“Though I cannot help concluding against the genuineness of this text, I may add, that the argument which is taken from the silence of Athanasius and the other Greek Fathers, is perhaps carried too far. It seems to be forgotten, that the 7th verse, which says that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one, would certainly not have silenced an Arian, who would also have quoted the text, and affixed to it his own interpretation : in the same manner as we learn from Epiphanius that the Arians explained John, xiv. 10, xvii. 23, to mean
'that the unity was not at all of nature, but of agreement:'
and so they might have said, that the unity, which is predicated of the three Persons in 1 John, v. 7, was not an unity of nature. There was also another reason why the most zealous Trinitarian might not have chosen to quote the text. He exposed himself by so doing to the charge of Sabellianism : for Eusebius informs us, that the Sabellians, when they wished to prove that the Father and the Son were one and the same, insisted particularly on John, x. 30, xiv. 10, and so in a work which has been falsely ascribed to Athanasius, when that Father is made to quote to an Arian, I and the Father are one, John, x. 30, the other replied, 'then you are a Sabellian.' Either of these reasons might have operated to hinder a controversial writer from quoting 1 John, v. 7. The Sabellian controversy occupied the latter half of the third century ; and nearly the whole of the fourth was taken up by that and the Arian together: so that our surprise might be diminished, if we do not find the orthodox writers insisting upon a text, which would have been quoted by one of their opponents as favourable to themselves, and which would not have produced any impression upon the other.”— pp. 522—526.
