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I. WHO WAS THE WRITER?

II. WHO WERE THE READERS?

III. WHAT WERE THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE

CHURCHES?

IV. IS THE WRITING AN EPISTLE?

I. Who was the Writer?-Three Epistles come before us in the New Testament bearing a very strong family likeness to each other and to the Fourth Gospel. They carry no superscription in their text, but "the elder," or "the old man." Whose are they? The manuscripts from which they are derived have always said "John's," and in some is added "the Apostle."

We will here consider the First. The Second and Third will be treated separately. The evidence for the First is as strong as anything could be. It was accepted as the Apostle's by the whole Church. Eusebius, the historian (born about A.D. 270), places it among the writings "universally admitted (homologoumena)"; and Jerome states that it received the sanction of all members of the Church. The only exceptions were such sects of heretics as would be likely to repudiate it as not harmonising with their theological errors: the Alogi, or Unreasonables," an obscure and rather doubtful sect in the second century, who rejected St. John's Gospel and the Revelation, and therefore, probably, these three Epistles; and Marcion, in the same century, who chose such parts of the New Testament as suited him best, and altered them at pleasure.

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The evidence of quotation and reference begins early. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, became a Christian A.D. 83. In the epistle which he wrote to the Philippians, occur these words: "For every one that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is antichrist." The likeness to 1 John iv. 2, 3, is marked; and it is far more probable that a loosely written letter, such as his, should embody a well-known saying of so sententious and closely worded a treatise as the First Epistle of John than the other way.

Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, flourished in the first half of the second century. Irenæus, who was born about the end of the first century, says that he was a hearer of St. John. This is contradicted by Eusebius on the evidence of Papias' own writings (H.E. III. 39, 1, 2); but he wrote a work called, An Explanation of the Oracles of the Lord, in which he bore witness to the authenticity of Christian doctrine. The account of his work is derived from Eusebius, the historian, who says that "he used testimonies from the First Epistle of John." By balancing the name of St. John in this sentence with that of St. Peter, Eusebius evidently understood the Apostle.

About A.D. 100 was born Justin Martyr. In his

time was written the anonymous epistle to Diognetus. Six of its chapters contain indisputable reminiscences of the First Epistle. The epistle of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons was written in A.D. 177. It quotes 1 John iii. 16. Carpocrates, the Gnostic, lived at Alexandria at the beginning of the second century. He tried to pervert 1 John v. 19, "The whole world lieth in the evil one." Irenæus cites three passages from the First Epistle, mentioning its author; and Eusebius mentions this piece of evidence in, exactly the same manner as that from Papias. Clement of Alexandria was born about A.D. 150. Like Irenæus, he quotes passages from the First Epistle, naming the author. So Tertullian, born about the same time, Origen, and the succeeding Fathers. About A.D. 170, a Canon of the New Testament was drawn up by some teacher for the use of catechumens. This is now known by the name of Muratori, who discovered and printed it A.D. 1740. (See Tregelles' Canon Muratorianus, pages 1, 81-89: Oxford, 1867.) "What wonder," it says, "that St. John makes so many references to the Fourth Gospel in his Epistles, saying of himself, that which we have seen with our eyes, and have heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, that have we written'? for thus he professes himself not only the eye-witness, but also the hearer and the writer of all the wonders of the Lord in order." And, after cataloguing St. Paul's Epistles, it continues : The Epistle of Jude, and the two which bear the name of John as a title, are considered General." The writer evidently means the Second and Third Epistles, which might not have been considered general from their shortness and slightness. The Peschito, or Syrian version, of about the same date, gives the same evidence as the Muratorian Canon. We have thus a consentient voice from the churches of East and West, of Syria, of Alexandria, of Africa, and of Gaul. So strong, so clear, is the external proof. On the internal, nothing can be better than the words of Ewald. "As in the Gospel, we see here the author retire to the background, unwilling to speak of himself, and still less to support anything by the weight of his name and reputation, although the reader here meets him, not as the calm narrator, but as an epistolary writer, as exhorter and teacher, as an Apostle, and, moreover, as the only surviving Apostle. It is the same delicacy and diffidence, the same lofty calmness and composure, and especially the same truly Christian modesty, that cause him to retire to the background as

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an Apostle, and to say altogether so little of himself. He only desires to counsel and warn, and to remind his readers of the sublime truth they have once acquired; and the higher he stands the less he is disposed to humble the brethren' by his great authority and directions. But he knew who he was, and every word tells plainly that he only could thus speak, counsel, and warn. The unique consciousness which an Apostle as he grew older could carry within himself, and which he, once the favourite disciple, had in a peculiar measure; the calm superiority, clearness, and decision in thinking on Christian subjects; the rich experience of a long life, steeled in the victorious struggle with every unchristian element; and a glowing language lying concealed under this calmness, which makes us feel intuitively that it does not in vain commend to us love as the highest attainment of Christianity-all this coincides so remarkably in this Epistle, that every reader of that period, probably without any further intimation, might readily determine who he was. But where the connection required it the author intimates with manifest plainness that he stood in the nearest possible relations to Jesus (chaps. i. 1-3; iv. 16; v. 3-6), precisely as he is wont to express himself in similar circumstances in the Gospel; and all this is so artless and simple, so entirely without the faintest trace of imitation in either case, that nobody can fail to perceive that the self-same author and Apostle must have composed both writings" (Ewald, Die Johann. Schriften, i. 431).

No less than thirty-five passages of the Fourth Gospel are common to the First Epistle. These expressions occur in twenty-three different places, and are used in a way of which only the author of the same two treatises could be capable. Considerably more than half of the parallel places in the Gospel belong to the farewell discourses of John xii.-xvii. There the tender, loving, receptive, truthful, retentive mind of the bosom-friend had been particularly necessary; at that great crisis it had been, through the Spirit of God, particularly strong; and the more faithfully St. John had listened to his Master and reproduced Him, the deeper the impression was which the words made on his own mind, and the more likely he was to dwell on them in another work instead of on his own thoughts and words. The style may be his own both in Gospels and Epistles, modified by that of our Lord; the thoughts are the thoughts of Jesus. (See Vol. I., pp. 557 and 558.) An examination of the following parallels will illustrate this :

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The proof that the Fourth Gospel was the work of St. John is given in the Introduction to that Gospel, in the first volume. On internal grounds alone, without the strong external evidence already sketched, an unbiassed mind would find it very difficult to believe that the First Epistle (and the Second and Third also) are not by the same author. Even the style and construction have an identity which could not easily be spurious or accidental. This is seen in the habit of thinking in periods the limbs of which are parallel and co-ordinate instead of progressive: the juncture of these by "and" instead of by particles, expressing con. sequence or movement: the peculiar use of four special particles the general Aramaic framework of the diction and the constant reappearance of special words and phrases. The identity of ideas in both writings is of the same character; they bear no sign of imitation, but are the free production of the same spirit. Light, life, darkness, truth, the lie, propitiation, doing righteousness, doing sin, doing lawlessness, life and death, loving and hating, love of the Father and love of the world, children of God and children of the devil, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error: all these notions underlie the thought of both Gospel and Epistle. The writer of each, too, has the same characteristics: love of the background for himself; absorbing devotion to his Lord; faithful receptiveness and faculty for sympathetic reproduction of His thoughts and spirit; pure unruffled, unfaltering movement among the very inmost facts of life and being; intense unhesitating indignation (like thunder from a clear sky) for wilful depravers of spiritual truth; and the absolute tranquillity of that certainty which comes from long conviction and demonstrable experience. again, the particular dogmatic notes of each are the same: the Spirit already marking off the true from false believers, and so preparing the way for the final judgment; the manifestation of the sons of God already by the presence of the Father and the Son in the Spirit; the actual present beginning of everlasting life, and the safety from future judgment; the present existence of the last hour; Christ the actual Paraclete, the Divine Spirit being another. It would, indeed, be difficult to find a more structural and penetrating identity between the works of any author whatever than there is between the Gospel and the First Epistle.

So,

It was Scaliger (1484-1558) who first announced "the three Epistles of John are not by the Apostle of that name." The tradition mentioned by Eusebius that there was living at Ephesus at the same time as St. John a presbyter of the same name, to whom great