That St. John never wrote them is beyond all question! but having found them to his hand, existing after the circuit of centuries and ages, the composition seemed so pure, and so consonant with Christianity, nay, its very vitality and soul, he adopted it as the _preface_ to his _own production_, which begins only at the sixth verse, opening with, “There was a man sent from God whose name was John”! Having asserted that the preliminary part was inalienably _Irish_, I now undertake to prove a _radical misconception_, nay, a _derogation_ from the _majesty_ of the _Messiah_, to have crept into the text, in consequence of its having been translated by persons unacquainted with that language! The term _logos_, which you render _word_, means to an iota the _spiritual flame_--_log_, or _logh_, being the _original_ denomination. The Greeks, who had borrowed all their religion from the Irish, adopted this also from their vocabulary; but its form not being suited to the genius of their language, they fashioned it thereto by adding the termination _os_, as _loghos_; and thus did it become identified in sound with the common _logos_, which they had before, and which merely expresses a _word_ or _term_! But though thus confounded, their philosophers, for a long time, kept both expressions distinct. The former they ever considered a _foreign importation_, rendering it, as we did, by the _spiritual flame_; as is evident from Zeno making use of the expression, δια του παντος λογος, that is, the spiritual _flame_, which is diffused through, and vivifies everything. Pythagoras is so explicit upon this _spiritual flame_, that you would swear he was paraphrasing the first five verses of St. John. “God,” says he, “is neither the object of sense, nor subject to passion, but invisible, only intelligible, and supremely intelligent. In His body, He is like the _light_, and in His soul He resembles truth. He is the universal _spirit_ that pervades and diffuseth itself over all nature. All beings receive their _life_ from Him. There is but one only God, who is not, as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the universe; but being Himself all in all, He sees all the beings that fill His immensity, the only principle, the light of Heaven, the Father of all. He _produces everything_, He orders and disposes _everything_; He is the reason, the _life_, and the motion of all being.” Even the Latins having borrowed the idea from the Greeks, steered clear of the equivocation of the ridiculous _word_; and the immortal Maro, when describing the quickening influence of this ethereal _logos_ through all the branches of nature, interprets it as above, literally, by the _spiritual flame_!