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478 Review . —Ben David $ Reply to Two Dehtieal Works .
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are , 1 , That the Pharisees , when they could no longer deny the works of Jesus , asserted that he was aided by a demon , and that the Emperor Alexander Severus believed in the divinity of Christ , as is attested by iEJius
Lampridius : 2 , That Hadrian in his letter to the Consul Servianus , preserved by Vopiscus , asserts that the devotees of Serapis were believers in Christ , that is , in his divinity : these were the Gnostic teachers , of whom Basilides
was chief : 3 , That those who first believed , or affected to believe , that our Lord was a supernatural being , changed Christ us into Chrestus , an epithet which the Pagans applied to such of the demons as they considered b&rign or useful to mankind : in the number of these Pagans was Suetonius * The philosophers of the Alexandrian
School , according to Dr . Jones , had recourse to the same reasoning , exerting " all their talents and reputation to destroy Christianity , upon no other ground than that the founder was himself supposed to be a supernatural being / ' These facts , he concludes , decide the controversy between the advocates of the Orthodox and those
of the Unitarian faith , and are " a sure proof that Christianity as vulgarly received and established , whether by prejudice or power , contains the very essence of Antichrist . Chap . IV . is headed " The Gnostic System and Antichrist the same—>
Gnosticism explained—Its Origin and Authors pointed out by Christ . " The Gnostics , Yvag-iKoi , pretended , says our author , to possess superior wisdom to
that of Christ and the apostles * They were Christians only in profession , but in reality Epicurean Jews , and the most deadly enemies of the gospel * In the Appendix , Dr . Jones presents us with a view of their principles .
e The system of the Gnostics was founded in three principles ; one was their rejection of the Creator as the supreme God and benevolent Father of mankind ; the second was their rejection of the maw Jesus , while they piretend ^ pretended ) to receive the Christ who was a God within
him ; the third was that Christ did not come from the Almighty with a commission to save the world on the terms of repentance and reformation , but that he came to destroy the works of the Creator , and to authorize his followers to continue
in the indulgence of their favourite sins . These impious sentiments , while they are attested by the Greek and Latin fathers ,
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are obviously alluded to in the apostolic writings : see Jude ver . 1 ; John ii . 22 They gare various Dames to the supreme God , which they pretended to reveal , such a » , Propater , Proarche , Bythos ox Bathos ¦ , the depth * To this John alludes ii
in Rev . , 24 , as well as Paul in Rom . viii . 39 . This chief divinity they coupled with a female called Sige . This pair gave birth to another , called Nous and Aletheia . These again unking begot Logos and Zoe who in their turn produced Anthropos and Ecelesta . Hence
finally arose the JEones or angels , or the boundless genealogies to which Paul ali hides 5 n 1 Tim i . 4 ; see Iren , pp . 7 , 8 . These fictions , Origen , in his answer to Celsus a p . 294 , thus characterizes : Cel- ' sus ought to know that there exist those who having espoused the cause of the Serpent ( O w $ ) are called ( P < f > uzvoi ) Ser pentiste * Their fictions exceed the fictions of the Titans and the Giants / Tbese
men being Egyptians ^ pretended , that the Christ or the divinity in the man Jesus , was the same with Horns , or Serapis , or Pan ; see Epiphanius * Vol . I . p . 171 ; Iren . pp . 17 , 18 . The Egyptians had tlieir elder and younger Horns ; hence the impostors had two Christs , one of the old , the other of the new dispensation . Duos quidem Deos ausos esse haereticos dicere et duos Ghristos
audivimus : Origen nsgi Apxoov , lib . ii . c , 7 The same learned writer thus bears testimony to the manner in which they cursed the Lord Jesus , while they pretended to honour the divinity within him . * They vilify Jesus no less than Celsus
nor d <> they admit any one into their society , unless he first deposit curses upon Jesus / Contra Cels . 294 . This doctrine was taught by the impostors at Corinth . To this , as we have seen , Paul pointedly alludes in 1 Cor . xii . 3 , and also at the end . It is with much truth
and propriety , that the following assertion is made in the interpolated letter to the Trallians , c . 6 : < They ( the heretics ) speak of Christ , not that they might preach Christ , but that they might supersede him ; and they profess the law , in order to establish a system of iniquity / It is a remarkable fact that Josephus spe&ks of the Jewish Gnostics under the
name of Zealots ; and the description which he has given us of their wickedness , throws much light on the second Epistle of Peter , and that of Jude . The Jewish historian and these apostles will appear , when duly compared , to speak of the same people ; and hence the authenticity of these two Epistles will be placed beyond the reach of reasonable doubt /' —Pp . 271—273 . The author thinks that Christ points out the Gnostics in the parable of the
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1824, page 478, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2527/page/30/
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