prevailing opinion. We naturally, therefore, look for the genuine doctrine of Christianity, concerning the person of Christ, among those who, from their condition and circumstances, were most likely to maintain the old opinion, rather than among those who were most apt to receive a new one. Surely, then, we have a better chance of finding the truth on this subject among these idiote, the common and unlearned people, than with such men as Justin Martyr, who had been a Heathen philosopher, Irenæus, or any other of the learned and speculative Christians of the same age. On the contrary, supposing the Christian religion to have been gradually corrupted, and that, in a long course of time, the corrupt doctrine should become the most prevalent among the common people; the reformation of it, by the recovery of the genuine doctrine, is naturally to be looked for among the learned and the inquisitive, who, in all cases, will be the innovators. This is remarkably the case in the present state of things. The common people in the Roman Catholic countries are bigots to the old established faith, while the learned are moderate, and almost Protestants. In Protestant countries the common people still adhere most strongly to the doctrine of their ancestors, or those which prevailed about the time of the Reformation, while the learned are every where receding farther from them; they being more inquisitive and more enlightened than the uninquiring vulgar. But still, if any man should propose simply to inquire what were the opinions most generally received in this country a century ago, (which was about the space that intervened between Victor and the time of the apostles,) we should think him very absurd, if he should look for them among the learned, rather than among the common people. We have experience enough of the difficulty with which the bulk of the common people are brought to relinquish the faith of their ancestors. † Dissenters in England are well situated for judging of the truth of the general maxim, that large bodies of men do not soon change their opinions. Notwithstanding the Dissenters have no legal bonds, but are perfectly free to adopt whatever opinions they please; yet, as they were universally Calvinists at the time of the Reformation, they are very generally so still. The ministers, as might be expected, are the most enlightened, and have introduced some reformation • See Vol. XVIII. pp. 23, 24. ↑ See ibid. p. 24. among the common people; but a majority of the ministers are, I believe, still Calvinists.* No person at all acquainted with history can entertain a doubt with respect to the general maxim, that great bodies of men do not soon change their opinions. It appeared when our Saviour and the apostles preached the gospel with all the advantage of miracles, and it appeared in the Christianizing of the Gentile world. How long did the ignorant country people, in particular, continue Pagans, a word borrowed from their being chiefly the inhabitants of villages! Does not the history both of the corruption and of the reformation of Christianity prove the same thing? How many yet believe the doctrine of Transubstantiation! And, what I think as much a case in point, how many yet believe the doctrine of the Trinity! † Is it then at all probable, that when the doctrine of the simple humanity of Christ is acknowledged to have been held by the idiote or common people, and who are expressly said to have been the greater part of the believers, (major credentium pars,) this should not have been the general opinion a century before that time; but, on the contrary, that of the deity of Christ, which was held by Tertullian and other learned Christians, and who speak of the common people as being shocked (expavescunt) at their doctrine? Sufficient cause may be assigned why the learned in that age should be inclined to adopt any opinion which would advance the personal dignity of their Master; and the same causes would produce the same effect among the common people, but it would be more slowly, and acquire more time, as appears to have been the fact. It may be said that the testimony of Tertullian is expressly contradicted by Justin Martyr, who, (in giving an account of the circumstances in which the Platonic philosophy agreed, as he thought, with the doctrine of Moses, but with respect to which he supposed that Plato had borrowed from Moses,) mentions the following particulars, viz. the power which was after the first God, or the logos," Assuming the figure of a cross in the universe, borrowed from the fixing up of a serpent (which represented Christ) in the form of a cross in the Wilderness; and a third principle, borrowed from the Spirit which Moses said moved on the face of the water at the creation; and also the notion of some fire or * See Vol. XVIII. pp. 173, 174. + See ibid. p. 24. See ibid. p. 174. conflagration, borrowed from some figurative expressions in Moses, relating to the anger of God waxing hot. These things, he says, we do not borrow from others, but all others from us. With us you may hear and learn these things from those who do not know the form of the letters, and who are rude and barbarous of speech, but wise and understanding in mind, and from some who are even lame and blind, so that you may be convinced that these things are not said by human wisdom, but by the power of God.' But all that we can infer from this passage is, that these common people had learned from Moses that the world was made by the power and wisdom (or the logos) of God; that the serpent in the Wilderness represented Christ; and that there was a spirit of God that moved on the face of the waters in short that these plain people had been at the source from which Plato had borrowed his philosophy. It is by no means an explicit declaration that these common people thought that the logos and the spirit were persons distinct from God. Justin was not writing with a view to that question, as Tertullian was, but only meant to say how much more knowledge was to be found among the lowest of the Christians, than among the wisest of the Heathen philosophers. Besides, Justin is here boasting of the knowledge of these lower people, and it favoured his purpose to make it as considerable as he could; whereas, Tertullian is complaining of the circumstance which he mentions; so that nothing but the conviction of a disagreeable truth could have extorted it from him. The same was the case with respect to Athanasius. That the common people in Justin's time should understand his doctrine concerning the personification of the logos, is in itself highly improbable. That this logos, which was originally in God the same thing that reason is in man, should, at the creation of the world, assume a proper personality, and afterwards animate the body of Jesus Christ, either in addition to a human soul, or instead of it, is not only very absurd, but also so very abstruse, that it is in the highest degree improbable, à priori, that the common people should have adopted it. The Scriptures, in which they were Ου τα αυία ουν ἡμεις αλλοις δοξαζομεν, αλλ' ἁπανίες τα ἡμετέρα μιμεμενοι λεγεσι παρ' ἡμιν ουν εςι ταυία ακεσαι και μαθειν παρα των ουδε τες χαρακτήρας τον σοιχείων επιταμένων, ιδιωτων μεν και βαρβαρων το φθεγμα, σοφων δε και πίςων τον νεν ονίων, και πήρων και χήρων τινών τας όψεις· ὡς συνείναι, ου σοφια ανθρωπεια ταυτα γεγονέναι, αλλα δυναμει Θεου λεγεσθαι. Αpol. p. 88. (Ρ.) chiefly conversant, could never teach them any such thing, and they could not have been capable of entering into the philosophical refinements of Justin on the subject. Whereas, that the common people should have believed, as Tertullian ́and Athanasius represent them to have done, viz. that there is but one God, and that Christ was a man, the messenger or prophet of God, and no second God at all, (the rival as it were of the first God,) is a thing highly credible in itself, and therefore requires less external evidence. 5. Another ground of presumption, that the Unitarians were not considered as heretics, or indeed in any obnoxious light, and consequently of their being in very great numbers in early times, is, that no treatises were written against them. As soon as ever Gnostics made their appearance, they were censured with the greatest severity, and express treatises were written against them. Whereas the Unitarians were first mentioned without any censure at all, afterwards with very little; and no treatise was written expressly against them before Tertullian's against Prareas, with whom he was, on other accounts, much offended. About the same time, it is supposed that Caius wrote the treatise called "The Little Labyrinth," quoted by Eusebius. Before this time there were some voluminous writers among Christians, and several treatises were written expressly against heresy, but all the heresies then noticed were those of the Gnostics. Irenæus's treatise against heresy shews, that the Gnostics only were considered as coming under that description. The Ebionites indeed are censured in it, but no mention is made of the Gentile Unitarians, though they were the majority of the common people among Christians a long time after this. His censure of Gentile Unitarians is, at least, indirect, as they held the same doctrine concerning Christ that the Ebionites did; and it must always be considered, that Irenæus lived in Gaul, where there were no Ebionites, and perhaps not many Unitarians, as they abounded most in those countries in which Christianity was first planted. Theophilus of Antioch, about the year 170, wrote against heresies, but only his book against Marcion is mentioned by Eusebius. He also mentions many of the works of Melito, bishop of Sardis, but none of them were against the Unitarians.† Rhodon, he also says, wrote against the Marcionites. • Hist. L. iv. C. xxiv. p. 187. (P.) ↑ Ibid. L. v. C. xiii. p. 225. (P.) · VOL. VI. 0 3 t. Ibid. C. xxvi. p. 188. (P.) We have also the first book of a large work of Origen's against heresy; and it is very evident, as I have observed, from his introduction, that he had no view to any besides the Gnostics. Can it be doubted then, but that there would have been treatises written expressly against Unitarians long before the time of Tertullian, if they had been considered in any obnoxious light, or had not been a very great majority of the Christian world? 6. That the Unitarian doctrine was very prevalent, even among learned Christians, in the age which followed that of the apostles, and was then supposed to be that which was taught by them, may, with considerable probability, be inferred from the Clementine Homilies, and Recognitions, of which some account was given, pp. 63, 64. What is particularly remarkable relating to this work (for the two were origi nally the same) is, that, though it was written by a philosopher, and upon subjects which related to the doctrine concerning the person of Christ, it contains no mention of that doctrine which made so great a figure afterwards, and which in time bore down all before it, viz. that of the personification of the logos. No person, I should think, could peruse that work with care, without concluding, that the orthodoxy of the subsequent period had made but little progress then. The same questions are discussed, and the same objections are answered, but on quite different principles, and without taking the least notice of any different principles. If we cannot infer from this circumstance, that such a system as that of Justin Martyr, or the orthodoxy of the third century, did not exist, or was not much prevalent, so as to have attracted much notice, in the second; it must at least be allowed, as I observed before, that the writer of this work, being indisputably a man of genius and learning, would ascribe to Peter and Clement such opinions, and such a mode of answering the Gnostics, as he thought would pass for theirs. And as the work was probably a very popular one, from the different editions and modifications of it, (being published afterwards with Arian, and again with Trinitarian adulterations,) and used, as Epiphanius says, by the Ebionites as a sacred book, we may likewise infer, that the theological doctrines of it were generally thought to be those of the apostolic age, though with such additions as the philosophy of the times could supply. A man must have had less knowledge and less judgment than the writer of this work was evidently possessed of, to have pet into the mouths of Peter and Clement, Unitarian doctrines, and Unitarian |