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apbstolicity of any point of Christian discipline or doctrine , it is obviously of the hi g hest importance to ascertain what was the belief or practice of those Christians who lived in the first ages of the churcfc ** So thought Dr . Priestley ; and it was this view of the subject , and the conviction that the great majority of the primitive Christians were Unitarians , believers in the strict unity of God and the simple humanity of Jesus Christ , that led to the composition of some of the most interesting and important of his theological
works . And it is the use which may be made of this fact , if sufficiently well established , that renders the orthodox writers of the present day so exceedingly anxious to shew that the antiquity which we claim for our opinions is unjustly claimed ; that it is , in fact , with them and not with us . In their zeal to establish this point , they are apt to confound two questions perfectly distinct , viz . the opinions held by the early philosophizing fathers , and the opinions held by the great mass of Christian believers . With the exception of those termed apostolic , it is not denied by Dr . Priestley , nor
by Unitarian writers generally , that the fathers , as they are called , were most of them believers in the divinity of Christ . * Whether that divinity which they professed was , or was not , of a subordinate nature , has , at different times , been a matter greatly disputed ; but it has not been disputed by them that the ancient fathers generally admitted the doctrines of the preexistence and divinity of Christ . That which they dispute and deny is the Trinitarianism of the great body of the early Christians . On the contrary , they maintain that , for upwards of a century after Christ , the generality of they maintain that , for upwards of a century after Christ , the generality of
Christian believers were properly Unitarians , and that the evidence for this fact is to be gathered from the incidental remarks and concessions of the orthodox writers themselves . The evidence to which they appeal , and on which they chiefly rely , is that which is derived not from the direct and positive testimony of partial and biassed friends , but that which is drawn from the indirect and incidental testimony of acknowledged , and , for the most part , bitter opponents . The Reviewer says , " he wonders that any man can have the face to say that all the fathers of the church and all
Christian people , till the Council of Nice , were Unitarians . " Dr . Priestley has not said so , nor has even Mr . Lindsey said so , to whom he refers , and from whom he quotes a part of a sentence instead of the whole . f Dr . Priestley
* " So far , " says Mr . Wellbeloved in his admirable Letters to Archdeacon Wrang ^ ham , " so far from considering these Fathers as Unitarians , we charge them ( with the exception of those denominated apostolic ) with being the corruptors 01 the Unitarian doctrine . All that we contend for , ( that is , with respect to these Antenicene Fathers , ) is , that they did not hold the doctrine of the Trinity as now professed ; that they had no notion of three co-eternal and co-equal persons forming one God ; but that , although they spoke of the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit , they spoke of it uniformly as an inferior and subordinate divinity , derived from the Father , who was the Supreme and only true God , and to whom alone the
highest degree of worship was to be paid . " This , however , is a question distinct from that which was mainly discussed by Dr . Priestley , and which concerned only the opinions of the great mass of Christian believers in the period immediatel y succeeding that of the apostles . That the opinions of the Aute-nicene Fathers , however , were such as Mr . Wellbeloved has mentioned above , has been maintained not only by Dr . Priestley but by Dr . Samuel Clarke , Whitby , in his Dkquisitiones Modestce , and Semler . Whether , however , this be so or not , it is , I again repeat , a different and independent question from that which it was the principal object of Dr . Priestley , in his Controversy with Dr . Horsley and his Early Opinions , to establish . t Mr . Lindsey ' s language is , that they were " Unitarians , " ( so far the Reviewer quotes , omitting the remainder of the sentence , ) " Arian V meaning by this latter
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Opinions of the Early Fathers on Vhe Person of Christ . 93
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1828, page 93, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2557/page/21/
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