the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

[268] easy to gainsay. Indeed, one is at a loss to imagine how men of high eminence for learning and acuteness, such as some of those who have espoused this notion certainly were, should have failed to perceive its inconsistency with the whole object and character of the Mosaic economy. For what was this object?—evidently to counteract the prevailing tendency of mankind to idolatry. And how did this tendency originate? To all appearance in an idea that the most High God did not occupy himself with the details of this lower world, but entrusted them to inferior beings, who, by consequence engrossed to themselves the whole attention of those who imagined that the affairs of mankind and the course of events by which they were affected were placed in their hands and at their controul. What more natural, than that they should address their petitions and their worship to those in whose hands their destiny, whether for good or evil, appeared to be placed? This, and this alone, seems for the most part to have been the true origin of all the idolatries of the ancient world. But if the Jewish polity were indeed what some have represented it, far from checking, it would seem only to encourage and promote the very system it is said to have been destined to overthrow.

By the Logos, which dwelt or tabernacled among us, being made flesh, or, as it were, taking up its residence in Jesus as the most glorious and excellent Schechinah, we are therefore to understand, according to this writer, no less a being than the one God, the Father; whose wisdom spake in our Lord's discourses, by whose power his mighty works were performed, and whose