This does help confirm that Potamius was writing of the heavenly witnesses verse.
Thanks!
Most Unlikely. The very most we get from Potamius is:
"Quia Filius sequitur vocabulo, ita maior est ille qui praevenit; sed
et mittentis et missi, quia tres unum sunt, sed et mittentis et missi,
quia
tres unum sunt,"
which as Conti correctly surmises, must come from 1 John 5:8.
One letter in which this is found is below (trans by Conti). Some of it is on the
PBF.
But by reading this particular letter in full you will see that Potamius is almost "the insane Trinitarian" - he is literally mad (i.e. he does not show the brotherly attitude towards the Arians as J. Chrysostom who considered them Christians). Potamius sees them as devils. So if ever someone was wanting to quote the Comma in full, it would have been Potamius. But clearly the Comma is completely unknown to him. He is limited to 1 John 5:8 "tres unum sunt".
__________________________________
"INCIPIT EPISTULA POTAMI
AD ATHANASIUM EPISCOPUM
AB ARRIANIS POSTQUAM
IN CONCILIO ARIMINENSI
SUBSCRIPSERUNT
"THE LETTER OF POTAMIUS TO THE BISHOP ATHANASIUS,
FROM THE ARIANS AFTER THEIR SUBSCRIPTION
AT THE COUNCIL OF ARIMINUM
"Potamius to his brother the very glorious and blessed lord bishop
Athanasius.
"What hand would have been more effective in scraping off the filthy dirt
of the damned sect, dirt that is abundant because of the pit of such a large
prison, as you correctly write, or in cleansing with fiery merits the corpses
of the dead men from the bloody stench of ordure, if that hand of yours, which
is etemal in regard to the pious feats of a man crowned by exile, had not
repelled the heretical sect with the anathema of God? You smiled, I say, upon
us, perfect in your Catholic purity, while slaying and condemning the treach-
erous and perjured enemies of true faith. Armed with the cutting sword of one
faith, you overcame doubtful minds corrupted by heresy and the immoderate,
culpably poisonous intrigues of a damnable soul.
"May the serpent lie dead and the land which received him become black
with his purulent venom. May the serpent lie condemned by the divine thun-
derbolt. May the serpent lie gripped in his blood-red horror. May the serpent
lie with his eye-sockets crushed, with the sewer of his three-forked mouth
wide open. May the originator of every crime vomit, go to rack and ruin,
writhe in agony: his having deprived the first man of etemal life would have
been a little offence, had he, more poisonous than the Hydra, not flung him-
self even on the Saviour.
"He wanted to separate our Lord Jesus Christ from the Father and the Holy
Spirit, as if he might be able to cut into pieces the Word of Jesus Christ, even
though it is evident that the Trinity is a unity bound together by the buckle of
substance: the Scriptures in fact assert: "I and the Father are one" (Joh. 10,13),
and "He who sees me, sees the Father" (Joh. 14,9), and "I am in the Father and
the Father in me" (Joh.14,11) and "In the beginning was the Word and the
Word was with God and the Word was God" (Joh. l,1). This barbaric torturer,
this deserter and parricide sought, if he only could, to divide, so I believe, the
unity of the Trinity with rapacious claws and furious fangs.
"And after all this, which argument did the enemies of true faith allege in
support of their blashemies? " He who sent me", they cite,"is greater than I"
(Joh.14,24+28). The one from whom he was begotten is his Father, certainly:
since he is acknowledged as Son. However the Father is greater than the Son
because he is Father. The rank is placed first, but the substance is not separat-
ed.
"What do you say to these arguments, you infamous traitor? You mustjust-
ly admit that, when your poisonous desire of impure slander was inflamed, the
venerable fathers transfixed you with pious arrows in that bolier council. Here
also it is clearly shown that you held before you fetters of malicious distor-
tion, since the Saviour says: "I have corne down from heaven not to do my
own will but the will of him who sent me" (Joh.6,38). What do you answer,
serpent? Is it really possible that you seek to obfuscate the brightness of this
"What do you say to these arguments, you infamous traitor? You must justly
admit that, when your poisonous desire of impure slander was inflamed, the
venerable fathers transfixed you with pious arrows in that bolier council. Here
also it is clearly shown that you held before you fetters of malicious distor-
tion, since the Saviour says: "I have corne down from heaven not to do my
own will but the will of him who sent me" (Joh.6,38). What do you answer,
serpent? Is it really possible that you seek to obfuscate the brightness of this
pure profession, which they consider to be a very small problem? The occa-
sion has a bearing on the matter. The Lord our Saviour appeared to mankind
as a human being, since he had clothed himself with a human body. Therefore
he said: "I have corne down from heaven not to do my own will" (Joh. 6,38).
"He denied the exercise of the humanity that was in him. Therefore he cries out
in order to proclaim in himself the predecessor whom he remembers as his
Father and begetter. Since the Son is named second, therefore he who pre-
cedes is greater: but, because "these three are one" (1 Joh.5,8), the substance
of him who sends and of him who is sent, in the context of the unity of the
Godhead, is one: "I and the Father are one" (Joh. 10,30), and "He who sees
me, sees the Father" (Joh.14,9) and, as the Saviour himself said to the
Apostles: "I have been so long with you and yet you do not know the Father"
(Joh.14,9).
"lt is also asserted by the enemies of Faith that the term "substance" is not
attested in the Scriptures. Restore what you had stolen, you thievish tempter:
see, you are overcome. Do you have the nerve to refute the "substance".
Indeed the pious men, that is, the ancient ranks of holy prophets, the entire
chorus, according to the Scriptures openly declare:
"<They heard not> the sound of the substance: from the birds of the sky and the
cattle they run in fear, they yelled, and 1 will deliver up Jerusalem to captivity " (Hier. 9, 10).
Since Christ the God had not been heard at all by the earlier people, the inhabitants
having become corrupted, the columns of Jerusalem collapsed.
"And now, you wretch, even though one judgement of God should have been sufficient,
listen to what the holy prophet thundered: "If they had stood in my substance and
had listened to me and proclaimed my words to my people, 1 would
have turned them from their evil way" (Hier. 23,22). This sacred voice con-
cerning the "substance" broke out on impious nations, in order that even the
prophet, beginning from Adam, desperately looks for Christ: "I am stuck fast
in deep mire, and there is no substance" (Ps. 68,2): to be sure because the sub-
stance of the Father had not yet been instilled in the human body of Jesus
Christ; and the same occurs to him who lost all his substance after having dis-
sipated his property with his dissolute life - in fact, as the sacred prophet
ofGod wrote: "the holy spirit of God will shun deceit" (Sap. 1,5): he lost his
substance because he lacked holiness owing to his licentiousness.
"If this is sufficient for you, I have finished.
"If you are now panting after them everything is filled with these sacred verities;
but if you are still on the rack, I will intensify my action. We read in the Scriptures:
"I also gathered for myself silver and gold and substance of kings and provinces" (Eccl. 2,8).
This is that substance which the prophet recalls by saying: "God has spoken once,
twice 1 have heard this (Ps.62,12)". The prophet asserts with certainty that in
the utterance of one word he has heard two voices, as David confirms: "My
tangue is like the calamus of a scribe" (Ps. 44,2). In fact, as the calamus is
made with separate, equal small teeth and works by means of harmoniously
combined thorns, so the Saviour is united to the will of his Father in an indivisible
harmony. Therefore what the Father said, the Son proclaimed; what the
Son announced, the Father fulfilled. With good cause the prophet says: "God
has spoken once, twice 1 have heard this" (Ps. 62,12). Two persons expressed
one will; and thus even in the Decalogue double tablets are engraved with one
sentence.
"May the heretical sect be suppressed, after being condemned to eternal
silence, smashed by the lightning of God and forsaken in the abyss
of hell.
"May the virgin alone, mother of God, raise to the clouds of heaven her head
crowned with laurels, she who is our only dove and is superior in fecundity.
May she be blessed among the nations who are piously faithful to the sacred
unity of the Trinity and fully praise her now and forever, world without end.
"May the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit make you blessed."
you are funny. Master of Posturing.