Alfo, notwithstanding, if they be afked, they will not hesitate to say, that Chrift is God, the fupremacy of the Father, even with respect to the Son, is, at the fame time, the real fentiment of their minds; and when they lift up their hearts to God, it is only God the Father that is the proper object of their adoration. The conftant tenor of the fcriptures is fo contrary to their profeffed creed, that though they dare not call it in queftion, it is not able to counteract the plainer, the more confiftent, and the better principles whichwill force themselves upon their minds from conversing with the bible.

Befides, it requires more fubtlety and refinement to enter into the principles above-mentioned, than the common people are masters of. They cannot conceive how one man should fin, and another perfon, fix thousand years after, be guilty of that fin, and punishable for it; how one perfon's righteoufnes fhould be confidered as the righteoufnefs of another; or that three diftinct perfons fhould each of them be God, and yet that there fhall be no more Gods than one.

Men of plain understandings, in fact, never do believe any fuch thing; nor can it be fuppofed that the gofpel, which was intended to be the folid foundation. of the faith, hope, and joy of common people, fhould require fo much acutenefs, as is neceffary to give even a plaufible colour to thefe ftrange affertions. The attempt to explain them (and, 'till they be explained,

they

they can no more be believed than a proposition in an unknown tongue) can lead to nothing but endless and unprofitable controversy. It is happy, therefore, that fo many perfons make a better ufe of the gospel than their tenets would lead them to do, and that they confider it chiefly as a rule of life, and the foundation of hape after death. But, as far as the principles I have been arguing against are believed, they cannot but do harm to those who entertain them, as well as bring difgrace upon the christian name; both which every lover of the gospel fhould endeavour to prevent.

A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE ABOVEMENTIONED DOCTRINES.

I. A CONCISE HISTORY OF OPINIONS CONCERNING JESUS CHRIST.

You will fay, if Chrift be not really God, but merely a man, though infpired and affifted by God, how came the chriftian world to fall into fo great an error? In return, I might afk, how, if Christ be truly God, equal to the Father, so many christians, and efpecially the jewish chriftians, and many others in the very early ages of the chriftian church, came to think him to be merely a man; when it may be eafily conceived that, on many accounts, chriftians, wha were continually reproached with the meanness of their mafter, would be difpofed to add to, rather than to take from his dignity? But it is not

difficult to

fhew

thew by what means, and by what Aeps, chriftians came to think as the generality of them now do.

It was the univerfal opinion of philofophers, at the time of the promulgation of christianity, that the fouls of all men had existed before they were fent to animate the bodies that were provided for them here, and also that all fouls were emanations, or parts detached from the deity. For at that time there was no idea of any substance being properly immaterial, and indivifible. When these philofophers became chrif tians, and yet were ashamed of being the difciples of a man who had been crucified, they naturally gave a distinguished rank to the foul of Chrift before he came into the world. They even went one step farther, and maintained that Chrift had a body in appearance only, and not in reality, and therefore that he suffered nothing at all when he was fcourged and crucified.

This opinion the apoftle John reprobates with great feverity, and even calls it Antichristian, `1 John iv. 3. whereas though it is acknowledged that the other opinion, viz. that of Chrift being merely a man, existed in the times of the apostles, it is remarkable that this apoftle takes no notice of it. It was plainly the doctrine of those only who maintained that Chrift was not truly a man that gave this apostle any difturbance, or he would never have faid as he does, 1 John iv. 2. Every spirit that confeffeth that Jefus Chrift is come in the flesh (that is, was truly a man) is of God.

After

After this, philofophizing christians began to add to the pre-existent dignity of Chrift in another way, and at length, carried it much higher than those upon whom this apostle animadverted with so much severity. They said that Chrift was originally in God, being his reafon, or logos which came out of him, and was perfonified before the creation of the world, in which he was the immediate agent, and that this new perfonage was henceforth the medium of all the divine communications to mankind, having been the person who spake to Adam in paradise, to Noah, to Abraham, and all the patriarchs, who delivered the law from mount Sinai, and lastly inhabited the body of Jefus of Nazareth.

On this principle they explained many paffages in the Old Teftament, in which the word of God is fpoken of, as that of the pfalmift, By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, &c. making this word to be a perfon, diftinct from God, whose word it was; whereas nothing can be more plain, than that by the word of God in this place is meant the power of God, exerted with as much ease as men utter words.

These philofophizing chriftians took great pains to explain how the reafon or wisdom of God could thus become a perfon, diftinct from God, and yet God continue a reasonable being; but their account of it is too trifling to be recited in this place. However, it was far from being pretended, in general, that the doctrine of the divinity of Chrift was fuch a mystery

D

a mystery as could not be explained. For by mystery they only meant fomething of a folemn nature, which was unknown 'till it was revealed or explained. And indeed this is plainly the use of the word mystery in the New Testament; and it was also the usual meaning of the word when the present translation of the bible was made; the mysteries of any particular trade being the fecrets of that trade, which yet every mafter taught his apprentices.

In this ftate the doctrine continued 'till after the council of Nice in the year of our Lord 325; but in all this time a real fuperiority was always acknowledged in the Father, as the only fource of divinity; and it was even explicitly acknowledged that there was a time when the fon of God had no separate existence, being only the reafon of God, juft as the reafon of man is a part, or a property of man. One of the most eminent of the chriftian fathers fays, "There was a time when God was neither a father,

nor a judge; for he could not be a father before "he had a fon, nor a judge before there was fin.”

So far were they from fuppofing the son of God to be equal to the Father, that when they were charged, as they frequently were, with making two Gods they generally replied, that the fon was only God of God, as having proceeded from a fuperior God, which is the language of the Nicene creed; whereas the Father was God of himself (alode) by which they

meant