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    rantial circumspection observed by that people in avoiding the utterance of the nama of Jehovah , and their practice of speaking- of all his operations and interpositions and communications in the circumlocution before described , had a tendency to mislead observers and travellers , rather than to inform them rightly &n tMs < subject . There is good ; reason to believe that this custom among the Jews of attributing all revelations and manifestations from above , to the iastromentality of the Word , or Logos , of the Lord , laid the

    foundations not only for erroneous opinions among their descendants , but also for much of those mysterious systems of divine philosophy which were brought to perfection in the school of Plato . "—V . 41 . So that the very same mode of expression which our author conceives to have originated in " the wise policy of the Jewish divines , " p . 26 , and to

    have been most " evidently adopted for the purpose of preserving the idea of the unity and spirituality of tne Supreme Being , '' p . 29 , is now found to have been calculated to * mislead and to have originated erroneous systems among the Jews , and to have been partly answerable for the reveries of Gentile philosophers ! The author conceives that ,

    * ' la the days when John wrote his Gospel , Judea , as well as the heathen countries , was overrun by teachers and preachers of every imaginable combination of doctrines , and that the truths of Christianity were in danger of being all swallowed up in the flood of conjectures , and hypotheses , and schemes , which was sweeping into one common confusion every form of philosophy or of faith . Many rash and bold adventurers from the heathen schools seized upon some of the articles of the Christian faith , and mixed them up with errors and fancies of their own . Christian converts also were captivated by the theories that prevailed , and were fond of associating them with the doctrines of the gospel / ' —P . 5 $ .

    Now , that these consequences did result in subsequent times from science , falsely so called , we are prepared to admit ; but we doubt much whether a knowledge of its principles will tend much to elucidate the composition of any books of the New Testament , and least of all account for the original of any one of the gospels or narratives of our Lord's actions and discourses . These were written generally to prove and illustrate the divinity of our Lord's mission ; and it would , we conceive , after the considerate Lardner ,

    have been beneath an apostle to have incorporated with a life of his Master , a refutation of the wild and absurd theories of human philosophy . And , besides , can another instance be produced from the multifarious volumes of polemics , in which opinions are attempted to be refuted in the manner in which the Gnostic philosophy is supposed , by our author and some others , to have been refuted in the proem to St . John '' s Gospel ? We are presented to have been refuted in the proem to St . Johns Gospel ? We are presented

    in the Fourth Letter with an ingenious scheme of the principles of Basil ides , and also of Valentinus ; but we cannot derive from them any aid to the understanding of St . John's Gospel till we have sufficient proof , which cannot , we think , he afforded , that at the time this Gospel was written ( according to LardneT , A . D . 69 ) these principles had been introduced into the Christian system .

    " It is well understood , that , in accordance with the practice in every l&gatl ^ eft system into whiten it had gained admission , they ( the Jews ) had personified ana given a distinct , substantive , and personal existence to the word * Logos . ' » —P . 78 . ' * Any reader of judgment will see what were the meanings attached to it in some of the most fashionable theories at the time when the Evangelist undertook to remove from it all erroneous significations , and to explain , in

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    690 Pamphlets on the Logos .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1828, page 690, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2565/page/34/