Had we had no written history of our Saviour's life, or of the preaching of the apoftles, or only fome very concise one; ftill fo very extraordinary an article as this would hardly have been unknown, or have paffed unrecorded; much lefs when the history is fo full and circumftantial as it is.

Had there been any pretence for imagining that the Jews in our Saviour's time had any knowledge of the doctrine of the trinity, and that they expected the second perfon in it in the character of their Meffiah, the question I propose to you would have been needlefs. But nothing can be more evident than that, whatever you may fancy with refpect to more ancient times, every notion of the trinity was obliterated from the minds of the Jews in our Saviour's time. It is, therefore, not only a curious, but a ferious and important queftion, When was it introduced, and by what steps? I have answered it on my hypothesis of its being an innovation and a corruption of the chriftian doctrine; do you the fame on your idea of its being an effential part of it.

I am, &c.

LETTER VI.

Of the Perfonification of the Logos.

DEAR SIR,

HAVING confidered all that you have advanced concerning the antiquity of the unitarian doctrine, I proceed to attend to what you obferve concerning the perfonification of the Logos by the platonizing chriftians: for that many of them did platonize you are far from denying. "If," you fay, p. 50." he hath fucceeded no better in the proof "of his third affertion, concerning the platonic chrif"tians of the second age, the inventors, as he would "have it, of our Lord's divinity; that the divinity "which they set up was only of the secondary fort, "which was admitted by the Arians, including nei"ther eternity nor any proper neceffity of existence; "having the mere name of divinity, without any "thing of the real form: if the proof of this third "affertion fhould be found to be equally infirm with

that of the other two, his notion of the gradual "progress of opinions from the mere Unitarian "doctrine to the Arian, and from the Arian doc"trine to the Athanafian faith, must be deemed a " mere dream or fiction in every part."

In the first place I must set you right with respect to my own idea, which you have totally misconceived, though you have undertaken to refute F

it

it, and this ftrange mistake of your's runs through the whole of your work. These platonizing chriftians who perfonified the Logos were not Arians: for their Logos was an attribute of the Father, and not any thing that was created of nothing, as the Arians held Chrift to have been. It is well known, as Beaufobre observes, that they were not Arians, but the orthodox, that platonized. Conftantine, as I have observed, vol. ii. p. 488. in his oration to the fathers of the council of Nice, fpeaks in commendation of Plato, as having taught the doctrine of a second God, derived from the fupreme God, and fubfervient to his will,

Among the proofs of the origin of the Son, according to the early orthodox writers, I first quoted a paffage in Athenagoras, which you tranf late fomewhat differently from me; but not so as to affect my conclufion from it. For he evidently afferts that the Logos was eternal in God, only because God was always a0yx, rational, which entirely excludes proper personification. See Athenagoras, p. 82. Can reafon, as it exifts in man, be callen a perfon, merely because man is a rational being?

that

Befides, this is the only one of all my authorities, you have thought proper to examine; whereas there are others which you have overlooked fo plain and determinate, that it is impoffible for you to interpret them otherwife than I have done; as they evidently imply, that it depended upon the

Father's

Father's will that the Logos fhould have a proper perfonification, and become a Son, with refpect to him. The paffages which I have quoted from Tertullian and Lactantius, vol. i. p. 28. whofe orthodoxy you cannot queftion, I call upon you particularly to confider.

There is a paffage in Tertullian which fhews how ready the platonizing Christians were to revert to the idea of an attribute of God in their use of

the word Logos. "We have faid that God made "the universe by his word, reason, and power; "and it appears that among your philofophers,

alfo, the Logos, that is, fpeech, and reason, was "the maker of the univerfe. For this Zeno fup"pofed to be the maker and difpofer of all things, "that the fame is called fate and God, and the "mind of Jupiter, and the neceffity of all things"." The Platonic trinity, at least the second person in it, probably had its origin in perfonification; and in this the Chriftians were too ready too follow them, by converting the Logos of St. John into a proper perfon.

You acknowledge, p. 56, that these writers platonized, and this you fay was common to Athenagoras, and them all. "If any thing," you

Jam ediximus Deum univerfitatem hanc mundi verbo, et ratione, et virtute molitum. Aqud veftros quoque fapientes, λoyov, id eft fermonem, atque rationem, conftat artificem videri univerfitatis. Hunc enim Zeno determinat factitatorem, qui cuncta in difpofitione formaverit; eundem et fatum vocari, et deum, et animum Jovis, *t neceffitatem omnium rerum. Apologeticus, fect. xxi, p. 19,

F 2

Lay,

fay, p. 56. " be jufty reprehenfible in the notions of "the platonic chriftians, it is this conceit, which "feems to be common to Athenagoras, with them

all, and is a key to the meaning of many obfcure "paffages in their writings; that the external display "of the powers of the fon in the business of creation, "is the thing intended in the fcripture language, "under the figure of his generation; a conceit which "feems to have no certain foundation in holy writ, "and no authority in the opinions and the doctrines "of the preceding age; and it seems to have

betrayed fome of thofe, who were the most wed"ded to it, into the ufe of a very improper "language; as if a new relation had taken place "between the firft and the fecond perfon, when the "creative powers were firft exerted."

You add, after apologizing for the conduct of the platonizing fathers, "the converfion of an attri"bute into a perfon, whatever Dr. Priestley may "imagine, is a notion to which they were entire "ftrangers." I answer that it is not poffible, either by the use of plain words, or figures, to express this notion, to which you fay they were entire ftrangers, more clearly than they do. For, according to the most definite language a man can use, the Logos, as existing in the father, prior to the creation, was according to them, the fame thing in him that reafon is in man, which is certainly no proper person, diftinguishable from the man himfelf. Will you fay that the man is one perfon or thing, and his reafon another, not comprehended