love me; for I proceeded and am come from God. I came not of myself; but he sent me."

Dr. Whitby and Dr. Doddridge think that in these words there is an allusion to the eternal generation of the Son; the word eλbew, to proceed, not being applied to any other apostle or prophet.

But as it is said of Jesus, that he was in the beginning with God,' to express his divine instruction and commission, so the expressions he proceeded,' or came out from the Father' and came to mankind, very naturally indicate that he was the chosen messenger of God to the human race 43.

The last clause explains the preceding. Compare John xiii. 3; xvi. 27, 28. 30.

VII.

John viii. 58. "Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was born 44, I am."

This text is held up as a triumphant argument for the deity, or at least the pre-existence, of Jesus Christ.

1. "I that am truth itself," says Dr. Guyse in his paraphrase upon the text, "assuredly tell you that how young soever I be, yet before Abraham was born, and before all worlds, I had a real existence, as the unchangeable I AM, who ordered Moses to speak of me to your fathers under that name."

"Something more is implied," says Dr. Sherlock, (Disc. vol. iv. on Philip. ii. 6,)" in the expression I AM,

13 Endor nas new q. d. εελowv yxw, a Deo missus sum.' Grotius. See Lardner on the Logos, p. 21.

44

* Before Abraham was born,] πριν Αβρααμ γενεσθαι, εγω ειμι. δο Arrian Epict. πριν Ιπποκρατη γενεσθαι, before Hippocrates was born.' Raphel, in loc. who cites other parallel instances from Herodotus. Пpiv yevεolai juas, before we were born.' Platon. Phædon. See Wolfius, and Archbishop Newcome.

than

than that he had long existed before his coming into the world; something peculiar, as we may learn from the original use of the words, they being the very same which God made choice of to express his own eternity and power, when Moses inquired after his name. Now what could tempt our Saviour to use and apply this expression to himself, when he knew that it had never been applied to any but God?”

"I cannot imagine," says Dr. Doddridge in his Note upon this text, "that if our Lord had been a mere creature, he would have ventured to express himself in a manner so nearly bordering upon blasphemy, or have permitted his beloved disciple so dangerously to disguise his meaning."

After the solemn appeal of these grave and learned men to this text as a decisive proof of the deity of Christ, who would suspect that, when our Lord made the declaration upon which this important conclusion rests, there is no reason to believe that he had the slightest allusion to the text in Exodus iii. 14, without which every appearance of argument vanishes away ?

The truth is, that the translators of the Old Testament having rendered erroneously a passage in Exodus, and the translators of the New Testament having also mistranslated a text in John; from a combination of the two, the unlearned or inadvertent reader draws a conclusion still more erroneous and pernicious than either or both the others.

When Moses asks by what name he shall describe the Almighty to the Israelites; God answers him, Exod. iii. 14, "I will be what I will be,”—a phrase expressive of the immutability of the divine nature and counsels: which the public version renders, "I am that I am." In the text in John, our Lord says to the Jews, " Before Abraham was born, I was," for so it must be rendered in order to make sense, as expositors generally allow. But the pub

lic version renders the words "I am;" which, being connected in idea with the same words in the English version in the book of Exodus, have led to the conclusion that our Lord assumed a title peculiar to the Supreme being: he is therefore God, equal to, or one with, the Father.

It is plain that no such inference would have been thought of had the translation of the two passages been more correct. Nor can it be reasonably alleged that the words of our Lord are a citation from the Septuagint version and not from the Hebrew original. For the words in the LXX. are Eyw sony, "I am the Being." And such would probably have been the words of the evangelist, had he intended to express in Greek an allusion to this text, which our Lord had delivered in his native, that is the Syro-chaldaic tongue 45.

2. "Before Abraham was born I existed."

The present tense of the substantive verb is sometimes used for the past. John xiv. 9, "Have I been (ε, am I,) so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?" Psalm xc. 2, "Before the mountains were brought forth thou wert (ova, thou art,) God." John v. 13, "He that was healed knew not who it was," (TIS EσTI, who it is.) In other verbs the present is also sometimes used for the preterite. John viii. 25, "They said to him, Who

15 This supposed allusion of our Lord to the declaration in Exodus is not noticed either by Calvin or Beza, though the former understands it as an assertion of his divine nature. The latter indeed appears to incline to refer the expression to the divine decree concerning Christ as mediator: "Quatenus est oculis fidei visus ab Abrahamo-alioqui non videretur Christus apposite disserere." Neither the LXX. translation nor the Latin Vulgate would be likely to lead any one into the same error into which the English version leads an English reader. The LXX. is cited above. The Latin Vulgate reads, “ Ego sum qui sum: sic dices filiis Israel, Qui est misit me ad vos,' Indeed the supposed allusion of our Lord to the words in Exodus, is so palpably groundless, and so completely abandoned by all learned and judicious critics, that one cannot help wondering that so enlightened and liberal a writer as Archbishop Newcome should have given any countenance to it.

art

art thou? Jesus said unto them, Even what I told you at first," (aλw, I tell.) See also John xii. 9; xv. 27; XX. 14; xxi. 4. 12. Acts ix. 2646.

The Jews evidently understood the language of Jesus as an assertion of his existence before the birth of Abraham; for in the paroxysm of their rage they took up stones to stone him as a liar and a blasphemer.

This text is regarded by the supporters of the Arian hypothesis as a decisive proof of the pre-existence of

46 Newcome in loc. "Eyw eu, præsens pro imperfecto: eram. syw TEXOV. Nonnus. Sic in Græco. Ps. xc. 2." Grotius.- "I am, that is, I was." Bishop Pearce, who observes in his note that the present tense is sometimes used for the preterite, and refers to John viii. 25 ; i. 18. Matt. xxiii. 39. and his notes upon them. "Le présent se prend souvent dans l'Ecriture pour l'imparfait, qui est un tems dont les langues Orientales manquent." Le Clerc." I assure you in the most solemn manner, I existed before Abraham drew the breath of life." Harwood. "The peculiar use of the present tense in the usage of scriptural expression is to imply determination and certainty, as if he had said, My mission was settled and certain before the birth of Abraham." Wakefield." The words may be rendered, I was. The present for the imperfect, or even for the preterperfect, is no unusual figure with this writer." Campbell." Dixerat prius, diem suam ardenti desiderio expetitum fuisse ab Abraham. Quia hoc Judæis incredibile erat, subjecit se tunc quoque fuisse." Calvin.

that

The expositors and critics are almost unanimous in giving to the words εγω ειμι the sense of past time. Nevertheless a learned writer in the Theological Repository, vol. iv. p. 350, objects, "If it be said Eyw sul may be translated I was, this appears to me more easily asserted than proved. Indeed the present tense of au in Greek and of sum in Latin may in some instances be translated have been, but I imagine in those only where the present time is taken in with the past, and a continuance of being is implied." And Dr. Carpenter, in his Letters to Mr. Veysie, p. 246, remarks, that "for the interpretation which requires ayw au, I am, to have the sense of I was, no justification appears in the writings of John, at least, if in any part of the New Testament."

The learned reader will judge how far the evidence alleged supports the general sense of critics and expositors, that the present tense is here used to express what is called the imperfect, I am, for I was.

It is observable that in the text above cited, John v. 13, the Cambridge manuscript for Tis 851 reads 75 ny. The Vulgate, the old Italic, and Beza, translate " quis esset."

Christ; and the Unitarian exposition of it is treated by them with great contempt 47.

"The Socinian interpretation of this passage," says Dr. Clarke, (Scrip. Doc. No. 591.) "is very languid and unnatural, that Christ was before Abraham in the foreknowledge and appointment of God. The plain meaning is, that he was really with God in the beginning, and be. fore the world was."

This language is rather too confident, especially as the learned advocate of this high-Arian or semi-Arian hypothesis has not condescended to state his objections to the Unitarian interpretation. The venerable bishop Pearce has given his explanation of the text in less offensive terms. "What Jesus here says relates, I think, to his existence antecedent to Abraham's days, and not to his having been the Christ appointed or foretold before that time: for, if Jesus had meant this, the answer would, I apprehend, not have been a pertinent one. He might have been appointed,

47 Dr. Harwood in his Observations on the Socinian Scheme, p. 42, allows himself great freedom and warmth of language upon this subject. "That plain declaration," says he, "of our Saviour to the Jews, that before Abraham was, he had an existence, will, I think, for ever stand in full force against all the acumen of criticism, and sagacity of refinement, which may be employed to invalidate and explain away its natural and obvious signification. The interpretation that our Lord had an existence in the divine decree before Abraham, and that it was before the times of this patriarch fore-ordained that he should appear in such an age and state of the world, is extremely forced and futile, and does not discriminate our Lord from thyself, O reader, who hadst from eternity an existence in the divine decree. It is plain that our Saviour's audience took these words in their natural acceptation; for, upon his asserting to them that he was in being before their great ancestor, they were instantly transported with fury against him as a blasphemer and impostor, and took up stones with a design to murther him. These actual violences of the Jews prove, I apprehend, better than a thousand inane and chimerical theories, how our Redeemer was understood, and intended to be understood."

After all, notwithstanding this fine declamation, the Jews might, for any thing that appears, misunderstand our Lord's words, as unquestionably they did.

foretold,