is tard edition, and by Robert Stephens, as We are assored by the several Editors.* He should, moreover, be informed, that the peted Verse has the same internal evidence of its authenticity, as that which authenticates the whole of the Epistle of St. John;† namely, the coincidence of its diction and doctrine with the language and reasoning of St. John in his Gos pel, with this additional proof in its favour, that the threefold testimony of the Heavenly Wit nesses, in the seventh verse, and the name by which the second Person of the Trinity is there distinguished, are peculiar to the Gospel and the Epistle of St. John. The eighth verse is . * They all affirm, that the text of their respective editions was from manuscript authority, and they make no exception to our Verse, except that Erasmus had not the Verse in his first two editions, but had manuscript authority for the third ،، + "The authenticity of this Epistle," says MenAPER, ،، ،، 4 also remarkable as an evidence of the Epistle by its coincidence with the three signs of Christ's death on the Cross, contained in the 19th ch. of the Gospel, ver. 30, 34: " And he bowed his "head, and gave up the ghost,"-yielded up his spirit," And one of the soldiers, with a spear, "pierced his side; and forthwith came thereout "blood and water." The seventh and eighth verses, therefore, are summary confirmations of the two great doctrines of the Epistle. -- There are two great doctrinal subjects in the First Epistle of St. John,-the eternal Deity of the Son of God, and his Incarnation; and two principal moral subjects, the love of God, and of the brethren. In the first chapter of the Epistle, the Apostle states the doctrine of the eternal Deity and the Incarnation of Christ, as in the first chapter of the Gospel. In the subsequent chapters, he reprobates the anti-Christianity of two heresies: one denying that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and the other denying that the Son of God was come in the flesh (1 John iv. 3, 2 John ver. 7); and, lastly, he proves the former doctrine by the threefold testimony of the Heavenly Witnesses in the seventh verse of the fifth verse; chapter; and of the latter, by the three evidences of Christ's death on the Cross, in the eighth verse. The context, which precedes and follows the controverted passage, requires the seventh and its coincidence with the diction, and the threefold testimony in the Gospel, demand it. The absence of the Verse, wherever it occurs in manuscript or in print, is the loss of St. John's strongest* proof of the Divinity of Christ, deranges the Apostle's reasoning in illustration of his main subject, and extinguishes the principal test of the authenticity of the whole Epistle. I have endeavoured, Madam, in the preceding pages, to trace the Doctrine of the Trinity through the several books of the New Testament; and to show, that the doctrine, as now generally professed by the Christian Church, is the leading and pervading Doctrine of the Sacred Volume; and to give such evidence of the doctrine as to show, to an unprejudiced Inquirer, * In the Gospel, Christ considered his single testimony of himself as (legally speaking) not true (ch. vi. 31, 32), without the concurrert testimony of his Father; and, therefore, St. John says, "the Spirit is truth: FOR there are THREE "that bear record,"--of whom the Spirit is one. G |