No. 2.

(GREEK AND RUSSIAN CHURCH.)

The Greeks have seven sacraments, or as they term them, mysteries; which are defined to be ceremonies or acts appointed by God, in which God giveth or signifieth to us his grace. This number they have probably received from the Latin Church; they are, 1. Baptism. 2. The Chrism, or Baptismal Unction. 3. The Eucharist, or Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 4. Confession. 5. Ordination. 6. Marriage. And, 7, the Euchelaion, or Mystery of the Holy Oil, with prayer..

See Smith, de Statu Hodierno Ecclesiæ Græcæ,

EPHESIANS vi. 11.

(UNITARIANISM.)

Against the artifices of the slanderer."-Belsham's Translation. "The slanderer.-Tov diaboλov, the devil. So the public and most other versions, applying it to the supposed leader of evil spirits. Accuser. Wakefield. The insidious artifice of the false accuser. Harwood. That the Apostle is here cautioning his readers

* The Russian Church agrees almost in every point of doctrine with the Greek Church, subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Raskolniks, who have broken off from the Russian Church, are, in fact, a great many different sects, as different from each other as from the Established Church.

The Raskolniks assumed the name of Isbraniki, i. e. the multitude of the elect; or, according to others, Staroivertsi, i. e. believers in the ancient faith; but the name given them by their adversaries, and that by which they are generally known, is Raskolniki, i. e. Schismatics, or the seditious faction.-See King, p. 439.

against the artifices of the judaizing teachers, by which they endeavoured to corrupt the Christian doctrine by blending it with the ceremonies of the Mosaic ritual, is sufficiently evident from the context; and that these teachers were justly entitled to the name of Siabolo, or slanderers, is notorious, both from Luke's History, and Paul's Epistles, especially those to the Galatians and Corinthians."

Belsham.

EPHESIANS vi. 12.

(UNITARIANISM.)

"For we combat not merely with the vices and prejudices of private individuals, but we have to conflict with all the confederate and united powers of grand and potent establishments, both civil and religious, which are supported by the sovereigns and rulers of this benighted age."-Harwood's Translation.

"For we not only have to wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the authority, against the powers, against the rulers of this dark age, against the wickedness of spiritual men in a heavenly dispensation."-Wakefield's Translation.

"Viz. against Jewish governors, who have a dispensation of religion from heaven, as well as against heathen magistrates under the darkness of superstition and idolatry."

Wakefield.

Perhaps, however, we shall approximate more nearly to the true meaning of the Apostle, if by taking the words principalities and powers, &c. in the sense in which they are used, chap. i. 21, as meaning the Jewish hierarchy and zealots for the law in general; we should understand its correlative

blood and flesh, as expressing heathen idolaters and opposers of the Gospel, see Heb. xii. 4. The contrast then will be, not between wicked men and angels, according to the common opinion, nor between men in low degree and men in power, according to Dr. Chandler and Dr. Harwood, but between the power and prejudices of heathen idolaters, and those of Jewish rulers and zealots for the law; not excluding the judaizing Christians, who created so much uneasiness to the Apostle and to the Gentile believers."

Belsham.

As believers, being raised to heaven, are represented as subject to a celestial hierarchy, (see chap. ii. 6; i. 20, 21), so unbelievers, dwelling upon earth, or in a world of darkness, are also figuratively described as subject to the dominion of evil spirits, of whom Satan, or the evil one, is the chief. This scenic representation, borrowed from the Oriental philosophy, is not to be understood literally. Principalities, powers, &c. express a personification of all wicked opposition to the Gospel, whether from the evil or the ecclesiastical power. The Primate, with Griesbach, omits the words rov alwvos, ' of this age,' which are in the received text. Mr. Simpson's interpretation is, we wrestle not against men merely, but against supreme governors, against powerful magistrates, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things.' Compare i. 20; ii. 6-10. By such rulers Paul was detained in prison while writing this Epistle"

Note to the Unitarian Version.

The armour of God here described, is wholly allegorical; a plain proof that the persons against whom this armour is to be used, are also figurative and allegorical."

Origen, an Alexandrian, born A.D. 185, having early acquired a knowledge of the philosophy in vogue at his time, industriously blended it with the doctrines of Christ, and recommended it to the youths which he taught. His fame daily increasing, his manner of explaining the Christian principles also gained ground, till it became almost universal.

The Platonic Doctors of Egypt and other places, disrelishing the plain method of instructing their people, and explaining the Scriptures, struck off into the devious wilds of fancy, studying to subject the dictates of Jesus to their eclectic philosophy; and pretending deep researches into what appeared obvious and plain to every common Christian.

In this method, Origen was a principal leader. His fancy being wild, and his attachment to the Platonic philosophy, as modified by Ammonius, ex

treme, he established a most pernicious mode of interpreting Scripture, in which he was followed by multitudes.

Pretending that an adherence to the plain and obvious meaning was the source of manifest evils, and that the literal sense of many passages could not be defended, he hunted for a spiritual and allegorical sense in the history of Scripture, as the heathen Platonists did in the history of their gods.

The hidden sense, which he often hunted after at the expense of truth and common sense, he divided into the moral and mystical; and the mystical into the allegorical, relative to the militant church, and the anagogic relative to the heavenly state.

Brown's General History, &c.

No. 2.

Gregory the Great asserted, that the words of the Sacred Writings are images of mysterious and invisible things.

The hypothesis of Grotius was, that "the predictions of the ancient prophets were all accomplished in the events to which they directly pointed before the coming of Christ; and that, therefore, the natural and obvious sense of the words and phrases, in which they were delivered, does not terminate in our blessed Lord; but that in certain of these predictions, and more especially in those which the writers of the New Testament apply to Christ, there is, besides the literal and obvious signification, a

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