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that I have turned to the places from which he cites , and think that if they are attentively considered , it will be perceived that the word in question is not in any of them confined to the simple sense s 7 vai 9 but carries with it ,
3 n all , its proper sense of acquiring ' or coming * into a new state of being . Thus the phrase paprvc ; yiyeooi , from Herodotus , does not , to me , convey simply the idea you are a witness , " as if it were paprvt ; e 7 , but rather that of , " you become a witness / ' which thing a person does every time that lie is called on to bear his testimony . T . F . B .
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A Brief View of the different Schemes of Interpreting the Proem of John s Gospel . AS the facts , on which the explanation of the Logos , given in my last paper , ( pp . 648—651 , ) are very remote from common
apprehension , its propriety , I fear , will be little felt by the readers of the Repository . Lest this be their feeling * , I beg- further attention , while I contrast it with some of the leading schemes which learned men have adopted for
interpreting the proem of John . It seems to have been the general opinion in the second century and afterwards , that this Evangelist wrote his Gospel against Cerinthus ; and the narrative of Irenseus implies that the
language of John is drawn up in direct opposition to the Gnostic heresy . JVlichaelis , it is well known , adopts the same supposition ; and it is remarkable that Dr . Priestley , who at first embraced the sentiments of
Lardner , felt reason to change his opinion ; and in his Notes on the Bible , he explains the words of the Evangelist as levelled ag-ainsfc the Gnostics .
The notion of Lardner is , that the Logos means God himself . When the Evangelist , therefore , says that " This was with God , " he asserts that God was with himself , an
assertion which , though not , as Dr . Clarke would have us believe , a contradiction in terms , is yet strange and unnecessary , as calculated neither to confirm the truth nor remove the errors of
those to whom the Gospel was addressed . Logos Oo < y < K ) signifies a word or speech ; and as speech is
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founded on the rational faculties of man , it hence came to signify reason or intelligence itself . This is the common acceptation of logos , and taken here in this sense it denotes not God , but an attribute of God , holds
him forth as a rational principle , as a designing cause , as the source of all the order , beauty and happiness which abound in the universe , in opposition to certain impostors who , to establish a system of Atheism and by that means erase the very foundations
of revelation , stripped the universal Father of his natural perfections . When the Evangelist , therefore , declares that reason was in the beginning , was with God and was God , he declares that He who at first brought all things into being was himself
possessed of life and reason , and the source of life and reason to all created things , and not what the Gnostics represented the Supreme God , destitute of life and reason , and existing from eternity , like what Moses says of the deep , in solitude and darkness .
If the Logos meant God himself , then when " he became flesh" in the person of Christ , God , even the Father , the Creator and Governor of the universe , became flesh , and this was the doctrine of Sabellius , who
supposed the Father , the Son and the Holy Ghost to be three different names of the same Being , expressive only of three different relations . See Lardner , III . / 8 . Aware of this conclusion , Lardner thus paraphrases the
verse : "' And the Word was made man , or took upon him the human nature , and we beheld his glory , the glory as of the only begotten of the Father \ full of grace and truth —that is , / And we beheld in Jesus such
power and wisdom that we could not doubt his being the Messiah / " Here the Doctor shifts his ground , makingthe Logos , which in the first verse he represents as God himself , to mean the power and wisdom of God uniting with the man Jesu 3 , and thus proving
him to be the Messiah . This paraphrase is very nearly the true one : and it is remarkable that this learned and amiable man should expound the drift of the Evangelists meaning without being aware of the great truth that the historian wished to establish . The impostors who denied
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Dr * J . Jones on the Proem of John ' s Gospel . ' 725
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1825, page 725, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2543/page/21/
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