The Socinians, who are regarded as blasphemers, do not recognize the
divinity of Jesus Christ. They dare to pretend, with the philosophers of
antiquity, with the Jews, the Mahometans, and most other nations, that
the idea of a god-man is monstrous; that the distance from God to man is
infinite; and that it is impossible for a perishable body to be
infinite, immense, or eternal.
They have the confidence to quote Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, in their
favor, who, in his "Ecclesiastical History," i., 9, declares that it is
absurd to imagine the uncreated and unchangeable nature of Almighty God
taking the form of a man. They cite the fathers of the Church, Justin
and Tertullian, who have said the same thing: Justin, in his "Dialogue
with Triphonius"; and Tertullian, in his "Discourse against Praxeas."
They quote St. Paul, who never calls Jesus Christ "God," and who calls
Him "man" very often. They carry their audacity so far as to affirm that
the Christians passed three entire ages in forming by degrees the
apotheosis of Jesus; and that they only raised this astonishing edifice
by the example of the pagans, who had deified mortals. At first,
according to them, Jesus was only regarded as a man inspired by God, and
then as a creature more perfect than others. They gave Him some time
after a place above the angels, as St. Paul tells us. Every day added to
His greatness. He in time became an emanation, proceeding from God. This
was not enough; He was even born before time. At last He was made God
consubstantial with God. Crellius, Voquelsius, Natalis Alexander, and
Horneck have supported all these blasphemies by arguments which astonish
the wise and mislead the weak. Above all, Faustus Socinus spread the
seeds of this doctrine in Europe; and at the end of the sixteenth
century a new species of Christianity was established. There were
already more than three hundred.
DIVORCE.
In the article on "Divorce," in the "Encyclopædia," it is said that the
custom of divorce having been brought into Gaul by the Romans, it was
therefore that Basine, or Bazine, quitted the king of Thuringia, her
husband, in order to follow Childeric, who married her. Why not say that
because the Trojans established the custom of divorce in Sparta, Helen
repudiated Menelaus according to law, to run away with Paris into
Phrygia?
The agreeable fable of Paris, and the ridiculous one of Childeric, who
never was king of France, and who it is pretended carried off Bazine,
the wife of Bazin, have nothing to do with the law of divorce.
They all quote Cheribert, ruler of the little town of Lutetia, near
Issay--Lutetia Parisiorum--who repudiated his wife. The Abbé Velly, in
his "History of France," says that this Cheribert, or Caribert, divorced
his wife Ingoberg to espouse Mirefleur, the daughter of an artisan; and
afterwards Theudegild, the daughter of a shepherd, who was raised to the
first throne of the French Empire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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