was really written to the Parthians. Paulus and Baur made use of the assumption to impugn the apostolicity of the Epistle. Grotius, who was followed by Haminond, and partially by Michaelis and Baumgarten-Crusius, gives a curious reason, in connexion with this idea, for the omission of all address and personal notices: "The Epistle was anciently called that to the Parthians, i. e. those Jews professing Christianity who lived under the rule not of the Romans, but of the Parthians in the parts beyond the Euphrates, where there was a great multitude of Jews, as at Nearda, Nisibis, and other places. And I imagine this to be the reason why this Epistle contains neither the name and title of an Apostle in its opening, nor salutations after the apostolic manner at its close, because the Epistle was to be sent by Ephesian merchants into lands hostile to the Romans, and it might have been very damaging to the Christians if this epistolary commerce, though innocent, had been detected." This is absurd enough, especially as the Epistle is evidently not addressed to Jews at all as such, but mainly to Gentile readers: see below, par. 5. And ecclesiastical tradition knows of no mission of St. John to the Parthians, St. Thomas being supposed to have carried the Gospel to them.

3. This being so, it would appear, as hinted before, that the supposed address "to the Parthians" rests upon some mistake. But if so, on what mistake? A conjecture is quoted from Serrarius that in the original text of Augustine it stood "to the Patmians." Other conjectures are enumerated in my Greek Test., among which the most probable is that the Greek word “parthenos," a virgin, either as a title of those addressed, or a name of the Apostle himself, has somehow produced the mistake.

4. At all events we may fairly assume, that the Epistle was not written to the Parthians. Nor is there more probability in the notion of Benson that it was addressed to the Jewish Christians in Judæa and Galilee, who had seen the Lord in the flesh: nor in that of Lightfoot, who sends it to the church at Corinth, supposing the Gaius to whom the third Epistle is addressed, identical with him of Acts xix. 29 and 1 Cor. i. 14, and the fact alluded to in 3 John 9 to refer to this first Epistle.

5. Setting aside these, and falling back on the general opinion, we believe the Epistle to have been written not to any one church, but to a cycle of churches, mainly consisting of Gentile converts. This last seems shewn by the warning of ch. v. 21, combined with the circumstance that so little reference is made to Old Test. sayings or history.

6. It evidently also appears, that the Apostle is the spiritual teacher of those to whom he is writing. He knows their circumstances and various advances in the faith: the whole tone is that of their father in the faith. Such a relation, following as we surely must the traces fur

nished by ancient tradition, can only be found in the case of St. John, by believing the readers to have been members of the churches at and round Ephesus, where he lived and taught.

7. The character of the Epistle is too general to admit a comparison between it and the Ephesian Epistle in the Apocalypse, which some have endeavoured to institute. Our Epistle contains absolutely no materials on which such a comparison can proceed.

SECTION III.

ITS RELATION TO THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.

1. As introductory to this enquiry, it will be well to give an account of opinions respecting the epistolary form of this canonical book.

6

2. This was always taken for granted, seeing that definite readers and their circumstances are continually present, and that the first and second persons plural are constantly used',-until Michaelis maintained that it is rather a treatise, or a book, than a letter; and only so far a letter, as any treatise may be addressed to certain readers, e. g. the Acts to Theophilus. Accordingly, he holds this to be a second part of the Gospel.

́3. As Lücke remarks, it is of great importance whether we consider the writing as an Epistle or not. Our decision on this point affects both our estimate of it, and our exposition. Surely, however, the question is not difficult to decide. We may fairly reply to the hypothesis which supposes the Epistle to be a second part of the Gospel, that the Gospel is complete in itself and requires no such supplement; see John xx. 30, 31, where the practical object also of the Gospel is too plainly asserted, for us to suppose this to be its practical sequel.

4. To view it again as a preface and introduction to the Gospel, as Hug, seems not to be borne out by the spirit of either writing. The Gospel requires no such introduction: the Epistle furnishes none such. They do not in a word stand in any external relation to one another, such as is imagined by every one of these hypotheses.

5. Hug fancied he found a trace of the Epistle having once been appended to the Gospel, in the Latin version attached to Beza's great MS. now at Cambridge. There, on the back of the leaf on which the Acts of the Apostles begin, the copyist has written the last column of 3 John, with this subscription: "Here end the three Epistles of

Compare ch. ii. 1, 7, 13, 14, 18, 28; iii. 18, 21; iv. 1, 7, 11, &c.

• Introd. to New Test., Marsh's translation, vol. iv. p. 400.

:

John here beginneth the Acts of the Apostles." But first, this proves too much, seeing that all three Epistles of St. John are included, and surely Hug does not suppose the second and third Epistles to have been also sequels to the Gospel: and secondly, this very circumstance, the inclusion of all three Epistles, shews the reason of the arrangement, viz., to place together the writings of the same Apostle.

6. The writing then is to be regarded as an Epistle, as it usually has been and no closer external relation to the Gospel must be sought for.

But, this being premised, a very interesting question follows. The two writings are internally related, in a remarkable manner. Do the phænomena of this relation point out the Gospel, or the Epistle, as having been first written?

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7. And to this question there can I think be but one answer. The Epistle again and again assumes, on the part of its readers, an acquaintance with the facts of the Gospel narrative. Lücke well remarks, that as a rule, the shorter, more concentrated expression of one and the same writer, especially when ideas peculiar to him are concerned, is the later, while the more explicit one, which first unfolds and puts in shape the idea, is the earlier one.” And he finds examples of this in the abbreviated formula of ch. i. 1, 2, as compared with John i. 1 ff.; iv. 2, compared with John i. 14.

8. Other considerations connected with this part of our subject will be found treated in the next section.

SECTION IV.

TIME AND PLACE OF WRITING.

1. On both of these, opinions have been much divided: no sure indi. cations being furnished by the Epistle itself. If however we have been right in assigning to it a date subsequent to that of the Gospel, we shall bring that date, by what has been said in the Introduction to Vol. I. ch. v. § iv. (where fifteen years, A.D. 70-85, are shewn to have marked the probable limits of the time of the writing of the Gospel), within a time not earlier than perhaps about the middle of the eighth decade of the first century: and extending as late as the traditional age of the Apostle himself.

2. Some have imagined that the Epistle betrays marks of the extreme old age of the writer. But such inferences are very fallacious. Certainly the repeated use of "little children," more frequently than any other term of endearing address, seems to point to an aged writer: but even this is insecure.

3. Again it has been fancied that the words, "it is the last time,” ch. ii. 18, furnish a note of time; and must be understood of the approaching destruction of Jerusalem. But as Lücke replies, this expression is used simply in reference to the appearance of antichristian teachers, and the apprehension thence arising that the coming of the Lord was at hand. So that we have no more right to infer a note of time from it, than from similar expressions in St. Paul, e. g. 1 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Tim. iii. 1.

4. As to the place of writing, we are just as much in uncertainty. The Gospel (Vol. I. Introd. ch. v. § iv.) is said by Irenæus to have been written at Ephesus. And ancient tradition, if at least represented by the subscriptions to the Epistle, seems to have placed the writing of the Epistle there also. Further, it is impossible to say.

SECTION V.

CONTENTS AND ARRANGEMENT.

1. This Epistle, from its aphoristic and apparently tautological character, is exceedingly difficult to arrange as a continuous contextual whole. Some indeed from this have been induced to believe that there is no such contextual connexion in the Epistle. So Calvin, Episcopius, and others. And this seems, up to the beginning of the last century, to have been the prevailing view. About that time, Sebastian Schmid, in his commentary on the Epistle, maintained, but only tentatively and timidly, that there is a logical and contextual arrangement. The same side was taken up with more decision by Oporinus of Göttingen.

2. But the principal advocate of this view in the last century was Bengel. In his note on the famous passage, ch. v. 7, he gives his contextual system of the Epistle'. This arrangement is made in the interest of the disputed verse, and tends to give it an important place in the context of the Epistle. It is moreover highly artificial, and the Trinitarian character, which is made to predominate in it, is certainly far from the obvious key to the real arrangement, as given us by the Epistle itself.

3. Nearer to our own time, differing arrangements of the Epistle have been proposed, by Lücke, De Wette, and Düsterdieck. I shall take these three in order.

4. Lücke holds the proper theme of the Epistle, the object, ground, and binding together of all its doctrinal and practical sayings, to be this proposition: "As the ground and root of all Christian fellowship is, the

7 Cited in the note on this part of the Introd. in my Greek Test.

fellowship which each individual has with the Father and the Son in faith and in love, so this latter necessarily unfolds and exhibits itself in that former, viz. in the fellowship with the brethren." Having laid this down, he divides the Epistle into many sections, all unfolding in various ways this central truth. Thus, e. g., ch. i. 5—ii. 2, speaks of fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. God is light: fellowship with Him is walking in light: all pretence to it without such walking, is falsehood. And striving after such purity is the condition under which only Christian fellowship subsists, and under which the blood of Christ cleanses from sin. For even the Christian state is a striving, and not free from sin, but proceeding ever in more detection and confession of it: which leads not to a compromise with sin, but to its entire annihilation.

5. This may serve for a specimen of Lücke's setting forth of the connexion of the Epistle: in which, as Düsterdieck observes, he does not attempt to grasp the master thoughts which account for the development, but merely follows it step by step. For this, however, Lücke does not deserve the blame which Düsterdieck imputes to him. His is obviously the right way to proceed, though it may not have been carried far enough in his hands: far better than the a priori assumption of a Trinitarian arrangement by Bengel. He has well given the sequence of thought, as it stands: but he has not accounted for it. The complete statement of the disposition of the matter of the Epistle must tell us not only how the train of thought proceeds, but why it thus proceeds.

6. A nearer approximation to this has been made by De Wette. His plan may be thus described. The great design of the Epistle is to confirm the readers in the Christian life as consisting in purity (love) and faith, and to this end to waken and sharpen the moral conscience by reminding them of the great moral axioms of the Gospel, by reminding them also of the inseparableness of morality and faith, to keep them from the influence of those false teachers who denied the reality of the manifestation of Jesus Christ in the flesh, and to convince them of the reality of that manifestation. The Epistle he arranges under 1. An introduction, ch. i. 1-4: 2. Three exhortations; a) i. 5-ii. 28, begins with reminding them of the nature of Christian fellowship, as consisting in walking in light, in purity from sin and keeping of God's commandments (i. 5—ii. 11): then proceeds by an earnest address to the readers · (ii. 12-14), a warning against the love of the world (ii. 15—17), against false teachers, and an exhortation to keep fast hold of Christ (ii. 18-27), and concludes with a promise of confidence in the day of judgment.

b) He again reminds them of the fundamental moral axioms of the Gospel. The state of a child of God rests on the conditions of righteousness and purity from sin: he who commits sin belongs to the devil.