Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.6

298 THE ARIAN INVITED TO ORTHODOX FAITH. Dr. Allix, in his Judgment of the Jewish Church app proaches nearer to the tritheistical hypothesis, and is charged with it by Mr. Nye, because he speaks of: three creators, makers and gods, a Trinity of uncreated beings and spirits, see Nye against Allix, page 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 177, &c. Now on this hypothesis Dr. Allix distinguishing the divine wisdom, dr Word, from God the Father, as a real, proper, distinct person, sometimes he applies what these Jewish authors say of the arch'- angel, called the " Logos," to the eternal divine Word, or wisdom, that is, to the second person in the Deity ; though this seems not to be agreeable to their sense, for these ancient Jews describe this angel as a superior sort of created, or deri- votive being, An effect, or production, of the will and power of God, as the christian fathers speak, and though not coming per- fectly into the rank of other creatures, yet not as being the true God, or properly divine. Mr. Nye justly reprehends Dr. Allix for this, that hehath heaped together indifferently all that Philo says of several " Logoi," and applied all to the eternal essential .t Logos;" not being aware that this eternal essential as Logos" is verydifferent from the great created " Logos" or archangel, who presides over the angels and stars. Letter II. page 80. . In short, all the moderns interpret these ancient Jewish .writings, as every party of men is ready to interpret the scrip- ture, to support their own hypothesis. But I cannot persuade myself that either Sandius, Dr. Alliik, or Mr. Nye, in their sea- timents, do sufficiently answer the expressions of these ancient authors: For each of them doth either join and affix divine characters to a dependent or created nature, or they apply in- ferior and'creatural characters to a divine nature, or else they drop one or more of these senses of the word " Logos," and leave it out of the character of the Messiah. Whereas, if we would but give ourselves leave to suppose the Messiah, or the Logos, even in his pre- existent state as well as after his incarna- tiòn, to be a complex, or compounded person, and that the di- vine Logos, the eternal Word assumed a super- angelic, or in- ferior nature, called also " Logos" into union with himself before he took flesh upon him, and even before the world was made, this would reconcile all these ideas which seem in- consistent, and scatter the darkness that hangs over these an- cient writers, and even over the scripture itself; if this opinion be not admitted. The learned Mr. Robert Fleming,* seems to come nearer As Scotland has produced some great and illustrious instances of piety and devotion, some men of a heavenly mind, filled with the fire of divine love beyond their fellows, so this learned author, Mr, Robert Fleming is an instance of what might be expected from that nation also in respect of light and sacred knowledge, if they didbut exert their genius with the same liberty of sentiment that he used; whose constant motto wa-, a Libere sed modeste."

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