[137:1] See Gibbon's Rome, vol. iv. pp. 492-495.
[137:2] Not a worldly Messiah, as the Jews looked for, but an Angel-Messiah, such an one as always came at the end of a cycle. We shall treat of this subject anon, when we answer the question why Jesus was believed to be an Avatar, by the Gentiles, and not by the Jews; why, in fact, the doctrine of Christ incarnate in Jesus succeeded and prospered.
[137:3] "This strong expression might be justified by the language of St. Paul (God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, &c. I. Timothy, iii. 16), but we are deceived by our modern Bibles. The word which was altered to God at Constantinople in the beginning of the sixth century: the true meaning, which is visible in the Latin and Syriac versions, still exists in the reasoning of the Greek, as well as of the Latin fathers; and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses of St. John (I. John, v. 7), is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton." (Gibbon's Rome, iv. 496, note.) Dean Milman says: "The weight of authority is so much against the common reading of both these points (i. e., I. Tim. iii. 16, and I. John, v. 7), that they are no longer urged by prudent controversialists." (Note in Ibid.)
[138:1] Gibbon's Rome, vol. iv. pp. 492-497.
[138:2] See Chambers's Encyclopædia, art. "Apollinaris."
[138:3] Gibbon's Rome, vol. iv. p. 498.
[138:4] That is, separate him from God the Father, by saying that he, Jesus of Nazareth, was not really and truly God Almighty himself in human form.
[139:1] See Gibbon's Rome, vol. iv. p. 516.