TULLY makes VELLEIUS fay that THALES

was.

thers, who had held one opinion in one council, changed it in another: there were therefore feveral orthodoxies pro tempore, if I may fay fo. But that which prevailed laft has come down to us and nothing has been neglected, not even interpolation, to make more ancient fathers hold the language of those who were more modern; an example of which I will quote from ERASMUS +. That learned, exact, and candid divine, not only acknowledges in many places, among a multitude of other defects, fuch as unfairness, uncharitableness, and violence, the inaccuracy of these fathers in their writings; but he complains likewise of the interpolations and alterations which have been made in them for the purpose I have mentioned. St. HILARY, for inftance, who spoke fometimes of the Son of God as of a God of the fame kind, or of the fame nature, with his Father; which expreffions however do not come up to a complete notion of confubftantiality; dared not call the Holy Ghoft God, nor ascribe adoration to him; either because he is not called God expressly in fcripture, or becaufe the faint thought it more neceffary to infist on the Godhead of the Son, whofe human nature made it more difficult to perfuade mankind that he was God; or elfe, finally, because the claim of the Holy Ghoft had not been yet admitted in due form by councils, who erected themselves, as it were, into courts of honor to settle ranks and precedency in heaven. ERASMUS thinks that fuch reafons as these obliged HILARIUS to ufe much caution in his expreffions; and therefore, speaking of the Holy Ghost, he had contented himself to fay, "promerendus eft:" but fome orthodox interpolator added, "et adorandus." Many other inftances of corrupting the text of this writer there are, and those principally where fuck liberties ought to

+ Ep. in HILARIUM,

2

have

was the firft who enquired into fuch matters;

that

have been taken the least, as in his books De Trininate, and De Synodis; for in them, fays ERASMUS, he treated very difficult and very dangerous points of divinity," periculofae "de rebus divinis difficultates."

THE fame artifice was employed fometimes in favor of opinions reputed heterodox, if we may believe Rufinus, who, in defending ORIGEN againft that bully JEROM, and that idiot EPIPHANIUS, infifts that ORIGEN Would not have been exposed to their cenfure if his writings had not been interpolated. But this artifice, as well as others, had a much greater, and an entire effect, when it was employed on the fide of the orthodox; that is, of the majority, or of those who made themselves pafs for the majority. Thus it happened in the cafe of the Trinity, and in many others, that Chriftian doctrines have been handed down with an appearance of uniformity, which pagan doctrines could not have.

BUT farther, if Chriftian doctrines had come down in the writings of the most ancient fathers with ftill lefs uniformity than they have, fuch modern fathers as bishop BULL would not have found it hard to make them appear entirely uniform. This he has attempted, in the cafe of the Trinity, with great applause from the ecclefiaftics of your church, and from those of ours. He owns, for inftance, that ORIGEN talks fometimes too freely and fceptically; that TERTULLIAN cared little what he faid, provided he contradicted his adversary; and that two eggs are not more alike, than the expreffions of this father to the whimsies of YALENTINIAN. He gives us LACTANTIUS for a rhetor ignorant in theology, and St. JEROM for a fophift not to be relied on much. Many of their expreffions being gnostical and arian, as well as thofe of other fathers, they were

not

that he afferted water to be the first principle of

things,

not much in his favor; and yet, to fave them for other purposes wherein their authority might be neceffary, he distinguishes between witneffes of the faith and interpréters of the fcriptures: he allows them to be good witnesses, and condemns them often as bad interpreters. He makes this diftinction particularly when he speaks of a paffage in IRENAEUS, where this father cites a paffage from the prophet ISAIAH to prove the divinity of the Holy Ghoft. BULL thought ORIGEN orthodox in his opinion, tho' not in his expreffions, concerning the Trinity. Few of the fathers who lived before the Nicean council were fo; and therefore BULL fuppofes them orthodox against their expreffions, rather than proves them to have been fo by their expreflions. He does by them what they did by the fcriptures, and draws them to his fenfe, in what terms foever they fignify their own. CUDWORTH thinks these primitive fathers heterodox in opinion, as well as in expreffion. They must needs have been much in the wrong, fince they agreed in afferting the fubordination of the Son to the Father. They had taken this opinion of the Logos from the platonic philosophy, and their whole trinity was built on the plan which PLATO had made less confused than that of other heathen trinitarians. 'Ufque ad tres hypoftafes, dicit PLATO, Dei progredi effentiam; et "effe quidem, dicit, Deum fumme bonum; poft illum "autem fecundum conditorem, tertium autem mundi ani

THE abfurdities and profanations built on fuch notions as thefe were innumerable. He who endeavours to confider them with attention, will find his head turn in the confufion they create, and no precife difcrimination of orthodox and heterodox poffible to be made between them,

things, and God the mind who framed them all

out

either according to reafon, wherein they have no foundation at all, or to gofpel revelation, wherein they have very little. They were however propagated by Pagan and Christian theology, till metaphorical generations were thought to be real, and till the virtues and operations of the one Supreme Being were affumed to be distinct hypostases or subsistences in the divinity; as the aeons of VALENTINIAN fignified, I prefume, no more, in the allegorical cant of the first Christian times, than virtues and affections of the divinity, which were afterwards underfood to be real beings exifting out of the firft Being.

THESE doctrines were encouraged, perhaps introduced, by others, that traditional theology among the heathens, and cabalistical literature among the Jews, had preserved from the most ancient ages; and which, as wild as they were, had wanted neither knayes nor fools to vouch for them. These were fuch as fuppofed frequent manifestations of the Supreme Being to his creatures. According to thefe, he manifefted himself sometimes under the form of an angel; fometimes a little, and but a little, differently under that of a man; both of which were called God whilft the manifeftation lafted. That this was fo, we may conclude from divers paffages of the Old Teftament, and from feveral Egyptian traditions. Thus it became in time not hard to imagine a much more noble manifestation of the Supreme Being himself, in the appearance of the Logos or the Word, under an human form, into which God had infinuated himself, and in which he remained incarnated. "Pater in me manens facit ipfe opera." The Word, that is the Supreme Reafon, was always with God, for God alone is that Supreme Reafon but this reafon fpoke to mankind under the fenfible image of a man, when that person appeared who was called the Son of

God,

out of water f. DIOGENES LAERTIUS says that THALES held God to be the oldest of all the things that exist, because ungenerated or unproduced; and the world to be the most beautiful, because it was made by God §. These expreffions might induce one to think that THALES was not only the oldeft, but the most orthodox of the Greek philofophers, even more fo than the divine PLATO; and that his doctrine may serve as an instance to confirm TERTULLIAN'S maxim, how precarious foever it be, "id verum quod primum." They might induce one to think that THALES intended the Supreme Being, whofe fole action in the production of things other theifts did not acknowledge; tho' they acknowledged his exiftence. But these paffages, compared with others, will rather ferve to fhew in how confused a manner the trinitarian hypothefis led these philofophers to speak of God, and of the firft efficient cause. BAYLE

God, on account of his miraculous birth, and most important miffion. Such was the Word of St. JOHN; "the

visible image of the invisible God." To this let us add, for the honor of humanity, and on the authority of fcripture, that angels fuffered themfelves to be adored by men before this manifeftation; but that they have declined this honor ever fince the is Son of God took upon him the human

nature.

+THALES, qui primus de talibus rebus quaefivit, aquam dixit effe initium rerum: Deum autem eam mentem, quae ex aqua cuncta fingeret. Cic. De nat. deor. Lib. i.

§ Antiquiffimum eorum omnium quae funt, Deus; ingenitus enim. Pulcherrimum mundus; a Deo enim factus est,

thought