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    teriously united to divinity . '' Again ( 209 »; " Jesus was no longer in a state to be naturally visible to any man . His body was indeed risen , but it was become that body which St . Paul describes in the fifteenth

    chapter of inn first epistle to the Cormthiuss , which , having no sympathy with the gross bodies of this earth ! . * sphere , nor any place among them must be indiscertiibie to the hum ;* n organs , till they shall have uMrierarone a similar refinement . The

    divinity united to the blessed Jesus , produced in a short space that change in him , which , in other men , according to the mysterious physics of St . Paul , must be the effect of a slower

    process every appearance of our Lord to the apostles after his resurrection , was iii truth an appearance of the great God , the Maker of heaven and earth , to mortal man . " Once

    more ( QM ' y , ' * ' Would you now ask , why Jesus after his resurrection was not rendered visible to all the people ? Will \ ou not rather stand aghast at tlie impiety of the question ? Ask , win God is of purer eyes than to Uehold iiiiquity ? Ask , why he who conversed with Abraham as a man

    talketh with his friend , conversed not but in judgment with the vile inhabitants of Sodom ? " &c . &c * But enough of such quotations . In the case described Bishop Horsley has thrown the reins on his

    imagination : and the sacred writers are profoundly silent concerning these " mysterious physics / ' We hesitate not to say that the prelate ' s speculation destroys the testimony of the apostles to " the fact of our Lord ' s resurrection : "

    for how could they be proper witnesses of the identity of his person if before that event he had a mortal and immediately on its taking place an immortal body ? Plain men will be satisfied with the declarations of the Christian scriptures , without additions and refinements : and it is « not

    undeserving of our regard , that among the " many infallible proofs" by which Jesus " shewed himself alive , after his passion , " to his chosen associates , ° ne was his eating and drinking with them after he rose from the dead . * Indeed , they had the authority of nearly all their sensesf for considering him not as a phantom * but as a real * --,- ' - ¦ ' r

    * Act * i . 3 . x . 41 . t 1 John i . 1 .

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    man . The error of Dr . Horsley resembles " the error of the Docetae " ( 198 ) . To justify this fancy of his brain , he would translate Acts x . 40 , as follows : " Him God raised up the third

    day , and gave him to be visible ; " as though he * ' was no longer in a state to be naturally visible . ' The words , in Hie original , are , eSujkbv clvIov gj&-tpayyj ysveirdzi , appointed him to be seen : and he who consults

    Schleusner on the word s ^( pavTf g ^ and the passages where it is found in the LXX and in the Greek Testament , will be sensible that Bishop Horsley ' s version of it is not more accurate than that of KingJames ' s translators .

    Of the five remaining sermons , the first is on Ps . xcvii . 7 . Worship him all ye Gods ; which text tlie preacher alleges in proof of our Lord ' s divinity . For this purpose , he appeals to . Heb . i . 6 , where these words of the

    Psalmist are quoted from the Septuagint translation , and employed in illustrating the dignity of the Messiah ' s office , and not that of his person and nature . Gran tins : that this Psalm is " a orokj ran ring mat tnis rsaim is a

    prophecy of the establishment of Christ ' s kingdom by the preaching of the gospel , and the general conversion of idolaters to the service of the true God , " still , the Bishop is unfortunate in the reasoning by which he

    endeavours to sustain the proposition . In God ' s universal kingdom , says he , " great majority of the ancient world , the idolaters , were considered not as subjects who might rejoice in the glory of their monarch , but as rebels who had every thing to fear from

    his just resentment ( 239 ) - " Rebels indeed they were : yet they were comprehended , nevertheless , under the Divine administration . Further ; it does not appear that they are exhorted to " rejoice in the glory of their monarch . " The invitation in is to

    the first verse ^ addressed inanimate nature : that in the twelfth , to the Jews , the worshipers of Jehovah . Mudge % with reason considers the Psalm as €€ occasioned by some victory , in which God had declared , his award from heaven in favour of his people , by some extraordinary manifestation of his glory in storms of thun-¦¦ ¦ ¦ iii

    111 - ' ' ' ¦ ' ¦ ' --- - . -. njf % On tli « Psalms ( hi loo . ) .

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    Review . —Bishop Horsley s Nine Sermons . 757

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1815, page 757, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1767/page/29/