about A.D. 212. And certain writers in Egypt cotemporary, or nearly cotemporary,-evidently under the same prejudices against and misconceptions of the Apocalyptic doctrine of a Millennium,-attacked it as obscure, unconnected, and indeed false in statement :inasmuch as it called that a revelation which was covered with darkness, and represented John to be its author, when in fact it was the work of Cerinthus. These continued the line of objections and objectors, from their first origin with the Alogi down to Dionysius:-that same Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria about the middle of the 3rd century, of whose arguments I have already given a succinct account; and who, we have seen, though he entered with better judgment and temper on the inquiry, was yet as unable as his predecessors to adduce any historical evidence whatsoever, of the least weight, to aid his argument. 2 Meanwhile the chain of testimony was continued still onward to the genuineness and divine inspiration of the Apocalypse. 1. First Hippolytus, 1. First Hippolytus,-a Christian Bishop who flourished, according to Cave and Lardner, about A.D. 220, in early years a disciple of Irenæus,3 and in more mature life a martyr to the cause of Christ,—not subject to sensual desires and pleasures. And, being an enemy to the divine Scriptures, and desirous to seduce mankind, he says there will be a term of 1000 years spent in nuptial entertainments." It seems to me not without reason that Lardner (in his later judgment on the point) and Michaelis have concluded that the Revelation here referred to by Caius was probably the Apocalypse of St. John; and not the spurious Revelation of St. Peter, written in the 2nd century, or any other. 2 See Michaelis, p. 477. These seem to have been the Allegorists whom Nepos opposed in his Ελεγχος Αλληγοριςων. And it was either these, or Caius, or the Alogi, that Dionysius must have meant, when he spoke of previous questioners of the inspiration of the Apocalypse. See Note 1, p. 5. p. 4, &c. suprà. 3 So Photius cited by Lardner, ii. 424: Μαθητής δε Ειρηναιου ὁ Ἱππολυτος. Photius eulogizes him as in his style clear, grave, concise: Tηy ppaσw σapns eσti, και ύποσεμνος, και απέριττος. He was bishop of some place called Portus Romanus: but whether the modern Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, or the modern Aden at the mouth of the Arabian Gulf, each of which bore that name in ancient times, has been a point controverted. See Lardner, ii. 427; also my own notice of Hippolytus in the Appendix to Vol. iv. 2 only elsewhere and otherwise bore testimony to it,' but moreover wrote an express commentary on the Apocalypse: and this with so much weight of influence from his character, authority, and talents, that Michaelis attributes to it very principally the general reception of the Apocalypse thenceforward in the Christian Church.32. After him (not to speak of the Egyptian Bishop Nepos, and of his Eλeyxos Aλλnyopiwy, to which Dionysius' work was an answer,) Origen, the most critical and learned of all the ecclesiastical writers of his time, though a decided anti-millennarian, did yet receive the Apocalypse into the canon of inspired Scripture; and this without the slightest doubt, so far as appears, of its genuineness. "What shall we say of John," is his observation in one place, "who leaned on the breast of Jesus? He has left us a Gospel: he wrote likewise a Revelation, in which he was ordered to seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered: also an Epistle of a moderate length; and perhaps" (I beg the reader to mark the discrimination exercised by him) “perhaps a 1 So in his work on Antichrist; "St. John saw in the isle of Patmos awful mysteries, which he taught to others without envy:" and, presently after; "Tell me, holy John, thou apostle and disciple of Christ, what thou hast seen of Babylon." 2 Jerome mentions among the writings of Hippolytus one entitled, "On the Apocalypse."-Again, on the curious marble monument of Hippolytus, dug up near Rome in 1551, and of which an account is given in Lardner (p. 428), a list is engraved of his writings, and one of them is recorded as " On St. John's Gospel and Apocalypse."-Similarly Ebedjesu, (Bishop of Nisibis in the Nestorian Syrian Church, near the close of the 13th century. See Lardner, iv. 320,) in the 7th chapter of his metrical catalogue of ecclesiastical writings, mentions among other works of Hippolytus, Chapters against Caius ; And in defence of the Apocalypse, The Apostle and Evangelist. 3 Ibid. p. 478. His Commentary on the Apocalypse is referred to several times by Andreas of Cæsarea; also by Jacob the Syrian, Bishop of Edessa from A.D. 651 to 710. Michaelis, p. 479. 4 See Lardner, ii. 655, 691, &c. usual candour notes this; "Origen, notwithstanding his doctrine of the Millennium, received the Apocalypse;" 5 Michaelis with his warm opposition to the &c. p. 480. ANT second and third."-3. And with Origen, in Eastern Africa, there doubtless agreed on the important point of our inquiry his cotemporary, the eminent bishop and martyr of Western Africa,-Cyprian.2 So ends our catena of testimonies to the genuineness and divine inspiration of the Apocalypse, traced as proposed through the three half centuries that followed after its publication. Alike from East and West, North and South, from the Churches of the Asiatic province and the Syrian, of Italy and of Gaul, of Egypt and of Africa, -we have heard an unbroken and all but uniform voice of testimony in its favor.3 Nay, even what there is of contrary testimony has been shown only to confirm and add new weight to that which it opposes for it proves how unable they who most wished it were to find evidence or argument of this kind, of any real value, and such as could bear examination, on their side of the question. Let me just add, by way of supplement to my sketch of the earlier historic evidence, that in what remained of the 3rd century, while no other opponent to it appeared of any note, the Apocalypse was received as the work of the inspired apostle John, alike by the schismatic Novatians and Donatists, and by the most eminent writers of the Catholic Church; e. g. Victorinus,5 Metho 1 Quoted by Eusebius, H. E. vi. 25. 2 See Lardner, iii. 47. Cyprian in several places cites it, and speaks of it as inspired Scripture. In the only passage where he mentions the name of the writer, he simply calls him John: but I conceive, in the absence of any such distinguishing appellative as John the Presbyter, there can be no reasonable doubt that he meant the most eminent person of that name, viz. the apostle John. The same might be said of an author cotemporary, as it would seem, with Cyprian, and whose Treatise is one of these that has been often joined with Cyprian's works.-See Lardner, iii. p. 64. 3 So Woodhouse. Lardner, iii. 121, 565. The Novatian schism began about A.D. 251, the Donalist about 311. Bishop of Pettaw on the Drave, about A.D. 290, according to Lardner; and who suffered martyrdom in the persecution by Diocletian. He wrote a Commentary on the Apocalypse, as Jerome informs us, evidently as a book of divine inspiration his other Commentaries, mentioned by Jerome in association with dius,' Arnobius, Lactantius:3further, that in the earlier half of the 4th century, while Eusebius doubted, Athanasius received it; 5 and in its later half, while Cyril of Jerusalem apparently hesitated respecting it, and Gregory Na this, being on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Ecclesiastes, and the Canticles; all books of the canon of scripture.-See Lardner, iii. 163. Whether the book still extant under the title of Victorinus' Commentary on the Apocalypse, be really his, and the one meant by Jerome, is another question. It is one on which I shall have to remark affirmatively in the second Chapter of this my Preliminary Essay; and also in my Treatise of Victorinus in the Appendix to my fourth Volume: to which latter I must beg especially to refer the Reader. 1 A cotemporary of Victorinus; bishop first of Olympus in Lycia, afterwards of Tyre; and who similarly suffered martyrdom under Diocletian. So Jerome. He often quotes the Apocalypse as a Book of Scripture, speaks of it as written by "the blessed John," (8 μaпkapios Iwavvηs,) in all probability meaning the apostle John; and is mentioned by Andrew of Cæsarea in conjunction with Irenæus and others, as among those who had borne testimony to the divine inspiration of the book.-Lardner, iii. 181, 198. 2 On Psalm cii he says, "Si vis videre divitem et mendicum, Sancti Apostoli Johannis lege Apocalypsim :" besides elsewhere referring to it as to Divine Scripture. Lardner, ibid. 480. 3 He expressly quotes the Apocalypse as a book of Sacred Scripture, and as written by John. Inst. vii. 17, Epit. c. 42, 73, 74, &c.-See Lardner, iii. 541. A person might put it, he said, among the duoλoyovμeva, the acknowledged Scriptures of inspiration, unless he preferred to put it among the vola, or apocryphal Lardner, iv. 103. (I have already noted this, p. 5, note 2 suprà.) -It is to be remembered that he seized on the fact of Papias having mentioned John the Presbyter, as one whom he had learnt from, as well as John the Apostle, and of the tombs of either being according to traditional report at Ephesus, as a ground-work for the theory of its having been not improbably the simple presbyter John that saw the Apocalypse: Εικος γαρ τον δεύτερον, ει μη τις εθελοι τον πρωτον, την επ' ονόματος φερομενην Ιωαννου Αποκαλυψιν έωρακέναι. Η. E. iii. 39. On which doubt as to the apostolicity of its origin was mainly founded his doubt as to its inspiration.—Lardner observes that he never refers to the Apocalypse for authority adding that he was probably influenced in his judgment on this point by regard to the arguments of Dionysius as well as by aversion to the millennarian doctrine, which the Apocalypse of St. John was brought forward to support. 5 The Apocalypse is often and largely quoted by Athanasius. Moreover in the Festal Epistle, generally allowed to be his, the list of sacred books given by him coincides with that of our own received Canon, and ends like it with the Revelation of St. John.-In one place, again, he gives John the Evangelist the title of John the Theologos, or Divine: so expressing his conviction of the author of the Apocalypse, "John the Theologos," as it is headed, being the same as the author of the Gospel. Lardner, iv. 155, 156.--I may here add that in the Synopsis of sacred Scripture, usually joined with the works of Athanasius, but of the real author of which there exists some doubt, "the Apocalypse seen by John the Evangelist and Divine in Patmos" is reckoned among the Canonical Books. Lardner, iv. 163. 6 He not only excludes it from his Canon of Scripture, but in his Chapter on Antichrist very significantly omits all reference to it as an authority; grounding his doctrine wholly on Daniel's prophecy, and apparently reflecting on the Apocalypse (for it seems the book referred to) as apocryphal. Baσiλevoel de d Antiχρισος τρια και ήμισυ ετη μονα. Ουκ εξ αποκρυφων λεγομεν, ἀλλ ̓ εκ το zianzen,' and Chrysostom,2 though not rejecting, did Δανιηλ. Φησι γαρ, Και δοθήσεται εν χειρι αυτου έως καιρου και καιρων και ήμισυ Kaigov. So the Benedictine Editors of Cyril, and Lardner, iv. 175. This insinuation against the genuineness of the Apocalypse had struck my own mind, previously to reading their remarks, precisely in the same way as it did these learned writers. But, since the publication of my first Edition, my attention has been directed by the works of Professor Lücke and Moses Stuart on the Apocalypse (the former at p. 335, the latter vol. i. p. 361) to Cyril's unquestionable reference in his Catechism, xv. 12, 13, 27, to the Apocalyptic figurations of the Dragon and the Beast in Apoc. xii, xvii; speaking, as he does, of "another head of the Dragon; (του δράκοντος εσιν αλλη κεφαλη) and of Daniel's fourth Beast in its last form (that of Antichrist,) that he was to be the eighth king: (avtos όγδοος βασιλευσει. Thus Cyril cannot be regarded as a decided rejector of the Apocalypse. " 1 The opinion of Gregory Nazianzen on the genuineness and inspiration of the Apocalypse has been a subject of controversy. His metrical catalogue of the genuine books of the New Testament, begins thus: Ματθαιος μεν εγραψεν Εβραιοις θαύματα Χριςρου Μαρκος δ'Ιταλιᾳ, Λουκας Αχαΐαδι. Πασι δ' Ιωάννης, κηρυξ μεγας ουρανοφοίτης. Then he gives the Acts, then the fourteen Epistles of Paul, and the seven Catholic Epistles, viz. one of James, two of Peter, three of John, one of Jude. From which Baronius and others infer that Gregory did not receive the Apocalypse; and Lardner (iv. 287) allows that, arguing only from it, this would be the natural conclusion. But he adds that in other of Gregory's remaining works the Apocalypse is twice cited; (in one, Προς δε τους εφεσώτας αγγέλους Πειθομαι γαρ άλλους αλλης προςατειν εκκλησιας, ὡς Ιωάννης διδασκει με δια της Αποκαλύψεως : in the other, Και δ ων, και δ ην, και δ ερχομενος, ὁ παντοκρατωρ)—also that Andreas of Cæsarea, in his Apocalyptic Commentary (as likewise his imitator Arethas) names Gregory as one by whom the Apocalypse was received.—And, let me add, not only does Andreas so speak of him at the beginning of his work, but he actually quotes him several times in it. Besides which, in the very verse itself of Gregory about John the Evangelist, there seems to me a not improbable argument for his reception of the Apocalypse. For if, instead of Lardner's figurative rendering of the oupavopoiтns, enlightened with the heavenly mysteries, we render it literally, "who went to heaven," it can only allude to John's rapture to heaven in the Spirit, so as described in the Apocalypse. And if so, it is a direct testimony to the fact of John the Evangelist being the Apocalyptic John, and may have been meant to couple together in brief his two chief works, the Gospel and the Apocalypse.-The circumstance of its being alluded to out of its order in the canon is not any strong argument against my inference. Order is by no means always observed in the patristic lists. For example, Chrysostom begins his List of the Books of the N. T. with St. Paul's Epistles. Lardner iv. 537. This controverted point about Gregory Nazianzen I have the longer dwelt upon, because Michaelis, on the assumption of Andreas being grossly incorrect in his statement that Gregory recognized the Apocalypse, has unduly used it to shake his testimony respecting Papias: pp. 466, 490. 2 Lardner iv. 549, says that Chrysostom no more notices the Apocalypse than Just as Prudentius in his Cathem. Hymn vi, (Lardner v. 5) referring to St. John's Apocalyptic rapture to heaven; |