Some, like Corluy, refer *God*, in this third clause, to the Divine Nature, which is common to the three Divine Persons; others, as Patrizzi, to the Divine Nature as terminated in the Second Divine Person. We prefer the latter view, but in either interpretation we have in this clause a declaration of the Divinity of the Word, a proof that cannot be gainsaid of His essential unity with the Father. Nor does the absence of the Greek article before “God” in this third clause, when taken in conjunction with its presence in the second, imply, as the Arians held, that the Word is inferior to the Father. For our Evangelist certainly refers sometimes to the supreme Deity without using the article (i. 6, 12, 18); and the absence of the article is sufficiently accounted for in the present case by the fact that Θεός is a predicate standing before the copula.(21) 2. Hoc erat in principio apud 2. The same was in the Deum. beginning with God. 2. *The same was in the beginning with God*. To emphasize the three great truths contained in verse 1: namely, the Word’s eternity, His distinct personality, and essential unity with the Father, they are repeated in verse 2. The same, that is, this Word who is God, was in the beginning, and was with God. Various attempts have been made by the Unitarians to escape the invincible argument for a Second Divine Person which these opening verses of our Gospel contain. Thus, they put a full stop after the last “erat” of verse 1; and, taking the words in the order in which they occur in the Greek and Latin, make the sense of the third clause: _And God was._ Then they join “_verbum_,” the last word of verse 1, with verse 2: This Word was in the beginning with God. But even if we granted to the Unitarians this punctuation of the verses, the sense of the third clause would still be that the Word was God, and not that God existed. For “Deus” (Θεός without the article), in the beginning of the third clause ought still to be regarded as the predicate, with “verbum” of the preceding clauses as the subject. This follows not merely from the absence of the Greek article already alluded to, but also from the absurdity of the Unitarian view, which supposes that St. John thought it necessary, after telling us that the Word was with God, to tell us that God existed! Others have tried to explain away the text thus: At the beginning of the Christian dispensation the Word existed, and the Word was most intimately united to God by love. But, primum, they have still to explain how this Word is declared Creator in verses 3 and 10; secundum, the statement in verse 14: “And the Word was made flesh,” implies transition of the Word to a state different from that in which He existed “in the beginning;” but the time of the transition is just the commencement of the Christian dispensation, which cannot, therefore, be the time referred to in verse 1 as “the beginning.”