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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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e&nfidenee ^ whether I do not know that the word &sos is hot ta be found ia any Greek copy before the fourth or fifth century ? I answer , that in the copies used by Ignatius and the writer of the Apostolical Constitutions the reading was evidently Qeq ? . Both these authors allude to the text in question , and both introduce , not the word os- or b 3 but 0 £ or . Thus in Ignatius we find th « expression 6 sh avSqainvcos < p < zvsp&t * , Evt * God manifested in human
form ; and in the Apostolical Constitutions Qso ? kvqie 9 6 ETripavzis f / ljuv ev < tqc % kI ) O Lord God who wast manifested unto us in the flesk . This God manifested in the flesh , according tj Cyril of Alexandria and Justin Martyr ^ was the divine Word , \ vhom St , John pronounces to be God and with God . Such is the evidence pro and con , internal and external : on which side , it
preponderates is , I think , not very difficult to determine , Are we to adopt the unsupported Alexandrine reading , of the origin of which a rational account maybe given , and which , if adopted produces absolute nonsense ; or the common reading , which is supported by the primitive fathers , which precisely accords with the doctrine contained in the beginning of St , John ' s
gospel ^ and which produces perfect grammatical sense ? As for J . M . ' s notable idea , that trinitarianisrn is the spirit of antichrist , it is too contemptible to deserve a serious answer . However such assertions may please the dogmatizing party among the Socinians > who claim exclusively to themselves the praise of rationality , the sober inquirer will find it difficult to discover in
St . John's description x > f antichrist any censure of those who believe Christ to be God without denying him to he man . According to J . M . the apostle himself must hrr / e drunk deeply of antichristianism : for , while he teaches us that Christ was man , he teaches us no less explicitly , that the Word made flesh was God . And that the Word means Christ , is allowed by J . M . himself : for he . acknowledges , that Rev . xix . 16 . relates to Christ ; but the person , styled u King of kings and Lord of Jords /^ is the Word of God . Sec Rev . xix . 13 .
The answer , which J . M * gives to Acts xx , 28 , is a mere fjuihble * I appeal to any person , whether in the piain untortured sense of the words God is not said to have purchased the Church with his own biooch The reason , of the expression in , that , God and man being one Christ , the blood of Christ , although the blood of the man Jesus , is styled the blood of GocL By the assistance however of 5- convenient ellipsis , or some similar contrivance , a Socinian will persuade himself , whatever he may do others , that a text means the very reverse of what tmlettered Christians would suppose it to mean . . In support of
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The Clergyman ' s Answer to J . M * 523
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1807, page 523, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2385/page/15/
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