at Clemens Alexandrinus, one of
the writers who asserts most decidedly the freedom of the will, admits
the necessity of a new birth unto righteousness. "The Father," says he,
"regenerates by the Spirit unto adoption all who flee to Him." [451:2]
"Since the soul is moved of itself, the grace of God demands from it that
which it has, namely, a ready temper as its contribution to salvation.
For the Lord wishes that _the good which He confers on the soul_ should
be its own, since it is not without sensation, so that it should be
impelled like a body." [451:3]

No fact is more satisfactorily attested than that the early disciples
rendered divine honours to our Saviour. In the very beginning of the
second century, a heathen magistrate, who deemed it his duty to make
minute inquiries respecting them, reported to the Roman Emperor that, in
their religious assemblies, they sang "hymns to Christ as to a God."
[451:4] They were reproached by the Gentiles, as well as by the Jews,
for worshipping a man who had been crucified. [451:5] When the
accusation was brought against them, they at once admitted its truth,
and they undertook to shew that the procedure for which they were
condemned was perfectly capable of vindication. [452:1] In the days of
Justin Martyr there were certain professing Christians, probably the
Ebionites, [452:2] who held the simple humanity of our Lord, but that
writer represents the great body of the disciples as entertaining very
different sentiments. "There are some of our race," says he, "who
confess that He was the Christ, but affirm that He was a man born of
human parents, with whom I do not agree, neither should I, even if very
many, who entertain the same opinion as myself, were to say so; since we
are commanded by Christ to attend, not to the doctrines of men, but to
that which was proclaimed by the blessed prophets, and taught by
Himself." [452:3]

When Justin here expresses his dissent from those who described our Lord
as "a man born of human parents," he obviously means no more than that
he is not a Humanitarian, for, in common with the early Church, he held
the doctrine of the two natures in Christ. The fathers who now
flourished, when touching upon the question of the union of humanity and
deity in the person of the Redeemer, do not, it is true, express
themselves always with as much precision as writers who appeared after
the Eutychian controversy in the fifth century; but they undoubtedly
believ