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the name of the crucified Jesus to the Father and maker of all things / We should spend much time , and add little to our real information , if we extended our inquiries into the precise notions of other writers of the second century . It is of more importance to see . full evidence of the fact , that , while little by little Christian theology increased—we use the words of Le Clerc—and lost its
primitive simplicity , and was obstructed with inextricable labyrinths , the people , everywhere devoting their attention to what was clear and practical , had sounder notions than their teachers , and adored the one supreme God , holding his unity in the strict and scriptural sense . That this was the fact , take the evidence of Irenaeus of the second century , who tells us , that the whole Christian world in his time believed in one God , the Father
omnipotent , who made the heavens and earth and sea , and all things which are in them ; and in one Lord Jesus Christ , the son of God , made flesh for our salvation , and in one Spirit , who prophesied of the events of the Gospel . Is there no worship claimed for Jesus ? None . Is it not said that the Father , Son , and Spirit are each God , and all three but one God ? No . The
universal church in the second century knew nothing of such things , the corrupters of Christianity themselves being witnesses . Take the evidence of Tertullian , a . d . 200 . He himself was bolder in his assertions of the deity of Christ , than its author ,
Justin ; for somewhat pf its novelty was lost in his day . But the people were still Unitarians . When the martyrs were brought to the stake , and challenged as to their faith , * We worship , ' they said , * one God through Jesus Christ . * I a another passage , in a work written against an eminent Unitarian , he allows , with
evident pain , that the people , that is the greater part , as he explains himself , of Christians shuddered at the doctrine of the Trinity , and eagerly maintained the doctrine of the divine unity and of the supremacy of the Father . Take the evidence of Origen in the third century . From him
we learn , that while some Christians believed in the deity of Christ , otners denied it , and held merely that he was a man approved of God . The latter , he tells us in another place , constituted the many . And in a third place he speaks of many pious persons who were terrified at the prevalent doctrine of two Gods , and denied thedeity of the Son . Nor did the teachers of religion in his day venture to * communicate the logos , except to * those who were further advanced and burning with the love of celestial wisdom / while to « the carnal' they * preached Christ and him crucified . * In the same century , so popular was the Unitarian faith in Africa , that Athanasius says , the deity of Christ was scarcely preached in the churches . From Epiphanius , also , we have evidence of the acceptance which the doctrine pf the divine unity
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Mise and Progress of t % e doctrine of the Trinity . 255
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No . 64 , • U
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 265, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/49/
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