And every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, of which you have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
So is this world to all the faithful seeking their own country, as was the desert to the people Israel. They wandered indeed as yet, and were seeking their own country: but with God for their guide they could not wander astray. Their way was God's bidding. For where they went about during forty years, the journey itself is made up of a very few stations, and is known to all. They were retarded because they were in training, not because they were forsaken. That therefore which God promises us is ineffable sweetness and a good, Isaiah 64:4 as the Scripture says, and as you have often heard by us rehearsed, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man. 1 Corinthians 2:9 But by temporal labors we are exercised, and by temptations of this present life are trained. Howbeit, if you would not die of thirst in this wilderness, drink charity. It is the fountain which God has been pleased to place here that we faint not in the way: and we shall more abundantly ...
And every spirit which dissolves (solvit) Jesus, is not of God. (Vulg.) It means that Jesus is composed of the Godhead and the manhood by the bond of the hypostatic union. He therefore who loosens this bond, by denying that Christ is God, as do the Arians, or that He is Prayer of Manasseh , as other heretics, is not of God, but of the devil. For such deny that Christ the Son of God came from heaven in the flesh, and say that He is God only or man only. This is what is set forth to be believed in the Athanasian symbol concerning Christ. "For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one Prayer of Manasseh , so God and man are one Christ;" where observe that the word as signifies union and unity, not the same but similar. For the rational soul and flesh make our composite being, our man. But the Godhead and the manhood united in Christ make one composite Being, not essentially, but substantially, or hypostatically. Nor indeed does the Godhead inform the Humanity in the same way that the soul i...
That dissolveth Jesus, viz. either by denying his humanity or his divinity. (Challoner)
This is antichrist; 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)
But in his epistle he especially designates those as "Antichrists "who "denied that Christ was come in the flesh".
The virgin friend of Apelles. Surely he is antichrist who denies that Christ has come in the flesh.
No one has as yet escaped from Antichrist;
