precarious conclusions,* may easily admit that St Barnabas, the companion of St Paul, might reason from false premises. You, who think that one apostle "has strained his imagination very much"f to find analogies between the rites of Judaism and something in Christianity, may easily suppose, that another apostle from the same motive a desire of reconciling the Jews to Christianity, may have strained much more to make the analogy much more complete. I can therefore see no reason, why you should not receive what is called the Epistle of St Barnabes, extravagant and nonsensical as it is in many parts, for the genuine work of Barnabas the apostle. But this is much more than I desire, and much more than is necessary to my argument. I suppose, however, that you will allow, what all allow, that the book is a production of the apostolic age: in the fifth section of your history of the doctrine of atonement, you quote it among the writings of the apostolic fathers. I think it fair to remind you of this circumstance, lest you should hastily ad Modica sunt, quæ in ejus gratiam, nec (ut puto) facile recusanda: ut nimirum, si non ipsis saltem annis ejus honos habeatur: si non apostolum agnoscamus; eum tamen ceu patrem revereamur; et demum, si non in canonem illum recipiendum ducamus, saltem in classicis scriptoribus, pro dignitate quam olim obtinuit apud ecclesiæ scriptores antiquissimos, humeremus. Præfat. Editoris Oxoniensis. vance a contrary opinion, when you find the testimony of this writer turned against you. 2. You allow him a place, then, among the fathers of the apostolic age: and will you not allow, that he was a believer in our Lord's divinity? I will not take upon me, Sir, to answer this question for you; but I will take upon me to say, that whoever denies it, must deny it to his own shame. "The Lord, says Barnabas, submitted to suffer for our soul, although he be THE LORD OF THE WHOLE EARTH, unto whom he said, the day before the world was finished, Let us make man after our image and our likeness."* Again, " for if he had not come in the flesh, how could 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." Compare Deut. xviii. 16. Exod. xxxiii. 20. Judges vi. 23. and xiii. 22. Again if then the Son of God, being Lord, and being to judge the quick and dead, suffered to the end, that his wound 66 * Dominus sustinuit pati pro animâ nostrâ, cum sit orbis terrarum dominus, cui dixit die ante constitutionem sæculi "Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram." sec. v. + Ει γαρ μη ἦλθεν ἐν σαρκι, πως ἂν ἐσώθημεν άνθρωποι βλε πούλες άυλον, ὅτι τον μελλονία μη είναι ήλιον, ἔργον χειρῶν αὐλὰ ὑπαρχονία ἐκ ἰσχύεσιν ἐἰς ἀκλινας ἀνεφθαλμησαι, sec. V. might make us alive; let us believe that the Son of God had no power to suffer, had it not been for us."* And again," Mean while thou hast [the whole doctrine] concerning the majesty of Christ; how all things were made for him and through him; to whom be honour, power, and glory, now and for ever." He who penned these sentences was surely a devout believer in our Lord's divinity. It is needless to observe, that he was a Christian; and almost as needless to observe, that he had been a Jew. For in that age none but a person bred in Judaism could possess that minute knowledge of the Jewish rites, which is displayed in this book. In the writer therefore of the Epistle of St Barnabas, we have one instance of a Hebrew Christian of the apostolic age, who believed in our Lord's divinity. 3. But this is not all. They must have been originally Jews to whom this epistle was addressed. The discourse supposes them well acquainted with the Jewish rites, which are the chief subject of it and indeed to any not bred in Judaism, the book had been uninteresting and unintelli : Εἰ ἐν ὁ ὕψος τα θες, ὧν Κύριος, και μελλων κρίνειν ζωνίας καὶ 98xpes, ἔπαθεν, ἵνα ἡ πληγη αλλα ζωοποίηση ήμας· πιτεύσωμείς το ὁ ίνα το θεν εκ ἐδυνατο πάθεσι, ἐν μη δια ήμας. sec. vii. + Habes interim de majestate Christi, quo modo omnia in illum et per illum facta sunt: cui sit honor, virtus, gloria nunc et in sæcula sæculorum. sec. xvii. gible. They were Hebrew Christians, therefore, to whom a brother of the uncircumcision holds up the doctrine of our Lord's divinity. He upholds it, not barely as his own persuasion, but as an article of their common faith. He brings no arguments to prove it-he employs no rhetoric to recommend it. He mentions it as occasion occurs, without shewing any anxiety to inculcate it, or any apprehension, that it would be denied or doubted. He mentions it in that unhesitating language, which implies that the public opinion stood with his own. So that in this writer we have not only an instance of an Hebrew Christian, of the apostolic age, holding the doctrine of our Lord's divinity; but in the book we have the clearest evidence, that this was the common faith of the Hebrew Christians of that age, or in other words, of the primitive church of Jerusalem. 4. This, Sir, is the proof, which I had to produce, of the consent of that church with the later Gentile churches in this great article. It is so direct and full, though it lies in a narrow compass, that if this be laid in the one scale, and your whole mass of evidence, drawn from incidental and ambiguous allusions, in the other, "The latter will fly up, and kick the beam." LETTER NINTH. The proof of the orthodoxy of the first age, overturns Dr Priestley's arguments from Hegesippus and Justin Martyr.-Hegesippus a voucher for the Trinitarian faith.-Dr Priestley's own principles set aside his interpretation of Justin Martyr.— Dr Priestley himself gives it up.-Tertullian makes no acknowledgment of any popularity of the Unitarian tenets in his own time. DEAR SIR, SINCE it is proved of the first Christians of the circumcision, that they were believers in our Lord's divinity; what becomes of your two arguments to the contrary, from Hegesippus and Justin Martyr? 2. The argument from Hegesippus rested on a presumption, that Hegesippus himself was an Unitarian. That Hegesippus himself was an Unitarian was presumed, because he was a Christian of the Hebrews, and the Christians of the Hebrews were supposed to be generally of that persuasion. But now that the reverse is proved of the Hebrew Christians, the presumption must be reversed concerning Hegesippus. Hegesippus must be deemed no Unitarian, and all consequences deduced from the contrary supposition must be reversed, or at least they will vanish. |