all
the Greek fathers, support the common reading.--Nov. Test. in loc.--M]

[Footnote 15: The Valentinians embraced a complex, and almost
incoherent, system. 1. Both Christ and Jesus were aeons, though of
different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the other as the
divine spirit of the Savior. 2. At the time of the passion, they both
retired, and left only a sensitive soul and a human body. 3. Even
that body was aethereal, and perhaps apparent.--Such are the laborious
conclusions of Mosheim. But I much doubt whether the Latin translator
understood Irenaeus, and whether Irenaeus and the Valetinians understood
themselves.]

[Footnote 16: The heretics abused the passionate exclamation of "My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Rousseau, who has drawn an eloquent,
but indecent, parallel between Christ and Socrates, forgets that not
a word of impatience or despair escaped from the mouth of the dying
philosopher. In the Messiah, such sentiments could be only apparent; and
such ill-sounding words were properly explained as the application of a
psalm and prophecy.]

IV. All those who believe the immateriality of the soul, a specious
and noble tenet, must confess, from their present experience, the
incomprehensible union of mind and matter. A similar union is not
inconsistent with a much higher, or even with the highest, degree of
mental faculties; and the incarnation of an aeon or archangel, the most
perfect of created spirits, does not involve any positive contradiction
or absurdity. In the age of religious freedom, which was determined
by the council of Nice, the dignity of Christ was measured by private
judgment according to the indefinite rule of Scripture, or reason, or
tradition. But when his pure and proper divinity had been established on
the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics trembled on the edge
of a precipice where it was impossible to recede, dangerous to stand,
dreadful to fall and the manifold inconveniences of their creed were
aggravated by the sublime character of their theology. They hesitated
to pronounce; that God himself, the second person of an equal and
consubstantial trinity, was manifested in the flesh; [17] that a being
who pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of Mary; that
his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and months, and years
of human existence; that the Almighty had been scourged and crucified;
that his impassible essence had felt pain