1 CORINTHIANS XV. 53.

"This mortal must put on immortality."

(PHILOPONUS.)

Philoponus maintained, that the form, as well as the matter, of all bodies, was generated and corrupted; and that both, therefore, were to be restored in the resurrection. Conon held, on the contrary, that the body never lost its form; that its matter alone was subject to corruption and decay, and was, consequently, to be restored when "this mortal shall put on immortality."

Photii Biblioth. Cod. 24. Asseman. Biblioth. Orient. Vatian. tom. ii. p. 329.

1 CORINTHIANS xvi. 19.

"The Church that is in their house."

(BROWNISTS.)

Every church or society of Christians was, according to the Brownists*, a body corporate, hav

* Robert Brown, the father of this sect, travelled up and down the country in company with his assistant, Richard Harrison, preaching against Bishops, Ceremonies, Ecclesiastical Courts, or ordaining of ministers, &c. [on which account he boasted of having been committed to thirty-two Prisons.]

Brown afterwards settled at Middleburg, in Flushing, where he formed a church according to his own model. His followers became divided among themselves, insomuch that Brown being weary of his office, returned into England in the year 1589, and having renounced his principles of separation, became rector of a church in Northamptonshire.

Notwithstanding the return of Brown to the Church of England,

ing full power within itself to admit and exclude members, to choose and ordain officers; and when the good of the society required it, to depose them, without being accountable to classes, convocations, synods, councils, or any jurisdiction whatsoever.

They denied the Church of England to be a true church, and her ministers to be rightly ordained. They maintained the discipline of the Church of England to be Popish and Anti-christian, and all her ordinances and sacraments invalid.

Neal's History of the Puritans.

his principles were adopted by many during the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and also by a considerable body of the Puritans in the next age.

The Brownists did not differ from the Church of England in any Articles of Faith; but were very rigid and narrow in points of discipline.

SECOND CORINTHIANS.

2 CORINTHIANS ii. 10.

"I also."

(ROMAN CATHOLICS.)

"The Apostle here granted an indulgence, or pardon, in the person, and by the authority of Christ, to the incestuous Corinthian, whom before he had put under penance; which pardon consisted in a releasing of part of the temporal punishment due to his sin."

Note to the Roman Catholic Version.

No. 1.

2 CORINTHIANS ii. 11.

"Satan."

(CELSUS.)

Celsus, the first Pagan writer against Christianity, casts an imputation upon the Christians for derogating from Divine Omnipotence, in that their hypothesis of an adversary power.

"The Christians," he says, "are erroneously led into most wicked opinions concerning God, by rea

son of their great ignorance of the divine enigms, whilst they make a certain adversary to God, whom they call the devil, and in the Hebrew language, Satan; and affirm, contrary to all piety, that the greatest God, having a mind to do good to men, is disabled or withstood by an adversary resisting him."

No. 2.

Cudworth, book i. c. 4. p. 270.

(BARDESANES.)

Bardesanes, who lived in the second century, was occupied with the philosophers and theologians of his time in solving the grand question,-"Why does evil exist in the world ?"

He contended, that it was absurd to say that God was the cause of evil. It was necessary, therefore, to suppose, that the cause was unconnected with God. According to him, this cause was Satan or the devil, whom Bardesanes regarded as the enemy of God, but not his creature.

See Dictionnaire des Hérésies.

By far the greater part of the Heretics of the second century were Gnostics, and derived their errors from the mixture of Christianity with the Oriental philosophy.

Their tenets are represented as so many different modifications of that fantastical system.

The followers of Saturninus and Basilides spread themselves over Syria and Egypt, and propagated the doctrine of a good and evil principle.

See Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. c. 30. p. 151. Origen Dial. contra Marcionitas, sect. iii. p. 70. edit. Wetstenii, Frid. Strunzii Hist. Bardesanes, &c.-Beausobre, Hist. du Manich. vol. ii. p. 128.

The Priscillianists, who continued as a sect during several centuries, derived their denomination from Priscillian, who was Bishop of Abila in the fourth century.

A considerable mixture of Gnosticism and Unitarianism appears to have been united in this sect, with the tenets of both of which, however, they were imperfectly acquainted. They thought the devil was not made by God, but arose from chaos and darkness; said, that the bodies of men were made by the devil; condemned marriage, and denied the resurrection of the body; asserted, that the soul was of a divine substance, which, having offended in heaven, was sent into the body as a place of punishment; that men are subject to necessity, to sin, and to the power of the stars; and our bodies compounded according to the order of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. They agreed that the Son is inferior to the Father, and that there was a time when the Son was not. The rule of manners prescribed by this sect, was remarkably austere.

No. 4.

Leo Opera, p. 167. Aug. de Hares, c. 70.

(UNITARIANISM.)

"That we may not be overreached by the adversary *, for we are not ignorant of his wiles."-Belsham's Translation.

"The Adversary.-Satan, the opposer, i. e. not an evil spirit, but their unbelieving neighbours, Jews, and Heathens, who would take advantage of their intestine divisions to disparage the Christian religion."

Belsham.