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which involves a proof, in the very attempt to extort a confession, that Christianity was at this early period distinguished by its mysteries, furnishes a noble testimony to the acknowledged divinity of its neavenly Founder. The utmost that he had ac quired from this undertaking he has himself recounted; and it amounts to little more than a discovery that the Christians merely convened for the purpose of addressing hymns to Christ as God*. We may clearly collect from his testimony, that the mysteries of which he was informed, were solemnized in the simple ceremony of partaking of bread and wine, under a covenant, which bound the soldiers of Christ not to transgress any moral obligation

Were there any thing equivocal in the testimony thus explicitly borne to the divinity of Christ, it would be at once illus trated, and the obvious meaning of Piny confirmed, by the description given by ecclesiastical historiaus of those hymns, in which our Lord was celebrated in the congregation of primitive Christians. Among the many proofs to which the early theologians appealed against the original impugners of this fundamental article of our faith, were these compositions t. One of these historians has expressly referred the origin of this psalmody to the times of St. Ignatius, who was placed in the see of Antioch by St. John the Evangelist +. And we have, even at this day, a specimen of these early productions, in a hymn composed by Clemens Alexandrinus, the disciple of Pantænus, who, if he did not converse with the Apostles, was instructed by their im mediate disciples. This curious document, however, closes with the most plenary confession of the divinity of our Lord; in hailing him as "Christ, the King,-the God of Peace §," as

* Plin Epist. Lib. X. cap. xcvii. p. 724. "Adfirmabant autem hanc fuisse summam, vel culpæ suæ, vel erroris, quod essent soliti, stato die, ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem.”

Euseb. Hist. Eccl. Lib. V. cap. xxviii. p. 252. 1. 19-22.
Socrat. Hist. Eccl. Lib. VI. cap. viii. p. 322. 1. 32-39.
Clem. Alexandr. Oper. Tom. I. p. 312. ed. Potter.

Βασιλεῖ Χρισῷ

Μισθὲς ὁσίες
Ζωῆς διδαχής
Μέλπωμεν ὁμα.
Χορὸς εἰρήνης,
Οἱ Χριςόγονοι,
Λαός σώφρων,
Ψάλω μεν ὑμᾶς

GEON signs.

he

he had been previously termed by the great evangelical pro phet.

The last witnesses, to whose testimony we may appeal against the determined blasphemy of the modern infidel, are those old and implacable enemies of our Lord and Redeemer, by whom he was rejected and crucified. However they denied that Jesus was the Christ, they were forward to admit the divinity of their Messiah. We possess translations and paraphrases of their prophets, we retain apocryphal histories, and learned commentaries on their sacred writers, which as published before the appearance of Christ upon earth, deliver a testimony uninfluenced by that party spirit which has since embittered their controversies with Christians, But from these impartial vouchers we deduce additional confirmation of the distinguishing doctrines of our holy religion. They join in pro claiming with one common voice*, that the Messiah, on whom the expectations of the Jewish nation were fixed, was to be born of a Virgin, that his going forth was of old, even from everlasting, and that assuming the name and character of the Almighty, he was to be Jehovah their righteousness.

Such is the strong line of circumvallation within which that sacred band, the army of martyrs and confessors, who have contended and died for the faith, have entrenched themselves against the open or secret attacks of the infidel and blasphemer. On hearing that the bulwarks of our Sion were again menaced with an attack, we confess our ingenuity was not a little baffled in endeavouring to discover the vulnerable point to which we should first be called to meet the assailants. It was, however, with no small share of mortification and surprise, that we found ourselves summoned to the weary task of retracing ground, over which our predecessors, of whose labours we may now speak with the tenderest sympathy, have been long weary in travelling, again and again.

We had been indeed told, by a talking title-page, as our rea ders have been already fully apprised, that "the origin of the introductory chapters of Matthew and Luke was (at length) brought to light from Josephus." But we must plead guilty to the count of dulness, to which our thankless though necessary office often and perhaps justly exposes us, in the heavy task which is imposed on us of following where others precede; that we did not anticipate a larger portion of our author's "Intro

* Vid. Rittangel. in Lib. Jezir. p. 81. sqq. ed. 1642. Basnage Hist. des Juif. Liv. V. chap. x. § 6. 7. Tom. VIII. p. 117. sqq. ed. 1716. Kidder Dem. of Messiah, P. I. ch. ix. p. 106. Allix Judgm. of Jew. Church ag. Unitar, passim.,

duction"

duction" than we can confess to, and which now appears to us by far too amusing to withhold any longer from our readers. It did not indeed enter our conception, that any writer would be found at the present day, so hardy as to risk his reputation for sanity, by avowing the dull and exploded fable, that the Essenes were primitive christians, and that Josephus and Philo, by whom they are described, were converts to the truth of the Gospel. Such, however, is too truly the case. In the proof of these points the author labours through the whole of his "Introduction," if indeed we may apply that term to the fortysix pages of senseless raving which he employs in giving us some insight into his designs. Thus far, however disposed to deny almost every conclusion which he has formed, we frankly admit he has succeeded probably beyond his expectations. For though we can discover, in the mode in which he has conducted his arguments, or to express ourselves with accuracy, has recounted his dreams, nothing from which we can conjecture how he could delude himself into the belief that he had established a single point at which he aimed; he thus far explained his intentions, as he has demonstrated, with admirable success, that there was a sinister object at which he secretly drove. It required no exertion of sagacity to discover, that by proving Philo, Josephus, and the Essenes to have been Christians, a commanding point would be gained. Since in being Jews, they must have been deists, it would have been strange, indeed, if this point being secured, their testimony could not be turned to some useful account, in undermining the peculiar doctrines of the Christian faith.

There are few discussions, however distinguished by their absurdity, which can be prolonged to any extent, (where the fatal extreme is avoided of wearying the reader by their tediousness and length) that do not afford something novel or ludicrous, to repay the patience of the reader, who follows them on to the close. When the Tolands or Woolstons of the last age exposed a soft or vulnerable part to the rod of the chastiser, they some. times unexpectedly exhibited themselves in those curious postures, which afforded some food for laughter, where they did not provoke a painful sense of disgust. But with such a drowsy and determined dullness has the sorry animal before us, (whose species is not defined by the quickness of their perception, but the length of their ears,) laid himself down to the lash, that we derive nothing but weariness from the painful duty he has imposed on us of goading him out of that sacred inclosure into which he has obtruded. Others err through inadvertence, but the sciolist with whom we are engaged, blunders by premeditation and design,

When

When it was first seriously asserted by Whiston, that he had discovered proofs of Josephus being a Christian*, the discovery, though superlatively absurd, was at least amusing to his contemporaries, because it was new. The idle legend of Philo's conversion by St. Peter, would be now less disgusting in the repetition, as it is more antient; if it were not so soon repeated after Basnage had demonstrated†, that the proofs of this silly notion were deduced from a work which was written when he was a Jew. We might even listen to a duli protracted tale, purporting to prove an absurdity, which even the credulity of Whiston could not swallow: that the Epaphroditus, whom Josephus has ennobled by so many titles, and to whom he has dedicated his principal works, was the humble emissary whom St. Paul dispatched on a mission to the Philippians. But when compelled to submit to have that old, doting, monkish dream, told over, once more and again, which exhibits the Essenes and Therapeutæ of Philo in the character of reverend friars, after the absurdity has been so thoroughly exposed, it is surely too much for the exhaused patience of our weary office to bear.

We need not expose ourselves to the chance of ridicule in entering into a serious refutation of the arguments used to prove the christianity of these witnesses, on whose testimony the orthodox faith is now overthrown. Had we leisure or room for such an undertaking, we would undertake to prove, that by a very little address in the management of the same arguments, the number of those witnesses in behalf of the Unitarian opinions might be extended at will. We would venture to demonstrate by the same, or similar arguments, that Celsus, or at least Porphyry, or those senseless Hebrew blasphemers, Kimchi and Lipman, were true advocates of the pure doctrines of Christianity, and enemies only to the errors of a corrupt and falsified creed. That undue advantage, however, may not be taken of our silence, we shall bestow on this fundamental position of our author just as much attention as it deserves. Leaving him therefore in unmolested enjoyment of those proofs, if he is pleased so to term them, by which he evinces that Philo, Josephus, and the Essenes were Christians, we shall submit to a

• Whist. Dissert. I. in Joseph. § lxxi. p. xxii. Conf. Dissert. VI. p. c. The honour of this curious discovery is however referred by this fanciful author to Galatin a converted Jew; Vid. Galatin. de Arcan. Cathol. Verit. cap. iv. int. Testimon. Joseph. n. 364. ed. Havercamp. Tom. II. p. 275.

+Vid. Basn. Hist. des Juif. Liv. II. chap. xxii. xxiii. Tom. IV, p. 597. sqq.

Id. ibid. chap. xxi.. p. 562. sqq.

task,

task, which we feel to be derogatory to our consequence, though it is accomplished by a single observation, and proceed to demonstrate that they were Hebrews.

One consideration is, we believe, adequate to lay the question at rest, and to dissipate the stupid dream in which our author has so long and so securely reposed. And difficult as may be the task of distinguishing between different shades of Deism, which melt into each other in so soft a gradation, that their conterminous boundaries are not easily perceived; one distinction, we imagine, still separates the faith of the Unitarian and the Jew, The notion of a military and temporal deliverer, will not, we trust, be easily reconciled, by those senseless perverters of the most obvious meanings, with the character of Him who was the Prince of Peace. Such, however, was the notion but too generally maintained by the Jews of their Messiah *; and such the common notion which Philo and Josephus have associated with that term t. The ludicrous mistake into which this notion led Josephus is sufficiently notorious; in the very scene of our Lord's miracles, and some years after his ministry was closed, he hailed the Emperor Vespasian as the Christ to whom he looked for salvation. The proofs of Philo's conversion, and of the conversion of the Essenes, whom he has eulogised, rest upon a foundation which involves consequences not less superlatively absurd. The description which he has given of the Therapeutæ, those primitive Christians, with whom the Unitarians of the present century seem as affectionately disposed to fraternize, as the Papists were of the past, was demonstrably written some years before the Gospel was preuched §.

These facts speak for themselves. We merely mention incidentally, as a further specimen of the accuracy with which our author has commenced his vigorous attack upon the orthodox faith; that his notion of the identity of the Essenes and the Therapeutæ, whom he takes leave to confound, without offer. ing any apology for the liberty, has been censured as a gross error. And we are further so rude as to insinuate, by way of corollary, that his notion of the identity of the Epaphroditus, who was known to Josephus with that Epaphroditus, who was freedman to Nero, has been conceived to rest upon a chrono

* Vid. Basn. Hist. des Juif. Liv. II. chap. xvi. § 20. p. 403. + Id. ibid. chap. xxii. § 21. p. 640. chap. xxiv. § 16. p. 701. Basn. ibid. Joseph. De Bel. Jud. Lib. III. cap. viii. § 9. p. 249. Basn. ibid. chap. xxii. § 10. 11. 12. p. 61.5. sqq. Beyereg. Cod. Canon. Eccl. Prim. Lib. III. cap. ii, § 3.

Patr. Apostol, Tom, II. p. 146. ed. Cleric. 1724.

ap.

logical

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