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and reprobation would be certain, speedy, and loudly proclaimed. On the other hand, the facility of a change the other way, being by the addition only of two small strokes, and even one would suffice, and the general agreeableness of the result thus given, would be likely to produce a tendency in that direction much more powerful than we can conceive as contingent in the contrary direction. Prof. Stuart, in his Dissertation on the Internal Evidence, before mentioned, has ably discussed the grammatical parts of the question, and his conclusions are very satisfactory: but he has taken no notice of this particular, in the hypothetical reasoning on the case. Neither has Dr. Henderson touched upon it. It may be asked, Whether the slender manuscript authority which exists in favour of os, may not have been derived from a Samosatenian or Arian source? We reply, that no charge can be justly brought against any person or party among the early Christians (after the time of Marcion, in the second century, and it is not clear even against him,) of designedly corrupting the text of the Scriptures: and further, that it is impossible to imagine that the most important of the Ancient Versions were all corrupted.—I do not mention this consideration, as if it were sufficient to induce a rejection of the conclusion in favour of the common reading, or materially to weaken our confidence in that conclusion; but to apprize the unpractised reader of the many and great difficulties which rest upon the entire question.—I now proceed to lay before the reader the concluding portion of Griesbach's Note.

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Supposing the reading ôs, the origination of the others may be very naturally accounted for. It is evident that O.might easily pass into Z, as copyists were not likely to be ignorant that the passage was generally understood of God the WORD. In like manner, μvorýρiov―ds would readily occasion μvoτýpιov-ŏ. On the other hand, if Σ, which expressed a sentiment in accordance with the almost universal persuasion of Christians, were the genuine reading, no man could have made out o from it; and scarcely any man, OZ. It has been surmised, that the first syllable E might fall at the end of a line, or the bottom of a page, and then the other syllable, OZ, would begin the next line or page; and hence a copyist, too intent upon hastening his work, might overlook the ✪e and take up only the os. But this is not a credible supposition; for it has been the constant practice, so far as our knowledge extends, from the earliest times, to use for eòs the abbreviated form in which so common and well-known abbreviation, a copyist could not easily commit a mistake. And if even it were admitted that some copyist might have accustomed himself to write EO in four letters; yet, supposing it ever to have happened to him that the word came at the end of a page or line, where the narrowness of the space would admit of only two letters, we cannot well doubt but that he would have used the common abbreviation. For the remaining part of the case; should we suppose & to have been the original reading, it would not be easy to conceive how os could have arisen from it.

"I arrive therefore at the conclusion, that, if the diversity of readings arose

from any accidental inobservance or carelessness of copyists, the estimate of probabilities is on the side of ôs; but that, if the alteration were made designedly, then the reading eòs becomes the most exposed to suspicion. This reasoning is confirmed by the example of those manuscripts, in which the original reading has been altered by a later hand; as the Alexandrine, the Ephrem, and the Clermont. There is nowhere an instance of eòs being turned into & or os but the case is the reverse; the change by correctors has been from ôs or ô to eós." Griesb. in loc.

The reader will recollect that the allegation of corrections by later hands, in relation to those three manuscripts, is a subject of strenuous contest.

Note [I], page 332.

It is painfully instructive to see the power of truth struggling against an inclination, it is to be feared, very unfriendly to its fair admission. Such a spectacle is presented to us in the following extract from the Adnotatio Perpetua on a part of this Epistle, by Dr. David Julius Pott, one of the Divinity Professors at Göttingen.

"That the word Lord, being opposed to the opinion of the heathen about their 'many lords,' which appellation they were accustomed to apply to their gods, is in this place also employed to signify God, can scarcely be doubted without abandoning the laws of grammatical interpretation. At the time when the apostle wrote, the name Lord was held to be of so exalted a kind, that it could not be given even to the Roman emperors without incurring the charge of flattery. See Tacitus, Annal. ii. 87, and Suetonius, August. § 53. Therefore Kúpios, used in this connexion, answers to the Hebrew 178 (Adonai) as a name of the Deity, representing his universal power and government. See Gen. xviii. 3, 12, compared with Matt. iv. 7, 10, and innumerable other places. But, whether the writer of the epistle sent by the Corinthians to Paul," [see ch. vii. 1, and viii. 1, from which epistle, some think that the first sentence of ver. 1, and the whole of vers. 4, 5, 6, are citations,]" and the persons in whose name he was writing, applied this exalted epithet to Christ, in consequence of the opinions which prevailed among the Jews, who, chiefly from the time of their sufferings under the Babylonish captivity, when their national interests seemed to be involved in irretrievable ruin, conceived that those deplorable circumstances required a helper and saviour who should be really Divine, and thus by degrees elevated their ideas of the dignity and supremacy of the Messiah to the more perfect conception of God himself: or whether they deduced it from the system of the Alexandrian philosophers, in which, as we learn from Philo, the unbegotten God was considered as the (airios) producer (vp' où)

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BY WHOM the intellectual world was created, and the Logos (the doctrine concerning which the evangelist John applied to the elucidation of the divine nature of Christ,) was considered as the (airos) producer, in an instrumental sense (as the ἐργαλειον or ὄργανον), δι' οὗ) THROUGH WHOM the sensible world was created; so, by the use of the preposition did (through whom, through him,') intending to represent Christ no less than (¿ Oɛòs, with the article,) God, as the creator of all things: or whether, (as the association of ideas appears in Horace, terrarum DOMINOS evehit ad DEOS,) by combining the appellative 'the LORD' with that of 'GoD,' the supreme and allperfect majesty, (as the Greeks and Romans called their greater gods, lords,) and thinking perhaps of the Romans, who would have conferred upon Augustus the divine title of (dominus) LORD, on account of his being the former of the Roman empire, but he refused to take so exalted a designation (see Tertullian's Apologeticus, cap. 34,) they intended, by the use of the expression (Kúpios, di ov rà πávra, i. e. oi távtes, all Christians,) 'Lord, through whom are all things,' only to express that Christ was, as it were, the creator and former of Christians, in other words, the founder of the new religion by which men become as it were 'new creatures,' (Gal. vi. 15,) in which sense this is affirmed by the apostle when he says ' (iv) by whom all these ' things (rà Távra) were created,' and that therefore Christ is also called, in the same passage (Col. i. 15—18,) ' the Image of the in'visible God' and the 'First-born of the whole creation:' whichever of these interpretations is to be preferred, I presume not to determine; though I scarcely need to remark that the last appears most readily to comport with the terms and purport of the passage." N. T. Koppianum, vol. v. par. 1. p. 318. Göttingen, 1826. I request the reader also to turn to Vol. I. pp. 552, 556. Vol. II. pp. 428—430, and of this Volume, pp. 91–99, 113–122.

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This notion, that the doctrine and expectation of a personal Messiah was formed by gradual accretion, so to speak, out of the ardent patriotism, the longing aspirations, the pious hopes and prayers, of the best parts of the Jewish nation, awakened and sustained by the noble enthusiasm and poetic inspiration of the prophets, particularly during the captivity; is one of the pillars of the Antisupernaturalist system. But how irreconcilable it is to the fair and honest interpretation of the Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testament; how it implicates the pure and disinterested and ever self-denying Jesus1 in the horrid charge (which these men can contemplate without

1 I state these characters of the Founder of Christianity solely upon their own showing. In addition to citations which have before been adduced, I take the

emotion;) of systematic deception, or the fond delusions of a “noble enthusiasm :" how plainly, in a word, it is an artfully disguised and decorated Infidelity; I submit to the judgment of every candid man.

commencement of Wegscheider's Part III. Chap. ii. which he entitles, “ On the Divine Method of effecting the Salvation of Men, by Jesus Christ."

"From all eternity God, in his wisdom, provided by vairous means for the deliverance of the human race, as far as possible, from the moral corruption and misery consequent upon sin. Not only by the power and emotions of conscience, the vicissitudes of human life, and those operations of his providence which are usually called the natural punishments of vice and rewards of virtue, doth God impel sinful man to repentance and reformation, so that he may lie under no necessity of persevering in depravity, and may even himself possess the power of commencing a virtuous course, which is man's moral liberty, (John viii. 34, 36); but he has moreover raised up, among many nations, men of distinguished wisdom and goodness, that they might, by their doctrines and examples, instruct their respective countrymen and exhort them to reformation of life, or even, by the transmission of civil and religious institutions to posterity, prevent them also from falling into vice and wickedness. But, among all who have, in this way, deserved well of their contemporaries and of future ages, the highest place in our veneration is due to Jesus of Nazareth; to whom was given the appellation of Christ, answering to the Messiah of the Hebrews, and at the same time distinguishing him as the founder of a divine or heavenly kingdom, though not in exactly the same sense as that which the Hebrew nation had been led to form, by certain passages of the O. T. which they looked upon as prophecies and types." Instit. Theol. p. 389, ed. 6; Halle, 1829.-" Early distinguished by the most excellent qualities both mental and corporal, animated by an ardent sense of religion, and deeply imbued with the knowledge of the sacred books of the O. T.,—he came forth as a Teacher of Religion.-He unsparingly attacked the traditions and the pernicious subtleties of the Pharisees, he boldly reproved the infidelity of the Sadducees, and in every respect he sedulously laboured to restore the religion of his country to a perfect practical system of inward purity and outward rectitude. By his excellent teachings and his illustrious actions, he soon became so celebrated that he was by many regarded as a prophet, and even as the Messiah, for whom the Jews of that age were most anxiously looking. Nor did he hesitate to profess himself to be the Messiah or Son of God, and the messenger of God; since God, in his providence, had so directed that the mind of Jesus should be induced, principally by some passages of the O. T., to take up a most firm persuasion, that this dignified Messiahship belonged to him, and that God had especially conferred upon him the office of a divine teacher; both these notions being in accommodation to the opinions of his age and country." Ib. p. 398.

To refresh the reader's mind, disgusted as it may well be with this impiety, I add a few sentences from a distinguished physician and philosopher, one of the brightest ornaments of his profession and his country.

"The bond is broken which joined man to God; and, not man, only God himself, can tie the knot again. The history of the human race is but the history of its endless wandering without God; sometimes putting out vain efforts to find him, sometimes satisfied with fancied resemblances of him, sometimes in full forgetfulness of God.――The history of Revelation--rises into view as a divine promise, having for its condition and its basis, Faith, the only mode left for man

to approach Deity. This promise, like a rich and beauteous bud, at first inclosed in manifold coverings, swells and unfolds itself from age to age, till in Jesus of Nazareth it opens into bloom, and scatters its fragrance over the whole world.

-Thus the last link of the chain maintains its dependence on the first. No Saviour is conceivable where there is no sin; and there is no redemption from sin and its consequences, without a Saviour. The manifestation of Christ thus stands in necessary connexion with the fall of the first human beings; and the promise given them receives in him its perfect fulfilment. This must appear plain to every man who, with thorough examination and strict demand of proof at every step, has traced this phænomenon" [an expected Messiah] "through the history of mankind. But this no man can do, whom the ardent love of truth leads not to the fountain of all truth, which springs forth, from no pedantic show of reason, from no scientific theory, from no scheme of identity,from no Plato or Aristotle, from no Indian or Chinese philosophy of religion; but solely from that simple book of books, which can be understood only in proportion as the heart is simple and pure. In vain seeks he wisdom, who seeks not truth: and he seeks not truth, who is labouring to hide from himself, or even wholly to deny, the sinful state of his own, his self-willed nature. He who wears the bandage over his eyes, cannot see the light." Lehrbuch der Anthropologie, u. s. w. von J. C. A. Heinroth, M. D. &c. Leipzig, 1822; pp. 328–332.

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