A commentary on the Epistles of St. John - The Preterist Archive

INTRODUCTION. 15
than the interpolations of a Gnostic. In short, in
order to find in our epistle, in its present form, only
a web, of which the woof is Judaic- Christian and
the warp Gnostic, we must first, along with the
author of " the Primitive Views of Christianity,"
have determined to consider everything occurring
in the epistle, respecting the Messiahship of Jesus,
and respecting the redemption and atonement by
Christ, as uncanonical and unjohanneic judaical
Christianity ; but every thing respecting the divine
Logos, respecting the yvusig of God, and the Mimvia
with his light, &c., as Gnostic pseudo-christianity,
and to reject every passage of either kind. But who
will do this ? It is manifest that, after the manner
of Cludius, one might declare almost every book of
the New Testament spurious, or at least interpolated
nay, being consistent, we would necessarily arrive
at that conclusion. I confess that I cannot consider
our epistle as a compound of Judaic- Christianity
and Gnoticism, (taking that word in its true sense.)
It carries in its standard opposition to Gnosticism
and Judaism.
More important, and more deserving of an accurate
examination, are Dr. Bretschneider's objections. What
he has said respecting the validity of the external
evidence in this inquiry, has been stated above, and
confuted. And, in as far as he rests his argument
on the presupposed spuriousness of the gospel, this
is not the place to confute it. Here is only to be
considered, that he says : that the logology and an-
tidoketic tendency of the epistle betrays an author
of the second century, and that since all the three
;