same writer.

John ii. 7: “I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning." Again, in ver. 11th, "I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning." Again, in ver. 24, “Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning." These citations, which might be multiplied, may suffice to shew that the phrase, in the beginning, or, from the beginning, was rather a favourite one with our Apostle, when he wished to refer to the commencement of the Gospel. I shall mention one further consideration in favour of the opinion for which we contend, which appears to me of great weight. In the 4th and 5th verses of the Gospel we read thus: "In it (i. e. the Word) was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." Now this indisputably refers to the light of the gospel, because John the Baptist is said immediately afterwards to have been sent to bear witness to this light. But if we refer the three first verses to the origin of creation, the transition in the 4th verse to the Gospel history, appears to me very awkward and abrupt. Of this every reader must judge for himself, but the arguments I have adduced certainly prevail with me to understand the passage as referring to the beginning, not of creation, but of the evangelic history. Well, then; 5w Tauτα, let us proceed.

In the beginning of the gospel was the Word. Antecedently, that is, to all those events of which the writer is about to give the narrative, existed the Word. He is about to recount a train of surprising occurrences, but he sets himself, in the first place, to declare to us the principle or agency from which they flowed. This principle was the Word. But what was the Word, and how did it exist? These inquiries the Apostle proceeds to satisfy in the verses which immediately follow. First, he says, the Word was with God. He is about to declare afterwards in what manner the Word was manifested among men, but previously to this manifestation, he wishes us to understand that the Word was with God, which he repeats again in the second verse. The full im

port of this expression cannot be determined till we are further made acquainted with the nature of the Word, what sort of existence it is; then only can we know in what precise sense it is said to be with God. All that seems to be intended here is to inform us, that previous to the manifestation of the Word among men, it existed in the Divine Nature, hidden from the world, but known to the Almighty. In the parallel passage of the Epistle the same is said of life: "That eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." There is a cast of mystical obscurity about these expressions as well as many others of this author, which ought to deter us from attempting too great precision of interpretation, lest we should overshoot our mark, and determine the sense more nicely than the writer himself conceived it.

In the

We have arrived thus far. beginning of the gospel was the Word, and the Word was with God; it was a principle or existence inherent in the Divine Nature. The sacred writer then proceeds to another assertion: and the Word was God. The nature of the Word is thus more fully discovered; it is not only present with God, and inherent in his nature, but it is, in fact, no other than a part or form of himself, inseparable from his being, and essentially one with him. So the various faculties of our own minds are with them and in them, and not to be distinguished from them. It has been objected to this view, that it makes the Word to be the same being with whom it was; but we have explained how this is to be understood, and, if I judge rightly, it has not much real difficulty, not nearly so much as there is in supposing that the Apostle should apply the name of God to two different beings in the same verse. The name of God in Scripture may justly be regarded as a proper name, belonging to one Being and no other; the exceptions are too rare to deserve consideration, and when they take place, the context is such as to leave no ambiguity. To doubt that God means God, seems as strange as to doubt that Abraham means Äbraham. I conclude, then, that when we are told that the Word was God, we are to understand it as said of that Being to whom this name as exclu

sively belongs, and whom, when thus absolutely used, it as unequivocally designates, as that of Abraham does the father of the faithful.

The original words that follow, Tarta di aute EYEVETO, &c., referring to the operation or agency of the word, may be understood either with respect to the creation of the natural world, or to the dispensation of the gospel. And in either sense they may be said in truth, according to that view of the nature of the Divine Word or Aoyos for which I am contending for the Word which dwelt in Christ, the source of his divine powers and lifegiving energy, was the very same to which the world itself owed its being. "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made." We need not, therefore, contend with much eagerness about this point; but the coherence of the whole passage, and its harmony with the corresponding passage in the Epistle, may seem to be better preserved if this third verse be referred entirely to the Gospel. In that case the English must run thus: " 'By or through it (i. e. the Word) were all things done, and without it was nothing done that has been done." But let me leave this question for others to decide.

That the nature and operation of this Word may be better understood, the Apostle proceeds to say that in it was life, and the life was the light of men: it was a principle of life and spiritual illumination. This evidently refers to the Gospel, and needs no comment. In the Epistle the Word is called the word of life. Indeed, we have, on the whole, three names given as of the same thing, the word, life, and the word of life. Let me ask, by the way, of those who prefer the Socinian interpretation, whether these titles do not most naturally convey the idea of an impersonal principle? Had the Apostle's design been to name his Master, there were surely appellations at hand much more proper for his purpose than these abstract terms. Is it not more reasonable to conclude, since the writer falls upon three abstract impersonal terms to designate the thing of which he speaks, that the thing itself was indeed of an abstract and impersonal nature ?

The discourse concerning the Word or Aoys, does not appear to be re

sumed until the 14th verse; for that which is said in the 10th verse," He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not," appears to be spoken immediately of God. In the 14th verse the Word is again mentioned: "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld its glory." The Word, before spoken of as a life-giving and enlightening energy inherent in, and emanating from, the Divine Being, is now to assume a new form; it is embodied in a mysterious manner in the person of a inan; according to the conceptions of the writer of this Gospel, which are in a manner peculiar to himself, a sort of unity and identity is effected between the divine Ayos and the human person: and this mystical and undefined idea runs through his works. It is from this source that the current doctrines of the deity and pre-existence of Jesus Christ have been derived, because theologians have not known how to distinguish mystical expressions from plain and literal ones; a similar error to that by which the Papists will have it that we actually feed, like cannibals, on the flesh and blood of our own Master. And thus the majority, confounding the person of Jesus with the divine Word interpret literally his declaration that he was come down from heaven, not discerning the mystical allusions of the writer. But to understand a mystical writer literally, is doing as much violence as to understand a plain writer mystically. It might, perhaps, be shewn that Unitarians also fall into some error in this Gospel, by trying to make the writer speak too much in their own plain way. But this may be a vain attempt. The fundamental idea of this author, that the Aoyos had become flesh in the person of Jesus, leads naturally to an identification of Jesus with God in a certain sense, though not in a literal and proper one. It is our duty, indeed, to give to mystical passages a rational interpretation, but to make them convey plain and simple ideas is a thing impossible, because contrary to their nature.

I observe some remarks by your intelligent correspondent, Mr. Cogan, (pp. 605 and 646,) on the signification of the word yeverba. I have not room at present to say more in reply, than

that I have turned to the places from which he cites, and think that if they are attentively considered, it will be perceived that the word in question is not in any of them confined to the simple sense Eva, but carries with it, in all, its proper sense of acquiring or coming into a new state of being. Thus the phrase μaptuç yivea, from Herodotus, does not, to me, convey simply the idea " you are a witness," as if it were μaptus ef, but rather that of, "you become a witness," which thing a person does every time that he is called on to bear his testimony.

T. F. B.

A Brief View of the different Schemes of Interpreting the Proem of John's Gospel.

S the facts, on which the expla

my last paper, (pp. 648-651,) are very remote from common apprehension, its propriety, I fear, will be little felt by the readers of the Repository. Lest this be their feeling, I beg further attention, while I contrast it with some of the leading schemes which learned men have adopted for interpreting the proem of John. It seems to have been the general opinion in the second century and afterwards, that this Evangelist wrote his Gospel against Cerinthus; and the narrative of Irenæus implies that the language of John is drawn up in direct opposition to the Gnostic heresy. Michaëlis, it is well known, adopts the same supposition; and it is remarkable that Dr. Priestley, who at first embraced the sentiments of Lardner, felt reason to change his opinion; and in his Notes on the Bible, he explains the words of the Evangelist as levelled against the Gnostics.

The notion of Lardner is, that the Logos means God himself. When the Evangelist, therefore, says that "This was with God," he asserts that God was with himself, an assertion which, though not, as Dr. Clarke would have us believe, a contradiction in terms, is yet strange and unnecessary, as calculated neither to confirm the truth nor remove the errors of those to whom the Gospel was addressed. Logos (oyos) signifies a word or speech: and as speech is

founded on the rational faculties of man, it hence came to signify reason or intelligence itself. This is the common acceptation of logos, and taken here in this sense it denotes not God, but an attribute of God, holds him forth as a rational principle, as a designing cause, as the source of all the order, beauty and happiness which abound in the universe, in opposition to certain impostors who, to establish a system of Atheisin and by that means erase the very foundations of revelation, stripped the universal Father of his natural perfections. When the Evangelist, therefore, declares that reason was in the begindeclares that He who at first brought ning, was with God and was God, be all things into being was himself possessed of life and reason, and the source of life and reason to all cre

things, and not

tics represented the Supreme God, destitute of life and reason, and existing from eternity, like what Moses says of the deep, in solitude and darkness.

If the Logos meant God himself, then when he became flesh" in the person of Christ, God, even the Father, the Creator and Governor of the universe, became flesh, and this was the doctrine of Sabellius, who supposed the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost to be three different names of the same Being, expressive only of three different relations. See Lardner, III. 78. Aware of this conclusion, Lardner thus paraphrases the verse: "And the Word was made man, or took upon him the human nature, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth'—that is, And we beheld in Jesus such power and wisdom that we could not doubt his being the Messiah." Here the Doctor shifts his ground, making the Logos, which in the first verse he represents as God himself, to mean the power and wisdom of God uniting with the man Jesus, and thus proving him to be the Messiah. This paraphrase is very nearly the true one: and it is remarkable that this learned and amiable man should expound the drift of the Evangelist's meaning without being aware of the great truth that the historian wished to establish. The impostors who denied

that Christ is flesh and blood, denied also that he derived his authority from the Creator of the universe. This sentiment, of which Lardner does not appear to have been aware, was, if adopted, completely destructive of the gospel, and John briefly sets it aside by representing the pow er, wisdom and goodness which Jesus displayed to be no other than the Logos, the moral perfections displayed by God himself in the creation and government of the world.

In this proem the Logos, as expressive of reason in God, or, more generally, of all those natural and moral attributes implied in reason when infinite, is personified. The object of this personification was to render the sense of the term more prominent and impressive, and at the same time more conformable to the glowing imagination of eastern writers: and it is to be observed, that a similar personification characterizes the writings and preaching of the apostles. I will here content myself with two instances. Thus in Acts x. 36, "The Logos, whom God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ: this Logos is Lord of all." Again, in Heb. iv, 12, "The Logos of God is alive and energetic, surpassing in keenness a two-edged sword, penetrating so far as to separate between life and breath, joints and marrow, and is a judge of the ineditations and thoughts of the heart." These are striking instances, and they demonstrate the erroneous. ness of the notion adopted by Lardner, Priestley and others, namely, that the personification of the Logos and its application to Christ originated with the Platonic philosophers converted to Christianity in the second century, this having already been done by the apostles themselves.

The next scheme for interpreting this much-disputed introduction is that of Socinus. This is adopted by the late N. Cappe, and, embellished by his eloquence, it found its way into the Improved Version. According to this scheme, the Logos means Jesus. "In the beginning," means "In the beginning of the gospel dispensation." "All things were made by him," means All things in the Christian dispensation were done by Christ." As the Logos was Jesus, the clause

66

"He became flesh," is rendered, "He was flesh."

On this interpretation I remark— and I make these remarks not without reverence and affection for the high character and talents of the Editor-that it is founded in the absence of the circumstances in which John wrote his Gospel, and which give full force and propriety to every word that he has penned. The irrelevance of this scheme to the momentous errors which pressed on the attention of the sacred writer, renders it at once impertinent and nugatory, the construction withal being in some of the clauses forced, and at variance both with common sense and the genius of the Greek language.

"The Word was in the beginning, or from the commencement of the gospel dispensation." Was it necessary to say that the Word was in the beginning of the gospel, more than in the middle or the end of the gospel? Who ever doubted that Jesus was in the beginning of his ministry? Who could question that every thing made during his ministry was made by him? But it is said that "yrquai occurs upwards of seven hundred times in the New Testament, but never in the sense of create." This may be true, for the obvious reason that the writers of the Christian Scriptures had in no other place occasion to speak of the creation, or to allude to Moses as the historian of it. I am free to assert that the perfect middle yeyove, is the most appropriate verb which the Evangelist could have used to express creation; the Pagan philosophers before Christ, and the Christian fathers afterwards, having continually employed it in that sense.

John wrote his Gospel as well as his Epistle against certain impostors who maintained the divinity of Christ with no other view than as a specious pretext to overturn Christianity. Is it then probable that he should in the commencement assert the very doetrine which it is the principal object of his writings to set aside as false and pernicious? "The Word was a God," and this God was Jesus. If the Evangelist was capable of saying this, or even favouring this conclusion, instead of the profound wisdom, the correct judgment and dignified simplicity which he displays as the