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the Serjuoon on the Mount , is to be removed out of the vvay because the " inexplicable doctrine of the Trinity " has been founded on the baptismal commission , and the " blasphemous doctrine of eternal torments" on
another passage . It has , indeed , been shewn by Priestley and others , that the commission of baptism warrants no such construction , and the original terms , supposed to imply the eternity of torment , have been critically sifted
by Simpson in his " Essays ; " but the method of erasure is confessedly more easy and concise than that of inquiry . The proem to John ' s Gospel is said to be in such " metaphysical and undefined language , that from it the orthodox undertake to prove and
defend the doctrine of the Trinity ; Unitarians , though not agreeing amongst themselves about the meaning of it , defend the doctrine of the Divine Unity ; and the Arians , with much greater
plausibility , establish the foundation of their own peculiar hypothesis . " It is no great objection to a writer , whose subject turns on metaphysical things , to say that he treats it metaphysically ; and language may naturally appear undefined to those who are not conversant
with the phraseology of an ancient writer and the opinions of his age . If three opinions be deduced from the passage , it is open to the fair judgment of every man , which of these opinions is best supported by philological reasons and the collateral evidence of scripture . The difficulty of interpretation arises from the distance of
time at which we live from the period in which the apostle wrote , and from the perplexity thrown into the plainest truths from the scholastic subtleties and refinements introduced into Christianity . But that these refinementsthat a sub-creator who was God the
oon , or a sub-creator who was a superangelic spirit , was originally suggested l > y the proem of John , is more easily said than proved . The Gnostics and the Platonists , as in course of time the Aristotelians , endeavoured to adapt
the Gospels and Epistles to their respective philosophies : and the notion of this writer , that the proem was the production of a " Greek converted to Christianity , and previously well versed in the Platonic philosoph y of that time , " is the reverse of the fact ; for it vol . xv . 4 r
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is notorious that Justin Martyr , the Platonw convert , first imagined these resemblances to Platonism in Christianity , and these were so far from having been familiarized to the people by the proem of John , which was supposed to countenance them , that he evidently
introduces them as a new discover ) ' ' , which he ascribes to special illumination . I challenge the writer to shew that the general body of Christians , in the first ages , conceived 6 f the word in any other manner than as the wisdom and power of God ; nor is it easy to say , why the Arian interpretation should be greatly more plausible than the Unitarian , when the word , however it may have been adopted in the
phraseology of the later Platonists , was in fact a Jewish term , equivalent to God himself ; and when in the Targum , the name Jehovah is interpreted by the periphrasis of 'the word of the Lord ,
The assumption of the writer , that the " whole style of the book , but particularly the introduction , plainly discovers that it could not be written by John , the son of Zebedee , the Galilean fisherman , reminds us of the reasoning of Bolingbroke , who , as JVarburton has well observed , while
noticing the assertion that Paul carried Christianity much further than lay within the conception or ability of the poor fisherman Peter , would have said the poor Carpenter ' s Son , if he dared . Has the writer , Sir , never read the assurance of Jesus , " Behold , I send
the promise of my Father upon you" ? Or the account of the powers shed forth on the apostles at the assembly of Pentecost ? They rest on the testimony of that Luke , whom he would have us receive as the sole
authentic gO 3 pel historian . Unless , however , he expects that we should discard the Epistles of John as equally apocryphal with his Gospel , the proem to these Epistles , in which the word of life is spoken of as having been seen and handled in the person of Jesus , to " whom the word came , " sufficiently identifies the introduction to John * *
Gospel , as proceeding from one and the same pen . In critical comparison , however , the writer seems less happy than positive . The transition from one person to another in the latter verses of John ' s
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The Canonical Gospels the support of Unitarian Christianity . 669
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1820, page 669, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2494/page/41/
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