es your name and faith, drawing
upon you even the commendation of your Pagan foes, you no sooner
assemble together, as now, than division and quarrel ensue, in such
measure, as among our Heathen opponents is never seen? Why is it,
Christians, that when you are so ready to die for Christ, you will not
live at peace for him? Honor you not him more by showing that you are of
his spirit, that for his name's sake you are willing to bear patiently
whatever reproach may be laid upon you, than you do even by suffering
and dying for him? The questions you have here agitated are not for this
hour and place. What now does it signify whether one be a follower of
Paul, of Origen, of Sabellius, or Novatian, when we are each and all so
shortly to be called upon to confess our allegiance to neither of
these--but to a greater, even Jesus, the master and head of us all! And
what has our preference for some of the doctrines of either of these to
do with our higher love of Christ and his truth? By such preference is
our superior and supreme regard for Jesus and his word vitiated or
invalidated? Nay, what is it we then do when we embrace the peculiar
doctrine of some great or good man, who has gone before, but embrace
that which in a peculiar sense we regard as the doctrine of Christ? We
receive the peculiar doctrine of Paul, or Justin, or Origen, not because
it is theirs, but because we think they have shown it to be eminently
the doctrine of Christ. In binding upon us then the dogmas of any
teacher, we ought not to be treated other than as those who, in doing
so, are seeking to do the highest honor, not to such teacher, but to
Christ. I am charged as a disciple of the bishop of Antioch, and the
honored Felix as a disciple of Plato. If I honor Paul of Samosata,
Christians, for any of his truth, it is because I deem him to have
discerned clearly the truth as it is in Jesus. My faith is not in him,
but in Jesus. And if Felix honor Plato or Plotinus, it is but because
in them he beholds some clearer unfolding--clearer than elsewhere--of
the truth in Christ. Are not we then, and all who do the same thing, to
be esteemed as those who honor Christ? not deny nor forsake him. And as
we all hold in especial reverence some one or another of a former age,
through whom as a second master we receive the doctrines of the gospel,
ought we not all to love and honor one another, seeing that in the same
way we all love and honor Christ? Let love, Christians,