That the works of St. John were directed against those who attributed a separate personal existence to Jesus, the Christ, &c., Irenæus expressly states. The Apostle wrote, he says, as a provision against the blasphemous dogmas of those who, as far as it was in their power, would divide the Lord: "providens has blasphemas regulas, quæ dividunt Dominum, quantum ex ipsis attinet, ex altera et altera substantia dicentes eum factum.' (Lib. iii., c. xviii., p. 241.) Hence we perceive with what propriety St. John affirms that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," and elsewhere carefully concentres in his one person the several titles by which our Redeemer is distinguished.

There is one passage in the first Epistle, which, according to the testimony of Socrates, (H.E., lib. vii., c. xxxii.,) presented, in the oldest copies, a remarkable variation from the received text, and bore directly upon our subject: Every spirit which dissolveth Jesus (ô Xúei tòv 'Inooũv) is not of God." (Chap. iv. 3.) I beg to refer to the various readings from Fathers and versions in the note of Griesbach. These it will be perceived are very numerous, and many of them substantially identical with the above; and in the absence of any very ancient Greek MSS. of the Catholic Epistles, must be allowed to possess great weight. In addition to which, as Hug judiciously remarks, (Int., vol. ii., p. 203,) the reading preserved by the historian is the more obscure and difficult. Invention or corruption is, of course, the less probable; while, on the other hand, the present reading has against it the suspicion of conformity to the preceding clause. There is therefore strong reason for believing that our Apostle here had direct reference to those solventes Jesum, as Tertullian expresses it,-who denied the proper hypostatical union.

To some this error may possibly appear so absurd as to render questionable the fact of its ever having existed. Yet this was the deviation from the truth to which Jewish theology was most likely to lead. If the Christ and the Son of God were separate, personal subsistences, which at the advent of our Lord was the popular opinion, nothing, to a temporizing Judaical professor of Christianity, was more easy or more natural than the accommodation presented by the theory in question. The Christ was admitted to be a divine emanation, and the son of

Mary was allowed to be Jesus Christ; that is, the man Jesus, for a time, was inhabited by the celestial spirit, Christ. On the one hand, there was no acknowledgment of sovereign Deity, or even of permanent superiority, to what was merely human; and thus the Jewish prejudice was met. On the other, our Lord was confessed to be the Messiah, and thus the Christian profession was salved. It is worthy of notice, that Cerinthus, with whom this error is said to have originated, was in all respects likely to be the inventor of such a system of accommodation; being a Jewish zealot, who to his national exclusiveness united some considerable skill in the philosophy of his times.

The speculations of some generally orthodox modern theologians are not wholly free from the taint of Cerinthian error. For example, it has been denied that at his nativity the divine was united to the human nature of our Lord. The son of Mary, "the holy thing born of her,” it is maintained, was a man only, the reason being that "the divine nature could not be born." The credit of a system more thoroughly digested must, however, be accorded to the heretic. He specified the time of union between the celestial spirit and the man Jesus.* Upon this part of the subject, the modern speculation affords us no light.

That in the age of St. John there were any who held the notions of the modern Socinian remains to be proved. But the advocates of the Eonic theory, by whatever name distinguished, were rejecters of our Lord's sovereign Divinity. Other absurdities, by many, were undoubtedly subjoined to their preposterous dreams of divine emanations; but the grand and fatal heresy of their system was the denial of Christ as the ONLY and ONLY-BEGOTTEN Son of God.

*The statement of Irenæus is too important and appropriate to be omitted. Cerinthus, he says, denied that Jesus was born of a virgin, for that seemed to him impossible. He represented him as excelling other men in justice, prudence, and wisdom; yet the son of Joseph and Mary, according to the ordinary manner. After the baptism, the Christ descended into him in the form of a dove, and afterwards departed from him, leaving him to suffer, and to be raised from the dead, &c. (Lib. i., c. xxvi., p. 102.)

SECTION II.

THE EVANGELICAL IDEA OF THE LOGOS.

On

EACH of the principal works of St.John commences with a compendious statement of its contents. This is particularly observable in his Gospel, the whole of which is but a developement of the truths expressed or referred to in its introduction. Now, as at its close we find the exposition of its design, we naturally compare the latter representation with that of the proemium. And here we are struck with the fact, that though the avowed object of the work was to vindicate the claims of Christ as the Son of God, this title, except in the last verse, does not occur throughout the introduction. the contrary, the term by which the attention of the reader is especially arrested, is one of different import. That term is THE LOGOS. Bearing in mind, however, the greatness of the entire design, and the improbability that at the very outset the Evangelist would allow himself to be diverted from an object so important, the natural conclusion is, that the titles, "Logos" and "Son of God," are identical in their application. This conclusion is inferrible, with yet greater force, from the obvious intention of the introduction to state the principal truths which the succeeding chapters are to illustrate and to confirm. They mainly respect the Son; it principally describes the Logos. By orthodox interpreters the latter title is admitted to describe the Deity of our Lord. The foregoing reasoning has advocated the like application of the former; and the comparison now suggested will serve for the mutual corroboration of these several views.

Whatever meaning we affix to the term "Logos,” it obviously must have had, in the minds of those for whom St. John's Gospel was primarily designed, a definite and well-understood signification. It will be remarked that he offers no exposition of its import. He employs it at once, and without the slightest indication that he feared it would be misinterpreted:-"In the beginning was the Logos." This is the more observable as in itself the term is one of varied signification; and as its application here is confessedly remote from its primary sense. Had it not been understood as a personal appellation, serious misconstruction would have been unavoidable. Its unqualified employment by the Evangelist, therefore, proves that his readers were perfectly prepared to appreciate its purpose.

Had the term in question been wanting in appropriateness, we may be assured that the Holy Spirit would not have permitted its use in the writings of St. John. But no title can be appropriate unless, both in itself and in its current associations, it is free from every thing likely to lead to serious error. If, in its primary import, a term conveys an idea not contemplated by the writer, or if it is closely connected with popular mistake, a judicious person will in general decline its employment. Or should it for special purposes be occasionally used, it will be accompanied by such explanations or restrictions as will preclude the liability to any considerable misconception. When, therefore, an inspired Apostle employs a title in the manner of St. John in this case, the unavoidable conclusion is, that it is neither objectionable in itself, nor so combined with erroneous associations as to render it at all ambiguous or delusive.

We have already brought before the reader a number of passages from the Targums, and from the writings of Philo Judæus, which will enable him to judge on the current Jewish import of the title under consideration.

He cannot fail to have remarked that, according to Philo, Logos and Son are of identical application; and that in the contemporary Jewish relics there are incidental allusions to the same effect. By a large proportion of his readers the writings of St. John would be thus understood; and when we consider that the special purpose of their publication was the suppression of existing errors on the person of Christ, there can be little doubt that the Jewish application of the titles before us was that which the Evangelist intended to sanction. Had the fact been otherwise, it is altogether inconceivable that, with his knowledge of the then Jewish theology, he would not anxiously have guarded against a mistake which otherwise must have been inevitable. If, therefore, "Logos" is a title of Deity, "Son of God" is so with equal exclusiveness. If our Lord, with respect to his divine nature, was, in the Jewish phrase, The Eternal Word, (Aóyos åídios,) it will follow that he was also, as designated by the most venerable Christian antiquity, The Eternal Son. (Yiòs didis).*

Into even a cursory survey of the various theories to which the title Logos has given rise, it will be impossible here to enter. As a general rule, it is obvious that no exposition can be admitted with which the original readers were not familiar; and it is therefore in the current notions of the times that we must seek the sense of this or any other peculiar appellation. And yet some of the most ingenious, and in themselves most

* Among the Jews, so far as Philo may be regarded as the representative of their opinions, the notion of eternity was not thought irreconcilable with that of generation; for in the very same passage both the one and the other are asserted of the Logos. "The ETERNAL WORD of the everlasting God,-the Father who begat him hath made the indissoluble bond of the universe." Aóyos ὁ ἀΐδιος Θεοῦ αἰωνίου,—ὁ γεννήσας Πατήρ, κ. τ. λ. (De Plant. Noa, T. i., pp. 330, 331; sup. p. 69.)