ceive marks enow of other new views of things, especially of the call of the gentiles to partake of the privileges of the gospel; and we hear much of the disputes and the eager contention which it occasioned. But how much more must all their prejudices have been shocked by the information that the person whom they at first took to be a mere man was not a man, but either God himself, or the maker of the world under God? Maxim 13. H. O. vol. 1, p. 23.

4. All the Jewish Christians, after the destruction of Jerusalem, which was immediately after the age of the apostles, are said to have been Ebionites; and these were only of two sorts, some of them holding the miraculous conception of our Saviour, and others believing that he was the son of Joseph as well as of Mary. None of them are said to have believed either that he was God, or the maker of the world under God. And is it at all credible that the body of the Jewish Christains, if they had ever been instructed by the apostles in the doctrine of the divinity or pre-existence of Christ, would so soon, and so generally, if not universally, have abandoned that faith? Maxim 6. H. O. vol. 3, p. 158. H. C. p. 7.

5. Had Christ been considered as God, or the maker of the world under God, in the early ages of the church, he would naturally have been the proper object of prayer to Christians'; nay, more so

thait

than God the Father, with whom, on the scheme of the doctrine of the Trinity, they must have known that they had less immediate intercourse. But prayers to Jesus Christ were not used in early times, but gained ground gradually, with the opinion of Christ being God, and the object of worship. Maxim 14. H. O. vol. 1, p. 36.

6. Athanasius represents the apostles as obliged to use great caution not to offend their first converts with the doctrine of Christ's divinity, and as forbearing to urge that topic till they were first well established in the belief of his being the Messiah. He adds, that the Jews, being in an error on this subject, drew the gentiles into it. Chrysostom, and the Christian fathers in general, agree with Athanasius in this representation of the silence of the apostles in their first preaching, both with respect to the divinity of Christ and his miraculous. conception. They represent them as leaving their disciples to learn the doctrine of Christ's divinity, by way of inference from certain expressions; and they do not pretend to produce any instance in which they taught that doctrine clearly and explicitly. Maxim 13. H. O. vol. 3, p. 86, &c. H. C. p. 12.

7. Hegesippus, the first Christian historian, himself a Jew, and therefore probably an Ebionite, enumerating the heresies of his time, mentions several of the Gnostic kind, but not that of Christ

B

being

being a mere man. He moreover says, that in travelling to Rome, where he arrived in the time of Anicetus, he found that all the churches he visited held the faith which had been taught by Christ and the apostles, which, in his opinion, was probably that of Christ being not God, but man only. Justin Martyr also, and Clemens Alexandrinus, who wrote after Hegesippus, treat largely of heresies in general, without mentioning, or alluding to, the Unitarians. Maxim 8. H. C. p. 8. H.O. vol. 1, p. 265.

8. All those who were deemed heretics in early times were cut off from the communion of those who called themselves the orthodox Christians, and went by some particular name; generally that of their leader. But the Unitarians among the gentiles were not expelled from the assemblies of Christians, but worshipped along with those who were called orthodox, and had no particular name till the time of Victor, who excommunicated Theodotus ; and a long time after that Epiphanius endeavoured to give them the name of Alogi. And though the Ebionites, probably about or before this time, had been excommunicated by the gentile Christians, it was, as Jerom says, only on account of their rigid adherence to the law of Moses. Maxim 5. H. C. p. 14. H. O. vol. 1, p. 238. vol. 3, p. 258.

9. The Apostles creed is that which was taught to all catechumens before baptism, and additions were

made

made to it from time to time, in order to exclude those who were denominated heretics. Now though there are several articles in that creed which allude to the Gnostics, and tacitly condemn them, there was not, in the time of Tertullian, any article in it that alluded to the Unitarians; so that even then any Unitarian, at least one believing the miraculous conception, might have subscribed it. It may therefore be concluded, that simple Unitarianism was not deemed heretical at the end of the second century. Maxim 7. H. O. vol. 1, p. 303.

10. It is acknowledged by Eusebius and others, that the ancient Unitarians themselves constantly asserted that their doctrine was the prevailing opinion of the Christian church till the time of Victor. Maxim 2. H. C. p. 18. H. O, vol. 3, p. 296.

11. Justin Martyr, who maintains the pre-existence of Christ, is so far from calling the contrary opinion a heresy, that what he says on the subject is evidently an apology for his own; and when he speaks of heretics in general, which he does with great indignation, as no Christians, and having no communication with Christians, he mentions the Gnostics only. Maxim 12. H. C. p. 17. H. O. vol. 1, p. 169.

12. Irenæus, who was after Justin, and who wrote a large treatise on the subject of heresy, says very little concerning the Ebionites, and he never calls them heretics. Those Ebionites he speaks of

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a's

as believing that Christ was the son of Joseph, and he makes no mention of those who believed the miraculous conception. Maxim 12. H. C. p. 15. H. O. vol. 1, p. 274.

13. Tertullian represents the majority of the common or unlearned Christians, the Idiota, as Unitarians; and it is among the common people that we always find the oldest opinions in any country, and in any sect, while the learned are most apt to innovate. It may therefore be presumed, that as the Unitarian doctrine was held by the common people in the time of Tertullian, it had been more general still before that time, and probably universal in the apostolical age. Athanasius also mentions it as a subject of complaint to the orthodox of his age, that the many, and especially persons of low understandings, were inclined to the Unitarian doctrine. Maxim 4. 10. H. O. vol. 3, p. 265.

14. The first who held and discussed the doctrine of the pre-existence and divinity of Christ acknowledge that their opinions were exceedingly unpopular among the unlearned Christians; that these dreaded the doctrine of the Trinity, thinking that it infringed upon the doctrine of the supremacy of God the Father; and the learned Christians made frequent apologies to them, and to others, for their own opinion. Maxim 10. H. C. p. 54. H. O. val. 3, p. 262, 277.

15. The divinity of Christ was first advanced

and