judgment is committed to the Son," that it is HE who shall "come in his glory, and that before him shall be gathered all nations." The Apocalyptic vision is in accordance with that testimony. “I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat upon it: from whose presence the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great standing before the throne."* iv. Christ is called "the Chief of the creation of God."+ By a common metonymy, the abstract term, Beginning, or Supremacy, is put for the concrete, to denote, either the Sovereign, in whom the supremacy resides, or the Author or Efficient Cause of the dependent universe, as, when Christ is styled the Life and the Eternal Life, the sense is that he is the Author of spiritual life and eternal happiness.§ The Annotator on the Improved Version assumes, "that the new creation" is intended, or that Jesus Christ was "the first who was raised from the dead." But, * Chap. xx. 11, 12. The reading, Opóvov, instead of coũ, is established by the decisive preponderance of manuscripts and fathers, and by all the ancient versions. See Wetstein and Griesbach. + Chap. iii. 14. "Omnis qui est insigni potestate et dignitate præditus, princeps, insignis et præstans in suo genere." Schleusn. signif. 4. § “ Η ἀρχὴ videtur positum pro ὁ ἄρχων, dominus : vel etiam is per quem hoc universum initium cœpit, ut Swỳ aiúvos, auctor felicitatis æternæ ; 1 Joh. i. 2. Sic hoc loco, ¿px, auctor initii.” Rosenm. So the Calm Inq. p. 149, 296. when the term creation is used to denote the practical influence of the gospel, it is the custom of the New Testament writers to add the epithet new, or some equivalent. The term itself, when put singly, denotes the act of creation, or the created universe, or some principal part of the universe. We are, therefore, I conceive, bound to understand this testimony as attributing to Christ the supremacy, in dignity and in the bestowment of blessings, over the whole of created existence. V. By symbols of established significancy, the perfect possession of power, knowledge, government, and spiritual influence, is attributed to Christ. "I saw, in the midst of the throne and of the four living beings, and in the midst of the elders, standing a Lamb, as having been slain; having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth."* Chap. v. 6. "Christ is described, who was once in a state of humiliation and suffered a murderous death, but is now supreme in power, and governs all things by his providence. The figures of the lamb, the crown, and the eyes, are mere symbols, each representing some part of the work of Christ. We ought not therefore to countenance the pernicious absurdity of painters, who represent Christ in the form of a lamb [with the other unnatural appendages.]—As having been slain; i. e. with blood that has flowed over him, and shewing his wounds: Joh. i. 29, 36. Seven horns; mighty power to subdue his enemies, for the horn is the emblem of strength and Seven eyes.-A very similar power. is in Zech. iv. 10, passage where seven lamps and seven conduit-pipes signify "the eyes of Jehovah running to and fro through the whole earth;" vi. The Lord Jesus is represented as being, conjointly with the Divine Father, the immediate source of the happiness of heaven. "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne will feed them, and will lead them to fountains of the waters of life; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. The glory of God enlightened it and the Lamb is the lamp of it. He shewed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and the Lamb. The throne of God -- and the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face and his name shall be upon their foreheads."* vii. This Book of Symbolical Visions and Revelations, concerning the progress, influence, and various fortune of Christianity among mankind, is represented as the gift of Christ as well as of God the Father: the honour of being the Author of i. e. the providence of God ruling and directing the whole world. -The sense is; all the ways which God uses in the government of the universe, Christ also uses in governing, preserving, and defending his church. For he, as well as the Father, is possessed of supreme power, and uses "the seven spirits," the ministers of divine providence, at his sovereign pleasure." Rosenm. in loc. et iv. 5. If the reader approve the explication of the Seven Spirits proposed at the beginning of this Section, he will perceive that the interpretation of the emblem here, coincides with those passages which speak of the Holy Spirit, as " the Spirit of Christ, sent by him, glorifying him," &c. * Chap. vii. 17. xxi. 22, 23. xxii. 1, 3, 4. this developement of futurity is asserted to both the Father and the Son, while the order of primacy in the former and mediatorial subordination in the latter, is expressly maintained; in accordance with the whole tenor of revealed truth. "The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to him, to shew to his servants the things which must shortly come to pass: and he sent and shewed them by his angel to his servant John. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to shew to his servants the things which must shortly come to pass.I Jesus have sent mine angel, to testify unto you these things with respect to the churches. Yea, I come quickly. Amen! Come Lord Jesus !"* * Chap. i. 1. xxii. 6, 16, 20.-See Note [B] at the end of the Chapter. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO CHAP. II. 1 Note [A] page 501. The opinion that the Gospel of John was composed expressly to refute the errors of Cerinthus rests upon the following passage of Irenæus. "John, the disciple of the Lord, declared this faith, desiring, by the publication of his Gospel, to clear away the error which had been disseminated by Cerinthus, and still earlier by those called Nicolaitans, who are an off-set of the 'science falsely so called;' that he might refute them, and produce a conviction that it is the one God, who hath made all things by his Word: and not, as they say, that the Creator was a different being from the Father of our Lord; that the Son of the Creator was one being and Christ another of the superior orders, whom they suppose to have continued in his own proper state of incapacity to suffer, to have descended upon Jesus the Son of the Creator, and again to have flown back into his own Fulness; that the Beginning was the Only-Begotten, and the Word the real Son of the Only-Begotten; and that the state of things to which we belong, was not formed by the Supreme God, but by some Power greatly inferior to him, and cut off from communion with things invisible and unspeakable." Iren. lib. iii. cap. 11. ed. Grabe, p. 218. But that we cannot place implicit reliance on this testimony, is maintained upon the following grounds : 1. Irenæus himself assigns the date of his intercourse with Polycarp to have been in very early life. “I saw him (ẻ đã πry μa λnia) in my early youth." Lib. iii. cap. 3, p. 203."While I was yet a child, (Tais ŵv et..)" Fragm. ex Euseb. ib. p. 464. And, from his own statements, in these passages, he |