Biographical Memoir ofDr Priestley. 221 



Arianism, while it declares Christ to be a creature, yet be- 

 lieves him to be endowed with a superior nature, produced be- 

 fore the world, and the instrument of the Creator in the produc- 

 tion of other beings. It is the doctrine that has been clothed with 

 such magnificent poetry in the Paradise Lost Priestley, after 

 professing it for a long time, abandoned it in its turn to become 

 a unitarian, or what we call a Socinian. 



There are perhaps very few among those who hear me that 

 have ever been informed in what the two sects differ. The So- 

 cinians deny the pre-existence of Christ, and regard him only as a 

 man, although they revere him as the Saviour of the world, and 

 admit that the divine nature was united to him for this great 

 work. This subtle shade of difference between the two heresies 

 occupied for thirty years a pre-eminence which the most import- 

 ant questions in science might well have challenged, and led 

 Priestley to produce incomparably more volumes than he ever 

 wrote on the different gases *. 



His creed is, that the primitive church was at first, Hke the 

 Jewish, unitarian, but that it remained so for a very short time ; 

 that the first alteration of this doctrine arose from the gradual 

 introduction of the ideas of the Gnostics, who appeared, as is 

 well known, in the days of the Apostles, and carried into the west 

 the principle of the Indian philosophy, that God made use of 

 an intermediary agent for the creation of the world ; that, on 

 the other hand, the Greek philosophy, allying itself with Chris- 



* The following are some of these works : 



History of the Corruption of Christianity, 2 vols. 8vo. 1782; reprinted in 

 1786, under the title of Doctrine of the First Three Centuries, 4 vols. 8vo. 



Exposition of the Arguments for the Unity of God, and against the Di- 

 vinity and Pre-existence of Christ. 1783, 8vo. 



Letter to Dr Horsley, with new proofs that the Primitive Church was 

 Unitarian. 1783 and 1787, 8vo. 



History of the Ancient Opinions concerning Jesus Christ. 1786, 8vo. 



Defence of Unitarianism for 1787* 



Letters to Dr Home on the subject of the Person of Christ. 1787, 8vo. 



Letters to Edward Burn on the Infallibility of the Testimony of the 

 Apostles concerning the Person of Christ. 1789, 8vo. 



Defence of Unitarianism for 1788 and 1789. 



General History of the Christian Church until the Fall of the Westerp 

 Empire, 2 vols. 8vo. 1789 ; and four others in 1804. 



Unitarianism explained and defended. 1796, 8vo. 



