P. 133. "These things Isaiah spake when he saw his glory.' Some authorities have, The Glory of God,' and others, The Glory of his God."" You should have given us the names of these authorities. It cannot be expected that we should leave the pillar and ground of truth, the sole support of the church, that "God was manifest in the flesh," on anonymous authorities ; especially while so far as I know, the whole Biblia Polyglotta, warrants our belief, as well as the plain connexion of the words, John xii. 41; that Isaiah saw the Messiah's glory. You attempted the same evasion, Doctor, with the glory which Isaiah chap. xl. 4-9, said should be revealed. But no Jew ever doubted but the God which the messengers were foretold as preaching to the cities of Judah, really refers to the Messiah. So Zachariah, ix. 9. "Behold thy king cometh unto thee, riding on a colt, the foal of an ass."

P. 136. "Whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God be blessed for ever? Rom. ix. 5. The original equally well admits of this rendering,

From whom Christ came, as to the flesh, God over all be blessed for ever.'" This, Doctor, is doing violence to the apostle's words; for first you add the verb BE; secondly, you take away the relative, Who. 0 ων επι πάντων, &c. "Who is over all, God blessed for ever." Thus Sir, you incur the double malediction of adding and taking away in the same member of a sentence! Really, Doctor, if Unitarianism could not be defended without thus making these horrible distortions, suppressions, and additions, I would

leave it undefended. There was no need for St. Paul to tell us that God was over all; and especially when he is not speaking of the Sovereignty of God, but of Jewish privileges. You yourself admit in very many places, that Jesus Christ is over all; and had the apostle meant a doxology, he would scarcely have deviated from the usual language of the New Testament, Ευλογητος οθεος. "Blessed be the God, &c." 2 Cor. i. 3: 1 Peter i. 3. From criticism so extravagant, what opinion must the learned form of the ability and integrity of the Unitarian ministers ?

P. 138.

"The kingdom of God and Christ. Eph. v. 5. I charge thee before the God and [Lord] Jesus Christ. 1 Tim. v. 21. The glorious appearing of our Great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Titus ii. 13. These are all practicable renderings of the places referred to." We take exceptions, Doctor, to your punctuation : you isolate Jesus Christ as an adjection without a connection. If the kingdom be God's, and not Jesus Christ's; if it be "our Great God," we expect, and not the glorious epiphany of Christ, why should St. Paul pin his name upon the garments of light and majesty, whom no man hath seen, nor can see? Certainly, Doctor, you here level a stroke against the apostle's understanding, or against your own. We have no grammar which allows a noun to stand alone at the end of a sentence. The English version is a perfect metaphrase of the Greek; yet you take the pronoun our, which stands before Saviour, and put it before the Great God. Would it not offend, Sir, if our barristers should get a habit of saying,

Our

estates," instead of our clients' estates? The conclusion from this punctuation, is quite clear; the Unitarian expects "the glorious appearing of our Great God," and as to Jesus Christ, cut off with a comma, having a soul material as his body, he never, in fact, either rose or ascended, and by consequence, shall never return. The comma cuts him off from any syntax with the Divinity.

P. 142. For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree in one.' 1 John v. 7. 8. No one with any pretensions to critical knowledge can doubt as to the spuriousness of this passage. It was not written in Greek till at least 1,100 years after the epistle was written. It rests wholly upon the testimony and fidelity of Tarpensis, who first cited it about 400 years after the epistle was written." You get on rather too fast, Doctor; Opera Cypriani is now before me; he was martyred in the year 248, and has the words, Et hi tres unum sunt," and these three are one." Jerome, in the preface to his canonical epistles, affirms that it was extant in the Greek copies: Erasmus confesses that it was extant in a very ancient British manuscript; the Complute, the Antwerp, the Valton, and that of Arias Montanus, our best editions, have this place.* Codex Montfortii,

* Prof. Turrentine of Geneva, in reply to the objection that it is wanting in various copies, says, "Imo extat in antiquissimis codicibus. Hieron. prologo in epist. Canon. in codicibus Græcis extitisse notat, et Erasmus fatetur extare in codice Britannico vetustissimo, et laudatissimæ editiones, Complutensis, Antuerpiensis,

which Archbishop Usher procured of Dr. Montfort about the year 1640, and presented to Trinity College Dublin, is a small manuscript, utterly unknown to Erasmus, and contains this text. The Homo-ousion faith had flourished in Ireland, from the purer ages, and where the Arian creed never could obtain. The churches in the west, says Eusebius, were warned on the breaking out of that controversy to hold fast the faith, as "once delivered to the saints." Griesbach admits that Tarpensis quotes this text from the Greek in the fifth century; but though you abuse him as "a fellow of no credit," it is no way credible that a notary should copy the Vulgate into his Greek text, when Greek manuscripts abounded of the highest antiquity. The council of Trent have decided on the authenticity of this text, and probably on authorities unknown to us. Griesbach's boast that this text is wanting in 112 manuscripts is therefore no established proof against its validity. The writers in the Arian age filled the world with their copies, of whom Jerome bitterly complains that "they wrote what they thought instead of what they found." They are equally active in the present age to corrupt our Encyclopædias, our Reviews, our Travels, and spread the effluvia through our reading rooms and public libraries.

P. 146. "Immanuel, God is with us." Aye, God was always with the Israelites, dwelling in Ariæ Montani, Valtoni, quæ optimis codicibus usæ sunt, hunc locum habent.-Ed. Amstelodami, 1695." It was utterly impossible for Jerome to have foisted this text into the Vulgate, read in all the churches of Rome, without canonical authority.

the tabernacle. This interpolation of the verb is, makes Isaiah go on a fool's errand to comfort King Ahaz and his army, and when he got there, he had nothing to say but what they already knew.

P. 147. "The word was A-God." Why Dr. do you return five times to this text in different parts of your book? I perceive that it chafes and gravels you, very much, and if you are not satisfied, how should your English reader be satisfied, whom you profess to guide? you might as well lay your axe and paddock aside, as you never will either fell the tree, or stub up its roots. THE WORD WAS GOD.

P. 150. "Because thou being a man makest thyself God." John x. 33. You endeavour to vindicate our Saviour from this unfounded charge of blasphemy in your comparative view, by adducing three texts delivered on different occasions, viz. "I can of my own self do nothing, v. 30. "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me." iv. 34. 66 My Father is greater than I." xiv. 28. Allow me Dr. to solicit the favour that Jesus Christ may take your pulpit, and speak for himself; for he did speak and make a three-fold defence in a far superior style to your three-fold excuses. Mr. Locke, and others, have admired the divine wisdom in the gradual disclosure, that Jesus was the Messiah. Had the Jews believed this, they would instantly have taken up arms against the Romans. To the woman of Samaria, (and there was no danger that the Jews would believe her) he frankly avowed that he was the Messiah, to promote her conversion. Otherwise he was