them, being determined to preserve their privileges as Jews inviolate, refused to become soldiers and were put to death. And thus for the wickedness of four men, the Jews were driven from the city." Antiq. Jud. lib. xviii. cap. 3, 6.

Now, if we compare the narratives of Tertullian, Philo and Josephus, the whole affair will become plain, consistent and credible. The Jewish be lievers at Rome, hating the despotic character of Sejanus, and penetrating his ambitious project of becoming emperor in the room of Tiberius, opposed his cruel measures, and arraigned him as a conspirator. Feeling their enmity against himself, he, with the usual adroitness of wicked ministers, represents them as enemies to the emperor and to the state. This, at first, Tiberius must have been ready to believe; and, actuated by resent ment, quickened by the complaint of Saturninus, he cruelly banishes all the Jews resident in Rome, compelling such young men as were of age to become soldiers, in direct violation of the rights which they had hitherto enjoyed. But the mask soon fell from the face of Sejanus, the great enemy and accuser of the Christians; and the deadly hatred which rose in the breast of Tiberius towards the detected traitor, was now necessarily followed by a change of sentiments and conduct towards the persons who had previously opposed him. Thus the emperor, from a persecutor, became inevitably the friend and protector of the Christians. The evidence, brought home to his own bosom, of the falsehood of the charge urged against the followers of Jesus, disposed him to consider their master as a victim of a similar calumny in Judea; and taking into consideration his miraculous power, of which he had, through various channels, un questionable evidence, he pitied his unmerited sufferings, and wished to atone for them, by consecrating him among the gods of the Pantheon. The Christian fathers, for obvious reasons, left the first impression of Tiberius's resentment unnoticed, men tioning only his subsequent conduct in behalf of the Christians. Hence the improbability which loads their narrative, and sinks it almost below rational belief.

The Jew whom Josephus stigmatises as in every way wicked, was, as we shall see hereafter, one of the framers and teachers of the Gnostic system, the principal object of which was to sink Christianity in Heathenism, by placing the founder with the Heathen gods. Tiberius, though a fatalist, was extremely superstitious; and Jewish magicians, Egyptian priests and Chaldean astrologers formed his most intimate associates. These men he consulted respecting Jesus; and there is no room to doubt, but at their instigation he proposed his deification to the Senate. It was very natural that the Senate and people of Rome should form their ideas of Jesus from those impostors who pretended to abet his cause. This circumstance led his enemies to speak of him as if he were a magician and an artful deceiver. It was this imputation which induced the Jewish historian to state, in the context, the real character and claims of Jesus Christ. With a comprehension yet brevity characteristic of this writer, he gives the whole substance of the four Gospels in one short paragraph. He sets aside the doctrine of his being a god, and stigmatises the attempt at his deification by calling him a man, if indeed he might be called a man; thus using the language which he uses of Moses, and meaning that he was a man eminently endowed with power from God. He farther passes by in silence the story of his miraculous birth, as forming no part of his real history, a strong presumption in itself of the authenticity of the passage. Nor did the writer rest in this negative testimony to the falsehood of the miraculous conception, but exposes, in the subsequent paragraph, the abominable deed, which, on inquiry, will be found to be the origin of it, and which in those times all readers knew to be the origin of it.

The advocates of Christianity maintained, and maintained with truth, that the vices and superstition which had hitherto debased the Pagan world, and which the erroneous philosophy of the times imputed to the demons, were, in a great measure, swept away by the religion of Jesus. The enemies of the gospel felt the weight of this argument, and Plutarch wrote his treatise concerning the cessation

of the Heathen Oracles, in order to remove it, by referring the destruction of the demons to causes unconnected with Christianity. In this work, the author artfully introduces a story circulated at Rome, soon after the death of Christ, that the great Pan was dead. This story, if true, and the truth of which Plutarch was anxious to establish, proved that Jesus, being one of the demons, and that the great est of them, so far from being the cause of destroying the demons, was himself destroyed. "When Tiberius Cæsar heard of the death of this god, he collected the astrologers and magicians in Rome to know what god he was and they determined that he was Pan, the son of Mercury and Penelope." In the number of these impostors, were doubtless the wicked Jew and his Egyptian associates branded by Josephus: and as they imposed on the emperor the belief that Jesus was a Heathen god, it was natural that they should advise him to propose his deification, or his consecration in the Pantheon. Tertullian well knew all this: but though he thought the conduct of the emperor honourable to Christ, and, therefore, mentions the proposal for his deification, he leaves his base advisers in the shade.

I shall just notice a few inferences worthy of consideration, which are warranted by the above statement. 1. The opinion held in Rome, that Jesus was some supernatural being, illustrates, in a remarkable manner, the miraculous power with which he was invested by the Almighty. Allow the truth of the miracles ascribed to him in the New Testament, and the conduct of the emperor in proposing his deification, and of the magicians in pronouncing him to be one of the Pagan gods, was perfectly natural, But deny these miracles, i. e. suppose them to be impostures, then the conduct of the emperor and the magicians around him, in ascribing a superior nature to an obscure individual in humble life, in a remote province, an individual, too, who had been condemned to an ignominious death, and

See a Series of Important Facts demonstrating the Truth of the Christian Religion, by J. Jones, Chap. xii,

belonging withal to a race of men in the highest degree despised and hated, will be altogether inexplicable, will be at variance with all human experience, with all that we know of the laws of the moral world.

2. The conduct of Paul at Athens shews that the apostles, in preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, did not, in their first address, dwell upon, or render prominent, the miracles of their Divine Master, because of the improper inference which their hearers, under the influence of Heathenism, would draw respecting his nature. They, therefore, confined themselves to his resurrection, as the proof and pledge of the resurrection of mankind, and to the necessity of repentance and reformation as a qualification for a future state of retribution grounded on that proof. When the persons addressed were thus far informed and enlightened, then the miraculous works of Jesus, as proofs of his delegation to reveal and certify the will of God, became proper subjects of discussion and testimony.

3. Every convert to Christianity from among the Heathens, carried with him into the Christian Church a strong predilection in favour of the divinity of Christ; and the advocates of this opinion, down to the present day, argue as the Heathens did, namely, that the works of Christ are proofs of his divine nature. Consequently, we may conclude with certainty that Heathenism is the source, and the only source of that doctrine.

4. We may further conclude, that, wherever a Christian Church was established by Paul, or any other of the apostles, the divinity of Christ became one of the first topics of discussion and dispute among the members. We might, therefore, expect in their Epistles, references to that controversy, and also words calculated and intended to set aside the supposed superhuman nature of our Saviour as altogether false and pernicious.

5. The notion entertained by Lardner, Priestley, and other Unitarian divines, that the divinity of Christ originated in the personification of the Logos, derived principally from Philo, and through him from Plato, iwide of the truth. This opini the advocates of the Trinitar the advantage of combati

while they fight against the truth;

SIR,

Unitarian, I feel great sa

traced the doctrine up to Heathenism as its true source, they would have held up their adversaries as defenders, not only of one of the grossest dogmas of the Pagan religion, but a dogma opposed and condemned by the apostles themselves.

J. JONES.

P. S. The persecution of the Christians by Tiberius must have taken place a year or two after the resurrection of Jesus. The enemies of the gospel in the provinces, naturally imitated the temper and measures adopted by the higher powers in the capital. The same spirit, as soon as the news of it had time to reach Judea, must have there kindled a similar flame. Accordingly, we read, "In those days there came to pass a violent persecution of the church in Je rusalem," Acts viii. 2. In a year or two, the hostility of the emperor was changed by the fall of Sejanus; and the effects of the edict dispatched in favour of the Christians, must have been, in a period somewhat later, felt in all the provinces, and in Judea and Samaria in the number. Conformably to this, we read, Acts ix. 31, "And all the churches throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria had repose; and being edified, and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the consolation of the Holy Spirit, they were greatly multiplied." Thus remarkably the transactions at Rome, mentioned by Philo, Josephus and Tertullian, illustrate, and are illus. trated by, two corresponding events in the Acts of the Apostles.

Gibbon, under the veil of insidious irony, endeavours to expose to contempt and derision the testimony of Tertullian. He says of himself, that his views respecting the records of Christianity were rather extensive than accurate. Yet had they been extensive, as he thus flatters himself, he would have known that all the improbability which weighs down the narrative of Tertullian, is removed by facts attested by Josephus and Plutarch; and that the very edict which Gibbon derides, is recorded by Philo. See the Decline and Fall, Vol. II. Chap. xvi. p. 444.

racters of those that have borne the same denomination, amongst whom is preeminent the learned and candid Lardner. Of him any party might justly boast. In fact, all parties claim him as a Christian, and I have sometimes wondered that the Trinitarians do not attempt to prove that he was no Unitarian.

An ultra-Unitarian he certainly was not. He would, I think, stand surprised, were he now living, at some of the opinions of the modern Unitarians; and there is not a little in his writings which these persons must consider as scarcely reconcileable with their orthodoxy.

For example, in his "Vindication of Three of our Blessed Saviour's Miracles," he says, in reply to Woolston's fifth objection with regard to the place and state of the soul of Lazarus between his death and resurrection, "Nor could the soul of any good man be unwilling to return for a time to the troubles and miseries of this wicked world, how grievous soever, in or der to serve the great design of saving his fellow-creatures; for which end Jesus his Saviour descended from the height of glory he had with his Father, took flesh, and underwent the troubles and sorrows of this mortal life." (Works, 8vo. XI. 41.) Again, in his reflections upon the raising of Lazarus, he exclaims, "Herein also is adorable the wisdom, the goodness, the condescension of Jesus." 76.)

(Id.

The treatise from which these extracts are made, was published in the year 1729, only one year before the Letter on the Logos was written. Did Dr. Lardner change his opinion concerning the person of Christ, in the interval between the composition of the two works? Or, was his view of our Lord's humanity always united with some notion of his pre-existent glory? Or, is the language here marked by italics the mere result of early habit, and an accommodation to the prejudices of the Christian world? Other passages might be extracted from Lardner, to shew that he wrote more agreeably to the language of Christians in general, than modern Unitarians (at least, the bulk of them)