account of this excommunication of the Ebionites by the fathers, mentioned by Jerom; but I think it very possible that it might have been nothing more than what was done by Victor, bishop of Rome, when he excommunicated all the Eastern churches (of whom the Ebionites were the chief) because they observed the Jewish rules in fixing the time of Easter; so that in this excommunication no mention might be made of any other tenet or custom of theirs, besides this instance of their obstinate adherence to Judaism. The rule laid down by Victor was afterwards confirmed by the Council of Nice, but I believe without any sentence of excommunication on those who did not conform to it. If any person will give me any more light with respect to this subject, I shall be truly thankful for it.

III.

On the Conduct of the Apostles, p. 58.

To these observations I would add, that, as among the twelve apostles there must have been men of very different tempers and abilities, it is not probable that they should all have agreed in conducting themselves upon the plan of not divulging the doctrine of the divinity of their master till their hearers were sufficiently persuaded of his messiahship. Some of them would hardly have been capable of so much refinement, and they would certainly have differed about the time when it was proper to divulge so great a secret. Besides, the mother of Jesus, and many other persons of both sexes, must have been acquainted with it. For that this secret was strictly confined to the twelve apostles will hardly be maintained. And yet we have no account

either of their instructions to act in this manner, or of any difference of opinion or of conduct with respect to it.

It might have been expected also, that the information that a person whom they first conversed with as a man, was either God himself, or the maker of the world under God, should have been received with some degree of doubt and hesitation by some or other of them; especially as they had been so very hard to be persuaded of the truth of his resurrection, though they had been so fully apprized of it before hand. And yet, in all the history of the apostles, there is the same profound silence concerning this circumstance, and every other depending on the whole scheme, as if no such thing had ever had any existence but in the imaginations of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and those other fathers who maintained it; which I therefore believe to have been the case, and that they invented this hypothesis in order to account for the early rise and general spread of the unitarian doctrine, which they could not deny, and of which it may therefore be considered as very good evidence.

IV.

Of the Excommunication of Theodotus by Victor.

It may be objected to the evidence of Tertullian concerning the major part of christians being unitarians, that about the same time Victor, bishop of Rome, excommunicated Theodotus of Byzantium for denying the divinity of Christ; which it may be thought he would not have ventured to do if the popular prejudices had not been with him in this business. I do

not think, however, that there is any contrariety between these two facts, when the circumstances attend. ing them are duly considered.

Tertullian lived in Africa, where there seems to have been a greater inclination for the unitarian doctrine than there was at Rome, as we may collect from the remarkable popularity of Sabellius in that country, and other circumstances. Athanasius also, who complains of many persons of low understanding favouring the same principles, was of the same country, residing chiefly in Egypt, though he had seen a great part of the christian world, and was no doubt well acquainted with it*.

We should likewise consider the peculiarly violent character of Victor, who was capable of doing what few other persons would have attempted; being the same person who excommunicated all the Eastern churches because they did not observe Easter at the same time that the Western churches did; for which he was much censured even by many bishops in the West.

Such an excommunication as this of Theodotus was

* I think it very probable that in the Western parts of the Roman empire in general, there were always fewer unitarians than in the Eastern parts; because the gospel was not preached so early in the Western parts, perhaps not to any great extent till the greater part of the clergy were infected with platonism. This might have been the case, especially in so remote a country as Gaul, where Irenæus resided, and may account for his treating the doctrine of the Ebionites with more severity than Justin, who lived in the East, where they were more numerous. On the same principles we may account for the prevalence of Arianism in all the barbarous nations bordering on the Roman empire. They had been converted to christianity chiefly by persecuted Arians. But Arianism was at length suppressed by the influence of the church of Rome, which also began to excom. municate the proper unitarians in the person of Theodotus.

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by no means the same thing with cutting a person off from communion with any particular church with which he had been used to communicate. Theodotus was a stranger at Rome, and it is very possible that the body of the christian church at Rome did not interest themselves in the affair, the bishop and his clergy only approving of it. For I readily grant that, though there were some learned unitarians in all the early ages of christianity, the majority of the clergy were not so.

Theodotus, besides being a stranger at Rome, was a man of science, and is said by the unitarians to have been well received by Victor at first; so that it is very possible that the latter might have been instigated to what he did by some quarrel between them, of which we have no account.

Upon the whole, therefore, though Victor excommunicated this Theodotus, who was a stranger, and had perhaps made himself conspicuous, so as to have given some cause of umbrage or jealousy to him, it is very possible that a great proportion of the lower kind of people, who made no noise or disturbance, might continue in communion with that church, though they were known to be unitarians.

I am not disposed to take any advantage of Dr. Horsley's supposition, that Theodotus might hold the unitarian doctrine in some more offensive form than that of the ancient Ebionites, and therefore might be more liable to excommunication; because both Tertullian and Theodoret say that he believed the miraculous conception, and it is only Epiphanius (who lived long after the time of Tertullian) who asserts the con

trary*.

It is indeed pretty certain that the opinion of

* Tillemont's Memoirs, vol. vii. p. 116.

Jesus being the son of Joseph began soon to give way to the authority of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and that it became extinct long before the doctrine of the simple humanity of Christ.

V.

Of Justin Martyr's Account of the Knowledge of some Christians of low Rank.

It is likewise said that the testimony of Tertullian is expressly contradicted by Justin Martyr*, who, in giving an account of the circumstances in which the platonic philosophy agreed, as he thought, with the doctrine of Moses, but with respect to which he supposed that Plato had borrowed from Moses, mentions the following particulars; viz. " the power which was after the first God, or the Logos," assuming the figure of a cross in the universe, borrowed from the fixing up of a serpent (which represented Christ) in the form of a cross in the wilderness; and a third principle, borrowed from the spirit which Moses said moved on the face of the water at the creation; and also the notion of some fire or conflagration, borrowed from some figurative expressions in Moses relating to the anger of God waxing hot. "These things," he says, "we do not borrow from others, but all others from us. With us you may hear and learn these things from those who do not know the form of the letters, who are rude and barbarous of speech, but wise and understanding in mind; and from some who are even lame and blind so that you may be convinced that these things are not said by human wisdom, but by the power of God."

*Edit. Thirlby, p. 88.