“honouring them” ([Greek:  timontes]), is the identical word four times employed by St. John [John v. 23.], in the same verse, to record our Saviour’s saying, “That all men might honour the Son, even as they honour the Father; he that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father, who hath sent him.”]

But in determining the true meaning of an obscure passage, grammatically susceptible of different acceptations, the author himself is often his own best interpreter.  If he has expressed in another place the same leading sentiment, yet without the same obscurity, and free from all doubt, the light borrowed from that passage {110} will frequently fix the sense of the ambiguous expression, and establish the author’s consistency.  On this acknowledged principle of criticism, I would call your attention to a passage in the very same treatise of Justin, a few pages further on, in which he again defends the Christians against the same charge of being atheists, and on the self-same ground, “that they worship the Father who is maker of all; secondly, the Son proceeding from Him; and thirdly, the Holy Spirit.”  In both cases he refers to the same attributes of the Son as the teacher of Christian truth, and of the Holy Ghost, as the Prophetic Spirit.  His language throughout the two passages is remarkably similar, and in the expressions on the true meaning of which we have already dwelt, it is most strikingly identical; but by omitting all allusion to the angels after the Son, his own words proving that the introduction of them could have no place there, (for he specifies that the third in order was the Holy Spirit,) Justin has left us a comment on the passage under consideration conclusive as to the object of religious worship in his creed.  The whole passage is well worth the attention of the reader.  The following extracts are the only parts necessary for our present purpose:—­

“Who of sound mind will not confess that we are not Atheists, reverencing as we do the Maker of the Universe.... and Him, who taught us these things, and who was born for this purpose, Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate.... instructed, as we are, that He is the Son of the True God, and holding Him in the second place; and the Prophetic Spirit in the third order, we with reason honour.” [Sect. xiii. p. 50.] {111}

The impiety apparently inseparable from Bellarmin’s interpretation has induced many, even among Roman Catholic writers, to discard that acceptation altogether, and to substitute others, which, though involving no grammatical inaccuracy, are still not free from difficulty.[37] After weighing the passage with all the means in my power, and after testing the various interpretations offered by writers, whether of the Church of Rome or not, by the sentiments of Justin himself, and others of the same early age, I am fully persuaded that the following is the only true rendering of Justin’s words: 

“Honouring in reason and truth, we reverence and worship him, the Father of Righteousness, and the Son (who proceeded from Him, and instructed in these things both ourselves and the host of the other good angels following Him and being made like unto Him), and the Prophetic Spirit.”