Ib. p. 267.

  Justin therefore proceeds to demonstrate it, (the pre-existence of
  Christ,) asserting Joshua to have given only a temporary inheritance
  to the Jews, &c.

A precious beginning of a precious demonstration!  It is well for me that my faith in the Trinity is already well grounded by the Scriptures, by Bishop Bull, and the best parts of Plotinus, or this man would certainly have made me either a Socinian or a Deist.

Ib. 2. p. 270.

The general mode of commencing and concluding the Epistles of St. Paul, is a prayer of supplication for the parties, to whom they were addressed; in which he says, ’Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and’—­from whom besides?—­’the Lord Jesus Christ’; in which our Saviour is at times invoked alone, as ’the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all’; and is even ‘invoked’ the first at times as, ’the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all’; shews us plainly, &c.

Invoked!  Surely a pious wish is not an invocation.  “May good angels attend you!” is no invocation or worship of angels.  The essence of religions adoration consists in the attributing, by an act of prayer or praise, a necessary presence to an object—­which not being distinguishable, if the object be sensuously present, we may safely define adoration as an acknowledgement of the actual and necessary presence of an intelligent being not present to our senses.  “May lucky stars shoot influence on you!” would be a very foolish superstition, —­but to say in earnest!  “O ye stars, I pray to you, shoot influences on me,” would be idolatry.  Christ was visually present to Stephen; his invocation therefore was not perforce an act of religious adoration, an acknowledgment of Christ’s deity.

[Footnote 1:  The Origin of Arianism Disclosed.  By John Whitaker, B.D.  London, 1791.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON OXLEE ON THE TRINITY AND INCARNATION. [1] 1827

Strange—­yet from the date of the book of the Celestial Hierarchies of the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite to that of its translation by Joannes Scotus Erigena, the contemporary of Alfred, and from Scotus to the Rev. John Oxlee in 1815, not unfrequent—­delusion of mistaking Pantheism, disguised in a fancy dress of pious phrases, for a more spiritual and philosophic form of Christian Faith!  Nay, stranger still:—­to imagine with Scotus and Mr. Oxlee that in a scheme which more directly than even the grosser species of Atheism, precludes all moral responsibility and subverts all essential difference of right and wrong, they have found the means of proving and explaining, “the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation,” that is, the great and only sufficient antidotes of the right faith against this insidious poison.  For Pantheism—­trick it up as you will—­is but a painted Atheism.  A mask of perverted Scriptures may hide its ugly face, but cannot change a single feature.