to them that are in darkness, an instructor of the ignorant, a teacher of babes. The deceivers by their behaviour brought disgrace on their profession, and the worship of the true God thus became odious to the nations. Hence the Apostle adds, "For the name of God is blasphemed through you among the Gentiles."

At the close of the Epistle, Paul thought it right to give the Christians the following admonition respecting this Jew and his base associates: "I beseech you, brethren, mark those who make divisions and bring offences," (i. e. introduce offensive doctrines,) "contrary to the doctrine which ye have learnt. For such men are not servants of our Lord Jesus Christ, but of their own belly, and by their doctrine about Chrestus, and their eulogy of him, they deceive the hearts of the simple. (For your obedience is come abroad unto all. I rejoice, therefore, in you; but I wish you to be wise unto goodness, and harmless unto evil.) But the God of peace will quickly bruise Satan under your feet." The impostors, when they taught the divinity of Christ, changed his name Xpιotos into XpnoTos*, good, benign, useful, an epithet of those superior beings whom Plato and others supposed to be agents under God, in the government of the world. Hence the origin of a well-known fact, that the enemies of the Gospel called our Lord Chrestus, and his followers Chrestiani: and frequent allusions to these names occur in the writings of the ancient apologists. The original term Xpηotoλoyia occurs in no other place, and is a word coined by the apostle to express the specious arts of the impostors in teaching the divinity of Christ, by making his very name indicative of his being a good demon. The impostors, however, were ready to allow among themselves that the doctrine which they thus taught was false but useful, as calculated to remove the objections of Heathens to a crucified Saviour. In this sense, Xpηotoλoyia may be considered as coined by the deceivers themselves to express the object and utility of their doctrine and

:

in this view it approaches near the notion which is annexed to it by the commentators and by Mr. Belsham.

Though the impostors pretended to honour Christ as a God, they uniformly refused to acknowledge him as their Lord. Ουδε κυριον αυτον ονομαζειν θελουσι, says Irenæus, p. 9. The reason was, that if they acknowledged him as Lord, they must have acknowledged their obligation to obey his moral precepts, and to imbibe his pure and holy example. If they looked to him as their lord, they stood to him in the relation of servants to a master, to whose authority they were obliged to submit; and whose work they were bound to do. This is the point upon which the following words of our apostle turn: “For such men are not servants of our Lord Jesus Christ, but of their own belly." In another place he says, "their belly was their God," alluding, by both expressions, to the well-known fact that these deceivers pretended to honour Christ's divinity by the festivals which they frequented, but the object of which in reality was to pamper their appetites and to gratify their lusts. Irenæus, (p. 31,) speaking of them, thus happily illustrates the language of Paul: "These men, serving the pleasures of the flesh, say that they ought to indulge the flesh with the works of the flesh; and the women who have imbibed from them this doctrine, they debauch in secret." Josephus himself has recorded one signal instance of the abominations which they practised. The crimes of which the Gnostics were guilty, were imputed by their enemies to all the followers of Jesus without discrimination: and it was in the practice of the most subtle and rancorous foes, under the name of friends, that the imputations entirely originated.

The impostors, I have observed, called the divinity and miraculous birth of Christ, but which Paul calls offensive doctrines, contrary to the doctrine which the converts had at first learned, xprotoλoyia, an useful doctrine; and the utility of it consisted "in deceiving Satan ;'

a phrase which, divested of its symbolical signification, simply means the leading of men into a belief of the Gospel, in consequence of evading, by false representations, those unreasonable objections which the mistaken notions and the depraved principles of the world threw in the way of its progress. Now it is observable, that if we pass over the words in the parenthesis, and consider the subsequent in connexion with the preceding part of the sentence, this will actually appear to be the pretence for their specious impostures. "And by their doctrine of Chrestus, and their eulogy of him," "they deceive the hearts of the simple-but the God of peace will quickly bruise Satan under your feet;" as though he had said, "These men propagate their falsehoods under the pretext of deceiving Satan; but in reality they deceive only those who, unlike themselves, possess innocent and guileless hearts. And as to Satan, the great adversary that retards the Gospel, the Almighty, instead of imposing on him by lies, or opposing him by violence and contention, will speedily bruise him under your feet; and this he will do by means consistent with gentleness, peace and truth."

Our Lord, wishing to prevent his apostles from adopting the conduct pursued by the Gnostic teachers in the propagation of their system, among many other appropriate directions delivered to them the following :— "Be ye wise as the serpent, and harmless as the dove." This maxim, though dictated in opposition to them, the deceivers perverted to a justification of their falsehoods, interpreting it thus, and omitting the last clause :-"As the serpent, or Satan, employed his wisdom to deceive the mother of mankind, so may you, after his example, employ the same means to deceive the serpent, and thus defeat him with his own weapons." The men who thus argued, the Apostle elsewhere calls false apostles, ministers of Satan, who himself was transformed into a minister of light; and he says, in reference to their sub

tilty, "I fear, lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity which is in Christ." In order to rectify the above wicked perversion of his divine Master's precept, Paul thus writes to his brethren at Rome: "I wish you to be wise unto goodness, but unto evil to be harmless." As if he had said, "My desire is, that the end you have in view should ever be laudable, and that you should pursue it by methods consistent with truth and virtue. It were better that you possess no wisdom at all, than that you pervert it to sinister purposes. In all that is evil, therefore, show yourselves as though you were entirely destitute of sagacity and skill; but in whatever is virtuous and praiseworthy, display all the knowledge and all the prudence which it is possible for man to acquire."

A circumstance in this place presents itself, which leads us to the men here stigmatized by Josephus and by the Apostle, as the authors of the doctrine inculcating the miraculous birth of our Lord. The plea by which they attempted to justify this and other falsehoods propagated respecting him, was to deceive the devil. Now it is remarkable, that this very plea has been adoptod by the supporters of that doctrine in after ages. When the objector to the truth of the tale asked, "If Mary did really conceive while she was yet a virgin and unknown to Joseph, how came she at that very time to be espoused to him, and by that means expose herself to an unjust suspicion ?"-The usual reply was, "She was espoused in order to deceive the devil. For the devil having heard that a virgin would be with child, observed the virgins; therefore, that the deceiver might be deceived, Joseph espoused her who was ever a virgin." This argument, which was borrowed, not as is supposed from Ignatius, but from the first inventors of the story, contemptible as it now is, had something like meaning in its original application. For, divested of its figure, the phrase to deceive the devil, meant the defeating of the

principle of evil, by removing those obstacles which it opposed to the prevalence of the Gospel. But the mystic or internal signification being in time lost, and the literal one only retained, the expression degenerated into rank nonsense and absurdity.

One passage in the body of this epistle has an evident allusion to the transactions at Rome, and to the artifices by which the deceivers endeavoured to separate the converts from a belief in one God. To this passage then I return, which is the following: Sejanus accused the Christians as enemies to Cæsar, and as wishing to raise a prince of their own to the throne of the universe. Besides, the wicked Jew and his associates were guilty of great crimes; and these were indiscriminately imputed to the whole body of the Jews. The hostility shown to the followers of Jesus by the government, and the accusations laid to their charge, are thus noticed by the apostle: "What then shall we say to these things? if God be for us, who can be against us? Shall any bring accusation against the chosen of God? God acquitteth them. Doth any condemn them? Christ hath died, or rather, he is risen; and standing at the right hand of God pleadeth in our behalf." The senate, in order to separate the converts from their allegiance to Jesus, banished some to remote islands; while those of proper age they forced to enlist, contrary to the privilege which for ages had exempted them, as Jews, from the military service. On these measures Paul must have had his eye, when he triumphantly puts the question, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ?" He then enumerates the several hardships which they underwent, in consequence of those cruel measures, and expresses his confidence that the love of their Master would enable them to triumph over all their distresses. "Shall tribulation, or oppression, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword (that is, the civil power)-nay, in all these things we are more than con