The Bible-Scholar's Manual; Embracing a General Account of the Books and Writers of the Old and New Testaments, the Geography and History of ... Etc. for Bible Classes and General Reading

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853. Excerpt: ... ing in these books, and strengthens rather thaD impairs his claim to be the author of the epistles The remarkable analogy of style and sentiment also offers most decisive evidence for the same conclusion. 3. Different opinions have been held as to the time when the epistles were written; some believing they were written after the destruction of Jerusalem, and toward the end of the first century; but the most probable opinion is, that they were written before this event, about A. D. 68 or 69. 4. It cannot be determined from whence, or to whom, the epistles were written--whether from Judea, Ephesus, or from Patmos. 5. The first book is usually styled, The General Epistle of St. John, but it bears no marks of the epistolary form; it is not inscribed to any individual, begins without salutation, and ends without benediction. "It would seem," says Bishop Horsley, "that this book hath, for no other reason, acquired the title of an epistle, but that, in the first formation of the canon of the New Testament, it was put into the same volume with the didactic writings of the apostles, which, with this single exception, are all in the epistolary form." 6. It is indeed a didactic discourse upon the principles of Christianity, both in doctrine and practice; and whether we consider the sublimity of its opening with the fundamental topics of God's perfections, man's depravity, and Christ's propitiation; the perspicuity with which it pro 10. The matter of the second epistle is a short summary of what is contained in the first. The elect lady is commended for her virtuous and religious education of her children; and is exhorted to abide in the doctrine of Christ, to persevere in the truth, and carefully to avoid the delusions of false teachers. But chiefly the apostle bes...