THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN 3 Series of Discourses BY FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A., PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, "Johannes redet schlecht und einfältig wie ein Kind, und lauten seine Worte London: MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK. 1888. The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved. RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LONDON AND BUNGAY. First edition printed Jan. 1837. Reprinted April 1857, 1867, 1877, 1878, 1882, 1885. M44 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. A VALUED friend, to whose judgment on a critical question I shall always defer, has sent me the following observations upon certain passages in the 11th and 16th Discourses of this volume. I have made no alterations in the text. John v. 3, 4. It is implied at page 143 that certain "honest and earnest men are unwilling to believe that St. John wrote the verse relating to angelic interposition in the cures wrought by the pool of Bethesda, merely because they consider the doctrine unworthy of him. It may be so: but it is at least possible to assent fully to the doctrine, and yet reject the verse, along with the last clause of the preceding verse, on purely outward and critical grounds. Of the six most important Greek MSS. two (and those, perhaps, the best) omit the whole passage, exdexoμένων-νοσήματι, two the clause, ἐκδεχομένων-κίνησιν, and two the verse, ayyeλos—voonμati: not more than one or two tolerable Greek MSS. support the received reading. Of important early versions three omit the whole passage (including the recently discovered "Curetonian" Syriac, probably the earliest and most important of all), another (and two MSS. of a second) omits the verse, and two others omit or obelize part of the b n |