the conjunction of both, and the distinction of one from the other, being

joined in one' (John Stock).

Another very dangerous teaching was called the Docetic doctrine of the

person of Christ, being derived from the Greek word dokeo, 'to seem', which

taught that during His life on earth, the Saviour had not a real body, but

only an apparent and assumed one.  The bolder Docetai went further and

affirmed that Christ was born without any participation of matter at all,

which in its turn led them to deny the resurrection and ascent into heaven.

In 1 John 4:2 the verb 'is come' is the perfect participle.  In 2 John 7 the

verb 'is come' is the present participle.  Some think that in these two

passages, there is a reference to the first and second Coming of Christ.

'Jesus Christ come in the flesh'.  In this sentence we have two

predicates.  The primary predicate is 'Jesus Christ', the secondary predicate

is 'come in the flesh'.  This is not exactly the same as saying, 'Jesus

Christ has come in the flesh'.  Similar use of primary and secondary

predicates may be seen in such statements as, 'We preach Christ (primary)

crucified (secondary)', which is not exactly the same as making the

statement, 'We preach that Christ was crucified'.  The one is the simple

announcement of a fact, the other announces a Person.  One remarkable reading

of 1 John 4:3 reveals the extremely serious view that was taken of this

subject, for instead of reading, as the A.V., 'And every spirit that

confesseth not', it reads, 'and every one that annulleth (ho luei) Jesus', as

much as to say, whoever denies the true humanity of the Saviour has destroyed

the Person of the Lord altogether.  In the fifth chapter of his first

Epistle, John returns to this subject, but the passage has been so tampered

with by those who were desirous of securing its testimony to the doctrine of

the Trinity, that we must first of all endeavour to get back to the original

text.  Of the words of verse 7 and 8,

'in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three

are one.  And there are three that bear witness in earth'.

The Companion Bible says:

'The words are not found in any Greek manuscript before the sixteenth

century.  They were first seen in the margin of some Latin copies.

Thence they have crept into the text'.

Alford says, 'There is not the shadow of a reason for supposing them

genuine'.  The Revised Version omits the words, and does not even make a

comment in the margin.  The passage before us therefore reads in the R.V.:

'This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with

the water only, but with the water and with the blood.  And it is the

Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth.  For

there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the

blood; and the three agree in one.  If we receive the witness of men,

the witness of God is greater: for the witness of God is this, that He

hath borne witness concerning His Son' (1 John 5:6 -9).

The denial of the true humanity by those possessed by 'spirits', was of

the spirit of Antichrist (1 John 4:1 -3), and is refuted in this passage now

before us.  The Gnostic heresy, which came into prominence in the early

centuries of the church, had been devised, as many another erroneous

teaching, to solve the question of the origin of evil and its associate