. Sæc. ii. § 39. Horsley against Priestley, Lett. 6. Grotius and Vossius thought that the Nazarenes coincided with that sect of Ebionites which acknowledged the miraculous conception. Grot. on Matt. i. 8. See Huet. ibid. Dr. Horsley, however, is constrained to admit, upon the authority of a passage cited by Dr. Priestley in his second set of Letters, that Epiphanies charges the Nazarenes as erring with the Ebionites in their opinion concerning the person of Christ. But as Joannes Damascenus in his book De Hær. expressly says, that the Nazarenes confessed Jesus to be the Son of God, the learned writer still charitably pleads for the orthodoxy of the sect. Dr. Horsley's Tracts, p. 144, note.

nation in particular 18; that Ebionites was the title by which the body of Jewish believers was distinguished by Gentile christians till the time of Epiphanius, who is the first writer that attempts, though unsuccessfully, to make a distinction between the Ebionites and the Nazarenes 19; and that from the similarity, or even identity, of their doctrine concerning the person of Christ; from their mutual adherence to the rites of Moses; and, above all, from their agreement in using the Hebrew gospel of Matthew only, it is highly probable, and with very few exceptions only it is agreed among the learned, that the Ebionites and Nazarenes were the same sect, or that they varied with very few and slight shades of difference 20.

As a further objection to the testimony of Origen, it has been stated by Mosheim, and after him by Dr. Horsley, that after the destruction of Jerusalem by Adrian,

18 Ipso nomine nos Judæi Nazarenos appellant per eum." Tertull. adv. Marcion. p. 418.-See also Agobardi, Opp. p. 63. This seems to be Jerome's meaning in the expression " quos vulgo Nazaræos nuncupant," cited by Dr. Priestley, vol. iii. p. 171; and in his controversy with Dr. Horsley. q. d. What we call Ebionites are the same with those Minei, or sectaries, among the Jews whom they commonly call Nazarenes.

19 This controversy concerning the testimony of Epiphanius was carried on with great animation between Dr. Horsley and Dr. Priestley, till the former was constrained to concede the point, though with a very ill grace, in the manner stated in the last note but one.

20 See Jones on the Canon, vol. i. p. 385-387. This learned writer without hesitation affirms the Nazarenes and Ebionites to have been the same. Huet, and after him Dr. Horsley, contend that they were different, because Epiphanius, Hær. xxix. § 7, says, "I do not know whether, like Cerinthus and Merinthus, they believe Christ to be a mere man, or whether, as the truth is, they maintain that he was born of the holy spirit and Mary." See Huet. Not. in Orig. p. 74. This hesitation of Epiphanius amounts, in Dr. Horsley's estimation, " to the unwilling confession of a base accuser," that the Nazarenes were believers in the divinity of Christ. See Horsley's Tracts, p. 26, and 144. The learned prelate, however, in the very same page, is obliged to unwilling confession" of his own error. Dr. Priestley has stated the argument at length, and very satisfactorily, in Hist. of Early Opinions, book iii. chap. 8.

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who forbad the Jews from coming within sight of the place, and who founded a colony in the vicinity, to which he gave the name of Ælia, the great body of orthodox Jewish believers, who had hitherto observed the rites of Moses, at once abandoned these rites, and resorted in great numbers to the new city, in order to participate in the privileges of the Ælian colony; that they joined the church of Gentile christians which was formed there; that Origen could not have been ignorant of this circumstance; and consequently that his account of the Hebrew christians must have been a wilful falsehood.

This strange hypothesis of the sudden defection of a great body of people, and those people Jews, from the customs of their ancestors, which had been held sacred for more than sixteen centuries, and of their instantaneous intimate union with a community of people whom they had always been accustomed to shun with horror, and to whose language they must have been entire strangers 21, is so incredible in itself, so contradictory to every known principle of the human mind, so unsupported by authority from ecclesiastical writers, so repugnant to historic evidence, and involves so unjust and cruel an aspersion upon one of the most unblemished characters of christian antiquity, that it will not bear a moment's examination; and the very statement of the case carries its own confutation 22.

It being thus established by competent evidence, that the great body of Jewish christians at the end of the se

21 Adrian's colony probably consisted of Greeks; and Sulpitius Severus says "that Mark, a Gentile, was then appointed bishop at Jerusalem." Hist. p. 245.

22 This curious fabric of a church at Ælia of orthodox Hebrew christians, who had abandoned the ceremonies of the Law, rests solely upon the affirmation of Mosheim, supported by that of Dr. Horsley, but destitute of every shadow of support from christian antiquity. This, however, being the principal, and almost the only important topic of discussion between Dr. Horsley and Dr. Priestley, a brief review of this famous controversy will be given in the Appendix to this Section.

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