Here the Jews are called the chosen people of the Light, in opposition to the Gnostics, who asserted that the God of the Jews was an inferior and malevolent Being. As proofs of this position, we cannot produce any passages, in which the Jews are said in express terms to have been the chosen people of the Light: but there are many passages which prove that the God of the Jews, who sent Moses, was the true God, and father of Jesus Christ. See ch. iv. 22. v. 39. 46, 47. viii. 54. 15. This eminent person, hitherto called Word, Light, Life, did not merely accompany the man Jesus during a certain period, but really and truly became man. Ver. 14. Here St. John combats that tenet of the Gnostics, according to which the Eon Christ associated itself with the man Jesus at his baptism, but left him before his death. The Gnostics denied that the eternal Son of God took man's nature, and became flesh, because they considered Matter as the origin of Evil, and incompatible with Good. All the passages of St. John's Gospel, in which the man Jesus, speaking in the first person, asserts of himself what cannot be attributed to any human Being, for instance, that he was in Heaven, that he existed before Abraham, ch. viii. 58. are proofs of the position laid down in this article. 16. Christ was full of Grace and Truth, ch. i. 14. In the Gnostic system, Grace and Truth were two Eons but St. John asserts that they were only two qualities belonging to Christ. Further, as Christ is here said to be full of grace, and in ver. 17. the law of Moses is opposed to the grace of Christ, it follows that the former is superseded by the latter. Hence this position is likewise a counterposition against Cerinthus in particular, who wished to retain at least some parts of the Mosaic law. The principal proofs are contained in ch. iv. 19-26. in ch. v. 8. (where Christ commanded a sick person, whom he had restored to health, to take away with him his bed, though it was on a sabbath day,) and in the sixth chapter. In the discourse delivered in this chapter, Christ says to the Jews, who were going up to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of the passover, that his flesh and blood was the food which giveth life: and as some took offence at this saying, because it seemed to imply the inefficacy of the Passover, he answered 'It is the spirit (that is, the spirit of the law) which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing: the words, that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life". The story of the adulteress, ch. viii. 1-11. seems likewise to be a proof of this article. By the law of Moses, a woman taken in adultery was to be put to death but in this instance Christ interfered, and the sentence was not executed. 17. Through faith, and not through birth or parentage, we become the sons of God. Ver. 12, 13. To what tenet of the Gnostics this doctrine was opposed I am unable to say, as our accounts of their system are very imperfect. But, since we know that Cerinthus, who in many respects differed from other Gnostics, was attached to some parts of the Mosaic law, it is not improbable that he considered the Jews as having, in consequence of their birth, a prior claim to the favour of God. The proofs of the position laid down in this article are contained in that part of Christ's discourse with Nicodemus, which relates to regeneration, and in the account of the conversion of the Samaritans. These are the positions which St. John has laid down in express terms. But whoever is acquainted with the doctrine of the Gnostics will perceive, that there are See the explanation, which I have given of this passage, in the first section of my Typical Theology, and the passage there quoted from Philo. other parts of St. John's Gospel, in which the Evangelist had the Gnostics in view; especially the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters, which contain the promises of Christ respecting the assistance, which the Apostles were to receive from the Holy Ghost. The Gnostics accused the Apostles of having misunderstood the meaning of Christ, and of having forgotten many of his doctrines: moreover they asserted, that the words of Christ alone were authority, and that the doctrines delivered by the Apostles were no more exempt from the danger of error, than the theological opinions of other writers. The notion of the Gnostics could not be better confuted, than by a relation of those speeches of Christ, in which he promised them, that the Holy Ghost would remind them of what they had already heard, and reveal to them truths, which he himself could not communicate, on account of their present inability to comprehend them. Further, as the Gnostics admitted the personality of the Holy Ghost, and considered him as an Eon distinct from Christ, it is evident that St. John, who no where says that the word was the Holy Ghost, but on the contrary has recorded speeches of Christ, in which he is represented as a distinct person, intended to support the doctrine relative to the personality of the Holy Ghost. Lastly, the passages which occur in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters relative to the union of the Christian Church, and the command of love and charity, were directed against those, who endeavoured to introduce divisions in the church, and to promote the persecution of the faithful. SECTION VI. St. John had read the three first Gospels before he wrote his own . I HAVE already mentioned in the second section of this chapter, that according to a passage in the Ecclesiastical history of Eusebius, St. John had read the three first Gospels, and supplied what his predecessors had omitted. Eusebius however has not mentioned it as an indisputable historical fact, but introduces it with the word pacı (they say), and consequently has only given it as a report. The passage is as follows, Hist. Eccles. Lib. III. cap. 24. Ηδη δε Μαρκε και Λεκα " των κατ' αυτές ευαγγελιων την εκδοσιν πεποιημένων, Ιωαννην φασι, τον παντα χρονον αγραφω κεχρημένον κηρυγματι, τέλος και επι την γραφην ελθειν, τοιασδε χαριν αιτίας. Των προ αναγραφέντων τριων εις παντας ηδη και εις αυτον διαδεδομε νων, αποδέξασθαι μεν φασιν, αληθειας αυτοις επιμαρτυρήσαντα, δε μονην αρα λειπεσθαι τη γραφη την περί των εν πρώτοις και κατ αρχήν T8 κηρυγματος απο τε Χρισε πεπραγμένων διηγησιν. But though Eusebius delivers this account only as a report, and that part of it which relates to the motive, by which St. John was induced to write his Gospel, is not quite accurate, we must not therefore conclude that the whole was devoid of foundation. Clement of Alexandria, an author of great importance on the present question, since he wrote only a hundred years after St. John, has likewise asserted that our Evangelist had seen the three first Gospels: but here again, the motive which Clement assigns for the composition of St. John's Gospel, is liable to objection. His words are, τον Of St. Matthew's Gospel Eusebius had spoken immediately before. This passage from the works of Clement is quoted by Eusebius. Hist. Eccles. Lib. VI. cap. 14. μεντοι Ιωάννην εσχατον συνιδοντα ότι τα σωματικά εν τοις ευαγ γελίοις δεδηλωται, προτραπέντα υπο των γνωρίμων, πνευματι Θεοφορηθεντα πνευματικών ποιησαι ευαγγελιον. Now that St. John's object was to write an ευαγγελιον πνευματικών, because his predecessors had written only avayyedia σωματικά, I think not very probable, because there are many parts of St. John's Gospel, which likewise come under the latter description; for instance, his accounts of the cure of diseases, and of the restoration of a dead person. If Clement had said that the three first Gospels contained chiefly points of morality, but that of St. John articles of faith, his assertion would have been more credible. It appears then that we have no indisputable historical evidence in favour of the opinion, that the three first Gospels were known to St. John. But on the other hand, as it is incredible that three Gospels written before that of St. John should have remained unknown to him, we may safely conclude that the fact is true, notwithstanding the weakness of our historical evidence. Besides there are internal marks in St. John's Gospel, which imply that the author was not only acquainted with the contents of the three first Gospels, but that he presupposed the same of his readers. Dr. Semler indeed has endeavoured to shew, and likewise from internal marks, that St. John was not acquainted with the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. For this purpose he has quoted ch. xx. 30. where St. John says, And many other signs truly did Jesus in presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.' Hence Dr. Semler argues, that, as St. John speaks only of his own Gospel, and is totally silent with respect to any other, the other Gospels were unknown to him. But the inference is without foundation; for a writer may be well acquainted with the works of his predecessors, and yet not mention them. In the Preface to my Dogmatical Theology, though it consists of not less than ten pages, I have not mentioned the name of a single writer on this subject, my principal the |