Revelation 5:7

7. Took the book Stuart, after Vitringa, and more persistently, raises the question, How could the Lamb take the roll without hands? And this question, Dusterdieck rejects as “unnothig und geschmacklos,” needless and tasteless. But Ezekiel did not think it geschmacklos to tell us that his cherubim “had the hands of a man,” Ezekiel 1:8. And the query of Stuart raises the question, What was the real form of the Lamb? and that is quite as legitimate as the question, What were the forms of the cherubim? which is much discussed by these critics. Alford argues that the cherubim were in human form, because they fall down in worship; and it seems as legitimate for us to argue that the Lamb could not have held a quadruped form in sitting on his “throne.” Stuart well discusses this perfectly necessary and aesthetic question. He rather favours the idea that the Lamb, at the first view of the seer, wore the quadruped form, but with the transformability of a dream-image, gradually changed to the form of the “Son of man,” as he approached to take the roll. Or, we may suppose that with visional liberty the two forms of lamb and man transparently enfolded and enclosed one the other, (as amber may enclose a diamond,) so as both to be recognisable by the seer’s eye. Nevertheless we rather prefer Stuart’s view; and holding the form of the Lamb with seven horns to be a transient symbol to the seer’s eye, we do not think it in connexion with the word Lamb as used in the rest of John’s twenty-seven instances.