In the same chapter in which he declares that God would judge the Ebionites, who of all the primitive heretics, exclusively considered our Redeemer a man born like themselves; he asserts the divinity of our Lord; and states this to be the doctrine, which had descended traditionally to the church in whatever regions she had published the gracious terms of the Gospel *. The testimony of history thus confirmed by tradition, derives still further corroboration from the evidence of that succession of writers, who have followed each other, in a long line commencing with the age of the Apostles. On the first attempt which was made to impeach the integrity of the church as a witness of the truth, the vindicators of her testimony supported her defence on the concurrence of the Sacred Text, and the interpretation of the ecclesiastical writers +. They maintained, that previously to the age in which this novel charge was advanced, many had written in defence of the truth, against the heathens and hereticks; and that all of them asserted the orthodox doctrine of the divinity of Christ, in terms the most full and explicit. These writings were examined at an early period by a person fully competent to appreciate the weight of their testimony; but they were found on experiment to justify the stress which was laid on their authority. The principal part of these works exist either wholly or partially at the present day; and a learned prelate of our church, equally distinguished by the extensiveness of his erudition and the strength and comprehensiveness of his mind, has carefully examined their evidence ; but the result of his inquiry has been the production of accumulating proof in support of the orthodox doctrine. By a full induction he has unanswerably demonstrated, that but one opinion prevailed in the church on the person of Christ from the earliest period; and that this opinion corresponded, even in the minutest respect, with the plenary sentence which was passed on the question before us in the first general council ¶. As the body of evidence which we thus quote in defence of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, is full and connected; it may be easily proved to be universally held, and this from the earliest ages. In the next succession after the Apostles, a curious and learned enquirer, visited the principal churches, dispersed * Conf. S. Iren ibid. Lib. IV. cap. xxxiii. § 4. 7. 8. pp. 271, 272. + Caius ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. Lib. V. cap. xxviii. p. 251.1.26. Id. ibid. p 252. 1.12—18. Euseb. ib. cap. xxi. p. 181. 1. 21-28. D. Bull. Def. Fid. Nicen. Op. Lat. ed. Lond. 1721. Id. ibid. Sect. II. cap. xv. p. 153. Conf. Sect. III. cap. x. § 24. p. 220. 2 through through the most remote regions, for the purpose of comparing their different tenets *. As this pe son was a converted Jew †, his evidence must be conceived superior to every objection. The substance of his testimony has been preserved by Eusebius; and is still direct in our favour. Having enumerated the succession of bishops in the church of Rome, and spoken of his familiarity with the bishop which presided in that city, in his own times, he thus expressly declares; "but in every succession, and every city, that doctrine is held, which the law, and the prophets, and our Lord himself had inculcated." As it is specifically stated by the historian who preserves this account, that he had left the most plenary testimonials of his religious opi. nions §; and, as the historian himself has acknowledged the divinity of our Lord, and condemned the Ebionites, who abjured it, as heretical and profane; we can be at no loss to determine in what sense he understood the author before us, in representing the catholic church as agreeing in their opinions of the person of Christ. The testimony which was thus collected by the primitive writers who visited different churches, is indisputably confirmed by the members of the same churches who assembled in one place, for the purpose of delivering their sentence in council. Besides the convention which was held under Victor, bishop of Rome, against the first heretick on record, who held the notions of the modern Unitarians ¶; a synod was held at Antioch, against Paul of Samosata, in which that heretick, though vested with the government of the see, was deposed, for impugning the divinity of the Saviour **. About fifty-six years su sequent to this period the celebrated council of Nice was convened; in which it is no where disputed, that the orthodox doctrine was fully canvassed, and formally recognized and confirmed, by the bishops of the Catholic Church, in a solemn confession, attested by their subscription ††. On the weight of this sentence of the Catholic Church, in deciding the point at issue, we have already stated our opinion; * Euseb. ibid. Lib. IV. cap. xxii. p. 181. 1. 31. sqq. + Id. ibid. p 184. l. 7. - Id. ibid. p. 182. 1. 10. ἐν ἑκάσῃ δὲ διαδοχῇ καὶ ἐν ἑκάση πόλει ὕτως ἔχει, ὡς ὁ νόμος κηρύττει καὶ οἱ προφῆται καὶ ὁ Κύριος. ៖ Id. ibid. p. 181. F 31-33, Vid Supr. p. 227. n. t. Euseb. ib. Lib V. cap. xxviii. p. 252. 1. 25-33. ** Conf. Euseb. Lib. VII. cap. xxix. p. 358. 1. 27. sqq. S. Athan de Synodd. § 45. Tom. II. p. 759. b. ++ Euseb. Vit. Const. Lib. VII. cap. xiv. p. 585. 1, 4. Socrat. Hist. Eccl. Lib. I. cap. viii. p. 22. L. 11-13. and and had all the monuments of ecclesiastical antiquity irrecoverably perished, from this single sentence the primitive doctrine might be infallibly collected. The venerable assembly who met for the purpose of comparing their opinions, were collected from the remotest parts of the civilized world. To that council flocked the divines from Arabia and Persia on the one side, and of the British isles on the other*. In this vast assemblage of the learning and piety of the habitable globe, there was not a single dissenting voice from the general sentence, which acknowledged the pre-existence of Christ, and admitted his divinity, as at least antecedent to the creation f. But five bishops, and these as inconsiderable in their name as their number, denied his co-eternity and co-essentiality with the Father. For this uniformity of testimony, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, there can be but one mode of accounting; that the opinion in which so many witnesses agreed, must have been coincident with that which they severally derived by tradition from the Apostles of Christ. Irrefragable as the body of proof is which thus accumulates as we advance, in support of the orthodox faith, it forms but a part of the testimony to which the Church may appeal in defence of the purity of its faith. Those who would question this evidence, as of suspicious authority, in consequence of the corrupted channel through which it is derived, may be finally referred to the Pagans and Jews for a testimony of its integrity. Within a few years of the death of the last surviving Apostle, the proconsulate of Asia was committed by Trajan to the younger Pliny. The desertion of the Heathen temples, within the sphere of his immediate jurisdiction, in consequence of the rapid extension of Christianity, excited his alarm, and became the subject of his complaint to the Emperor §. The most effectual means were taken by the proconsul to acquire a just knowledge of the tenets and institutions of a sect, whose history was novel and extraordinary. For this purpose he examined two young persons, of the office of deaconness, by torture, that the strength of their sufferance operating on the weakness of their sex, he might acquire, from their extorted confessions, a perfect insight into the nature of the new religion. The result of this experiment, * Euseb. Vit. Const. Lib. VII. cap. vii. p. 579. 1. 35. sqq. Conf. cap. xix. p. 588. 1. 37. Socrat. Hist. Ecc. Lib. I. cap viii. p. 18. 1. 48. sqq. + Socrat. ibid. p. 22. 1. 11—13. Id. ibid. p. 22. 1. 14—18. Plin. Epist. Lib. X. cap. xcvii. p. 722, ed. Varior. 1669. Il Id. ibid. 1 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 acquired 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 illustrated, and the obvious meaning of Piiny confirmed, by the description given by ecclesiastical historians of those hymus, 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. 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 immediate 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 ὁσίας Ζωής διδαχής ΘΕΟ Ν εἰρήνης, he he had been previously termed by the great evangelical prophet. 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 proclaiming 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 readers 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. Judgm. of Jew. Church ag. Unitar. passim, p. 106. Allix duction" |