promises, that he should be favourable to the Jews, and to the family of David; and then he says, "they shall look on me." John, therefore, uses similar words in a sense altogether different. J. G. ROSENMÜLLER.

The evangelist here plainly reads vs [on him], instead of bs, [on me]. But so also read forty Hebrew manuscripts. And that this is the true reading appears by what follows, "and they shall mourn for him.” The Syriac renders it, "They shall look on me, through him whom they have pierced." The Septuagint I cannot make sense of. — DR. RANDOLPH: Prophecies, &c. cited in the New Testament, p. 32. [See "Concessions," pp. 223-4.]

JOHN xx. 21: "Then said Jesus to them again, Peace [be] unto "you: as [my] Father hath sent me, even so send I you."

His Father sent him [our Lord] with power to impart authority for preaching the gospel to his apostles, who, after his ascent into heaven, were to be the visible directors of the church in his stead. DR. STANHOPE on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv. p. 515.

Ver. 22: "And when he had said this, he breathed on [them], "and saith unto them, Receive ye the holy spirit (πveνμa åɣiov).”

He breathed on them: an emblematical action, which Jesus immediately explains. His spirit, his inspiration, are to be imparted to them.-J. D. MICHAELIS: Resurrection of Jesus, p. 256.

The Son of God performs the act of breathing, emblematically, when he bids his disciples to receive the holy Vεvμa, the Christian life. DR. HEY: Lectures in Divinity, vol. ii. p. 437.

The phrase holy spirit is here to be understood of that divine power by which the apostles were assisted, and rendered fit to execute their office rightly. See note on chap. xiv. 17.- KUINOEL.

Ver. 23: "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto "them; [and] whose soever [sins] ye retain, they are retained."

It appears to me, that by forgiveness of sins is meant as much as in Matt. ix. 5 and James v. 15, viz. "If you remit to a sick person the punishment of those sins, which punishment has been sent by

God, it shall be remitted, and his health shall be restored: you shall also, upon extraordinary occasions, have the power of inflicting sickness as a punishment of sin.”—J. D. MICHAELIS: Resur. of Jesus, pp. 258-9.

[The remitting of sins is here understood by LE CLERC, J. G. ROSENMÜLLER, and S. T. COLERIDGE, Literary Remains, vol. iii. p. 17, in the sense of curing diseases. The passage is introduced into this place merely for the purpose of illustrating the phraseology employed by our Lord in Matt. ix. 5.]

Ver. 28: "And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord " and my God (ὁ Κύριος μου, και ὁ Θεος μου).”

I acknowledge thee as my Lord, and as the Messiah, my King. J. G. ROSENMÜLLER [who gives this as the sense of the passage, on the supposition that Thomas called Jesus his God].

Thomas addressed these words to Jesus, and therein declared him to be at once his Lord and the Messiah; for it is expressly stated, "He said to him." From this address of Thomas, however, many commentators are of opinion, that the doctrine of Christ's divine nature may be established, and conceive that the sentence, when filled up, would be thus: "I am not faithless; I doubt no longer: thou art my Lord and my God." But, on the contrary, others justly observe, that Thomas used the term God in the sense in which it is applied to kings and judges, who were considered as representatives of Deity, and pre-eminently to the Messiah: see Ps. lxxxii. 6, 7; xlv. 6, 7; cx. i. John x. 35. Some adopt the opinion of THEODORE of Mopsuesta, regarding the words as merely an exclamation of surprise, and referring them, not to Christ, but to God. But, &c. KUINOEL.

Thomas declared that the person whom he beheld was no visionary appearance, but Jesus himself; and professed his most full persuasion, that Jesus had returned from the state of death and lived again, and was truly Lord and God. But it may indeed be doubted whether, at that time, Thomas had a full conception of Jesus Christ as Lord and God; since the other disciples received it afterwards by the communication of the Holy Spirit.— TITTMAN; apud Dr. J. P. Smith's Script. Test. vol. ii. p. 288.

It may be justly doubted whether the so lately incredulous, because prejudiced and unenlightened, disciple had then, or at any time before the illumination of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, any complete notion

of the divine nature of Jesus, as forming part of the Godhead; yet there is reason to think, that the Jews held in a certain sense the Divinity of the Messiah-[in what sense?]-though they had no adequate conception of the true nature of it. - BLOOMFIELD.

My Lord! and my God! I do not understand this as an address to Jesus; but thus, "Yes; he it is indeed! He, my Lord and my God!" Yet, in giving this interpretation, I do not affirm that Thomas passed all at once from the extreme of doubt to the highest degree of faith, and acknowledged Christ to be the true God. This appears to me too much for the then existing knowledge of the disciples; and we have no intimation, that they recognised the divine nature of Christ, before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I am therefore inclined to understand this expression, which broke out from Thomas in the height of his astonishment, in a figurative sense, denoting only, "Whom I shall ever reverence in the highest degree." If he only recollected what he had heard from the mouth of Jesus ten days before (chap. xiv. 9, 10), that recollection might have given occasion to an expression which probably Thomas himself could not have perfectly explained; as is often the case with such words as escape us when we are under the most overpowering surprise. But yet the expression might be equivalent to saying, "He! my Lord! With whom God is most intimately united, and is in him! In whom I behold God, as it were, present before me!" Or, a person raised from the dead might be regarded as a divinity; for the word God is not always used in the strict doctrinal sense. [Michaelis then shows the incongruity of explaining the words as an exclamation.] Besides, the first compellation, my Lord! certainly is directed to Christ. — J. D. MICHAELIS: Anmerk. in loc.; apud Dr. J. P. Smith's Script. Test. vol. ii. p. 287. [See another quotation from the same writer (Resurrection of Jesus, p. 272–3), given in " Illust. of Unitarianism,” p. 266, No. 5, second edit.]

JOHN XX. 31: "But these are written, that ye might believe that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might "have life through his name."

Ὁ Χριστος, ὁ υἱος του Θεου, the Christ, the Son of God. Believing that Christ is the Son of God, that is, that Messias and Prophet whom God sent into the world to reveal his will to us. DR. WM. SHERLOCK: Knowledge of Christ, chap. iv. sect. 3.

The formulæ, Jesus is the Christ and Son of God, are of the same import. See Matt. xvi. 16. John xx. 31. Acts viii. 37. 1 John v. 1.LIMBORCH: Theol. Christ. lib. v. cap. 9, § 4. [So others.]

....

Chap. xxi. 17: "Peter said unto him, Lord, thou knowest "all things: thou knowest that I love thee."

Thou possessest a peculiar and extraordinary knowledge of the human mind. · - KUINOEL.

[In the second part of this work, we took up the texts in the Old Testament which are supposed to contain references, allusions, and declarations, favourable to the doctrine of a Triune God, or of the essential Deity of Jesus Christ, and of another agent called the Holy Ghost, the third person in the Trinity; and, by the assistance of the professed opponents of Unitarianism, we showed that the Jewish Scriptures do not contain any satisfactory evidence whatever of the truth of these primary principles in orthodox metaphysics.

We granted, however (in p. 230), that the Almighty might have purposely concealed some of the great mysteries in religion, until the world should have been able to receive them. until "the fulness of the time," when the moral firmament should be radiated by the Sun of righteousness. In accordance, then, with our design, we entered into an examination of numerous passages in the memoirs of the Saviour, in order to ascertain whether he who was perfectly acquainted with the will of the Father as respects human salvation, and who "made known all things he had heard of the Father," ever revealed that God was a Being subsisting as three persons. This examination we have now finished. With those previously, and some of them deeply, baptized into the spirit of Trinitarian theology, we have travelled together, we trust as disciples of a common Lord, to listen to the announcements of the blessed Jesus, and to observe the impressions made by these announcements on the minds of the apostles, and other followers. All of them we interpret as consistent with or favourable to the doctrine that God is one that the Father is the only true God. that, without any distinction of persons, Jesus is the Son and Servant of the Most High-and that the holy spirit is either the Father himself, or his agency and gifts, whether natural or supernatural. Many of our fellow-travellers and fellow-disciples, some of whom look with pity or scorn on our doctrines, have felt

bound, by the force of truth, virtually to acknowledge, that we have not listened in vain to the words of Jesus-that their own interpretations of passages in the Gospels harmonise with ours and that neither did Christ teach the doctrine of a Triune God, and the co-eternity of himself and the Holy Ghost with the Father, nor do the evangelists say that he laid any claim to the attributes of Divinity. In short, Trinitarians have expressly conceded, that Christ owed his whole being and attributes to the Father; and many of them have explained the texts deemed most favourable to their cause in such a way as, when used by Unitarians, has provoked the unseemly ridicule and contempt of the ultra-supporters of so-called orthodoxy; as if these interpretations had not been propounded by those good and learned men of their own creed who would reflect honour on any section of the church to which they might belong. For illustrations of these remarks, see part ii. passim, pp. 231-385; and part i. pp. 46, 47; 58-62.

With some of our distinguished opponents (pp. 49, 50), we do not think, that any of the primary or essential truths in Christianity were concealed by the Author and Founder of our faith, while on earth; but, as some of those who call themselves " orthodox," in contradistinction to those who differ from them, believe that, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit revealed mysterious doctrines to which our Lord had merely alluded, we will grant, for the sake of eliciting all the truth which can be discovered on this subject, that the apostles may have been enabled, by a flood of light poured into their minds, to discern that the meek and holy being with whom they had eaten and drunk, and whom they had heard uttering the cry of suffering humanity, and the prayer of submission, was Almighty God himself. Let us, then, with our Trinitarian interpreters, go along with the first disciples, on their missionary tour, to learn what they said of "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, three persons in one God"- to note the utter amazement which the Jews must have felt and manifested, when they were first told that the Man of Nazareth whom they had put to death was the Invisible and Immortal Spirit "whom heaven and earth cannot contain"— to hearken to the strong objections which they must have offered to a doctrine seemingly repugnant, at least, to the fundamental truth in their Sacred Books, that God is one and without an equal- and to observe the metaphysical tact, the logical acumen, or the supernatural energy, with which the apostles silenced, if not convinced, their adversaries, whether these were Jews or Gentiles.]