Now, if in my objections to the falsified passage, I had laid any special stress on its not having been quoted by the Fathers of the first three centuries; it would have been nothing more than just in T. M. to have exacted from me some Ante-Nicene testimony for the two verses which he has alleged: but since my complaint is, that of all the Greek Fathers put together, not one; and of all the Latin Fathers, next to none have cited the disputed text; I may venture, surely, to appeal to the candour of T. M., whether, on being required to compare the negative evidence of the Christian Fathers against any verse of the New Testament, with the same kind of evidence against the Heavenly Witnesses, I ought to be restricted to the writers of the first three centuries only; and not Eikewise allowed the best Post-Nicene testimony, as is every where demanded by me for the passage in dispute. To convince T. M. how ever, how little advantage he has gained from any concession which I may have made, I will briefly demonstrate to him, first, that neither of his two texts can strictly and exclusively apply to the divinity of Christ; and that, as to the testimony afforded them by the Fathers, they have five times, yea, ten times the support of the Heavenly Wit

nesses.

In considering 1 John v. 20. the first thing which the mind collects from the construction of, His Son, is, that this, Son, cannot possibly be the chief subject of what immediately goes before; but the, He, that is, the Father, to whom the pronominal, His, refers; and, therefore, we seem under the necessity of expounding the expression of, The true One, in both the places in which it occurs, of God the Father only. It is equally superfluous to observe, that in the Gospel of St. John the exalted appellation of, The true God, is appropriated and confined to the Father alone; and REMEMBRANCER, No. 41.

consequently we are fully authorised to expound it of the Father only in the text before us. I beg, however, to be understood as by no means quarrelling with T. M. for applying the last clausule to the divinity of Christ; knowing as I do, that it is even so applied by several of the chief Fathers. What I would suggest, is, the folly and inexpediency, at all times, of bringing to bear on contested points what easily admits of being otherwise expounded, and that, too, in a catholic and orthodox sense.

If T. M. will allow any credit to the Pontifical Epistles, there is express Ante-Nicene testimony for the twentieth verse. In an epistle ascribed to Pope Evaristus, and addressed to the African bishops, it is cited and applied to prove, that the Son is not separated from the Father; and that, where we read, in the apostle, of God alone having immortality, and dwelling in that light which none can approach, we are not to expound this of the Father exclusively; but also of the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. It is quoted, together with nearly the whole of the chapter, in an epistle of Pope Eusebius to the Gallican bishops; in which we find, . at the same time, a fatal blow directed against the anthenticity of the Heavenly Witnesses.-Etspiritus est qui testificatur, quoniam Christus est veritas. Quoniam tres sunt qui testimonium dant, spiritus, sanguis, et aqua; et hi tres unum sunt, Si testimonium hominum accipimus, &c. In this epistle, I say, we have not merely the twentieth verse fully cited; but what highly concerns the main controversy, the most complete and positive evidence against the interpolation of the Heavenly Witnesses in the present Latin Version; and that, too, from a document of which the Latin church herself is both the author and the keeper. It will be in vain to reply, that this epistle may have been penned by some later hand than Pope Eusebius

M m

himself, for whoever the author of it might be, he was doubtless a sound trinitarian, a member of the Romish church, and had before him at the time that Latin Version of the first epistle of St. John, which was current at the period in which he flourished.

But as to the further testimony of the primitive Fathers for the twentieth verse, we have the best possible Post-Nicene evidence that can be adduced for any text, whatever. It is cited at full length, by Cyrillus Alexandrinus at the close of his celebrated Tract on the true faith; addressed to the emperor Theodosius. By Augustinus, in the very first of his fifteen books on the doctrine of the Trinity; and that too, in support of the divinity of Christ. It is quoted, moreover, by Hilary, Ambrose, Facundus, &c. not to mention Vigilius and Fulgentius, the two grand props for the Heavenly Witnesses.

In respect of 1 Tim. iii. 16. there surely must be some mistake; as Sir Isaac Newton could never mean to assert, that the text was never cited at all by the Fathers of the first five centuries; but, that it was never cited, as now corruptly read, for the purpose of proving the divinity of Christ. So far from not being cited at all in its genuine form, T. M. will find it to have been quoted, either wholly or in part, even by Origen, Hilary, Jerome, Austin, Chrysostom, and Isidore; Fathers of acknowledged and distin. guished pre-eminence in the church of God.

In more places than one T. M. has intimated to me, that even the Greek Fathers are not without their testimony for the Heavenly Wit. nesses. Now, I wish from my heart, that he would condescend to produce one of these testimonies, if even he should have to come down so low as to a Father of the tenth century; as it would at least cure me of my present belief, that the passage never found its way

into

any Greek manuscript till within a century or two before the invention of printing; and would tend to restrain other objectors from treating it with that scorn and contempt to which, in the present lack of Greek testimony, it seems so unfortunately exposed.

I would further ask him, too, whether he does not consider the argument drawn from the supposed fact, that the interpolation in the Vulgate was never objected to by the Greeks, a sort of weapon which may be equally used by both parties. For if the Latin church really regarded this verse as the genuine text of St. John, and as having been faithfully preserved in her version of the New Testament; why did she not upbraid the Greek church with, the loss of it, and urge it as an undeniable proof of her great want of vigilance in maintaining the true faith. This, I say, would have been a triumphant ground of exultation to the Western over the Eastern church; and which, I think, could scarcely have been overlooked, had there been the least opportunity for doing it. The truth. is, there was no mighty advantage to be taken by either side; for if the Latins had been called to an account by the Greeks, their an-. swer would unquestionably have. been, that their oldest and principal manuscripts contained it not.

But to come to a close with your worthy correspondent. My conditions of peace were, that, if any other authentic and important passage of the New Testament could. be shewn to have been equally unnoticed by the great body of the Greek and Latin Fathers, I would offer no further hostility to the interpolation of the Heavenly Witnesses.. T. M. has challenged me with two. different verses. I cheerfully accept his challenge. If he can allege me testimony for the disputed passage equal to that which I may have already cited, or shall hereafter be able to produce for either,

of his two verses, I will immediately acknowledge, not indeed its certain authenticity, but what ought equally to satisfy your worthy correspon> dent, the reasonableness of allowing it to remain undisturbed in the sacred Canon; with a promise never to discountenance, but rather to sanction it as the language of St. John. By way of arranging the preliminaries, I would merely subjoin, that I shall not exact from T. M. the precise Fathers that I may adduce for his two verses; but any others that were contemporary with them, and of equal celebrity in the church; and that I shall not trouble him to descend farther down than to the end of the fifth century. I remain, &c. RECTOR OF SCAWTON.

Stonegrave Parsonage,
April 5th.

To the Editor of the Remembrancer.

SIR,

THE incomparable Newton, in calling upon the advocates of the Heavenly Witnesses, to point out in what manner the text was erased from the canon, fixed the a ora, from whence, if practicable, the difficul ties which embarrassed the question of its authenticity were to be moved. Under a conviction that no way could be made, in defending the contested passage, until this just challenge was answered, I gave up Eusebius of Cæsarea, as the author of the defalcation, and offered, in his publication of the Scriptures, after their distruction in the persecution of Diocletian, the grounds of a case competent to answer the de-, mands of Newton, and adequate to solve the conditions of the problem which he had proposed.

As the evidence borne to the disputed passage, in the Scriptures of the Eastern and Western Churches is contradictory, on establishing one, of the two propositions into which

it resolved itself, the eviction of the opposite became unnecessary; as of two contradictions, if one is false the other is necessarily true. But, as both fortunately admit of the same method of demonstration; as the integrity of the Latin text may be satisfactorily established by the same method of proof which bas been employed to invalidate that of the Greek; and as the deductions, thus separately conducted, when brought to bear connectedly on the point at issue, afford each other mutual confirmation, the attainment of an object so important in the discussion ought not to be disregarded.

In giving up Eusebius as the probable mutilator of the sacred text, I justified the presumption on a written instrument, ascribed by him to Constantine the Great, at whose command he prepared his edition of the Bible. That document was produced for the purpose merely of identifying him as the compiler of an edition of the Scriptures, under discretionary powers, which I held it to be probable he had carried to their utmost limits. The proof of the charge with which I was so adventurous as to accuse him, in asserting, "that the probabilities were decidedly in favour of his having expunged, rather than the Catholics having interpolated the sacred text," were exclusively deduced from the possibility of establishing two points;" it having been most remote from my intention to establish the charge directly, much less to prove it, as has been stupidly or dishonestly asserted, by the alleged document, which must have made Constantine an accomplice in his act. In the most perfect independence on so senseless a conception, I had maintained, that if two points could be established against Eusebius, that he wanted neither the power nor the will to suppress the passages under consideration, the establishment of that relative probability which presumed him to have mutilated the Scripture, would fol».

low as matter of course. As no effort has been made to disturb this position, I am of course at liberty to consider it effectually established. In proceeding to identify the author of the disputed passage in the Latin version, I appeal to a document of the same nature, professedly written by the author of the version, and prefixed, as a prologue, to the Catholic Epistles. And that my purpose may not be again blindly or wilfully misrepresented, I beg to be understood, that the position which I now maintain is, that the author of this prologue, as I formerly observed respecting Eusebius, wanted neither the will nor the power to insert the disputed passage in the Latin Vulgate. In confining our views to this point, while the subject is kept within the bounds which I originally assigned it, the discussion is reduced to still narrower grounds. For this position being established, the question no longer rests between the heterodox as mu

tilators and the orthodox as interpolators, but between Eusebius, as having suppressed the disputed text in the Greek, and the true or fictitious Jerome, as having interpolated or replaced it in the Latin.

That the author of the Prologue to the Catholic Epistles wanted not the will to insert the disputed passage, is at once evident in the terms in which he has expressed himself respecting it. Having mentioned the Epistles, with the Apostles who wrote them, he observes-" which (Epistles), if they had been faithfully turned into the Latin speech, as they have been digested by these (their authors), would have neither occasioned ambiguity to the readers, nor would the variety of the expression have impugned itself, particularly in that place of the First Epistle of St. John, where the unity of the Trinity is mentioned. In which (Epistle) I find that unfaithful translators have also much erred against the truth of the faith, setting down in their edition the names of three,

that is, of the Water, Spirit and Blood,' and omitting the testimony of the Father, Word, and Spirit,' by which chiefly both the Catholic faith, and the one substance of the divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is proved."

That the author of the Prologue possessed not only the will but the power to insert the disputed text in the Latin version, is no matter of conjecture, but of fact. Not to speak of the passage which is its common attendant, the Prologue has insinuated itself into the entire body of the translation. The testimony of every researcher into the manuscripts of the Latin version, brings but an accumulation of proofs in support of this position. The Benedictine editors of the Vulgate Bible, and of St. Jerome's Works, who have furnished the principal evidence against the contested verse, and have given up the prologue to the mercy of its impugners, bear the fullest testimony to its general prevalence in the manuscripts, including those of the most venerable antiquity. It exists in all the standard copies, some of which have the disputed passage inserted only in the margin; it is thus found in the Vatican MS. Bible, which is the authentic exemplar of the printed Vulgate, and in the Valicella Bible, which is the model and witness of its integrity; in the Bible of St. Germain des Prez, which is the oldest and best manuscript in France, in the Caroline Bible, which is the oldest and best in Spain, and in that of the Royal Library in the British Museum, which is the oldest and best in England. Father Simon, who first disputed its authenticity, seems to have found it absent from no Bible in France; from the search of Montfaucon and Mabillon in Italy ; in a tour having such researches for its object, we deduce the same conclusion relative to the latter country. They mention, each of them, a manuscript which wanted the disputed verse; but Mabillon assures us of

the one which he examined, that it contained the prologue; and the same conclusion is implied in the silence of Montfaucon, relative to the one which he saw, as is further confirmed by the silence of Bishop Burnet, who examined the library ia which it was found by Montfaucon. The testimony of that prelate, who has collected the strongest manuscript evidence against the disputed verse, is of itself decisive as to the point at issue. He assures us, that in a research prosecuted through France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, he had taken some pains to examine all the MSS. of the New Testament, concerning that doubted passage in St. John's Epistles." But the result of his scrutiny is a plenary concession of the point for which I contend, "that preface," as he assures us, 'being in all the manuscripts, ancient or modern, of those Bibles that have the other prefaces in them that he ever saw" and his researches, it should be added, discovered but a single Bible, which wanted both the prologue and the passage.

"

That the power, however originating, by which the prologue has thus taken universal possession of the version, was adequate to procure the passage an insertion in its text, directly follows from its object and intention. That, in the first copy in which it found a place, the will and power were followed by the act, and the disputed verse accordingly inserted in the Epistle which follows it, the terms in which it is expressed place beyond mere pro. bability."How much the edition of others differs from mine, I leave to the prudence of others. But thou, Eustochium, virgin of Christ, whilst thou seekest the truth of Scripture, exposest, in some measure, my old age to the gnawing tooth of envy, which pronounces me a falsifier and corrupter of the Sacred Scriptures. But I, in such a work, neither fear the envy of rivals, nor will deny the verity of the Holy Scriptures, to

those who demand it." The same conclusion follows with respect to every transcriber by whom the prologue was copied. As its express object is to denounce, under the sentence of the translator, those who omitted the verse, as having sinned against the Catholic faith, and the truth of Scripture; the transcriber who inserted the prologue, while he omitted the verse, gave equal, or indeed greater, proof of its author's power, than if he followed the direct course of transcribing it into his copy; as, when it was thus inserted without the verse, it could serve no purpose but that of leaving a memorial, that could only perish with his work, to record his own criminal negligence.

If the Latin Vulgate is corrupt in its testimony to the Heavenly Witnesses, as the corruption pervades the whole body of its text, a difficulty consequently arises to embarrass the impugners of the con tested verse, commensurate with that which they oppose to its advocates. In disposing of this difficulty, however it may serve to deceive the reader with the illusion of a solution, where nothing is really solved, it is perfectly insignificant, as to the question at issue, in what manner the disputed passage originated; whether it was immediately transferred from the baptismal commission, or arose out of an allegorical interpretation of the context. Were even a demonstration attainable, of what must ever continue matter of vague conjecture, and we could be infallibly assured, in what manner the disputed passage first existed, it would still leave an immeasurable distance between the difficulty to be solved, and the illusory solution by which it was in reality evaded. And until the manner were pointed out, in which the passage, however originating, had usurped its place in the whole body of the text, the resolver would not have come even in sight of the difficulty to be conquered.