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    He embraced Christianity about a hundred years after the death of our Lord . It appears probable that he very much contributed to establish the subsequent doctrine of the 'Trinity among Christians , by applying the Platonic notion of the Logos to Jesus

    Christ . Plato maintained , that " there is only One Supreme , Spiritual and Invisible God , whom he calls the Being , the very Being , the Father and Cause of all beings . He placed under this Supreme God , an inferior Being whom he called Reason , ( Aoyo $ ) the Director of things present and

    future , the Creator of the Universe . In fine , he acknowledged a third Being , whom he calls the Spirit or Soul of the world . He added , that the first was the Father of the second , and that the second bad produced the third . "—Le Clerc ' s Lives of the Primitive Fathers , p . 68 . English Ed .

    The application of the Logos of Plato to Jesus Christ , Justin deemed a wonderful discovery , which he thought himself inspired by heaven to make ; and whenever a person feels an impression of his being taught any peculiar tenet by immediate Divine

    communication , ( though in reality it be the offspring of his warm imagination ) the voice of sober reason and the plainest declarations of Scripture are disregarded by the pious enthusiast . As one false step generally leads to another , so this error of Justin , from the pure doctrine of Christ and his

    apostles , not only by degrees spread in the -Christian world , but also gained great additions to it , till at length it led the human mind into the labyrinth of incomprehensible mysteries , as they afterwards appeared in established creeds . The sentiment respecting the person of our Lord , advanced by Justin , does not seem to have extended

    very rapidly , or to have gained ground "without opposition . " All the learned Christians of that time ( says a late venerable divine , who made a noble aacrifice of his worldly interest to his iategrity ) , were far from favouring

    Justin-s new doctrine of Christ being a second God , spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures . Many , whose names are recorded , with numberless others unknown , continued to hold him to be a human being , with extraordinary power * from God . And it has been

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    amply proved , that whilst Justin and the philosophic Christiaus after him , indulged themselves in their unscriptural speculations concerning the Logos , the Word , as the Son of God before all time , and his eternal gene ration , ordinary Christians of plain understanding kept close to the doctrine

    of the apostles concerning Christ , as being a man of the Jewish nation , and the Son of God in no other sense , than that of having received his being , and extraordinary favours and communications from God . * —Lindsey ' s Second Address to the Students of Oxford and Cambridge , Note to p . 213 .

    Dr . Priestley has thrown much light on ecclesiastical history , by proving from the writings of the primitive fathers themselves of the second and third centuries , that their opinions respecting the person of Christ are no criterion of the sentiments of the

    Christian church within that period , if thereby be meant the general body of professing Christians : With reference to these , Tertullian , the first of the Latin fathers , who flourished

    about the beginning of the third century , sadly complains that " the simple , the ignorant and unlearned , who are always the greater part of the body of Christians , " cannot enter into his

    sublime speculations respecting the ceconomy . ** They therefore will have it , that we are worshipers of two , and even of three Gods , but that they are the worshipers of one God only . * — Priestley ' s History of the Chi-istian Church . I . p . 285 .

    This evinces the difficulty which the speculative and philosophic teachers among professing Christians had , to induce the general body to renounce the plain intelligible doctrine taught by our Lord and his apostles , of the

    supremacy of the Father , and that Jesus Christ was a man possessed indeed of extraordinary divine communications , " the spirit being given him without measure , whereby he was qualified to reveal the will of God , and to be an all-sufficient Saviour .

    Greatly as they revered , and ardently as they loved their professed Master , their minds revolted at the representation of his deity , as interfering with the prerogative of the only true God . They were unable to enter into those metaphysical distinctions and subtle-

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    Mr . Howe on the Opinions , on the Trinity . 52

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    Tor . xii . * x

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1817, page 521, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2468/page/9/