probable event, yet some ancient Greek or Latin palimpsest may yet be unearthed, containing the Comma in an undoubtedly genuine and original form. The absence of the passage from so many New Testament codices could then be satisfactorily explained by an oversight of the copyists. G. Schepss has lately found the mooted text cited in a work of Priscillian's newly discovered in 1889. At the present stage of the controversy, however, there is no blinking the fact that the critical arguments against the authenticity of the Comma Ioanneum considerably outweigh those adduced in its favor.

b) The most weighty objection raised against the authenticity of 1 John V, 7 is based on the circumstance that the text is missing in all the older Greek codices without exception. Not until the fifteenth century does it begin to make its appearance in the manuscript copies of St. John's First Epistle. Moreover, not one of the Greek Fathers who combated Arianism ever cited this strong passage, which would have dealt a death blow to the heresy of Subordinationism. In fact, when we observe how eagerly the Greek Fathers of the Nicene and Post-Nicene period conned their Bible for texts with which to refute the Arians, without ever lighting upon 1 John V, 7, the only rational explanation is that the Comma Ioanneum was not there. Nor were the Latin Fathers (if we disregard a few faint and doubtful traces) acquainted with the text of the three heavenly Witnesses. St. Augustine, e. g., fails to cite it in his great work De Trinitate, in which with his customary ingenuity he turns to account practically all the Trinitarian texts found in the whole Bible.29 He repeatedly quotes 1 John V, 8, but never once I John V, 7. What

29 The Speculum Augustini "Audi Israhel" is spurious. Cfr. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, p. 505.

is still more remarkable is that Leo the Great, in his dogmatic Epistula ad Flavianum (A. D. 451), quotes as Scriptural the verses that immediately precede, and several that follow the passage called Comma Ioanneum, but never alludes to the Comma itself. Nor was the Comma known to St. Jerome, who restored the Vulgate text by order of Pope Damasus. If the editors of the official edition, prepared under Pope Sixtus V and his predecessors, had recognized the spuriousness of the pseudo-Hieronymian prologue to the Catholic Epistles, now so apparent to all, the Comma would probably never have been incorporated in the Vulgate. The most ancient manuscript codices of the Vulgate among them the Codex Fuldensis, the Codex Amiatinus, and the Codex Harleianus and the oldest extant copies of the Greek Testament, do not contain the much discussed passage, which made its way very gradually since the eighth century. In England it was unknown to Saint Bede, who died in the year 735.

But how did the text of the three heavenly Witnesses find its way into the Vulgate? All explanations that have been advanced so far are pure guesswork. The circumstance that in certain manuscript codices the Comma occurs sometimes before and sometimes after verse 8, has suggested the hypothesis that it was originally a marginal note, which somehow crept into the text. Some think that a misunderstood remark by St. Cyprian first led to its reception. This would explain the early occurrence of the Comma in the African Church. St. Cyprian (+258) writes in his treatise De Unitate Ecclesiae, c. 6: "Dicit Dominus: ego et Pater unum sumus, et iterum de Patre et Filio et Spiritu Sancto scriptum est: et tres unum sunt The Lord sayeth: I and the Father are one; and again it is written of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost: And the Three are one." Of this passage, as Al. Schäfer points out, only the words et tres unum sunt" can be looked upon as a quotation from Sacred Scripture, and they may have been borrowed from the genuine eighth verse of the fifth chapter of St. John's First Epistle.30 Facundus of Hermiane (+ about 570), who had no inkling of the existence of the famous Comma, actually formulated this surmise: "Tres sunt qui testimonium dant, spiritus, aqua et sanguis, et hi tres unum sunt • . quod Ioannis testimonium B. Cyprianus de Patre, Filio et Spiritu Sancto intelligit." 31 Tertullian (born about 160) has a passage in his Contra Praxeam which sounds somewhat like the Comma,32 but we may fairly doubt whether it is intended for a citation or merely expresses the author's personal opinion.

c) Against such arguments as these it is difficult to defend the authenticity of the Comma Ioanneum,33 which undeniably did not find its way into the Vulgate until the ninth century, while the Greek codices contain no trace of it prior to the fifteenth century.34 All that can be said for the other side is that since the apographs

30 Schäfer, Einleitung in das N. T., p. 340, Paderborn 1898.

31 Defens. Trium Capitul., I, 3. 32 Contr. Prax., 25. The passage reads: "Ita connexus Patris in Filio et Filii in Paracleto tres efficit cohaerentes, alterum ab altero, qui tres unum sunt, non unus."

33 But few attempts at such a defense have been made in English since Dr. Wiseman published his well-known Letters on 1 John V, 7; e. g., by Lamy, in the American Ecclesiastical Review, 1897, pp. 449 sqq. Cfr. also Ch. Forster, A New Plea for the Authenticity of the Text of the Three Heavenly Wit

nesses, Cambridge 1867. J. Lebreton gives a brief and impartial summary of the present status of the controversy in an appendix (pp. 524-531) of his work Les Origines du Dogme de la Trinité, Paris 1910.

34 Of the Greek uncials every one that contains the First Epistle of St. John is without the Comma Ioanneum. Of the cursive MSS. of the Greek New Testament about one hundred and ninety do not include the passage, while only four contain it, and these four as text-witnesses are worthless. Cfr. W. L. Sullivan in the New York Review, Vol. II, (1906), No. 2, p. 180.

of the earliest period are nearly all lost, there remains a bare possibility that the Comma Ioanneum may have occurred in one or the other of the most ancient, especially African, codices. Some importance attaches to the fact that as early as 380 the Spanish heresiarch Priscillian cites as Scriptural the verse: "Et tria sunt, quae testimonium dicunt in coelo, Pater, Verbum et Spiritus, et haec tria unum sunt." 35 The main argument for the authenticity of the Comma is based upon a passage in the "Libellus Fidei," which the Catholic Bishops 36 who were cited by Hunneric, King of the Vandals, to meet the Arians in conference on Feb. 1, 484,37 submitted in defense of their faith. The passage is as follows: "Et ut adhuc luce clarius unius divinitatis esse cum Patre et Filio Spiritum Sanctum doceamus, Ioannis Evangelistae testimonio comprobatur. Ait namque: Tres sunt, qui testimonium perhibent in coelo: Pater, Verbum et Spiritus Sanctus, et hi tres unum sunt." 38 St. Fulgentius (468–533), Bishop of Ruspe, in the African province of Byzazena, undoubtedly knew of the verse and, rightly or wrongly, ascribed a knowledge of it to St. Cyprian: "Beatus Ioannes Apostolus testatur dicens: Tres sunt, qui testimonium perhibent in coelo, Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus, et tres unum sunt; quod etiam B. martyr Cyprianus in epistola de unitate ecclesiae confitetur." 39 The defense can also claim the

35 Lib. Apologet., IV, ed. Schepss, p. 6. Schepss, as we have already intimated, discovered this lost work of Priscillian's in the Würzburg University Library in 1889.

86 They included Victor of Vita (cfr. his Hist. Persecut., II, 56) and Vigilius of Tapsus.

37 Cfr. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, Vol. II, p. 28

sq. Cincinnati 1899; Sullivan in the New York Review, II, 2, 185 sq. 38 Quoted by Hardouin, Conc., t. ii, p. 863.

39 Resp. ad Obiect. Arianorum, 10. The passage of St. Cyprian's, to which Fulgentius here refers, occurs in the sixth chapter De Unitate Ecclesiae and reads as follows: "Dicit Dominus, ego et Pater unum sumus;

authority of Cassiodorus, who, about the middle of the sixth century, with many ancient manuscripts at his elbow, revised the entire Vulgate of St. Jerome, especially the Apostolic Epistles, and deliberately inserted I John V, 7, which St. Jerome had left out. If we consider all these facts, in connection with the passage quoted above from Tertullian, which bears the earmarks of a direct citation from Holy Scripture, we are justified in assuming that the Comma Ioanneum was perhaps found in copies of the Latin Bible current in Africa as early as the third century.

d) The dogmatic authenticity of 1 John V, 7, is quite another matter. It can be satisfactorily established by a purely theological process of reasoning. The Comma Ioanneum played a prominent part at the Fourth Lateran Council, A. D. 1215, where Abbot Joachim of Flora adduced it in favor of his tritheistic vagaries. In the Caput "Damnamus," which solemnly condemns his errors, we read: "Non enim (ait Ioachim) fideles Christi sunt unum, i. e., quaedam una res, quae communis sit omnibus, sed hoc modo sunt unum, i. e., una ecclesia, propter catholicae fidei unitatem . . . quemadmodum in canonica Ioannis Apostoli epistula legitur: quia tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in coelo, Pater et Filius [sic!] et Spiritus Sanctus, et hi tres unum sunt.' Statimque subiungitur: Et tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in terra, spiritus, aqua et sanguis, et hi tres unum sunt: sicut in quibusdam codicibus invenitur." 40 Though we have here the express testimony of a council of the

et iterum de Patre et Filio et Spiritu Sancto scriptum est: et tres unum sunt." It is, as Tischendorf has rightly observed, by far the weightiest proof for the Comma Ioanneum. But it does not prove decisively that St. Cyprian used a New Testament

text which contained the “ Comma"; and if it did, it would by no means follow that the verse was written by St. John. Cfr. Sullivan in the New York Review, II, 2, pp. 182 sq.

40 Quoted by Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchiridion, n. 431.