tions, bearing up under their unjust sufferings with a temper like the Divine Martyr himself.

4. Counsels to wives and husbands, and to the members of the church in general, on unanimity, sympathy, kindness, gentleness, and patience. In returning good for evil, the Christian is blessed. He has the benediction of a special providence, and is happy even if called to suffer.

5. Having shown how the believer is to comport himself with the adversaries of the faith, St. Peter, to encourage them in the hour of trial, refers again to the example of Jesus, who suffered in the flesh, and was then exalted at the right hand of God; and also to the case of Noah, who was saved with his household while the world of the ungodly perished; (compare 2 Peter ii. 5, 9;) in connexion with which topic he affirms, that it was Christ who, by his Spirit, preached to the antediluvians in the years preceding the deluge; and that the waters on which the patriarchal family were saved were a type of baptism, which, to caution us against trust in it as a work, he reminds us is not a mere external washing, but the exponent of a genuine self-consecration to God.

Reverting to the example of Jesus, he exhorts them to become imbued with the mind that was in him, and to be willing to die for the truth. For he who has attained this state, accounting himself dead, is emancipated from the tyranny of sin, and henceforth lives to God. The sensual world has already had too great a portion of our life. It becomes us now to be finally separate from those who are dead in sins, regardless of the opinions. they form of us. As for them who are thus passing without thought to their last account, they had been left without excuse by the gospel which had now been preached. Wherever this has been done, men who persist to live after the flesh will meet with a more condign

judgment; while they who obey it shall live for ever with the Lord.

6. But, whether saved or unsaved, the end comes to all. Let us be prepared: and let the interval be sanctified by charity, beneficence, and the improvement of the various gifts and graces we have received to the glory of the great Donor. Now, again, the apostle, in yet more serious terms, addresses himself to fortify the courage and enduring power of a people over whom the thunderclouds of persecution were gathering blackly. He lifts up their view to the glory and blessedness which await those who suffer for Christ, and with him. But if an all-just God appoint or permit even his servants to suffer now, what woes are in reversion for his enemies!

7. A charge to the presbyters: their duty and their reward. To the flock to cultivate a teachable disposition, the spirit of meekness, and a tranquil dependence on the care of the Almighty; to be vigilant against the tempter, and steadfast in the faith. He combines and concludes these admonitions with the expression of his confident hope of their final salvation.

THE (FIRST) EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.

THE First "Epistle" of St. John is not, in the usual acceptation of the term, a letter addressed to some particular community, but an inspired treatise, theological and practical, intended for the edification of the Christian church at large; yet, with the special design of warning the disciples of that early time against those incipient heresies which were soon after classed under the common name of Gnosticism.* The date of the composition is

* See MOSHEIM, "Commentaries," cent. i. sect. 60; NEANDER'S "Church History," sect. iv.; GIESELER, div. ii. cap. 2; HAGENBACH'S "History of Doctrines," vol. i.

unknown; but the majority incline to the opinion that it was just previous to the destruction of Jerusalem. Many respectable critics, however, argue, that the apostle must have written it as late as A.D. 90, or even 96, nigh upon the close of his long and eventful life.

1. It appears from Irenæus, (A.D. 167,) that the Gnostics accused not only the presbyters of the latter part of the first century, but the surviving apostles themselves, of having adulterated the primitive doctrine of Christ by legalist commandments of their own. Dicentes se, non solum presbyteris, sed et apostolis superiores, sinceram invenisse veritatem; apostolos autem admiscuisse ea, quæ sunt legalia Salvatoris verba; se incontaminate et sincere absconditum scire mysterium.* But St. John sets out by affirming the contrary; declaring that the doctrine which he and his brethren then preached was that which was from the beginning, and which they had learned by personal converse with the Son of God; (compare chap. ii. 7, 13, 14, 24;) and that the present discourse was designed to confirm them in, and lead them to, the happiness to be enjoyed by the soul in the full experience of the truth. At the same time he condemns the error of those Gnostics, known in after days by the name of Docetæ, that the humanity of the Saviour was not real, but phantasmal, by adducing the personal testimony of himself and the other apostles, that they had not only had visual but tangible evidence of the reality of the Lord's incarnate nature. And whereas the foundation of all our happiness is the knowledge of God as revealed in Christ, he elevates the mind to the contemplation of the immanent glory of the God whom they adored as infinitely holy, incorruptible, and blessed; and then shows that man, redeemed and sanc

*Adv. Hæres. lib. iii. cap. 2.

tified, may have communion with him, and that there is no other communion with the Deity than that which makes us holy and happy. Nor is this a doctrine which tends to drive sinners to despair; for the same gospel which reveals the sanctity of God, proclaims as well his redeeming love, and brings before us an effectual provision for the pardon and renovation of all who know and confess their sins. The genuineness of our knowledge of a sin-forgiving God will become apparent in our obedience to his law; for union with Christ by faith has its natural and necessary manifestation in conforming our conduct to his own.

2. The heretics, as already said, charged the apostles with adding new commandments to the Christian system, and thus introducing the legal element into the gospel : but the venerable writer here asserts, that the comprehensive commandment, to love our neighbour, enforced by him, was the same which the disciples of Jesus had had from the beginning; the same, indeed, which had been binding on the church of God in all past ages; though, considered in relation to the superior light of the Christian dispensation in which its amplitude and perfection were more clearly revealed, it might be called a new commandment. The obligation to brotherly love is so clearly made known, that he who does not fulfil it demonstrates his ignorance of, or estrangement from, the truth; while he who loves his neighbour as himself, gives luminous evidence of establishment in the renewed life. This precept he knew would commend itself to all the faithful;-to those of long standing, who would recognise it as the voice of Christ; to others, who, though not elders in the church, were, nevertheless, confirmed and vigorous in the habits of holiness, and who, having overcome the tempter, would welcome every intimation of the divine will; and even to the recently converted, because,

having begun to know God as a Father, they would delight to obey him.

He then cautions them against the love of the world, as an antagonistic principle to the love of God, not originated by his Spirit, nor leading to him; but altogether opposed to him. Both the object of it and all who cherish it must perish. The friend of God has an immutable inheritance.

And, reminding them of the premonitions of our Saviour, that, about the time of the ruin of Jerusalem, his people would be exposed to temptation by the pretensions of false Messiahs,* the apostle, from the fact that many such had arisen, deduces the seasonable warning that the period of the Judean commonwealth had come. [It is possible, however, that, the date of the epistle being later, the phrase, "the last hour" or "time," may mean either the close of the apostle's own life, or the termination of the apostolic age; while the warnings he was thus constrained to give, as on the verge of eternity, show the solicitude he felt for the stability of the church, about to lose the last of the personal witnesses for Jesus, at a time when the foes of the truth were becoming portentously numerous.] Of these antichrists, or opponents of Christ, some were apostates. The believers to whom he was writing would know, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, how utterly removed they were from the truth in this denial of the Messiahship and Divinity of Jesus. For themselves, their holding fast these vital realities would be the pledge of their conti

* Greek: Αντίχριστοι πολλοί. If the preposition anti, signifies "in the place of," the name of antichrist will indicate a surreptitious Messiah: and in this sense the Syrian translator has understood it he has Meshihee dagolee, "false Messiahs." But if anti be taken as equivalent to "against," it denotes an opposer of Christ, whether a false prophet, an infidel, or a persecutor.