The first question—­and by far the most important one which we shall have to meet—­is this:  Is the doctrine respecting the Person of Jesus more fully developed in the pages of Justin Martyr, or in the Fourth Gospel?  We mean by the doctrine respecting the Person of Jesus, that He is, with reference to His pre-existent state, the Logos and Only-begotten Son of God; and that, as being such, He is to be worshipped and honoured as Lord and God; and that, in order to be our Mediator, and the Sacrifice for our sin, He took upon Him our nature.

The author of “Supernatural Religion” endeavours to trace the doctrine of the Logos, as contained in Justin, to older sources than our present Fourth Gospel, particularly to Philo and the Gospel according to the Hebrews.  The latter is much too impalpable to enable us to verify his statements by it; but we shall have to show his misconceptions respecting the connection of Justin’s doctrine with the former.  What we have now to consider is the following statement:—­

“It is certain, however, that, both Justin and Philo, unlike the prelude to the Fourth Gospel (i. 1), place the Logos in a secondary position to God the Father, another point indicating a less advanced stage of the doctrine.”

From this we must, of course, infer that the author of “Supernatural Religion” considers that Justin does not state the essential Godhead of the Second Person as distinctly and categorically as it is stated in the Fourth Gospel.  And as it is assumed by Rationalists that there was in the early Church a constantly increasing development of the doctrine of the true Godhead of our Lord, gradually superseding some earlier doctrine of an Arian, or Humanitarian, or Sadducean type; therefore, the more fully developed doctrine of the Godhead of our Lord in any book proves that book to be of later origin than another book in which it is not so fully developed.

The author of “Supernatural Religion” cannot deny that Justin ascribes the names “Lord” and “God” and Pre-existence before all worlds to Jesus as the Logos, but he fastens upon certain statements or inferences respecting the subordination of the Son to the Father, and His acting for His Father, or under Him, in the works of Creation and Redemption, which Justin, as an orthodox believer who would abhor Tritheism, was bound to make, and most ignorantly asserts that such statements are contrary to the spirit of the Fourth Gospel.

I shall now set before the reader the statements of both St. John and Justin respecting the Divine Nature of our Lord, so that he may judge for himself which is the germ and which the development.

The Fourth Gospel once, and once only, sets forth the Godhead and Pre-existence of the Logos, and this is in the exordium or prelude:—­

    “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
    Word was God.”

The Fourth Gospel once, and once only, identifies this Word with the pre-existent nature of Jesus, in the concluding words of the same exordium:—­