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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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later , hath any inheritance in the kingdom ' of Christ and of God /' " Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ . " " Through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ /'
This is saying no more than that we may p ut any sense on a text which best comports with our preconceived system of op inions , provided it be grammatically feasible : but though the Trinitarians build their faith on sentences
thus favourably biassed , after being torn from their immediate context , as well as viewed disconnectedly from the general texture of Scripture , we oppose this grammatical dexterity by an appeal to those numerous texts where no such
ambiguity can be pretended , and where Christ and God are spoken of in plain contradistinction as two separate persons ; in the same manner as any unprejudiced mind , for instance that of a child , would conceive them to be spoken of in the texts above cited , notwithstanding the verbal ambiguity , which , in fact , is the same in the Greek , Latin and
English ; and to assert that God could not have permitted a verbal ambiguity to exist , which self-evidently does exist , is to deny that the rules of philology are applicable to the Sacred Writings , and to require that , to guard against the possible aberrations of the human intellect , and to spare his creatures the exercise of their
understandings , God should have changed the nature of language . In pursuit of the same argument , Mr . H . demands , " Will any one say that the clause in John i . 1 , cannot be
translated ' the Word was God ?'" And he adds , " If the idea intended to be conveyed was only that the Word was a God , i . e . that Christ was a person of the greatest dignity , but not the supreme God , will reason teach us that a phrase would have been used so likely to lead to the promulgation of an opposite idea ?"
But if , as . we find stated in the same scri ptures on the authority of Jesus himself , the Jews " called them gods to whom the word of God came , " John x \ 35 , the improbability of John's using such a phrase , supposing that the word L $ there used personally of Jurist , is not so apparent . If Christ be the M ' age of God " Heb- i . 3 ,
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I do not well conceive how € t reason could teach"'& that he is the very God whose image he is . I , however , for one , am of opinion that , although Christ is spoken of in John i . 1 , as the personal word , this is
only figurative ; because he was the medium or depositary of the wordin the same manner as he is styled the Resurrection , because he was the first who rose to immortal life ; and I consider the Word , in the opening of John ' s Gospel , to be the original word
or wisdom that was with God and was God , that is , his essential attribute . I think it probable that the Evangelist wrote in reference to the Gnostics , who were accustomed to separate the attributes of Deity as personal emana ^ tions , and denied that the Father was the creator of the world . " The word
bemg « made flesh , " or the " power and wisdom" of God being revealed in the man Christ Jesus , seems to regard also the Gnostics , who believed his humanity a phantom . The passage is so rendered and illustrated , consistent with the popular Version , bv the
Socinian Biddle , ( see his Tracts , ) and that it is so interpreted by eminent modern Unitarians , as Priestley and Lindsey , is perfectly known not only to Unitarians themselves , but what is somewhat remarkable , to Mr . Harwood himself ! who from his occasional
reference to the Improved Version must have had it in his hands , and must have read a paraphrase to the above tenor in the notes at the bottom of the page ; yet in the eagerness , probably , to claim the honours of conversion as " a brand snatched from the
fire , " he chooses to make the Improved Version of this passage " the rock of his offence , " though he must or ought to have seen that the Unitarian cause required no such aid . Mr . Harwood thinks it " reasonable
to conclude either that Jesus , the Christ , was the Divine Being incarnate , God manifest in the flesh , ( I must protest , by the way , against the phrases being necessarily synonymous , ) or that revelation is all a fable ; " but as he also admits that " reason as well as
revelation is the gift of God , and , therefore , they cannot contradict each other , " I should wish him to reconcile his conclusion with the following , se * - lected out o £ innumerable parallel
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Reasons for returning to Trinitarianism . 519
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1820, page 519, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2492/page/19/
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