single instance, I maintain, that if the phrase in question were in itself equally capable of the two senses, the low sense to which the Unitarians would confine it, and the sublimer sense in which it is generally understood, it certainly might be taken in either in this passage of St Polycarp; and that, in whatever light the passage be considered, whether as descriptive of three sects, as I believe it to be, or of one only, as Dr Priestley understands it. This passage, therefore, is of no significance in the argument; since no passage can be alleged, as an instance of any particular use of any phrase, in which various senses of the phrase may equally suit the purpose of the writer.

To this neutral passage of St Polycarp, I have on my side to oppose a very decisive passage of St Barnabas; in which the allusion to a prior condition of our Lord, which I contend to be the natural import of the phrase, is manifest; and is so necessary to the writer's purpose, that if the phrase be understood without such allusion, the whole sentence is nonsense. "For if he had not come in the flesh, how should we mortals, seeing him, have been preserved? when they who behold the sun, which is to perish and is the work of his hands, are unable to look directly against its rays." Let Dr Priestley find a passage in which the allusion to our Lord's original glory is as necessarily excluded from the import of the

phrase as it is included in it in this passage of St Barnabas. And even then the only just inference will be, that the phrase is used variously, in a more restrained or larger signification, as may suit the particular occasion on which it is introduced; but that in its full and natural import ît affirms the incarnation,

But in truth Dr Priestley seems to deal by St Polycarp as by St John; by the disciple as by the master. Devoted himself to the Unitarian doctrine, he takes it with him as a principle in the study of St Polycarp, as of the New Testament, that the creed of St Polycarp, as of all the primitive Christians, was Unitarian. Then, whatever expressions occur alluding to opinions of a different cast, he interprets in the sense in which he and his Unitarian brethren would use them. From these expressions, so interpreted, he goes back to his original prejudice, that St Polycarp held and taught an Unitarian creed, as to a conclusion which he hath drawn, and can teach others to draw, from St Polycarp's own writings. Alas! the sum of all such reasonings is no more than this: I JOSEPH PRIESTLEY am an Unitarian ; therefore such was Polycarp. And the basis of this argument is the supposed infallibility of JoSEPH PRIESTLEY.

DISQUISITION SECOND.

Of Tertullian's testimony against the Unitarians, and his use of the word IDIOTA.

DR PRIESTLEY has made it an occasion of great triumph to himself and to his party, that he has caught me tripping, as he thinks, in my Greek and Latin, in the translation which I have given, in the ninth of my Letters in Reply, of a certain passage in Tertullian's book against Praxeas, which is produced by him as an acknowledgment of Tertullian that the Unitarians were in his time the majority of Christians, and is represented by me as an assertion of the contrary. None but an idiot, as Dr Priestley conceives, in the learned languages, would imagine that the English word "idiot," which I have used in my translation of that passage, might in any sense render the In of the Greek or the Idiota of the Latins, which is the name by which, with other adjuncts, Tertullian describes the Unitarians of his time. Dr Priestley says in the nineteenth of his Second Letters, sec. 3. "What will be said of the man who can translate Idiota, idiot?" He hath now for some considerable time been receiving the incense of his own applause, and the triumphant acclamations of his party, on the occasion of this victory

gained over his daring adversary, on the very ground on which the enemy had taken his stand with particular security. But it will be time enough to bind the laurel on their chieftain's spear, when they are sure he is in possession of the field.

In the seventh of his Second Letters, Dr Priestley says to me, "I will venture to say that it properly signifies [the word Idiota in Latin, or låtas in Greek properly signifies] an unlearned man, or a person who has not had a liberal education.” This Dr Priestley ventures to affirm, and this I venture to deny. The word is hath ten distinct senses; which I shall recite in order.

I. A private person; i. c. a person in private life, in opposition to a person in public office or employment, civil or military. In this sense the word is chiefly used by the orators and historians, and by all writers who treat of popular subjects; and this is its first and proper sense, as it is of all its senses the most immediately connected with the sense of the adjective is, from which the substantive is is immediately derived.

II. A person in low life, one of the common people, in opposition to persons of condition. This is nothing more than an intension of the former

DIS. II.

sense; private life in the extreme becoming obscure and low.

III. A laic, as distinguished from a clerk. This sense the Greek fathers easily grafted upon the first; the church being considered as a polity of its own kind, in which the clergy bear the public offices, the laity are citizens in private life. In a sense nearly allied to this, the word seems to be used by St Paul, 1 Cor. xiv. 16, to denote a private member of a congregation as distinguished from the minister.

IV. A person unskilled in any particular science or art, in opposition to the professors of it. The word, thus used, rather expresses the want of professional skill than of ordinary knowledge. In this sense the word is sometimes constructed by the Attic writers with a genitive of the thing, and by ordinary writers with an accusative, either with Plat. in or without a preposition. ideas idealer övla Tim. idang lelo, xala lekc, or is meos luto.

V. A person deficient in any particular talent, habit, or accomplishment. In this sense the word is sometimes constructed with a dative of the thing. Iding To λoy, 2 Cor. xi, 16. In this sense the word is used, by St Paul, 1 Cor. xiv. 23, 24, to denote a common Christian, not endowed with