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fore , from alh ete $ i % ity * equally o bj ects of its con temp la tion , i f o u r Lord ' s meaning had been ( hat stated in the preceding position , though he would have advanced a
strict truism , yet it would have been no more than might have t ^ en said of any other individual qL the great patriarch ' s posterity with equal truth and propriety . — Jji . such a sense of our Lord ' s
words there would have been nothing exclusively appropriate to Bis . circumstances— -nothing likely to silence the Jews , nothing adapted to convince them of the justness of the claim , which they
evidently supposed him to have laid tou a . superiority to Abraham ^ and which seems plainly to have been the subject of the latter part at l& %$ t of the conversation * See particularly verse 51—53 , 5 fj .
& . That if neither Jesus nor Abraham existed the one before th « fcother in : the divine contemplationor appointment y our Lord did poj ; speak of simple existence , in
^}* . afcever language , he spoke , if the words .-he employed were of the fcaifie import with gj / ju , and yevsJ&aj , Jiy whatever tenses in English jfchose Greek words ^ e translated , hut of existence vnder certain
characters respectively belonging to the two persons mentioned in the dispute ; and that the Jews accordingly understood Jesu ^ s to assert , that Abraham ( of their natural descent from whom they so
proudly boasted ) was not yet in being , or did not yet exist 9 in the character and relation , which God had changed his name to denote that ^ he should one day sustain , and which would afford his natural
descendants much better grounds for glorying in him than they could have before ;' but that he himself
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( Jesjis ) wm ( not only in being $ 9 their senses must convince them ^ but also ) in actual possession cf the title and character of the Christ or Messiah , by whose means A&raham was to be raised to the
honour destined for him by the Supreme pisposer of events , and who consequently , as the instrument to be employed in advancing him to that honour , was his supe *
rzor . The learned reader will observe , that the translation I would now give of the wordsitpiv ASgaafj , ygverSou * zycju sif £ i 9 is Before Abraham shall be or shall exist , I am
hey or the Christy without the supposition of any ellipsis in the former clause , and that I understand ysvz&boLi to denote mere existence ^ though under a particular
character . That yivopou signifies the same as eijxi in two passages at least of John ' s gospel , ch . x ] iu 2 . xx . 27 * is noiiced by . Schleusner . I refer also to H . Steph . Gr . Thes . But that such is not
unfrequently the signification of yivofj ^ oti in various Greek wri ters , I am not aware of being denied . I find some of the ablest writers among the old Socinians so Far from allowing the common
interpretation of the former clause of the text under consideration , that they even presume to call it a-ftorbarismJ To their reasoning in ^ favour of my way of translating this
clause ^ I beg leave to refer . See Socini Opera , v . i . p . 37 g , 380 , 504 ? 505 , Enjedini Explicationes , &c . p * 224 . Crellii-Opera , v .-3 . p . 93 , 94 . Woltzogenius in loc , Artemonius in initium
evangelii Joannis , v . 2- Diss . iv . p % 614 . As to the translation of the Iat ~ ter clause ( eyw * bim ) by a , preterite
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gS ^ On . Join viii . 58 .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1812, page 98, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1745/page/34/
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