Martyr, because it was not in his time an article in any Creed? If fo, it will follow, by parity of arguing, that almost all the other articles of our present Creeds were the private tenets or opinions of particular perfons, and not the common doctrine, or belief of the catholic Church. This must follow upon Dr. S's own principles. For he has himself remarked in his preface, that "it " is highly probable these, (referring to doc"trines he had been mentioning,) and other "doctrines were taught, (viz. after baptism,) "as circumstances arofe, either to explain "fome things inculcated in the Gospels, or "to avoid fomething erroneous, And hence "it was that the original Creed was enlarged, " and more things inferted into it; and in"deed all that has been added to it seems to "have been owing to these causes." The just now cited declaration of Justin Martyr is therefore to be regarded as exactly coincident with a doctrine publickly received, and not as the bare refult of his own judgment, for any thing Dr. S. has faid, or proved to the contrary, But if fo, the doctrine of the Refurrection

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Refurrection of the body, or of the flefb, was an article of faith from the beginning; and its fubfequent date as an article of any Creed is a circumftance of very inferior confideration. What matters it to us when it was thought neceffary to be required of the members of the Church of Chrift openly to profefs they believed as the Apostles and primitive Chriftians did?

But let me fhew you how unfairly the author of the Enquiry deals by Polycarp. Of the two places in this father's epiftle to the Philippians in which mention is made of the refurrection, the principal, I think, is that I not long fince quoted, and will here lay again before you. He that raifed up Chrift from the dead, fhall alfo raise up us in like manner. The words in like manner are by the no lefs faithful than judicious tranflator printed in Italics, as not been literally contained, though neceffarily implied in the original. This paffage then, like many more parallel ones which I have had occafion to produce, I mean, from the Scripture itfelf, manifeftly imports

imports the refurrection of the body; though should any perfon affect to doubt what the good father's meaning may be here, they may foon learn what his idea of the refurrection was, from a part of the prayer he preferred to God in the hour of his martyrdom, according to the account we have of it in the circular epistle of the Church of Smyrna. He there makes mention of the refurrection both of foul and body. For though the foul cannot, properly speaking, be faid to rise again, yet as the foul and body constitute the same man, as these constituent parts are feparated by death, and reunited at the refurrection, this reunion is not unfitly expreffed by a term that may be truly predicated of one of the constituent parts.

Dr. S. admits the genuineness of the above-mentioned narrative; and yet will not fuffer us to confider the letter in one place to be an explanation of the fenfe in the other. There is more of art than honefty in an attempt to flip out of this difficulty by saying, as the Enquirer does in the following words,

that

that "by the time this letter was wrote, the "notion feems to have prevailed among "Chriftians, that the body was to be raised,

though it was not yet got into any of their Creeds." This is a fort of fpiritual juggle which inverts truth, and disguises it in the fame instant: it metamorphofes the real fentiment of Polycarp into a whimsical notion which began to gain ground in the Church!

But this matter may be viewed in another

light. The force of truth has drawn from our author an involuntary ceffion of his own. darling point. For immediately after the fentence laft cited from him, he acquaints us, that "foon after the middle of the fecond "century difputes arofe about the refurrec"tion; the heathens objecting to the poffibility of it, and the CHRISTIANS endea

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vouring to answer the objections they met with. The enquiry, fays he, was, whe"ther there was to be a refurrection of the

foul alone, or of the whole man confifting "of body and foul? And then a fecond

queftion was, whether the flesh, the very "" flesh

"flesh which we now bear about us, was to be raised up again? The WRITERS of

that time ftill extant contended for the re

Jurrection of the flesh together with the foul. "But there does not appear to be any Creed "weich established fuch a doctrine. For "whatever PRIVATE PERSONS might ima

gine to be true, was not inftantly to be “professed as an article of faith, necessary to "be believed in order to Baptifm." And afterwards he tells us, that "the controverfy "about the refurrection of the flesh did not

begin till the middle, or near the end of "the fecond century. And then as philofophers objected to the refurrection ITSELF, "from the common topics, how could FLESH "devoured by beafts or fishes, and thus become

PARTS of thofe animals; or perhaps reduced "by fire to afbes, or difperft by feas and rivers,

be reftored? Athenagoras, Theophilus, and "Tertullian undertook a defence of this notion; and taught, that it was no ways beyond the power of Almighty God to "restore to every one the flesh he once “had." * (ii)

Enquiry &c. p. 18.

Now