subject, appear sufficiently from the very sentence just cited. For in its ending clause he attributes the millennary opinions of both Irenæus and each other ancient father that adopted that view, to the weight which Papias' opinion (that silly old man, as he calls him) had with them. Whereas, possessing (as we do) the works of both Irenæus and of other early millennarists, we know from them, (as will be seen almost immediately,) that these later fathers did not rest their opinions on Papias' authority, but on written scripture, alike of the Old and New Testaments; including specially the Apocalypse of St. John.'

My conclusion is, that Papias did precisely the same; that Eusebius' insinuation about him was groundless; that Andreas is correct in mentioning Papias among the witnesses to the genuineness and inspiration of the Apocalypse, just as we know him to have been correct in respect of the other four ancients whom he quotes as authorities; and that Papias' millennary doctrine was founded in part on the Apocalyptic Book, as well as on the many other scriptures well agreeing therewith, both of the Old and New Testament.

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II. So we come to the writers of the second half century subsequent to the publication of the Apocalypse ; a period extending from A.D. 150 to 200, and which includes the honoured names of Justin Martyr, the Narrator of the Lyonnese martyrdoms, Irenæus, Melito, Theophilus, Apollonius, Clement of Alexandria, Tertul

1 See especially in the last chapters of Irenæus' 5th Book on Heresies, his reference to, and argument from various Books of Scripture. I believe the little sentence quoted in Note 2, p. 20, above, is all that he says of Papias.

2 Viz. Irenæus, Hippolytus, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Cyril of Alexandria. Gregory is the only one about whose testimony on the point in dispute there can be no doubt. And see on it p. 33, Note 1, infrà.

lian. And in regard of all these our task is indeed. brief and easy. Their testimony to the apostolic authorship and divine authority of the Apocalypse is uncontroverted and notorious.

1. First, Justin Martyr,-a Christian philosopher, born at Sichem,' it is supposed, about A.D. 103, converted to Christianity about 133, and who suffered martyrdom about 165,-this man, to whose learning and piety testimony has been borne by nearly all the succeeding fathers, in his Dialogue with Trypho, written probably about the year 150, thus expresses himself: "A man from among us, by name John, one of the apostles of Christ, in the Revelation made to him, has prophesied that the believers in our Christ shall live a thousand years in Jerusalem; &c."

2. Some twelve or fifteen years after this, the Narrative of the Lyonnese martyrs was written by one of the surviving Christians of that city; that is about A.D. 177. It was addressed by the Gallic Churches, as a letter to the Churches of Asia (Proconsular Asia) and Phrygia, including of course the seven Apocalyptic Churches among them, and by Eusebius has been preserved to us entire. And in this letter there appears (as Lardner has remarked) the remarkable expression, in description of a true disciple, Following the Lamb whithersoever be goeth,” ακολύθων τῳ Αρνιῳ όπε αν ὑπαγγ—the very words (thus adopted as from scripture) of the Apocalypse.3

3. It was very soon after these martyrdoms that Irenæus, previously a presbyter of the Lyonnese Church, became its bishop. He wrote his Book on Heresies

1 See Lardner for the authorities.

2 Cited ibid. Vol. ii. p. 137.

8 Viz, Apoc. xiv. 4 : Ούτοι εισιν δι ακολουθούντες τῳ Αρνιῳ όπου αν ὑπαγη. It also refers to Christ as τῳ πιστῳ και αληθινῳ μαρτυρι, και πρωτοτοκά των νεκρων, so as Apoc. i, 5, iii. 14.

So Eusebius, H. E. Lib. v. p. 170; "When Pothinus had been put to death

probably between A.D. 180 and 190.

And in it he

testifies many times most clearly on the point in question; speaking of the Apocalypse as the work of John the disciple of the Lord, that same John that leaned on his breast at the last supper;' declaring (as will be seen in the second chapter of this Preliminary Essay) the time when it was written; and speaking of exact and ancient copies of the Book as then existing, confirmed by the agreeing testimony of those who had seen John himself.2—In short a more clear and decisive testimony on almost every point on which information might be desired, could scarcely have been given.

4. Next may be mentioned his cotemporary Melito, Bishop of Sardis, about A.D. 170; and who consequently may have presided over that See at the very time when the letter from the Gallic Churches was sent to it.3 He wrote a Treatise on the Revelation of St. John; and is allowed by Michaelis to be one of the witnesses in its favour.

5. Of Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch about 181, Eusebius says that in a work of his against the Heresy of Hermogenes, he therein made use of testimonies or quotations from John's Apocalypse. It was undoubtedly, Michaelis allows, received by him.

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6. Apollonius, called by Jerome an eloquent man (whether or no the same that, when accused before Perennis, the Prætorian Prefect under Commodus, made an eloquent apology before the Senate, and then suffered mar

with the martyrs in Gaul, Irenæus succeeded him in the bishopric of the Church of Lyons." 1 De Hær. iv. 37, 50, pp. 335, 353 (Ed. Grabe); also, v. 26, 30. 2 This occurs in his disquisition on the name and number of Antichrist: "These things being thus, and this number being in all the exact and ancient copies, and they who saw John attesting the same thing." &c.-On which passage the thought suggests itself, were not both Papias and Polycarp among the persons referred to by him in the plural, as having seen St. John?

3 So Dean Woodhouse.

4 Lardner, Vol. ii. p. 214.

tyrdom, about A.D. 186)—is also noted by Eusebius as one that acknowledged the Apocalypse, and borrowed testimonies from it.1

7. Its reception by Clement of Alexandria, an inquisitive and learned writer who flourished, as Lardner gives the date, about 194, is as undoubted. He has frequently quoted from it, and referred to it, as the work of an apostle :2 and adds, as we shall presently see, his testimony to fix its date.

8. Finally in this half century comes Tertullian, the cotemporary of Clement; the most ancient, and one of the most learned, of the Latin fathers. His testimony to the Apocalypse is most full and ample. He quotes or refers to it in more than seventy passages in his writings; appealing to it expressly as the work of the apostle John, and the same that wrote the 1st Epistle of St. John.3 He defends the authenticity of the book against the heretic Marcion and his followers, by asserting its external evidence: thus appealing to the Asiatic Churches on the point; "We have churches that are disciples of John for though Marcion rejects the Revelation, the succession of bishops, traced to its original, will rest on John as its author."4

Thus far not a single writer of the Church had impugned the genuineness, or the divine inspiration, of the Apocalypse of St. John. Only the Alogi, an heretical sect that rose up ere the end of this half century, (so Epi

' Lardner thinks him a different person from the martyr of that name, and a few years later. Ib. p. 393.

He refers to Apoc. xxi. 21, (" The twelve gates are twelve pearls,' &c.) as the work of an apostle.-Pæd. Bk. ii. Again, referring to Apoc. iv. 4, he says, "Such an one, though here on earth he be not honoured with the first seat, shall sit upon the four-and-twenty thrones, judging the people; as John says in the Revelation." Strom. Bk. vi. Lardner, ii. 245. 3 See Lardner, ii. 295. 4 "Habemus et Johannis alumnas ecclesias: nam, etsi Apocalypsim ejus Marcion respuit, ordo tamen episcoporum, ad originem recensus, in Johannem stabit auctorem." Adv. Marcion, 1. iv. c. 5.

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phanius tells us,) and derived their name from an absurd antipathy to the term Logos (The Word,) did on this account reject both the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse of John, which alike gave the obnoxious title to Jesus Christ. The only other objection they pretended against the latter, was that there was no Church of Christians existing at the Apocalyptic station, Thyatira: ' of which statement, if referred to St. John's time, they offered no proof; and, if referred to their own time, the circumstance did not militate against there having been one some sixty or eighty years before. Their ascription of the Book to Cerinthus,-whose obviously it could not be, as I have already shown,'-did not help their case. And altogether, Michaelis confesses, "the estimation in which they were held by their cotemporaries was not such as to inspire respect for them in a critic of the present age.

III. In the early part, however, of the next half century, a man of some repute in the Church rose up to impugn the genuineness of the Apocalypse; I mean the Roman presbyter Caius. But this was evidently under the influence of strong anti-millennarian prejudices, and with almost as little just pretension to authority as his Alogistic predecessors: since he appears to have urged no argument against it, except its (by him misunderstood) millennial doctrine; and, with the same absurdity as the Alogi, to have ascribed it to Cerinthus. This was 1 See Michaelis, ibid, p. 468.

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2 Και ουκ ένι εκει εκκλησια Χμισιανων. So Epiphanius reports their language. Gibbon could not find in his heart to pass by the objection. See his History, ii. 359. 3 So Michaelis ibid. 4 See Note 1, p. 5. The following are the words of Caius, as reported by Eusebius, H. E. iii. 28: 'Cerinthus also,-who, by his revelations, as if written by some great apostle, imposes upon us monstrous relations (TЄpaToλoyias) of things of his own invention, as shown him by an angel,-says, that after the resurrection, there shall be a terrestrial kingdom of Christ, and that men shall live again in Jerusalem,