Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/284

 but refer to God. Those are all the proofs from the Gospels.

“Finally in Revelation are frequently quoted the words of the Saviour who appeared to him: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last (Rev. i. 8, 11, 17, 18; ii. 8; xxii. 13), and there it is said that Christ is the prince of the kings of the earth (i. 5), and king of kings and lord of lords (xix. 16).” (pp. 52 and 53.)

As any one may see, even in these passages of Revelation, a book which has no significance for the explanation of the teachings of Christ, there is not even an indication of the divinity of Christ. Then follow proofs from the apostles.

“(5) St. Jude, the apostle, representing the heretics, says: For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ (Jude 4).” (p. 53.)

The oldest texts of the Epistle of St. Jude read as follows: “Denying the only lord and master (δεσπότην), Jesus Christ.” In the later, and in our texts, it runs as follows: “Denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the first reading there cannot even be a question about the Godhead of Christ; in the second, one would think, there can be even less any question about the Godhead of Christ, for here God is called, as he is always called, “only,” and after him Jesus Christ is mentioned as a prophet or righteous man. But the absence of such proofs are regarded as proofs. Even such are the proofs from the Epistles of St. Paul. Here they are:

“(6) St. Paul calls the Saviour in his Epistles: God manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. iii. 16), the Lord of glory (1 Cor. ii. 8), the great God (Tit. ii. 11-13), God blessed