As it has been very much my object to trace effects to their causes, and I consider the human mind, and consequently all human actions, to be subject to laws as regular as those which operate in my laboratory, (for want of knowing or attending to which Mr. Gibbon has egregiously failed in his account of the causes of the spread of christianity, and you in this controversy,) I had framed an hypothesis to account for Mr. Badcock's censure of what I said concerning Eusebius; but not being quite satisfied with it I rejected it. However, notwithstanding strong appearances, I am still willing to hope that the misrepresentation, though exceed. ingly gross, was not directly wilful.

I am, &c.

LETTER XIX.

Miscellaneous Articles, and the Conclusion. REV. SIR,

DISPOSED as you are to make the most of every trifling oversight that you can discover in my History, and of every concession that I make to you, I still have no ob jection to acknowledge any real mistake that I have fallen into, important or unimportant; and I shall certainly correct all such in any future edition of my work; and likewise, as far as I am able, in the trans

in his own imagination, as the Archdeacon afterwards found to his great disappointment and chagrin. And the remainder of this controversy is occupied chiefly in elaborate and ingenious but unsuccess ful efforts to extricate himself from the difficulties in which he had involved himself by hastily adopting the unfounded positions and calumnies of Mosheim.-Ev.

lations that are making of it into foreign languages. I shall now make two acknowledgements, and let our readers judge of their importance; and how little my History loses for want of being perfectly correct in those particulars.

I had said that "Valesius was of opinion that the history of Hegesippus was neglected and lost, because it was observed to favour the unitarian doctrine;' whereas I should have said, "on account of the errors which it contained, and that those errors could not be supposed to be any other than those of the unitarians;" and if I had consulted the passage at the time, I certainly should have expressed myself in that more cautious manner. But of what consequence is this circumstance to my great argument? Mr. Badcock, having looked for the passage to which I refer, and not being able to find it, seems to have imagined that I had no such passage to produce. He therefore, after his insolent manner, challenges me to produce it, and to put him to shame. That I believe to be impossible, otherwise it would have been effectually done in my Remarks on the Monthly Review; at least, by my notice of his most shameful conduct with respect to my censure of Eusebius, p. 21, of which he says nothing at all in his Letter to me. I suppose he thought it not to be regarded. However the passage which I refer to, and which sufficiently answers my purpose, is as follows: "Moreover, those books of Clement contained a short and compendious exposition of both the testaments, as Photius, in his Bibliotheca witnesses; but on account of the errors with which they abounded being negligently kept, they were at length lost; nor was there any other reason, in my opinion, why the

books of Papias, Hegesippus, and others of the ancients are now lost *."

You, Sir, however, have observed this passage, and you say, p. 4, "Valesius has indeed expressed opinion that the work of Hegesippus was neglected by the ancients on account of errors which it contained. But what the errors might be which might occasion this neglect is a point upon which Valesius is silent. And what right have you to suppose that the unitarian doctrine was the error which Valesius ascribed to Hegesippus more than to Clemens Alexandrinus, upon whose last work of the Hypotyposes he passes the same judgement?"

I answer, that there were no errors of any conse. quence ascribed to that early age besides those of the Gnostics and of the unitarians. The former certainly were not those that Valesius could allude to with respect to Hegesippus, because this writer mentions the Gnostics very particularly as heretics, but makes no mention of unitarians at all; though they certainly existed, and I doubt not constituted the great body of unlearned christians in his time, which is one circumstance that, together with his being a Jewish christian, (all of whom are expressly said to have been Ebionites, and none of them to have believed the divinity of Christ,) leads me to conclude that he was an unitarian himself. Though Clemens Alexandrinus was not an unitarian, yet he never calls unitarians heretics; and

* Porro ii Clementis libri continebant brevem et compendiariam utriusque testamenti expositionem, ut testatur Photius in Bibliotheca. Ob errores autem quibus scatebant, negligentius habiti, tandem perierunt. Nec alia, meo quidem judicio, causa est, cur Papiæ et Hegesippi, aliorumque veterum libri, interciderint. In Euseb. Hist. lib. v. cap. 11.

since in his accounts of heretics in general, which are pretty frequent in his works, he evidently means the Gnostics only, and therefore virtually excludes unitarians from that description of men; it is by no means improbable but that, in those writings of his which are lost, he might have said things directly in favour of unitarians.

In this passage Valesius also mentions the writings of Papias as having, in his opinion, been lost for the same reason. Now Papias has certainly been supposed to be an Ebionite. Mr. Whiston has made this very probable from a variety of circumstances. See his Account of the Ceasing of Miracles, p. 18. In the same tract he gives his reasons for supposing Hegesippus to have been an Ebionite, and he expresses his wonder, "that he should have had the good fortune to be so long esteemed by the learned for a catholic," p. 21, &c. In this Mr. Whiston may be supposed to have been sufficiently impartial, as he was an Arian, and expresses great dislike of the Ebionites; as, indeed, Arians always have done.

I also acknowledge that I ought not to have exempted Epiphanius (as you have observed, p. 4, though with more severity than the case required) from the impropriety of charging Noetus with being a Patripassian. But this also is a circumstance of as little consequence to the main argument as the former, though my negligence with respect to it, I frankly own, was greater. I had myself discovered the mistake, and should have corrected it, if your Letters to me had never appeared. That the Patripassian notion was injuriously charged upon the unitarians of antiquity is sufficiently shown by Beausobre, who was himself a trinitarian and a man of

learning if ever there was one. This charge was so common that, without any proper evidence whatever, all the unitarians are called Patripassians by one writer or other. Optatus even says that Ebion, the supposed father of the Ebionites, was a Patripassian*, though no early writer who mentions the Ebionites says any such thing of them.

I must, however, acknowledge that you have one just cause of triumph over me, and all the friends of free inquiry; but this also, as with respect to every other advantage which you have gained, you exult in too much, and make too great account of. The Monthly Review, which was formerly in our favour, is now completely yours. Your Charge, which contains the highest orthodoxy, and discovers the greatest spirit of church authority of any production in this age, has been examined before that tribunal, and been honoured with an unqualified approbation. And as to your present publication, which has no less merit of the same kind, its praises, I doubt not, are already sung, or at least set to music, and the whole choir of Reviewers, who have been unanimous in their condemnation of me, are ready to join the chorus on this occasion.

You plead your right, p. 78, to make the most of this your new acquisition; and in this you think your sell justified by my conduct in the publication of small and cheap pamphlets, for the purpose of disseminating my principles among the lower and poorer class of people, though, in my opinion, the two cases are very different indeed. This post, however, which we were once in possession of, you and your friends have now

* Ut Hebion qui argumentabatur patrem passum esse, non filium. Lib. iv. p. 91.