The original Text of the Passage from the EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS, introduced on the Page fronting the Commencement of Discourse I. Ἐπεὶ δὲ πεπλήρωτο μὲν ἡ ἡμετέρα ἀδικία, καὶ τελείως, πεφανέρωτο, ὅτι ὁ μισθὸς * * * κόλασις καὶ θάνατος προσεδοκατο ἦλθε δὲ ὁ καιρὸς ὃν Θεὸς προέθετο, λοιπὸν φανερῶσαι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ χρηστότητα καὶ δύναμιν, ὡς * * * υπερβαλλούσης φιλανθρωπίας μία ἀγάπη * * * οὐκ ἐμίσησεν ὑμᾶς, οὐδὲ ἀπώσατο, οὐδὲ ἐμνησικάκησεν, ἀλλὰ ἐμακροθύμησεν, ἠνέσχετο, λέγων αὐτὸς, τὰς ἡμετέρας ἁμαρτίας ἀνεδέξατο· αὐτὸς τὸν ἴδιον υἱὸν ἀπέδοτο λύτρον ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, τὸν ̔́Αγιον ὑπὲρ ἀνόμων, τὸν ̓́Ακακον ὑπὲρ τῶν κακῶν, τὸν Δίκαιον ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀδίκων, τὸν Αφθαρτον ὑπὲρ τῶν θνητῶν. Τί γὰρ ἄλλο τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν ἠδυνήθη καλύψαι, ἢ ἐκείνου δικαιοσύνη; Ἐν τίνι δικαιωθῆναι δυνατὸν τοὺς ἀνόμους ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀσεβεῖς ἢ ἐν μόνῳ τῷ Υἱῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ; Ω τῆς γλυκείας ἀνταλλαγής· ὢ τῆς ἀνεξιχνιάστου δημιουργίας· ὢ τῶν ἀπροσδοκήτων εὐεργεσιῶν· ἵνα ἀνομία μὲν πολλῶν ἐν δικαίῳ ἑνὶ κρυβῇ, δικαιοσύνη δὲ ἑνὸς πολ~ λοὺς ἀνόμους δικαιώσῃ. The asterisks mark the absence of some letters or words, through the corrosion or other obliteration in the ancient manuscripts: but the sense is not much interrupted. APPENDIX, REFERRING TO THE LETTERS OF MR. VANCE SMITH. In the year 1843, the Rev. George Vance Smith, B. A. (Unitarian minister at Macclesfield,) published "Letters to the Rev. John Pye Smith, D.D., occasioned by the recent Republication of his Four Discourses,” &c. The object of that work is to represent, that I have utterly failed in proving the truth of the doctrines under consideration; and that such failure is consequent upon my having neglected to obtain an honest and fair understanding of the passages cited from the Scriptures, according to the established and rational rules of interpretation which we apply to the text of any ancient author: in other words, that, having assumed the point in debate, I have made up a collection of short passages as testimonies of the scriptural doctrine, detaching them from their proper connexion, and having no "due reference to the parties, institutions, circumstances, opinions, and prejudices, in connexion with which, often with direct and exclusive application to which, they were written." To this observation I offer the following reply : The first of these Discourses was a sermon, preached and published in 1812; and neither the limits nor the character of a sermon admitted of critical disquisition. The doctrine was proposed in terms I hope sufficiently plain, and the applicableness of the citations I thought might fairly be left to the intelligence and, if need were, investigation of the reader. The means of such investigation are abundant and well known. I conceived that the terms of each passage generally conveyed its just interpretation; that, to have carried out a philological discussion, in the different instances, would have required a volume; and that, in subsequent parts of the work, aids to interpretation are given, which may suggest the resolution in particular cases. Agreeing with Mr. Vance Smith that, in order to the understanding of the speeches of Jesus and the writings of his apostles, we must take up a right conception of their circumstances, the errors which they opposed, and the prejudices they sought to rectify; I am at issue with him as to those things themselves, the very fountains of knowledge from which valid interpretation must flow. With him, so far as refers to an important part of the writings of the apostle Paul, sin and its guilt, redemption and righteousness, pardon, justification, and adoption, are terms relating solely to the ceremonial institutions of the Hebrews, their observance or their absence; the arrogant claims of the Jews and the Judaizing teachers; and the admission of Christian Gentiles into the kingdom of the Messiah, without passing through the gate of Mosaism. His theory is briefly represented in his own terse and lucid manner. "Jesus the Messiah was a Jew, born 'under the law.' The law therefore forbade him from having friendly relations, in his character of Messiah, with any but Jews. Hence, none but Jews could legally become subjects of the Messiah, while himself was thus 'under the law.' Had Jesus, Hebrew as he was, continued to live, had he remained (as the Jews had expected Messiah would remain—John xii. 34) for ever in his mortal life, the Gentiles must still and for ever have remained without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,' to which alone the mortal Messiah belonged. But Providence, in its mercy, had ordained that the kingdom of Christ should be enlarged, so as to admit the whole human race; that Jesus should be the Messiah, not merely of the one small Jewish nation, but of all the nations of the world. In order to the accomplishment, however, of this great design, it was necessary that Jesus should cease to be what he was, a Jew born under the law,' and forbidden by the law (which he came not to destroy but to fulfil') to have any intercourse with those who were, legally, in a state of sin. And how was this to be effected? How, but by his death? The apostle Paul writes, Know ye not, brethren, how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?' implying, and indeed stating immediately afterwards, that, when the man is dead, the law has no longer dominion over him. Hence, therefore, by his death Jesus became free from the bonds of the law. "Christ, therefore, died to put himself, as it were, out of the jurisdiction of the law; so that all men, notwithstanding their state of legal condemnation and exclusion, might still become his subjects, by believing in him in his risen and glorified state. (Rom. iv. 24; x. 9.) Thus Christ 'died for' all men :-not in their stead-not to bear the punishment of their sins, and thus to free them from it; but to place himself out of the reach of that law which, while he lived, had dominion over him, (Acts x. 28, Rom. vii. 1,) and intervened between him and those whom it condemned to exclusion from his kingdom. The connexion between the death of Christ and forgiveness of sins is, therefore, presented to us in two separate points of view. (1.) One has reference to the Gentiles alone: they were in a state of ceremonial disqualification for Messiah's kingdom, so long as Messiah himself was 'under the law;' but his death freed him from the law, and thus rendered that state of ceremonial disqualification of no importance. (2.) The other has reference to both Jews and Gentiles: both were in a state of moral guilt and condemnation through their sins; and hence, on principles of law, neither were admissible to Messiah's kingdom. But Messiah died, and thus put himself out of the jurisdiction of the law: hence the law had no longer dominion over him; and, therefore, though it condemned both Jew and Gentile, yet could he still receive them as his subjects. Thus, did his death redeem them from the state of condemnation and exclusion which, on principles of law, attached to them, and virtually effect remission of the sins by which that state was caused. "The necessary and immediate consequence (in relation to the Gentiles) of our Lord's death and exaltation, was his release from those legal restraints which attached to him by birth, and prevented him, while in life, from being Messiah to any persons who were legally 'sinners.' It was, indeed, with the express design of breaking down the barrier, which, while he lived, kept off such persons from being his subjects, that he died; that is to say, he 'died FOR' such persons,constituting, as they did, the whole Gentile world. "[In the sense just explained] Christ gave himself for the Ephesians (Eph. v. 2): But he was also an offering and a sacrifice to God.' Under the Mosaic dispensation, offerings and sacrifices to God were presented, in order to procure the removal of ceremonial uncleanness, or sinfulness. So, too, it is in the case of the annulment of the disqualification under which the Ephesians, as Gentiles, had laboured. The remission of their sins had its accompanying 'offering and sacrifice :' for, was it not by laying down his life, that Christ had brought about their admission into his kingdom? Thus was he, by the actual efficacy of his death, 'an offering and a sacrifice to God' for the Ephesians;-not literally so, it is manifest, for Christ was crucified as a criminal by Roman soldiers, not offered up, a victim upon the altar, by any priest,—ʻan offering and a sacrifice,' on presentation of which the disqualifying sins of the Ephesians were remitted. The figure,—if we remember who the writer was, a 'Hebrew of the Hebrews,' with his mind intimately familiar with the peculiar rites and ceremonies of his religion,-is an apt and forcible one. To interpret his words literally, is to destroy the beauty and force of the allusion. The expression is simply but one way of stating the great truth, that the death of the Messiah, by freeing him from the restraints of the law, admitted the Ephesians to be his subjects."-From pages 30-36. I must acknowledge that this representation, in my judgment and feeling, bears the same relation to genuine Christianity that a skeleton hung up in a dissecting-room does to a living and healthy man. That in it which is true we already have; but its deficiency is infinitely lamentable. Ꮓ |