subject. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xx. xix.) says "Satan shall be loosed, and by means of that Antichrist shall work with all power in a lying but wonderful manner. Jerome affirms that Antichrist "is one man, in whom Satan shall dwell bodily;" and Theodoret that "the Man of Sin, the son of perdition, will make every effort for the seduction of the pious, by false miracles, and by force, and by persecution." From these and many more passages that might be cited it is quite clear that the Church of the first three or four centuries almost universally regarded Antichrist as an individual. The evidence, beginning with Justin Martyr in the sub-Apostolic age, warrants us in believing that in this stream of testimony we have a belief which prevailed in the time of the Apostles and was possibly shared by them. But as regards this last point it is worth remarking how reserved the Apostles seem to have been with regard to the interpretation of prophecy. "What the Apostles disclosed concerning the future was for the most part disclosed by them in private, to individuals-not committed to writing, not intended for the edifying of the body of Christ,—and was soon lost" (J. H. Newman).

(c) Besides the various passages in N.T. which point to the coming of false Christs and false prophets (Matt. xxiv. 5, 24; Mark xiii. 22, 23; Acts xx. 29; 2 Tim. iii. 1; 2 Pet. ii. 1), there are two passages which give a detailed description of a great power, hostile to God and His people, which is to arise hereafter and have great success;-Rev. xiii. and 2 Thess. ii. The second of these passages will be considered in the discussion of the second question. With regard to the first this much may be asserted with something like certainty, that the correspondence between the 'beast' of Rev. xiii. and the 'little horn' of Dan. vii. is too close to be accidental. But in consideration of the difficulty of the subject and the great diversity of opinion it would be rash to affirm positively that the 'beast' of the Apocalypse is a person. The correspondence between the 'beast' and the 'little horn' is not so close as to compel us to interpret both images alike. The wiser plan will be to leave Rev. xiii. out of consideration as neutral, for we cannot be at all sure whether the beast (1) is a person, (2) is identical with Antichrist. We shall find that 2 Thess. ii. favours the belief that Antichrist is an individual.

II. There is a strong preponderance of opinion in favour of the view that the Antichrist of S. John is the same as the great adversary of S. Paul (2 Thess. ii. 3). 1. Even in the name there is some similarity; the Antichrist (ò avrixpiσTos) and 'he that opposeth' (o dvтikelμevos). And the idea of being a rival Christ which is included in the name Antichrist and is wanting in 'he that opposeth,' is supplied in S. Paul's description of the great opponent: for he is a 'man,” and he 'setteth himself forth as God.' 2. Both Apostles state that their readers had previously been instructed about this future adversary. 3. Both declare that his coming is preceded by an apostasy of many nominal Christians. 4. Both connect his coming with the Second Advent of Christ. 5. Both describe him as a liar and deceiver. 6. S. Paul says that this 'man of sin exalteth himself against all that is called God.' S. John places the spirit of Antichrist as the opposite of the Spirit of God.

7. S. Paul states that his 'coming is according to the working of Satan.' S. John implies that he is of the evil one. 8. Both Apostles state that, although this great opponent of the truth is still to come, yet his spirit is already at work in the world. With agreement in so many and such important details before us, we can hardly be mistaken in affirming that the two Apostles in their accounts of the trouble in store for the Church have one and the same meaning.

Having answered, therefore, this second question in the affirmative we return to the first question with a substantial addition to the evidence. It would be most unnatural to understand S. Paul's 'man of sin' as an impersonal principle; and the widely different interpretations of the passage for the most part agree in this, that the great adversary is an individual. If, therefore, S. John has the same meaning as S. Paul, then the Antichrist of S. John is an individual.

To sum up: Although none of the four passages in S. John's Epistles are conclusive, yet the first of them (1 John ii. 18) inclines us to regard Antichrist as a person. This view is confirmed (a) by earlier Jewish ideas on the subject, (b) by subsequent Christian ideas from the subApostolic age onwards, (c) above all by S. Paul's description of the 'man of sin,' whose similarity to S. John's Antichrist is of a very close and remarkable kind.

For further information on this difficult subject see the articles on Antichrist in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (Appendix), and Dictionary of Christian Biography, with the authorities there quoted; also four lectures on The Patristical Idea of Antichrist in J. H. Newman's Discussions and Arguments.

C. THE SECT OF THE CAINITES.

The name of this extravagant Gnostic sect varies considerably in different authors who mention them: Cainistae, Caiani, Cainani, Cainaei, Cainiani, Caini, and possibly other varieties, are found. The Cainites were a branch of the Ophites, one of the oldest forms of Gnosticism known to us. Other branches of the Ophites known to us through Hippolytus are the Naassenes (Naash) or 'Venerators of the serpent,' the Peratae (réрav or πeрậv) 'Transmarines' or 'Transcendentalists,' the Sethians or 'Venerators of Seth,' and the Justinians or followers of Justin, a teacher otherwise unknown. Of these the Naassenes, as far as name goes, are the same as the Ophites, the one name being Hebrew, and the other Greek (öpts) in origin, and both meaning 'Serpentists' or 'Venerators of the serpent.'

All the Ophite sects make the serpent play a prominent part in their system, and that not out of sheer caprice or extravagance, but as part of a reasoned and philosophical system. In common with almost all Gnostics they held that matter is radically evil, and that therefore the Creator of the material universe cannot be a perfectly good being. The Ophites regarded the Creator as in the main an evil being, opposed to the Supreme God. From this it followed that Adam in disobeying his Creator did not fall from a high estate, nor rebelled against the

Most High, but defied a hostile power and freed himself from its thraldom and the serpent who induced him to do this, so far from being the author of sin and death, was the giver of light and liberty. It was through the serpent that the human race were first made aware that the being who created them was not supreme, but that there were higher than he; and accordingly the serpent became the symbol or intelligence and enlightenment.

Logically carried out, such a system involved a complete inversion of all the moral teaching of the Old Testament. All that the Creator of the world (who is the God of the Jews) commands, must be disobeyed, and all that He forbids must be done. The negative must be struck out of the Ten Commandments, and everything that Moses and the Prophets denounced must be cultivated as virtues. From this monstrous consequence of their premises most of the Ophites seem to have recoiled. Some modified their premises and made the Creator to be, not an utterly evil being, but an inferior power, who through ignorance sometimes acted in opposition to the Supreme God. Others, while retaining the Ophite doctrine that the serpent was a benefactor and deliverer of mankind in the matter of the temptation of Eve, endeavoured to bring this into harmony with Scripture by declaring that he did this service to mankind unwittingly. His intention was evil; he wished to do a mischief to the human race. But it was overruled to good; and what the serpent plotted for the ruin of man turned out to be man's enlighten

ment.

The Cainites, however, accepted the Ophite premises without qualification, and followed them without shrinking to their legitimate conclusion. Matter and the Creator of everything material are utterly evil. The revolt of Adam and Eve against their Creator was a righteous act, the breaking up of a tyranny. The serpent who suggested and aided this emancipation is a good being, as worthy of veneration, as the Creator is of abhorrence. The redemption of man begins with the first act of disobedience to the Creator. Jesus Christ is not the redeemer of the human race. He merely completed what the serpent had begun. Indeed some Cainites seem to have identified Jesus with the serpent. Others again, with more consistency, seem to have maintained that Jesus was an enemy of the truth and deserved to die.

The moral outcome of such a system has been already indicated, and the Cainites are said to have openly accepted it. Everything that the God of the Old Testament forbids must be practised, and everything that He orders abjured. Cain, the people of Sodom, Esau, Korah, Dathan and Abiram, are the characters to be imitated as saints and heroes; and in the New Testament, Judas. These are the true martyrs, whom the Creator and His followers have persecuted. About Judas, as about Jesus Christ, they seem not to have been agreed, some maintaining that he justly caused the death of one who perverted the truth; others, that having higher knowledge than the Eleven, he saw the benefits which would follow from the death of Christ, and therefore brought it about. These benefits, however, were not such as Christians commonly suppose, viz. the deliverance of mankind from the power of the serpent, but the final extinction of the dominion of the Creator. Irenaeus

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(Haer. I. xxxi, 1) tells us that they had a book called the Gospel of Judas. In the next section he states the practical result of these tenets. They say, like Carpocrates, that men cannot be saved until they have gone through all kinds of experience. They maintain also that in everyone of their sinful and foul actions an angel attends them and listens to them as they work audacity and incur pollution. According to the nature of the action they invoke the name of the angel, saying, 'O thou angel, I use thy work. O thou great power, I accomplish thy action.' And they declare that this is perfect knowledge,'-fearlessly to rush into such actions as it is not right even to name.'

These are developments of those 'depths of Satan' of which E. John) speaks in the Apocalypse (ii. 24) as a vaunted form of knowledge. Into the fantastic details of the system it is not necessary to enter. Suffice to say, that taking an inverted form of the Old Testament narrative as their basis, they engrafted upon it whatever took their fancy in the Egyptian rites of Isis and Osiris, the Greek mysteries of Eleusis, the Phoenician cultus of Adonis, the speculative cosmogony of Plato, or the wild orgies of Phrygian Cybele. Purpurei panni from all these sources find place in the patchwork system of the Ophite Gnostics. Christianity supplied materials for still further accretions, and probably acted as a considerable stimulus to the development of such theories. In several of its Protean forms we trace what appear to be adaptations of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

"The first appearance of the Ophite heresy in connexion with Christian doctrines," says Dean Mansel (The Gnostic Heresies p. 104), "can hardly be placed later than the latter part of the first century;" which brings us within the limits of S. John's lifetime. It is not probable that the monstrous system of the Cainites was formulated as early as this. But the first beginnings of it were there; and it is by no means impossible that I John iii. 10-12 was written as a condemnation of the principles on which the Cainite doctrine was built. Be this as it may, the prodigious heresy, although it probably never had very many adherents and died out in the third century, is nevertheless very instructive. It shews us to what results the great Gnostic principle, that matter is utterly evil, when courageously followed to its logical consequences, leads. And it therefore helps us to understand the stern and uncompromising severity with which Gnostic principles are condemned, by implication in the Fourth Gospel, and in express terms in these Epistles.

D. THE THREE HEAVENLY WITNESSES.

The outcry which has been made in some quarters against the Revisers for omitting the disputed words in I John v. 7, and without a hint in the margin that there is any authority for them, is not creditable to English scholarship. The veteran scholar Döllinger expressed his surprise at this outcry in a conversation with the present writer in July, 1882: and he expressed his amazement and amusement that anyone in these days should write a book in defence of the passage, in a conversation in September, 1883. The Revisers' action is a very tardy act of

justice; and we may hope that, whether their work as a whole is authorised or not, leave will before long be granted to the clergy to omit these words in reading 1 John v. as a Lesson at Morning or Evening Prayer, or as the Epistle for the First Sunday after Easter. The insertion of the passage in the first instance was quite indefensible, and it is difficult to see upon what sound principles its retention can be defended. There would be no difficulty in treating this case by itself and leaving other disputed texts to be dealt with hereafter. The passage stands absolutely alone (a) in the completeness of the evidence against it, (b) in the momentous character of the insertion. A summary of the evidence at greater length than could conveniently be given in a note will convince any unprejudiced person that (as Dr Döllinger observed) nothing in textual criticism is more certain than that the disputed words are spurious.

(i) The External Evidence.

1. Every Greek uncial MS. omits the passage.

2. Every Greek cursive MS. earlier than the fifteenth century omits the passage.

3. Out of about 250 known cursive MSS. only two (No. 162 of the 15th century and No. 34 of the 16th century) contain the passage, and in them it is a manifest translation from a late recension of the Latin Vulgate.

Erasmus hastily promised that if he could find the words in a single Greek MS. he would insert them in his text; and on the authority of No. 34 he inserted them in his third edition; Beza and Stephanus inserted them also: and hence their presence in all English Versions until the Revised Version of 1881.

4. Every Ancient Version of the first four centuries omits the passage.

5. Every Version earlier than the fourteenth century, except the Latin, omits the passage.

6. No Greek Father quotes the passage in any of the numerous discussions on the doctrine of the Trinity. Against Sabellianism and Arianism it would have been almost conclusive.

It has been urged that the orthodox Fathers did not quote v. 7 because in conjunction with v. 8 it might be used in the interests of Arianism. But in that case why did not the Arians quote v. 7? Had they done so, the orthodox would have replied and shewn the true meaning of both verses. Evidently both parties were ignorant of its existence.

Again, it has been urged that the Greek Synopsis of Holy Scripture printed in some editions of the Greek Fathers, and also the so-called Disputation with_Arius, “seem to betray an acquaintance with the disputed verse." Even if this 'seeming' could be shewn to be a reality, the fact would prove no more than that the interpolation existed in a Greek as well as a Latin form about the fifth century. Can we seriously defend a text which does not even 'seem' to be known to a single Greek Father until 350 years or more after S. John's death. Could we defend a passage as Chaucer's which was never quoted until the nine