APPENDIX. I Extract of a Letter from a Friend. DEAR SIR, November 5, 1783. HAVE just been reading Dr. Horsley's charge against you, to which I doubt not you will make a proper reply. As he seems to triumph in your having, as he supposes; mistaken the sense of some Greek quotations; and as parallel passages are not always at hand, though common enough if we could wait for them till they occur, I take the liberty of sending you one that I have since met with in Demosthenes, and another from Thucydides. In opposition to your interpretation of the beginning of John's gospel, he says, the natural force of ouros is this person. Very true, if the noun to which it belongs represent a person; but if the noun be only the name of a thing, then the natural force of ouros will be this thing, as appears from the following passage from Demosthenes, 1st Olynthiac, Νυνι δε καιρος ἡκει τις οὗτος ; ὁ των Ολυνθίων αυτοματος τη πόλει. "Now comes another conjuncture; what conjuncture? That which voluntarily offers itself to the republic from the Olynthians." FRANCIS. The Doctor is much displeased with your translating oux anλw Twin nothing but. To be sure, if it were clear from other arguments that the Aoyos and ropia σοφια in question were persons, his translation would be the But that those words cannot always be un true one. derstood to mean no other person, will be manifest from the following passage of Thucydides, lib. iv. cap. cxxvi. p. 311. Ουκ αλλῳ τινι κτησαμενοί την δυναστείαν, η τῳ μαχομενοι κρατ TEV. Qui nulla alia ratione principatum sunt adepti, quam quod (hostes) præliando superarent. As to the other passage from Theophilus, of which the Doctor takes notice in his 63d page, when you come to look at it again, you will perceive that you did not exactly hit on the meaning of the last line; and I think the Doctor was a little warped by his system, when he translated God the word, the wisdom, Man. I think it pretty plain from the preceding words, TOU θεου και του λογου, και της σοφιας αυτου, that the words in question should be translated "that there might be God, his word, his wisdom, (and) man." But this I submit to your better judgement. PREFACE. I AM truly concerned that the discussion which I have entered into, of the historical evidence of the doctrine of the primitive ages concerning the person of Christ, has not taken the amicable turn that I proposed, and of which I gave a specimen in my former series of Letters to Dr. Horsley. Those were strictly argumentative, and likewise uniformly respectful. But as his Letters, in answer to me, are written in a style that is far from corresponding to mine, as the reader must perceive in every page, to reply to him in the same respectful manner in which I first wrote, would have been unnatural and absurd. In the present publication, therefore, I have taken the liberty to treat him with more freedom. As he has declared that he will make no further reply to me, I imagine that this publication will close the present controversy; and I hope it will not have been without its use in promoting the cause of truth, though I am persuaded it would have answered this end still more effectually, if my proposal of a perfectly amicable discussion, and also that of bringing it to its proper termination, had been accepted. I am now proceeding with my larger History of the State of Opinions concerning Christ in the primitive Times. But to execute this work as I wish to do it, and consistently with my other engagements and pursuits, will require a considerable time, hardly less than two or three years. Nor will my readers wonder at |