ADVERTISEMENT. THIS new edition of Dr. Allix's "Judgment of the "Ancient Jewish Church against the Unitarians" is printed verbatim from a copy corrected by the author, now in the possession of the Rev. Dr. Nott, Prebendary of Winchester, with the use of which he was pleased to oblige the Delegates of the Clarendon Press. Feb. 2, 1821. THE PREFACE. ALTHOUGH the Jews, by mistaking the prophecies of Scripture concerning the kingdom of their Messias, expected he should have a temporal kingdom; and because our Lord Jesus was not for that, therefore they would not acknowledge him for their Messias; yet, all things considered, there is no essential difference between our religion and theirs. We own the very same God whom they formerly worshipped, the maker of the world, and their lawgiver. We receive that very Messias whom God promised them by his prophets, so many ages before his coming. We own no other Spirit of God to have inspired the Apostles, besides the Holy Ghost, who spoke by the Prophets, and by whose manifold gifts the Messias was to be known, as one in whom all nations should be blessed. This plainly appears in the way and method which both Christ and his Apostles followed in preaching the Gospel. They endeavoured to take off the prejudices the then Jews laboured under, concerning the nature of the Messias, and the characters by which he was to be known: for they argued all along from the books of Moses and the Prophets, and never proposed any thing to their disciples but what was declared in those writings which the Jews acknowledged as the standard of their religion; which may be seen in Christ's discourse to the Jews, John v. 46. and to his disciples after his resurrection, Luke xxiv. 27. and 44. in the words of St. Peter, Acts x. 43. and of St. Paul, Acts xxvi. 22. The truth is, in those sacred Books, although one only God be acknowledged, under the name of Jehovah, which denotes his essence, and therefore is incommunicable to any other; yet not only that very name is given to the Messias, but also all the works, attributes, and characters peculiar to Jehovah, the God of Israel, and the only true God, are frequently bestowed on him. This the old Jewish authors, as Philo and the Targumists, do readily acknowledge. For in their exposition of those places of the Old Testament which relate to the Messias, they generally suppose him to be God; whereas the modern Jews, being of a far different opinion, use all shifts imaginable to evade the force of their testimonies. The Apostles imitated in this the synagogue, by applying to Christ several places of the Old Testament, which undoubtedly were primarily intended of the God of Israel. But because they sometimes only touch at places of the Old Testament, without using them as formal proofs of what they then handled; Socinus and his disciples have fancied that those citations out of the Old Testament, which are made use of by the Apostles, though they represent the Messias as being the same with the God of Israel; yet for all this are but bare allusions and accommodations, made indeed |
