Let us eat This was the

by his own power, and not by a power derived from the Creator. Virtue, moreover, will not be rewarded, nor vice punished in a future state, because there will be no resurrection of the dead; there will be no resurrection of the dead, because the resurrection of Christ, who, by nature, is su perior to death, is no proof of the resurrection of beings, who, by nature, are subject to death. There is therefore no life to come: and drink, for to-morrow we die. sum and purport of their Gospel. The Gnostics borrowed the above impious principles from the Heathens, and came to the same conclusion in regard to Christianity. Tiberius, Plutarch, Suetonius, Hadrian, and Alexander Severus, rejected the Gospel of Christ, because they accounted, to their own satisfaction, for his miracles by supposing his divinity.

The philosophers who flourished in the second century and afterwards, and who formed the celebrated school of Alexandria, had recourse to the same reasoning; and there is reason to believe, that they exerted all their reputation and talents to destroy Christianity, upon no other ground than that the founder was himself supposed to be a supernatural being.

When Christianity was first proposed to the Gentiles, it was strongly opposed, because it was new and hitherto unknown. The greatest respect was paid to the wise men of Greece, and other countries; and whatever doctrine claimed the attention of mankind, not taught or at least not sanctioned by them, was was rejected with contempt. This objection was sorely felt by the learned advocates of the gospel, and, in order to

remove it, they employed all their talents and learning to discover and to display certain analogies between the Christian doctrine, and the sentiments of the Greek philosophers. In this attempt the writings of Plato, of Heraclitus, and Aristotle; the tenets of Pythagoras and Socrates, were appealed to and examined, in deciding on the credibility of the Christian faith. And here its supporters were imperceptibly betrayed into the two-fold error of making the philosophers, by a forced interpretation, to speak the sentiments of Christians, and on the other hand, by the same violence, to make the Christian scriptures speak the language of heathen philosophy. The Christian teachers among the Gen

* The temptation to this erroneous mode of reasoning, operated most powerfully at the commencement of the Gospel, when its novelty was mostly felt, and when it was yet unsupported by great numbers. I give the following from Justin Martyr:

"Since we Christians hold some opinions similar to those poets and philosophers, who are held in esteem by you, why are we unjustly hated beyond all other men? For in saying that all things are made by God, we say the same thing with Plato; that the world will be destroyed with fire, we entertain the notion of the Stoics; that the souls of the wicked shall be punished after death, while those of the virtuous shall be free from punishment and continue happy, we advance the sentiments of your poets and philosophers; that we ought not to worship the works of men's hands, we concur in the same thing with Menander the Comic, and others who assert that the Creator is greater than the work made to represent him; and when we declare that the word of God, which is the first offspring of God, without human seed, become a man, and is Jesus Christ our Master; that he was crucified, died, rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, we declare nothing new beyond what you advance of the sons of Jupiter, &c.

tiles had been educated in the heathen religion, and therefore were insensibly disposed to adopt the divinity of Christ, as the natural dictate of heathenism. The adoption of it moreover removed the obloquy to which Jesus was exposed, as an obscure and untutored teacher, and held him forth to the world in all the splendour of a celestial origin. They observed that the term logos, or word, which strictly denotes the perfections of God, is in the New Testament applied to Christ. It is applied, however, not to his person,

Apol. Prima, p. 31. ed. Thirlby. No sensible man can peruse this and such like passages without regretting the unhappy state of things that could betray any friend of the Gospel to dictate it. Philo and Josephus were men wiser than Justin Martyr; and even they were not able to resist the same unfortunate bias. The former has made much use of the Greek poets and philosophers, in his attempts to shelter from the disgrace of novelty, and from persecution the Gospel and its advocates. Josephus on many occasions felt the necessity of pursuing the same erroneous course. The immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punishments, were the great doctrines by which the Jewish believers allured men to receive their profession. Against this allurement, the Greeks and Romans had the strongest prejudice; and Josephus endeavours to remove it by the following remarks. "The Esseans think, and in this agree with them the sons of Greece, that for virtuous souls are reserved a constitution and a country, never harassed by storms, nor hails, nor inclement heats, but which is cooled by eternal zephyrs from the ocean: while the bad are separated into a pit, dark, tempestuous, and full of endless torments. From this notion the Greeks appear to have adopted their island of the blessed, consecrated to those brave men, whom they call heroes or demigods; and the region of the impious in Hades, appropriated to the souls of the wicked, where fable represents Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Ixion in torments." See Eccles. Res. p. 55. or J. W. Lib. ii, 8.

but to his office, and intended to designate his divine commission under a name expressive of those attributes, which proved the truth of its divinity. The fathers overlooked the obvious distinction, which subsists between the personal nature, and the ministerial character of Jesus Christ; and thinking that he was personally meant, where he is said to be the logos, or word of God, they considered him as a second God, and endeavoured to discover the same, or a similar doctrine, in the sentiments and language of Plato.

The adversaries of the gospel must at first have objected to these conclusions; but they soon observed that such conclusions tended to overthrow, instead of establishing the new religion. The doctrine of the logos as a second god, and thence, by the personification of the holy Spirit, the doctrine of the trinity in unity were in process of time, insisted upon by its mistaken advocates, as the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. Its enemies did not then fail to observe that, if this doctrine be the leading article of Christianity, and, if the same doctrine may be found in the writings of the Greek philosophers, it followed that Christianity itself, as a divine revelation, was altogether unnecessary. This reasoning appears to have originated in the platonic school of Alexandria. The founders of that school artfully conceded to the Christian teachers, that the leading doctrines of the gospel are taught in the writings of Plato, and even in the pagan mythology. They went even farther; pursuing the path pointed out to them by the advocates of Christianity, they affected to develope and to

prove the same doctrines from the same unpure sources. Having done this, they removed, as they supposed, the chief pillars of the gospel, and silently left it with the process of time to fall to the ground, or to moulder into mere heathenism.

The principal of those who distinguished themselves in this work of malice and falsehood, was Plotinus," whose writings," says Dr. Morgan, are to be considered as philosophical lectures, in which he undertakes, not to investigate, but to prove and illustrate certain doctrines by a variety of arguments and statements. The principal of those doctrines, to which his chief attention was directed throughout all his works is, a trinity in the divine nature. This doctrine so conspicuous and important in the Christian dispensation, he endeavours to prove by abstract reasoning, to support by the authority of Plato, and to illustrate by mythological stories. *"

The works of Plato are happily still extant; and whoever examines them will find that nothing analogous to the doctrine of the Logos or that of the Trinity can be found in them. "After a minute examination," says the learned Dr. Morgan, who was himself a believer in that doctrine, "of the writings of Plato, I cannot find any thing, which sufficiently proves him to have had even an obscure knowledge of the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity. None of his immediate followers taught it: none of his personal enemies or philosophical rivals urged it as an objection

Dr. Morgan's Investigation of the trinity of Plato,

p. 135.