He that believes on the Son has everlasting life: and he that believes not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him.
All Commentaries on John 3:36 Go To John 3
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
The divinity of the Son is in this chapter proved as clearly as in 1 John v. 7. "There are three who give testimony in heaven; the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. "Which verse is entirely omitted by Luther in his version; for which omission he is severely reproved by Keckerman. But while Catholics and Protestants deduce from this and many other places in Scripture, the divinity of Jesus Christ, as an indubitable and irrefragable consequence, how may learned Arians, Socinians, and Unitarians read the same texts, and deduce quite contrary consequences? How clearly does this prove that the Bible only cannot prove the exclusive rule of faith. With reason does the Cambridge divinity professor, Dr. Herbert Marsh, ask in his late publication on this subject, p. 18, "Are all Protestants alike in their religion? Have we not got Protestants of the Church of England, Protestants of the Church of Scotland, Protestants who hold the profession of Augsburgh? Have we not both Arminian and Calvinistic Protestants? Are not the Moravians, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Quakers, and even the Jumpers, the Dunkers, the Swedenborgians, all Protestants? Since, then Protestantism assumes so many different forms, men speak quite indefinitely, if they speak of it without explaining the particular kind which they mean. When I hear of a Swedish or a Danish Protestant, I know that it means a person whose religion is the Bible only, as expounded by the Synod of Dort. In like manner a Protestant of the Church of England, is a person whose religion is the Bible only; but the Bible as expounded by its Liturgy and Articles. How, therefore, can we know, if we give the Bible only, what sort of Protestantism well be deduced from it? "
In the same publication, Dr. Herbert Marsh, p. 21, adds, "Protestants of every description, however various and even opposite in their opinions, claim severally for themselves the honour of deducing from the Bible irrefragable and indubitable consequences. The doctrine of conditional salvation is an indubitable consequence to the Arminian. The doctrine of absolute decree, an indubitable consequence to the Calvinist. The doctrines of the trinity, the atonement and the sacraments, which the Church of England considers as indubitable consequences of the Bible, would not be so, if the Unitarians and Quakers were right in the consequences which they draw from the Bible. But the consequences which they deduce appear indubitable to them. "This the professor properly styles protestantism in the abstract, or generalized, and nearly allied to apostacy from Christianity: a system, p. 16, "by which many a pilgrim has lost his way between the portal of the temple and the altar
disdaining the gate belonging only to the priests, and approaching at once the portals of the temple, they have ventured without a clue, to explore the inmost recesses; and have been bewildered in their way, till at length they have wandered to the devious passage, where Christianity itself becomes lost from the view. "See his Inquiry into the consequences of neglecting to give the Prayer-Book with the Bible.
