scholar of St. John. Pothinus was succeeded immediately by Irenæus, another hearer of St. Polycarp; so that if any church in Europe could bid fair to have a genuine and perfect copy of the first epistle of St. John, it was surely the ancient and venerable church of Lyons. But in the whole list of Prelates from Pothinus down to Eucherius, who, as the reader may see in my Discourses on the Christian Hierarchy, was the twenty-first in succession, and filled the see from the year of Christ four hundred and thirty-four to four hundred and fifty-four, there is not upon record a single Arian Bishop, nor yet a Presbyter; the venerable see of Lyons having never at any time been branded either with this or any other damnable heresy. It is plain, however, that Eucherius, from the citation of the eighth verse only in the genuine remains of his works, knew nothing of the Heavenly Witnesses; and, if he was ignorant of it, we may rest assured that all his predecessors in the same chair had been equally ignorant of it. I shall now proceed to state in what way I think the verse at first got thrust into the Latin manuscripts. This I hesitate not to charge, originally, on the undesign. ing mistakes of the two African Prelates, Vigilius Tapsensis and Fulgentius Ruspensis. In the days of these prelates the African church had suffered from the Arian faction the most violent persecutions; and Vigilius, particularly, being anxious to vindicate the cause of orthodoxy, and conscientiously believing that in the copy of St. Cyprian the words Tres unum sunt were absolutely affirmed of the Three Persons of the Godhead, ventured to allege the verse in due form; and so in the Confession of Faith which he drew up in the name of the African Bishops, as well as in the several tracts which he put forth under the names of Athanasius, Augustinus, and Idacius, he scrupled not to in-. sert it as the testimony of St. John. Fulgentius striking in with the same notion, cited it in like manner; and from these two writers it was henceforth communicated to others of the Latin church, till at length it was received as a genuine part of the epistle. It did not, however, find its way into any of the Latin manuscripts for some centuries after Vigilius and Fulgentius. It is a mistake even to suppose, that it had obtained a place in any one single manuscript at the time that PseudoJerome composed his prologue to the canonical epistles. The language of the prologue is not, that of the Latin copies, some contained the Heavenly Witnesses but others not; or, that the orthodox had preserved, but the heretics expunged the verse, a circumstance of which, no doubt, he would have heen happy to take notice; but that the unfaithful translators in putting down nothing except the words, the spirit, and the water, and the blood; and omitting the words, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, had egregiously departed from the true catholic faith. He does not go so far even as to assure the reader, that he had taken care to have the words correctly inserted either from the Greek or the Latin manuscripts; nor do I verily believe that he had the presumption to do it. In this I am supported by what I remember having once read in the Iter Italicum of Mabillon. That learned monk being at Rome, and inspecting one of the most valuable public libraries, fell in with a manuscript containing the Acts, the canonical Epistles, and the Apocalypse, written in uncial letters, and above a thousand years old. In this manuscript there was prefixed to the canonical Epistles the prologue of Pseudo-Jerome, absque auctoris nomine, complaining, as usual, of the absence of the Heavenly Witnesses; but behold, in the text of the epistle itself the testimony was omitted. And can any one suppose, that the transcriber of this manuscript, who must have flourished towards the close of the seventh century, and who, from the circumstance of his prefixing the prologue, must have cherished the most orthodox sentiments of the doctrine of the Trinity, would have neglected to insert the passage of the Heavenly Witnesses, had it appeared in the copy from which his transcript was made? Surely not it is an incredible supposition. Seeing, however, that this spurious passsage has resulted entirely from the peculiar manner in which St. Cyprian expounded the eighth verse, I shall here pause to inquire in what sense he must have understood it, so as to apply the words Tres unum sunt, to the Persons of the Godhead. That Tertullian was the chief guide of St. Cyprian, is the assertion of St. Jerome. But, if we consult Tertullian, we shall find that, in the baptismal formula, he regards the three names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as so many privy spectators or witnesses of the faith of the person baptized, as well as sponsors of his salvation; and that, as under the law the testimony of three persons was sufficient to establish every word; so, under the Gospel, the testimony of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, at our baptism, affords the strongest confirmation of our hopes of salvation. Now, if we turn to the fifth chapter of the First Epistle of St. John, we shall there find that he is describing with what evidence or testimony from heaven Christ entered on the course and discharge of his ministry: for like as every Christian man enters on his new vocation at his baptism, so Christ entered on the fulfilment of his mission by a threefold bap. tism, by baptism with the water, by baptism with the blood or cruci fixion, and by baptism with the Holy Ghost; of all which baptisms there is mention made in the gospels, and with all which our Lord Jesus Christ was most certainly baptized. The meaning, therefore, of the eighth verse according to St. Cyprian is,— For there are three divine persons who bear testimony to the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ; first, as to the Spirit, in that he had the testimony of the Holy Ghost in the miracles which he wrought; secondly, as to the water, in that on his being baptized with the water baptism of St. John, he received the testimony of the Father, who by a voice from heaven pronounced him his beloved Son; and thirdly, as to the blood, in that on his shedding his blood upon the cross, he had the testimony of the Word, who being united to his soul at that moment, caused such a supernatural darkness and concussion of the earth as to draw from the mouths of the centurion and the Roman soldiery a confession of his divinity: moreover, these three divine persons, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost are one and the same witness, in that they equally testify of the divine mission of Christ. In this manner the three nouns, To πνεύμα, και το ύδωρ, και το αιμα, are not considered as being of the nominative, but of the accusative case; and as severally governed by xata, understood. The three witnesses here are supposed to be the same with the three Heavenly Witnesses at our baptism; and for this reason, and no other, it is that in his application of the words Tres unum sunt, to the Trinity, he does not affirm them of the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, as they stand in the seventh verse; but of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as they stand in the baptismal formula. Nor have I the least fault to find with this exposition of St. Cyprian. On the contrary, unless we are prepared with the Armenian editor to discard from the text the eighth as well as the seventh verse, I see no other mode of eliciting any sense. The idea of a real personification of the Spirit, the water, and the blood, I totally reject, as abhorrent from the style of the writers of the New Testament. To me the notion of the water and the blood bearing any kind of actual testimony, whether in the heavens or on the earth, is perfectly unintelligible; nor can I conceive, how these two witnesses should unite with the Spirit in producing the same testimony. are one: and there are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit; and these three things are one in Christ Jesus. In the Dublin Greek manuscript,For there are three who bear testimony in heaven, Father, Word, and Holy Spirit; and these three are one: and there are three who bear testimony on the earth, spirit, water, and blood. If we receive, &c. In the Latin vulgate,-For there are three who bear testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit; and these three are one: and there are three who bear testimony on the earth, the spirit, the water and the blood; and these three are one. In the printed Greek text, I am not ignorant, indeed, that with some expositors the water and the blood here spoken of are referred to the blood and water which gushed from the side of our Saviour, when pierced upon the cross by the Roman soldier. But on this supposition the emphasis, surely, would have been the very reverse of what it is; and, since blood, and not-For there are three who bear teswater, might have been expected to gush from his side, the language of the divine apostle should have been, that Christ came by blood and water; not by blood only, but by blood and water; the directly contrary to which is the language of the epistle. Besides, the circumstance of the blood and water gushing from his side could furnish no kind of testimony whatever, except that of his death. Before saying any thing on what is termed the intrinsic evidence for the disputed passage, we ought clearly to determine the context; as it seems most unfair to draw arguments from any part of the printed Greek copies, of which we may be left in uncertainty whether the construction be genuine or not. Now nothing, surely, can exceed the immense diversities of construction observable in those two verses, as cited by their earliest authorities. In some they are read ;-There are three who bear witness on earth, water, blood, and flesh; and the three are one in us: and there are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit; and these three are one. In others, -For there are three who bear witness on earth, the water, the blood, and the flesh; and these three things REMEMBRANCER, No. 39. timony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one: and there are three who bear testimony on the earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood; and the three are for one; or, as we read it in the English version, agree in one. Here, then, we have no less than five different constructions of these two verses; not to mention several less important variations, and that, on many occasions, we find the eighth verse placed before the seventh. Such a confusion could have arisen from no other possible cause than the clumsy and unsuccessful attempt to create two verses out of one; and he must be a hardy critic indeed, who, from such a deranged and chaotic mass of constructions, should pretend from the state of the eighth verse, to fetch any intrinsic evidence in support of the seventh. But it will here be argued, that. the text of Griesbach concludes the eighth verse with To V ; and that the definitive article ro, before 1, supposes some other, preceding, to which it pointedly refers. To this I reply, that Griesbach, discharging the duties of an editor, has given agreeably to the majority of his manuscripts, & To ; but that this was at all times the geneᎢ ral reading of the Greek text is extremely questionable. The Latin version, and, I might add, all the Latin writers, acknowledges neither the article nor the preposition. The Æthiopic, according to Griesbach, for I have not the version by me to inspect it myself, has neither the article nor the preposition. The Coptic tongue possesses both the definite and the indefinite article, and is very regular in the use of them; but in the Coptic version of the eighth verse there is a preposition, indeed, equivalent to in; but no article whatever. The same may be said of the Syriac version. Though the Armenian tongue has no real prepositive article; yet, by virtue of the final Nu, of the use of which it is extremely lavish, the Greek prepositive article is capable of being fully expressed nevertheless, in the genuine Armenian text of this verse, there is neither article nor preposition. From the consideration, then, of the state of the eighth verse in all those ancient and celebrated versions, which must, at one time or another, have been severally made from certain Greek manuscripts; I conclude that the genuine reading of the Greek text was not always the same with that of Griesbach ; and, therefore, that no stress ought to be laid on the existence of the prepositive article in the present Greek copies. To me, however, the sense appears to be the same, whether the article be present or not; its use, as is well known, being to point out not only some one individual person, or particular thing of the kind; but also the whole kind itself, taken in its utmost latitude, without any reference whatever to one individual more than to another. Certainly the translators of our re. ceived version were either unable or unwilling to perceive, in this place, any definite meaning of the Greek prepositive; and I call upon those who seem to have penetrated more deeply than others into its mysterious uses, to give us something more to the purpose than what the present version supplies. There is, I think, a high degree of inconsistency in the espousers of the Heavenly Witnesses, when they argue against its possible personification of the earthly witnesses in the eighth verse, in order to bring in the seventh. The external evidence for the eighth verse is so strong that it cannot now be rejected. But, if we may not be permitted to personify the spirit, the water, and the blood, when the seventh verse is omitted, how, I ask, shall we be any more at liberty to do so when it is actually thrust in? I am aware that the learned Bishop of St. David's has said, by an attraction; but to that I may reply in one word, that the Greek tongue acknowledges no such attractions as this, nor any other tongue whatever, with which I am in the least acquainted. There are some other arguments brought forward, on which, with your permission, Mr. Editor, I shall take an early opportunity to animadvert; as I am anxious to leave nothing unnoticed that may in any measure contribute to the support of the falsified text. passed over in silence by all the Greek and Latin Fathers, I will acquiesce in the reasonableness of admitting the whole verse into the sacred Canon." Your learned correspondent assumes here what cannot be granted, that all the Greek and Latin Fathers have passed over the verse in silence. Even the Greek Fathers are not without authorities in favour of the verse; and the Latin Fathers have several express citations of it. But waving this objection to the Rector's premises, there is an authentic and very important passage in the same chapter with the controverted verse, which has been more than equally passed over in silence by all the Greek and Latin Fathers of the first three Centuries, I mean the twentieth yerse, This is the true God, and eternal life." This passage was of great importance in the many controversies respecting the Divinity of Christ during the second and third Centuries, and yet it was never quoted by any of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. If the Greek text of 1 John v. 7. was never quoted by any Greek Father, (which cannot be admitted,) the Latin version was never objected to by any Greek or Latin heretic, nor by the Greek Church in all her long-continued disputes with the Latin Church. Feb. 14. T. M. "And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels," Amongst the Nagay Tartars in the Crimea, we saw a great many buffaloes and camels, several of the latter we met drawing, in their two wheeled carts, a service for which I should think them not so well adapted as for bearing burdens; and although a chariot of camels is mentioned by Isaiah, I do not remember having heard of such a practice elsewhere. Rer. R. Heber's Note on Clarke's Travels in the Crimea, p. 576. Hebrews xi. 38. "Of whom the world was not worthy, they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth." Judges vi. 2. "And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel, and because of the Midian ites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves and strong holds." 1 Sam. xiii. 6. "When the men of Israel saw that they were in a straight, then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits." In returning to Achmetchet we stopped to water our horses in the steppes, (or plains) where the dwellings were entirely subterranean.Not a house was to be seen; but there were some holes as entrances in the ground, through one of which we descended to a cave, rendered almost suffocating by the heat of a stove for dressing the victuals of its poor owners. The walls, floor, and roof, were all of the natural soil.Clarke's Travels. See also an account of the caverns of Inkerman by the same author, p. 491; but these, from their |