at once; frankly acknowledging any mistakes I shall appear to have fallen into, and vindicating whatever I shall think capable of it, and deserving it.

As this is a controversy that will probably have lasting consequences, let all who engage in it, on either side, be careful to acquit themselves in proportion to the character which they apprehend they have at stake; but above all, let truth be our great object. Our readers will easily perceive whether it be so or not. We shall sooner deceive ourselves than them. And least of all can we impose upon that great Being who is the God of truth, who secretly guides all our pursuits, and whose excellent purposes will be answered by them, with whatever views we may engage in them,

LETTERS

TO THE

ARCHDEACON OF ST. ALBAN'S.

AN INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

REV. SIR,

In the course of our controversy, you maintained that there was a church of trinitarian Jewish christians at Jerusalem after the time of Adrian; and as the account that Origen gives of the state of things in his time does not admit of the existence of such a church, you scrupled not to say, that "he had recourse to the wilful and deliberate allegation of a notorious falsehood." This you did on so little foundation, that I charged you with being a falsifier of history, and a defamer of the character of the dead.

On this article you have thought proper (notwithstanding your previously declared resolution to the contrary) to make your defence, in which you produce five passages from ancient writers, two from Origen himself, two from Jerom, and one from Epiphanius. In these Letters I undertake to show that, though you have taken eighteen months to write, and to revise your Remarks, you have grossly misunderstood, or misapplied, all the passages, so that not one of them is to your purpose, and my charge still remains in its full force. For the justness of my interpretation of the

passages in question, I appeal to all who have any pretensions to scholarship, in this or any other country, and in this public manner I call upon you to vindicate your own.

On this article, at least, an article deliberately selected by yourself, let the controversy between us come to a fair issue. Nothing has been or shall be wanting to it on my part; and therefore the Public will certainly expect your explicit and speedy answer.

I am, Reverend Sir,

Your very humble Servant,

BIRMINGHAM, June 1, 1786.

J. PRIESTLEY.

REV. SIR,

LETTER I.

Of the Veracity of Origen.

AFTER having indulged your indolence, as you say, eighteen months, I am happy to find that, notwithstanding your opinion of my manifest insufficiency as your antagonist, (which you observe "left you at liberty to indulge yourself without seeming to desert your cause,") there was something in my Letters to you that has at length roused you to make a reply. To me this is a very high gratification. For, my predominant disposition not being indolence, I rejoice in any circumstance that contributes to keep the subject of our controversy in view; being confident that nothing but a continued attention to it is requisite to a

speedy decision in favour of the cause that I have espoused, which I cannot help considering as of the greatest importance to the cause of christianity itself.

I should have been more pleased if you had pursued the discussion of every article in debate between us; but, as you have thought proper to confine yourself chiefly to what relates to the orthodoxy of the primitive Jewish church, I must do the same, first considering what you have advanced in order to impeach the veracity of Origen, and then the testimonies of Epiphanius and Jerom, as evidences of the existence of a whole church of orthodox Jews at Jerusalem after the time of Adrian.

"In the second book against Celsus," (to use your own words, p. 22.) "near the beginning of the book, Origen asserts of the Hebrew christians of his own times, without exception, that they had not abandoned the laws and customs of their ancestors, and that for that reason they were called Ebionites." This is also the appellation that he gives to all the Jewish christians, of whom he makes two classes, one of them believing the miraculous conception of Jesus, and the other denying it; but neither of them admitting his divinity.

This testimony of such a person as Origen to the unitarianism of all the Jewish christians in his time, goes so near to prove the unitarianism of the grea body of Jewish christians, and consequently of th christian church in general, in the time of the apostles that I do not wonder at your wishing to set it aside and it is so full and express, that you have no oth way of doing it than by maintaining that this most r spectable man knowingly asserted an untruth. Y even add that you would not take his evidence up

oath. Indeed, this writer was so circumstanced, in consequence of living so near Judæa, and sometimes in it, that he could not but have known whether there was any considerable body of Jewish christians who believed the doctrine of the trinity, and who had abandoned the customs of their ancestors, or not; so that, if what he asserted be an untruth, it must have been a wilful one, and (as serving the purpose of his argument) a deliberate one.

There are, however, some circumstances attending this charge of a wilful falsehood against Origen, that I should have thought might have made you pause before you had advanced it so confidently as you have done.

The general character of Origen makes the supposition highly improbable. For he was a man not more distinguished by his genius and learning, (in which he had confessedly no superior in the age in which he lived,) than he was by his integrity and his firmness in the cause of christian truth; and when, in a subsequent age, his opinions were deemed to be heretical, his greatest enemies left his moral character unimpeached. In such esteem was he universally held, that, as Eusebius informs us, it was generally said of him, "As was his speech, such was his conduct; and as was his conduct, such was his speech *:" his eloquence and the virtues of his life corresponding to each other. And et this is the man whose evidence, because it makes against yourself, you declare that you would not admit upon oath.

Had the testimony of Origen to the unitarianism of

Οἷον γουν τον λογον τοιονδε φασι τον τρόπον· και οἷον τον τρόπον Tolv de xai Tov λoyov ETTEDEIXVUTO. Euseb. Hist. 1. vi. cap. 3. p. 261.