Now, considering the Word as a person, this reproach is without point. There was nothing about Christ, personally, to lead the world even to suspect that he was its Creator, or that he had more than a human nature, aided by the wisdom and the power of God. “He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and had not where to lay his head." He suffered pain, was crucified, commended his spirit into the hands. of God, and died. There was nothing in all this to convince mankind that he was the Creator of the world, but every thing to convince them that he was not. He never made any such pretension. The Creator and Governor of the world might have wrought miracles by his own power, if he had chosen to do so; and if it had been any part of his purpose to convince the world that he was its Creator, Christ would have let the world know, that he wrought miracles by his own power. But he "Of mine own self I can do says, nothing." "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." At the grave of Lazarus, he does not

pretend to raise him by his own power, but says, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

And I

know that thou hearest me always; but because of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe" what? that I am the Creator of the world? no, but "that thou hast sent me."

which Christ claimed the

This was the ground upon attention and obedience of

the world, that God had sent him; not that he was the Creator of the world, but that he had been sent and commissioned by the Creator of the world. "This is

life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true

God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."

The only true God can be none other than the Creator. If Christ is the Creator, then he is the only true God to us. Any other God is nothing to us, for he can have nothing to do with us. It could not have been a matter of reproach to the world, that they did not recognize Christ as their Creator, as there was nothing in him to make them think so, and he himself never made any such pretension. But if we interpret the term “Word" to mean an attribute, or several attributes of God, personified, then the passage will make sense, and carry some point in its reproach. If we make it mean the divine Power, Wisdom and Goodness, which in fact constitute the very essence of God, then the passage would justly reproach the world for not recognizing in Christ the same divine power and wisdom which made the world.

My fifth objection to the Trinitarian apprehension of this passage, is found in the fourteenth verse. "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Now if we suppose the Word to have been God, personally, in any sense, the most irreconcilable inconsistences will follow. "God became a man," which contradicts the very definition of God, that he is unchangeable, and cannot become any thing. "And we beheld his glory," not original and underived, as the glory of God must be, but subordinate and derived, "the glory," literally, "as of an only begotten son with his father, full of grace and truth." Now the very idea of God's becom

ing a man, is totally shocking. Scarcely less so is it, that the Creator of the world should be united, in one person, with a human body and a human soul, and in that condition receive glory from a higher being still. Such difficulties are to my mind, I confess, totally insuperable. They seem utterly irreconcilable with any clear conception of the nature of either God or man. I can conceive of divine attributes being with God, and constituting God, and being displayed in creation and revelation, and being especially manifested in Jesus Christ, so as to clothe him with glory, and make him to appear to be the peculiar favorite of heaven; but I cannot conceive of a Divine Person to do all this.

My sixth objection is taken from the fourteenth verse, taken in connection with the seventeenth. In the seventeenth verse, one special part of his glory seems to be, that, as the "only begotten," he was "full of grace and truth." In the seventeenth verse, this preeminence is said not to reside in his person, but in his revelation: "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." There is no difference of nature intimated here between Moses and Christ, nor any difference in the relation which they sustained to man. The law was given by Moses, by God of course through Moses, and grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, from God of course through Christ. This contrast, to my mind, explains the strong language of this whole chapter. In the creation, and in the Mosaic revelation, God was revealed and made known; but so much more perfect is the knowledge we obtain of him through Christ, that he may almost be said to be the tabernacle in which he dwelt.

My seventh objection, is the reason which John the Baptist gives for Christ's superiority to himself. This was he of whom I spake: He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me." And so

was Moses, and David, and so were the angels, before John the Baptist; but priority in time proved no superiority. He should have said, if it were true, “because he is the Almighty, and I am a man. But the true meaning of this passage is totally overlooked by all parties. It is a figure of speech, drawn from the way in which servants used to walk in relation to their masters. They went behind. And it all amounts to this, and nothing more. "There is one coming behind me, who ought to go before me, for he is my superior." And he means precisely the same thing that he did when he said, "the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose."*

John the historian goes on to give the reason and the measure of his superiority to John the Baptist. "For

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* It was the office of a servant to go behind his master, to carry his shoes when he went to feasts, to substitute them for his sandals when he arrived, and to stoop down and put them on and off. The figure turns on the two adverbs before and behind, and on the fact that Jesus appeared after John, though his superior. "One is coming after me as my servant, who ought to go before me as my master. Indeed, I am not worthy to be his servant, to bear his shoes,' according to one Evangelist; or to unloose them,' according to another. As authority for rendering πρωτος μου, my superior, we have the same use of it in a sentence of Paul. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, ὧν πρωτος ειμί, of whom I am first," not in point of time, but chief in point of eminence. Indeed, we have the same sense reported by Matthew, in which for πρωτος μου, is substituted ιςχυρότερος μου, mightier than I. "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance; but he that cometh after me, literally behind me, is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear."

of his fulness have we all received, and grace for grace." It is through Christ that we receive the greater fulness of divine revelation, in proportion as he received a more full and perfect revelation from God than Moses. Such a reason would hardly be given by one who knew his real superiority to be derived from his nature, and not from his endowments. Such a reason for Christ's superiority to Moses, as the greater perfection of his revelation, coming immediately after this discourse about the Word, is certainly out of place, if that superiority were in fact owing to the incarnation of a Person of the Trinity in him; for it was not the true reason. It all goes to show, that the incarnation of the Word is a figure of speech, precisely similar to that which we make use of when we say, of a wise man, that he is an incarnation of wisdom, or wisdom has taken up her abode in him. And it all amounts to this, that revelation, imperfectly imparted before, seemed to become incarnate in Christ. The word of God came to the ancient prophets from time to time, but it seems to have dwelt in Jesus fully and permanently, like a person. In him became incarnate the very spirit of revelation. It seems to me to be a highly figurative and poetic mode of representing what is elsewhere simply and plainly expressed. "He, whom God hath sent, speaketh the words of God, for God giveth him the spirit not by measure." What is called in the one case the indwelling of the Word, is in the other called the fulness of the Spirit.

My eighth reason, for thinking that the Word was not a person of the Trinity, or a person at all, is found in