He is deposed,
A. D. 628.
Feb. 25.

and murdered by his son Siroes,

Feb. 28.

Twenty-two satraps, they styled themselves patriots, were tempted by the wealth and honours of a new reign to the soldiers, the heir of Chosroes promised an increase of pay; to the christians, the free exercise of their religion; to the captives, liberty and rewards; and to the nation, instant peace and the reduction of taxes. It was determined by the conspirators, that Siroes, with the ensigns of royalty, should appear in the camp; and if the enterprise should fail, his escape was contrived to the imperial court. But the new monarch was saluted with unanimous acclamations; the flight of Chosroes (yet where could he have fled?) was rudely arrested, eighteen sons were massacred before his face, and he was thrown into a dungeon, where he expired on the fifth day. The Greeks and modern Persians minutely describe how Chosroes was insulted, and famished, and tortured, by the command of an inhuman son, who so far surpassed the example of his father: but at the time of his death, what tongue would relate the story of the parricide? what eye could penetrate into the tower of darkness? According to the faith and mercy of his christian enemies, he sunk without hope into a still deeper abyss; and it will not be denied, that tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such infernal abodes. The glory of the house of Sassan ended with the life of Chosroes: his unnatural son enjoyed only eight months the fruit of his crimes and in the space of four years, the regal title was assumed by nine candidates, who disputed, with the sword or dagger, the fragments of an exhausted monarchy. Every province, and each city of Persia, was the scene of independence, of discord, and of blood, and the state of anarchy prevailed about eight years longer, till the factions were silenced and united under the common yoke of the Arabian caliphs.

empires,

A. D. 628. March, &c.

Treaty of peace As soon as the mountains became between the two passable, the emperor received the welcome news of the success of the conspiracy, the death of Chosroes, and the elevation of his eldest son to the throne of Persia. The authors of the revolution, eager to display their merits in the court or camp of Tauris, preceded the ambassadors of Siroes, who delivered the letters of their master to his brother the emperor of the Romans." In the language of the usurpers of every age, he imputes his own crimes to the Deity, and, without degrading his equal majesty,

p On the first rumour of the death of Chosroes, an Heracliad in two cantos was instantly published at Constantinople by George of Pisidia, (p. 97-105.) A priest and a poet might very properly exult in the damnation of the public enemy, (EμTEσOV EV Tаρтарw, V. 56.) but such mean revenge is unworthy of a king and a conqueror; and I am sorry to find so much black superstition (θεομαχος Χοσρόης έπεσε και επτω ματίσθη εις τα καταχθονία . . . εις το πυρ ακατασβεσον, &c.) in the letter of Heraclius: he almost applauds the parricide of Siroes as an act of piety and justice.

q The best oriental accounts of this last period of the Sassanian kings are found in Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 251-256.) who dissembles the parricide of Siroes, D'Herbelot, (Bibliothec. Orientale, p. 789.) and Assemanni. (Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. iii. p. 415-420.) The letter of Siroes in the Paschal Chronicle (p. 402.) unfortunately ends before he proceeds to business. The treaty appears in its execution in the histories of Theophanes and Nicephorus.

he offers to reconcile the long discord of the two nations, by a treaty of peace and alliance more durable than brass or iron. The conditions of the treaty were easily defined and faithfully executed. In the recovery of the standards and prisoners which had fallen into the hands of the Persians, the emperor imitated the example of Augustus: their care of the national dignity was celebrated by the poets of the times, but the decay of genius may be measured by the distance between Horace and George of Pisidia: the subjects and brethren of Heraclius were redeemed from persecution, slavery, and exile; but, instead of the Roman eagles, the true wood of the holy cross was restored to the importunate demands of the successor of Constantine. The victor was not ambitious of enlarging the weakness of the empire; the son of Chosroes abandoned without regret the conquests of his father; the Persians who evacuated the cities of Syria and Egypt were honourably conducted to the frontier, and a war which had wounded the vitals of the two monarchies, produced no change in their external and relative situation. The return of Heraclius from Tauris to Constantinople, was a perpetual triumph; and after the exploits of six glorious campaigns, he peaceably enjoyed the sabbath of his toils. After a long impatience, the senate, the clergy, and the people, went forth to meet their hero, with tears and acclamations, with olive branches and innumerable lamps: he entered the capital in a chariot drawn by four elephants; and as soon as the emperor could disengage himself from the tumult of public joy, he tasted more genuine satisfaction in the embraces of his mother and his son.$

The succeeding year was illustrated by a triumph of a very different kind, the restitution of the true cross to the holy sepulchre. Heraclius performed in person the pilgrimage of Jerusalem, the identity of the relic was verified by the discreet patriarch,t and this august ceremony has been commemorated by the annual festival of the exaltation of the cross. Before the emperor presumed to tread the consecrated ground, he was instructed to strip himself of the diadem and purple, the pomp and vanity of the world but in the judgment of his clergy, the persecution of the Jews was more easily reconciled with the precepts of the gospel. He again ascended his throne to receive the congratulations of the ambassadors of France and India: and the fame of Moses, Alexander, and Hercules," was eclipsed, in the popular estimation, by the superior merit and

s The burthen of Corneille's song,

"Montrez Heraclius au peuple qui l' attend,"

is much better suited to the present occasion. See his triumph in Theophanes, (p. 272, 273.) and Nicephorus, (p. 15, 16.) The life of the mother and tenderness of the son are attested by George of Pisidia. (Bell. Abar. 255, &c. p. 49.) The metaphor of the Sabbath is used, somewhat profanely, by these Byzantine christians.

t See Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A. D. 628. No. 1-4.) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 240-248.) Nicephorus. (Brev. p. 15.) The seals of the case had never been broken; and this preservation of the cross is ascribed (under God) to the devotion of queen Sira.

u George of Pisidia, Acroas. iii. de Expedit. contra Persas, 415, &c. and Heracleid, Acroas. i. 65-138. I neglect the meaner parallels of Daniel, Timotheus, &c.; Chosroes and the chagan were of course compared to Belshazzar, Pharaoh, the old serpent, &c.

glory of the great Heraclius. Yet the deliverer of the east was indigent and feeble. Of the Persian spoils, the most valuable portion had been expended in the war, distributed to the soldiers, or buried, by an unlucky tempest, in the waves of the Euxine. The conscience of the emperor was oppressed by the obligation of restoring the wealth of the clergy, which he had borrowed for their own defence: a perpetual fund was required to satisfy these inexorable creditors; the provinces, already wasted by the arms and avarice of the Persians, were compelled to a second payment of the same taxes; and the arrears of a simple citizen, the treasurer of Damascus, were commuted to a fine of one hundred thousand pieces of gold. The loss of two hundred thousand soldiers who had fallen by the sword, was of less fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and population, in this long and destructive war and although a victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius, the unnatural effort appears to have exhausted rather than exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some troops who advanced to its relief: an ordinary and trifling occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution. These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valour had emerged from the desert; and in the last eight years of his reign, Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from the Persians.

CHAP. XLVII.

Theological history of the doctrine of the incarnation. The human and divine nature of Christ. -Enmity of the patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople.-St. Cyril and Nestorius.-Third general council of Ephesus.-Heresy of Eutyches. -Fourth general council of Chalcedon.-Civil and ecclesiastical discord.—Intolerance of Justinian.-The three chapters.-The Monothelite conx Suidas (in Excerpt. Hist. Byzant. p. 46.) gives this number; but either the Persian must be read for the Isaurian war, or this passage does not belong to the emperor Heraclius.

a By what means shall I authenticate this previous inquiry, which I have studied to circumscribe and compress!-If I persist in supporting each fact or reflection by its proper and special evidence, every line would demand a string of testimonies, and every note would swell to a critical dissertation. But the numberless passages of antiquity which I have seen with my own eyes, are compiled, digested, and illustrated, by Petavius and Le Clerc, by Beausobre and Mosheim. I shall be content to fortify my narrative by the names and character of these respectable guides; and in the contemplation of a minute or remote object, I am not ashamed to borrow the aid of the strongest glasses: 1. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius, is a work of incredible labour and compass; the volumes which relate solely to the incarnation (two folios, fifth and sixth, of 837 pages) are divided into sixteen books-the first of history, the remainder of controversy and doctrine. The Jesuit's learning is copious and correct; his Latinity is pure, his method clear, his argument profound and well connected; but he is the slave of the fathers, the scourge of heretics, and the enemy of truth and candour, as often as they are inimical to the catholic cause. 2. The Arminian Le Clerc, who has composed in a quarto volume (Amsterdam, 1716) the ecclesiastical history of the two first centuries, was free both in his temper and situation; his sense is clear, but his thoughts are narrow; he reduces the reason or folly of ages to the standard of his private judgment, and his impartiality is sometimes quickened, and sometimes tainted, by his opposition to the fathers. See the heretics (Cerinthians, 1xxx. Ebionites, ciii. Carpocratians, cxx. Valentinians,

troversy.-State of the oriental sects:-I. The Nestorians.-II. The Jacobites.-III. The Maronites.-IV. The Armenians.-V. The Copts and Abyssinians.

AFTER the extinction of paganism, The incarnation the christians in peace and piety of Christ. might have enjoyed their solitary triumph. But the principle of discord was alive in their bosom, and they were more solicitous to explore the nature, than to practise the laws, of their founder. I have already observed, that the disputes of the TRINITY were succeeded by those of the INCARNATION; alike scandalous to the church, alike pernicious to the state, still more minute in their origin, still more durable in their effects. It is my design to comprise in the present chapter a religious war of two hundred and fifty years, to represent the ecclesiastical and political schism of the oriental sects, and to introduce their clamorous or sanguinary contests, by a modest inquiry into the doctrines of the primitive church.a

I. A laudable regard for the honour I. A pure man to of the first proselytes, has counte- the Ebionites. nanced the belief, the hope, the wish, that the Ebionites, or at least the Nazarenes, were distinguished only by their obstinate perseverance in the practice of the Mosaic rites. Their churches have disappeared, their books are obliterated: their obscure freedom might allow a latitude of faith, and the softness of their infant creed would be variously moulded by the zeal or prudence of three hundred years. Yet the most charitable criticism must refuse these sectaries any knowledge of the pure and proper divinity of Christ. Educated in the school of Jewish prophecy and prejudice, they had never been taught to elevate their hopes above a human and temporal Messiah. If they had courage to hail their king when he appeared in a plebeian garb, their grosser apprehensions were incapable of discerning their God, who had studiously disguised his celestial character under the name and person of a mortal. The familiar companions of Jesus of Nazareth conversed with their friend and countryman, who, in all the actions of rational and animal cxxi. Basilidians, exxiii. Marcionites, cxli, &c.) under their proper dates. 3. The Histoire Critique du Manicheisme (Amsterdam, 1734, 1739, in two vols. in 4to, with a posthumous dissertation sur les Nazarenes, Lausanne, 1745) of M. de Beausobre, is a treasure of ancient philosophy and theology. The learned historian spins with incomparable art the systematic thread of opinion, and transforms himself by turns into the person of a saint, a sage, or a heretic. Yet his refinement is sometimes excessive: he betrays an amiable partiality in favour of the weaker side, and, while he guards against calumny, he does not allow sufficient scope for superstition and fanaticism. A copious table of contents will direct the reader to any point that he wishes to examine. 4. Less profound than Petavius, less independent than Le Clerc, less ingenious than Beausobre, the historian Mosheim is full, rational, correct, and moderate. In his learned work, De Rebus Chris. tianis ante Constantinum, (Helmstadt, 1753, in 4to,) see the Nazarenes and Ebionites, p. 172–179. 328-332. The Gnostics in general, p. 179, &c. Cerinthus, p. 196-202. Basilides, p. 352-361. Carpocrates, p. 363-367. Valentinus, p. 371-389. Marcion, p. 404-410. The Manichæans, p. 829–837, &c.

» Και γαρ παντες ήμεις τον Χριςον άνθρωπον εξ ανθρώπων προσδοκω μev yerngeabat, says the Jew Tryphon, (Justin. Dialog. p. 207.) in the name of his countrymen; and the modern Jews, the few who divert their thoughts from money to religion, still hold the same language, and allege the literal sense of the prophets.

c Chrysostom (Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. v. c. 9. p. 183.) and Athanasius (Petav. Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. 1. i. c. 2. p. 3.) are obliged to confess that the divinity of Christ is rarely mentioned by himself or his apostles.

life, appeared of the same species with themselves. His progress from infancy to youth and manhood, was marked by a regular increase in stature and wisdom; and after a painful agony of mind and body, he expired on the cross. He lived and died for the service of mankind: but the life and death of Socrates had likewise been devoted to the cause of religion and justice; and although the stoic or the hero may disdain the humble virtues of Jesus, the tears which he shed over his friend and country, may be esteemed the purest evidence of his humanity. The miracles of the gospel could not astonish a people who held with intrepid faith the more splendid prodigies of the Mosaic law. The prophets of ancient days had cured diseases, raised the dead, divided the sea, stopped the sun, and ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot. And the metaphorical style of the Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr, the adoptive title of SON OF GOD.

His birth and elevation.

Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and Ebionites, a distinction

is faintly noticed between the heretics, who confounded the generation of Christ in the common order of nature, and the less guilty schismatics, who revered the virginity of his mother, and excluded the aid of an earthly father. The incredulity of the former was countenanced by the visible circumstances of his birth, the legal marriage of his reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and his lineal claim to the kingdom of David and the inheritance of Judah. But the secret and authentic history has been recorded in several copies of the gospel according to St. Matthew, which these sectaries long preserved in the original Hebrew, as the sole evidence of their faith. The natural suspicions of the husband, conscious of his own chastity, were dispelled by the assurance (in a dream) that his wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and as this distant and domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal observation of the historian, he must have listened to the same voice which dictated to Isaiah the future conception of a virgin. The son of a virgin, generated by the ineffable operation of the Holy Spirit, was a creature without example or resemblance, superior in every attribute of mind and body to the children of Adam. Since the introduction of the Greek or Chaldean philosophy,' the Jews were persuadeds of the pre-existence, transmigra

d The two first chapters of St. Matthew did not exist in the Ebionite copies; (Epiphan. Hæres. xxx. 13.) and the miraculous conception is one of the last articles which Dr. Priestley has curtailed from his scanty creed.

e It is probable enough that the first of the gospels for the use of the Jewish converts, was composed in the Hebrew or Syriac idiom: the fact is attested by a chain of fathers-Papias, Irenæus, Origen, Jerom, &c. It is devoutly believed by the catholics, and admitted by Casaubon, Grotius, and Isaac Vossius, among the protestant critics. But this Hebrew gospel of St. Matthew is most unaccountably lost; and we may accuse the diligence or fidelity of the primitive churches, who have preferred the unauthorized version of some nameless Greek. Erasmus and his followers, who respect the Greek text as the original gospel, deprive themselves of the evidence which declares it to be the work of an apostle. See Simon, Hist. Critique, &c. tom. iii. c. 5-9. p. 47-101. and the Prolegomena of Mill and Wetstein to the New Testament.

f The metaphysics of the soul are disengaged by Cicero, (Tusculan. 1. i.) and Maximus of Tyre, (Dissertat. xvi.) from the intricacies of diaJogue, which sometimes amuse, and often perplex, the readers of the Phædrus, the Phædon, and the Laws of Plato.

tion, and immortality of souls; and Providence was justified by a supposition, that they were confined in their earthly prisons to expiate the stains which they had contracted in a former state. But the degrees of purity and corruption are almost immeasurable. It might be fairly presumed, that the most sublime and virtuous of human spirits was infused into the offspring of Mary and the Holy Ghost; that his abasement was the result of his voluntary choice; and that the object of his mission was to purify, not his own, but the sins of the world. On his return to his native skies, he received the immense reward of his obedience; the everlasting kingdom of the Messiah, which had been darkly foretold by the prophets, under the carnal images of peace, of conquest, and of dominion. Omnipotence could enlarge the human faculties of Christ to the extent of his celestial office. In the language of antiquity, the title of God has not been severely confined to the first parent, and his incomparable minister, his only-begotten Son, might claim, without presumption, the religious, though secondary, worship of a subject world. II. The seeds of the faith, which had II. A pure God slowly arisen in the rocky and ungrate to the Docetes. ful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in full maturity, to the happier climes of the Gentiles; and the strangers of Rome or Asia, who never beheld the manhood, were the more readily disposed to embrace the divinity, of Christ. The polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and the barbarian, were alike accustomed to conceive a long succession, an infinite chain, of angels or dæmons, or deities, or æons, or emanations, issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it seem strange or incredible, that the first of these æons, the Logos, or word of God, of the same substance with the Father, should descend upon earth, to deliver the human race from vice and error, and to conduct them in the paths of life and immortality. But the prevailing doctrine of the eternity and inherent pravity of matter infected the primitive churches of the east. Many among the Gentile proselytes refused to believe that a celestial spirit, an undivided portion of the first essence, had been personally united with a mass of impure and contaminated flesh and, in their zeal for the divinity, they piously abjured the humanity, of Christ. While his blood was still recent on mount Calvary, the Docetes, a numerous and learned sect of Asia

g The disciples of Jesus were persuaded that a man might have sinned before he was born, (John ix. 2.) and the Pharisees held the transmigration of virtuous souls; (Joseph. de Bell. Judaico, l. ii. c. 7.) and a modern Rabbi is modestly assured, that Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato, &c. derived their metaphysics from his illustrious countrymen.

h Four different opinions have been entertained concerning the origin of human souls. 1. That they are eternal and divine. 2. That they were created, in a separate state of existence, before their union with the body. 3. That they have been propagated from the original stock of Adam, who contained in himself the mental as well as the corporeal seed of his posterity. 4. That each soul is occasionally created and embodied in the moment of conception.-The last of these sentiments appears to have prevailed among the moderns; and our spiritual history is grown less sublime, without becoming more intelligible.

1 Ότι ή του Σωτήρος ψυχη ή του Αδαμ ην was one of the fifteen heresies imputed to Origen, and denied by his apologist. (Photius, Bibliothec. cod. cxvii. p. 295.) Some of the Rabbis attribute one and the same soul to the persons of Adam, David, and the Messiah.

k Apostolis adhuc in seculo superstitibus, apud Judæam Christi sanguine recente, PHANTASMA domini corpus asserebatur. Hieronym.

tics, invented the phantastic system, which was afterwards propagated by the Marcionites, the Manichæans, and the various names of the Gnostic heresy. They denied the truth and authenticity of the gospels, as far as they relate the conception of Mary, the birth of Christ, and the thirty years that preceded the exercise of his ministry. He first appeared on the banks of the Jordan in the form of perfect manhood; but it was a form only, and not substance; a human figure created by the hand of Omnipotence to imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed on their optic nerve, eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension, of Christ, were represented on the theatre of Jerusalem for the benefit of mankind. If it were urged, that such ideal mimicry, such incessant deception, was unworthy of the God of truth, the Docetes agreed with too many of their orthodox brethren in the justification of pious falsehood. In the system of the Gnostics, the Jehovah of Israel, the Creator of this lower world, was a rebellious, or at least an ignorant, spirit. The Son of God descended upon earth to abolish his temple and his law; and, for the accomplishment of this salutary end, he dexterously transferred to his own person the hope and prediction of a temporal Messiah.

His incorrupti One of the most subtle disputants ble body. of the Manichæan school, has pressed the danger and indecency of supposing, that the God of the christians, in the state of a human foetus, emerged at the end of nine months from a female womb. The pious horror of his antagonists provoked them to disclaim all sensual circumstances of conception and delivery; to maintain, that the divinity passed through Mary like a sun-beam through a plate of glass; and to assert, that the seal of her virginity remained unbroken even at the moment when she became the mother of Christ. But the rashness of these concessions has encouraged a milder sentiment of those of the Docetes, who taught, not that Christ was a phantom, but that he was clothed with an impassible and incorrupti

advers. Lucifer. c. 8. The epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnæans, and even the gospel according to St. John, are levelled against the growing error of the Docetes, who had obtained too much credit in the world. (1 John iv. 1-5.)

1 About the year 200 of the christian æra, Irenæus and Hippolytus refuted the thirty-two sects, ens vevdwvvμor yvwoews, which had multiplied to fourscore in the time of Epiphanius. (Phot. Biblioth. cod. exx. cxxi. exxii.) The five books of Irenæus exist only in barbarous Latin; but the original might perhaps be found in some monastery of Greece.

m The pilgrim Cassian, who visited Egypt in the beginning of the fifth century, observes and laments the reign of anthropomorphism among the monks, who were not conscious that they embraced the system of Epicurus. (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, i. 18-34.) Ab universo propemodum genere monachorum, qui per totam provinciam Egyptum morabantur, pro simplicitatis errore susceptum est, ut e contrario memoratum pontificem (Theophilus) velut hæresi gravissimâ depravatum, pars maxima seniorum ab universo fraternitatis corpore decerneret de

ble body. Such, indeed, in the more orthodox system, he has acquired since his resurrection, and such he must always have possessed, if it were capable of pervading, without resistance or injury, the density of intermediate matter. Devoid of its most essential properties, it might be exempt from the attributes and infirmities of the flesh. A foetus that could increase from an invisible point to its full maturity; a child that could attain the stature of perfect manhood, without deriving any nourishment from the ordinary sources, might continue to exist without repairing a daily waste by a daily supply of external matter. Jesus might share the repasts of his disciples without being subject to the calls of thirst or hunger; and his virgin purity was never sullied by the involuntary stains of sensual concupiscence. Of a body thus singularly constituted, a question would arise, by what means, and of what materials, it was originally framed; and our sounder theology is startled by an answer which was not peculiar to the Gnostics, that both the form and the substance proceeded from the divine essence. The idea of pure and absolute spirit is a refinement of modern philosophy: the incorporeal essence, ascribed by the ancients to human souls, celestial beings, and even the Deity himself, does not exclude the notion of extended space; and their imagination was satisfied with a subtle nature of air, or fire, or æther, incomparably more perfect than the grossness of the material world. If we define the place, we must describe the figure, of the Deity. Our experience, perhaps our vanity, represents the powers of reason and virtue under a human form. The anthropomorphites, who swarmed among the monks of Egypt and the catholics of Africa, could produce the express declaration of Scripture, that man was made after the image of his Creator.m The venerable Serapian, one of the saints of the Nitrian desert, relinquished, with many a tear, his darling prejudice; and bewailed like an infant, his unlucky conversion, which had stolen away his God, and left his mind without any visible object of faith or devotion."

thus.

III. Such were the fleeting shadows III. Double naof the Docetes. A more substantial ture of Cerinthough less simple hypothesis, was contrived by Cerinthus of Asia," who dared to oppose the last of the apostles. Placed on the confines of the Jewish and Gentile world, he laboured to reconcile the Gnostic with the Ebionite, by con

testandum. (Cassian, Collation. x. 2.) As long as St. Augustin remained a Manichæan, he was scandalized by the anthropomorphism of the vulgar catholics.

n Ita est in oratione senex mente confusus, eo quod illam avépo Touоppov imaginem Deitatis, quam proponere sibi in oratione consueverat, aboleri de suo corde sentiret, ut in amarissimos fletus, crebrosque singultus repente prorumpens, in terram prostratus, cum ejulatu validissimo proclamaret; "Heu me miserum!" tulerunt a me Deum menin, et quem nunc teneam non habeo, vel quem adorem, aut interpellam jam nescio. Cassian, Collat. x. 2.

o St. John and Cerinthus (A. D. 80. Cleric. Hist. Eccles. p. 493.) accidentally met in the public bath of Ephesus; but the apostle fled from the heretic, lest the building should tumble on their heads. This foolish story, reprobated by Dr. Middleton, (Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii.) is related however by frenæus, (iii. 3.) on the evidence of Polycarp, and was probably suited to the time and residence of Cerinthus. The obsolete, yet probably the true, reading of 1 John. iv. 3.-0λVEL TOV InGov-alludes to the double nature of that primitive heretic.

fessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union of a man and a God: and this mystic doctrine was adopted with many fanciful improvements by Carpocrates, Basilides, and Valentine," the heretics of the Egyptian school. In their eyes, JESUS of Nazareth was a mere mortal, the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary but he was the best and wisest of the human race, selected as the worthy instrument to restore upon earth the worship of the true and supreme Deity. When he was baptized in the Jordan, the CHRIST, the first of the æons, the Son of God himself, descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his mind and direct his actions, during the allotted period of his ministry. When the Messiah was delivered into the hands of the Jews, the Christ, an immortal and impassible being, forsook his earthly tabernacle, flew back to the pleroma or world of spirits, and left the solitary Jesus to suffer, to complain, and to expire. But the justice and generosity of such a desertion are strongly questionable; and the fate of an innocent martyr, at first impelled, and at length abandoned, by his divine companion, might provoke the pity and indignation of the profane. Their murmurs were variously silenced by the sectaries who espoused and modified the double system of Cerinthus. It was alleged, that when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he was endowed with a miraculous apathy of mind and body, which rendered him insensible of his apparent sufferings. It was affirmed, that these momentary though real pangs, would be abundantly repaid by the temporal reign of a thousand years reserved for the Messiah in his kingdom of the new Jerusalem. It was insinuated, that if he suffered, he deserved to suffer; that human nature is never absolutely perfect; and that the cross and passion might serve to expiate the venial transgressions of the son of Joseph, before his mysterious union with the Son of God.

IV. Divine incarnation of

IV. All those who believe the immateriality of the soul, a specious and Apollinaris. noble tenet, must confess, from their present experience, the incomprehensible union of mind and matter. A similar union is not inconsistent with a much higher, or even with the highest, degree of mental faculties; and the incarnation of an æon or archangel, the most perfect of created spirits, does not involve any positive contradiction or absurdity. In the age of religious freedom, which was determined by the council of Nice, the dignity of Christ was measured by private judgment accordp The Valentinians embraced a complex, and almost incoherent, system. 1. Both Christ and Jesus were æons, though of different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the other as the divine spirit, of the Saviour. 2. At the time of the passion, they both retired, and left only a sensitive soul and a human body. 3. Even that body was æthereal, and perhaps apparent.-Such are the laborious conclusions of Mosheim. But I much doubt whether the Latin translator understood Irenæus, and whether Irenæus and the Valentinians understood themselves.

q The heretics abused the passionate exclamation of "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" Rousseau, who has drawn an eloquent, but indecent, parallel between Christ and Socrates, forgets that not a word of impatience or despair escaped from the mouth of the dying philosopher. In the Messiah, such sentiments could be only apparent; and such ill-sounding words are properly explained as the application of a psalm or prophecy.

This strong expression might be justified by the language of St.

ing to the indefinite rule of Scripture, or reason, or tradition. But when his pure and proper divinity had been established on the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the catholics trembled on the edge of a precipice where it was impossible to recede, dangerous to stand, dreadful to fall; and the manifold inconveniences of their creed were aggravated by the sublime character of their theology. They hesitated to pronounce; that God himself, the second person of an equal and consubstantial trinity, was manifested in the flesh; that a being who pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of Mary; that his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and months, and years of human existence; that the Almighty had been scourged and crucified; that his impassible essence had felt pain and anguish; that his omniscience was not exempt from ignorance; and that the source of life and immortality expired on mount Calvary. These alarming consequences were affirmed with unblushing simplicity by Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, and one of the luminaries of the church. The son of a learned grammarian, he was skilled in all the sciences of Greece; eloquence, erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous in the volumes of Apollinaris, were humbly devoted to the service of religion. The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian, he bravely wrestled with the Arians and polytheists, and, though he affected the rigour of geometrical demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the ScripA mystery, which had long floated in the looseness of popular belief, was defined by his perverse diligence in a technical form; and he first proclaimed the memorable words, "One incarnate nature of Christ," which are still re-echoed with hostile clamours in the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Æthiopia. He taught that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a man ; and that the Logos, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the flesh the place and office of a human soul. Yet as the profound doctor had been terrified at his own rashness, Apollinaris was heard to mutter some faint accents of excuse and explanation. He acquiesced in the old distinction of the Greek philosophers, between the rational and sensitive soul of man, that he might reserve the Logos for intellectual functions, and employ the subordinate human principle in the meaner actions of animal life. With the moderate Docetes, he revered Mary as the spiritual, rather than as the carnal, mother of Christ, whose body Paul; (1 Tim. iii. 16.) but we are deceived by our modern Bibles. The word (which) was altered to @eos (God) at Constantinople in the beginning of the sixth century; the true reading, which is visible in the Latin and Syriac versions, still exists in the reasoning of the Greek as well as of the Latin fathers: and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses of St. John, is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton. (See his two letters translated by M. de Missy, in the Journal Britannique, tom. xv. p. 148-190. 351-390.) I have weighed the arguments, and may yield to the authority, of the first of philosophers, who was deeply skilled in critical and theological studies.

tures.

s For Apollinaris and his sect, see Socrates, l. ii. c. 46. 1. iii. c. 16. Sozomen, l. v. c. 18. 1. vi. c. 25-27. Theodoret, 1. v. 3. 10, 11. Tillemout, Memoires Ecclesiastiques, tom. vii. p. 602-638. Not. p. 789794. in 4to. Venise, 1732. The contemporary saints always mention the bishop of Laodicea as a friend and brother. The style of the more re. cent historians is harsh and hostile: yet Philostorgius compares him (l. viii. c. 11–15.) to Basil and Gregory.