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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
the eastern countries , that is to say , in Arabia . There is a certain bird called a phoenix . Of this there is never but one at a time , and that lives five hundred years . And when the time of its dissolution draws near , that it must die , it makes itself a nest of frankincense and myrrh , and other spices , into which , when its time is fulfilled , it enters and dies . But its flesh putrefying ,
breeds a certain worm , which being nourished with the juice of the dead bird , brings forth feathers , and when it is grown to a perfect state , it takes up the nest in which the bones of its parent lie , and carries it from Arabia into Egypt , to a city called Heliopolis , and flying in open day in the sight of all men , lays it upon the altar of the sun , and so returns from whence it came .
The priests then search into the records of time , and find that it returned precisely at the end of five hundred years . And shall we then think it to be any very great and strange thing for the Lord of all to raise up those that religiously serve him in the assurance of a good faith , when , even by a bird , he shows us the greatness of his power to fulfil his promise ? ' Nor is this illustration confined to Clement . Most of the Christian Fathers have made use
of the same story for the same purpose . While , however , even the purest writer of Christian antiquity could indulge in what is so manifest an absurdity , the many were in a state of mind so mystified that , though in a far different sense from that which they were meant to convey , they realised the words of the prophecy , * Your young men shall see visions , and your old men
shall dream dreams . ' As a specimen of a style of reasoning but too prevalent in the early Church , we may adduce an argument used by Christian priests in favour of their taking tithe . Tithes were not , they contended , peculiar to the Jewish Church , for the very first letter in the name of Jesus , I , stood ( in the Greek ) for
ten . Jortin terms the Jewish tradition c the muddy fountain of everlasting nonsense . ' Surely the phrase , whatever may be thought of its original application' is not too strong to characterise a system which added to the traditions of the Jewish doctors the darkness of the Platonists , and the thick darkness of the Philonic and Alexandrian schools . What can we think of the
intellect of an age , in which the following story could gain currency ? Simon Magus , spoken of in the Gospel , was the father of all heresies . In the Testament , we have an account of the rebuke that he met with from the Apostle Peter . In the Apostolical constitutions , Peter is introduced telling his own tale , how that , having come into contact with him , and overcome him in
argument , the magician was compelled to retire into a distant country . Owing Peter a grudge for injuring his professional character , Simon hit upon a plan for baffling the Apostle . In the city of Rome , he gives the Apostle a challenge to a public trial of skill . Accordingly Simon , aided by demons , mounts up into the air , and travels through it as though it had been his native
Untitled Article
112 Rise and Progress of the Doctrine of the Trinity .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 112., in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/40/
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