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Hale , and the Devil , afterwards wrote against them . " Most of your readers probably know that Bishop Lavington wrote " The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared , " which having become very scarce , was lately repubiished .
Mr . Coade having quoted and censured ( pp . Ill , 112 , ) the work of " a person of high rank and confessedly great abilities , " proposed that (< the bulky performance" should " meet with the same treatment as the famous Oxford Decree of 1683 j" this Annotator remarks :
fC The book here referred to the common hangman , for the last and greatest honour it deserved , is entituled the Codex , by old Fryar Gibson , Bishop of London , who died about 40 years ago , and ought to have had his books buried in his coffin along with
him . However , he was nobly handled , and as finely answered by Judge Foster , nt that time Recorder of Bristol . " The date of these remarks is " Aug . 27 , 1790 , " with the initials , C . P . F . so far as I can ascertain them .
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402 Mr . R . Martin on the Difficulties of Unilarianism .
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. Lewes Sir , March 1 . 9 , 1821 . PART of the difficulties alluded Ata in the conclusion of my letter , ( p . 295 , ) on ( what I consider ) the Platonic phraseology of the New Testament , will be found stated in what follows .
Dr . Priestley , in his History of Early Opinions concerning the Person of Christ , lays great stress upon the Ebionites being simple Unitarians . I see no reason to deny that they were ; or that they believed Jesus Christ to be simply a man as to his person . But
the Doctor tells his readers , they were ' oil the Jewish Christians . " Upon the truth of this opinion , rests the weight of the cause he pleaded , so far as it depends upon the Ebionites . Now , Sir , I think he has not only
failed to prove that they were all the Jewish Christians , but has inadvertently , yet clearly proved , by quotations scattered in different parts of his volumes , that they were actually heretics , and no true Christians at all . It
was thought by him , and I believe has been thought by most Unitarians acquainted with his work , that his point was fully established by the following
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quotation from Origen , viz . €€ Those of the Jews who have believed in Jesus have not deserted the customs of their ancestors , but live according to them ; having a name agreeing with the poverty of their legal observances ; for the name Ebion in the Jewish language
signifies poor : and those of the Jews who believe Jesus to be the Christ are called Ebionites . " * Against Dr . Priestley s opinion , founded on this seemhigly strong passage , I have to say , there are decisive reasons for believii ur
that Origen was so far from meaning all the Jewish converts to Christianity , that he only intended certain deluded persons , inconsistently remaining in the Jewish communion , whom he did
not consider as being Christians at all , hence he calls them , " Those of the Jews who have believed in Jesus /' He does not call them the Jewish Christians , nor intimate that their belief concerning Christ entitled them to be considered as such—his language is
very indefinite . His saying they " believed in Jesus , " and " believed him to be the Christ , " is no proof that he thought them to be any part of the true converts to the gospel , because he says , respecting them , in another
place , ( which the Doctor also quotes ^) * " Persons may believe and not believe at the same time , " and he instances , says the Doctor , in " those who believed in Jesus crucified by Pilate in Judea , but who do not believe in the Son of
Him who made the heavens and earth , " &c . Now it cannot be reasonably supposed that Origen considered these persons as all the Jewish Christians , whose faith he esteemed as amounting to nothing , in the Christian sense of
the word . He evidently viewed their not believing the divinity of Jesus Christ as reducing their belief concerning him , in other respects , to a mere nonentity , and therefore could not reckon them as the body o&the Jewish converts to the gospel , except upon the monstrous supposition that no real Christian converts were made
from among the Jews . That he really viewed the Ebionites as only an inconsistent faction in the Jewish communion , and no part of the church of
* History of Early Opinions , III . 195 f Idem , IV . 86 .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1821, page 402, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2502/page/22/
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