Waterland’s anxiety to show the anti-heretical force of St. John’s Gospel and Epistles, has caused him to overlook their Catholicity—­their applicability to all countries and all times—­their truth, independently of all temporary accidents and errors;—­which Catholicity alone it is that constitutes their claim to Canonicity, that is, to be Canonical inspired writings.

Ib. p. 266.

  Hereupon therefore the Apostle, in defence of Christ’s real humanity,
  says, ‘This is he that came by water and blood’.

‘Water and blood,’ that is ‘serum’ and ‘crassamentum’, mean simply ‘blood,’ the blood of the animal or carnal life, which, saith Moses, ’is the life’.  Hence ‘flesh’ is often taken as, and indeed is a form of, the blood,—­blood formed or organized.  Thus ‘blood’ often includes ‘flesh,’ and ‘flesh’ includes ‘blood.’  ‘Flesh and blood’ is equivalent to blood in its twofold form, or rather as formed and formless.  ‘Water and blood’ has, therefore, two meanings in St. John, but which ’in idem coincidunt’: 

1. true animal human blood, and no celestial ichor or phantom: 

2. the whole sentiently vital body, fixed or flowing, the pipe and the stream.

For the ancients, and especially the Jews, had no distinct apprehension of the use or action of the nerves:  in the Old Testament ‘heart’ is used as we use ‘head.’  ’The fool hath said in his heart’—­is in English:  “the worthless fellow (’vaurien’) hath taken it into his head,” &c.

Ib. p. 268.

  The Apostle having said that the Spirit is truth, or essential truth,
  (which was giving him a title common to God the Father and to Christ,)
  &c.

Is it clear that the distinct ‘hypostasis’ of the Holy Spirit, in the same sense as the only-begotten Son is hypostatically distinguished from the Father, was a truth that formed an immediate object or intention of St. John?  That it is a truth implied in, and fairly deducible from, many texts, both in his Gospel and Epistles, I do not, indeed I cannot, doubt;—­but only whether this article of our faith he was commissioned to declare explicitly?

It grieves me to think that such giant ‘archaspistae’ of the Catholic Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1 ‘John’ v. 7), which, in the opulence and continuity of the evidences, as displayed by their own master-minds, would have been superfluous, had it not been worse than superfluous, that is, senseless in itself, and interruptive of the profound sense of the Apostle.

Ib. p. 272.

  He is come, come in the flesh, and not merely to reside for a time, or
  occasionally, and to fly off again, but to abide and dwell with man,
  clothed with humanity.

Incautiously worded at best.  Compare our Lord’s own declaration to his disciples, that he had dwelt a brief while ‘with’ or ‘among’ them, in order to dwell ‘in’ them permanently.