argument was to no purpose, as no man's evidence could be admitted in favour of himself. So you, Sir, will perhaps allege that, though the question between us is simply whether I appeal to the Scriptures or not, my own actual and repeated appealing to them is to be considered as no evidence at all. You will next, I suppose, maintain that the publications are not mine. Indeed, there is no other method of supporting your accusation of me, and of vindicating yourself. However, you will not easily find any other person who will choose to lay claim to them.

I am, &c.

LETTER II.

Of the Argument for the Divinity of Christ from Heb. i. 8.

REV. SIR,

HAVING Confidently asserted, and severely censured, my utter rejection and contempt of scripture evidence, in the controversy concerning the person of Christ; you proceed to a particular instance, as an exemplification of my conduct in it. And as it happens that I have actually considered the very same text that you produce for this purpose, our readers will have an opportunity of comparing your representation of my treatment of this passage with my own actual treatment of it, in a treatise published long before your Letters were written, and probably long before you were of age to write at all; and the contrast will be not a little striking.

"I will endeavour," you say, "to state this opinion by an example. Suppose the sixth verse of the forty-fifth Psalm: < Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre.' Let this, in connexion with its parallel place in the first chapter of Hebrews, 8th verse, be the passage adduced in favour of Christ's divinity; according to your hypothesis there is no dependence to be placed on the argument, because the apostle, in his application of this scripture to the Messiah, was misled by a prejudice common among the Jews, respecting this and other passages of the Old Testament. In this statement, the principle at least of your objection is faithfully preserved; a principle which I shall now proceed to prove, has for its object, not the emendation of an interpolated

passage, nor the correction of such casual errors as are incident to every writer of antiquity, but the total demolition of revealed truth."*

You then proceed to consider, and reply to, this treatment of the passage in question, taking it for granted, that it was mine, at least that the principle, as you say, of my objection is faithfully preserved in it. With what fidelity let our readers now judge for themselves.

In my "Illustration of particular Passages of Scripture," first published in the year 1772, I consider this very text; and after perusing your Letters, the reader must be surprised to find that, instead of going upon the principle of the writer being misled by any prejudice, so that no dependence can be placed upon his argument, I actually explain it on the very opposite principle, viz. of its being a very proper citation; the passage quoted not being at all misunderstood by the apostle, and fully proving what he had in view, which was not the divinity of Christ, but his dignity, as conferred upon him by God; the character and authority of God, on which that of Christ_rested, being properly mentioned on the occasion. What I then wrote, and which I still approve, is as follows:

6

"Heb. i. 10: And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth,' &c. As there are several expressions in the first part of this chapter which are not easy to be understood, I shall give a brief explanation of them all, in their order. The great objection which the Jews made to Christianity, being the meanness of Christ's appearance, and the ignominious death that he suffered; to obviate this, the author of this epistle begins with representing the great dignity to which, for the suffering of death, Christ is now exalted at the right hand of God. Having said, (verse 2,) that God-hath, in these last days, spoken unto us by his Son,' he immediately adds, whom he hath appointed heir,' (or Lord,) of all things; by whom also he made,' (or appointed, not the material worlds, but) 'the ages; that is, the present dispensation of God's government over mankind, which is established by the gospel, the administration of which is committed to the Son; Who being the brightness of his' (that is, God's) glory, and the express image of his' (that is, God's) person, and upholding all things by the word of his' (that is, God's) 'power,' &c., sat down on the right hand of the Majesty

* Letters, p. 10. (P.)

on high.' It is plain from this passage, that whatever Christ is, he is by Divine appointment; whom he hath appointed heir of all things.'

"Afterwards this writer proceeds to prove that Christ is superior to angels, and at the close of this argument he has these words, But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever;' or as it may be rendered, God is thy throne for ever and ever; that is, God will establish the authority of Christ till time shall be no more. A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.' From this passage nothing can be more plain, than that whatever authority belongs to Christ, he has a superior from whom he derives it; God, even thy God, has anointed thee. This could never have been said of the one true God, whose being and power are underived.

"In verses 10-12, the apostle quotes an address to God, as the great Creator and everlasting Ruler of the universe, but without any hint of its being applied to Christ, from Psalm cii. 25-27: And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thine hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.' This quotation was probably made with a view to express the great honour conferred on Christ, on account of the dignity of the person who conferred it; for it immediately follows, (verse 13,) But to which of the angels said he,' that is, the great Being to whom this description be longs, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy foot-stool?' Or, since this quotation from the Psalmist describes a perpetuity of empire in God, it may be intended to intimate a perpetuity of empire in Christ, who holds his authority from God, and who must hold it, unless God himself be unable to support it."

What

This, Sir, I hope, will be a lesson to you in your future attempts at controversy, and teach you not to write from imagination only, but to have some facts to go upon. would you think of a judge or jury, who should treat a criminal as you have done me, that is, condemn him not only without evidence, but contrary to evidence, and that of the plainest kind?

* See Vol. II. pp. 461, 462; XIV. pp. 349—S5 1.

I do not profess, any more than you do, in this correspondence, to enter into the controversy itself, but only to consider the principle or ground on which it proceeds. I cannot, however, avoid observing with respect to these quotations from the Psalms, by the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, (which you, I doubt not, think so decisively in favour of the proper divinity of Christ, that I must renounce all scripture authority before I can evade the force of them,) that if your interpretation be just, worse consequences will follow than any of those which you have ascribed to my principles, and which it behoves you and your friends to consider. It is, that if the person here described by the characters of him who laid the foundation of the earth, the work of whose hands are the heavens, who will even change them with as much ease as a garment, and who is for ever unchangeably the same, be descriptive of Christ, there is no such person as God the Father at all. For, certainly, the Being who is thus described by the Psalmist was the only God that he acknowledged, or that is acknowledged in all the Old Testament, and consequently in the New. For, make what you will of the word elohim, there certainly is but one Jehovah. And thus that great Being, to whom Christ himself prayed, (John xvii. 3,) as "the only true God," will not only be no God at all, but an absolute nonentity, and whose absence from the creation would not be missed. Blasphemous and dreadful consequences are frequently ascribed to my opinions; but what are they, Sir, in comparison of this? It is more than dethroning; it is no less than annihilating the Almighty Maker of all things, and setting up a mortal man (one who actually did die, and whom God raised from the dead) in his place.

There is another passage of scripture in the interpretation of which you exceedingly exult, viz. Ps. cx. 1, quoted by our Saviour as applicable to the Messiah, calling any interpretation that I can give of it, "the very extreme of impiety, hostile to the authority of the New Testament, and utterly inconsistent with his character who was endued with the Holy Spirit without measure.' You hereupon request my explicit answer to our Lord's question, David then call him Lord, how is he his son?" [Matt. xxii. 45.] "No doubt," you insultingly add, " your superior advantages of knowledge, in this as in all other respects, will effectually secure you from the embarrassment, and

* Letters, p. 19. (P.)

If

consequent silence of those to whom the question was originally propounded."

Now, Sir, I feel no embarrassment on the subject, and therefore no cause for the silence to which you imagine you have reduced me. The Pharisees considered their Messiah as another David, viz. a great king and conqueror; nor does it appear that they had any idea of his being a person superior to David in any respect. It might, therefore, well puzzle them to find that David should call him Lord;* as I think it must not a little puzzle you to make out how a God could be the son of man, or how it should be necessary that Jesus should have the Spirit of God without measure, to enable him to work miracles, if he had that power in himself, independent of this Spirit, or of that God whose Spirit it is. Meanly as, in your idea, we Unitarians think of Christ, we consider him as a person greatly superior to David, and very justly called his Lord and Master, as well as ours. When his proper kingdom takes place, he will be king over David himself. If you ask, how came one man to be so greatly exalted above others? I ask, how came David, who was only a shepherd's boy, to be made so great a king?

Whether Jesus considered the passage he quoted as originally relating to himself, or whether he only argued with the Pharisees, as he frequently did, on their own principles, does not appear. I feel no embarrassment in consequence of either supposition, though I consider the passage as relating to David or Solomon only. But this subject I have discussed elsewhere.† What I have advanced is submitted to the judgment of the public, and I am willing that it should stand or fall by its own weight.

LETTER III.

I am, &c.

Of the Reasons for appealing to Early Opinions concerning the Person of Christ.

REV. SIR,

YOUR account of the ground or principle of my inquiry into the sentiments of the early Christians, concerning the person of Christ, appears as strange to me as your account of my treatment of scripture authority on the subject. That

See Vol. XII. p. 109; XIII. p. 290. + See Theol. Repos. IV. pp. 103, 104.