formity to his authority and example, and in a manner of which he would himself testify the most entire approbation if he were to appear in person upon earth.

They who believe in the proper humanity of Jesus Christ claim the title of Unitarians, not only because custom, the arbiter of language, has ever since the Reformation annexed, and till very lately limited, the appellation to that denomination of christians, but more especially, because they conceive that they are almost the only body of christians who practically maintain the important doctrine of the divine Unity in its full and just extent, and who exclude every creature, without exception, from every degree of participation in those ATTRIBUTES, WORKS, and HONOURS, which reason and revelation ascribe and appropriate to the ONLY GOD.

The Unitarians think it superfluous to produce any arguments to prove that a person who is repeatedly called a man, who had every appearance of a human being, who was born, who grew, who lived, who conversed, who felt, who acted, who suffered, and who died like other men, who was universally believed to be a man by all who saw and conversed with him, and was addressed and spoken of as a human being by all his contemporaries, whether friends or enemies, was really what he appeared and affirmed himself to be, truly and properly a man, and nothing more than a man. This is a fact which must be admitted without hesitation, unless the most unequivocal and decisive evidence can be produced to the contrary, And they think that a fact so astonishing, and so contrary to experience and analogy, as the incarnation of a superior spirit, is not to be received upon the authority of oblique hints, or of obscure, figurative, and ambiguous phraseology, but that it is reasonable to expect that the evidence

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of such a fact should be clear and decisive in proportion to its antecedent improbability.

Now the Unitarians profess, that after having carefully consulted and examined the Scriptures, they can find no such clear and satisfactory evidence. They observe, that there is no allusion at all to the supposed pre-existent state and superior nature of Jesus Christ, in three of the evangelists, or in the history of the Apostles' preaching, and of the first plantation of the Gospel contained in the Acts of the apostles; and that John is a very mystical writer, abounding in harsh metaphors and symbolical phraseology, very different from the simplicity which characterizes the other evangelists. Nor can they discern any traces of that surprise and astonishment which must have seized the minds of the disciples and companions of Jesus when it was first revealed to them that the master with whom they had so frequently and familiarly conversed, was the Lord their Maker, or at least a great celestial spirit in a human shape.

The Unitarians also plead, that by a diligent investigation of the Scripture language, by examining the connexion in which particular phrases occur, by a careful comparison of different passages, and by making Scripture its own interpreter, it is not difficult to show that the few phrases which, in contradiction to the general current of the Sacred Writings, are supposed to teach the superior nature and pre-existent state of Christ, if such texts are genuine, may justly be understood, and, by the established rules of fair and liberal criticism, ought to be interpreted in a sense consistent with his proper humanity.

Particularly, they profess to prove that those passages in which Jesus represents himself as having descended from heaven, signify nothing more than the divine origi nal of his doctrine: that where he is represented as the maker of all things, the new creation only is intended,

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that is, the new state of things which he was commissioned to introduce into the moral world; and that the creation of natural objects is no where attributed to Christ. Also, that if the title God be ever applied to Christ in the New Testament (which some deny), it is only in the sense in which Moses is said to have been a god to Pharaoh, that is, as being invested with a divine commission, and a power of working miracles in proof of it. They also observe, that the same, or even stronger expressions are applied to christians in general than those from which the deity of Christ is usual inferred. They maintain that the creation and support of the natural world and its inhabitants is uniformly ascribed to God; and that there is no evidence whatever to prove that Christ was personally concerned in any of the former dispensations of God to mankind, either to the patriarchs or to the Jews, but that the contrary is explicitly and repeatedly asserted in the Scriptures.

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The Unitarians maintain that those peculiar expressions, from which, what is called the doctrine of the eternal neration of the Son is inferred, may be clearly proved to signify nothing more than the superior dignity of his prophetical character as the promised Messiah, and the chief of the prophets of God.

They also remark, that the apostles, when speaking of Christ after his resurrection and ascension, use a kind of unqualified language concerning his person, which no Arian or Trinitarian would now adopt without much explanation and caution: such as, no doubt, the apostles themselves would have used, had they believed in the preexistence or deity of Christ.

Lastly, it has been stated by Dr. Priestley with irresistible evidence, that the Jewish christians almost universally, and a very great majority of the Gentile christians in the two first centuries, were believers in the proper humanity

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of Jesus Christ; some admitting and others rejecting the circumstance of his miraculous conception: and these primitive believers, having received the christian doctrine from the apostles and their immediate successors, must have had the best means of interpreting that obscure phraseology which in later ages has been applied to the support of those unscriptural opinions with which the vanity of heathen philosophy has corrupted and debased the purity and simplicity of the christian faith 1.

Against the Unitarian doctrine it is objected that our inquiries are to be directed not into the opinions of the early christians, whether converts from judaism or heathenism, for they were men fallible and prejudiced like ourselves, but into the natural and obvious meaning of the Scriptures ;-that the Scriptures were written for the use of plain illiterate men, and are therefore to be understood in their most obvious and popular sense ;-that, although it might not fall in with the design of every one of the sacred writers to discourse upon the pre-existence or divinity of Jesus Christ, nevertheless, this doctrine is taught in various passages of the New Testament in the clearest and most unambiguous language, such as cannot be wrested to any other meaning but by a mode of interpretation which would reduce every thing to uncertainty, and make all language useless ;-that this great doctrine is taught not in one or two passages only, or left to be inferred

1 See, upon this subject, Haynes on the Attributes of God. Lardner on the Logos. Cardale's True Doctrine concerning Christ. Lindsey's Apology and Sequel. Conversations on Christian Idolatry. Dr. Priestley's History of Corruptions of Christianity, History of Early Opinions, and Defences of Unitarianism. Cappe's Critical Remarks on Scripture, 2 vols. Simpson's Essays on the Language of Scripture. Belsham's Reply to Wilberforce, and Letters on Arianism. Dr. Carpenter's Unitarianism the Doctrine of the Gospel. The Notes to the Improved Version of the New Testament are intended chiefly to exhibit the most approved interpretations of the Unitarian expositors.

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from an equivocal expression here and there, but that it is expressly asserted in a great number of texts in the New Testament, and in a great variety of phraseology, and that it is frequently alluded to and reasoned upon as an unquestionable fact; that, one positive assertion of Jesus, or of his apostles inspired, or informed by him, is sufficient to overthrow every objection which may be urged from the antecedent improbability of the fact, or from its contrariety to the general analogy of nature and course of events, an objection which is equally applicable to all other miracles;-that, it is gratuitous assumption to affirm that the only object of the mission of Christ was to teach the doctrine of a future life, a doctrine which was so generally acknowledged, and which is so easily proved by rational deduction, as almost to supersede the necessity of divine revelation for this purpose alone;—that, the mind revolts at the idea of a human creature being appointed to the high office of raising the dead and judging the world, while the obvious propriety of assigning the offices of redeemer and judge to him who was the maker of the world, who supports and governs it, and who was the medium of all the moral dispensations of God to mankind, forms a strong presumptive argument in favour of the pre existent state and dignity, and of the superior nature of Jesus Christ;-and finally, that this doctrine is so plainly revealed in the Scriptures, that although it may have been called in question by a few speculative or interested men at different periods, from very early times, it has nevertheless commanded the belief of the great body of professing christians from the first promulgation of the christian religion to the present day.

It is further objected, that it is very arbitrary and unwarrantable in the Unitarians to strike out of the Scriptures whatever they find in it which is inconsistent with their own principles and hypotheses, and which they can

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