phanius, of St John and Ebion in the bath. The same is told by other writers, of St John and Cerinthus; and it hath altogether the air of fiction. But suppose I were to allow the highest antiquity to these Nazarenes; suppose that with you I were to place them in the apostolic age; would this oblige me to allow, that they were the true members of the primitive church? Had not the apostolic age its schisms and its heresies? The Simonians, the Nicolaitans, the Cerinthians; were not all these contemporary with the apostles? Were they therefore sound members of the church of Jerusalem ? Be pleased, Sir, to consider this question.

I am, &c.

POSTSCRIPT.

1. Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical Theology, speaks as if he thought the name Ebionites had been imposed by the apostles themselves, upon those who disowned our Lord's divinity; which necessarily implies, that, in his opinion, the sect and the name were of the apostolic age. " Our Saviour's own heralds," says Eusebius, "named those Ebioniteswho acknowledged

not the Godhead of the Son."* Our Saviour's own first heralds must be the preachers, it should seem, of his own appointment; namely, the apostles and that they are the persons intended, is the more probable, for the distinction seems to be made between these first heralds and ecclesiastical fathers, who are afterwards mentioned. Strenuously as you assert the antiquity of the Ebionites, you have no where, that I remember, alleged this testimony. You were aware perhaps, that were it good for the antiquity of the sect, it would be equally good for the reason and origin of the name. For my own part, I am not inclined to avail myself of it. I consider it as a hasty assertion of a writer, over zealous to overwhelm his adversary by authorities. I mention it only to protest against any use, which you may hereafter be disposed to make of it, in a dearth of proof of Ebion's antiquity. Should you urge me with any part of this testimony, I shall have a right to insist, that you accept the whole. Should you produce it in proof, that an Unitarian sect existed in the apostolic age; you will be obliged to allow, that it is equally a proof that the Unitarian doctrine was

μεν

* Καὶ ἀΰλε δε τες σωληρος ήμων πρωτοκηρυκες Εβιωναίος ὠνομάζοι, ἑβραϊκη φωνη πλωχες την διάνοιαν ἀπικαλείες της ένα θεον λεγοντας ειδέναι, καὶ τε σωτηρος το σώμα μη άρνεμενες, την δε τα ένα θεοτητα un idolas. Ecc. Theol. lib. i. c. 14.

expressly condemned by the apostles. It will be no concern of mine to disprove the antiquity of Ebion, however I may disbelieve it, so long as the very ground of his claim seals his condemnation ; so long as his pretensions to an early existence rest on a presumption, that he had the honour to be the object of apostolical censure.

I

2. Upon the story of St John and the hæresiarch, in the public baths at Ephesus, I passed judgment hastily, when I spake of it as a foolish story, carrying altogether the air of fiction. ought to have recollected, that Irenæus vouches strongly for so much of it as he relates. He even cites the testimony of Polycarp, in terms which may be understood to imply, that he was himself one of many, still living when he wrote, who had heard the story from the mouth of Polycarp. The testimony of Irenæus is hardly to be disbelieved; the testimony of Polycarp is irresistible. But the story, which Irenæus relates after Polycarp, he relates of St John and Cerinthus. It makes nothing therefore for the antiquity of Ebion. As related of him, with the addition of many improbable circumstances not mentioned by Irenæus, it may be deemed a fiction.†

Lib. iii. c. 3.

Dr Priestley, in the third of his Second Letters to me, to corroborate the testimony of Epiphanius, alleges that of Jerome;

LETTER SEVENTH.

Continuation of Reply to Dr Priestley's Second.-Of the argu ment from Origen.-That it rests on two passages in the books against Celsus. The first misinterpreted by Dr Priestley in a very important point.-No argument to be drawn from the two passages in connexion.-Origen convicted of two false as sertions in the first passage.-The opinions of the first age not to be concluded from the opinions of Origen.

DEAR SIR,

In failure of all other proof of your supposed identity of the Ebionites and Nazarenes, you still appeal to the testimony of Origen, You have however, given a new turn to this part of your argument. Your appeal was originally* to a pretended acknowledgment of Origen's, that the Nazarenes and the Ebionites were the same people. But being made sensible,† how difficult it must

who, he says, "mentions the Ebionites, not only as a sect, but a flourishing sect, in the time of St John." But Jerome makes no such mention of the Ebionites. He says, that St John wrote his Gospel in opposition to Cerinthus, and other heretics, and principally the doctrine of the Ebionites (not then flourishing, but) tunc consurgens, then making its first appearance. This I readily allow; for what was afterwards the doctrine of the Ebionites, was first propagated by the Cerinthian Gnostics. Hist. of Corrup. vol. i. p. 7.

+ See the Monthly Review for June, 1783, and for September, 1783.

be to find an acknowledgment of this identity, in a writer who never once names the Nazarenes; you abandon that project, and in the passages which were at first cited to establish this supposed identity, you have at last the good fortune to discover an immediate proof of your main proposition, that the primitive faith of the Hebrew church was Unitarian. Your method is, to trace from Origen the faith of the Jewish Christians in his age, and from their faith to infer that of their ancestors.

2. The strength of this argument lies in two passages in the books against Celsus; which are very distant from each other: for the one is in the second, the other in the fifth book; and yet they must be taken in connexion, to give any colour to your reasoning. You set it off indeed to great advantage, when, appealing to the first of these passages, you say, that it appears, and that I deny not that it appears," that the unbelieving Jews called all those of their race, who were Christians, by the name of Ebionites, in the time of Origen;" and that "Origen's own words are too express, to admit any doubt of this."* Truly, Sir, I was not likely to deny a groundless assertion, before it was made by my antagonist; and you now make

Letters to Dr Horsley, p. 18.