Is it clear that the distinct 'hypostasis' of the Holy Spirit, in the same sense as the only-begotten Son is hypostatically distinguished from the Father, was a truth that formed an immediate object or intention of St. John? That it is a truth implied in, and fairly deducible from, many texts, both in his Gospel and Epistles, I do not, indeed I cannot, doubt;--but only whether this article of our faith he was commissioned to declare explicitly? It grieves me to think that such giant 'archaspistæ' of the Catholic Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1 'John' v. 7), which, in the opulence and continuity of the evidences, as displayed by their own master-minds, would have been superfluous, had it not been worse than superfluous, that is, senseless in itself, and interruptive of the profound sense of the Apostle. Ib. p. 272. He is come, come in the flesh, and not merely to reside for a time, or occasionally, and to fly off again, but to abide and dwell with man, clothed with humanity. Incautiously worded at best. Compare our Lord's own declaration to his disciples, that he had dwelt a brief while 'with' or 'among' them, in order to dwell 'in' them permanently. Ib. p. 286. It is very observable, that the Ebionites rejected three of the Gospels, receiving only St. Matthew's (or what they called so), and that curtailed. They rejected likewise all St. Paul's writings, reproaching him as an apostate. How unlikely is it that Justin should own such reprobates as those were for fellow-Christians! I dare avow my belief--or rather I dare not withhold my avowal--that both Bull and Waterland are here hunting on the trail of an old blunder or figment, concocted by the gross ignorance of the Gentile Christians and their Fathers in all that respected Hebrew literature and the Palestine Christians. I persist in the belief that, though a refuse of the persecuted and from neglect degenerating Jew-Christians may have sunk into the mean and carnal notions of their unconverted brethren respecting the Messiah, no proper sect of Ebionites ever existed, but those to whom St. Paul travelled with the contributions of the churches, nor any such man as Ebion; unless indeed it was St. Barnabas, who in his humility may have so named himself, while soliciting relief for the distressed Palestine Christians;--"I am Barnabas the beggar." But I will go further, and confess my belief that the (so-called) Ebionites of the first and second centuries, who rejected the 'Christopædia', and whose Gospel commenced with the baptism by John, were orthodox Apostolic Christians, who received Christ as the Lord, that is, as Jehovah 'manifested in the flesh'. As to their rejection of the other Gospels and of Paul's writings, I might ask:--"Could they read them?" But the whole notion seems to rest on an anachronical misconception of the 'Evangelia'. Every great mother Church, at first, had its own Gospel. Ib. p. 288.