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The hypothesis under consideration might naturally dispose the reader to conclude, that the writings of Philo were peculiarly fraught with evangelical truth. But nothing can be farther from the fact. The extraordinary similarity occasionally to be remarked between his language and that of the New Testament, needs no such solution. If Philo and the Apostle Paul, for example, both Jews, well versed in the habits and accustomed to the phraseology of their countrymen, wrote within a few years of each other, and both upon subjects intimately connected with Old Testament theology, the absence from their respective productions of many identical expressions might well occasion surprise. These, in fact, occur less frequently than might have been anticipated, and principally refer to the subject of the foregoing citations. Nothing can be less conclusive than the argument founded upon a few examples of this kind, culled out of a mass of tracts altogether twice or three times as large as the entire New Testament.

No ancient writings with which I am acquainted so frequently disappoint a Christian reader as do those of Philo. There is often in them a gleam of truth so bright as to lead to the expectation of some developement of doctrine purely evangelical. But scarcely has the hope been formed, when a cloud of philosophic dreaming intervenes, and all is dark again. Hence, there is scarcely any author of whom a less correct idea is to be formed from detached expressions or insulated phrases. For example, the Christian reader upon being told that he represents God as a great Shepherd, who appoints the Son to the care of his sacred flock, at once recurs to the inimitable discourse of our Lord, recorded by St. John, (chap. x.,) and to its assemblage of affecting images. But all this agreeable emotión subsides, upon the introduction of the cold and repulsive fancy that the object of the divine pastoral care is not the church of the blood-redeemed, but merely the elements and the planetary system. (De Agricult., T. i., p. 308. Vide sup., p. 69.) How promising again is the opening of such a paragraph as the following :-"What man of sober mind, beholding the labours of the mass of men, and their disproportioned efforts after wealth, or fame, or luxuries, doth not vehemently bewail their condition, and cry to the only Saviour God, that he would relieve them; and that, by the payment of a ransom for

the soul, he would restore them to liberty?" But let us pursue the passage, and as usual it terminates in cloud-land. ،، What therefore is the firmest liberty? The service of the wise man only, as the oracle testifieth, in which it is said, Let my people go, that they may serve me. It is the prerogative of those that serve the Self-Existent, to be dependent neither upon wine-bearers, nor bakers, nor cooks, nor any other earthly things, to fashion and compound their bodies, as bricks are made; but to ascend in their contemplations to the lofty ether, even as Moses, beloved of God, did before. There do they behold evidently the place in which the inflexible and immutable God is seated, his footstool being as a sapphire stone, and as the firmament of heaven; that is, the sensible universe, which is thus signified. It becomes those who are associated for the purposes of science to desire the like spectacle; or, at least, to behold his image, the most sacred WORD; and, next to him, the most perfect of the objects of sense, this universe: for to philosophize is nothing but the diligent effort to discern these things." (De Confus. Ling., T. i., pp. 418, 419.) Thus does this remarkable writer alternate between the grand and the mean, the true and the visionary; between that which affects the heart, and that which is cold, abstract, and unreal.

In several respects, the writings of the Alexandrian Fathers, Clement and Origen, are not dissimilar from those of Philo; and the question of his Christianity might safely be committed to the result of a fair comparison between them. In the ethics of Clement and the allegories of Origen, we are perpetually reminded of their common evangelical original; and no one could peruse the works of these Fathers, even in the most cursory way, without recognising them as the productions of men who believed in Jesus, and in the great truths developed by his Spirit. But nothing can be more remote from the genius of the writings of Philo. He has no references to the Messiah, no indications that in any sense “he waited for the consolation of Israel." Large portions of his works might be transferred to the pages of a heathen philosopher without any perceptible incongruity; and his allegorical expositions of the Pentateuch usually terminate, either in the sensible universe, or in abstractions on the Divine Essence and government. It would be some relief to descend from the unnatural elevation

of his speculations to those visions of secular and national glory, which, at this period, in connexion with the expected advent of the Messiah, warmed the imaginations of so many of his countrymen. But even of these there is no trace discoverable, much less of those spiritual triumphs ensured in the Gospel. His genius, lofty and colossal, is in its creations like the sculpture of the land in which he dwelt; obscure, unnatural, and profitless.

In the account of the Legation to Caligula, one of the few of Philo's works written after the promulgation of Christianity, there is a passage which may possibly allude to the incarnation of our Lord. Speaking of the claims of that tyrant to divine honours as the most absurd and impious of all conceptions, he says, that God might more readily become a man, than a man be changed into God. (θᾶττον ἂν εἰς ἄνθρωπον Θεὸν, ἢ εἰς Θεὸν ἄνθρωπον μεταβαλεῖν. Legat., Τ. ii., p. 562.) This is the only example with which I have met, where a reference of this kind is conceivable. And here it is plain that the nature of his reasoning requires us to conclude the former notion as, in his judgment, second in absurdity only to the latter. The argument is d fortiori, and the amount of it is that what in itself would be a most outrageous and impious opinion, is, in comparison with the mad atrocity of Caligula, credible and decent.

The reader has now to judge for himself whether such a writer could have been a Christian, or intimately connected with Christians, or a partaker in a degree of divine inspiration. Should any one still conceive either hypothesis probable, I beg to remind him, that though the evidence of Philo is thus rendered inappropriate to the present stage of our inquiry, it is by no means invalidated with respect to the general argument. Supposing him to have been a Christian writer, his testimony to the divine generation of the Logos proves it to have been a doctrine of the apostolic age. And since, upon the theory before us, it was thus held by the most eminent individual of all the early converts to Christianity, one, who for excellence in the particular branch of literature to which he devoted himself certainly has no rival in the primitive church, and who was the intimate associate of the Apostle of the circumcision, it is difficult to resist the conclusion,

that an opinion so attested must have been that of the Apostles themselves.

If, on the other hand, we suppose, with Dr. Clarke, that Philo, though not a Christian, was, to a certain degree, the subject of the spirit of prophecy, the evidence rises still higher; since it is all but inconceivable that a writer endowed with a measure of inspiration should, on a subject vitally connected with the person of the Messiah, fall into any serious error. With this supposition, his testimony to the generation of the Logos may fairly be regarded as decisive. Thus, whatever may be our conclusion on the character of Philo, his evidence upon the question is obviously of great weight and importance.

The intimate connexion of the subject of this note with the Socinian controversy in general, and especially with our present inquiry, will, it is hoped, be accepted as an apology for the length to which it is carried.

SECTION II.

THE JEWISH DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE MESSIAH AND THE SON OF GOD.

CONNECTED with the sentiments of Philo upon the divine Logos, there is one circumstance to which we have already cursorily adverted, which it is necessary again to bring before the reader :-the absence, I mean, of all allusion to the person and work of the Messiah. Throughout the whole of his somewhat voluminous productions, the Messiah is not named, either expressly or under any of the synonymes current among the Jews. Those parts of prophetic scripture which directly bear upon evangelical times, Philo usually declines to illustrate; and when he incidentally refers to them, as in his exposition of Zech. iii. 8, he applies them, not to an illustrious Prophet or to a divine person incarnated, but to one of dissimilar attributes, very 66 one not compounded of body and soul,-an incorporeal person who shares the divine image."*

Had the Jews of this period regarded the Messiah as "the WORD made flesh," it cannot reasonably be doubted, that a writer who treats thus largely of the divine Logos would occasionally, at least, have glanced at an event so remarkable as his incarnation; especially in passages on the doctrine of the atonement, and the mediation of the Son of God;† topics which immediately invite such a reference. The natural conclusion from his silence is, that while Philo considered the Logos and the Son of God as terms of identical application, he had

* De Confus. Ling., T. i., p. 414. Vide sup., p. 70. † As for example, De Confus. Ling., T. i., p. 418. Quis Rer. Div. Hær., T. i., p. 501. De Vita Mosis, lib. iii., T. ii., p. 155. Vide sup., pp. 77, 71.

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