majority acknowledge a dependence of the Son's existence on the Father, strenuously asserting in the language of the Nicene creed, that the Son is "God of God." But some of no inconsiderable name have adopted what was thought to be Calvin's doctrine, in an extent to which I think with Beza, Calvin himself never meant it should be carried.

Upon the whole, I trust it appears that this singular conceit of mine, this invention for which I am challenged to produce any authority ancient or modern, is a principle that was tacitly assumed by many of the fathers; openly maintained by some; disputed about by the schoolmen; approved by the church of Rome; maintained by the greatest of the Lutheran divines; objected to by the Calvinists as a point of doctrine, but received by some of the most learned of that persuasion as at least a probable surmise. About the truth of the opinion, I have declared that I will not dispute; and I shall keep my word. But Dr Priestley's rash defiance I may place among the specimens with which his history and his letters to me abound, of his incompetency in this subject, and of the effrontery of that incurable ignorance which is ignorant even of its own want of knowledge.

DISQUISITION FIFTH.

Of Origen's want of veracity.

THE defence of Origen's veracity, which Dr Priestley hath attempted to set up in the second of his Third Letters, is in some parts so weak, and in others so disingenuous, that it would deserve no serious reply if the reader might be considered as a judge before whom Origen was arraigned, who would be obliged by his office to canvass the arguments and weigh the evidence on both sides with a scrupulous attention, in order to a solemn condemnation or acquittal of the accused party. But it may be expected of a controversial writer to save trouble to the reader, who is bound to no such official duty, to assist him in forming a final judgment upon the evidence produced on either side, and to expose the futility of arguments and the fallacy of assertions, which in a criminal process before any of his Majesty's judges of assize, might safely be trusted to expose themselves.

The work of Celsus against Christianity being lost, neither the plan nor the matter of it is otherwise to be known, than by what may be gathered from Origen's answer. It appears from Origen,

that it was a composition of much art, and highly laboured. Many of Celsus's objections were delivered in the person of a Jew, who is supposed to address his discourse first to Jesus and afterwards to the Hebrew Christians. In the discourse addressed to the Hebrew Christians, Celsus makes his Jew upbraid them with a desertion of the Mosaic law. To this reproach Origen in vindication of the Hebrew brethren, gives a double answer, which I have shewn to be inconsistent with itself in the two different branches.* First, he asserts that the Jews believing in Christ had not renounced their Judaism. Upon occasion of this assertion he goes into a discourse of some length about St Peter's adherence to the Mosaic law, and the information which was conveyed to that apostle in a vision concerning the extinction of its authority. From this discourse he runs into a second, upon a saying of our Lord's, which he expounds as an ænigmatical allusion to the intended abrogation of the law. And when in this digressive way he hath written" about it and about it," till he had himself forgotten, or might reasonably trust that his reader would have forgotten, the position with which this prolix discourse began, he enters upon the second branch

* Remarks on Dr Priestley's Second Letters, P. II. chap. i. sec. 6.

of his defence of the Hebrew brethren, in which he flatly contradicts his first assertion, insulting over Celsus's ignorance, who had not made his Jew distinguish the different sects of the converted Hebrews,-two of which observed the law, and one of which had to all intents and purposes abandoned it. I have given this passage at length in my Remarks on Dr Priestley's Second Letters,* and shall not tire my readers' patience with a needless repetition of it.

Dr Priestley to vindicate Origen from the charge of self-contradiction in this instance, hath recourse to a very curious piece of criticism. He bids me observe, that Origen contends not that Celsus's Jew, had he said what Origen says he should have said, would have said what was true, but what was plausible. The same critical sagacity that struck out this distinction, might have perceived that the want of plausibility with which Celsus's Jew is taxed, consisted in the confounding of distinctions which actually existed; and that the existing distinctions which Celsus's Jew confounded, were the distinctions between the Hebrew sects, two observing the law, and one disusing it. For this is the language of Origen's

* Remarks on Dr Priestley's Second Letters, P. II. chap. i. sec. 6.

+ Third Letters, p. 10.

reproach. "How confusedly does Celsus's Jew speak, when he might have said, &c." and by saying so have avoided the imputation of confusion.

The plausibility, of the want of which Origen complains in the discourse of Celsus's Jew, is what may be called poetical plausibility. It is that general air of truth which a writer of judgment and good taste contrives to give to the fable of a drama, by an attention to the peculiarities of times, places, manners, and characters; a neglect of which stamps a manifest character of clumsy fiction on what ought to seem reality; as would be the case in any serious play in which the Maid of Orleans should be seated on the Delphic tripod, or Hugh Peters introduced maintaining the divine rights of kings and bishops. This is the want of plausibility, with which Origen taxes Celsus. He says that Celsus with all his great pretensions to learning and taste knew not the common rules of art about maintaining character in the fiction of persons. Το άκολυθον εκ' οἶδε κατατον τι He made his Jew say what no real Jew would have said,-that the Hebrew Christians in general had deserted the law of their ancestors. This no Jew would have said, because it was a downright falsehood, which every Jew must have known to be such. Had Origen stopt short here he would not have him

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