they were condemned was perfectly capable of vindication. [452:1] In the days of Justin Martyr there were certain professing Christians, probably the Ebionites, [452:2] who held the simple humanity of our Lord, but that writer represents the great body of the disciples as entertaining very different sentiments.  “There are some of our race,” says he, “who confess that He was the Christ, but affirm that He was a man born of human parents, with whom I do not agree, neither should I, even if very many, who entertain the same opinion as myself, were to say so; since we are commanded by Christ to attend, not to the doctrines of men, but to that which was proclaimed by the blessed prophets, and taught by Himself.” [452:3]

When Justin here expresses his dissent from those who described our Lord as “a man born of human parents,” he obviously means no more than that he is not a Humanitarian, for, in common with the early Church, he held the doctrine of the two natures in Christ.  The fathers who now flourished, when touching upon the question of the union of humanity and deity in the person of the Redeemer, do not, it is true, express themselves always with as much precision as writers who appeared after the Eutychian controversy in the fifth century; but they undoubtedly believed that our Lord was both God and man. [453:1] Even already the subject was pressed on their attention by various classes of errorists who were labouring with much assiduity to disseminate their principles.  The Gnostics, who affirmed that the body of Jesus was a phantom, shut them up to the necessity of shewing that He really possessed all the attributes of a human being; whilst, in meeting objectors from a different quarter, they were compelled to demonstrate that He was also the Jehovah of the Old Testament.  The Ebionites were not the only sectaries who taught that Jesus was a mere man.  The same doctrine was inculcated by Theodotus, a native of Byzantium, who settled at Rome about the end of the second century.  This individual, though by trade a tanner, possessed no small amount of learning, and created some disturbance in the Church of the Western capital by the novelty and boldness of his speculations.  In the end he is said to have been excommunicated by Victor, the Roman bishop.  Some time afterwards, his sentiments were adopted by Artemon, whose disciples, named Artemonites, elected a bishop of their own, [453:2] and existed for some time at Rome as a distinct community.

But by far the most distinguished of these ancient impugners of the proper deity of the Messiah was the celebrated Paul of Samosata, who flourished shortly after the middle of the third century.  Paul occupied the bishopric of Antioch, the second see in Christendom; and was undoubtedly a man of superior talent.  According to his views, the Divine Logos is not a distinct Person, but the Reason of God; and Jesus was the greatest of the sons of men simply because the Logos dwelt in Him after a higher manner, or more