[DISCOURSE III.]
THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.
"Dum Magistri super pectus
Fontem haurit intellectûs
Et doctrinæ flumina,
Fiunt, ipso situ loci,
Verbo fides, auris voci,
Mens Deo contermina.
"Unde mentis per excessus,
Carnis, sensûs super gressus,
Errorumque nubila,
Contra veri solis lumen
Visum cordis et acumen
Figit velut aquila."
Adam of St. Victor, Seq. xxxii.
"Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. Every spirit that confesseth not [that] Jesus Christ [is come in the flesh] is not of God."—1 John iv. 2, 3.
A discussion (however far from technical completeness) of the polemical element in St. John's Epistle, probably seems likely to be destitute of interest or of instruction, except to ecclesiastical or philosophical antiquarians. Those who believe the Epistle to be a divine book must, however, take a different view of the matter. St. John was not merely dealing with forms of human error which were local and fortuitous. In refuting them he was enunciating principles of universal import, of almost illimitable application. Let us pass by those obscure sects, those subtle curiosities of error, which the diligence of minute research has excavated from the masses of erudition under which they have been buried; which theologians, like other antiquarians, have sometimes labelled with names at once uncouth and imaginative. Let us fix our attention upon such broad and well-defined features of heresy as credible witnesses have indelibly fixed upon the contemporaneous heretical thought of Asia Minor; and we shall see not only a great precision in St. John's words, but a radiant image of truth, which is equally adapted to enlighten us in the peculiar dangers of our age.
Controversy is the condition under which all truth must be held, which is not in necessary subject-matter—which is not either mathematical or physical. In the case of the second, controversy is active, until the fact of the physical law is established beyond the possibility of rational discussion; until self-consistent thought can only think upon the postulate of its admission. Now in these departments all the argument is on one side. We are not in a state of suspended speculation, leaning neither to affirmation nor denial, which is doubt. We are not in the position of inclining either to one side or the other, by an almost impalpable overplus of evidence, which is suspicion; or by those additions to this slender stock, which convert suspicion into opinion. We are not merely yielding a strong adhesion to one side, while we must yet admit, to ourselves at least, that our knowledge is not perfect, nor absolutely manifest—which is the mental and moral position of belief. In necessary subject-matter, we know and see with that perfect intellectual vision for which controversy is impossible.[69]