*

fully heightens the obscurity, of the apostle's discourse. Dr Priestley perhaps imagines, that I hold myself bound to acknowledge whatever Newton hath attempted to prove. In his letters to me, and in his animadversions upon Dr White's celebrated discourses, he is often pleased to boast of the probability of what he knows, more than his antagonists; and that too in subjects, in which he hath been convicted of the greatest want of knowledge. I hope I may say, without arrogance, that it is probable that Sir Isaac Newton's talents in demonstration, are as well known to me, as to Dr Priestley. It is probable too, that, after the pains which I have taken to examine the principles and the authorities on which his ancient chronology is founded, I am as well qualified, as Dr Priestley, to judge of his talents in other subjects, which are not capable of demonstration. Now in these, I scruple not to say with a writer of our own times, that the great Newton went out like a common man. For the exposition, which to complete his argument against the record of the three in heaven, he gives of the context of the apostle's discourse, I hold it to be a model of that sort of paraphrase, by which any given sense may be affixed to any given words.

Second Letters, p. 135, 146, 200, 202. Animadvers, ns on Dr White, p. 66, 72.

But that even the external evidence of the authen ticity of the passage is so far less defective, than Newton and others have imagined, will be denied, I believe, by few, who have impartially considered the very able vindication of this celebrated text, which hath lately been given by Mr Travis, in his Letters to Mr Gibbon. Dr Priestley perhaps hath not found leisure to look through that performance. Or, if he have, he hath formed, I suppose, "no very high opinion of the author's acquaintance with Christian antiquity."* For in this, all who oppose the Socinian tenets, are miserably deficient.

16. Here I close my remarks upon my adversary's reasoning; and I now proceed to the proof of my own facts, and the vindication of my own character.

See Remarks on Mr Howes's discourse,

PART SECOND.

PROOFS.

CHAPTER FIRST.

Of Origen's want of veracity. Of the fathers in general.-Of the passages in which St Chrysostom is supposed to assert that the apostles temporized.—A specimen of CORRECTION by an Unitarian,

THE first fact that comes in question, is the want of veracity in disputation, which I impute to Origen.

2. In the second book against Celsus, near the beginning of the book, Origen asserts of the Hebrew Christians of his own times, without exception, that they had not abandoned the laws and customs of their ancestors; and that, for that rea

son, they were called Ebionites. Dr Priestley sets a high value upon this testimony of Origen, as clearly establishing his great point, that the Ebionites were nothing worse than the Christians of the circumcision. I maintain, that if the truth of Origen's assertion were admitted, still his testimony would be less to Dr Priestley's purpose, than he imagines. It would prove, indeed, the Hebrew Christian, and the Ebionite, to be the same; but it would equally prove, that the disbelief of our Lord's divinity was no necessary part of the Ebionæan doctrine. But I go further. I deny the truth of Origen's assertion in both its branches. I deny, that it is universally true of the Hebrew Christians, in his time, that they had not abandoned the Mosaic law; and I deny that it is true, that they were all called Ebionites. I say, that Origen himself knew better, than to believe his own assertion. And I say that it was a part of Origen's character, not to be incapable of asserting, in argument, what he believed not.

3. Dr Priestley ill brooks this open attack upon the credibility of one, whom he considers as a principal witness. He defends Origen, by retorting a similar accusation upon me; and, with the utmost vehemence of indignant oratory, he arraigns me at the tribunal of the public, as a falsifier of history, and a defamer of the character of