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    Benson has shewn from several examples that Iv may have two significations in the same sentence . " The expression eternal life is much relied upon as always belonging to Jesus Christ . But Christ is spoken of as the communicator and establisher of the doctrine of eternal life , not as the original author of the blessing . Let Rom . vi . 23 , be recollected , eternal life is " the gift of God through

    Jesus Christ ; " and in John xvii . 3 , which the author probably had in his mind when he wrote the words we are now examining , eternal life is said to consist in knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he had sent . What more natural , then , than for the apostle , after glorying in the knowledge of the true God obtained through his Son , to exclaim , " This is the true God , and eternal life "—the Author and Source of that eternal

    life , which is made known to us by his Son ! It may now be sufficiently apparent that the argument for the deity of Christ from this text might as well have been abandoned by our author , as it has been by some of the most learned and respectable supporters of the doctrine .

    In the chapter on the " Testimonies of the Apostles Peter , Jude , and James , " all the most important arguments are derived from the rule respecting the use of the Greek article , to which public attention was first called by Mr . Granville Sharpe , and which has been corrected , explained , and illustrated by the late Bishop Middleton .

    No doubt , one who thinks we have elsewhere sufficient proof of the deity of Christ , may with propriety adopt the proposed translations , but it is equally certain that one who believes that elsewhere God and Christ are always distinguished , may with equal propriety resist them , and consequently no independent argument in . favour of the orthodox doctrine can be derived from the passages .

    ******* We now come to the testimony of the Apostle Paul . Dr . S . begins with a common rhetorical artifice . He calls our attention to all the enmity against the Apostle of the Gentiles , which has existed in ancient or in modern times , from the opposition of the first Judaizers down to the ** not Paul but Jesus" of Gamaliel Smith , and , without taking the slightest notice of the very obvious circumstances which account for both the one and the

    other—Jewish bigotry in the one case ; horror of the unnatural system of Calvinism , commonly reputed to be especially contained in the writings of Paul , in the other—by a quiet assumption of the very thing which he undertakes to prove , he offers to explain the whole . Paul , according to his account , was " the chosen vessel of the Divine Spirit for completing the

    archives of Christian doctrine , by a clear and bold , a copious and uncompromising testimony , to the Divine person and the redemption of Christ , the reign of his grace , and the conformity of its subjects to his holiness . " Those who cannot , after the most patient investigation , see any thing of the

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    816 : Dr . «/ . P . Smiths Scripture Testimony to the Messiah .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1831, page 816, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2604/page/20/