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    Fisher Street Red Lion Square , Sir , Nov . 23 , 1814 . HAVING appeared in your Repository as a defender of the doctrine of the pre-existence of Jesus

    Christ , and having upon a further investigation of the subject been induced to change my mind , I think it right , as a friend to truth and free inquiry , to acknowledge thut 1 am now convinced that 1 was mistaken

    in my ideas on that subject , and as to the meaning of those passages of scripture by which I endeavoured to support that doctrine . There is no passage of scripture , I believe , on which the advocates for the Arian hypothesis lay more stress than John xvii # 5 . " And now

    O Father glorify thou me with thine ownself , with the glory which I had -with thee before the world was . " On that passage , I myself have made the following remarks , * " It is almost impossible to conceive of any terms

    by which the fact of his ( Christ ' s ) pre-existence could be more fully ascertained , than by those here used , and it will surely require great critical skill to explain the words so as to set aside that idea . ' So I then

    thought , but further reflection has led me to think otherwise . It is true our Lord prays to be glorified with a glory which , he says , he had with the Father before the world was ; but the inquiry is whether Jesus Christ by this expression meant to say that

    he was then in the actual possession of this glory ? That the glory for ¦ w hich our JLord here prays , was actually bestowed upon him after his resurrection , the scriptures expressly affirm . Peter tells the Jews that God had glorified his son Jesus whom

    they slew and hanged on a tree . This glorification therefore , whether we refer it to his person , which was raised to a life of incoiruption and invested with glory , or to the honour and dignity which was conferred upon him , vvJicn he had a name

    given him above every name , in heaven and earth , and all things subjected to him , was the glorification of a human being , of that man who suffered the death of a malefactor 3 and it is also represented as the reward of his obedience unto death ; * Mon . llcpos . iii . 653 .

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    as such he here prays for it , I have glorified thee on earth , and now O Father , glorify me with thine ownself . Because " he humbled himself and became obedient unto death ! 4 ^ W - » V ^ Jt

    VJ X _ s M . Illi V ^ C +- * V- V , * A « ^— ' V ^ * - ' V- * ¦* - ¦« -AX ^ M * . V * -+ » « - ^ - » ^ . •»• « s-B . « even the death of the cross , therefore God hath highly exalted him . " " Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity , therefore

    God , even thy God , hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellow-. 11 Now a glory which was the consequence of his resurrection and the reward of his

    obedience , could not be a glory which he actually possessed before he entered upon the performance of the work which his father gave him to do , and which he had before the world was . If Jesus Christ , according to the

    Trinitarian hypothesis pre-existed as properly God , a divine person , necessarily possessing all the perfections of deity , his glory as such must be essential to his being , that glory therefore he could neither be

    divested of nor pray for , nor can that be the glory here intended . If Jesus pre-existed as a superhuman being in a state of glory , the glory which he here prays for and which was conferred upon him in answer to his prayer , could not be hi * glory as such , because , as we have

    seen , he was glorified not as a superhuman , hut as a human being , properly a man , who had suffered death , a man raised up of the seed of David , and made in all things like unto his brethren of mankind , nor could his glory as such be the reward of his obedience and consequently not the glory intended in this passage .

    Again , if Jesus Christ was properly a man , as the scriptures always represent him to be , deriving his being , as all other men derive their ' s , by a natural descent from his parents , being made of the seed of David , then he could not have existed before he was

    born into the world , and consequently could not have been in possession of glovy before the foundation of the world . What then did our Lord mean when he said of the glory for which

    he prayed that he had it with his father before the world was ? The expression " with thee , " may , it is true , mean in the enjoyment of thy presence and in a participation of thy glory : so our Lord says , ch .. xiii . 31 , 32 , anticipa-

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    30 Mr . Marsom on the Pre-existence of Jesus Christ .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1815, page 30, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1756/page/30/