There is a fine irony in some of his remarks on Priestley’s interpretations of Scripture.  ‘To others,’ he says in his ‘Charge,’ ’who have not the sagacity to discern that the true meaning of an inspired writer must be the reverse of the natural and obvious sense of the expressions which he employs, the force of the conclusion that the Primitive Christians could not believe our Lord to be a mere man because the Apostles had told them He was Creator of the Universe (Colossians i. 15, 17) will be little understood.’[460] In the famous text which speaks of Christ as ‘come in the flesh,’ for ‘come in the flesh’ Priestley substitutes ‘come of the flesh.’  ‘The one,’ says Horsley, ’affirms an Incarnation, the other a mortal extraction.  The first is St. John’s assertion, the second Dr. Priestley’s.  Perhaps Dr. Priestley hath discovered of St. John, as of St. Paul, that his reasoning is sometimes inconclusive and his language inaccurate, and he might think it no unwarrantable liberty to correct an expression, which, as not perfectly corresponding with his own system, he could not entirely approve.  It would have been fair to advertise his reader of so capital an emendation, an emendation for which no support is to be found in the Greek Testament or any variety of manuscripts.’[461] In a similar tone, he trusts ’that the conviction of the theological student that his philosophy is Plato’s, and his creed St. John’s, will alleviate the mortification he might otherwise feel in differing from Dr. Priestley.’[462]

One of the most important and interesting parts of Horsley’s letters was that in which he discussed the old objection raised by Priestley that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was borrowed from Plato.  There is, and Horsley does not deny it, a certain resemblance between the Platonic and the Christian theories.  The Platonist asserted three Divine hypostases, the Good Being ([Greek:  tagathon]), the word or reason ([Greek:  logos] or [Greek:  noys]), and the Spirit ([Greek:  psyche]) that actuates or influences the whole system of the Universe (anima mundi), which had all one common Deity ([Greek:  to theion]), and were eternal and necessarily existent.[463] Horsley can see no derogation to Christianity in the resemblance of this theory to that of the Christian Trinity.  He thinks that the advocates of the Catholic Faith in modern times have been too apt to take alarm at the charge of Platonism.  ’I rejoice,’ he says, ’and glory in the opprobrium.  I not only confess, but I maintain, not a perfect agreement, but such a similitude as speaks a common origin, and affords an argument in confirmation of the Catholic doctrine for its conformity to the most ancient and universal traditions.’[464] For was this idea of a Triad peculiar to Plato? or did it originate with him?  ‘The Platonists,’ says Horsley, ’pretended to be no more than expositors of a more ancient doctrine which is traced from Plato to Parmenides; from Parmenides to his master of the