kind might have no doubt what great things had been done for them; and that they might respect their great deliverer, as his nature and his proper rank in the creation required. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews evidently considered Christ as a being of a different rank from that of angels, and the reason why he says that he ought to be so, is, that he might have a feeling of our infirmities. But, certainly, we shall be more easily satisfied that any person really felt as a man, if he was truly a man, and nothing more than a man; than if he was a superior being (and especially a being so far superior to us as the maker of the world must have been) degraded to the condition of a man; because, if he had any recollection of his former state, the idea of that must have borne him up under his difficulties and sufferings, in such a manner as no mere man could have been supported: and it is supposed by the Arians that Christ had a knowledge of his prior state, for they suppose him to have referred to it in his prayer to the Father for the glory which he had with him before the world was; and yet this is hardly consistent with the account that Luke gives of his increasing in wisdom. No person, I think, can, with an unprejudiced mind, attend to these considerations, and the texts of Scripture above recited, (which are perfectly agreeable to the tenor of the whole,) and imagine tha that it was the intention of the sacred writers to represent Christ either as the supreme God, or as the maker of the world under God. There is another hypothesis, of some modern Arians, which represents Christ as having preexisted, but not as having been the creator or governor of the world, or the medium of all the dispensations of God to mankind. But those texts of Scripture which seem to be most express in favour of Christ's pre-existence do likewise, by the same mode of interpretation, represent him as the maker of the world; so that if the favourers of this hypothesis can suppose the language of these texts to be figurative, they may more easily sup-. pose the other to be figurative also; and that, whatever obscurity there may be in them, they were not intended to refer to any pre-existence at all. The passages of Scripture which are supposed to speak of Christ as the maker of the world are the following, viz. John i. 3. Eph. iii. 9. Col. i. 15. Heb. i. 1, &c. These, I will venture to say, are the texts that most strongly favour the notion of Christ's. pre-existence; and no person can doubt but that, if they must be interpreted to assert that Christ preexisted at all, they, with the same clearness, assert that he was the maker of the world. But if these texts admit of a figurative interpretation, all the other texts, which are supposed to refer to the preexistence only, will more easily admit of a similar construction. construction. These two opinions, therefore, viz. that Christ pre-existed, and that he was the maker of the world, ought, by all means, to stand or fall together; and if any person think the latter to be improbable, and contrary to the plain tenor of the Scriptures, (which uniformly represent the supreme being himself, without the aid of any inferior agent, or instrument, as the maker of the universe,) he should abandon the doctrine of simple pre-existence also. In what manner the proper Unitarians interpret these passages of Scripture may be seen in my Familiar illustration of particular texts of Scripture, in several of the Socinian tracts, in three volumes, quarto, and especially in Mr. Lindsey's Sequel to his Apology, p. 455, to which I refer my reader for a further discussion of this subject. It is only of late years that any persons have pretended to separate the two opinions of Christ's pre-existence, and of his being the maker of the world. All the ancient Arians maintained both, as did Dr. Clarke, Mr. Whiston, Mr. Emlyn, Mr. Pierce; and their followers; and I do not know that any other hypothesis has appeared in writing, except that it is alluded to in the Theological Repository. IV. AD IV. ARGUMENTS FROM HISTORY AGAINST THE DIVINITY AND PRE-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST; OR A SUMMARY VIEW OF THE EVIDENCE FOR THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANS HAVING HELD THE DOCTRINE OF THE SIMPLE HUMANITY OF CHRIST. N. B. To each article is subjoined a reference to publications in which the subject is discussed: H. C. signifying the History of the Corruptions of Christianity, vol. i. and H. O. the History of early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ. To each article is also subjoined a reference to the following Maxims of Historical Criticism. 1. It is acknowledged by early writers of the orthodox persuasion, that two kinds of heresy existed in the time of the apostles, viz. that of those who held that Christ was simply a man, and that of the Gnostics, of whom some believed that Christ was man only in appearance, and others that it was only Jesus and not the Christ (a pre-existent spirit who descended from heaven and dwelt in him) that suffered on the cross. Now the apostle John animadverts with the greatest severity upon the latter, but makes no mention of the former; and can it be thought probable that he would pass it without censure, if he had thought it to be an error; considering how great and how dangerous an error it has always been thought by those who have considered it as being an error at all? Maxim 12. H. C. p. 9. H. O. vol. 3, p. 260. 2. The great objection that Jews have always made made to Christianity in its present state is, that it enjoins the worship of more gods than one; and it is a great article with the Christian writers of the second and following centuries to answer this objection. But it does not appear in all the book of Acts, in which we hear much of the cavils of the Jews, both in Jerusalem and in many parts of the Roman empire, that they made any such objection to Christianity then; nor do the apostles either there, or in their epistles, advance any thing with a view to such an objection. It may be presumed, therefore, that no such offence to the Jews had then been given, by the preaching of a doctrine so offensive to them as that of the divinity of Christ must have been. Maxim 12, 13. 3. As no Jew had originally any idea of their Messiah being more than a man, and as the apostles and the first Christians had certainly the same idea at first concerning Jesus, it may be supposed that, if ever they had been informed that Jesus was not a man, but either God himself, or the maker of the world under God, we should have been able to trace the time and the circumstances in which so great a discovery was made to them; and also that we should have perceived the effect which it had upon their minds; at least by some change in their manner of speaking concerning him. But nothing of this kind is to be found in the Gospels, in the book of Acts, or in any of the Epistles. We per ceive |