certain religious works to send theirs and receive mine in exchange, by which we shall obtain a better knowledge of what is going forward. "In the holy bonds of the Gospel, I am affectionately yours,

"REUBEN POTTER, Jun.

"Should you be able to comply with my request, in forwarding a collection of periodical works, the sooner you send them the more the favour will be enhanced. Letters from you and any of your friends, will be gratefully received, and be certain of receiving the earliest attention.

"If you wish to open a correspondence with either of the other denominations, I will refer you in my next to ministers who will be happy to unite in it. As my writing is scarcely legible, and I have had but little time to devote to it, I fear you will not be able to read me. Inaccuracies you will please to excuse. Let me hear from you soon.

In great haste, I am yours,

"R. POTTER, Jun. "The title of my paper is the Gospel Palladium.

"Mr. G. Smallfield,

"Hackney, England."

SIR,

June 10, 1823.

amongst the Jews previous to the Christian æra, could not possibly embrace the views of Christians of the person of Christ.

And yet, Mr. Editor, this gentleman's notion frequently recurs to my recollection in my intercourse with persons holding the popular creed, and suggests a somewhat formidable difficulty in regard to the adoption of Unitarian views by plain, unlettered minds. It has, I believe, been often hinted, the Unitarian doctrine is too abstract and philosophical; too rational (I had almost said) for popular belief; but, thinking as we do, the Scriptures most clearly teach the worshop of a Spiritual Being, (not Jesus Christ, but a Being in a high spiritual sense, the Father of Jesus Christ,) I feel more affected, Sir, by the difficulty which seems to attend the competent conception and grasping of the idea of such a Being by uncultivated minds. It will occur to many of your readers, how relieved such minds seem, the instant they associate the person of Jesus Christ with the Godhead; they then expatiate with all freedom on a par doning God," a " merciful God," &c.; and if their convictions are not very clear, their feelings seem then to have an object to which they promptly attach themselves with grateful, fervent affection.

SIR,

A CONSTANT READER.

R. BELLAMY (who has dis

Conversing with a ing female of the Establishment, who seemed peculiarly happy in a new religious experience, I found it impossible to fix her view for a moment on the Deity separate from the personal image of the Saviour. She notwithstanding declared she prayed to God, and, I had some reason to believe, used a language in prayer that might seem almost correct and scriptural to Unitarian Christians. But, till the person of the Mediator was in her view, her ideas seem to have been without an object, and her words with

brew scholar) has somewhere said that we can have no other conception of the Deity than as embodied in the person of Jesus Christ; and that, in our prayers, we address a reality only so far as we have the image of Jesus Christ before us. This may seem to come strangely from one familiar with the Jewish Scriptures; who must have known that the worship of God

guidance, Mr. Editor, I shall be happy in the suggestions of any of your intelligent readers on this difficulty; and beg to ask them, whether we may not (for a creature of sight and sense as man is) refine too much in the worship of God, and reject the aid of the senses and imagination more than it could ever have been intended we should do? For my own part, I freely

confess the difficulty I have ever felt to lay hold on the Deity, (reverently using the words,) without the aid of a natural object or moral relation borrowed from things of the earth; and, perhaps, in minds of the noblest powers, the idea of the Deity in its grandeur and excellence, is least of all separable from great and beautiful objects submitted to the senses. It certainly seems a beautiful accommodation to human imperfection, and must be acknowledged a very lovely feature of Christian truth, that it presents a Deity to us under the parental relation, and thus greatly aids the struggling mind of man; at once enabling the understanding in some measure to grasp the object, and making it dear and interesting by touching the sweetest affections of the heart. Might not, Sir, the Christian worship of the Father be aided by means which seem to be studiously rejected by the Reformed Christian Churches, and particularly by Noncons of our denomination? Would it essentially violate the law of pure and spiritual worship to introduce any more sensible media of adoration amongst us? It appears to myself, we aim at a simple abstract worship which wars with human instincts, and a character of mind inseparable from the circumstances of human life; and that we deny our devotional sentiments the benefit of associations which might aid their fervour without injuring their purity. The burst of adoration suggested by the blue sky or green earth is surely correct and good; and devotional feeling never more pure and amiable than when prompted by the winds and the waves, the woods and the streams, the valleys and the mountains, &c. We have music and poetry in our worship; might not painting and sculpture also assist it? I suggest this with misgivings, aware of the shock of it to the severer character of Nonconformity, and the simplicity of our Unitarian faith. But may we not be superstitiously afraid of superstition? And, though the spirit and principle of religion must ever be one and the same, must not its modes and forms be accommodated to the character of the age, and ever modified by the prevailing standard of intellect and taste? It was once asked, (with a little illnature perhaps,) who ever thought of

the charms of poetry in connexion with the Unitarian question? But, Sir, would not our cause be more acceptable to certain classes, if we drew it off more from the dryness of a theological argument, and brought it in closer contact with the elegant arts of life?*

But I am trespassing, Sir, and need your indulgence for the inconsistency of adverting to the question of facilitating the success of Unitarianism with the higher classes, when my original object was, to consult your correspondents on the best mode of obviating the difficulty first alluded to; namely, that of unlettered minds to form any conception of the Deity without the aid of personality; that is, (what is usually the case,) without the human form of Jesus Christ being suggested to the imagination.

ALBANUS.

Dr. J. Jones on Gen. iv. 26.
Ο

Nature,

literature, sacred or profane, is so widely mistaken, or the mistake of which has opened so wide a door to the influx of superstition as the following: "Then men began to call on the name of the Lord." Gen. iv. 26. This is the exact rendering of the original, according to the vowel points, and yet it is obviously at variance with the truth, Adam, Eve and their children, especially Abel, having from the beginning never ceased to call on the name of the Lord. If we disregard these points we have the true sense: "Then men began to call themselves by the name of Jehovah," that is, they assumed the title and attributes of the eternal God, thinking themselves immortal on the earth. This presumption, however impious or unreasonable it may now appear to us, was, in the then circumstances of mankind, very natural. The leading idea, which men ever attached to the character of God, was exemption from death; and as there were among the Antediluvians those who lived for ages in full vigour, without, it is probable, being visited

*The architecture of the New Chapel, Finsbury, will not, I trust, disgrace either the age, or its neighbour, the London Institution.

by infirmity or sickness, they began to consider themselves as gods, and to hold themselves forth as such to the world, thus claiming the submission and homage of their fellow-mortals. Moses mentions this circumstance as the origin of idolatry, and proceeds to state the shortening of the period of human life, and the destruction of the world by a flood, as the consequences of it. But it being his purpose to relate the pedigree of Adam, who remained in the knowledge and worship of the true God, unseduced by the impious presumption of their degenerate brethren, he digresses to fulfil that purpose; and after exhausting it, he returns to the subject. Thus, "Then men began to assume the name of Jehovah.-And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of the Gods saw the daughters of men that they were fair, they made them their wives whomsoever each might choose. And the Lord said, My breath shall not for ever remain in man, for he is himself but flesh, so that his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. Thus there were marauders in those days: for after the sons of the gods had commerce with the daughters of men, they bare them children who became violent and mighty men, the same with those who of old were men of renown."

The passage thus brought into one point of view, and more faithfully translated, is clear and consistent. Some of the descendants of Cain, who having forsaken the true God, and who living for ages probably with great bodily strength, began to consider themselves immortal, and to hold themselves forth as gods to be worshiped by their inferiors in rank, might and years. God beholding their impiety, removes the foundation of it, thus saying, "These men think that they have the principle of life in themselves, and that they will for ever live independent of me; I will correct their presumption: and as they breathe only in the breath which I gave them, I will recall it, and thus teach them humility and wisdom by shortening their days."

This passage owes its obscurity to the misconception of two words in the

בני האלחים

original. The phrase 'nben 1 translated sons of God in our common version, means "Sons of the Gods," that is, the sons or descendants of those who made themselves gods, or, according to the language of Moses, who called themselves by the name of Jehovah. These men, instead of confining themselves to a faithful union with one woman, agreeebly to the marriage institution appointed and recommended to Adam by God himself, indulged themselves in promiscuous intercourse with the daughters of men, that is, women in the lower classes of life, and thus gave birth to a race of children who, possessing vast stature and great bodily strength, and withal abandoned on the world, without virtuous example or education, lived by violence and plunder, the terror and disturbers of society. Many tales respecting these marauders, who in after days were called Giants, were doubtless handed down to posterity by the family of Noah; and it is to these traditional tales, current in his days, that Moses alludes when he says, They became violent and mighty men, the saine with those who of old were men of renown."

The other mistake lies in the verb 117 idun, which our translators have rendered by "shall strive," while the Syriac and Arabic Versions, the Chaldee Paraphrase, the Septuagint, and even the Latin Vulgate, have rendered it by terms expressive of the meaning I give to it, viz. "shall remain." How is this to be accounted for? The Chaldeans often changed the final into, such as the termination of plural nouns □' um, into 'un. Thus the verb 17 dum, to continue, perpetuate, became changed into dun, the same in form with another verb already existing in Hebrew, under the sense of "striving, contending, litigating." This accidental corruption may have taken place in the times of Moses or upwards, who has consecrated the vulgar corruption with the primary meaning of "continuing or remaining." The corrupted verb dun, is the parent of the Greek dy, dnvasos, ona, ovvw; while dun, to contend, gave birth to devos, devvala, &c. This confusion having taken place, it was natural that the interpreters of Moses should have been divided, some adapt

ing the sense of the corrupted, and others that of the genuine verb, and agreeing in nothing but in overlooking the meaning of the passage.

In the Jewish Scriptures angels are called "sons of God." See Job i. 6, xxxviii. 7. Now as the Jews believed that angels were employed under God in superintending the affairs of men, and as the title by which angels are elsewhere designated is here used by Moses, it was natural for the Jews to conclude that the same writer meant angels in this place. But it seems that some of these angels, while engaged in the affairs of men, perceiving how fair their daughters were, became enamoured of them, and seduced them; and thus fell from God. Josephus, the Jewish historian, who could not have been mistaken as to the sentiments of his countrymen on this subject, states this to be the fact, in express terms. See Antiq. Jud. i. 4; and also Just. Martyr, Apol. 2, p. 112. Here we see the origin of fallen angels; nor is there another single verse in all the Jewish Scriptures that can be considered as countenancing the same absurd and impious notion. But though the Jews believed in the preposterous notion of fallen angels, they did not think it consistent with the character of God to suffer beings so subtle and powerful to roam at large, worrying mankind and seducing them to evil. They therefore imagined that the Almighty keeps them chained up in hades till the day of judgment. This notion is countenanced by Peter. 2 Pet. ii. 4: "For if God spared not the angels who transgressed, but cast them down to hades, and put them in chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment, and spared not the old world when he brought the food,” &c. It is needless to say that this is a piece of Jewish mythology, which forms no part of the gospel. For neither Christ nor any of the Evangelists sanctions it; and Peter alludes to it as an opinion, which he believed in common with other Jews before the coming of our Lord; and he himself refers to the very passage in Moses, on which that notion is grounded.

.

But these fallen angels, being spirits, could not have commerce with flesh and blood in a state purely incorporeal. The meaning then was, that they had previously entered the bodies of men; and the men, thus possessed, acting solely under the influence of the supposed indwelling spirits, assumed their name of "sons of God." In other words, they were demoniacs, tyrannical and violent men, instigated by demons or evil spirits. Hence the origin of demoniacal possessions.

According to the Jews and many Christians, good angels are still employed in administering the affairs of men. But it is thought they will not look in the face of women, lest they be tempted, and follow the example of their fallen brethren. And to this alludes the following verse of the Apostle Paul: "For this cause ought a woman to have a veil over her head, because of the angels." This illustrious champion of the Christian faith correctly understood the language of Moses, and his words are to this effect: "The marauders and oppressors of old, who go under the name of sons of God, or angels, laid violent hands on those females who came within their view. For this reason let every woman wear a veil, lest she should become the victim of temptation,— lest she should expose herself to some person, who, by intrigue or violence, by wealth or power, may lead her astray." Nor should it be forgotten that this admonition was given to the women of Corinth, a place celebrated for its wealth, and in which rich men were collected from every part of the world to expend their property with loose women. Hence the proverb, said in reference to those who had not riches to dissipate in debaucheries, Ου παντος ανδρος ες Κορινθον εσθ ̓ ὁ πλες, It is not every man that can sail to Corinth. The circumstance that many men flocked from all parts to this city to purchase beautiful women, and to carry them away either by force or money, must appear to give much propriety to this precept of our apostle.

JOHN JONES.