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fail , by deifying mem to imitate in Rome her heathen predecessors . She carried on a trade in the manufacturing of a kind of secondary Gods , termed Saints , much to her own aggrandizement and the peopled degradation .
While deity was thus easily conferred on mortals , strange would it have been had the Saviour of the world escaped the supposed honour . The heathen when they heard of his mighty acts would naturally suppose him the son of some God , and enter the Christian Church with the impression that if he did not enjoy he certainly merited the distinction of divinity . At all events the deification of a man , and a man approved of God , presented to their minds no insuperable difficulty . They were familiar with
the idea ; to make Gods had been before their eyes almost as common as to make knights in these days , and whatever , therefore , were the teachings of the Scripture , they would easily be led by the influence of men of learning and station to transmute in their apprehensions the man Christ Jesus into a Divinity . Those who could term an Apostle Divine—and a Bishop God—and hear , without revolting , an Rmperor styled Eternal , might well give the name and honours of Deity to one confessed on all hands to be inconceivably superior to them all .
There is in human nature a strong propensity to raise above the common level those who have signalized themselves by deeds of beneficence . Gratitude , when excited , is a feeling which rather ranges with the imagination than abides the control of reason . The idea of a benefactor is magnified by the intensity of our emotions . We take a sacred pleasure in enriching our conception of him with many an excellence , which has , perhaps , no other
source than our imagination , and we finish this illusory but pleasant fiction by ascribing to the benefactor himself what has an existence no where save in our own minds . The process in the case of men of rare excellence is continued from age to age , till he who originally was but a man rises into the rank of a Saint , perhaps of a God . After the lapse of a few centuries , he is no longer seen in the just proportions of his own character , but
through the magnifying mists which succeeding years have accumulated on the horizon of the past . Actuated by this principle , all nations , especially in their earlier stages , have made men into heroes , and heroes into Gods . And still , in these days , when the empire of reason has been founded on the ruins of that of the imagination , we invest with a hundred imaginary virtues him
whom we have reason to esteem either for his moral qualities or his beneficent deeds . The words of our Lord are daily receiving illustration in the feelings with which we entertain the memory of the great and good— Whosoever hath to him shall be given , and he shall have abundance . " With what facility do the bulk of the people at least make an idol of him whom they have reason to respect ! In spiritual concerns especially , how easily have the
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Rise and Progress of the Doctrine of the Trinity . [ £ 1
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1832, page 21, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1804/page/21/
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