On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    Benson has shewn from several examples that Iv may have two significations in the same sentence . " The expression eternal life is much relied upon as always belonging to Jesus Christ . But Christ is spoken of as the communicator and establisher of the doctrine of eternal life , not as the original author of the blessing . Let Rom . vi . 23 , be recollected , eternal life is " the gift of God through

    Jesus Christ ; " and in John xvii . 3 , which the author probably had in his mind when he wrote the words we are now examining , eternal life is said to consist in knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he had sent . What more natural , then , than for the apostle , after glorying in the knowledge of the true God obtained through his Son , to exclaim , " This is the true God , and eternal life "—the Author and Source of that eternal

    life , which is made known to us by his Son ! It may now be sufficiently apparent that the argument for the deity of Christ from this text might as well have been abandoned by our author , as it has been by some of the most learned and respectable supporters of the doctrine .

    In the chapter on the " Testimonies of the Apostles Peter , Jude , and James , " all the most important arguments are derived from the rule respecting the use of the Greek article , to which public attention was first called by Mr . Granville Sharpe , and which has been corrected , explained , and illustrated by the late Bishop Middleton .

    No doubt , one who thinks we have elsewhere sufficient proof of the deity of Christ , may with propriety adopt the proposed translations , but it is equally certain that one who believes that elsewhere God and Christ are always distinguished , may with equal propriety resist them , and consequently no independent argument in . favour of the orthodox doctrine can be derived from the passages .

    ******* We now come to the testimony of the Apostle Paul . Dr . S . begins with a common rhetorical artifice . He calls our attention to all the enmity against the Apostle of the Gentiles , which has existed in ancient or in modern times , from the opposition of the first Judaizers down to the ** not Paul but Jesus" of Gamaliel Smith , and , without taking the slightest notice of the very obvious circumstances which account for both the one and the

    other—Jewish bigotry in the one case ; horror of the unnatural system of Calvinism , commonly reputed to be especially contained in the writings of Paul , in the other—by a quiet assumption of the very thing which he undertakes to prove , he offers to explain the whole . Paul , according to his account , was " the chosen vessel of the Divine Spirit for completing the

    archives of Christian doctrine , by a clear and bold , a copious and uncompromising testimony , to the Divine person and the redemption of Christ , the reign of his grace , and the conformity of its subjects to his holiness . " Those who cannot , after the most patient investigation , see any thing of the

    Untitled Article

    816 : Dr . «/ . P . Smiths Scripture Testimony to the Messiah .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1831, page 816, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2604/page/20/