The Lost Gospel and Its Contents by Michael F. Sadler (most popular ebook readers TXT) 📖

Pusey, "Seminal Divine Word."

[78:1] A few pages further on I shall show that the mode of reasoning adopted by the author of "Supernatural Religion," in drawing inferences from the ways in which Justin expresses the idea of St. John's [Greek: ho logos sarx egeneto] would, if we adopted it, lead us to some very startling conclusions.

[84:1] The following are some instances:--"God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world." "He Whom God sent."--John iii. 17, 23. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me." "Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent." "As my Father sent me, so send I you," &c.

[85:1] This passage does not occur among the remarks upon Justin Martyr's quotations, but among those on the Clementine Homilies. However, it seems to be used to prove that the Gospel of St. John was published after the writing of the Clementines, which the author seems to think were themselves posterior to Justin.

[86:1] I say the "necessary" developments, because Holy Scripture is given to the Church to be expounded and applied, and in order to this its doctrine must be collected out of many scattered statements, and stated and guarded, and this is its being developed. The Persons, the attributes, and the works of the three Persons of the Godhead are so described in Holy Scripture as Divine, and They are so conjoined in the works of Creation, Providence, and Grace, that we cannot but contemplate Them as associated together, and cannot but draw an impassable gulf between Their existence and that of all creatures, and we cannot but adoringly contemplate Their relations one to another, and hence the necessary development of the Christian dogma as contained in the Creeds.

[91:1] [Greek: Ton di' hêmas tou anthrôpous kai dia tên hêmeteran sôtêrian katelthonta ek tôn ouranôn, kai sarkôthenta ek Pneumatos Hagiou kai Marias tês parthenou, kai enanthrôpêsanta, k.t.l.]

[94:1] Though of course not as regards time , for all Catholics hold the Eternal Generation, that there never was a time in which the Father was not a Father; nor as regards power or extension, for whatever the Father does that the Son does also, and wherever the Father is there is the Son also.

[100:1] Eusebius, B. ii. ch. v.

[106:1] Apol. i. 14.

[107:1] The spirit of this verse, and its form of expression, are quite those of the Gospel of St. John; and it serves to form a link of union between the three Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth, and to point to the vast and weighty mass of discourses of the Lord which are not related except by St. John. Alford in loco.

[117:1] If the reader desires to see Logos doctrine expressed in philosophic terminology, he can find it in some of the extracts from Philo given in the notes of "Supernatural Religion" vol. ii. pp. 272-298. Can there be a greater contrast than that between St. John's terse, concise, simple, enunciations and the following: [Greek: Kai ou monon phôs, alla kai pantos heterou phôtos archetypon mallon de archetypou presbyteron kai anôteron, Logon echon paradeigmatos to men gar paradeigma ho plêrestatos ên autou Logos, k.t.l.]--De Somniis, i. 15, Mang. i. 634. There is no particularly advanced philosophic terminology here, and yet there is a profound difference between both the thought and wording of this sentence of Philo and St. John's four enunciations of the Logos. Again, [Greek: Dêlon de hoti kai hê archetypos sphragis, hon phamen einai kosmon noêton, autos an eiê to archetypon paradeigma, idea tôn ideôn, ho Theou Logos.]--De Mundi Opificio Mang. vol. i. p. 8. "It is manifest also that the archetypal seal, which we call that world which is perceptible only to the intellect, must itself be the archetypal model, the idea of ideas, the word of God." (Yonge's Translation.)

[126:1] "When He came into the world He was manifested as God and man. And it is easy to perceive the man in Him when He hungers and shows exhaustion, and is weary and athirst, and withdraws in fear, and is in prayer and in grief, and sleeps on a boat's pillow, and entreats the removal of the cup of suffering, and sweats in an agony, and is strengthened by an angel, and betrayed by a Judas, and mocked by Caiaphas, and set at naught by Herod, and scourged by Pilate, and derided by the soldiers, and nailed to the tree by the Jews, and with a cry commits His spirit to His Father, and drops His head and gives up the ghost, and has His side pierced by a spear, and is wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb, and is raised by the Father from the dead. And the Divine in Him, on the other hand, is equally manifest when He is worshipped by angels, and seen by shepherds, and waited for by Simeon, and testified of by Anna, and inquired after by wise men, and pointed out by a star, and at a marriage makes wine of water, and chides the sea when tossed by the violence of winds, and walks upon the deep, and makes one see who was blind from birth, and raises Lazarus when dead for four days, and works many wonders, and forgives sins, and grants power to His disciples."

[152:1] History affords multitudes of instances, but an example may be selected from one of the most critical periods of modern history. Let it be granted that Louis the Sixteenth of France and his Queen had all the defects attributed to them by the most hostile of serious historians; let all the excuses possible be made for his predecessor, Louis the Fifteenth, and also for Madame de Pompadour, can it be pretended that there are grounds for affirming that the vices of the two former so far exceeded those of the latter, that their respective fates were plainly and evidently just? That whilst the two former died in their beds, after a life of the most extreme luxury, the others merited to stand forth through coming time, as examples of the most appalling and calamitous tragedy. (Mivart's "Genesis of Species," ch. ix.)

[155:1] What sign showest Thou us? Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up: but He spake of the temple of His Body. (John ii. 19-21) An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the Prophet Jonas, for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matt. xii. 39, 40) God commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because He hath appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath chosen, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men in that He raised Him from the dead. (Acts xvii. 30.)

[158:1] This sentence seems extremely carelessly worded. The author cannot possibly mean that our ignorance is the anomaly, for throughout his whole work he assumes that ignorance is the rule in all matters, moral, physical, historical. The Fathers of the second century knew nothing of the Evangelists. St. John knows nothing of the writings of his brother Evangelists. They are all assumed to be ignorant of what they have not actually recorded. We know nothing of vital force, or physical force, or of a revelation. In fact, God Himself is the Unknowable.

[164:1] Perhaps 1 Tim. i. 20, iv. 14; 2 Tim i. 6, may refer to such gifts; but the contrast between such slight intimations and the full recognition in 1 Cor. xii. and xiv. is very great.

[168:1] "The author [of the book of Enoch] not only relates the fall of the angels through love for the daughters of men, but gives the names of twenty-one of them, and their leaders, of whom Jequn was he who seduced the Holy Angels, and Ashbeel it was who gave them evil counsel and corrupted them. A third, Gadreel, was he who seduced Eve. He also taught to the children of men the use and manufacture of all murderous weapons, of coats of mail, shields, swords, and of all the implements of war. Another evil angel, named Penemue, taught them many mysteries of wisdom. He instructed men in the art of writing, with paper and ink, by means of which, the author remarks, many fall into sin, even to the present day. Kaodejâ, another evil angel, taught the human race all the wicked practices of spirits and demons, and also magic and exorcism. The offspring of the fallen angels and of the daughters of men, were giants whose height was 3,000 ells, of these are the demons working evil upon earth. Azayel taught men various arts, the making of bracelets and ornaments, the use of cosmetics, the way to beautify the eyebrows, precious stones and all dye-stuffs and metals, &c. The stars are represented as animated beings. Enoch sees seven stars bound together in space like great mountains, and flaming with fire, and he enquires of the angel who leads him on account of what sin they are so bound. Uriel informs him that they are stars which have transgressed the commands of the Most High, and they are thus bound until ten thousand worlds, the number of the days of their transgression, shall be accomplished." So far for the "Angelology." As to the demons, "Their number is infinite ... they are about as close as the earth thrown up out of a newly made grave. It is stated that each man has 10,000 demons at his right hand, and 1,000 on his left. The crush in the synagogue on the Sabbath arises from them, also the dresses of the Rabbins become so old and torn through their rubbing; in like manner also they cause the tottering of the feet. He who wishes to discover these spirits must take sifted ashes and strew them about his bed, and in the morning he will perceive their footprints upon them like a cock's tread. If any one wish to see them, he must take the after-birth of a black cat, which has been littered by a first-born black cat, and whose mother was also a first-birth, burn and reduce it to powder, and put some of it on his eyes, and he will see them." (Vol. i. pp. 104 and 111). And this is the stuff which the author would have us believe was the real origin of the supernatural in the life of Jesus!

[170:1] See also Mark v. 42 (healing of Jairus' daughter), "They were astonished with a great astonishment." Mark vii. 37 (healing of deaf man with impediment in his speech), "They were beyond measure astonished." Luke v. 9, "He was astonished at the draught of fishes;" viii. 56, "Her parents were astonished."

[178:1] There cannot be the slightest doubt but that certain cases of madness or mania present all the appearances of possession as it is described in Scripture. Another personality, generally intensely evil, has possession of the mind, speaks instead of the afflicted person, throws the patient into convulsions,--in fact, exhibits all the symptoms of the ancient demoniacs. I have now before me the record of five or six such cases attested by German physicians.

[183:1] The reader will find the references to it discussed in a dissertation at the end of Whiston's "Josephus." Lardner utterly denies its authenticity. Daubuz, however, has, I think, clearly proved its style and phraseology to be those of Josephus.

[185:1] Singular that he should say "out of Palestine," for if they were false they would be first heard of at a distance from the scene of their supposed occurrence. Jerusalem, so full of bitter enemies