He then shows how much is involved in this divine witness, in the emphatic words: "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God, which he hath testified of his Son."

That which he has called the witness of the Spirit, is here designated as testimony given by God himself; and this divine witness is contrasted with all human testimony, which is ever liable to mislead. If we receive anything as true, upon the testimony of men whom we have reason to believe, how can we but follow this unerring witness of God? So is this continuous divine witness, extending through all times, something more reliable than human testimony. This factual witness of God himself, everywhere seen in the practical workings of the Gospel, shows us the same image of his Son delineated in the Gospel narrative, and thus attests it to be true, beyond all reach of doubt. It testifies of the same Christ mirrored in the Gospel history. It is, as John says, the Father's witness of the Son. This, in the preceding passage, had been represented as belonging to the present. It is now spoken of as something completed, the witness which the Father has already given of the Son. Looking back upon the past, on these operations of the Spirit as a whole, he regards them as a testimony already closed. But as extending into his own time, they are a present witness. And thus we also, from the stand-point of our own age, may appeal to it as something at once past and present.