may permit, and provided the dispute may be brought into a narrow compass. I might reasonably decline all private conference, having sufficiently done my part in this controversy, till some or other shall undertake, in the same public way, to confute what I have publicly asserted. Yet since you have been pleased to apply yourself to me, with much civility, and with an air of strict sincerity, entreating me not to think it too great a task, though in respect of a single soul, to take particular notice of what you have publicly and privately advanced upon the subject; I shall not scruple to comply with your desires, so far as may be sufficient to answer the end intended.

The points which, after our conference at Kensington, I promised to go upon, were these: 1. The interpretation of the first of St. John. 2. The question whether Christ be Creator. 3. The point of worship. Under these three is contained all that is material; and upon these the main of the controversy turns. I must insist upon it with you, as a preliminary article, that you confine yourself, for the present at least, within these bounds; avoiding all wanderings and unnecessary diversions, attending to one point only at a time, and contentedly suffering it to be distinctly and fully debated, before we proceed to any new one. You are first to be upon the defensive, and to bear the part of a respondent. You shall have your turn to object afterwards (if we continue our correspondence) what you please to my scheme; but, for the present, you are only to defend your own.

These things premised, I shall now begin with your interpretation of St. John. You construe the words Osos v ó Aóyos, God was reason or wisdom. To which I object as follows:

1. The article i before Aóyos, and the want of the article ¿ before eòs, make one presumption against your interpretation. Please to observe St. John's manner of expressing himself elsewhere, i eòs åɣáπη ésìv, “God is "love," twice, 1 John iv. 8, 16, ó Оeds pãs est," God is "light," 1 John i. 5. Now these are just such propo

sitions as that of yours, God was wisdom: wherefore had St. John intended it, he would have expressed it thus; Oeds Aóyos v. This observation is of weight, not only because of St. John's manner of expressing himself, but also because the Greek idiom requires it. See Erasmus's comment upon the place, who was a good judge in such

matters.

2. Another objection against your interpretation is this, that the Aoyos is the principal subject, the theme which the Apostle took to discourse on. He is there showing what the Aoyos was, not what God the Father was. The Aóyos was in the beginning, the Aóyos was with God, the world was made by the same Aóyos, and so on. The whole first fourteen verses are, in a manner, little else but a description of the several powers and attributes of the Aóyos. Wherefore it is more natural and consonant to understand that the Apostle intended to tell us that the Aoyos was God, than vice versa: since the Apostle was recounting the attributes of the Aóyos, his principal theme, not the attributes of God the Father.

3. I must not forget to add, that all antiquity has construed the words as we do. Now, whether you consider the ancients as the properest judges of the idiom of the language in or near their own times; or whether you consider them as faithful conveyers of the Apostle's meaning, (some having been his immediate disciples, as Ignatius; others having conversed with those that had been,) either way, the verdict of the ancients, especially in so noted and so important a passage of Scripture, ought to be of great weight, and indeed decisive; unless there appeared (as there does none) some plain reason or necessity, in text or context, for another construction. You seem indeed to lay some stress upon this consideration, that, in our way, we construe the words backwards. But this is slight. Would you call it construing backwards, if we rendered the first sentence, (èv ågxã йv ó Aóyos,) “The Word "was in the beginning?" It is not construing backwards, to render veμa i Osòs, "God is spirit:" John iv. 24. or

to render μάρτυς γάρ μου ἐστὶν ὁ Θεὸς, " God is my witness : Rom. i. 9. Multitude of like examples may be given, where the different idioms of languages require that the sense should run under a different order of the words.

Your other observation, borrowed from Bishop Pearson, that the Evangelist makes "the last word of the former "sentence the first of that which follows," appears to be of very little moment. By this rule, the second verse should have begun with ó Aóyos instead of ouros. Or if you answer this by saying, that still ouros refers to the last word preceding, then by the same rule di' aurou, in the third verse, should refer to Tov eòv preceding. But enough of fancies let us rather attend to dry criticism and strict reasoning.

I proceed to your construction of di' aurou, by it, or according to it, as in or by an exemplar. It is sufficient here to observe, that this construction is ungrammatical. The preposition cannot bear any such sense. The English particle by is indeed sometimes so used, but I want some example of any such use of the Greek diá. Give me one, at least, out of Scripture: or I shall be content if you can produce me any either in sacred or profane writer.

Mr. Norris's speculations upon this head I am well acquainted with. They may pass for pretty fancies, and that is all. Allowing the thing itself be true, yet it neither can be made appear that John has here asserted it, nor was Mr. Norris himself sanguine enough to affirm that he ever intended it. See his preface to part i. p. 14. Add to this, that the ideal world is nobody knows what. Strip it of flight and figure, and there is no more in it than this, that God knew all things before he made them: but the modus of it infinitely surpasses all created understanding. If we come to plain good sense, we can conceive nothing of God, but what is either substance or attribute. ideal world, in your hypothesis, must either be the substance of God the Father, that is, God himself, or only some attribute of him. You make it to be his reason, or his wisdom, and therefore must of consequence suppose

The

it

an attribute; and so you say in your first letter, though in the same place you observe that it is "of the substance of "God," the meaning of which I should be glad to know distinctly. To me there appears no medium between an attribute of God, and God himself. You suppose wisdom to be an attribute, not God himself precisely considered; and accordingly you say by it, not by him: so that, at length, allowing only for a small difference in words, your hypothesis falls in with the Sabellian scheme, and I have already confuted it in my first Sermon. However, I shall not scruple to make a little more particular application of what I have there said to your hypothesis.

I argue thus. Either you must understand by the Aóyos, God the Father himself, or an attribute of God the Father: but neither of these suppositions can be reconciled to St. John's Gospel, therefore your scheme falls. If you understand by the Aóyos, God the Father, try if you can make sense of verse the 1st, 2d, and 14th; if you understand any attribute of him, as you seem to do, I object as follows.

1. The Logos was with God, pòç Tòv Osóv. What accurate writer would not rather have said of an attribute, that it was ἐν τῷ Θεῷ, in God? And yet πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν is again repeated.

2. St. John lays some stress upon the Logos's being in the beginning with God. He repeats, he inculcates it. What need of this, if the Logos means only God's wisdom? Can any man doubt whether God was always wise? But there might be some doubt whether any other Person was in the beginning with God the Father; and therefore, if a Person be meant, we see the reason of the Evangelist's repeating it, and laying a stress upon it.

3. The pronoun ouros (verse the 2d) put by itself, and beginning a sentence, seems rather to denote a Person than an attribute, and to be more justly rendered he than it. I know not whether any the like instance can be given of outos put absolutely and beginning a sentence, and not denoting a person.

4. Verse the 8th, "He (John the Baptist) was not that light." The he here, of whom this is denied, plainly refers to some other he, of whom the thing is affirmed. How would it sound to say, he was not, but it (an attribute of God) was that light?

5. Proceed to verse the 11th, and read it in your way, thus: It came unto its own, and its own received it not. Where is the sense or the propriety?

6. Go on to verse the 12th. But as many as received it, to them it gave power to become the sons of God. Is not the sense flat, and the sentence very odd and unnatural?

7. Lastly, consider verse the 14th. The Logos (an attribute of God the Father) was made flesh, and it tabernacled amongst us, and we beheld its glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, &c. Now, how comes wisdom or reason to be the only begotten of the Father, more than power, or goodness, or any other attribute?

8. St. John in his Revelations seems to have determined, that Ayos is the name of a Person, not an attribute, the Person of Jesus Christ: Rev. xix. 13.

These are the principal difficulties against your scheme, which at present occur to me. Be pleased to answer them severally and distinctly, or give them up as unanswerable. In the interim, I rest,

I RECEIVED a letter from you, containing some exceptions to the evidence and reasons which I offered against your interpretation of the first chapter of St. John.