used into the
offspring of Mary and the Holy Ghost; that his abasement was the result
of his voluntary choice; and that the object of his mission was, to
purify, not his own, but the sins of the world. On his return to his
native skies, he received the immense reward of his obedience; the
everlasting kingdom of the Messiah, which had been darkly foretold by
the prophets, under the carnal images of peace, of conquest, and of
dominion. Omnipotence could enlarge the human faculties of Christ to the
extend of is celestial office. In the language of antiquity, the title
of God has not been severely confined to the first parent, and his
incomparable minister, his only-begotten son, might claim, without
presumption, the religious, though secondary, worship of a subject of a
subject world.

II. 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 or Asia, who
never beheld the manhood, were the more readily disposed to embrace the
divinity, of Christ. The polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and
the Barbarian, were alike accustomed to conceive a long succession, an
infinite chain of angels or daemons, or deities, or aeons, or emanations,
issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it seem strange or
incredible, that the first of these 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, and to conduct them in
the paths of life and immortality. But the prevailing doctrine of the
eternity and inherent pravity of matter infected the primitive churches
of the East. Many among the Gentile proselytes refused to believe that
a celestial spirit, an undivided portion of the first essence, had been
personally united with a mass of impure and contaminated flesh; and,
in their zeal for the divinity, they piously abjured the humanity,
of Christ. While his blood was still recent on Mount Calvary, the
_Docetes_, a numerous and learned sect of Asiatics, invented the
_phantastic_ system, which was afterwards propagated by the Marcionites,
the Manichaeans, and the various names of the Gnostic heresy. They denied
the truth and authenticity of the Gospels, as far as they relate the
conception of Mary, the birth of Christ, and the thirty years that
preceded the exercise of his ministry. He first appeared on the b