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their request that he would shew them , like Moses , some sign from heavenj , he tells them , v . 32 , " That his Father was then giving them the true bread from heaven , which was far superior to the manna given from heaven by Moses to their fathers , for it would make them immortal / ' This they understood in a
literal sense , which error our Lord did not vouchsafe to rectify , but proceeds to tell them that he , meaning , his doctrine , was the true bread from heaven ^ v . 35 . The Jews being still at a loss to understand his meaning , v . 41 , our Lord > without waiting to explain himself ^ goes on to assure them that his person was the living bread , and that they must eat his flesh , and drink his
blood , in order to obtain eternal life , meaning , that they must receive and digest his heavenly doctrine . They , still taking his words in a literal sense , complain , v . 60 , that such a requisition was unintelligible and impracticable . Our Lord ' s reply is natural and pertinent , though still couched in terms which they could not comprehend * " Does this offend you ? What if you should see the son of man ascend up where he was before . " q . d * What if I should disclose to you truths still more remote from
your apprehension , and more offensive to your prejudices ? But to his stupid and prejudiced hearers our Lord ' s question sounded as if he had asked what they would think if they saw him ascend to heaven after they had been eating his flesh and bloody
which excited their disgust to such a degree , that they forsook his society , probably believing him to be insane , x . 20 . This was what our Lord intended ; though at the same time he explained to them that what he had said was to be understood , not
in a literal but in a spiritual and figurative sense : that if they were actually to eat his flesh it would be of no use to them , but that the doctrine which he taught was that spiritual and vivifying food , of which he had been speaking , v . 63 . " It is the spirit that quickeneth , the flesh profiteth nothing : the words
which I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life /* This then appears to me to be the true meaning of our Lord ' s enigmatical discourse ; and in the connexion in which the 62 d
verse is introduced it admits of a sense perfectly consistent with our Lord ' s proper humanity : though when considered as a detached sentence the words seem to imply a pre-cxistent state in heaven . But the whole discourse is highly figurative . And if
any argus from our Lord ' s expressions \ n iU that he literally descended from heaven , they ought , like the Jews , to interpret literally the precept to eat his flesh arid drink his blood . But if this precept is to be understood figuratively , as relating to his doctrine , then by parity of reason it was his doctrine and not Jus person which descended from heavep .
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Mr . Belshairis Strictures on Carpenter ' s Lectures . 5 *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1807, page 547, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2385/page/39/
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