supposed to be Le Clerc. He it is, who says in his preface, that the Platonic enthusiasm crept first into the Jewish, afterwards into the Christian church. Then he tells his readers how the Jews picked up their Platonism. Of which, he says, the principal doctrines were two: the one, that of the preexistence of souls; the other, that of the Divine Trinity. These, he says, were the opinions of the Jews in the days of our Saviour and his apostles: and hence, perhaps, it hath come to pass, that, as the learned have observed, certain Platonic phrases and expressions are to be found in the New Testament, especially in St John's Gospel. You, Sir, and this Unitarian brother, seem to agree but ill in your notions of the doctrine of the first ages. He thought the doctrine of the Trinity one of the ancient corruptions of Judaism; which, in laying the foundations of Christianity, the heaven-taught builders some how or other forget to do away. You have discovered, that every notion of the Trinity, whatever may be fancied with respect to more ancient times, was obliterated from the minds of the Jews, in our Saviour's time.' I believe, Sir, I shall never sit down to the task, which you desire me to undertake,—a translation of the works of Bishop Bull. For as his argument is not for the unlearned, the labour would Letters to Dr Horsley, p. 64. + Ibid. p. 113, be thrown away. A work which might be more generally edifying, and in which I might engage, if it were not that I really grudge every moment which I give to controversy, would be,-a har, mony of the Unitarian divines. 14. You will ask me, whence was the offence which the assertion of our Lord's divinity, by my own confession, gave the Jewish people, if divinity made a part of their own notion of the Messiah's character? I answer, the deification of the Messiah was not that which gave offence, but the assertion that a crucified man was that divine person and before his crucifixion, the meanness of his birth gave an offence, less in degree, but of the same kind. I am, &c. LETTER THIRTEENTH. In Reply to Dr Priestley's sixth.-Dr Priestley's ignorance of the true principles of Platonism, appears in his disquisitions concerning matter and spirit.-The equality and unity of the three principles of the Platonists.-Dr Priestley's peculiar sense of the word PERSONIFICATION, not perceived either by the archdeacon, or the reviewer.—The outline, however, of Dr Priestley's work not misrepresented by the archdeacon.-The conversion of an attribute into a substance, differs not from a creation out of nothing.-Never taught by the Platonists.The eternity of the Logos independent of any supposed eternity of the world.—Not discarded therefore by the converted Platonists.-Dr Priestley's arguments from the analogy between the divine Logos and human reason, answered.—The archdeacon abides by his assertion, that Dr Priestley hath misrepresented the Platonic language.-The archdeacon's interpretation of the Platonists rests not on his own conjecture, but on the authority of Athenagoras.-Confirmed by other authorities.-Dr Priestley's quotations from Tertullian, considered.-From Lactantius. DEAR SIR, You must forgive me, if I confess to you, that so long since as when I first read your disquisitions concerning matter and spirit, I formed no very high opinion of your learning in the Platonic philosophy. What gave me my first suspicion, as I well remember, was a surprise which you express, that a certain French writer should speak of the idea of a circle as itself not round,* and of the ideas of extended things as not extended. Your apprehension, that ideas could not be divisible, unless they were extended,† heightened my suspicion; which became something more than suspicion when I found you speaking of the soul's need of a repository for her ideas especially during sleep; as if ideas were things to be locked up, with our china, in a cupboard. Dr Priestley, I said to myself, confounds ideas with the impressions of external objects, on the material sensory which impressions are in truth as much external to the mind, as the objects which make them. What pity, that he hath not been more conversant with the Platonists! These previous indications, of your deficiency in this branch of learning, in some measure prepared me for what I was to find in your History of the Philosophical Doctrine concerning the soul; insomuch, that I read your assertion, that "Plato's philosophy was the oriental system, with very little variation,"§ without indignation; because I considered it as the reproach of an enemy, whom better information might make a friend. I was indeed surprised, at your want of information in this particular instance; because Mosheim, whose * Disquisitions, p. 39. + Ibid. p. 37, 38. authority as an historian, you seem to hold in due respect, indisposed, as he is in general, to be partial to the Platonists, hath however so far done them justice, as to point out the total discordance in principle at least, between the sober philosophy of Plato, and the extravagancies of the Gnostics; whose principles were those of the oriental system. After this, Sir, it gives me no surprise at all, that you should now assert," that it was never imagined that the three component members of the Platonic Trinity, are either equal to each other, or, strictly speaking, one."* They are, Sir, more strictly speaking, one, than any thing in nature of which unity may be predicated. No one of them can be supposed without the other two. The second and third being, the first is necessarily supposed; and the first (Ayado) being, the second and third, (Ne, & Tux) must come forth. Concerning their equality, I will not say that the Platonists have spoken with the same accuracy which the Christian fathers use; but they include the three principles in the Divine nature, in the TO ; and this notion implies the same equality, which we maintain; at the same time I confess, that the circumstance of their equality was not always strictly adhered to by the younger Platonists, for reasons which I have explained.t Letters to Dr Horsley, p. 99. + See Charge V. sec. 5. |