nse of the prophets. * Note: See on this passage Bp. Kaye, Justin
Martyr, p. 25.--M. Note: Most of the modern writers, who have closely
examined this subject, and who will not be suspected of any theological
bias, Rosenmuller on Isaiah ix. 5, and on Psalm xlv. 7, and Bertholdt,
Christologia Judaeorum, c. xx., rightly ascribe much higher notions
of the Messiah to the Jews. In fact, the dispute seems to rest on the
notion that there was a definite and authorized notion of the Messiah,
among the Jews, whereas it was probably so vague, as to admit every
shade of difference, from the vulgar expectation of a mere temporal
king, to the philosophic notion of an emanation from the Deity.--M.]

[Footnote 3: Chrysostom (Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. v. c. 9, p. 183)
and Athanasius (Petav. Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c. 2, p. 3) are
obliged to confess that the Divinity of Christ is rarely mentioned by
himself or his apostles.]

Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, a
distinction is faintly noticed between the heretics, who confounded the
generation of Christ in the common order of nature, and the less guilty
schismatics, who revered the virginity of his mother, and excluded the
aid of an earthly father. The incredulity of the former was countenanced
by the visible circumstances of his birth, the legal marriage of the
reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and his lineal claim to the kingdom of
David and the inheritance of Judah. But the secret and authentic history
has been recorded in several copies of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew, [4] which these sectaries long preserved in the original
Hebrew, [5] as the sole evidence of their faith. The natural suspicions
of the husband, conscious of his own chastity, were dispelled by the
assurance (in a dream) that his wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and
as this distant and domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal
observation of the historian, he must have listened to the same voice
which dictated to Isaiah the future conception of a virgin. The son of
a virgin, generated by the ineffable operation of the Holy Spirit, was a
creature without example or resemblance, superior in every attribute
of mind and body to the children of Adam. Since the introduction of the
Greek or Chaldean philosophy, [6] the Jews [7] were persuaded of the
preexistence, transmigration, and immortality of souls; and providence
was justified by a supposition, that they wer