he _first_ budding out of--what was termed by the
_true_ followers of Jesus--_heretical doctrines_. The time had not yet
come to make Jesus _a god_, to claim that he had been born of a virgin.
As he _must_, however, have been different from other mortals--throughout
the period of his ministry, at least--the Christ _must_ have entered
into him at the time of his baptism, and _as mysteriously_ disappeared
when he was delivered into the hands of the Jews.

In the course of time, the seeds of the faith, which had slowly arisen
in the rocky and ungrateful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in full
maturity, to the happier climes of the _Gentiles_; and the strangers of
_Rome_ and _Alexandria, who had never beheld the manhood_, were more
ready to embrace the _divinity_ of Jesus.

The polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and the barbarian, were
alike accustomed to receive--as we have seen in this chapter--a long
succession and infinite chain of angels, or deities, or _aeons_, or
emanations, issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it seem strange
and incredible _to them_, that the first of the _aeons_, the Logos, or
Word of God, of the same substance with the Father, should descend upon
earth, to deliver the human race from vice and error. The histories of
their countries, their odes, and their religions were teeming with such
ideas, as happening in the past, and they were also _looking for and
expecting an Angel-Messiah_.[137:2]

Centuries rolled by, however, before the doctrine of Christ Jesus, the
Angel-Messiah, became a settled question, an established tenet in the
Christian faith. The dignity of Christ Jesus was measured by _private
judgment_, according to the indefinite _rule of Scripture_, or
_tradition_ or _reason_. 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_,[137:3] that the 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 God had been scourged and crucif