He shows, then, that so far from all the Church being originally Unitarian, there was no Unitarian before the end of the second century, when Theodotus, ‘the learned tanner of Byzantium,’ who had been a renegade from the faith, taught for the first time that His humanity was the whole of Christ’s condition, and that He was only exalted to Heaven like other good men.  He owns that the Cerinthians and Ebionites long before that had affirmed that Jesus had no existence previous to Mary’s conception, and was literally and physically the carpenter’s son, and so asserted the mere humanity of the Redeemer, ‘but,’ he adds, ’they admitted I know not what unintelligible exaltation of His nature upon His Ascension by which He became no less the object of worship than if His nature had been originally divine.’[456] He acknowledges that the Cerinthian Gnostics denied the proper divinity of Christ, but, he adds very pertinently, ’if you agree with me in these opinions, it is little to your purpose to insist that Justin Martyr’s reflections are levelled only at the Gnostics.’[457]

Like Waterland, and indeed all defenders of the Catholic doctrine, Horsley fully admits the difficulties and mysteriousness of his subject, ‘but,’ he asks, ’is Christianity clear of difficulties in any of the Unitarian schemes?  Hath the Arian hypothesis no difficulty when it ascribes both the first formation and perpetual government of the Universe not to the Deity, but an inferior being?  In the Socinian scheme is it no difficulty that the capacity of a mere man should contain that wisdom by which God made the universe?’[458]

Horsley rebukes his opponent in severe and dignified language for presuming to write on a subject on which, by his own confession, he was ignorant of what had been written.  In reply to a passage in Horsley’s ‘Charge,’ in which it was asserted that Priestley’s opinions in general were the same as those propagated by Daniel Zuicker, and that his arguments were in essential points the same as Episcopius had used, Priestley had said that he had never heard of Zuicker, and knew little of Episcopius; he also let slip that he had only ‘looked through’ the ancient fathers and the writings of Bishop Bull, an unfortunate phrase, which Horsley is constantly casting in his teeth.[459] On the positive proofs of his own position, Horsley cites numerous passages from the ante-Nicene fathers.  He contends that in the famous passage of Tertullian on which Priestley had laid so much stress, Tertullian meant by ‘idiotae,’ not the general body of unlearned Christians, but some stupid people who could not accept the great mystery which was generally accepted by the Church.  He shows that the Jews in Christ’s time did believe in a Trinity, and expected the Second Person to come as their Messiah.  He maintains that when Athanasius spoke of Jews who held the simple humanity of Christ, he meant what he said, viz., Jews simply, not Christian Jews, as Priestley asserted.