DISQUISITIONS.

DISQUISITION FIRST.

Of the phrase of " coming in the flesh," as used by St Polycarp in his epistle to the Philippians.

DR PRIESTLEY, in the fifth of his Second Letters to me, to prove that the phrase of "coming in the flesh" asserts nothing more than our Lord's manhood, without any reference to a prior state of existence, alleges that the phrase is so used by St Polycarp, the disciple of St John, in his epistle to the Philippians. The passage in which Dr Priestley imagines that he hath found this use of the phrase stands thus in Archbishop Wake's translation, from which Dr Priestley makes his quotation:

"Whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, he is antichrist; and whosoever does not confess his suffering upon the cross, is from the Devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that

there shall be neither any resurrection nor judgment, he is the first-born of Satan."

By an argument, the force of which will, I believe, be perceived by few but his Unitarian brethren, Dr Priestley persuades himself, that the blessed martyr, in this passage, is not describing three different sects, but that "he alludes to no more than one and the same kind of persons by all the three characters," i. e. by the denial of our Lord's coming in the flesh, the denial of his sufferings, and the denial of the general resurrection and the future judgment.

Hence he would infer, that the phrase of "coming in the flesh" predicates the manhood of our Lord, and nothing more; as I conceive for this reason: (for he hath not stated his argument very clearly.) The denial of our Lord's coming in the flesh must be something that might consist with the denial of his sufferings; since the two errors (by Dr Priestley's hypothesis) were found in the same persons. They who denied the reality of our Lord's sufferings, denied his manhood; and in that sense they might, and they did, deny his coming in the flesh. But his divinity they denied not; on the contrary, they strenuously asserted a 'nature in him superior at least to the human. Any allusion, therefore, which may be supposed in the phrase of his "coming in the flesh," to an original

nature in him more than human, they denied not. His manhood therefore, which is all that they who are charged with a denial of his "coming in the flesh" denied, is all that the phrase imports.

This is the very most that I can make of my adversary's argument. And in this state of it (if I have misrepresented it, I most seriously declare it is without design) I confess myself too dull to perceive the connexion of the premises and the conclusion. We of the orthodox persuasion conceive that the phrase of "coming in the flesh” expresses the INCARNATION; that is to say, it contains this complex proposition, that a Being originally divine assumed the human nature. This complex proposition, they who denied the reality of our Lord's sufferings denied; not in that part which affirms his divinity, but in that part which affirms his assumption of the manhood; and the denial of this was the foundation of their error about the sufferings on the cross. These three characters of error, therefore, mentioned by St Polycarp, might belong to one and the same sort of persons, as Dr Priestley supposes that they did, and yet the phrase of "coming in the flesh" in its natural sense may, for any thing that appears from St Polycarp's own words, allude not to the manhood simply, but to the Catholic doctrine. of the incarnation.

TICS.

It must be observed however, and the fact is too well known to the learned in ecclesiastical history to require proof, that a great variety of sects, differing from each other in the wild and impious opinions which they severally maintained, were comprised under the general name of GNOSTo say, therefore, that the one and same kind of persons, alluded to by St Polycarp under all these three different characters, was the Gnostics, is to say that this one and same kind of persons was many different kinds. Of the various sects that went under this common name, the Docetæ, who denied our Lord's genuine manhood, were one general branch,-itself subdivided, if I mistake not, into many distinct denominations ; the Cerinthians, who denied his original divinity, were another. Both these equally, though in different ways, denied the proposition that "Jesus Christ was come in the flesh," in the sense in which the orthodox understand it. And I confess I am not sure, though Dr Priestley says we are sure of it, that the denial of the resurrection was not to be found in a third class, distinct from either of these two, and from every branch of the Gnostics. The two ancient heretics mentioned by St Paul, (2 Tim. ii. 17, 18,) who said that the resurrection was past, and in that assertion, as St Chrysostom observes, denied a resurrection to come and the general judgment, are not numbered, by the writers of antiquity, among the