Saviour to the Jews." Is it your opinion, Sir, that they are the same or different persons, who are mentioned under the name of Jews, in these two different clauses? If they are different persons, I desire to know, what circumstance or note of difference you find in the author's expressions? If you find none, on what is your opinion of a difference founded? Or not to entangle you again in grammatical disquisitions, I will for a moment suppose the persons different, and desire you to shew me, what will then be the sense or coherence of the writer's argument. If you allow that the same persons are designed in both places under the same name; I must desire you to remark, that the Jews, mentioned in the second instance, were persons who were "at any rate to be persuaded (at any rate, that is the force of λws, which you have erroneously rendered by the word fully) at any rate to be persuaded, from the actual state of things, and from the evidence of the miracles which had been wrought, that the Christ was come."* Could these, Sir, be converted Jews? Could they be already Christians, in whom this general persuasion, "that the Christ was come," was yet to be wrought? Wanting this persuasion they were clearly Jews, whose conversion was not yet begun and of the same description, since they Ινα όλως πεισαλες άλλως ἐκ των φαινομένων καὶ γενομένων σημείων. were indeed the very same persons, were the Jews, to whom it is imputed, that they held the erroneous belief of the Messiah's mere humanity, and that they spread the like error among the Gentiles: 14. But the Gentiles, you say, who were thus misled, must have been Christian Gentiles; and by consequence the Jews, who misled them, were Jewish Christians.* But, Sir, whence is the certainty that Christian Gentiles were intended by Athanasius? It hangs upon this principle, that to any other Gentiles the whole doctrine of a Messiah must have been uninteresting. Have you forgotten, Sir, have you never known, or would you deny, what is not denied by candid infidels, that the expectation of a great deliverer or benefactor of mankind, was universal even in the Gentile world, about the time of our Lord's appearance? If you acknowledge this, where is the improbability, that the general opinion concerning this personage should be modified by the opinions which prevailed in Judea, which was the centre of the tradition? especially when it is considered, that the proselytes of the gate, made an easy channel of communication between the Jews and the ido latrous Gentiles. But whatever you may be dis * Letters to Dr Horsley, p. 41. P + Ibid. posed to grant, or to deny, this argument is easily inverted, and turned against you. It hath been shewn, that none but Jew Jews can be intended by Athanasius, when he speaks of the Jews as misleaders of the Gentiles. They were Gentile Gentiles, therefore, who were misled: for, from unbelieving Jews, Christians of the Gentiles would hardly take instruction. 15. Your last resource is to flee for shelter to the authority of Beausobre. "The learned Beausobre, a Trinitarian, and therefore an unexceptionable judge in this case, quoting this very passage, does not hesitate to pronounce, that they were believing Jews, who were intended by the writer."* It is for you, Sir, to judge, what deference is due from you to the authority of Beausobre. For my own part-I shall not affect a modesty which I feel not-when the sense of a Greek sentence is the thing in question, if I have the writer upon my own shelf, or can find him upon my friend's, it is not much my practice to stand bowing at a distance to authorities; unless indeed it be the authority of a Casaubon, a Scaliger, or a Bentley. But these men would laugh, or they would storm, at your attempts to construe Greek, with Beausobre at your elbow. To construe * Letters to Dr Horsley, p. 42. Greek! I fear, Sir, they would think but lightly of your Latin erudition, after the specimen which you have given of it, in your attempt to wrest from my learned ally, his strong argument for the difference, which we assert, in articles of faith, between the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. The feats of criticism, which you have performed for this purpose, upon certain plain words of Jerome,* to draw them from the only meaning of which they are capable, had you been a Westminster man, were enough to bring old Busby from his grave. But, alas! Sir, you are not to be persuaded, though one should rise from the dead. I trust our readers are persuaded, that the argument from Athanasius † was with great justice and propriety, placed among my specimens of insufficient proof. I am, &c. * Letters to Dr Horsley, p. 152-156. + Of the testimonies of other writers, by which Dr Priestley attempts to confirm his argument from Athanasius, see the tenth of his Second Letters to me, and my Remarks upon his Second Letters, Part II. c. i. sec. 10-14. LETTER TWELFTH. In Reply to Dr Priestley's fifth; in which he moves certain chronological difficulties.-Himself chiefly concerned to find the solution. His question divided.-The divinity of our Lord preached from the very beginning, by the apostles.— St Stephen a martyr to this doctrine.-His dying ejaculations justify the worship of Christ.-Christ deified in the story of St Paul's conversion.-The divinity of Jesus acknowledged by the apostles, from the time when they acknowledged him for the Messiah.-Notions of a Trinity, and of the Deity of the Messiah, current among the Jews in the days of our Saviour. DEAR SIR, IN your fifth letter, you call upon me to assign the particular time, when the knowledge of our Lord's divinity, which, in the persuasion that the apostles were taxed by the fathers with a reserve upon the subject, you are pleased to call "the great secret of Christ being not a mere man, but the eternal God;"* you call upon me to assign the time, when this great secret "was communicated first to the apostles, and then by them to the body of Christians."† You"request my opinion" upon this question, with a certain air of triumph, which seems to imply, that, in your ap Letters to Dr Horsley, p. 55. + Ibid. |