The degrees of purity and corruption are almost Stains which they had contracted in a former state. They were confined in their earthly prisons to expiate the Souls and providence was justified by a supposition, that Of the preexistence, transmigration, and immortality of Greek or Chaldean philosophy, ( 6) the Jews ( 7) were persuaded Or resemblance, superior in every attribute of mind and body Operation of the Holy Spirit, was a creature without example The son of a virgin, generated by the ineffable Same voice which dictated to Isaiah the future conception ofĪ virgin. Observation of the historian, he must have listened to the His wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and as this distantĪnd domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal The natural suspicions of the husband, conscious of his ownĬhastity, were dispelled by the assurance (in a dream) that Original Hebrew, ( 5) as the sole evidence of their faith. Matthew, ( 4) which these sectaries long preserved in the Recorded in several copies of the Gospel according to St. But the secret and authentic history has been His lineal claim to the kingdom of David and the inheritance Legal marriage of the reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and The incredulity of the former wasĬountenanced by the visible circumstances of his birth, the Revered the virginity of his mother, and excluded the aid ofĪn earthly father. Heretics, who confounded the generation of Christ in theĬommon order of nature, and the less guilty schismatics, who Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and theĮbionites, a distinction is faintly noticed between the Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr the adoptive Prophets of ancient days had cured diseases, raised theĭead, divided the sea, stopped the sun, and ascended to Gospel could not astonish a people who held with intrepidįaith the more splendid prodigies of the Mosaic law. Which he shed over his friend and country may be esteemed Hero may disdain the humble virtues of Jesus, the tears Life and death of Socrates had likewise been devoted to theĬause of religion and justice and although the stoic or the He lived and died for the service of mankind: but the Was marked by a regular increase in stature and wisdom andĪfter a painful agony of mind and body, he expired on theĬross. His progress from infancy to youth and manhood Rational and animal life, appeared of the same species with With their friend and countryman, who, in all the actions of ( 3) The familiar companions of Jesus of Nazareth conversed ![]() Plebeian garb, their grosser apprehensions were incapable ofĭiscerning their God, who had studiously disguised hisĬelestial character under the name and person of a mortal. If they had courage to hail their king when he appeared in a Prophecy and prejudice, they had never been taught toĮlevate their hopes above a human and temporal Messiah. Refuse these sectaries any knowledge of the pure and properĭivinity of Christ. Would be variously moulded by the zeal or prudence of three Latitude of faith, and the softness of their infant creed Their churches have disappeared, their booksĪre obliterated: their obscure freedom might allow a Only by their obstinate perseverance in the practice of the Has countenanced the belief, the hope, the wish, that theĮbionites, or at least the Nazarenes, were distinguished A laudable regard for the honor of the first proselyte It is my design to comprise in the present chapter a religious war of two hundred and fifty years, to represent the ecclesiastical and political schism of the Oriental sects, and to introduce their clamorous or sanguinary contests, by a modest inquiry into the doctrines of the primitive church. I have already observed, that the disputes of the TRINITY were succeeded by those of the INCARNATION alike scandalous to the church, alike pernicious to the state, still more minute in their origin, still more durable in their effects. But the principle of discord was alive in their bosom, and they were more solicitous to explore the nature, than to practice the laws, of their founder. The Abyssinians.Īfter the extinction of paganism, the Christians in peace and piety might have enjoyed their solitary triumph. Enmity of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople. The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - In The EastĬhapter XLVII Theological history of the Doctrine of the Incarnation. The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire XLVII
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