God, who brings salvation as 'Ye will not come to me, that ye
the reward of repentance and might have life.'--John v. 40.
righteousness.
'Beloved, we be now the sons of
'If then men have from God; and it doth not yet appear
their very souls a just what we shall be; but we know that
contrition, and are changed, when he doth appear we shall be
and have humbled themselves for like him.'--1 John iii. 2.
their past errors, acknowledging
and confessing their 'As we have born the image of the
sins, such persons shall find earthy, we shall also bear the image
pardon from the Saviour and of the heavenly.'--1 Cor. xv. 49.
merciful God, and receive a
most choice and great advantage 'For if we have been planted
of being like the Logos together in the likeness of his
of God, who was originally death, we shall be also in the
the great archetype after likeness of his resurrection.'--
which the soul of man was Rom. vi. 5.
formed.'--De Execrationibus.

Here, then, we get, complete, the idea of Christ as the Word of God, and
we see that Christianity is as lacking in originality on these points as
in everything else. We may note, also, that this Platonic idea was
current among the Jews before Philo, although he gives it to us more
thoroughly and fully worked out: in the apocryphal books of the Jews we
find the idea of the Logos in many passages in Wisdom, to take but a
single case.

The widely-spread existence of this notion is acknowledged by Dean
Milman in his "History of Christianity." He says: "This Being was more