particular passages, would weaken the authority of the whole N. T. With equal reason Mill believes that the marginal notes produced by Simon from Greek Mss. (the most palpable glosses that can be conceived), are not intended for interpretations of the eighth verse, but are really the mangled limbs of the seventh. But while these learned men urge such frivolous arguments, they show more plainly than by a direct confession, how severely they feel the want of evidence. So severely, that Bengelius at last begs leave to hope, that in due time, if not St. John's own autograph, yet some very ancient Greek Mss. containing the verse, may be found hidden in the shelves of Divine Providence." To which pious hope Wetstein answers in the words of Cicero: "Hic tu tabulas desideras Heracliensium publicas, quas Italico bello, incenso tabulario, interisse scimus omnes. Est ridiculum ad ea quæ habemus, nihil dicere; quærere quæ habere non possumus." 3. "But the tenor of the context requires us to keep the verse." The opposers of the verse say, on the contrary, that its insertion confuses the whole sense, breaks the connexion, and makes the most intricate and ambiguous sentence that ever was seen. For my own part, I thought Newton's exposition of the shorter reading probable and consistent enough, till I was told by Dr. Horsley, Tracts, p. 346. that "it was a model of that sort of paraphrase by which any given sense may be fixed to any given words." I suspected, I confess, at first, that having before him both your exposition and Newton's, he might have confounded them in his mind, and given to Newton's the character which was due to yours. But this opinion I soon abandoned. I wish therefore that Dr. Horsley had favored us with his own paraphrase, and shown the truth of his assertion, "that the omission of the seventh verse breaks the connexion and heightens the obscurity of the apostle's discourse." Certainly the mention of the water, blood, and spirit, in the sixth verse, is with great propriety followed by the repetition of the same terms in the genuine text; which repetition is rendered emphatic by the exaltation of the spirit, water, and blood, into three witnesses. If the spirit that witnesses in the sixth verse be the Holy Spirit, which I think cannot be doubted, "because the Spirit is truth," why is the epithet, after being twice omitted, added in the seventh verse, to mark a distinction without a difference? If the word " holy," which is omitted in some few Mss. be spurious, why is the human spirit, without any mark or circumstance to distinguish it, repeated in the same breath? But if the Spirit in the eighth verse be the Holy Spirit, what is the sense of the same Spirit witnessing both in heaven and on earth? It will be to no purpose to invert the order of the words, and say, There are three in heaven, and There are three on earth, for still the Spirit is both in heaven and earth. You tell us that, without the seventh verse, the expression, Witness of God, in the ninth, has no due antecedent. This, Sir, is a mistake. The witness of the Spirit in the sixth and eighth verses is a proper antecedent. The Spirit may be taken in two senses. The orthodox, who understand the Spirit personally, cannot deny that the witness of the Spirit is the witness of God; nor will either the orthodox or heretics deny, that the miracu lous gifts of the Spirit, which attested the divine mission of Jesus, were truly the witness of God, which he witnessed of his Son. I have diligently perused all the orthodox expositions that have fallen in my way, but without ever having the good luck to understand them. I remember one very ingenious gentleman, who, in two letters to Dr. Bentley, offers to prove that the seventh verse is essential to the context, and only assumes two self-evident propositions: 1. That the Spirit signifies the mediatorial office; and, 2. That the water is the Shechinah. But I have dwelt longer than I intended on this subject. Where there is no external evidence, internal evidence can never be pleaded for the necessity of so large and so important an addition. I shall therefore hasten to dismiss the subject by a brief recapitulation of the inferences which may fairly be deduced from the facts dispersed through the foregoing Letters. The only genuine words of 1 John v. 7, 8. are these: "Ori rpeis εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, τὸ πνεῦμα, καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ αἷμα, καὶ οἱ τρεῖς eis rò ev elow. This is the reading of all the Greek Mss. above a hundred and ten; of near thirty of the oldest Latin, of the two Syriac versions, of the Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Slavonic. But Tertullian, in imitation of the phrase, I and my Father are one,* had said of the three persons of the Trinity, Which three are one. Cyprian was misled by this passage of his master. Taking it for an allusion to scripture, he wisely inferred that it was an application of 1 John v. 8. and, as he had no doubt of Tertullian's infallibility, he adopted the same application, and said boldly, "Of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it is written, And the three are one." That Cyprian in this place interprets the eighth verse, we are told by Facundus, who, by appealing to this very place of Cyprian to prove that the spirit, water, and blood, are meant of the Trinity, shows that he knew of no such text, and that in his opinion Cyprian knew of no such text, as the three heavenly witnesses. Fulgentius indeed quotes Cyprian's authority for the modern reading, but from the manner of his appeal it appears that he could not quote the verse on the faith of copies of his own age, and therefore relied on the faith, as he supposed, of Cyprian's copy. 1 An antagonist of Beza's told him, that instead of endeavoring to wrest so stubborn a text as, This is my body, by vain explanations, he would do better to amend it at once, and read, This is not my body. The Jesuit Garasse (see Bayle, au mot Beze) soon after asserted, in print, that Beza had actually proposed this reading. In the interval of more than two centuries, when this interpretation had been expressly maintained by Augustine and Eucherius, a marginal note of this sort crept into a few copies; Sicut tres sunt qui testimonium dant in cœlo, Pater, &c. Such a copy was used by the author of the confession which Victor has preserved. Such another was used by the author of the books De Trinitate, if indeed he was a different person from the other. He would miss no fair opportunity of producing his favorite text, of which he perhaps was the fonder for having newly found it. The verse however seems to have had very small success till the eighth century, when the forger or forgers of the decretals, and of the spurious prologue to the canonical epistles, recommended it to public notice. Yet still it remained a rude, unformed mass, and was not completely licked into shape before the end of the tenth century. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was universally received for genuine, and therefore cited without suspicion in the Acts of the Lateran Council. These Acts were translated into Greek about the year 1300, and from them Emanuel Calecas borrowed his quotation. Joseph Bryennius, too, in the fifteenth century, quotes the same verse, but either from the Latin version, or from his friend Thomas Aquinas. In the thirteenth century, Haytho, king of Armenia, undertook to make a new edition of the Armenian scriptures, with the aid of Jerome's prologues and the Latin version. Haytho most probably inserted this verse in his edition on the authority of his supposed Jerome; but if Haytho, which is scarcely possible, neglected it, Uscan, who improved Haytho's edition from the Vulgate, could not fail of supplying the defect. With equal accuracy and fidelity this verse has been imposed on the modern Greeks in their printed Apostolos, on the Indian Christians by Menezes, on the Russians by their late editors, and on every other Christian nation in their several translations. It has been honestly inserted in several of the Syriac editions, and in the Greek and Russian confessions of faith. The reader, who recollects the substance of my Letters, will easily distinguish the probabilities from the positive facts. But from the facts stated in this historical deduction, it is evident, that if the text of the heavenly witnesses had been known from the beginning of Christianity, the ancients would have eagerly seized it, inserted it in their creeds, quoted it repeatedly against the heretics, and selected it for the brightest ornament of every book that they wrote on the subject of the Trinity. . In short, if this verse be really genuine, notwithstanding its absence from all the visible Greek Mss. except two; one of which awkwardly translates the verse from the Latin, and the other transcribes it from a printed book; notwithstanding its absence from all the versions except the Vulgate, and even from many of the best and oldest Mss. of the Vulgate; notwithstanding the deep and dead silence of all the Greek writers down to the thirteenth, and most of the Latins down to the middle of the eighth century; if, in spite of all these objections, it be still genuine, no part of scripture whatsoever can be proved either spurious or genuine; and Satan has been permitted, for many centuries, miraculously to banish the finest passage in the N. T. from the eyes and memories of almost all the Christian authors, translators, and transcribers. If At last, Sir, I see land. I have so clearly explained my sentiments concerning the authority of the disputed verse, and the merits of your book, in the progress of these Letters, that it will be needless to add any thing on either of those topics. As I was persuaded that Mr. Gibbon would never condescend to auswer you, I have been bold enough to trouble you with my objections to your facts and arguments. The proofs of the spuriousness of 1 John v. 7. that I have enumerated, are, in my opinion, more than sufficient to convince any reasonable man. But whatever success I may have had in the main question, there is another point which I have proved to demonstration, that Mr. Travis is radically ignorant of the subject which he has undertaken to illustrate. You may therefore reply, Sir, or not, as shall seem good to you. you think proper not to expose yourself again, which, to speak as a friend, I should think your wisest plan, I shall attribute your silence to a consciousness of your own weakness. You will call it contempt of your adversary, and I cannot deny the retaliation to be fair enough, considering with how small respect I have treated an author, who "has vindicated the authenticity of that important passage (1 John v. 7.) in a superior way, so as to leave no room for future doubt or cavil." But if you reply, as you half promise, I shall not think myself bound to continue the debate, unless both your matter and style much excel your Letters to Mr. Gibbon, and still more that Crambe recocta 3 which you called a defence of Stephens and Beza. Such replies will carry their own refutation with them to all readers that are not eaten up with prejudice; and others it would be folly to expect to satisfy. I shall therefore be perfectly silent, unless you can disprove the charges that I have brought against you, of ignorance and misrepresentation. In case of conviction, I dare not promise to retract 2 1 "An Apology for the Liturgy and Clergy of the Church of England," p. 57, 58. How much stronger is this than the faint, half-faced compliment paid by the author of "Considerations on the Expediency of revising the Liturgy and Articles," p. 70. "Mr. Travis's labors on the genuineness of this text are highly meritorious!" And, as if this compliment were not cold enough, he soon damps it by adding, that many excellent critics will not admit Mr. Travis's vindication to be such as leaves no room for future doubt. From this and similar passages, our Consistent Protestant is, I fear, little better than a heretic. 2 Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1790. 3 Ibid. Jan. 1790. publicly (for I know how frail are the vows of authors and lovers), but I promise to try. If you confess the charges, and yet maintain that the errors you have committed are venial, and consistent with a knowlege of the subject, I shall excuse myself from the controversy, and consider you as degraded from that rank of literature which entitles one writer to challenge another. ON THE SITUATION OF THE HADES OF HOMER. WHEN Ulysses leaves the residence of Circe, he seeks, by the direction of the goddess, "The dreary house of Aïdes, and of dread - Αίδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης. Odyss. κ'. 491. The characteristics of its situation are distinctly marked by the poet, Ἱστὸν δὲ στήσας, ἀνὰ δ ̓ ἱστία λευκὰ πετάσσας, Ενθα μὲν εἰς ̓Αχέροντα Πυριφλεγέθων τε ρέουσι, Κωκυτός θ', ὃς δὴ Στυγὸς ὕδατός ἐστιν ἀποῤῥώξ. κ. τ. λ. 66 once on board, Odyss. '. 505. Your mast erected, and your shining sail Dread Pyriphlegethon, but Cocytus loud, From these lines we may learn that the road to Hades lay in a southern direction from the Œæan isle, and that Hades itself was situated beyond the ocean. |