On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
that Atigtfsfctrie contents hitiifcfelf with s&fttig t ! i # t the Fatter , the Son and the Holy Spirit ^ re thre £ witnesses ; ffi sunt tres testes ; but ff&s suppressed the subject which they at- ^ tested , namely , that " Jesus is the Christ or the Son of God , " in opposition to the Gnostics , who maintained
the divinity of the Christ , and rejected Jesus as being a man . This suppression is a palpable omission , and shews to demonstration that Augustine understood the verse in the very sense which I have annexed to it : yet he wheels about , and when you might expect him to say that these three Witnesses were one in
testimony , he inculcates that they were one in substance . Had he gone one step farther and stated what those Witnesses certify in the Gospel , he would have cut down the Trinity at one blow as with a hatchet . This he well knew , and though he lifted up his arm to do it , he directed the blow
to another quarter . His conduct in this respect warrants me in concluding , that Augustine was , at this time , a Trinitarian sorely against his will , and that he wished , but dared not , avow his real sentiments . I conclude this , because , by directing the attention of his readers to the three
Witnesses as bearing testimony to Jesus in the Gospel , he led them directly to perceive the true sense of the apostolic text , and thus to reject the mass of absurdity and falsehood implied in the Trinitarian interpretation . Augustine was a man of talents and
great learning , but he was a temporizer , and his own confession is on record , that till he read the writings of Plato he was an Unitarian . This confession of itself is enough , and speaks
« volume . But hear the Quarterly Reviewer . In the face of the fact that Augustine cites the verse , and leads his readers to set aside the perversion of it in support of the Trimx he is so blind and infatuated
?< p ° ^ ravv l he following inference : / From this single passage we believe Jt to be impossible fairly to avoid the c onclusion , that at the beginning of the fifth century the verse containing the three Heavenly Witnesses was un-Known as a part of Holy Writ ? " !
Ku cherius , about the middle of the mih century ,- quotes the verse . Numerus tenvurms refcrtur ad Triuitatcm
Untitled Article
in Joannis epistoiat iieB sunt qui testimonhnn daafc i » a iCicaio ^ H Bute rj Verbum * et Spmt&s Sanctum < ffare the Unity is first assumed as meaning "
the Trinity ; the clauses asserting-fit in both the seventh and eighth verses are amputated , the amputation beitig designed to prevent the reader from discovering the true nature of that unity which the Apostle inculcates .
Vigilius of Thapsos quotes the verse : —Tres sunt qui testimonium : perhibent in terra , aqua , sanguis , et caro ; et tres in nobis sunt : et tres sunt qui testimonium perhibent in coelo—Pater , Verbum , et Spiritus ; et hi tres unura sunt . Here we
detect several artifices calculated to disguise the real meaning of the Apostle . Some words foreign to the original are introduced , and the clause in the eighth expressing the unity of testimony , which is the only true key to the sense of the passage , is excluded . The seventh and eighth are
transposed . The transposition is artful : for by the help of the new reading it suggests a tacit illustration of the Trinity in Unity—that as water , blood and flesh form one body in man , so the three which give testimony in heaven , the Father , * the Word and the Holy Spirit , are © ne being . .
Cassiodorus , about the middte ^ of the sixth century , quotes the verse . This man , like Jerome , was a , great biblical critic ! and a laborious invest gator of MSS . and various readings ;
and he wrote a commentary ojq the Epistles of Paul , the Acts of the Apostles , and the Revelation , entitled Complexiones , in which he has these words : Testificantur in terra
tria mysteria , aqua , sanguis , et spiritus , quae in passione Domini leguntur impleta : in coelo autem Pater , et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus : et hi tres unus est Deus .
Finally , the verse is quoted by above four hundred orthodox bishops , in a confession of faith presented to Hunneric , King of the Vandals , in Africa . This was in the year 484 , and the confession has these words ,
which they ascribe to John the Evangelist : Trea sunt qui testhaoiiiuin perhibent in coelo , Pater , Verbum , et Spiritus Sanctus . Observe , this is not a quotation of one writer , biiit of all the heacte of the churches in- Afti *
Untitled Article
B * n David on i Jbkri v * ? . ¥ j $
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1826, page 279, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2548/page/27/
-