I also consider as evidently favourable to my interpretation of this passage. He read παντα δυναμενος, having all power, which naturally alludes to the great power of which he became possessed after the descent of the spirit of God upon him at his baptism.

As to the phrase coming, you must be little at home, as you say, in the language of the scriptures, or have given little attention to it, not to have perceived that it is a phrase used to express the mission of any prophet, and that it is applied to John the Baptist as well as to Christ, of which the following are examples: Matt. xi. 18, 19, John came neither eating nor drinking, &c. The son of man came eating and drinking, &c. i. e. not locally from heaven, but as the prophets came from God. Christ says of John, Matt. xxi. 32, John came unto you in the way of righteousness. John the evangelist also says of him, John i. 7, The same came for a witness, &c. so that all your descanting upon this passage of Clemens is impertinent.

Admitting that some one circumstance in the prophecies he quotes, rigorously interpreted, should allude to the birth of Christ, (though I see no reason to think so,) you are not authorized to conclude that Clemens attended to that in particular, but to the general scope of the whole, which is evidently descriptive of his public life only.

If, with your boasted knowledge of Greek, you had attended ever so little to the theory of language in general, and the natural use of words, you would have seen that the term God would not, from the beginning, have been used by way of contradistinction to Christ, if the former could have been predicated of the latter. We say the prince and the king, because the prince is

not a king. If he had, we should have had recourse to some other distinction, as that of greater and less, senior and junior, father and son, &c. When therefore the apostle Paul said that the church at Corinth was Christ's, and that Christ was God's, (and that manner of distinguishing them is perpetual in the New Testament,) it is evident that he could have no idea of Christ being God in any proper sense of the word.

In like manner, Clemens, in this passage, calling Christ the sceptre of the majesty of God, sufficiently proves that, in his idea, the sceptre was one thing, and the God whose sceptre it was, another. This, I say, must have been the case when this language was first adopted, though, when principles are once formed, we see by a variety of experience that any language may be accommodated to them. But an attention to this circumstance will, I doubt not, contribute, with persons of real discernment, to bring us back to the original use of the words, and to the ideas originally annexed to them. I am persuaded that even now the constant use of these terms Christ and God, as opposed to each other, has a great effect in preventing those of the common people who read the New Testament more than books of controversy, from being habitually and practically trinitarians. There will by this means be a much greater difference between God and Christ in their minds than they find in their creeds.

With respect to Ignatius I would observe, that as you knew the genuineness of his epistles had been controverted, and by men of learning and ability, you certainly ought not from the first to have concealed that circumstance. You say, however, p. 34, "I shall

appeal to them with the less scruple, forasmuch as the same sincerity which I ascribe to them, and which is quite sufficient for my purpose, is allowed by the learned and the candid Dr. Lardner.-After suggesting in no very confident language, that even the smaller epistles may have been tampered with by the Arians, or the Orthodox, or both, he adds, I do not affirm that there are in them any considerable alterations or corruptions. If no considerable corruptions or alterations, certainly none respecting a point of such importance as the original nature of Christ."

This is curious indeed. What then could Dr. Lardner mean by these epistles having been tampered with by the Arians, the Orthodox, or both? If they interpolated them at all, it would certainly be to introduce into them passages favourable to their opinions concerning the divinity or pre-existence of Christ. How would it be worth their while, as Arians or Orthodox, to interpolate them for any other purpose? If a farmer, hearing of some depredation on his property committed by foxes, should say, My corn may have been plun dered, but as the mischief has been done by foxes, my geese and my poultry are safe; what would be said of his reasoning? Yet of the same nature is yours in this

case.

prey

These foxes have not refrained from their in more sacred inclosures than those of Ignatius.-Sir Isaac Newton, among others, has clearly proved that the orthodox, as they are commonly called, have in this way tampered with the New Testament itself; having made interpolations favourable to the doctrine of the trinity, especially the famous passage concerning the three that bear record in heaven, in the first

epistle of John. This I should imagine you yourself will acknowledge; and can you think they would spare the epistles of Ignatius, which were much more in their power?

Jortin says, "Though the shorter epistles are onmany accounts preferable to the larger, yet I will not affirm that they have undergone no alteration at all." Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 361.

For my own part, I scruple not to say, that there never were more evident marks of interpolation in any writings than are to be found in these genuine epistles, as they are called, of Ignatius; though I am willing to allow, on reconsidering them, that, exclusive of manifest interpolation, there may be a ground-work of antiquity in them. The famous passage in Josephus concerning Christ is not a more evident interpolation than many in these epistles of Ignatius, which you quote with so much confidence.

You yourself may believe that every word now found in these epistles was actually written by Ignatius; but if they have been tampered with, or have undergone alterations, how can you quote them with so much confidence, as if the argument must necessarily have the same weight with all persons? Notwithstanding this you say, p. 34, "I will therefore still appeal to these epistles as sufficiently sincere to be decisive in the point in dispute. Nor shall I think myself obliged to go into the proof of their authenticity till you have given a satisfactory reply to every part of Bishop Pearson's elaborate defence, a work which I suspect you have not yet looked through." And I, Sir, shall save myself that trouble till you shall have replied to every part of Larroque's answer to this work of Pearson;

N

a work which I suspect you have not looked into. I will however favour you with a sight of it, if you will gratify me with the perusal of the works of Zwicker, which, by your account, you have carefully read, though I have not yet been able to procure them. I am, &c.

LETTER III.

Of the Nazarenes and Ebionites.

REV. SIR,

You still insist, p. 38, upon the high orthodoxy of

those whom the christian fathers call Nazarenes. "Epiphanius, you say, p. 38, "confesses that the Nazarenes held the catholic doctrine concerning the nature of our Lord;" whereas I have maintained that though, according to him and some other ancient writers, there was some difference between them and the Ebionites, they still agreed in asserting the proper humanity of Christ. The γνωμη which distinguished the Ebionites, you say, p. 41, was something that they had borrowed, not from the Nawpaio, the christian Nazarenes, but the Nasareans, a sect of Jews only. "I still abide by my assertion," you say, p. 176, "that the name of Nazarenes was never heard of in the church, that is, among christians themselves, before the final destruction of Jerusalem by Adrian; when it became the specific name of the Judaizers, who at that time separated from the church at Jerusalem, and settled in the North of Galilee: the