ye have received from him remaineth in you; and ye have no need that any one should teach you. And as that very effusion which hath taught you concerning all things, is true, and there is no falsehood in it-as, I say, it hath taught you, so do you remain in it." These, nearly, are the words of Jesus in his last address to the desponding disciples; and they receive a flash of light from the application here made of them by the Apostle : "These things I have spoken to you while remaining yet with you. But the Comforter," (the Paraclete,) "the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things." John xiv. 25. "When he, the spirit of truth, shall come, he will lead you to all the truth," xvi. 13. Before I point to the light which is reflected on this passage, I must quote another from the Epistle of John: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but probe the spirits, if they be of God, because many false prophets are come into the world. Know by this the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesseth Jesus to be the Christ, and to have come in the flesh, is of God: and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus to be the Christ, and to have come in the flesh, is not of God; and this is the spirit of Antichrist, which ye have learnt that it will come, and even now is in the world."

The belief that the gods or demons occasionally assumed a human form, and so appeared unto men, prevailed not only in heathen countries, but also in Judea and when our Lord, newly risen, shewed himself to his disciples, they were forced upon the supposition, that it was some demon in his well-known shape. This superstition was general: and the current of public opinion ran so strong in its favour, that the enemies of Christ laid hold of it as a happy expedient to overturn the gospel. They said that Jesus who had suffered did not appear, but the Christ within him, who being a God in an empty form, without flesh and blood, was, in consequence of his divine nature, incapable of suffering. By thus superseding the resurrection of the man Jesus, they superseded the resurrection of mankind, and thereby precluded all hope of a future state. It is this subterfuge that he meets, when in the

following emphatical manner he asserts the resurrection of Christ, as a proof and a pledge of eternal life to the human race: "What was in the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we explored, and our hands have handled, concerning the logos of lifeand this principle of life shewed itself to us; and we saw it, and we are witnesses of it; and we declare it to you as that eternal life which was with the Father, and which shewed itself to us-what, I say, we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that you may have communion with us: and our communion is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. These things write we unto you, that our joy our joyful hope of a future state might be complete."

In an age when a belief in many gods was almost universal, and the knowledge of God and of the laws of nature was very imperfect, it must appear difficult to defeat the artifices of the Gnostics: and the wisdom of Heaven alone could suggest to our Lord the only effectual way to accomplish this end. His last address to his disciples contains matter to this effect: "My enemies, like wolves in sheep's clothing, will come in among you, under pretence of teaching my gospel, but in reality to destroy it. For they will endeavour, by a false philosophy, to set aside my resurrection, by saying that it was not the man Jesus, but a God within him, or a God in his shape, that appeared to his followers after death. I will frustrate this doctrine by not delegating to you now, before I leave you, the miraculous power necessary to ensure your success in the propagation of my gospel; but will defer it for some time, till I rise from the grave and ascend to my heavenly Father. I will then cause it to descend upon you: and you must consider its descent as a pledge of three things-that, like a letter received from a friend departed to a distant land, I, agreeably to my promise, have actually reached my destination in safety-that the person who will send the Holy Spirit to you is identically the same with him that now promises to send it-that at some distant period I shall again return to raise the dead and reward my faithful followers." We are, then, to regard

the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles as the last seal which the hand of God put not only to the divine mission of Jesus, but to the simple humanity of Jesus, and that in direct opposition to certain impostors who sought to undermine his religion by teaching his divinity. This is the reason why every miracle which the apostles ever wrought, was wrought in the name of the man Jesus. Hence the propriety of such language as the following: "By this ye know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth Jesus to be the Christ, and to have come in the flesh, is of God: and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus to be the Christ, and to have come in the flesh, is not of God. And this is that spirit of Antichrist," &c. It was allowed on all hands that Jesus was a man, and simply a man. The Apostle, therefore, in maintaining the Christ to be Jesus, and to have come in the flesh, maintains that the Christ was a real man, and simply a man. To this the Spirit of God bears testimony, and he who believes it, is born of God. The Antichristian teachers, on the contrary, in maintaining the Christ to be God, maintained that he was not Jesus; him, as being really and simply a man, they rejected with execration.

-The divinity of Christ was one of those mysteries which the impostors pretended to have discovered by their superior wisdom, but which the Spirit of God withheld from the apostles as men of no education. Accordingly they pretended to be more competent teachers than those simple, illiterate men. To this John alludes, when he tells the believers "they had no need that any should teach them, because they had been taught by the Holy Spirit shed upon them." The language of John here is that of Jesus, John xvi. 13, where he assured his disciples, that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, would lead them to the whole truth, would leave nothing unrevealed, which might be necessary for them to know or to teach, and that consequently the men who affected to reveal certain mysteries, hitherto unknown to the apostles, were liars and impostors.

To conclude: the proposition that Jesus is the Christ, or that Jesus is the Son of God, implies that the

Christ is a real man, and simply a man, endued with extraordinary power and wisdom from God. Throughout the whole of his Epistle, and even his Gospel, the object of John is to establish the truth of this proposition, against men who denied it, under the specious plea of maintaining his divinity. He grounds the evidence of it on three testimonies-the testimony of the Father, the testimony of the Word, the testimony of the Holy Spirit. These three are one testimony, or are testimonies to one and the same object. They announce the divine mission of Jesus, appear in his ministry, lie dispersed in the Gospel, and concentrated on the disputed text. They are the sole pillars on which Christianity rests. Remove them as spurious, and the whole edifice falls to the ground.

This sense of the verse shews that, though John wrote it, Christ is virtually the author of it. The materials of it are scattered throughout his Gospel and the larger Epistle, and the Apostle has collected them, and placed them together here in one concise view. The last words of Jesus to his apostles, of themselves prove this to be a fact: "Go ye and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son and the Holy Spirit;" which is to this effect: "Go and convert the nations, initiating them in the knowledge of a new religion, and alleging for its truth the authority and testimony of the Father, the testimony of the Son, and the testimony of the Holy Spirit." Now, it might be expected that, if the three heavenly Witnesses, in the supposed spurious verse, be, as I have proved, a formula against the Gnostics, the original formula formed and used by our Lord must have been drawn up for the same purpose. And this is a fact demonstrable from the words of Irenæus on this very subject. That father, p. 91, says, They (the Gnostics) lead the disciple to the water, and, on baptizing him, they thus say,-Unto the name of the Unknown Father of all; unto Truth, the mother of all; unto him which came down on Jesus." Here the formula of Christ and that of the Gnostics stand in direct opposition to each other, the object of the one being to establish the truth of the Gospel against its ene

mies, the object of the other being to subvert it by similar views. For the universal Father, the impostors substituted the Supreme Unknown God, which they pretended to have revealed; for the man Jesus or the Son of God, they held forth as an object of faith the God that had descended upon him; and in the room of the Holy Spirit, which attested his simple humanity, they placed a fictitious being, which in mockery they called Truth or mother of all.

:

I have said that the context without the seventh verse, is a dead letter. The next verse, which is allowed to be genuine, is a demonstration of this: "There are three which bear testimony on the earth, the Spirit, the Water and the Blood." The water and the blood bear testimony; as having proceeded from the region of the heart pierced by the spear, they prove that the sufferer, being really a man possessing flesh and blood, actually died and the Spirit bears testimony, because, being communicated to Jesus at his baptism, it enabled him to foresee and to foretell his death. But what does this testimony prove? Taken in itself, nothing to the purpose. Every man has flesh and blood; every man dies. But take Jesus in the character of the Logos, alive, and in heaven at the time the Apostle was writing, as it is asserted in the preceding, disputed verse, the circumstance of his having died proves every thing. It places on a solid foundation the grand principles of Christianity, the actual death, resurrection and exaltation to the right hand of God, of the man Jesus Christ; whence, according to his own solemn promise, he will one day return in the power of his Father to raise the dead and judge the world in righteousness. The Gnostics allowed that the Christ, after the crucifixion of Jesus, was still alive, as having neither died nor suffered. In order to set aside this, it was necessary for the apostles to assert his death, whenever they had occasion to speak of him as being alive. See Rev. i. 18; also, ch. ii. 8. The conclusion, then, infallibly is, that the text of the Three Heavenly Witnesses, John v. 7, is genuine for is is morally impossible that a verse which attests the simple humanity of Christ, and sets aside his divi.

nity, should be the forgery of men who, in after ages, perverted it to prove the Trinity. BEN DAVID.

SIR,

AM happy to see that the question regarding the interpretation of the proem of John's Gospel has engaged the attention of several of your ablest correspondents. From the opinions that they have expressed, I am led to hope that this good at least will arise, that when another edition of the Improved Version shall be given to the public, the Socinian interpretation will no longer be allowed to maintain its place exclusively of the other-I mean that of Lardner and Priestley; but that, at least, both will be so introduced as to afford a fair alternative to the reader's judgment. I see with satisfaction that the mode of interpretation for which I contend is adopted in the continental versions, which are therein at variance with the received English text. The Geneva version of 1802 renders the passage thus: "Au commencement étoit la parole, la parole étoit avec Dieu et la parole étoit Dieu. Elle étoit au commencement avec Dieu. Toutes choses ont été faites par elle," &c. Harmonizing with this we find the Italian version: "Nel principio la parola era, e la parola era appo Iddio, et la parola era Dio. Essa era nel principio appo Dio. Ogni cosa è stata fatta per essa," &c. And to do justice to all opinions and to the original itself, the English rendering ought to be similar to these; and f trust in the next edition of the Improved Version we shall see it so. It would run thus: "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made (or done) by it, and without it no one thing was made (or done) which has been made (or done)." Such a translation is in itself neutral; it favours no opinion particularly, and is therefore such as all parties may use with satisfaction: whereas the present text of the Improved Version has such a peculiarity as to be altogether intolerable to those who view the subject in any degree differently from its authors. Surely it is a matter of the greatest

importance, for those with whom the decision of this and other similar points will rest, that they endeavour to provide us with an edition of the New Testament of a truly valuable and unobjectionable character. But such an edition must not be a party book; the Scriptures are the common ground of all parties; we ought to use a version which, while it does us justice, does our opponents justice also. Such a version ought to preserve, as far as possible, even the ambiguities of the original; it ought in short to know nothing about contending dogmas, and to aim at nothing more than to place the English reader, as nearly as possible, in the same position for forming his judgment which would be enjoyed by one who was reading the original. Another very important principle I conceive to be, that of not departing, without some considerable reason, from the text commonly received, the reasons of which principle are too obvious to need enforcement.

-

I must now say something in reply to my candid and scholar-like opponent Mr. Cogan. After considering carefully all the quotations which he has transcribed in order to illustrate the use of the word y:yverba, I cannot concede to him that any one of them is such as to justify us in translating & λογος σαρξ εγένετο "the word was flesh." It is a very just remark, assuredly, that yerba is frequently used as an aorist to ɛiva. If proof were wanting of this, the passages quoted by Mr. C. would afford that proof. But the aorist is very different from the imperfect, and if the imperfect is the tense which the proposed rendering expresses, as I conceive it is, to prove that yeverba is used for the aorist is very little to the purpose. Tyverbaι, as Mr. C. observes, expresses properly the commencement of a state of being; it signifies to come into some state or mode of existence, to become, or to come to be, if I may use such an expression. And the aorist of this verb, EYEVETO, asserts simply, that a thing has come into such and such a state of being, that it has come to be this or that. An aorist of Eva, had there been such a tense to that verb, would assert the naked fact of past existence, without implying its commence ment; but as in all cases of which we

have commonly to speak, such existence must needs have had a commencement; and as, on the other hand, the sense of yeverba, viz. to commence or come into some mode of existence, necessarily implies the fact of such existence, it follows that the signification of yvelas is so very nearly equivalent to that of an aorist of eva, that it may with great propriety be used to supply the place of such a tense, and in any case in which such an aorist would have been proper, we have no reason to question the propriety of using the word yeεσDas.

But, I repeat it, the present does not appear to me to be such a case. An aorist of, had such a tense been used in this place, would have expressed rather the sense of, the word has been flesh. The word's being flesh, not being, according to the Socinian interpretation, a contingent or accidental circumstance befalling the λoyos, but a description of its permanent nature, the mode of expression should be couched in the imperfect tense, ¿λoyos y cap, just as it was said before λoyos ñy ĕeos. Mr. C. will observe, that the quotations he has made refer to the contingent circumstances which happen to personsTM or things in the course of their existence, and, consequently, it can always with equal propriety be said, that such persons or things became, or came to be such, as that they were such. A commencing, or entering into, such circumstances is implied. V UK εγένοντο ἐν τῇ πόλει "Such sort of soldiers had not come to be, had not come into existence, or been introduced into the city." The aorist, moreover, is continually used in the sense of what we call in English the preter-pluperfect; there is commonly no other way of expressing this tense of ours in Greek, as what is called in Greek Grammar the plusquam perfectum has a very different and much more limited sense. EYEVETO apxǹ † Odpvoŵv, &c.—“The government of the Odrysians had become, in extent, such as to reach the sea," &c. So Alows Iadμovos EyeVETO" Esop came to be, or had come to be, the slave of Iadmon." The passage from the Septuagint, υιος γαρ εγενομην καγώ πατρι ὑπήκοος, &c., differs from λoyos σaps εyεyετο, because ύπήκοος and αγαπωμενες express circumstances into which the

:

writer came, not the constitution of his nature but the phrase, the "word was flesh," describes the nature of the λόγος.

However, after all that may be said on either side, there is a better judge, at least as far as regards every man's own satisfaction, than all the citations and reasons that can possibly be produced. After we have obtained a little familiarity with a language, we judge of the meaning of its expressions at once by that sense of their import which experience has given us. According to this criterion, I, for my own part, feel it impossible to think that the words & λoyos cap eyEVETO, can properly be rendered the word was flesh," nearly as impossible as I do think that a former passage can properly be rendered "the word was a God."-I conclude where I began, that I am happy to see discussion of this subject excited, and solicit from Mr. Cogan's candour that fair appreciation of my arguments which his critical acuteness is so able to bestow.

SIR,

THE

T. F. B.

HE preface to John's Gospel presents difficulties to our TriUnitarian and many of our Unitarian brethren. To the former, from their preconceived opinion, that Christ is one of the three persons of their Trinity; to the latter, from the low and inadequate ideas they entertain of our Saviour's character. I cannot agree with Dr. Jones, that we are to enter into the labyrinth of the Gnostic controversy for the solution of these difficulties. A due attention to the language of Scripture, and some important facts related in it, will, I am convinced, be sufficient to render the whole satisfactory to the commonest reader. John, indeed, has given us a clue to the explanation; for at the close of his memoir he explicitly informs us of his intention in writing it, namely, to convince us that Jesus is the Son of God; and it would be very extraordinary that a writer, with such an end in view, should commence his history with a preface declaratory, not of his being the Son of God, but of his being God himself. It must be shewn, that the beginning and the end are in conformity with each other; and this I think will appear, when the

discussion on this subject, which has been so well begun in your Repository, is brought to a conclusion.

There is a remarkable event in our Saviour's life, which appears to me to deserve particular attention. John was one of the apostles present on the Mount when the three greatest characters that have ever met in this world were surrounded with the effulgence of the Divine glory-Moses, Elijah and our Saviour. A voice at the same time proclaimed, This is my beloved Son; hear ye him. In these words the superiority of our Saviour to either of the other two great characters is evident. But in what does this superiority consist? To me it appears traceable in the beginning of John's Gospel, and in the difference of the manifestation of the word, with respect to the head of the law, the head of the prophets, and the head of the gospel dispensation.

The difference in the style of John's Gospel, from that of the three other historians, cannot have escaped the notice of any attentive reader. The latter have given us a detail of events, written in a clear, plain and impartial manner. John was the beloved disciple of Jesus, and the affection was, I doubt not, reciprocal. John had witnessed the glory of his beloved Master on the Mount; he was present with him in public and in private; he had treasured up in his mind, more than any other, the discourses of his Lord. It was impossible, with such impressions on his mind, that John could write like the other Evangelists. They detail events; he enters fully into the sentiments of his Master, introduces us to all the excellencies of his character; he felt more, and therefore he makes us feel the more. The beginning of his Gospel corresponds with the conceptions I have of his character, and he appears to me to have acted strictly under the Horatian precept,