Tertullian's meaning, may be proved, without insisting upon any particular force of the word idiotæ, from the necessary indisputable sense of the adverb semper, which extends Tertullian's proposition, concerning the majority of believers, from his own time in particular to all time. He says not what were, or what were not, the prevailing opinions of his own times; but he says, that those persons who come under the characters of simplices, imprudentes, and idiotæ (that is, according to Dr Priestley's own translation, which yet I admit not otherwise than disputandi gratia, for I have still "the assurance" to call my own. an exact translation) but according to Dr Priestley's own translation, Tertullian says, that persons who come under the character of "the simple, the ignorant, and the unlearned," whatever their opinions at one time or another may be, are, in all times, the greater part of believers : as indeed they must be of every society collected indiscriminately, as the church is, from all ranks of men. Tertullian alleges that persons of that description, in his time, meaning to assert what they little understood, the Divine Monarchy, were startled at the doctrine of the Trinity, which they as little understood. This is the only sense in which Tertullian's words can be taken, unless some Unitarian adventurer in criticism shall be able to prove, that the adverb semper

is equivalent to nunc, expressive of present time exclusively.

Dr Priestley "wonders at my assurance" in another circumstance; namely, that I should limit, as he says, what Tertullian affirms, as he would have him understood, of the whole body of the simplices and idiota to some of them. In this limitation, he says, I am altogether unwarranted. But when Tertullian says, that simple persons and idiota are startled at the economy, the natural sense of the words is, that this scruple was incident chiefly to persons of that description; not that it was to be found in the whole body of the common people. He insinuates, that persons of that weak character only were liable to that alarm. Had he meant to speak of the whole body of the common people, he must have used phrases of another cast, as vulgus indoctum, or genus hominum simplex. Dr Priestley's complaint against me might have seemed to have some foundation, had the word "some" been prefixed to "simple persons" in my translation. But it only appears in an exposition of the passage, which follows the translation. And surely having translated the passage exactly, I took no unwarrantable liberty in adding an explanation of the author's sense (or of what I take to be his sense) in my own words. Had Dr Priestley's loose expositions of the passages in ancient writers, which

he cites, been always accompanied with exact translations, the world would have had less reason to stand aghast at his assurance and ill-dissembled management. But to what purpose can it be to hold an argument with a man, who is too hasty to distinguish between what professes to be paraphrase, and what pretends to be exact translation; who has the vanity to play the critic in languages, to the idioms of which he is a stranger; and the audacity to challenge the production of authorities, without taking the pains to inform himself, in which scale the weight of authority may preponderate? Pray, Sir, in what lexicon or dictionary, ordinary or extraordinary, do you find idiota in Latin, or idag in Greek rendered idiot?" Vide Glossarium Vetus, R. Steph. Calepin. Cooper, Ainsworth.

66

DISQUISITION THIRD.

On what is found relating to the Ebionites in the writings of IRENEUS, in confutation of an argument advanced by Dr Priestley in favour of the Ebionites, in the third of his First, and the fourth of his Second Letters, from the writings of Irenæus in particular.

THE particular argument in favour of the Ebionites, which Dr Priestley, in the third of his First Letters to me, attempted to draw from the writings of Irenæus, was so ably, though concisely answered in the Monthly Review for January 1784, by Mr Badcock, who, taking facts as Dr Priestley chose to state them, shewed, even upon his own statement of the facts, the utter futility of his conclusion, inasmuch as the contrary conclusion might be drawn with equal probability from the same assumptions, that when I wrote my Letters in Reply, I thought I might be excused if I passed by this argument without any other notice, than a slight reference to Mr Badcock's confutation. But in the sixth of his Second Letters, Dr Priestley hath attempted to refit this shattered piece of his artillery, and to bring it again into action.

He says to me, "It is truly remarkable, and may not have been observed by you, as indeed

ît was not by myself till very lately,"-It had indeed been strange, if any sagacity of remark in me had outrun Dr Priestley's!" that Irenæus, who has written so large a work on the subject of heresy, after the time of Justin, in a country where it is probable there were fewer Unitarians, again and again characterises them in such a manner as makes it evident, that even he did not consider any other persons as heretics besides the Gnostics. He expresses a great dislike of the Ebionites, but he never calls them heretics."*

Freely I resign to Dr Priestley the honour of having been the first to make this remark. At least I shall put in no claim for myself, or for my friends. If any plagiarism hath been committed, which I pretend not in this particular instance to assert, the depredation must have been made upon some of his own party. For I will venture to affirm, that the remark, so far as it extends to Irenæus's acquittal of the Ebionites from the imputation of heresy, could have occured to none, that had not been in some good degree an IDIOT in the writings of Irenæus. It could have occurred to none, that had known more of the work of Irenæus, than is to be learned from an occasional re

* Second Letters, p. 56.