is no
where: herewith they would shew that God is all, and yet is nothing.

What a huge difference the absence of a blank space, which is nothing,
or next to nothing, may make! The words here should have been printed,
"God is all, and yet is no thing;" For what does 'thing' mean? Itself,
that is, the 'ing', or inclosure, that which is contained within an
outline, or circumscribed. So likewise to 'think' is to inclose, to
determine, confine and define. To think an infinite is a contradiction
in terms equal to a boundless bound. So in German 'Ding, denken'; in
Latin 'res, reor'.

Chap. VII. p. 113.

Helvidius alleged the mother of Christ was not a virgin; so that
according to his wicked allegation, Christ was born in original sin.

O, what a tangle of impure whimsies has this notion of an immaculate
conception, an Ebionite tradition, as I think, brought into the
Christian Church! I have sometimes suspected that the Apostle John had a
particular view to this point, in the first half of the first chapter of
his Gospel. Not that I suppose our present Matthew then in existence, or
that, if John had seen the Gospel according to Luke, the 'Christopaedia'
had been already prefixed to it. But the rumor might have been whispered
about, and as the purport was to give a psilanthropic explanation and
solution of the phrases, Son of God and Son of Man,--so Saint John met
it by the true solution, namely, the eternal Filiation of the Word.

Ib. p. 120. Of Christ's riding into Jerusalem.

But I hold (said Luther) that Christ himself did not mention that
prophecy of Zechariah, but rather, that the Apostles and Evangelists
did use it for a witness.

Worth remembering for the purpose of applying it to the text in which
our Lord is represented in the first (or Matthew's) Gospel, and by that
alone, as citing Daniel by name. It was this text that so sorely, but I
think very unnecessarily, perplexed and gravelled Bentley, who was too
profound a scholar and too acute a critic to admit the genuineness of
the whole of that book.

Ib.

The Prophets (said Luther) did set, speak, and preach of the second
coming of Christ in manner as we now do.

I regret that Mr. Irving should have blended such extravagancies and
presumptuous prophesyings with his support and vindication of the
Millennium, and the return of Jesus in his corporeal individuality,
--because these have furnished divines in general, both Churchmen and
Di