One of these is in the First Apology, and reads thus:—­

“Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the Second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the Third, we will prove.” (Apol.  I. ch. xiii.)

Again, he endeavours to show that Plato held the doctrine of a Trinity.  He is proving that Plato had read the books of Moses:—­

“And, as to his speaking of a third, he did this because he read, as we said above, that which was spoken by Moses, ’that the Spirit of God moved over the waters.’  For he gives the second place to the Logos which is with God, who he (Plato) said, was placed crosswise in the universe; and the third place to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon the water, saying, ‘and the third around the third.’” (Apol.  I. ch. lx.)

Now unquestionably, so far as expression of doctrine is concerned, these passages from Justin are the developments of the Johannean statements.  The statements in St. John contain, in germ, the whole of what Justin develops; but it is absurd to assert that, after Justin had written the above, it was necessary, in order to bolster up a later, and consequently, in the eyes of Rationalists, a mere human development, to forge a now Gospel, containing nothing like so explicit a declaration of the Trinity as we find in writings which are supposed to precede it, and weighting its doctrinal statements with a large amount of historical matter very difficult, in many cases, to reconcile perfectly with the history in the older Synoptics.

SECTION XV.

JUSTIN AND ST. JOHN ON THE INCARNATION.

Two further matters, bearing upon the relations of the doctrine of Justin to that of St. John, must now be considered.  The Author of “Supernatural Religion” asserts that the doctrine of Justin respecting the Incarnation of the Word is essentially different from that of St. John:—­

“It must be borne in mind that the terminology of John i. 14, ’And the Word became flesh ([Greek:  sarx egeneto]) is different from that of Justin, who uses the word [Greek:  sarkopoietheis].” (Vol. ii. p. 276.)

Again, with reference to the word [Greek:  monogenes], he writes:—­

“The phrase in Justin is quite different from that in the Fourth Gospel, i. 14, ‘And the Word became flesh’ ([Greek:  sarx egeneto]) and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father’ ([Greek:  hos monogenous para patros], &c.) In Justin he is ‘the Only-begotten of the Father of all’ ([Greek:  monogenes to Patri ton holon)], ‘and He became man’ ([Greek:  anthropos genomenos]) ‘through the Virgin,’ and Justin never once employs the peculiar terminology of the Fourth Gospel, [Greek:  sarx egeneto], in any part of his writings.” (Vol. ii. p. 280.)

Again:—­