troduced a fubordinate God, owing his ⚫ existence indeed to the fupreme God, but ' at what time and in what manner created by him, either omit to inform us, choofing to pafs by difficulties in filence, when their abilities are incompetent to the folu'tion of them, or abfurdly define him to be the eternal fon of an eternal father. This little God, (fo your Methodists, though in general of the Athanafian superftition, and otherwife irrational enough in their own peculiar tenets, humorously and rationally ftile the inferior deity of the • Arians) this fubordinate Jehovah, they assert, did, at the expiration of the period ' of about 4000 years, from the creation of this world, unite his pre-exiftent Godhead to a post-existent manhood. This ludicrous but not inadequate defcription of the Jefus of the Arians, I should think would be fufficient to bring their incarnate demigod into derifion and difrepute. But, be that as it may, it is certain this fuppofed compound being fo mongrelled, answers not as you rightly obferve, to the Meffiah foretold by the prophets; and the whole which can be faid in favor of the Arian hy

'pothefis

·

pothefis is, that it is not fo full fraught • with abfurdities as the Athanafian.

Let us now defcend a ftep lower, in a

regular degradation, or to speak rhetoris modo, anticlimax, from the exalted fupreme divinity of the Athanafian, through the inferior demi-godhead of the Arian, 'to the humble Meffiah of the Socinians, • who derive their distinguishing appellative from Socinus, whofe name is juftly delivered down to pofterity, as the name of a man illustrious for denying the pre-existence of Jesus Christ.

His opinion, it must be acknowledged, 'approaches nearer to the truth, than either the Athanafian or Arian; both which may • rather be faid to be removed, the one at

6

an immense, the other at a great distance from prophetical verity. However, the Meffiah of Socinus does not intirely accord with the Meffiah of the prophets. He has a characteristic mark fet upon him, • fufficient to distinguish him from the true Christ, and to conftitute him a Pfeudo• Chrift. I allude to that peculiar hypothefis,

thefis, which is equally common to the three fyftems of Athanafius, Arius, and Socinus, viz. the fupernatural birth of Jefus, derived from the miraculous, and what is called the immaculate, conception. ⚫ of the virgin Mary, effected, mirabile dictu! without the previous carnal knowledge of ' a man. It is eafy to conceive, that a paffage or two, in his Christian Scriptures, misled Socinus into the faid error, concerning this reputed extraordinary birth of Jesus ; ⚫ and I do fuppofe, if this wife man, who 6 flourished about the middle of the fixteenth century, when the light of knowledge began but to dawn, and ignoran c but to totter on her ebon throne, had exifted in the prefent laudably inquifitive age, he would not have grudged the pains to carefully compare this merely mater•nal nativity of Jefus, with the divine pre'dictions delivered by our prophets refpecting the lineal defcent of the true Meffiah.

But, as Socinus gives credit to the hypothefis, that Jefus was the offspring of a virgin, carnally unconnected with a man, he is not intirely exempt from the accu'fation of impofing on the world a Pfeudo• Meffiah;

• Meffiah; and, by representing this his • Meffiah as a mere man, he exposes himself to the lash of ridicule. For how can a rational creature, pretended to be thus 'fprung from a woman alone, a woman un'confcious of receiving in her womb the generating feed of copulation with a man, ⚫ be denominated a man?

It furely is highly abfurd. to speak of Jefus as a man, when a man is fuppofed to be totally unconcerned in begetting him. A new name therefore fhould Socinus have invented for this new fpecies of intelligent beings, or rather, according to • naturalifts, this genus per fe; though I fancy he would have been greatly puzzled to have excogitated an appellative fufficiently fignificative of a rational creature of the masculine gender, born of another purely feminine, who had never previously admitted the conjugal embraces ⚫ of a male of the fame human fpecies with herfelf. Thus much for the demi-parental • Meffiah of Socinus, who afcribes to him an human mother, denies him an human father, and yet inconfiftently denominates

• him

him a man, thereby giving me infallible

tokens, whereby to difcern, that his • Meffiah alfo is, like the reft, a mere nonentity, exifting only in his imagina

<tion.

'We have now explored the cloud-capt fummit of the mount of metaphyfical fancy, inhabited by that idol, the God Meffiah, and levelled him and his temple with the ground. From the upper we have paffed downwards to the middle and less misty region of the mount, occupied by the demi God Meffiah, and overturned ⚫ likewise his image and altar. We have

pursued the declivity, till we came to the lower region, which enjoys a still clearer atmosphere; but meeting here the statue of a virgin-man Meffiah, mother-full and 'fatherless, we have configned him also to the fame fate with his fellows.

Having demolished, in our paffage down the perilous declivity, every Pfeudo-Meffiah, whose defturction was your great object in view, and happily being fafely arrived on terra firma, or ftedfaft level

'ground,