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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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which they might think proper to adopt- Jerome availed himself of this more auspicious time , to restore the verse ; though , had he lived at an earlier period , he would doubtless have concurred in the course pursued
by his orthodox brethren . Besides this , personal resentment had a considerable share in his determination . His engagements and his high talents , though most honourably and usefully directed , brought upon him the envy and opposition of his contemporaries .
This ungenerous conduct alienated and determined him to act in defiance of them , saying , as he does say , in the prologue , tf I neither dread the malice of rivals , nor shall I withhold the truth of the Holy Scriptures from those who ask it . " In all this
the hand of God is most visible ; as without these causes , the restoration of the text , and with it the restoration of genuine Christianity , would have been precluded . 10 . When I take a general view
of the prologue before me , I cannot help looking upon Griesbach , Porson , Marsh and the Quarterly Reviewer , to whatever eminence they have risen by native talents and acquirements above the rest of mankind , as having left common sense and common
sagacity behind them , when they insist on its spuriousness . The buoyance of vigorous powers enabled them to emerge from the dregs of prejudices , in which they conceived others to be
wallowing ; and , reaching the summit of learning , they glide with its stream , luxuriating in its muddy froth as delicious amber , while the truth lies far below them , sparkling like golden sand at the bottom .
Jerome , in his Preface to the book of Job , complains that the malice of his adversaries compelled him to suspend his work , and answer them by prefaces occasionally prefixed to the sacred books : and is it credible that , when he arrived at the seven
Canonical Epistles , and saw the shock which he was likely to give to the public feeling and the public opinion , he should leave the important alterations he had occasion to introduce without noticing , in a preface , the necessity lor them and the authorities upon which he proceeded ? Is it likely that Griesbach should have omitted the
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verse In his edition of the Nev ? Testameat , without a diatribe to justify the omission ? Or is it to be supposed that Mr . Belsham should have
exeluded it from the Improved Version , without a note to state his conviction of its forgery ? Jerome , with regard to his contemporaries , stood in a predicament far more critical than these
gentlemen : and his prologue , brief and pithy as it is , stands as vitally connected with the transactions in which he was personally engaged , as his head with his own body : and what should we say of learned men , if they argued in the following manner : € i Jerome , to be sure , lived in the fifth
century , but had no head , this being clapped by a certain moulder of clay on his shoulder , two or three hundred years after he was buried" ? Men that argued after this manner would be deemed little better than a parcel of Bedlamites , splendidly endowed ,
indeed , by Providence , but let loose to play their anticks in the face of society , for no other end than to render talents ridiculous , and to expose the folly of learning , when fettered in preconceived opinions , or blinded with a lofty confidence in one ' s self .
I he prologue suggests that the disputed text was excluded from some copies , and improperly arranged in others that had it . Quse si ut ab eis
( 1 . e . ab eis Greeds ) digestae sunt—ilia prsecipue loco ubi de Unitate Trinitatis iu prima Johannis epistoia positum legimus . It intimates , farther , that those who excluded the text of
the three heavenly witnesses , endeavoured to deduce the Unity of the Trinity from the three names—the water , blood and spirit : and this in fact , has been done from the days of Jerome , and afterwards by annexing
to them a mystical sense expressive of the Father , Son and Holy Spirit . On this allegory Mr . Porson observes , p . 311 , " That no writer in his perfect mind could possibly adopt this allegorical interpretation of the eighth verse , if the seventh were extant in
his copy : because it is not likely that any body , seeing the doctrine of the Trinity clearly revealed in the seventh verse , should extract it from the eighth by an unnatural construction . " P . 307- By means of this argument the Professor infers the absence of the
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Ben David on 1 John v . 7 . 21 &
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1826, page 219, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2547/page/31/
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