John ii. 20; to bread, aptos, John vi. 50; to stones, λo, Matt. iv. 3; Acts iv. 11; a salutation, aσπaσ. μας, Luke i. 29, and not less than eight times to λoy05, where it certainly means nothing more than speech, as Matt. xxviii. 15, &c. To satisfy yourself, only look into any Concordance of the Greek Testament.

ούτος.

The logos of John, therefore, may be a mere attribute of the Father, though it be the antecedent to the pronoun ouros. For you will hardly say that the law, or death, or the temple, &c. &c. is a real person capable of intention and action. Besides, I do suppose that John uses a figurative personification, which would require the same forms of speech as if he had intended to speak of a real person.

You also find a reference to the pre-existent state of our Saviour in 1 John iv. 2, where it is said every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; by which you say, p. 15, "the opinion that Christ was truly a man is very awkwardly and unnaturally expressed. The turn of the expression," you add, "seems to lead to the notion of a being who had his choice of different ways of coming."

On the other hand, I think the phrase sufficiently similar to other Jewish phrases, of which we find various examples in the scriptures, and that it may be explained by the phrase partaker of flesh and blood, Hebrews ii. 14. If the word coming must necessarily mean coming from heaven, and imply a pre-existent state, John the Baptist must have pre-existed for our Saviour uses that expression concerning him, as well as concerning himself, Matt. xi. 18, 19, John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he hath a dæmon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, &c.

It may also be asserted with more certainty still concerning all the apostles that they pre-existed; for our Saviour, in his prayer for them, respecting their mission, makes use of the term world, which is not found in 1 John iv. 2, where he says, John xvii. 18, As thou hast sent me into the world, so have I also sent them into the world.

The phrase coming in the flesh, in my opinion, refers very naturally to the doctrine of the Gnostics, who supposed Christ to be a super-angelic spirit, which descended from heaven, and entered into the body of Jesus. The phrase he that should come, or who was to come (his coming having been foretold by the prophets), appears to have been familiar to the Jews, to denote the Messiah: but with them it certainly did not imply any coming down from heaven, because they had no such idea concerning their Messiah.

I see no trace, therefore, in the epistle of John of any more than one heresy. He neither expressly says nor hints that there were two; and part of his description of this one heresy evidently points to that of the Gnostics, as is acknowledged by yourself; and this heresy was as different as possible from that of the Ebionites. The early writers who speak of them mention them as two opposite heresies existing in the same early period; so that it is very improbable a priori, that the same expression," as you say, p. 16, "should be equally levelled at them both." Gnosticism being certainly condemned therefore by the apostle, and not the doctrine of the Ebionites, I conclude that in the latter, which is allowed to have existed in his time, he saw nothing worthy of censure; but that it was the doctrine which he himself had taught. If

this apostle had thought as you do with respect to it, why did he not censure it unequivocally, as you do, and with as much severity?

Tertullian, indeed, maintained that, by those who denied that Christ was come in the flesh, John meant the Gnostics, and that by those who denied that Jesus was the son of God, he meant the Ebionites*. He had no idea that the former expression only could include both. But as the Gnostics maintained that Jesus and the Christ were different persons, the latter having come from heaven, and being the son of God, whereas Jesus was the son of man only, the expression of Jesus being the son of God is as directly opposed to the doctrine of the Gnostics as that of Christ coming in the flesh.

You say, p. 17, "It appears, therefore, that to confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, and to affirm that Jesus Christ is truly a man, are propositions not perfectly equivalent. Dr. Priestley indeed has shown himself very sensible of the difference. He would not have otherwise found it necessary for the improvement of his argument, in reciting the third verse of the 4th chapter of St. John's first epistle, to change the expression which he found in the public translation, for another which corresponds far less exactly with the Greek text. For the words that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, Dr. Priestley substitutes these, Jesus Christ is come of the flesh." You add afterwards, “He might think it no unwarrantable liberty to correct an expression, which, as not perfectly corresponding with his own system, he could not en

* De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, sect. xxxiii. p. 214.

tirely approve. It would have been but fair to advertise his readers of so capital an emendation; an emendation for which no support is to be found in the Greek text, nor even in the varieties of any MSS."

I am sorry, Sir, that my printer, or my own mistake, should have given you all this trouble in consulting MSS. &c. I do assure you I had no knowledge of having made a change in a single word in copying that text, nor should I have wished to have made any change at all in it; thinking that, as it now stands, it is quite as much for my purpose as that which you suppose I have purposely substituted in its place. Had you thought me capable of an attempt of this kind, you should not have ascribed to me, as you have done, the greatest purity of intention in all that I have written on this subject.

1 now proceed to remark on what you have observed from Clemens Romanus, concerning the pre-existence of Christ.

You think that, through my excessive zeal for an hypothesis, I make every thing to favour it but I hardly think that you can find any thing in my attempt to support the Socinian doctrine, that discovers more zeal than you manifest in support of the Athanasian one; and I think that excessive zeal has misled you in as remarkable a manner as you suppose mine to have misled me. I can no otherwise account for your asserting, p. 16, that "The notion of Christ having had his choice of different ways of coming into the world, is explicitly expressed in a book little inferior in authority to the canonical writings, in the first epistle of Clemens Romanus, in a passage of that epistle which Dr. Priestley, somewhat unfortunately for his cause, has chosen for

the basis of an argument of that holy father's heterodoxy. The sceptre of the majesty of God, says Clemens, Our Lord Jesus Christ, came not in the pomp of pride and arrogance, although he had it in his power. Clemens, it seems, conceived that the manner of coming was in the power and choice of the person who was to come."

Of this I have no doubt; but the question is, from whence he was then to come. Clemens does not say that it was from heaven to earth. That is entirely your own interpretation, for which I see no ground at all; since the phrase is so easily explained by his entering upon his commission, as a public teacher; when, being invested with the power of working miracles, he never made any ostentatious display of it, or indeed exerted it for his own benefit in any respect.

Besides Clemens Romanus, you refer to the epistles of Ignatius, for a proof of the early knowledge of the doctrine of Christ's divinity. "The holy father," you say, p. 19, "hardly ever mentions Christ without introducing some explicit assertion of his divinity, or without joining with the name of Christ some epithet in which it is implied." All this is very true, according to our present copies of Ignatius's epistles. But you must know that the genuineness of them is not only very much doubted, but generally given up by the learned; and it was not perfectly ingenuous in you to conceal that circumstance. First prove those epistles, as we now have them, to be the genuine writings of Ignatius, and then make all the use of them that you

can.

I am, &c.