them held that he had no natural father, but had a miraculous birth*. Epiphanius, in his account of the Nazarenes (and the Jewish christians never went by any other name) makes no mention of any of them believing the divinity of Christ, in any sense of the word. It is particularly remarkable that Hegefippus, in giving an account of the herefies of his time, though he mentions the Carpocratians, Valentinians, and others who were generally termed Gnoftics (and who held that Christ had a pre-existence, and was man only in appearance) not only makes no mention of this fuppofed heresy of the Nazarenes or Ebionites, but fays that, in his travels to Rome, where he spent fome time with Anicetus, and visited the bishops of other fees, he found that they all held the fame doctrine, that was taught in the law, by the prophets, and by our Lord t. What could this be but the proper unitarian doctrine, held by the Jews, and which he himself had been taught, though he had, no doubt, a particular view to the tenets of the Gnoftics which appeared in the earliest age, and which were ftrongly reprobated by the apoftles and their followers? That Eufebius doth not give this account of the primitive christian faith, is no wonder, con • Ibid. p. 125. † Eufebii. Hift. L. iv. C. xxii. p. 182. fidering fidering his prejudice against the unitarians of his own time. He speaks of the Ebionites, as perfons whom a malignant dæmon had brought into his power*, and though he speaks of them as holding that Jefus was the fon of Jofeph, as well as of Mary, he speaks with no less virulence of the opinion of those of his time, who believed the miraculous conception, calling their herefy madness. Valefius, the translator of Eufebius, was of opinion that the hiftory of Hegefippus was neglected and loft by the ancients, on account of the errors it contained, and these errors could be no other than the unitarian doctrine. It is poffible also, that it might be less esteemed on account of the very plain unadorned style, in which all the antients fay it was written. Almost all the ancient writers who speak of what they call the heretics of the two first centuries, fay that they were of two kinds, the first thofe who thought that Chrift was a man only in appearance, and the other that he was a mere mant. Tertullian calls the former Docete, and the latter Ebionites. Austin fpeaking of the fame two fects, fays, that the former believed Chrift to be God, but denied that he was man, whereas the latter believed him to be man, but denied that he was God. Of this latter opinion Austin owns that he himself was, till he became Ib. L. iii. C. xxvii. p. 121. acquainted acquainted with the writings of Plato, which in his time were translated into Latin, and in which he learned the doctrine of the Logos. Now that this fecond herefy, as the later writers called it, was really no herefy at all, but the plain fimple truth of the gospel, may be clearly inferred from the apostle John taking no notice at all of it, though he cenfures the former, who believed Chrift to be a man only in appearance, in the feverest manner. And that this was the only herefy that gave him any alarm, is evident from his first epistle chap. iv. 3, where he fays that every spirit which confeffes that Jefus Chrift is come in the flesh (by which he must have meant, in oppofition to the Gnoftics, is truly a man) is of God. On the other hand, he fays, every spirit which confeffes not that Jefus Chrift is come of the flesh, is not of God, and this is that fpirit of Antichrift, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world. For this was the first corruption of the christian religion by the maxims of heathen philofophy, and which proceeded afterwards till christianity was brought to a ftate little better than paganism. That chriftian writers in later times fhould imagine that this apoftle alluded to the unitarian herefy, or that of the Ebionites, in the introduction to his gofpel, is not to be wondered at; at; as nothing is more common than for men to interpret the writings of others according to their own previous ideas and conceptions of things. On the contrary, it seems very evident that, in that introduction, the apostle alludes to the very fame system of opinions which he had cenfured in his epiftle, the fundamental principle of which was, that, not the fupreme Being himself, but an emanation from him, to which some gave the name of Logos, was the maker of all things; whereas he there affirms that the Logos by, which all things were made, was not a being diftinct from God, but God himself, that is, an attribute of God, or the divine power and wisdom. The unitarians of the third century charged the orthodox with introducing a new and strange interpretation of the word Logos by supposing it to mean Christ*. That very fyftem, indeed, which made Christ to have been the eternal reafon, or Logos of the Father, did not, probably, exift in the time of the apostle John; but was introduced from the principles of platonifm afterwards. But the Valentinians, who were only a branch of the Gnoftics, made great use of the fame term, not only denominating by it one of the mons in the system described by Irenæus, but also one of them that was endowed by all the other cons See Beaufobre, Hiftorie de Manicheisme, vol. i. p. 540. with fome extraordinary gift, to which perfon they gave the name of Jefus, Saviour, Christ, and Logos*. The word Logos was alfo frequently used by them as fynonymous to on, in general, or an intelligence that fprung, mediately or immediately, from the divine effence +. It is, therefore, almost certain, that the apostle John had frequently heard this term made ufe of, in fome erroneous representations of the fyftem of chriftianity that were current in his time, and therefore he might choose to introduce the fame term in its proper sense, as an attribute of the deity or God himself, and not a diftinct being that fprung from him. And this writer is not to be blamed if, afterwards, that very attribute was perfonified in a different manner, and not as a figure of speech, and confequently his language was made to convey a very different meaning from that which he affixed to it. Athanafius himfelf was fo far from denying that the primitive jewish church was properly unitarian, maintaining the fimple humanity and not the divinity of Chrift, that he endeavours to account for it by faying, "that all the Jews were fo firmly perfuaded that their Meffiah *Opera L. i. Sec. iv. p. 14. + Beaufobre, vol. i, p. 571. * De Sententia Dionyfii, Opera, vol. i. p. 553. << was |