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    phemous . This instance of human folly prevents me from ex * pecting that the progress of truth should at any- time he rapid , though it will overcome at the last . The belief of the divinity of Christ is as absurd as any fiible in the heathen mythology . " I

    have proved to you , that neither Jcwtis nor his coteinporaries believed it : but when I have done this , and proceed to shew you , that our Saviour himself in . the most explicit terms contradicts such a notion , I am far from expecting you readily to submit to liiiYU ^ The hand of power has compelled , and the fascination of interest induced the many in eve *

    ry age and country , to-acquiesce in the most striking absurdities : add to this the natural indolence of man » much more ready to take

    upon trust than to examine his opinions , and we need not be surprized at the prevalence of a belief , which contradicts the first principles of natural and revealed

    religion . I might fill this letter , and twenty more , with passages of scripture , in which our Saviour acknowledges in the plainest terms bis inferiority to God . He testified , that there was only one God his father , from whom he received every tiling—who had sent him to the Jews—to whom he taught his disciples to pray , and to whom he prayed most

    fervently himself . To conceive , that a being should pray to another for blessings , is ; absurd , unless the one was inferior to the other . Our Saviour taught , that there is no one good but . this one God , who had taught him many things , but bad kept some , concvsiU ' d from him : that he could

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    da nothing of himself , that he came not in his own name , nor to do his own will—but to exc * cute the commands of God . Ko \ t how can these tilings be reconcile ed to truth ; if " Jesus was at the

    same tune God ? how could he be ignorant of any thing , if he had lived from all eternity 7 You invent a fiction , that he was both God and man . But where does Christ '^ peak this language ? and what dependence can we have upon a person , who puts on two characters , and leaves us to find

    out what suits the one , and what the other , just as it may answer his purpose . Besides how cotild you make so absurd a division ? Could God lie in the womb of a woman , be born , grow like other children , and at last die on a cross ? At

    the moment of his death could he say , Father , into thy hands I commend my spirit ? Was his spirit , that fancied immaterial substance , you suppose resident in man . divided into two sorts , the

    one human and the other God ? tray what became of the God spirit , at that moment ? Was he playing the fool with mankind ,

    in so awful an hour , commending one spirit to the other ? How shockingly absurd and impious is this notion of the divinity of Christ ? To what strange vagaries does it not lead its advocates ?

    Christ , like a pious man , resigned his breath to his fathei ' s will , and in the same hopes , which every Christian now has , of a restoration to life .

    When he was restored to life did the God spirit again come into his body ? If it did , how could he mock his disci ples , by saying , 1 go to my father and to youv fa *

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    5 Q 6 Ok the Testimony of the Jbxss to the Person of Chrirt .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1808, page 596, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2398/page/20/