in other branches of knowledge, or our success in propagating them. In looking back upon the dismal scene which the shocking corruptions of Christianity exhibit, we may well exclaim with the prophet, How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! But the thorough examination of everything relating to Christianity, which has been produced by the corrupt state of it, and which nothing else would probably have led to, has been as the refiner's fire with respect to it; and when it shall have stood this test, it may be presumed that the truth and excellency of it will never more be called in question. This corrupt state of Christianity has, no doubt, been permitted by the Supreme Governor of the world for the best of purposes, and it is the same great Being who is also now, in the course of his providence, employing these means to purge his floor. The civil powers of this world, which were formerly the chief supports of the anti-christian systems, who had given "their power and strength unto the beast," Rev. xvii. 13, now begin to hate her, and are ready to "make her desolate and naked," ver. 16. To answer their own political purposes, they are now promoting various reformations in the church; and it can hardly be doubted, but that the difficulties in which of the European nations many are now involving themselves, will make other measures of reformation highly expedient and necessary. Also, while the attention of men in power is engrossed by the difficulties that more immediately press upon them, the endeavours of the friends of reformation in points of doctrine pass with less notice, and operate without obstruction. Let us rejoice in the good that results from this evil, and omit 1 Joseph, Emperor of Germany, had suppressed the religious orders, in his dominions, and otherwise controlled the power of the church. Pope Pius VI. paid a visit to Vienna, in March 1782, from "a desire to put some stop, to the heretical innovations of the Emperor." See N. Ann. Reg. III. pp. 64-66. no opportunity that is furnished us, voluntarily to co-operate with the gracious intention of Divine Providence; and let us make that our primary object, which others are doing to promote their own sinister ends. All those who labour in the discovery and communication of truth, if they be actuated by a pure love of it, and a sense of its importance to the happiness of mankind, may consider themselves as workers together with God, and may proceed with confidence, assured that their labour in this cause shall not be in vain, whether they themselves see the fruit of it or not. The more opposition we meet with in these labours, the more honourable it will be to us, provided we meet that opposition with the true spirit of Christianity. And to assist us in this, we should frequently reflect that many of our opponents are probably men who wish as well to the gospel as we do ourselves, and really think they do God service by opposing us. Even prejudice and bigotry, arising from such a principle, are respectable things, and entitled to the greatest candour. If our religion teaches us to love our enemies, certainly we should love, and, from a principle of love, should endeavour to convince those who, if they were only better informed, would embrace us as friends. The time will come when the cloud, which for the present prevents our distinguishing our friends and our foes, will be dispersed, even that day in which the secrets of all hearts will be disclosed to the view of all. In the meantime, let us think as favourably as possible of all men, our particular opponents not excepted; and therefore be careful to conduct all hostility, with the pleasing prospect that one day it will give place to the most perfect amity. You, my friend, peculiarly happy in a most placid, as well as a most determined mind, have nothing to blame yourself for in this respect. If, on any occasion, I have indulged too much asperity, I hope I shall, by your example, learn to correct myself, and without Saviour himself not wholly excepted; abating my zeal in the common cause. As we are now both of us past the meridian of life, I hope we shall be looking more and more beyond it, and be preparing for that world, where we shall have no errors to combat, and, consequently, where a talent for disputation will be of no use; but where the spirit of love will find abundant exercise; where all our labours will be of the most friendly and benevolent nature, and where our employment will be its own reward. Let these views brighten the evening of our lives, that evening, which will be enjoyed with more satisfaction, in proportion as the day shall have been laboriously and well spent. Let us, anticipating with joy the glorious morn- J. PRIESTLEY. then, without reluctance, submit to In the faith and hope of the gospel, that temporary rest in the grave, which our wise Creator has thought proper to appoint for all the human race, our Birmingham, Nov. 1782. A HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. PART I. THE HISTORY OF OPINIONS RELATING TO JESUS CHRIST. THE INTRODUCTION. THE unity of God is a doctrine on which the greatest stress is laid in the whole system of revelation. To guard this most important article was the principal object of the Jewish religion; and, notwithstanding the proneness of the Jews to idolatry, at length it fully answered its purpose in reclaiming them, and in impressing the minds of many persons of other nations in favour of the same fundamental truth. The Jews were taught by their prophets to expect a Messiah, who was to be descended from the tribe of Judah, and the family of David,—a person in whom themselves and all the nations of the earth should be blessed; but none of their prophets gave them an idea of any other than a man like themselves in that illustrious character, and no other did they ever expect, or do they expect to this day. Jesus Christ, whose history answers to the description given of the Messiah by the prophets, made no other pretensions; referring all his extraordinary power to God, his Father, who, he expressly says, spake and acted by him, and who raised him from the dead: and it is most evident that the apostles, and all those who conversed with our Lord before and after his resurrection, considered him in no other light than simply as "a man approved of God, by wonders and signs which God did by him." Acts ii. 22. Not only do we find no trace of so prodigious a change in the ideas which the apostles entertained concerning Christ, as from that of a man like themselves, (which it must be acknowledged were the first that they entertained,) to that of the most high God, or one who was in any sense their maker or preserver, that when their minds were most fully enlightened, after the descent of the Holy Spirit, and to the latest period of their ministry, they continued to speak of him in the same style; even when it is evident they must have intended to speak of him in a manner suited to his state of greatest exaltation and glory. Peter uses the simple language above quoted, of a man approved of God, immediately after the descent of the Spirit: and the apostle Paul, giving what may be called the Christian creed, says, 1 Tim. ii. 5, "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." He does not say the God, the God-man, or the super B angelic being, but simply the man Christ speculative as the nature of the thing Jesus; and nothing can be alleged from the New Testament in favour of any higher nature of Christ, except a few passages interpreted without any regard to the context, or the modes of speech and opinions of the times in which the books were written, and in such a manner, in other respects, as would authorize our proving any doctrine whatever from them. From this plain doctrine of the Scriptures, a doctrine so consonant to reason and the ancient prophecies, Christians have at length come to believe what they do not pretend to have any conception of, and than which it is not possible to frame a more express contradiction. For, while they consider Christ as the supreme, eternal God, the maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, they moreover acknowledge the Father and the Holy Spirit to be equally God in the same exalted sense, all three equal in power and glory, and yet all three constituting no more than one God. To a person the least interested in the inquiry, it must appear an object of curiosity to trace by what means, and by what steps, so great a change has taken place, and what circumstances in the history of other opinions, and of the world, proved favourable to the successive changes. An opinion, and especially an opinion adopted by great numbers of mankind, is to be considered as any other fact in history, for it can not be produced without an adequate cause, and is therefore a proper object of philosophical inquiry. In this case I think it not difficult to find causes abundantly adequate to the purpose, and it is happily in our power to trace almost every stop by which the changes have been successively brought about. If the interest that mankind have generally taken in anything, will at all contribute to interest us in the inquiry concerning it, this history cannot fail to be highly interesting, For, perhaps, in no business whatever have the minds of men been more agitated, and, is, in few cases has the peace of society been so much disturbed. To this very day, of such importance is the subject considered by thousands and tens of thousands, that they cannot write or speak of it without the greatest zeal, and without treating their opponents with the greatest rancour. If good sense and humanity did not interpose to mitigate the rigour of law, thousands would be sacrificed to the cause of orthodoxy in this single article; and the greatest number of sufferers would probably be in this very country, on account of the greater freedom of inquiry which prevails here, in consequence of which we entertain and profess the greatest diversity of opinions. The various steps in this interesting history it is now my business to point out, and I wish that all my readers may attend me with as much coolness and impartiality as I trust I shall my. self preserve through the whole of this investigation.1 tory, will show that the spirit of the Synod of 1 The following anecdote respecting the HisDort, had survived two centuries. "This book in the city of Dort, province of Holland, anno was burnt by the hands of the common hangman 1785a piece of intelligence communicated by me to Dr. Priestley in the hotel where I lodged in of having with that extraordinary man, a few Birmingham, in a conversation I had the pleasure weeks after that event. Having asked me with much earnestness, how he would be received in Holland, were he to appear there, I told him I did not exactly know how they might treat the original, but that he himself might be able to determine that point when I had told him that he had been burnt in effigy at Dort, a few weeks before I left Holland-a person's writings being often viewed as a picture of his mind, the burning of his Corruptions might be easily considered as burning himself in effigy. He deplored our ignorance and blindness. A greater philanthropist I never met with." Peirson, D.D. senior minister of the established Note by the Rev. Thomas English church in the city of Amsterdam. Bibliotheca Peirsoniana, p. 211. "In This was not the first attempt to confute the author's opinions by the argument of fire. 1782, previous to the sale by auction of the Abbé Needham's library at Bruxelles, the licensers, as usual, went to burn the prohibited books. They destroyed Cudworth's Intellectual. System,' Priestley's Hartley, a New Testament, and many escaped the flames." Mon. Mag. xxxiv. p. 521. others; but 'Christianity as old as the Creation,' SECTION I in the greatest abhorrence by the Jews from whom they had separated, and OF THE OPINION OF THE ANCIENT JEWISH who cursed them in a solemn manner AND GENTILE CHURCHES. THAT the ancient Jewish church must have held the opinion that Christ was simply a man, and not either God Almighty, or a super-angelic being, may be concluded from its being the clear doctrine of the Scripture, and from the apostles having taught no other; but there is sufficient evidence of the same thing from ecclesiastical history. It is unfortunate, indeed, that there are now extant so few remains of any of the writers who immediately succeeded the apostles, and especially that we have only a few inconsiderable fragments of Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian, who wrote the history of the church in continuation of the Acts of the Apostles, and who travelled to Rome about the year 160; but it is not difficult to collect evidence enough in support of my assertion. The members of the Jewish church were, in general, in very low circumstances, which may account for their having few persons of learning among them; on which account they were much despised by the richer and more learned gentile Christians, especially after the destruction of Jerusalem, before which event all the Christians in Judea, (warned by our Saviour's prophecies concerning the desolation of that country,) had retired to the northeast of the sea of Galilee. They were likewise despised by the Gentiles for their bigoted adherence to the law of Moses, to the rite of circumcision, and other ceremonies of their ancient religion. And on all these accounts they probably got the name of Ebionites, which signifies poor and mean, in the same manner as many of the early reformers from Popery got the name of Beghards, and other appellations of a similar nature. The fate of these ancient Jewish Christians was, indeed, peculiarly hard. For, besides the negfect of the gentile Christians, they were, as Epiphanius informs us, held three times, whenever they met for public worship, 1 In general these ancient Jewish Christians retained the appellation of Nazarenes, and it may be inferred from Origen, Epiphanius and Eusebius, that the Nazarenes and Ebionites were the same people, and held the same tenets, though some of them supposed that Christ was the son of Joseph as well as of Mary, while others of them held that he had no natural father, but had a miraculous birth.2 Epiphanius, in his account of the Nazarenes, (and the Jewish Christians never went by any other name,) makes no mention of any of them believing the divinity of Christ, in any sense of the word. It is particularly remarkable that Hegesippus, in giving an account of the heresies of his time, though he mentions the Carpocratians, Valentinians, and others who were generally termed Gnostics, (and who held that Christ had a pre-existence, and was man only in appearance,) not only makes no mention of this supposed heresy of the Nazarenes or Ebionites, but says that, in his travels to Rome, where he spent some time with Anicetus, and visited the bishops of other sees, he found that they all held the same doctrine that was taught in the law, by the prophets, and by our Lord.3 What could this be but the proper Unitarian doctrine held by the Jews, and which he himself had been taught? That Eusebius doth not expressly say what this faith was, is no wonder, considering his prejudice against the Unitarians of his own time. He speaks of the Ebionites, as persons whom a malignant demon had brought into his power; and though he speaks of them as holding that Jesus was the son of 1 Epiphanii Opera, 1682. (Hær. 29.) I. p. 124. 2 Ibid. pp. 123, 125. (P.) (P.) 3 Eusebii Hist. 1720, L. iv. C. xxii. pp. 181, 182 (P.) 4 Ibid. L. iii. C. xxvii. p. 121. (P.) |