deeming sufferings and that which the Spirit of God, whose witness is infallible, has effected, and still effects, by him, testifies the same. The threefold witness of the water, the blood, and the Spirit, thus unite to verify the same."

It is possible that John in this passage collected such marks as appeared to him most striking, which distinguished Jesus as the Son of God, without any special controversial reference. But it is also possible that he connected a polemical with a parænetical design, and therefore was induced to select exactly these marks; and in this case it would be certainly natural to suppose an intended contradiction of the Cerinthian view which separated the Christ who appeared at the Baptism from the crucified Jesus.

This epistle then contains an impressive appeal against the practical adulterations of Christianity. The apostle declares that only he who practised righteousness was born of God,that a life in communion with Christ and a life of sin were irreconcilable,—that whoever lived in sin was far from knowing him; whoever committed sin transgressed also the law, and sin was peculiarly a transgression of the law. From this contrast it might be inferred that the false Gnosis here combated had produced and confirmed practical errors; and we may believe that we here find traces of the false liberalism and antinomianism of the later Gnosis, such as we have pointed out above, p. 390, in many appearances of this age. In this case his opponents would be only those who opposed the ethical under the form of law, and said, What you call sin appears so only to those who are still enthralled in legal bondage; we must give proof of our being free from the law by not regarding such commands. But if John had been called to oppose such a gross antinomianism, he would have had to maintain against it the dignity and holiness of the law, and his line of argument would have been in a very different direction, indeed quite the reverse. He must have said, Whoever transgresses the law, commits sin, and the transgression of the law is sin. Also from his saying, "Whoever sinneth, knoweth not Christ," it by no means follows that those against whom he is writing, taught a Gnosis of immoral tendency. Nor is it evident that the practical errors which he combated proceeded in general from erroneous speculation; nothing more was needed for their production than that

unchristian tendency which would naturally spring up in Christian communities, after they had been for some time established, in which Christianity had passed from parents to children, and become a matter of custom, and thus easily gave birth to a reliance on the opus operatum of faith and of outward profession, instead of viewing faith as an animating principle of the inward life. In opposition to such a tendency, which disowned the claims of Christianity on the whole of life, and palliated immorality, the apostle says, "Whoever lives in sin, whatever be his pretensions, is far from knowing Jesus Christ; all sin is a transgression of the divine law, which in its whole extent is sacred to the Christian."

The view of the false teachers to which we have been led, by the First Epistle of John,' is confirmed by the second, addressed to a Christian female in those parts, named Cyria,

It is remarkable that the author of the two last epistles of John styles himself a presbyter, a term which is not suited to designate an apostle, and particularly since at that time, and in that region, a person was living who was unusually distinguished by the name of the Pres byter John. Such was the presbyter John to whom Papias appeals, Euseb. iii. 29, and we might be tempted to attribute this epistle to him. He appears to have been commonly distinguished by the name of the presbyter (which is here a title of office) John, from the apostle John, and hence the word peoßurepos was wont to be placed before the name John. It is indeed improbable that, during the lifetime of the apostle, another could have attained such high repute among the churches, as this epistle leads us to suppose of its author; but it might have been written after the apostle's death; for that the presbyter survived him may be inferred, as Credner justly remarks, from the circumstance that Papias, in speaking of what John and the other apostles had said, uses the word elev, but when speaking of the two individuals who had not heard Christ himself, Aristion and the presbyter John, he says Aéyovσw. On the other hand, we are obliged to acknowledge that the great harmony of colouring, tone, and style, between the first epistle and the two others, favours the opinion of their being written by the same person; nor can this be counterbalanced by the instances of single expressions that do not occur elsewhere in John's writings. It is difficult to imagine how that presbyter, especially if we are to consider the Apocalypse as his work, could adopt a style so foreign to himself, in so slavish a manner, during the latter years of his life. As to the name of presbyter, which John here assumes, we can hardly think it of consequence that l'apias distinguishes the apostles by the term "peoßrepos, for it is evident that he so calls them only in relation to their contemporaries as belonging to a still earlier period, and it cannot hence be inferred that John gave himself that title. But since there is no original document extant, in which John marks his relation to the church, we cannot pronounce an opinion that he was never known by such an epithet.

and her children; for in this we find similar warnings against false teachers who would not acknowledge the appearance of Jesus Christ in human nature.' He speaks of their efforts as forming a new feature of the times, and describes them not as the adversaries of Christianity in general, but as persons who had apostatized from the original doctrine of Christ. He solemnly protests against all falsifiers of that doctrine, enjoins on the faithful not to receive them into their houses, nor to salute them as Christian brethren.

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The third Epistle of John, which is addressed to an influential person, probably an overseer in one of the churches, named Gaius, also contains several important hints respecting the existing state of the church. This Gaius had distinguished himself by the active love with which he had received the messengers of the faith, who had come from foreign parts and visited his church. But in the same Christian community there was a domineering individual, Diotrephes, who had shown a very different disposition towards these missionaries. He not only was not ready to give them a hospitable reception, but wished to prevent others from doing so, and even threatened to exclude them from church communion. He refused to acknowledge the authority of the apostle, and even indulged

1 It appears to me most natural to explain the present in 2 John vii. ἐρχόμενον instead of ἐληλυθότα, by supposing that John used this form owing to the impression on his mind that these false teachers not only refused to acknowledge the historical manifestation of Jesus Christ, but also denied the possibility, in general, of a Messiah's appearing in the flesh.

2 Although we may recognise in the form of this expression a natural characteristic of John, a vehemence of affection as strong in its antipathies as in its attachments, yet its harshness is much softened by a reference to the circumstances under which he was writing. He certainly wished only to express, in the strongest terms, that every appearance should be avoided of acknowledging these persons as Christian brethren. Only on this account he says, that they are not to be saluted. which, in the literal sense, he would not have said even in reference to heathens. We must restrict it to the peculiar sense of Christian salutation, which was not a mere formality, but a token of. Christian brotherhood. But to preserve the purity of Christianity and the welfare of the Christian church, it was very important to exclude from the very beginning the reception of these persons (who, by their arbitrary speculations and fabrications, threatened to destroy the grounds of the Christian faith) into the churches, which were not sufficiently armed against their arts, and into which they had various methods of insinu. ating themselves.

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in malicious invectives against him. It is evident, that if a member of a Christian community ventured to conduct himself in such a manner towards an apostle, he must have had personal reasons for not treating him with that reverence which was shown to an apostle by all believers; just as those who were hostile to Paul had special grounds for disputing his apostolic authority. It is also very improbable, that this unfriendly behaviour towards the missionaries could have arisen at this period from an aversion to their calling simply as such. We must rather attempt to discover a special ground of dislike to these individual missionaries. Nor is it unnatural to suppose that there was one common ground for his hostility both to the apostle and the missionaries. Now, let us suppose that the latter were of Jewish descent. It is said to their praise, that they went out to publish the gospel, without taking anything of the heathen for their maintenance. If they were Jewish missionaries this would serve as a praiseworthy distinction, for from what Paul has said respecting this class of persons, we know that many of them abused the right of the publishers of the gospel to be maintained by those for whose salvation they laboured. Now, as there existed in the Gentile churches an ultra-pauline party, of a violent, one-sided, anti-Jewish tendency, and the forerunner of Marcion, Diotrephes possibly stood at the head of such a body, and his hostile conduct towards these missionaries, as well as towards the apostle John, who on his arrival in Lesser Asia had sought to reconcile the differences that were on the point of breaking out, by the harmonizing influence of the Christian spirit-may be traced to the

1 It may appear strange that Paul, the most influential of the apostles, is not mentioned in the Apocalypse, and that in xxi. 14, only twelve apostles are named as forming the foundation of the New Jerusalem. Though the reference to the twelve tribes might induce the author, whose imagery was borrowed from the Old Testament, to mention only the original number of the apostles, still the apparent undervaluation of the great apostle of the Gentiles which this seems to imply, must excite our surprise. And we are ready to ask, whether the author did not belong to those who did not place Paul exactly on a level with the older apostles, and did not sufficiently acknowledge his fitness for the apostolic work, though we must, at the same time, perceive how very free he was from the Judaism that would easily ally itself with such a tendency, and how deeply he was imbued with the Christian universalism of John's school of theology.

same source. Thus, at a later period, Marcion attached himself to Paul alone, and paid no deference to the authority of John.

Various traditions respecting the labours of John in these regions, which he continued to a very advanced age, perfectly agree with that image of fatherly superintendence presented to us in these epistles. In a narrative attested by Clemens Alexandrinus,' we see how he visited the Christians in the parts round about Ephesus, organized the churches, and provided for the appointment of the most competent persons to fill the various church-offices. On one of these occasions, he noticed a young man who promised to be of much service in the cause of the gospel. He commended him to one of the overseers as a valuable trust committed to him by the Lord. The overseer carefully watched him till he received baptism. But he placed too much reliance on baptismal grace. He left him to himself, and the youth, deprived of his faithful protection, and seduced by evil associates, fell deeper into corruption, and at last became captain of a band of robbers. Some years after, when John revisited that church, he was informed to his great sorrow of the woful change that had taken place in the youth of whom he had entertained such hopes. Nothing could keep him back from hastening to the retreat of the robbers. He suffered himself to be seized and taken into their captain's presence; but he could not sustain the sight of the apostle; John's venerable appearance brought back the recollection of what he had experienced in earlier days, and awakened his conscience. He fled away in consternation; but the venerable man, full of paternal love, and exerting himself beyond his strength, ran after him. called upon him to take courage, and announced to him the forgiveness of sins in the name of the Lord. By his fatherly guidance he succeeded in rescuing his soul, and formed him into a worthy member of the Christian community. Another 1 Quis dives salv. c. 42.

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2 Clemens gives this narrative, which breathes the spirit of John, as a veritable historical tradition, and no legend, μvos λόγος, not a μῦθος in the sense of a fable, a legend ; ἄκουσον μῦθον, οὐ μῦθον, ἀλλὰ ὄντα λόγον . . . . παραδεδομένον καὶ μνήμῃ πεφυλαγμένον. See Segaar on the passage. Such late traditions are indeed not sufficient pledges to authenticate a narrative as true in all its parts. It is possible that such a narrative might be so constructed, partly to check the injurious con