selves to such relations as more especially concerned the humanity and personal history of Christ, the Gospel of St. John was intended to treat particularly of his Deity; and accordingly, by the ancients, it was styled, “ The Spiritual Gospel."*

This opinion is fully borne out by internal evidence. In a considerable number of instances, it has been proved that the title in question is used by St.John in the highest possible sense. It is from his Gospel, more than from any other part of the New Testament, that we learn the Jewish acceptation of the term. Here we have the record of those controversies between our Lord and the Jews, in which his claims to be the Son of God were adjudged to be blasphemous, and so worthy of capital punishment. These narratives are so interwoven with the sentiments of the Evangelist, and the reasonings of Christ, as to allow of no doubt that, temporarily at least, they adopted the exposition of their countrymen. So far, then, the subject requires no further investigation. But if in so large a number of instances the sense of the expression is thus clearly ascertained, it follows that, unless expressly prohibited, the same idea is contemplated in all cases where the like phraseology occurs. But there is no such prohibition, either directly or indirectly conveyed. The title in question throughout is thus determined to its Jewish acceptation.

Nor is it unworthy of passing remark, that, by the advocates of our Lord's Deity, the writings of St. John have in all ages been resorted to as a treasury of irrefragable argument. While, on the other hand, there are no portions of holy Scripture which have so perplexed Socinian critics, or upon which they have found it needful to expend so great an amount of ill-directed and perverse ingenuity. And still, after ages of evasive and

Clem. Alexand. ap. Euseb., H. E., lib. vi., c. xiv.

conjectural criticism, the proem of St. John's Gospel, upon their hypothesis, remains in its invincible simplicity, unexplained and inexplicable.

us.

The distinguishing doctrine of this Apostle's writings is the Deity of Jesus. The characteristic title is, "Son of God." Let these facts be fairly combined, and no doubt will remain on the sense of the passages before According to his own statement, therefore, it was the Apostle's design to rescue from those who denied, or who would pervert it, the fundamental truth of our Lord's divine nature, and to prove that Jesus, the Messiah, and the divine subsistence described by the term "Son," were one and the same person:—at once, the son of Mary; the anointed of God; and the second person of the Trinity.

The conclusion has been anticipated from other premises. It is, that as the title "Son of God," in the Apostle's statement of his design, conveys the idea of supreme Divinity, it will require the same exposition in its current use throughout his writings. It is constantly to be regarded as a divine appellation, and in every example as an indirect affirmation of Christ's Deity. In this sense it was undoubtedly understood by the first readers of these books; and in this sense it was, through every succeeding period, intended to be explained.

In speaking of God and Christ, St. John frequently employs the terms "Father" and "Son," each without qualification. With the other Evangelists this phraseology is very unusual. In the discourses of our Lord which they relate, the designation, "Son of man," frequently occurs; a title not so common in the writings of St. John. And if it was his design, as distinguished from that of the New Testament historians in general, to state what concerned the Deity of Jesus, to this every peculiarity in his choice of terms may naturally be

referred. The frequent use of the unqualified titles "Father" and "Son " is, therefore, to be explained as distinctive of the proper and divine relation between the first and second subsistences of the Trinity. In the sense of true and eternal Deity, the first person in the Godhead is "The Father," and the second person "The Son." If the writer intended to prove that, in the highest sense, Jesus was the Son of God, it is impossible to deny to the title "Son" thus applied precisely the same signification. The meaning of the correlative "Father" is, of course, equally accurate and determined.

In this peculiarity there is an emphasis worthy of remark. We are not unacquainted with the effect in ordinary cases of a similar mode of expression. When, for instance, we speak of THE King, THE Prince, THE Elector, we refer to individuals well known and eminently distinguished under these titles. Such a designation as the King of England naturally suggests the associated idea of the Kings of other countries. If we speak of King Henry VIII., we are led to recur to his predecessors, particularly those of the same name. But if we employ only the term "the King," the idea of royalty, peculiar and isolated, is instantly conveyed to the mind.

These illustrations, it is hoped, will not be deemed too familiar for the dignity of our subject, and will perhaps aid us in showing what impression the phraseology under consideration may naturally be supposed as designed to produce. When St.John relates the discourses of our Lord, or when he himself reasons on subjects of a similar kind, the perpetual recurrence of the terms "Father" and "Son" suggests to us paternity and filiation at once recognised and exalted: paternity and filiation which none can share but those whom these titles describe. Beyond this mode of expression, no

other argument is necessary to prove that both the auditors of Christ's personal ministry, and the original readers of St. John's writings, had the most accurate apprehension of the meaning which these appellations were designed to convey; and that this eminent and absolutely unapproachable sense alone can do justice to the illustrious argument of these deeply interesting productions.

NOTE (I), p. 219.

On the Heresies of the Age of St. John.

THE heresies of the apostolic period are, by ecclesiastical writers, classed under two general heads. The former includes the various sects of Gnosticks, whose origin is referred to Simon Magus; the latter comprises those persons called Ebionites, and such others as were characterized by a denial of Christ's Divinity. This arrangement, however, is to be applauded rather for its convenience than for its accuracy.

That by some of the former class our Lord's proper humanity was denied, may be gathered from the testimony of Irenæus, respecting the doctrines of their originator. This eminently bad man, representing himself as the Lord Jesus, stated that he had appeared as a man without being really such; and that, according to common opinion, he had been crucified in Judæa, though his suffering had been in phantasm and seeming only; "in hominibus homo appareret ipse, cum non esset homo; et passum autem in Judæa putatum, cum non esset passus." (Lib. i., c. xx., p. 95.)

31;

In the writings of St. John, many passages affirm, with peculiar emphasis, the fact of our Lord's proper and substantial incarnation; and these are susceptible of no explanation so plausible as that by which they are applied to the error in question. The reader, among many others, will find the following especially in point: John i. 14, 38, 39; iv. 6, 7, xi. 35; xix. 34, 35; xx. 27; 1 Epist. i. 1; iv. 2, 3; v. 6; 2 Epist. 7. If the advocates of this heresy were a sect of Gnosticks, of which little or no doubt can be entertained, they did not regard the superior nature in our Lord as a subsistence in the eternal Godhead; for in the Gnostical theogony both Christ and Logos were Æons of an inferior rank. (Iren. adv. Hær., lib. i., c. xxxiii., p. 107.) The name Docetæ, employed in the text, it should be added, does not belong to the apostolical age, but was first applied to the followers of Julius Cassian, a Valentinian heresiarch, who, towards the close of the second century, maintained the phantasmic theory.