passage, which we quote from the Syriac version of the Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans: I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, and I seek his blood, which is incorruptible love.' But in the same epistle, the author referring to his impending martyrdom, says, 'I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become the pure bread of God.' This form of metaphor, therefore, belongs to the author, but if it is associated with the language of Pseudo-John, the Ignatian epistles have been too freely handled by literary forgers to assign a date to the publication of the fourth Gospel.

not

We are next referred, for further traces of Johannine phraseology, to the anonymous author of the epistle to the unknown Docetus; as, for instance, when he says, Christians live in the world, but are not of the world,' and He sent his only-begotten Son as loving condemning.' But as this writer, whilst claiming to be the disciple of Apostles, stands self-convicted of deception by his contempt for the Mosaic dispensation, his consequently undated epistle furnishes no clue to the era of Johannine authorship.

A more important coincidence occurs in Justin Martyr: Christ said, "Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." But, as Justin sustains the identity of Jesus with the ideal Logos of Plato, in absolute independence of Johanninę theosophy, he was obviously ignorant of the fourth Gospel in its present form; and the exceptional passage in question, therefore, simply indicates the currency of traditional sayings of Jesus, available for any Christian 1 1 Apol. lxi.

writer of the second century, or possibly, the existence of some other gospel, from which Pseudo-John selected materials for fusion with his ideal Gnosticism.

Orthodox theologians further say: The fourth Gospel was undoubtedly recognised, in the last quarter of the second century, as the work of John; if it is alleged that the author is not John, we demand an explanation of its existence and reception at that period as the work of the apostle.' We answer, the Book of Enoch was • accepted in the second century as the work of Enoch ; if, therefore, orthodox theologians of the nineteenth century reject its antediluvian origin, let them forthwith name the veritable author, and explain the success of this literary forgery. This line of argument is equally applicable to a wide range of pseudonymous literature, from the Wisdom of Solomon to the Apocalypse of John; but, passing to a later date, we merely add, do orthodox theologians believe in the Athanasian authorship of the anathematic Creed, and if not, can they explain its introduction into the faith of Christendom on apparently false pretences?

Notwithstanding the hopelessness of rationally assigning an apostolic date to the fourth Gospel, faith triumphs where reason fails, and modern piety accepts this evangelical fiction as the veritable autogram of the apostle John. Grant that faith is right and reason wrong, to what conclusions do we attain through a Johannine gospel? Its author had been the friend and companion of Jesus, witnessing a noble life which, in its simple submission to the will of the Deity, disclosed no trace of pretension to Divinity; but having settled at

Ephesus after the fall of Jerusalem, and mingled with the cosmopolitan crowd of philosophers who discussed conflicting systems as they sauntered in the Xystus, whither men came to barter merchandise or exchange ideas, this Galilean peasant, chosen by his Lord and Master for his simplicity and ignorance, made the startling discovery that the Hebrew Messiah is the Logos of Plato! and, accepting the revelation as divine, hastened to compose the evangelical fiction which depicts a Being, neither true to Humanity nor to Divinity. It is said that John wrote his Gospel in extreme old age; was his work, therefore, the product of senility, and do we accept an octogenarian version of phantasmal Divinity, in preference to the simple story of the Son of Man recorded in the pages of Matthew?

If, therefore, we see in John the author of the fourth Gospel, we also recognise in him the Heresiarch who corrupted the original teaching of Jesus with the philosophic Gnosticism more fully developed in the system of Valentinus, and who set the pernicious example of inspired innovations, which eventually transformed Christianity into the magical mirror, in which successive generations of imaginary followers of Jesus of Nazareth have seen the reflection of their own ideas, and imposed them on Humanity as divine.

We have thus seen that the deification of Jesus of Nazareth was the imaginative creation of credulous theologians, who, under the control of an illusory superstition, gave free scope to their inventive genius in constructing fanciful theories of relationship between the Son of Man and the Platonic phantoms of Alexan

drine Gnosticism. And it, therefore, remains for all who have formed their ideal of Jesus through the Logia of Matthew, to acquit him of having ever claimed to be more than man, inspired by the Spirit of his Father in heaven.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE TRINITY.

HAVING thus traced the progressive deification of Jesus to the middle of the third century, our readers may reasonably inquire where, during this long lapse of time, was that mysterious Trinity which we have all been taught to reverence as an apostolic institution? We answer, waiting the evolution of the Third Person in a sufficiently definite form to complete the number of triune Divinity.

The minds of theologians had been previously too deeply absorbed in discussing the attributes of the Logos to give much attention to the Holy Spirit, whose personality therefore remained an open question long after the deification of Jesus.

Justin Martyr speaks of worshipping 'God and the Son who proceeded from Him, the host of the other good Angels who accompany and resemble him, and the prophetic spirit.'1

Irenæus says: 'I have also shown that the Word, namely, the Son, was always with the Father, and that Wisdom also, which is the Spirit, was present with Him before all creation.'

Tertullian, who speaks of Unitarian Christians as simpletons because they could not understand his 1 1 Apol. vi.