43. John
speaks thus;—For we know that the Son of God is come, and was
incarnate for us, and suffered, and rose again from the dead and took
us for Himself, and gave us a good understanding that we may know Him
that is true, and may be in His true Son Jesus Christ. He is true
and is life eternal and our resurrection 1 John v. 20, the long interpolation, which resembles
a creed, is only found twice elsewhere (Codex Toletanus and the
so-called Speculum of Augustine), and, though evidently from the Greek,
never in that language.. Wisdom doomed to an evil end,
void of the Spirit of God, destined to possess the spirit and the name
of Antichrist, blind to the truth that the Son of God came to fulfil
the mystery of our salvation, and unworthy in that blindness to
perceive the light of that sovereign knowledge! For this wisdom
asserts that Jesus Christ is no true Son of God, but a creature of His,
Who bears the Divine name by adoption. In what dark oracle of
hidden knowledge was the secret learnt? To whose research do we
owe this, the great discovery of the day? Were you he that lay
upon the bosom of the Lord? You he to whom in the familiar
intercourse of love He revealed the mystery? Was it you that
alone followed Him to the foot of the Cross? And while He was
charging you to receive Mary as your Mother, did He teach you this
secret, as the token of His peculiar love for yourself? Or did
you run to the Sepulchre, and reach it sooner even than Peter, and so
gain this knowledge there? Or was it amid the throngs of angels,
and sealed books whose clasps none can open, and manifold influences of
the signs of heaven, and unknown songs of the eternal choirs, that the
Lamb, your Guide, revealed to you this godly doctrine, that the Father
is no Father, the Son no Son, nor nature, nor truth? For you
transform all these into lies. The Apostle, by that most
excellent knowledge that was granted him, speaks of the Son of God as
true. You assert His creation, proclaim His adoption, deny His
birth. While the true Son of God is eternal life and resurrection
to us, for him, in whose eyes He is not true, there is neither eternal
life nor resurrection. And this is the lesson taught by John, the
disciple beloved of the Lord.