The dominion of the Meffiah is alfo called an everlafting dominion, which fhall not pass away, and his kingdom that, which fhall not be deftroyed;' not that the Meffiah will reign a king for ever, but that the laws of righteousness, love and peace, by which he will govern his kingdom, will be everlafting, the practice of fuch moral duties being of immutable and eternal obligation. The apostle Paul' affirms, he,' Christ, 'must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet; for he,' God, hath put all things under his feet.” But at that period of time, called the end,

when all things fhall be fubdued unto him, then he fhall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the father, put down * all rule, all authority, and power, and the fon alfo himself be fubject unto him, that put all things under him, that God may be all in all,' or reign without a delegate: For, when all the nations of the earth fhall be brought under the righteous and peaceful government of the Meffiah, and fin and death fhall be destroyed, his kingdom,

when

when it shall thus have produced the great end for which it was conftituted, viz. the introduction of universal holiness and virtue among men, will by express divine appointment ceafe, and civil government itfelf be altogether unneceffary.

The joyful happy world experiencing, that the enjoyment of happiness is infeparably affociated with the practice of virtue, will not ftand in need of a code of pofitive written laws to regulate their conduct, nor of a delegated judge to administer them, but yield a voluntary and universal obedience to God, their fupreme and only governor, and be ever diftinguished by a grateful piety, and a filial love for their heavenly father, by mutual difinterested beneficence, and by an emancipation from those turbulent paffions and ungoverned appetites, which at prefent fubjugate mankind, harraffing their minds with an inceffant difquietude, the neceffary confequence of an unrestrained indulgence of the fins of fenfuality, ambition, and avarice. These, or

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to speak evangelically, the luft of the flesh, the luft of the eyes, and the pride of life,' the fruitful fources, whence all the mischief and mifery, with which the world abounds, are evidently derived, will then be altogether unknown, and the fordid gratification of them, fo derogatory from the genuine dignity of the human nature, and the tranfcendent purity of Chriftian morality, will be fucceeded by the invariable practice of that amiable train of focial virtues, which will be the peculiar characteristics of thofe, who shall be deemed worthy partakers of that "new heavens. "and new earth, wherein dwelleth right"eousness," supporting and adorning the happy fpiritual brotherhood of Christians in their future state of a glorious immortality.

An unfeigned love of truth, a defire to difentangle it from falfhood, and thereby to facilitate your general converfion, were the motives which induced me to expose the non-entity of the feveral Pfeudo-Meffiahs of the Socinians, Arians, and Athanafians,

Athanafians, whofe feveral hypothefes, though more or lefs abfurd, yet agree in one fundamental error, viz. the merely maternal virgin-origin of Jefus, confounding the idea, and overturning the definition, of that rational creature of God, denominated a man. There never was an inftance, from the day of the creation of the first human pair to the prefent hour, of an interruption of that one and only mode of the propagation of the human fpecies, which is common likewife to all the animal creation, and which the God of nature established, and is in itfelf a miracle, as all his works are, and inimitable by

man.

From the circumftances of the narratives of the respective births of Ifaac and John the Baptist, especially of that of the former, it is evident, that Abraham and Zecharias were through age as impotent, and incapable of begetting children, as their wives Sarah and Elizabeth were barren and advanced beyond the time of life adapted to concep

tion

tion and parturition: Yet Ifaac and John were, by the miraculous power of God, as truly the offspring of the immediate feed of their refpective fathers, Abraham and Zacharias, as they were the fruit of the womb of their refpective mothers, Sarah and Elizabeth. It is a plain cafe then, whatever Athanafians, Arians, or Socinians, and other hyper-metaphyficians, may hold to the contrary, that he alone is a man, who is defcended from the firft man, as well by an human father, as well as by an human mother.

For argument fake however let. us admit as true what is falfe, viz. that the Jewish prophets and genuine Christian evangelists agree in afcribing to the Meffiah the celebrated extraordinary origin from a virgin alone; yet a being fo produced cannot be a man, without an exprefs direction from God to authorize us to denominate him a man, and to regard him, or any other being as a man, who is represented as deftitute of an human father,