Chapter XI: Letter III: p. 38

They (the Jews) did not deny that to be God's own Son was to be equal
with the Father, nor did they allege that such an equality would
destroy the divine unity: a thought of this kind never seems to have
occurred to their minds.

In so truly excellent a book as this is, I regret that this position should rest on an assertion. The equality of Christ would not, indeed, destroy the unity of God the Father, considered as one Person: but, unless we presume the Jews in question acquainted with the great truth of the Tri-unity, we must admit that it would be considered as implying Ditheism. Now that some among the Jews had made very near approaches, though blended with errors, to the doctrine taught in John, c. i., we can prove from the writings of Philo;--and the Socinians can never prove that these Jews did not know at least of the doctrine of their schools concerning the only-begotten Word--[Greek: Lógos monogenáes],--not as an attribute, much less as an abstraction or personification--but as a distinct 'Hypostasis' [Greek: symphysikáe]:-and hence it might be shown that their offence was that the carpenter's son, the Galilean, should call himself the [Greek: Theòs phanerós]. This might have been rendered more than probable by the concluding sentence of Christ's answer to the disciples of John;--'and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me' (Luke vii. 23.); which appears to have no adequate or even tolerable meaning, unless in reference to the passage in Isaiah, (lxi. 1, 2.) prophesying that Jehovah himself would come among them, and do the things which our Saviour states himself to have done. Thus, too, I regret that the answer of our Lord, (John x. 34-36.) being one of the imagined strong-holds of the Socinians, should not have been more fully cleared up. I doubt not that Fuller's is a true interpretation; and that no other is consistent with our Lord's various other declarations. But the words in and by themselves admit a more plausible misinterpretation than is elsewhere the case of Socinian displanations. In short, I think both passages would have been better deferred to a further part of the work.

Let me add that a mighty and comparatively new argument against the Socinians may be most unanswerably deduced from this reply of our Lord's, even were it considered as a mere 'argumentum ad homines': --namely, that it was not his Messiahship that so offended the Jews, but his Sonship; otherwise, our Saviour's language would have neither force, motive, or object. "Even were I no more than the Messiah, in your meanest conceptions of that character, yet after what I have done before your eyes, nothing but malignant hearts could have prevented you from adopting a milder interpretation of my words, when in your own Scriptures there exists a precedent that so much more than merely justifies me." And this I believe to be the meaning of the words as intended to be understood by the Jews in question; though, doubtless, Fuller's sense exists 'implicite'. No candid person would ever call it an evasion, to prove the injustice and malignity of an accuser even from his own grounds:--"You charge me falsely; but even were your charge true, namely, that I am a mere man, and yet call myself the Son of God, still it would not follow that I have been guilty of blasphemy." But as understood by the modern Unicists, it would verily, verily, be an evasive ambiguity, most unworthy of Christian belief concerning his Saviour. Common charity would have demanded of him to have said:--"I am a mere man: I do not pretend to be more; but I used the words in analogy to the words, 'Ye are as Gods'; and I have a right to do so: for though a mere man, I am the great Prophet and Messenger which Moses promised you."