ian sage. But their national pride would have been
mortified by a fair confession of their former poverty: and they boldly
marked, as the sacred inheritance of their ancestors, the gold and
jewels which they had so lately stolen from their Egyptian masters.
One hundred years before the birth of Christ, a philosophical treatise,
which manifestly betrays the style and sentiments of the school of
Plato, was produced by the Alexandrian Jews, and unanimously received
as a genuine and valuable relic of the inspired Wisdom of Solomon.
A similar union of the Mosaic faith and the Grecian philosophy,
distinguishes the works of Philo, which were composed, for the most
part, under the reign of Augustus. The material soul of the universe
might offend the piety of the Hebrews: but they applied the character of
the Logos to the Jehovah of Moses and the patriarchs; and the Son of God
was introduced upon earth under a visible, and even human appearance, to
perform those familiar offices which seem incompatible with the nature
and attributes of the Universal Cause.

Chapter XXI: Persecution Of Heresy, State Of The Church.--Part II.

The eloquence of Plato, the name of Solomon, the authority of the school
of Alexandria, and the consent of the Jews and Greeks, were insufficient
to establish the truth of a mysterious doctrine, which might please, but
could not satisfy, a rational mind. A prophet, or apostle, inspired
by the Deity, can alone exercise a lawful dominion over the faith of
mankind: and the theology of Plato might have been forever confounded
with the philosophical visions of the Academy, the Porch, and the
Lycaeum, if the name and divine attributes of the Logos had not been
confirmed by the celestial pen of the last and most sublime of the
Evangelists. The Christian Revelation, which was consummated under the
reign of Nerva, disclosed to the world the amazing secret, that the
Logos, who was with God from the beginning, and was God, who had made
all things, and for whom all things had been made, was incarnate in the
person of Jesus of Nazareth; who had been born of a virgin, and suffered
death on the cross. Besides the genera design of fixing on a perpetual
basis the divine honors of Christ, the most ancient and respectable of
the ecclesiastical writers have ascribed to the evangelic theologian a
particular intention to confute two opposite heresies, which disturbed
the peace of the primitive church. I. The faith of the Ebion