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Haydock Commentary
**Ver. 1. **
Try the spirits; i.e. every doctrine that you hear: for now are many false teachers, false doctors, and false prophets. (Witham)
— Try, &c. viz. by examining whether their teaching be agreeable to the rule of the Catholic faith and the doctrine of the Church. For, as he says, (ver. 6) “He that knoweth God, heareth us: (the pastors of the Church) …by this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” (Challoner)
— The Church only, not every private man, hath to prove and discern spirits.
**Ver. 2. **
By this is the Spirit of God known. He gives the new converts first this general mark, by which they might have good grounds to think that the teachers they met with in those days had a good spirit, were of God, if they confessed and acknowledged Jesus Christ to have come from heaven and to have been made flesh, or made man; i.e. to be truly God and truly man. But if (ver. 3) they met with teachers of such a spirit as dissolveth Jesus,[1] by denying him either to be the Messias or to be truly God, or to be a true man, they might conclude for certain that such men had not a true spirit, but were heretics, antichrists, and forerunners of the great antichrist. Such, even in St. John’s time, was Simon the magician, who, according to St. Epiphanius, (hær. xxi. p. 55. Ed Petav.) pretended among his countrymen, the Samaritans, that he himself was God the Father, and among the Jews that he was God the Son, and that Jesus suffered death in appearance only. His disciple also, Menander, said he was sent from heaven for the salvation of men. See St. Epiphanius, hær. xxii. p. 61. 3. Cerinthus, as also Carpocras, held that Jesus was a mere man, born of Joseph and Mary, and also different from Christ. See St. Epiphanius, hær. xxxvii. and xxix. p. 102. and 110. 4. Ebion held much the same. See the same St. Epiphanius, hær. xxx. p. 142. These heretics and divers of their followers divided Jesus, and destroyed the faith and mystery of the incarnation. (Witham)
— Every spirit which confesseth, &c. Not that the confession of this point of faith alone, is at all times and in all cases sufficient; but that with relation to that time, and for that part of the Christian doctrine, which was then particularly to be confessed, taught, and maintained against the heretics of those days, this was the most proper token by which the true teachers might be distinguished from the false. (Challoner)
**Ver. 3. **
That dissolveth Jesus, viz. either by denying his humanity or his divinity. (Challoner)
— This is antichrist;[2] i.e. such is the spirit of antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh, or is to come in the latter times.
— And he is now already in the world, not the chief and great antichrist, but his precursors, in whom he may be said to come. (Witham)
— And he is now already in the world. Not in his person, but in his spirit and in his precursors. (Challoner)
