Ib. p. 257.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The same Word was life, the
and
both one. There was no occasion therefore for subtilly distinguishing the Word and Life into two Sons, as some did.
I will not deny the possibility of this interpretation. It may be,—nay, it is,—fairly deducible from the words of the great Evangelist: but I cannot help thinking that, taken as the primary intention, it degrades this most divine chapter, which unites in itself the three characters of sublime, profound, and pregnant, and alloys its universality by a mixture of time and accident.
Ib.
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness cometh not upon it. So I render the verse, conformable to the rendering of the same Greek verb,
, by our translators in another place of this same Gospel. The Apostle, as I conceive, in this 5th verse of his 1st chapter, alludes to the prevailing error of the Gentiles, &c.
O sad, sad! How must the philosopher have been eclipsed by the shadow of antiquarian erudition, in order that a mind like Waterland's could have sacrificed the profound universal import of
comprehend
to an allusion to a worthless dream of heretical nonsense, the mushroom of the day! Had Waterland ever thought of the relation of his own understanding to his reason? But alas! the identification of these two diversities—of how many errors has it been ground and occasion!