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It is really a laughable circumflance to contemplate the droll dilemma, in which these three feds of Platonizing Christians have plunged me; for, by omitting to confine their ideas of a man to a rational being, generated by a man on the body of a woman, and by extending it to the fuppofed offspring of a virgin alone, carnally unconnected with a man, they have impofed on me the difficult task of refuting their respective senselefs fyftems of the Godhead manhood, the Demi-godhead manhood, and the fole virginSprung manhood, of Jesus Christ, so as not to offend against the strictest rules of the most delicate propriety and chastity. However, I hope, I have fucceeded in my endeavors to expofe the absurdity of them by a choice of expreffions, which cannot give umbrage to the moft exemplary moralift, a truly Christian character, which I am ambitious of acquiring, and of recommending to the practice of my fellow Christians, in words from the prefs in public, and not lefs fo in private conversation; and in deeds, by that weighty leffon of inftruction, my own personal example.

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I have fhewn, that the higher any set of theological theorists exalt the nature, perfon, or effence, of Chrift, the lower they debafe his moral character; and that those of his difciples and followers, who were to a man univerfally allowed to have been mere men, and who, like him, became obedient to God even unto death, and attested their conviction of the truth of his Gospel difpenfation with their blood, being according to the Arian, and particularly according to the Athanafian, hypothefis, inferior to their mafter in mental ability, were fuperior to him in this his most signal inftance of moral worth. But if we admit Jefus Chrift to be a man, as he really was, begotten by a man, and born of a woman, his moral character and conduct are difplayed to the greatest advantage, his godlinefs, philanthropy, and innocence, are eminently confpicuous in all the fullness of human perfection, he being the only man, who never failed in the discharge of every branch of virtuous obligation, the fingle individual of the human race, who, completely good to the

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utmost extent of the ability of the human fpecies, lived and died without fin. Hence being man, in the one only fenfe, in which he could be claffed in the order of finite intelligent beings of that denomination, and at the fame time a finlefs man, though tempted and befet with human paffions, like as we are, he demonftrated to his fellow-men, that his and their God and father was not an unreasonable Pharaoh, who requires bricks to be made without ftraw, their duty to be done without granting the means and power to perform it, but an all-wife parent, who had imprinted in indelible characters a plain and unalterable rule of moral obligation on their hearts, called by Paul the law of their mind,' or the understanding, abundantly sufficient to restrain the impetuofity of that turbulent principle within them, the animal part of their nature, termed by the fame apoftle the law of their members,' or the appetites and paffions; and to regulate and direct the motions of these springs of human action fo, as to make them inftrumental in promoting the interests of virtue

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virtue and true religion, rather than fubfervient to the law of fin.' For our appe

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tites and paffions are not, in fact, vicious in themselves, but become vitiated by man's vicious mifgovernment and mifapplication

of them.

Hence too this man of the feed of David, the Meffiah, or Chrift Jefus the appointed favior, exhibited a moft illustrious example of goodness, righteoufnefs, and obedience, to his brethren the Jews, in particular, and to his fellow-creatures in general, and confequently was juftified in recommending it to the imitation of his difciples, and in requiring the practice of the fame abfolute human perfection from them.

But, if according to an unavoidable inference from the fenfeless and contradictory doctrine, (not to give it an harfher epithet) of the Athanafian Trinity in Unity, Christ was (to fpeak as intelligibly as poffible on a nonfenfical fubject) the fupreme God in a tri-. partite degree, or conjointly with the Father and Holy Spirit, and, though impaffible in

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his divine, yet fuffered in his human nature; if, agreeably to the chimerical Arian and Apollinarian hypothefes, which differ from each other more in name, than in reality, Chrift pre-existed before all worlds as a fuper-angelic fpirit, and a fubordinate Jehovah, till anno mundi 40co he post-existed as a Demi-God or God-man; if lastly, in conformity to the Socinian fcheme, lefs wild than the two preceding fyftems, Chrift drew his firft existence from the womb of the virgin Mary, previously unconfcious of receiving the vivifying feed of man, and thus became a new undefinable. being, mother-full and fatherless, he could not, on the footing of these three different hypothefes, which equally represent him as a being of a different fpecies from men, become an example of abfolute moral perfection to men, and it would have been abfurd in him to have proposed himself as such to their imitation. At beft he could only have injoined them to be relatively perfect; for, confiftently with thefe three varying accounts of his nature and effence, he could only be a pattern of abfolute virtue,

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