e confined in their earthly
prisons to expiate the stains which they had contracted in a former
state. [8] But the degrees of purity and corruption are almost
immeasurable. It might be fairly presumed, that the most sublime and
virtuous of human spirits was infused into the offspring of Mary and
the Holy Ghost; [9] that his abasement was the result of his voluntary
choice; and that the object of his mission was, to purify, not his
own, but the sins of the world. On his return to his native skies, he
received the immense reward of his obedience; the everlasting kingdom of
the Messiah, which had been darkly foretold by the prophets, under the
carnal images of peace, of conquest, and of dominion. Omnipotence could
enlarge the human faculties of Christ to the extend of is celestial
office. In the language of antiquity, the title of God has not been
severely confined to the first parent, and his incomparable minister,
his only-begotten son, might claim, without presumption, the religious,
though secondary, worship of a subject of a subject world.

[Footnote 4: The two first chapters of St. Matthew did not exist in
the Ebionite copies, (Epiphan. Haeres. xxx. 13;) and the miraculous
conception is one of the last articles which Dr. Priestley has curtailed
from his scanty creed. * Note: The distinct allusion to the facts
related in the two first chapters of the Gospel, in a work evidently
written about the end of the reign of Nero, the Ascensio Isaiae, edited
by Archbishop Lawrence, seems convincing evidence that they are integral
parts of the authentic Christian history.--M.]

[Footnote 5: It is probable enough that the first of the Gospels for the
use of the Jewish converts was composed in the Hebrew or Syriac idiom:
the fact is attested by a chain of fathers--Papias, Irenaeus, Origen,
Jerom, &c. It is devoutly believed by the Catholics, and admitted by
Casaubon, Grotius, and Isaac Vossius, among the Protestant critics. But
this Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew is most unaccountably lost; and we
may accuse the diligence or fidelity of the primitive churches, who have
preferred the unauthorized version of some nameless Greek. Erasmus
and his followers, who respect our Greek text as the original Gospel,
deprive themselves of the evidence which declares it to be the work
of an apostle. See Simon, Hist. Critique, &c., tom. iii. c. 5--9, p.
47--101, and the Prolegomena of Mill and Wetstein to the New Testament.
* Note: Surely the exti