"Water and blood," that is "serum" and "cra.s.samentum", mean simply "blood," the blood of the animal or carnal life, which, saith Moses, "is the life". Hence "flesh" is often taken as, and indeed is a form of, the blood,--blood formed or organized. Thus "blood" often includes "flesh,"
and "flesh" includes "blood." "Flesh and blood" is equivalent to blood in its twofold form, or rather as formed and formless. "Water and blood"
has, therefore, two meanings in St. John, but which "in idem coincidunt":
1. true animal human blood, and no celestial ichor or phantom:
2. the whole sentiently vital body, fixed or flowing, the pipe and the stream.
For the ancients, and especially the Jews, had no distinct apprehension of the use or action of the nerves: in the Old Testament "heart" is used as we use "head." "The fool hath said in his heart"--is in English: "the worthless fellow ("vaurien") hath taken it into his head," &c.
Ib. p. 268.
The Apostle having said that the Spirit is truth, or essential truth, (which was giving him a t.i.tle common to G.o.d the Father and to Christ,) &c.
Is it clear that the distinct "hypostasis" of the Holy Spirit, in the same sense as the only-begotten Son is hypostatically distinguished from the Father, was a truth that formed an immediate object or intention of St. John? That it is a truth implied in, and fairly deducible from, many texts, both in his Gospel and Epistles, I do not, indeed I cannot, doubt;--but only whether this article of our faith he was commissioned to declare explicitly?
It grieves me to think that such giant "archaspistae" of the Catholic Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1 "John" v. 7), which, in the opulence and continuity of the evidences, as displayed by their own master-minds, would have been superfluous, had it not been worse than superfluous, that is, senseless in itself, and interruptive of the profound sense of the Apostle.
Ib. p. 272.
He is come, come in the flesh, and not merely to reside for a time, or occasionally, and to fly off again, but to abide and dwell with man, clothed with humanity.
Incautiously worded at best. Compare our Lord"s own declaration to his disciples, that he had dwelt a brief while "with" or "among" them, in order to dwell "in" them permanently.
Ib. p. 286.
It is very observable, that the Ebionites rejected three of the Gospels, receiving only St. Matthew"s (or what they called so), and that curtailed. They rejected likewise all St. Paul"s writings, reproaching him as an apostate. How unlikely is it that Justin should own such reprobates as those were for fellow-Christians!
I dare avow my belief--or rather I dare not withhold my avowal--that both Bull and Waterland are here hunting on the trail of an old blunder or figment, concocted by the gross ignorance of the Gentile Christians and their Fathers in all that respected Hebrew literature and the Palestine Christians. I persist in the belief that, though a refuse of the persecuted and from neglect degenerating Jew-Christians may have sunk into the mean and carnal notions of their unconverted brethren respecting the Messiah, no proper sect of Ebionites ever existed, but those to whom St. Paul travelled with the contributions of the churches, nor any such man as Ebion; unless indeed it was St. Barnabas, who in his humility may have so named himself, while soliciting relief for the distressed Palestine Christians;--"I am Barnabas the beggar." But I will go further, and confess my belief that the (so-called) Ebionites of the first and second centuries, who rejected the "Christopaedia", and whose Gospel commenced with the baptism by John, were orthodox Apostolic Christians, who received Christ as the Lord, that is, as Jehovah "manifested in the flesh". As to their rejection of the other Gospels and of Paul"s writings, I might ask:--"Could they read them?" But the whole notion seems to rest on an anachronical misconception of the "Evangelia". Every great mother Church, at first, had its own Gospel.
Ib. p. 288.
To say nothing here of the truer reading ("men of your nation"), there is no consequence in the argument. The Ebionites were Christians in a large sense, men of Christian profession, nominal Christians, as Justin allowed the worst of heretics to be. And this is all he could mean by allowing the Ebionites to be Christians.
I agree with Bull in holding [Greek: ap tou hymeterou genous] the most probable reading in the pa.s.sage cited from Justin, and am by no means convinced that the celebrated pa.s.sage in Josephus is an interpolation.
But I do not believe that such men, as are here described, ever professed themselves Christians, or were, or could have been, baptized.
Ib. p. 292.
Le Clerc would appear to doubt, whether the persons pointed to in Justin really denied Christ"s divine nature or no. It is as plain as possible that they did.
Le Clerc is no favourite of mine, and Waterland is a prime favourite.
Nevertheless, in this instance, I too doubt with Le Clerc, and more than doubt.
Ib. p. 338.
[Greek: Phusei de taes phthoras prosgenomenaes, anagkaion aen hoti sosai Boulomenos ae taen phthoropoin ousian aphanisas touto de ouk aen heteros genesthai ei maeper hae kata phusin zoae proseplakae to taen phthoran dexameno, aphanizousa men taen phthoran, athanatn de tou loipou t dexamenon diataerousa. k.t.l.]--Just. M.
Here Justin a.s.serts that it was necessary for essential life, or life by nature, to be united with human nature, in order to save it.
Waterland has not mastered the full force of [Greek: hae kata phusin zoae]. If indeed he had taken in the full force of the whole of this invaluable fragment, he would never have complimented the following extract from Irenaeus, as saying the same thing "in fuller and stronger words." Compared with the fragment from Justin, it is but the flat common-place logic of a.n.a.logy, so common in the early Fathers.
Ib. p. 340.
"Qui nude tantum hominem eum dic.u.n.t ex Joseph generatum * * moriuntur."
"Non nude hominem"--not a mere man do I hold Jesus to have been and to be; but a perfect man and, by personal union with the Logos, perfect G.o.d. That his having an earthly father might be requisite to his being a perfect man I can readily suppose; but why the having an earthly father should be more incompatible with his perfect divinity, than his having an earthly mother, I cannot comprehend. All that John and Paul believed, G.o.d forbid that I should not!
Chap. VII. p. 389.
It is a sufficient reason for not receiving either them ("Arian doctrines"), or the interpretations brought to support them, that the ancients, in the best and purest times, either knew nothing of them, or if they did, condemned them.
As excellent means of raising a presumption in the mind of the falsehood of Arianism and Socinianism, and thus of preparing the mind for a docile reception of the great idea itself--I admit and value the testimonies from the writings of the early Fathers. But alas! the increasing dimness, ending in the final want of the idea of this all-truths- including truth of the Tetractys eternally manifested in the Triad; --this, this is the ground and cause of all the main heresies from Semi-Arianism, recalled by Dr. Samuel Clarke, to the last setting ray of departing faith in the necessitarian Psilanthropism of Dr. Priestley.
Ib. p. 41-2, &c.
I cannot but think that Waterland"s defence of the Fathers in these pages against Barbeyrac, is below his great powers and characteristic vigour of judgment. It is enough that they, the Fathers of the first three centuries, were the lights of their age, and worthy of all reverence for their good gifts. But it appears to me impossible to deny their credulity; their ignorance, with one or two exceptions, in the interpretation of the Old Testament; or their hardihood in a.s.serting the truth of whatever they thought it for the interest of the Church, and for the good of souls, to have believed as true. A whale swallowed Jonah; but a believer in all the a.s.sertions and narrations of Tertullian and Irenaeus would be more wonder-working than Jonah; for such a one must have swallowed whales.
[Footnote 1: The Importance of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity a.s.serted, in reply to some late pamphlets. 2nd edit. Lond. 1734.]
NOTES ON SKELTON.[1]
1825.
Burdy"s Life of Skelton, p. 22.
She lived until she was a hundred and five. The omission of his prayers on the morning it happened, he supposed ever after to be the cause of this unhappy accident. So early was his mind impressed with a lively sense of religious duty.