Note 167 — Quest. IX., X., XI. (continued 5)

“If Dr. Priestley, in his celebrated efforts to establish the Unitarianism of the primitive church against Dr. Horsley, fell so short of ‘complete victory;’ it may be presumed, that the failure would, in some degree, affect his greater work, The History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ. Many parts of that elaborate performance are merely a republication of the Letters, excluding the personalities. Their merits and their fate must, therefore, be closely, interwoven.

“This large and capital work was given to the world under circumstances which appeared very promising for bringing the controversy to a satisfactory issue. With great and long continued diligence the indefatigable author collected his materials. He digested and arranged them, with that lucid perspicuity for which he was so justly distinguished. He tried every method to call forth into the field of preparatory discussion, some learned and able Trinitarians and Arians. He waited for some years after the publication of the work; and then renewed his public challenge, affording an additional period for the fate of the question. It was, of course, implied, and the obligation was frankly avowed by the Doctor; that he would in proper time duly notice what any fair and candid opponents should produce.

“It is to be lamented, however that the expectations thus excited have not been completely answered; and the decease of Dr. Priestly excludes every hope that they will be so.

“Early in the year 1790, a mild and amiable writer, Dr. Williams,^[168] addressed to Dr. Priestley his objections to the whole structure of the argument built on the History of Early Opinions. He offered reasons to shew, that the appeal to the fathers was a method calculated to increase difficulties, and to render the controversy almost interminable; that it has been experimentally proved an insufficient mode of argument; that it has been long ago solidly refuted;^[169] that it was plainly reprehended by Jesus Christ; that it is highly untheological in its just consequences; and that it is illogical and inconclusive. This letter breathed the sincere spirit of amicable controversy; and I cannot but think that it deserved the very candid and serious attention of your learned friend. But I believe it was never noticed in any other way than that of private compliment.

“In 1794, Dr. Jamieson published a professed and minute examination of the History of Early Opinions. This elaborate and learned work was the very performance which Dr. Priestley had so long desired and challenged. It surely, then, had a just claim on his particular and public notice. At the time of this work’s appearance, Dr. Priestley was occupied in the important measure of emigration to America. But when that step was accomplished, he enjoyed, for the remaining years of life, a calm and undisturbed retreat. We have, however, yet to be informed of the reason why his former pledge was not fulfilled.

“As the controversy has been thus left open, it cannot be deemed illiberal in me to mention the result of personal observation in reading this large work of Dr. Priestley’s. I am the more inclined to do so, since what I have remarked may be of use in answering a question of some importance; What degree of reliance can be placed on Dr. Priestley’s care and accuracy in his citations of the fathers?

“You, Sir, are well aware of the importance which Dr. Priestley attaches to the position, that the doctrines of the pre-existence and divinity of Christ were acknowledged by the orthodox fathers to have been most cautiously concealed, in the earlier preaching of the apostles, and not to have been clearly divulged, till John taught them at the close of the apostolic age.

“Dr. Jamieson appears to me to have solidly refuted this assertion.^[170] But he has, by no means, proceeded so far as he might easily have done, in shewing Dr. Priestley’s remarkable inattention to rigid accuracy in the allegation of his authorities.

“The instances of this kind which I have observed have given me much astonishment. If they concerned merely the literary reputation of this truly eminent character, to drag them into public notice could only be the work of a petulant and little mind. But they become cases of a very different nature, when conclusions of prime importance on a very interesting subject are inferred from egregious misconstructions of an author’s meaning. In such cases regard to truth must supersede personal delicacies.

“This duty becomes the more urgent when we are told, from high and respectable authority, that, ‘in all the most important controversies in which’ Dr. Priestley ‘was engaged, he had studied the subject thoroughly, and was a complete master of the whole question:’ and that, in his reasoning, ‘there was nothing artificial and ambiguous; no design to slur over difficulties and objections, or to lay greater stress upon a topic than it would well bear.’^[171]

“The doctor has selected Chrysostom as the father whose evidence is most ample in support of the opinion, that John first taught the divinity of Christ. ‘Chrysostom,’ says Dr. Priestley, ‘represents all the preceding writers of the New Testament as children, who heard, but did not understand things, and who were busy about cheese-cakes and childish sports, but John,’ he says, ‘taught what the angels themselves did not know before he declared it.’^[172]

“At the bottom of the page, Dr. Priestley faithfully transcribes the Greek of this passage, and no one can say that his translation is materially unfair, so far as it goes. The sentence is exactly thus: ‘All the rest, like little children, hear indeed, yet do not understand what they hear, but are captivated with cakes and childish sports.’ The omission of the clause ‘all the rest,’ (οι γε αλλοι παντες) does not appear of much consequence. The insertion of it would only have led the reader to inquire for the antecedent, and Dr. Priestley has provided a ready answer: ‘all the preceding writers of the New Testament.’

“Do me the favour, my dear Sir, to take down the volume of Chrysostom, and turn to the passage. Will you find the antecedent to this relative clause to be any ‘writers of the New Testament,’ or any persons at all connected with the New Testament? No, Sir. You will find it to be the effeminate and dissipated spectators of athletic games, and the auditors of musicians and oratorial sophists!^[173]”

Smith’s Letters to Belsham.