ites,
perhaps of the Nazarenes, was gross and imperfect. They revered Jesus
as the greatest of the prophets, endowed with supernatural virtue and
power. They ascribed to his person and to his future reign all the
predictions of the Hebrew oracles which relate to the spiritual and
everlasting kingdom of the promised Messiah. Some of them might
confess that he was born of a virgin; but they obstinately rejected the
preceding existence and divine perfections of the Logos, or Son of God,
which are so clearly defined in the Gospel of St. John. About fifty
years afterwards, the Ebionites, whose errors are mentioned by Justin
Martyr with less severity than they seem to deserve, formed a very
inconsiderable portion of the Christian name. II. The Gnostics, who
were distinguished by the epithet of Docetes, deviated into the contrary
extreme; and betrayed the human, while they asserted the divine, nature
of Christ. Educated in the school of Plato, accustomed to the sublime
idea of the Logos, they readily conceived that the brightest AEon, or
Emanation of the Deity, might assume the outward shape and visible
appearances of a mortal; but they vainly pretended, that the
imperfections of matter are incompatible with the purity of a celestial
substance. While the blood of Christ yet smoked on Mount Calvary, the
Docetes invented the impious and extravagant hypothesis, that, instead
of issuing from the womb of the Virgin, he had descended on the banks
of the Jordan in the form of perfect manhood; that he had imposed on the
senses of his enemies, and of his disciples; and that the ministers of
Pilate had wasted their impotent rage on an airy phantom, who seemed to
expire on the cross, and, after three days, to rise from the dead.

The divine sanction, which the Apostle had bestowed on the fundamental
principle of the theology of Plato, encouraged the learned proselytes of
the second and third centuries to admire and study the writings of the
Athenian sage, who had thus marvellously anticipated one of the most
surprising discoveries of the Christian revelation. The respectable name
of Plato was used by the orthodox, and abused by the heretics, as
the common support of truth and error: the authority of his skilful
commentators, and the science of dialectics, were employed to justify
the remote consequences of his opinions and to supply the discreet
silence of the inspired writers. The same subtle and profound questions
concerning the nature