rent
nature of which we know little or nothing.[435] The objection that the
Christian Trinity was borrowed from the Platonists he turns against the
objectors by asking, 'What is become of the master argument of the
Socinians that the Trinity is contradictory to common sense and
reason?--Yet now they would make it the invention of the principal and
most celebrated philosophers, men of the most refined reason.'[436]

On the whole this is a very valuable contribution to the apologetic
literature on the subject of the Trinity, for though Leslie, like his
predecessors, sometimes has recourse to abstruse arguments to explain
the 'modes' of the divine presence, yet he is far too acute a
controversialist to lay himself open, as Sherlock and South had done, to
imputations of heresy on any side; and his general method of treating
the question is lucid enough, and full of just such arguments as would
be most telling to men of common sense, for whom rather than for
profound theologians the treatise was written.

About the same time that this treatise was published, there arose what
was intended to be a new sect, or, according to the claims of its
founders, the revival of a very old one--a return, in fact, to original
Christianity. The founder or reviver of this party was William Whiston,
a man of great learning, and of a thoroughly straightforward and candid
disposition, but withal so eccentric, that it is difficult sometimes to
treat his speculations seriously. His character was a strange compound
of credulity and scepticism. He was 'inclined to believe true' the
legend of Abgarus' epistle to Christ, and Christ's reply. He published a
vindication of the Sibylline oracles 'with the genuine oracles
themselves.' He had a strong faith in the physical efficacy of anointing
the sick with oil. But his great discovery was the genuineness and
inestimable value of the Apostolical Constitutions and Canons. He was
'satisfied that they were of equal value with the four Gospels;' nay,
'that they were the most sacred of the canonical books of the New
Testament; that polemical controversies would never cease until they
were admitted as the standing rule of Christianity.' The learned world
generally had pronounced them to be a forgery, but that was easily
accounted for. The Constitutions favoured the Eusebian doctrines, and
were therefore repudiated of course by those who were interested in
maintaining the Athanasian heresy.

Whiston had many m