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worship that great man who was crucified in Palestine (n);" and we learn from Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian, that " the orator Libanius praised Porphyry and Julian for confuting the folly of a sect which styled a dead man of Palestine God, and the Son of God (o)." Arnobius, in the year 303, represents the heathen as saying to the Christians, "The gods are not angry with you because you worship the Almighty God, but because you contend that he was God who was born a man, and, which is infamous even for vile persons, was crucified; and because you believe that he is still living, and worship him with daily prayers ;" and again he says, "That the Christians do really worship Christ, but that it is from their indubitable knowledge that he is the true God; and they are bound to worship him as the head of their body. And should a Gentile ask, Is Christ God? we answer, He is God, and God of the interior powers, that is, the searcher of hearts, which is the sole prerogative of God (p)." The objection urged against Christianity from the worship of Christ is frequently noticed by the writers of the first four centuries; and the defence uniformly made, is, that they worshipped Christ as God; and at the same time they constantly assert the unity of God.

(n) Luc, de Morte Peregrini. (0) Soc. Hist. Eccl. (p) Arnob. cont. Gent. lib. 1,

God. There cannot be a more decisive proof that the early Christians believed in the divinity of our Saviour (q).

As the opinion of the primitive church is deservedly considered as carrying great weight with it in this question, I shall add a few other authorities from the antient fathers. There is an Epistle extant which most learned men ascribe to Barnabas (r), the companion of St. Paul, and all agree that it was written in the apostolic age. In this Epistle we have the following passages, which plainly imply a belief in the divinity of Christ: "The Lord submitted to suffer for our soul, although he be the Lord of the whole earth, to whom he said before the formation of the world, Let us make man after our image and likeness."-" For if he had not come in the flesh, how could we men have been saved ?""If then the Son of God, who is Lord, and hereafter to judge the quick and dead, suffered

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(q) Vide Dr. Knowles's Primitive Christianity, in which it is shewn, in the clearest and most satisfactory manner, by a great variety of quotations from the writers of the first four centuries, that Jesus Christ was worshipped as God from the beginning of the Christian church. Vide also Bingham's Ant. B. 13. c. 2.

(r) This Epistle n the original Greek, and also an antient Latin version of it, which seems to have been made from a purer text than that of our present copy, are both published in the first volume of the Patres Apostolici, by Cotelerius.

135 that he might make us alive, let us believe that the Son of God could not have suffered but through us."-" You are informed concerning the majesty of Christ, how all things were made. for him and through him."-Ignatius, another apostolical father, calls Christ" of the race of David according to the flesh, the Son of God according to divinity and power, truly born of a virgin-our God Jesus Christ-the Son of man, and the Son of God (s)." These passages are all quoted by Theodoret, A. D. 449, which was nearly a century before any interpolation is suspected to have been made in the Epistles of Ignatius. "We are not senseless," says Tatian, nor trifle with you, O Greeks, when we declare that God was born in the form of man (t)." Irenæus declares, that " every knee should bow to Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, our Saviour and King, by the will of the invisible Father (u).” Eusebius says, that the divinity of Christ was asserted in the writings of Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, Clement, Irenæus, and Melito, all of whom lived in the second century, and by many others; he also says that it was expressly declared in psalms and hymns of the earliest date; and that

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(s) Ignat. in Theod. Dial. Immutab. Vide Pearson, Vindic. Part. 1. c. 1. p. 10.

(t) Page 159. ed. Paris, 1615. (u) Lib. 1. cap. 2.

in fact Theodotus, a tanner, in the second century, was the first person who asserted that Christ was a mere man, for which he was excommunicated by Victor (x).

I shall conclude this subject with a quotation from Novatian, a writer of the third century; "Whereas it is the property of none but God to know the secrets of the heart, and yet Christ knows what is in man; whereas it is in the power of none but God to forgive sins, yet Christ does forgive sins; whereas it is of no man to come down from heaven, and yet he descended from thence; whereas no man could utter that saying, I and my Father are one, and Christ alone, from a consciousness of his divinity, said it; and whereas, finally, the apostle Thomas, furnished as he was with every proof of Christ's divinity, said in answer to him, my Lord and my God; whereas the apostle St. Paul writes in his Epistle, Whose are the fathers, and from whom according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for evermore; whereas the same apostle declares, that he was made such, not by men, or through man, but through Jesus Christ; whereas he contends that he learned the gospel not of men, but by Jesus Christ: upon all these accounts we must conclude that Christ is God (y).

(r) Euseb. H. E. lib. 5. cap. 28.
(y) Novat. Lib. de Trin. cap. 13.

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The importance of the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, has induced me to be thus full in the explanation and proof of it. I now proceed with the Article, which in the next place states, that Christ TOOK MAN'S NATURE IN THE WOMB OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN, OF HER SUBSTANCE. Isaiah foretold that the Messiah should be born of a virgin: "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (z);" and St. Matthew informs us, "that when Mary was espoused unto Joseph before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost;"-" and that Joseph, knew not Mary until she had brought forth her first-born Son, and he called his name Jesus (a)."-" When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law (b)." The miraculous conception of Christ is asserted in the passage just now quoted from Ignatius, and it is also mentioned by the following writers, Justin Martyr (c), Irenæus (d), Origen (e), Cyril of Jerusalem (f), Ambrose,

(z) Is. c. 7. v. 14.

(a) Matt. c. 1. v. 18 and 25. Luke, c. 1. v. 27-35. (b) Gal. c. 4. v. 4.

(c) Dial. pars. 2. page 354.

(d) Lib. 3. cap. 29. page 258.

(e) In Matt. V. 1. P. 426 & contr. (do. P. 25.) (f) Cat. 12. P. 155 & 164.

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