letter (110-171) quietly adopting the idea, almost as an understood thing, declaring "For every one who shall not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is antichrist" (vii. 1), it becomes almost a certainty that he had read 1st John.[27] Footnote 27: Not 2nd John; for it is only in 1st John ii. 18 that the elder speaks of "many antichrists," identifying each separate Doketist with the apocalyptic figure. In 2nd John vii. it is the heresy itself as a phenomenon which constitutes _the_ antichrist. Our elder's warning "to the church" (perhaps more particularly its governing body) is to beware of these deceivers; not to receive them, nor even to greet them, because they "go onward" (are 'progressives') and do not "abide in the teaching of Christ." To abide in this "teaching" is the church's only safeguard. If next we turn to the more general epistle known as 1st John the lack of any superscription is more than counterbalanced by the writer's full and explicit declarations regarding motive and occasion. The epistle was certainly intended to be read before entire congregations. Of part of it at least the author himself says that it was "written concerning them that would lead you astray" (ii. 26). Comparison of the full denunciation with what we know of Doketism from its own writings, such as the so-called _Acts of John_ (_c._ 175), shows very plainly what type of heresy is meant. Moreover we have the Epistles of Ignatius, written to these same churches but a few years later, and the detailed descriptions of the Doketist Cerinthus and his doctrines given by Irenæus, together with the explicit statement that the writings of John were directed against this same Cerinthus. Yet 1st John is far more than a mere polemic. The author writes to those "that believe on the name of the Son of God, that they may know that they have eternal life" (v. 13). This certainly is the result of the conscious indwelling of the Spirit of Jesus. It is not evidenced, however, by boastful words as to illumination, insight and knowledge, but by practical obedience to the one new commandment; for "God is love, and he that _loveth_ (not he that hath _gnosis_) is begotten of God and knoweth God." This inward witness of the Spirit is a gift, or (to use our author's term) an "anointing" (_i. e._ a 'Christ'-ening), whose essence is as much beyond the Greek's ideal of wisdom, on the one side, as it is beyond the Jew's ideal of miraculous powers on the other. It is a spirit of ministering love corresponding to and emanating from the nature of God himself. This is "the teaching of Christ" in which alone it is safe to "abide."