demnation is certain; accusation will come from a quarter you are little thinking of. Moses, in whom ye trust, will accuse you and condemn you.'

The Jews had a superstitious trust in Moses. They expected him to appear along with the Messiah, and to assist him in accomplishing their deliverance. They also, at least in later ages, trusted in the intercession of Moses for the acceptance of their prayers. For the doctrine of the intercession of saints as mediators seems to have been borrowed

by the apostate christian church, from the apostate Jewish church. The trust our. Lord refers to was likely, however, rather a trust in his writings than in his person. They thought that in them they had eternal life. They made their boast in the law. Their language was-" We are Moses' disciples, we know that God spake by Moses." But our Lord assures them that this very Moses would be their accuser.

Moses may be considered as the accuser of the Jews in a variety of ways. His law, of which they were proud, had often been violated by them, and they had exposed themselves to the punishment it denounces against its violators. In his writings, especially in the prophetic song in the 32d chapter of Deuteronomy, the contemporaries of our Lord are described and condemned. But the manner in which Moses was to accuse them, referred to by our Lord, was obviously this: Moses is a witness to the justness of our Lord's claims, and, of course, a witness against those who rejected them. That this was our Lord's meaning seems plain from what follows: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me."1

Moses wrote of our Lord. In Moses' writings are recorded some very remarkable prophecies of the Messiah, such as the first promise, the promise to Abraham, the dying blessing of Jacob on the tribe of Judah, and possibly also the predic

John v. 46.

1

tion of Balaam, "Behold a star shall arise out of Jacob." Moses himself also uttered a remarkable prophecy respecting the Messiah. "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken." He instructed them in the signs of true and false prophets. The whole of the sacrificial economy had a reference to the Messiah. Had the Jews believed Moses, they would have believed Jesus. In one sense the Jews did believe Moses-they had no doubt of his divine mission. In another sense they did not believe him—they did not understand his writings; and, therefore, they could not believe them. Had they properly understood Moses' writings, and firmly believed them, the reception of Jesus as the Messiah would have been a matter of course. "But," added our Lord, "if ye believe not his writings, how shall believe my words? "2 We are not to understand these words as if they intimated that Moses is worthy of greater credit than our Lord, or that our Lord's divine mission is not established on evidence altogether independent of Moses' testimony. They merely intimate that nothing but a rejection of Jesus' claims was to be expected from persons who, through ignorance and unbelief, paid no attention to the declarations of a writer whom they acknowledged as inspired.

ye

the judicious Scott:

It is to be feared that there are too many nominal Christians, who will be found at last involved in a similar condemnation with the Jews. These are weighty words of "How many are there who trust in their attachment to some form of doctrine, or to some renowned head of a party, who no more enter into the meaning of these doctrines, or into the views of the persons whose names they bear, than the Jews believed the words of Moses, or entered into his views of the prefigured and predicted Messiah. The creeds and formularies of many sects and

1 Deut. xviii. 15.

John v 47.

establishments suffice for the condemnation of vast multitudes who glory in belonging to them as members or ministers; and it is well if the sermons many preach, and the books which they publish, do not appear in judgment against them to accuse them of not believing and practising what they preached and printed."

Note A, p. 97.

Præteritum, perаßéẞnke, est præteritum propheticum et vim futuri obtinet hic, ut Jo. i. 15. KUINOEL. I demur to this "ut," &c. There can, however, be no doubt that the "enallage temporum" is very frequent with the Evangelist John. We need not go farther than the immediate context to prove this. Some Latin codices render the word "transibit," indicating not how they read, but how they understood it. I am disposed to think the declaration refers to an event, future when the declaration was made, yet past, in reference to the future event indicated in the immediately preceding clause. He shall not enter into condemnation, or punishment, and the reason is," he has already passed from death into life." The passage in 1 John iii. 14, where the same phrase occurs, though it may be interpreted in the same way as in the case before us, will seem to many more naturally to refer to conversion; and it is not without some hesitation that we come to the conclusion that our exegesis is the more probable.

NOTE B, p. 114.

CAMPBELL translates this passage thus:-"Did ye never hear his voice, or see his form? Or have ye forgotten his declaration, that ye believe not him whom he hath commissioned?" And he defends his translation in the following able note :—

"The reader will observe, that the two clauses which are rendered in the English Testament as declarations, are, in this

version, translated as questions. The difference in the original is only in the pointing. That they ought so to be read, we need not, in my opinion, stronger evidence than that they throw much light upon the whole passage, which, read in the common way, is both dark and ill connected. See an excellent note on this passage, from Mr Turner of Wakefield (Priestley's Harmony, Sect. xl.) Our Lord here refers them to the testimony given of him at his baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended on him in a visible form, and when God, with an audible voice, declared him to be his beloved Son, and our lawgiver, whom we ought to hear and obey. What has chiefly contributed to mislead interpreters in regard to the import of this sentence, is the resemblance which it bears to what is said, ch. i. 18, Oeòv ovdeìs éwpakev πώποτε, no one ever saw God; and ch. vi. 46, οὐχ ὅτ τὸν πατέρα Tis éάpake, not that any one hath seen the Father. There is, however, a difference in the expressions; for it is not said here, oute τὸν πατέρα, but οὔτε εἶδος αὐτοῦ ἑωράκατε. This, it may be thought, as it seems to ascribe a body to God, must be understood in the same way; for we are told, Deut. iv. 12, that, when the Lord spake to the people out of the fire, they saw no similitude. Of this they are again reminded, verse 15. But the word in the Septuagint is, in both places, not eidos, but ópoíwμa, which, in scriptural use, appears to denote a figure so distinct and permanent, as that it may be represented in stone, wood, or metal. Now, though this is not to be attributed to God, the sacred writers do not scruple to call the visible symbol which God, on any occasion, employs for impressing men more strongly with a sense of his presence, eidos auroù, which (for want of a better term) I have rendered, his form. Thus the Evangelist Luke says, ch. iii. 22, in relating that singular transaction here alluded to, that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus, owμarik edel, in a bodily form. Thus, also, the word eidos is applied to the appearances which God made to men, under the Mosaic dispensation.

His appearance in fire upon Mount Sinai, is called by the Seventy, Ex. xxiv. 17, tò eidos tŷs dóĝns toû kupíov; in our Bible, the sight of the glory of the Lord. In like manner, the word eidos is applied to the symbol of the Divine presence, which the

Israelites enjoyed in the wilderness; the cloud which covered the tabernacle in the day-time, and appeared as fire in the night, Num. ix. 15, 16. And, to mention but one other instance, the display which he made to Moses, when he conversed with him face to face, is, in the English Translation, said to be apparently, Num. xii. 8; but, in the Septuagint, év eïdes, that is, in a form or visible figure. Thus, in the language of Scripture, there is a manifest difference between seeing God-which no man ever did, he being in himself a pure spirit-and seeing his form, rò eidos avrov, the appearance which, at any time, in condescension to the weakness of his creatures, he pleases to assume. Another evidence, if necessary, might be brought to show that there was no intention here to express the invisibility of the divine nature, and is as follows: the clause which appears to have been so much misunderstood, is coupled with this other, oure pwvnv ἀκηκόατε πώποτε. Can we imagine that the impossible would have been thus conjoined with what is commonly mentioned as a privilege often enjoyed by God's people, and to which their attention is required as a duty? For, though we are expressly told, that no man ever saw God, it is nowhere said that no man ever heard his voice. Nay, in the very place above quoted, Deut. iv. 12, where we are informed that the people saw no similitude, ópoíwpa, it is particularly mentioned that they heard the voice.

"To conclude: there is the greater probability in the explanation which I have given of the words, as all the chief circumstances attending that memorable testimony at his baptism, are exactly pointed out-the miraculous voice from heaven, the descent of the Holy Spirit in a bodily form, and the declaration itself then given. Dr Clarke seems to have had some apprehension of this meaning; for though, in his paraphrase, he explains the words in the usual way, he, in a parenthesis, takes notice of the two striking circumstances, the voice and the form, at our Lord's baptism." Dr Campbell is not singular in this view: Trinius and Moldenhauer have given the same interpretation.

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