4 January 1846
adams-john10 Neal Millikan Religion
366 Sunday 4th. January 1846—

4. V.30—

Cutts R. D. Mrs. R. D. Cutts Miss Cutts

I attended Public Worship this morning at the Hall of the House of Representatives where the two Chaplains were present and Mr. Milburne preached from John 3.16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting Life”— Mr. McClure in his Comment upon this text made a very explicit exposition of his own Creed for he said that this was perhaps the most solemn and important verse of the whole Bible and further that a very eminent Divine had once said to him that if by any possible calamity every other Book of the Scriptures except the Gospel of St John and if every Chapter of that Book except the 3. should be involved in the same destruction and every verse in that chapter should be swallowed up in the same ruin that verse alone would be of power to supply the place of the whole scriptures of the Old and New Testament— Mr. Milburne expressed no dissent from that saying—and his citation of it and his own observation upon the same text—sufficiently testify the wholesale Calvanism of his Faith 367Now the whole of this Chapter carries to my mind a strong suspicion that it was interpolated into the Gospel according to St John some Centuries after the Advent of Jesus Christ. The verse is a part of the conversation between Jesus at a very early period of his ministry and Nicodemus a Ruler of the Jews, who came to him by night and told him that they knew he was a Teacher come from God, because he had performed miracles such as no man could do except God were with him— Jesus thereupon announces to him the Doctrine of regeneration and solemnly declares that “except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” Nicodemus amazed at this declaration enquires how this can possibly be. Whereupon Jesus replies—but foreshadowing the event of his own death and adds this verse representing the Love of God to the world as so great, as to have given his only begotten Son as a sacrifice to secure everlasting life to all who should believe in him— This declaration implied but did not expressly assert that he was himself the only begotten Son of God but not only did it make not the most distant intimation that He was himself a person of the Godhead but directly excluded that idea by assuming that He was the Son of God sent by him on a mission to the World of mankind— If then, this single verse contains the whole Doctrine of the Christian Faith it certainly gives no countenance to the Doctrine of the Trinity or of the Divinity of Christ himself but is of itself an irrefragable testimony against those articles of a Creed— If he was the Son of God—he could not be God, if he was sent by God—he could not have sent himself and if this text is the all important Text of the whole scriptures it is fatal to the belief of a God in three Persons— In the afternoon at St Johns Church the Revd. Mr. Pyne read the evening service for the 2d. Sunday after Christmas and the Epiphany and preached from Ecclesiastes 8. part of 5. verse “A wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment” a sensible Discourse on the employment of time— We had no visitors this evening which my Grandaughter spent at Mrs. Madisons—

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