adoption of expressions from the Greek poets by St. Paul. But his main argument is to show that the early Greeks must have been acquainted with the writings of Moses and the prophets; and that from thence they derived knowledge of every description, as well as philosophy. To the former, especially, they were indebted for the regal, legislatorial, and military wisdom which their history so largely evidences.17 His proof that Moses taught the Greeks the art of war is not a very convincing one: he asserts that the strategics of Miltiades at the battle of Marathon, were entirely derived from the Mosaic account of the Exodus !18

But of all the Grecian sages and philosophers, there was no one who had borrowed so extensively from Moses, and drunk so entirely into his spirit, as Plato. He styles him "the Hebraizing Philosopher;"19 yea, "Moses Atticising:"20 and often prefaces the quotations from his works, which abound throughout the Stromates, with remarks, calling to mind the high authority to which the opinions of Plato are entitled on this account.21 It is scarcely needful to add, that Clement of Alexandria enforces the freedom of the will to the full extent in

17 1 Strom., § 22-26.

18 § 24.

19 ὁ ἐξ Εβραίων φιλόσοφος Πλάτων. 1 Strom., § 1.

20 Mwons arrixigav. Id., § 22.; that is, Moses in an Attic dress, writing according to the taste of Attica; he has borrowed this piece of flippant foppery from Numenius, a Hellenising Jew.

21 1 Strom., § 25.; 5 Strom., § 14., &c. He gives only one or two instances of this resemblance between Moses and Plato, upon which he insists so largely; they are so ridiculously trivial, that they would not at all repay the trouble of the long explanation which would be required to make them intelligible. 1 Strom., § 1, 24.; 5 Strom., § 1, 14, &c.

Χ

which it was maintained by the Platonists,22 and frequently upholds his opinion, by the express sanction and authority of passages from the works of Plato.23

We are now saved the trouble of all further investigation: the opinions of the early fathers upon free-will, we have traced in an unbroken line of descent from Justin, the Platonist, down to Clement, one of the founders of the school of the New Platonics; and we have found that none of them appeal to any authority in support of their doctrine, but that of Plato; and that they only attempt to countenance it from Scripture by citing passages in which men are addressed as rational and responsible agents: which is, of course, to beg the entire question, if there be one, between Plato and the Bible.

If, then, the ultimate appeal upon this most momentous question is to be made to the Scriptures, nothing can be more certain, than that the opinions of the fathers of the second century are utterly unimportant and valueless in the controversy; since they only prove that Plato maintained the entire freedom of the will:-a fact with which we were already acquainted, upon the more unexceptionable authority of his own extant works.

What would be the fate, with these writers, of the portion of the Christian scheme which depends upon the solution of this question, and which, since the Reformation, has been comprehended under the technical expression doctrines of Grace, it is not very difficult to divine. The large and liberal canon of scriptural interpretation then in use, or, in a case of emergency, the timely aid of the aupBoxía, could scarcely fail to remove all impediments

22 1 Strom., § 17, 18.; 2 Strom., § 4, 6, 12, 13. ; 3 Strom., § 5. ; 4 Strom., § 24.; 5 Strom., § 3, 12, 14.; 7 Strom., § 2.

23 5 Strom., § 14., &c.

from this quarter, to a system of divinity in entire harmony with the Platonic principle. And such is certainly the fact of the case. Upon these points, the Bible is only quoted to be disregarded, or explained away where it seems to oppose the doctrine to be proved: it is perfectly powerless against this their prepossession. If we are saved by faith alone,24 faith is merely that assent of the understanding, which, by the express doctrine of both the Stoics and Platonists, is in our own power.25 If the grace of God be needed at all, beyond the ordinary grace of baptism, it is only for those whose ambition, and whose nerve, have prompted and enabled them to climb to perilous elevations on the giddy eminences of gnosticism26 and martyrdom.27 If there be any thing like depravity in human nature, it is that which, it is entirely within the power of the will to rectify; nor does it, in any one of the fathers of the second century, overstep the dimensions which the academic philosophy had assigned to it; namely, that man has a pure soul dwelling in an impure body.28 We may, indeed, in our anxiety to apologise for the early representatives of the

24 Μία καθολικὴ τῆς ἀνθρωπότητος σωτηρία, πίςις.—Clem. Αlex., Pad. lib. 1. c. 6.

25 Irenæus, ubi supra, Clem. Alex. 2 Strom., § 12.; in the same book he speaks of τὴν ἑκούσιον πίςιν, § 2. ; he also terms faith, τέχνη φυσική, in the sixth section, which is an argument to prove that it is a voluntary act of the understanding, and only to be called divine on account of its excellent nature and properties: he uses the same argument § 11. See also 5 Strom., § 13.

26 5 Strom., § 12, 13.

27 See above, p. 218.

28 Tertullian de Animâ. c. 41. Clem. Alex., 2 Strom., § 3.; 4 Strom., § 3.; Strom., §1., &c. It was this notion which gave rise to the error of the Basilideans and Marcionites, that the soul was created by a good god, and the body by an evil one. See the last section of the 4th book.

visible church, cite passages from the works of Justin,29 which apparently give some degree of countenance to these doctrines; but though I readily acknowledge that more of this phraseology will be found there than in the writings of his successors, yet I cannot help fearing that they will not admit of an orthodox interpretation, without doing considerable violence to the entire scope of the author's meaning. And I feel compelled to state, unhesitatingly, that upon this part of the great question between God and man, which constitutes religion, the fathers of the second century were the disciples, not of Christ, but of Plato :nor are the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel to be found in their works, and for this most obvious reason, because they did not maintain them.

We have no difficulty in accounting for this circumstance. Their mode of interpretation has already shown us that they regarded the Bible in the light of a mythology; revealing certain truths regarding the divine nature and worship, but concealing, under the semblance of moral maxims, twisted together in amphibologies, or enshrined in allegorical histories, the elemental germs of an ethical system, which it was the province of philosophy to develope. And to what philosophy could they so naturally apply for this assistance, as to that from whence the protomartyr of this phase of Christianity had stepped into the new religion; which had already been applied as the solvent of the Mosaic dispensation by the Hellenising Jews; and the intellectual beauties of which project the shadow of an apology for those who have denominated its founder, the divine Plato?

As the rule which we have hitherto invariably fol

29 See the bishop of Lincoln's Justin., pp. 74-78.; also Milner's Church History, Vol. I.

lowed, of endeavouring to point out wherein the error we have to expose consists, is at this advanced stage of our enquiry necessarily made absolute, it gives me the most sincere pleasure to be able to state, that my view of the question of free-will pretends to nothing new or original; but, on the other hand, is now so generally entertained, that a very brief notice of it will suffice. It appears to me, that whichever part we take in this controversy, we are ultimately thrown upon insuperable difficulties. We soon refute the Calvinist, as we imagine, upon the imputed injustice of unconditional election and reprobation, or preterition. But does he not turn our own argument against us, and with exactly equal force, in the next step of the enquiry, upon the imputed injustice of the original permission of evil? As this is, notwithstanding, a subject on which it is plainly needful that man should know something, here is a strong case in favor of a revelation. That revelation has been imparted, and its purport is entirely embodied in the following passage:-" Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his own good pleasure."30 I readily grant that here is no solution of the metaphysical difficulty; but, nevertheless, every ethical purpose for which such knowledge was required is abundantly answered by it. Here is a rule, so regulating the faith of the devout enquirer, that receiving the whole of that it hath pleased God to disclose to him upon these mysterious subjects, he ascribes all "to the praise of the glory of his grace," from the first movement of conviction in his heart, to that blessed manifestation of the divine presence, which (as his hope is) shall at the last enable him "to walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

30 Phil. ii. 12, 13.