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1 $ there in it that could be so cited t ) f which it may not be said that it is not to be found in the other evangelists * and therefore their silence is fatal to the argument ? *< I affirhV' says Mr . B » , ** without fear of . contradiction *
that if Christ was , as my learned friend maintains , the grand agent employed by the supreme being in creating and governing tke world , and the immediate dis * . penser of all things , the evangelists must have been well informed of this fact at the time they wrote their respective histories / ' " It will Rot then" he adds , " for a moment bear a question whether they knew of the p re-existent dignity of Christ , if that doctrine were true / ' But he asks , " Is it possible that the evangelists could have known these amazing facts , and yet that in their histories of the life and ministry of this
extraordinary person they should pass them over in total silence ? Would not the mind of a Jew who had never heard of delegated creators and subordinate Jc / iovafts , have been overwhelmed with astonishment when this new and strange doctrine was first discovered tohim ? '' 1 think it certainly would , and I apprehend the astonishment would have been increased by the reflection that
they ( the Jews ) had been imposed upon b y Mosos and the prophets , who uniformly teach that there is but one Jehovah , who stretched out the heavens alone , who spread abroad the earth by himself , and whose hand , and not that of a delegated creator or subordinate Jehovah had " laid its foundation . But supposing thedoctrine of the pre-existence of Jesus Christ to ke true , it is certain that this lew
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Mr * Marsom ' s Defence of the Pre-existtiicc of Christ . » 3 § t
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and strange doctrine is not any * where connected with it in the discourses of our Lord recorded by the evangelist John . Separate this new and strange doctrine from that of the pre-cxistence of Jesus Christ , and the whole forcj ^
and energy of Mr . B / s . rea ; du : ng is lost . Is not Mr . B . guilty of the same fkult whicli he would be ready enough to charge on the opposers of Christianity ,, that they attack its corruptions and not Christianity itself , as left in the New Testament ? Will he say in reply , that he finds this new and strange doctrine , maintained as a doctrine of scripture by his learned friend to whom lie is writing ?' id So may they say , that those corruptions , as . we call . them , are maintained as Christianity by its advocates .
That the doctrine of d state of pro-existence was believed in our Lord's days will not , I apprehend , be disputed , und that it was be-¦ Leved by his -diciples is highly probable from the question which they put to him , respecting tbe man who was born blind . Believing then the p re-existence of others , would they be overwhelm- * ed with the astonishment Mr . C supposes , had they been informed that their lord and master had , existed before he was born inttt this world ? Or would they have supposed merely because he had
pre-existed , that he , any more than the blind man , must have foeen ' of a super-angelic nature * the delegated creator and governor of the world t aijd the immediate dispenser of all things ? If the « the discovery of the fact would have . e ^ ciied rio extraordinary surprise , was it impossible tutf them to sit -tlown and write , the
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1808, page 381, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2394/page/29/
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