1 John 5:88And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (1 John 5:8).-It is plain that "the Spirit" (τὸ πνεῦμα) means the Holy Ghost. He only is truth (ver. 6). Allow me to take this opportunity of expressing my regret that Prof. Gaussen (Plenary Inspiration, pp. 192, 193) should venture to defend the text. rec. of the two preceding verses, and in doing so to misstate, of course through inadvertence, the evidence. He ought to have known that the alleged testimonies of some early Latin fathers are very questionable, and that the most ancient MSS. of the Latin Vulgate are against the insertion of the disputed clause, not to dwell on the fact that the three Greek MSS. containing it, against near 150 which omit it, are not older than the fifteenth or sixteenth century; at least, if the God. Neapol. belong to the eleventh century, the reading here is a correction made 500 years later.
As to the two grammatical considerations which he borrows from Bishop Middleton, I would briefly reply:-
1. That the words τρεῖς οἱ μαρτυρῦντες, and oἱ τρεῖς (verses 7, 8) are no insuperable difficulty. They are masculine, it is true, while the words to which they relate are neuter; but the difficulty is nearly if not altogether the same,, if the passage remained entire, as in the common text. If in that case the
principle of attaction is used to justify this irregularity, the principle of rational concord applies to the correct text; and the more especially, as τὸ πνεῦμα, that well-known- personal object whose power wrought in the saints, is the first of the three witnesses who are specified immediately after. They are, as it were, personified as witnesses, and the gender is accommodated to the sense rather than in strict grammatical form.
2. The next objection is founded on the article being coupled with ἕν, as if it necessarily supposed a previous mention, which only occurs in the retrenched clause. But this is so far from being necessary that, even if ἕν, were rightly read in verse 7, the object and force of τὸ ἕν in verse 8 is wholly different. In other words, supposing the passage in question to be spurious, the anarthrous form would be an error, and the article is required (i.e. τὸ ἕν) in verse 8; for the idea intended is not the numerical unity, but the uniform testimony of the Spirit, the water, and the blood.
It may be added, that all three, I believe, of these MSS. which contain the passage, omit the article before πατήρ, λόγος, and πν. ἅγ., which I venture to say is not even correct Greek, but just such phraseology as might come from an unlearned forger translating from the Latin. It was Erasmus who supplied the article to each of these words, with no other warrant than his own erudition: