But if such a formula existed it is highly probable that it took its rise from St.John's Epistle.

This passage of the Epistle of Polycarp is the earliest instance of the use of the word 'Antichrist' outside the Johannean writings in which, alone of the New Testament, it occurs five times.

Here too it occurs in conjunction with other characteristic phrases, [Greek: homologein, en sarki elaeluthenai, ek tou diabolou].

The phraseology and turns of expression in these two verses accord so entirely with those of the rest of the Epistle and of the Gospel that we must needs take them to be the original work of the writer and not a quotation, and we can hardly do otherwise than see an echo of them in the words of Polycarp.
There is naturally a certain hesitation in using evidence for the Epistle as available also for the Gospel, but I have little doubt that it may justly so be used and with no real diminution of its force.

The chance that the Epistle had a separate author is too small to be practically worth considering.
This then will apply to the case of Papias, of whose relations to the fourth Gospel we have no record, but of whom Eusebius expressly says, that 'he made use of testimonies from the first Epistle of John.' There is the less reason to doubt this statement, as in _every_ instance in which a similar assertion of Eusebius can be verified it is found to hold good.