66

divine of the church of Scotland, a Calvinist,* and by consequence, a serious and devout believer in the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, hath remarked to me, that your assertion, that the Nazarenes were the first Hebrew Christians, might have had some colour given to it, from the history of the accusation of St Paul before Felix, in the Acts of the apostles. St Paul was charged upon that occcasion, by Tertullus the orator, as he is called, as a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." Whence it might have been argued, that this was the name, which Christians in general at that time bore. This argument, I think, is far more specious, than any you have produced for yourself; but it is only an instance, by which it may be seen how easy it is, to frame arguments, in that oblique kind in which you so much delight, which may give a false colouring to things, and impose upon the ignorant or heedless. It is for this purpose, I believe, that it is produced by my learned and much honoured correspondent; not as a proof which, had it been set up by you, would have convinced, or even staggered, either him or me. It only proves, that in the infancy of Christianity, Christians, among the unbelieving Jews, who considered them as an heretical sect in

The person meant, was my maternal uncle, the Rev. Robert Hamilton, D. D. many years professor of divinity in the college of Edinburgh.

their own religion, went by the name of Nazarenes, as followers of the Nazarene; for that was the appellation which, in contempt, they gave our Lord himself, from the obscure village to which his family belonged. But while the Christians were called Nazarenes by the unbelieving Jews, they were called among themselves The Brethren, They of the Faith, and The Faith; till at length, when they became more numerous, and received a large accession of converts from the Gentiles, Christians became the general name, and the Hebrew Christians, who still perhaps bore the name of Nazarenes among the Jews, were distinguished among Christians by the names of The Hebrews, and They of the Circumcision. I still therefore abide by my assertion, that the name of Nazarene was never heard of in the church, that is, among Christians themselves, as descriptive of a sect, (as a general name for the whole fraternity of believers, it was never heard of in the church at all,) but as descriptive of a sect, it was never heard of before the final destruction of Jerusalem by Adrian; when it became the specific name of the Judaizers, who at that time separated from the church of Jerusalem, and settled in the north of Galilee. The name was taken from the country in which they settled; but it seems to have been given in contempt, and not without allusion to the earlier application of it by the Jews to the Christians in general

The intent of it was, to signify that these Judaizers, who were for imposing the yoke of the Mosaic law upon the brethren of the uncircumcision, knew so little of the spirit of the gospel, that they were only to be considered as a sect of Jews; and were undeserving of any more honourable name, than that by which the unbelieving Jews, of the apostolic age, had been accustomed to express their contempt for the then new and little family of Christ; that they could not be more properly described than as heretical Jews, living in the poorest village of the poorest pro. vince.

LETTER EIGHTH.

A positive proof still extant, that our Lord's divinity was the belief of the very first Christians.-The Epistle of St Barnabas not the work of an apostle, but a production of the apostolic age. Cited as such by Dr Priestley.-The author a Christian of the Hebrews.-A believer in our Lord's divinity, -Writes to Christians of the Hebrews concurring in the same belief.

DEAR SIR,

I AM to produce a positive proof, that the divinity of our Lord was the belief of the very first Christians. Give me leave then to ask your opinion of that book, which had been current in the church from the very first ages, under the title of The Epistle of St Barnabas. It is quoted, you know, by Clemens Alexandrinus, not to mention later writers, as the composition of Barnabas the apostle. Take no alarm, Sir-I shall not claim a place for it in the canon. I shall not contend, that any apostle was its author. I am well persuaded of the contrary. But the reasons which persuade me, are such as ought to have no weight with you, if you will be true to your own principles. The style is indeed embarrassed and undignified; the reasoning is often unnatural and weak. Texts of the Old Testament are drawn

by violence to allegorical senses, which are inadmissible as when Moses, encouraging the Israelites to take possession of the promised land, is supposed to exhort the Jews to embrace the Christian religion; and in the description of Canaan, as a land flowing with milk and honey, the land is our Saviour's body, the milk and honey are the doctrines and promises of the gospel. The attempt to find evangelical types in the Jewish rites, is injudiciously conducted. The essential part of a rite, which was of divine appointment, is often superficially treated; and the supposed sense of subordinate ceremonies, and those very often of human institution, and of no significance, is pursued with a trifling exactness: thus, in the exposition of the red heifer, and in that of the scape goat; the stress is principally laid upon circumstances, about which the divine law is silent. But what may least of all be reconciled with the apostolic spirit, is that strange cabalistic process, by which the name of Jesus, and the cross, are drawn from the number of Abraham's armed domestics; and the great credit which the author gives himself for such discoveries. My notion of inspiration will not allow me to believe, that an inspired apostle could be the writer of such a book, and be vain of having written it. Your principles leave you at liberty to be less scrupulous. You, who have convicted St Paul of reasoning to