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and their God; and that the responsibility in the full discharge of his duty is, therefore, most awful. Gentlemen, I shall confidently bring this enquiry before you, and leave the issue of it in your hands, persuaded that any cause, whether public or private, cannot be in greater security than when it is committed to the keeping, or hangs upon the decision, of men whose characters, deserved fame, and conscientious principles, are an ample guarantee for the just and due discharge of their duty. – Call Samuel Horsley.

Crier. He is sworn.

Examined by the Attorney-General :—

Att. Gen. Your name, sir, I think is Horsley? Witness. It is.

Att. Gen. Do you know any thing of a book entitled "The Corruptions of Christianity?"

Witness. I do, sir: I know it to have been written by Thomas Priestley, one of the defendants. Priestley. To save the time of the Court, I admit that I am the author of that work.

Att. Gen. Very good. Pray then, sir, inform the gentlemen of the jury of the nature of that work.

Witness. The object of it is to throw discredit upon the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, by denying that it has any existence in Scripture, or that either the Scriptures, or the belief of the primitive Christians, afford any support to the truth of it. It attempts to prove that the doctrine, in the form in which it

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is now maintained, is of no greater antiquity than the Nicene Council;-that it is a gradual corruption of the doctrine of the Gospel, which took its rise in an opinion first advanced in the second century by converts from the Platonic school; — that before this innovation, of which Justin Martyr is made the author, the faith of the whole Christian Church, and particularly of the Church of Jerusalem, was simply and strictly Unitarian ; — that the immediate disciples of the Apostles conceived our Saviour to be a man, whose existence commenced in the womb of Mary;-that they thought him in no respect an object of worship'; — that the next succeeding race worshipped him, indeed, but they had no higher notions of his divinity than those which are maintained by the followers of Arius in the fourth century. Thus, by the declaration that the primitive Christians were Unitarians, and their followers, to the fourth century, Arians, have the defendants attempted to level, and too fatally succeeded in striking, a blow which aims to dispossess that Being of divinity," who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, although he made himself

The doctrine of our Lord's mere humanity is the clear doctrine of the Scriptures, and the apostles never taught any other. Hist. of Corr. vol. i. p. 6.

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2 See Horsley's Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of St. Albans.

of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men."

Judge. Defendant, — I shall take it as admitted

that this and any other statement here made of your work by the witnesses is correct, where you do not interpose to deny it. In what year did the Nicene Council assemble?

Witness. In the year 325.

Att. Gen. Is the assumption that the faith of the first Christians was simply and strictly Unitarian true or not?

Witness. Decidedly untrue; for it was the evident object of St. John to guard against the possibility of mistaking the divine original of Christ in his decisive statement, that he was the divine WORD or Logos that had existed from all eternity; and Ignatius, the disciple of St. John, here states in the page now open before me, in terms highly figurative, I will allow, but perfectly unequivocal, the WORD or Logos to be a distinct person from the Father. "There is one God, who hath manifested himself through Jesus Christ his Son, who is his eternal Son, who came not forth from silence 1;" meaning thereby, that the Son's existence holds not of the Father by any such remote relation as the fabulous genealogies describe; but he is the eternal Logos of the paternal mind.

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Ign. ad Magn., sect. 8.

Again, Clemens Romanus, the fellow-labourer of St. Paul', says, speaking of Christ, "The sceptre of the majesty of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, came not in the pomp of pride or arrogance, although he had it in his power." And if Christ had the power of coming into the world in what manner he pleased, he was a Divine Being; and this exactly coincides with what St. John says, -"Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God." Now, had Christ been a mere man, in what other way could he have come than in the flesh? and yet Priestley says, that Clemens, when speaking in the highest terms concerning Christ, only calls him "the sceptre of the majesty of God;" whereas both he and the Apostle, his fellow-labourer, declare that he came in the flesh; or, as another Apostle has it, "in the likeness of men." St. John, therefore, with great truth and reason, sets forth this as the cardinal doctrine of Christianity; insomuch that he speaks of the belief of this article as the accomplishment of our Christian warfare; the attainment, at least, of that faith which with certainty overcometh the world. "This," he says, "is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith." Then he adds, “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"

1 Vide Phil. iv. 3.

Ep. 1. ch. 16.

"Son of God" is a title that belongs to our Lord in his human character, describing him as that man who became The Son of God by union with the Godhead; as "Son of Man," on the contrary, is a title which belongs to the Eternal WORD, describing that person of the Godhead who was made man by uniting himself to the man Jesus. To believe, therefore, that Jesus is The Son of God, is to believe that he is God himself incarnate. This the Apostle says, is the faith which overcometh the world; inspiring the Christian with fortitude to surmount the temptations of the world, in whatever shape they may assail him. On the other hand, the denial of this great truth, so animating to the believer's hopes, he represents as the beginning of that apostacy which is to come to its height in the latter ages, as one of the characters of Antichrist. "Ye have heard," he says, "that Antichrist shall come: even now there are many Antichrists. Who is a liar, but he that denieth the Father and Son?" And again, "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God: and this is that spirit of Antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come, and now already is it in the world." "The Christ" is a name properly alluding to the inauguration of the Redeemer to his triple office of Prophet, Priest,

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