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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26363	Christos autotheos, or, An historical account of the heresie denying the Godhead of Christ	Addison, Lancelot, 1632-1703.	1696 (1696)	Wing A516; ESTC R11751	46,659	120

God in that Sense in which the Christians own him to be the second Person in the Holy Trinity For tho' the Jews by many Texts of Scripture prove that the Messiah shall be the Son of God yet they hold he is not to be the Son of God by Nature but only by Deputation So that they deny his Eternal Existence and Deity Now this is an Opinion which was afterwards followed by those Hereticks who held the Kingdom of Christ was not perpetual and eternal and that he was made the Son of God only from the time that he took our Flesh and was born of the Virgin When Christ put that Question to his Disciples Whom do Men say that I the Son of Man am He reflected upon a double Error in his Country-men the Jews concerning the Messiah The first Error respected the Manner of his coming among them which they expected shou'd be in Secular Pomp and Grandeur and attended with the Conquest and subduing of the Nations From which Error he labour'd to withdraw their Minds by recalling them to the original Promise of his Coming and shewing them that the end thereof was not to conquer Kingdoms but to bruise the Serpent's Head and to manifest that he was the Seed of the Woman which was promised to do this he takes upon him no higher Title than that of the SON of MAN A second Error the Jews had imbib'd concerning the Messiah respected his Descent For they were uncertain whether he was to arise from the Living or from the Dead which Doubt Christ also fully cleared when he expresly owned himself to be the Son of Man or the Son that was promised to the first Man who should be born from the Seed of the Woman Christ did not so much enquire whether the Jews thought him to be the Messias as what kind of Person they thought him to be as he was the Messias So that the Question he put to his Disciples did not so much regard his Person as the Quality of his Person and whether the Messias whom they all acknowledg'd shou'd be the Son of Man was not also to be the Son of God not only by Adoption Deputation and Promotion but by Nature And the Disciples returned an Answer to their Master's Question according to the Opinion the Multitude had of him telling him that some took him for John the Baptist some for Elias and some for one of the old Prophets who was either returned to Life or else that the Soul of one of them was transmigrated and come into his Body which Opinion the Pharisees had borrowed of the Pythagoreans And when the Disciples had given Christ this Account of the various Sentiments the Jewish People had of the Quality of his Person he was pleas'd to ask them their Opinion of him But whom do ye my Disciples say that I am To which Demand Simon Peter in the Name of the rest makes this Reply Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God The Answer is not only wonderfully emphatical by reason of the Multitude of Articles that are in it but also because that Peter did not return it of his own Head nor by any Dictate inferiour to that of the Holy Ghost For Flesh and Blood as they signifie meer Man in Opposition to God did not put this Answer in Simon 's Mouth but it was immediately from Heaven For from thence he was inspired to declare that Jesus was the true Messias and by Nature the Son of the living God He needed no Revelation to enable him to confess that the Messias was the Son of God by Deputation Every ordinary Jew could have told him so much For it was generally believed that when ever God should be pleased to send the Messias he would depute him to be his Son but that he was to be his Son by Nature Very God of very God was no Article in the Jewish Creed And this great Truth was not founded on Humane Testimony nor on the Votes and Wishes of Men but on the Testimony of God himself For it was he that put it into Peter's Mind to declare the Divinity of Christ and by that Means to settle the uncertain wavering Thoughts that were on Foot concerning the Quality of the Person of the Messias and that it might be no longer doubted that he was God The Divinity of Christ is indeed the Rock on which the Christian Church is built and that which makes it stand impregnable against the Gates of Hell the greatest Power and Artifice that can possibly be used to destroy it From what has now been intimated we may conclude that the Denial of Christ's Divinity came originally from the Jews and that it is an Opinion which receiv'd its full Confutation from Heaven So that it may justly create our Wonder that after so solemn a Confession as Peter Made of Christ's Divinity and that too by the Dictate of God himself that any who believe the Scripture shou'd be so hardly as to gainsay it But seeing it has happened to be otherwise and that among the Professors of Christianity some have so far Judaiz'd in this Particular as sacrilegiously to rob our Lord of his Divinity We are next to consider who and what sort of Persons they were that first did thus Eusebius upon whose Authority I depend in this Point writes how that one Theodotus was the Inventer of this Atheistical Opinion and that he was a Man of mean Education being by Profession a Tanner This Man drew into his Heresie another of his own Name who was a Banker and both together proselyted Asclepiodotus of whose Quality and Condition the Historian makes no mention This Asclepiodotus gained to his Opinion Natalis a Confessour a Man of Piety and good Meaning who being afterwards convinced of his Error recanted it This Heresie was no sooner heard of but it was exploded and writ against and Enquiry made after those who maintained it And one Artemon being found a zealous Stickler in Defence of this blasphemous Heresie it was called the Heresie of Artemon In Confutation of which several Pieces were composed by the Ancients evincing that the Opinion which asserted our Saviour to be meer Man was an Innovation of late Date amongst the Christians Of those Tracts that were written on this Argument none was so elaborate as that called the Little Labyrinth whose Author according to Nicephorus is unknown And Theodoret who mentions the Story of Theodotus the Tanner and Natalis the Bishop attests that he had taken it out of the Book called the Little Labyrinth Photinus relates that Caius a Roman Presbyter living in the Time of the Pope's Victor and Zephyrin in the Year 199 wrote a Book against the Heresie of Artemon but says that it was not the same with the Little Labyrinth But to proceed out of the Little Labyrinth Eusebius tells us that those who affirmed our Saviour to be a meer Man boasted much of the Antiquity of their Opinion and how that all the Ancients

and the very Apostles themselves received and taught the same things that they asserted and that the same was taught till the Times of Victor who from Peter was the thirteenth Bishop of Rome but that when Zephyrinus was made Pope the same Opinion began to be adulterated which saith Eusebius out of the Little Labyrinth might seem probable if it were not contradicted by the sacred Scriptures and the Writings of some Christians ancienter than the Times of Victor who lived in the End of the second Century For Justin who died about the Year 166 and Tatianus who lived about the same time as also Clemens wrote in the Defence of the Truth against the Gentiles and the Heresies of their own Times and these in all their Books have maintained the Divinity of Christ And who is he that is ignorant of the Books of Irenaeus Melito the Sardian Bishop and others which declare Christ to be God and Man Pliny in his Epistle to Trajan tells him how it was the Custom of the Christians to compose Psalms and Hymns in Honour of Christ in which they attributed Divinity to him and sang forth his Praises as God These very Psalms and Hymns written at the Beginning of Christianity by its faithful Professors yield an undeniable Attestation of their believing Christ to be God So that the Hereticks who first held the contrary had no reason to say that their Opinion was the Creed of the Primitive Christians And it is a shameless Falsity to affirm that Victor Bishop of Rome was of their Judgment For Victor was so far from abetting those who held Christ to be a meer Man that he condignly punished them as was evident in the Case of Theodotus the Tanner the Founder of this Apostacy whom Victor excommunicated and proscrib'd Which certainly he would not have done had he been of the same Judgment with him Thus stood Affairs in the Times of Victor and in what Posture they were in the Days of his Successor Zephyrinus who was made Bishop of Rome about the ninth Year of Severus's Empire comes now to be recounted The Person that compil'd the Book concerning the execrable Heresie now treated of relates a very remarkable Passage that happened in the Days of Zephyrinus concerning one Natalis who as Valesius conjectures was that Caecilius Natalis who by a Dispute of Octavius Januarius's before Minucius Felix at Rome was converted to the Christian Faith as Minucius Felix relates in his Dialogue and the Name the Time and the Profession of this Person do all agree to make this probable This Natalis was a Confessor and lived at the Time when the Little Labyrinth was composed but by the Craft of Asclepiodotus and Theodotus the Banker both Disciples of Theodotus the Tanner he was seduced to their Opinion and persuaded by them to be elected a Bishop of their Heresie And the most prevailing Argument with Natalis to accept of this Office was the Consideration of a monthly Salary amounting to an hundred and fifty Pence which they promised duly to pay him Natalis being thus made a Bishop turned a vehement Assertor of the Heresie of Theodotus but he did not long therein continue with any Sedateness or Complacency For by Visions in his Sleep he was frequently admonished by our Lord whose Compassion towards him was so great that he would not let him who had been a Witness of his own Sufferings to perish in his Heresie and under Excommunication But Natalis being bewitch'd with the Bait of Primacy among those of his Sect and with the Lucre he got by being their Bishop he regarded not the Visions he had in his Sleep but continu'd as zealous in the Defence of his Opinion as if he had never been warned from Heaven to reject it Whereupon it pleased the compassionate God to send his holy Angels to chastize him who for a whole Night having loaded him with severe Stripes he was therewith so far awaken'd that he thought of nothing but a speedy Recantation and Repentance And rising very early the next Morning he put on Sackcloth and besprinkled himself with Ashes and with Tears in his Eyes prostrated himself before Zephyrinus the Bishop and fell down not only at the Feet of the Clergy but of the Laity also and with Tears mov'd the Compassion of the Church which having view'd the print of the Stripes he had received and observed his sorrowful Carriage and other Tokens of his Repentance at last tho' with great Difficulty she admitted him into her Communion But besides the Little Labyrinth out of which Eusebius transcribed this Story of Natalis he takes notice of other Books written against the Hereticks that denied Christ to be God which Books represent them to have been Persons of the vilest Impiousness and Immorality And such as impudently adulterated the sacred Scriptures rejected the Canon of the primitive Faith and were ignorant of Christ For they neglected the holy Bible and instead of enquiring into its Meaning they laboured to obscure the Light thereof bestowing their Pains in finding out such Schemes of Argumentation as might confirm the System of their Impiety If any propos'd unto them a Text of the divine Scriptures they examined whether a connex or a disjunctive Proposition might be made out of it and instead of studying the Word of God they applied themselves to Geometry and to the reading of Euclid Aristotle Theophrastus and Galen admiring the Books the last had written concerning the Forms of Syllogisms and the whole Body of Philosophy They made use also of the Arts of Infidels for the Confirmation of their Heretical Opinion and by the Craft of some Atheists they adulterated the sincere Authority of the divine Scriptures on which they impudently laid their Hands saying that it ought to be corrected They put out several Copies of the Bible which Copies upon Examination and comparing them one with another were found to be very disagreeing For the Copies of Asclepiodotus were much different from those of Theodotus and the Disciples of each of them laboured diligently to amend the Corrections of their Masters The Copies of Hermophilus differed from those of Asclepiodotus and those Copies of Scripture written by Apollonides differed one from another But all the Copies agree in an audacious wresting and deforming the Word of God And we may well imagine that these Hereticks were not ignorant of their wicked Acting in depraving the divine Scriptures For either they did not believe the divine Scriptures to have been dictated by the Holy Spirit and then they were Infidels Or if they did believe this and yet went about to correct them then they must think themselves wiser than the Holy Ghost and what were they then but mad Men For they cannot deny this their bold Fact in correcting the Scriptures to have been done by them because the Copies were written by their own Hands And they did never pretend to have received such Copies as they produc'd from those who were their Instructers nor could they