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surely no human being but the Archdeacon of St. Albans would have ventured upon such feeble grounds to have taxed the character of the great and venerable Origen with notorious falsehood. "What an appetite," says Dr. Priestley," must a man have for calumny, who can seize upon such a circumstance as this to gratify it !" Third Series of Letters, p. 15.

* Nor is it to be supposed that the archdeacon himself would have preferred so serious a charge upon such frivolous pretexts, had he not been completely misled by the visions of Mosheim. For had the fable of the Hebrew orthodox church at Ælia been true, Origen must have known it, as he resided for some time in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and he would in that case have merited the imputation of a want of veracity. But this ground being untenable, and the learned dignitary having alleged his accusation of the venerable Father in such broad and unqualified terms, he probably thought it necessary in vindication of his own character to search for other proofs of his charge against that of Origen: with what success the reader is now competent to judge.

The reader may now likewise form a just estimate of the truth of a curious observation in a late Quarterly Review, that "Dr. Priestley was regarded as a giant in theological controversy, till he was vanquished by a giant greater than himself." How far Bishop Horsley, conscious as he evidently was of the infirmity of his argument, which he in vain endeavoured to conceal under the pomp and colouring of his language, would have relished the equivocal compliment of the same Reviewers in their critique upon his posthumous sermons, that "his principal forte was Theology," may not be so easily ascertained.

To the liberal and enlightened author of the masterly "Dissertation upon the Evangelical Sects," in the last Number of this Literary Journal, the Unitarians, in common with the rest of their non-conformist brethren, are under great obligation, for his manly and unequivocal avowal of the grand principles of religious liberty, and his indig nant reprobation of persecution in every form. While the Unitarians can boast of their Lardners, Lindseys, Jebbs, Wakefields, and Tyrwhits, and many other names living and dead, whose claim to literary cele brity would not have been deemed equivocal had they imbibed their learning in royal colleges or national institutions, they can forgive the sarcasm of the worthy Reviewer that their doctrine "appeals to the vanity of the half-learned, and the pride of the half-reasoning." But they cannot suppress their astonishment that this able critic, who does not appear to be an enemy to revelation, should, in reply to a most judicious and important observation of the Barrister, "that Christ never required faith in his disciples, without first furnishing sufficient evidence to justify it," have ventured to affirm that the Barrister "makes this assertion in direct contradiction of many plain texts, and of the whole spirit of the whole gospels." We indeed have not so learned Christ.

The candid writer, allowing that Unitarianism is "the most harm.

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In the fifth Disquisition annexed to his Collection of Tracts, Dr. Horsley, then Bishop of St. Davids, labours, but without success, to establish his impeachment of Origen's character upon the ground of these two passages, from his answer to Celsus; and having convicted Dr. Priestley of two or three trifling inaccuracies, he concludes with the following illiberal reflection: "This art, which Dr. Priestley is so apt to employ, of reducing an argument, by well-managed abridgements, to a form in which it may be capable of refutation, indicates so near a resemblance between the characters of Origen and his Hyperaspistes in the worst part of Origen's, that perhaps I might not be altogether unjustifiable, were I to apply to the Squire the words which Mosheim so freely uses of the Knight; Ego huic testi, etiamsi jurato, qui tam manifesto fumos vendit, me non crediturum esse confirmo.""

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Dr. Priestley, disdaining to enter any further into the defence of Origen's character, in reply to the above calumnious insinuations of the bishop against himself, says, Fourth Series, p. 85, "To this conjunction of myself with Origen I heartily say, Amen. May my character be that of this great man with all its faults, and then it will be as far removed as I wish it to be from that of the present Bishop of St. Davids, whom I scruple not once more to call, as I have abundantly proved the truth of the accusation, a falsifier, though I believe not a wilful falsifier, of history, and a defamer of the character of the dead."

less of all heresies," declares his opinion that "it never can become a popular doctrine." The writer of this note once entertained the same opinion; and that at a time when, from a conviction of the truth of the Unitarian doctrine, he thought it his duty to make an open profession of it. He has since learned from experience to place more confidence in the energy of Truth when proposed in a plain and undisguised form. If the critique was written by the respectable author to whom it is attributed by common rumour, he will permit the writer of this Note to lay claim to a more convenient station for observing the progress of Unitarianism, than the Reviewer, with all his acknowledged talents and resources, can possess in the "antres vast and desarts idle” of the North. The Unitarians do not complain of decreasing numbers and empty chapels. Their want is that of popular, enlightened, and faithful ministers to large and crowded auditories. And the philosophic Reviewer may, if he pleases, smile at the fond credulity of the writer while he avows his firm conviction, that the only effectual check which can be given to that torrent of absurdity and enthusiasm which threatens to overwhelm the country, and which excites just alarm in every considerate mind, is, not by opposing nonsense to nonsense, and fanaticism to fanaticism, but by the calm, dignified, and irresistible progress of reason, truth, and virtue; by the prevalence of Unitarian principles, of the Lancasterian system of education, and of a firm, temperate, and truly primitive christian discipline.

PART THE SECOND.

A SUMMARY VIEW OF THE VARIOUS OPINIONS WHICH HAVE BEEN ENTERTAINED CONCERNING THE PERSON OF CHRIST, AND OF THE ARGUMENTS FOR AND OBJECTIONS AGAINST EACH.

SECTION I.

THE PROPER UNITARIAN SCHEME, OR THE DOCTRINE OF THE SIMPLE HUMANITY OF JESUS CHRIST.

THE Unitarian doctrine is, that Jesus of Nazareth was a man constituted in all respects like other men, subject to the same infirmities, the same ignorance, prejudices, and frailties-descended from the family of David, the son of Joseph and Mary, though some indeed still adhere to the popular opinion of the miraculous conception-that he was born in low circumstances, having no peculiar advantages of education or learning, but that he was a man of exemplary character,-and that, in conformity to ancient prophecy, he was chosen and appointed by God to intro. duce a new moral dispensation into the world, the design of which was to abolish the Jewish ceconomy, and to place believing Gentiles upon an equal ground of privilege and favour with the posterity of Abraham: in other words, he was authorized to reveal to all mankind, without distinction, the great doctrine of a future life, in which men shall be rewarded according to their works.

It does not appear that Jesus was at all conscious of the honour and dignity for which he was intended till after his baptism, when the Holy Spirit was communicated to him in a visible symbol, and when he was miraculously announced as the beloved Son of God, that is, as the great prophet or Messiah whom the Jews had been taught to expect; after which, in the course of his public ministry, he occasionally spoke of himself as the Son of Man and the Son of God.

After his baptism, it is generally believed by the Unitarians, that he spent some time in the wilderness, where he was fully instructed in the nature of his mission, and invested with voluntary miraculous powers, which, by the visionary scene of his temptation, he was instructed to exercise, not for any personal advantage, but solely for the purposes of his mission. Many, however, conceive that Jesus never performed a miracle but when he was prompted to it by a divine impulse. It has been maintained by some learned men, that during the period of his residence in the wilderness Jesus was favoured with divine visions, in which, like the apostle Paul, (2 Cor. xii.) he apprehended himself to be transported into heaven; and that the language which he uses concerning his descent from heaven is to be explained by this hypothesis: but the generality of Unitarians interpret these expressions of his divine commission only, and the perfect knowledge with which he was favoured, above all other prophets, of the will of God concerning the moral state of men, and the new dispensation which he was appointed to introduce.

The Unitarians generally believe that Jesus, having exercised his public ministry for the space of a year, and perhaps a little more, suffered death publicly upon the cross, not to appease the wrath of God, not as a satisfaction to divine justice, not to exhibit the evil of sin, nor in

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any sense whatever to make an atonement to God for it; for this doctrine in every sense, and according to every explanation, they explode as irrational, unscriptural, and derogatory from the divine perfections; but as a martyr to the truth, and as a necessary preliminary to his resur rection. And they hold that it was wisely ordered, to preclude cavils, that his death should be an event of great public notoriety, and inflicted by his enemies.

The Unitarians also believe that Jesus was raised to life by the power of God, agreeably to his own predictions, on the third day, and that by this event he not only confirmed the truth and divinity of his mission, but exhibited in his own person a pattern and a pledge of a resurrection to immortal life; for which reason he is called the first-born of the whole new creation, and the first-begot. ten from the dead.

The Unitarians further believe, that after having given sufficient proofs to his disciples, for forty days, of the truth of his resurrection, he was in a miraculous manner withdrawn from their society, a circumstance which is described as an ascension into heaven; and that, in a few days after this event, the holy spirit was communicated to his apostles in a visible symbol on the day of Pentecost, by which they were endued with the gift of speaking various languages which they had never learned, and were furnished with many other gifts and powers by which they were qualified to propagate the Gospel in the world, and to exhibit a most satisfactory and public proof of the resurrection of their master from the dead.

The Unitarians maintain, that Jesus and his apostles were supernaturally instructed as far as was necessary for the execution of their commission, that is, for the revela tion and proof of the doctrine of eternal life, and that the favour of God extended to the Gentiles equally with the Jews; and that Jesus and his apostles, and others of the

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