I. THE GALILEAN APOSTLES. (continued 10)

Parthia.――The earliest trace of this story is in the writings of Augustin, (A. D. 398,) who quotes the first epistle of John as “the epistle to the Parthians,” from which it appears that this was a common name for that epistle, in the times of Augustin. Athanasius is also quoted by Bede, as calling it by the same name. If he wrote to the Parthians in that familiar way, it would seem probable that he had been among them, and many writers have therefore adopted this view. Among these, the learned Mill (Prolegomena in New Testament § 150) expresses his opinion very fully, that John passed the greater part of his life among the Parthians, and the believers near them. Lampe (Prolegomena to a Johannine Theology, Lib. I. cap. iii. § 12, note) allows the probability of such a visit, but strives to fix its date long before the destruction of Jerusalem; yet offers no good reason for such a notion.

India.――The story of the Jesuit missionaries is given by Baronius, (Annals 44. § 30.) The story is, that letters from some of these missionaries, in 1555, give an account of their finding such a tradition, among an East Indian nation, called the Bassoras, who told them that the apostle John once preached the gospel in that region. No further particulars are given; but this is enough to enable us to judge of the value of a story, dating fifteen centuries from the event which it commemorates.

HIS RESIDENCE IN ASIA.

The great mass of ancient stories about this apostle, take no notice at all of his residence in the far eastern regions, on and beyond the Euphrates, but make mention of the countries inhabited by Greeks and Romans, as the scenes of the greater part of his long life, after the destruction of Jerusalem. The palpable reason of the character of these traditions, no doubt, is, that they all come from the very regions which they commemorate as the home of John; and the authors of the stories being interested only to secure for their own region the honor of an apostolic visit, cared nothing about the similar glory of countries far eastward, with which they had no connection whatever, and of which they knew nothing. That region which is most particularly pointed out as the great scene of John’s life and labors, is Asia, in the original, limited sense of the term, which includes only a small portion of the eastern border of the Aegean sea, as already described in the life of Peter. The most important place in this Little Asia, was Ephesus; and in this famous city the apostle John is said to have spent the latter part of his life, after the great dispersion from Palestine.

The motives of John’s visit to Ephesus, are variously given by different writers, both ancient and modern. All refer the primary impulse to the Holy Spirit, which was the constant and unerring guide of all the apostles in their movements abroad on the great mission of their Master. The divine presence of their Lord himself, too, was ever with them to support and encourage, in their most distant wanderings, even as he promised at parting,――“Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” But historical investigation may very properly proceed with the inquiry into the real occasion which led him, under that divine guidance, to this distant city, among a people who were mostly foreign to him in language, habits and feelings, even though many of them owned the faith of Christ, and reverenced the apostle of his word. It is said, but not proved, that a division of the great fields of labor was made by the apostles among themselves, about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; and that, when Andrew took Scythia, and others their sections of duty, Asia was assigned to John, who passed the rest of his life there accordingly. This field had already, indeed, been gone over by Paul and his companions, and already at Ephesus itself had a church been gathered, which was now flourishing under the pastoral care of Timothy, who had been instructed and commissioned for this very field, by Paul himself. But these circumstances, so far from deterring the apostle John from presenting himself on a field of labor already so nobly entered, are supposed rather to have operated as incitements to draw him into a place where so solid a foundation had been laid for a complete fabric. As a center of missionary action, indeed, Ephesus certainly did possess many local advantages of a high order. The metropolis of all Asia Minor,――a noble emporium for the productions of that great section of the eastern continent, on whose farthest western shore it stood,――and a grand center for the traffic of the great Mediterranean sea, whose waters rolled from that haven over the mighty shores of three continents, bearing, wherever they flowed, the ships of Ephesus,――this port offered the most ready and desirable means of intercourse with all the commercial cities of the world, from Tyre, or Alexandria, or Sinope, to the pillars of Hercules, and gave the quickest and surest access to the gates of Rome itself. Its widely extended commerce, of course, drew around its gates a constant throng of people from many distant parts of the world, a few of whom, if imbued with the gospel, would thus become the missionaries of the word of truth to millions, where the name of Jesus was before unknown. And since, after the death of all the other apostles, John survived alone, so long, it was desirable for all the Christian churches in the world, that the only living minister of the word who had been instructed from the lips of Jesus himself, should reside in some such place, where he might so easily be visited by all, and whence his instructions might quickly go forth to all. His inspired counsels, and his wonder-working prayers, might be sought for all who needed them, and his apostolic ordinances might be heard and obeyed, almost at once, by the most distant churches. But the circumstance, which more especially might lead the wanderer from the ruined city and homes of his fathers, to Ephesus, was the great gathering of Jews at this spot, who of course thus presented to the Jewish apostle an ample field for exertions, for which his natural and acquired endowments best fitted him.

In the account given in the Acts of the Apostles of Paul’s visit to Ephesus, particular mention is made of a synagogue there, in which he preached and disputed daily, for a long period, with great effect. Yet Paul’s labors had by no means attained such complete success among the Jews there, as to make it unnecessary for another apostle to labor in the ministry of the circumcision, in that same place; for it is especially mentioned that Paul, after three months’ active exertion in setting forth the truth in the synagogues, was induced by the consideration of the peculiar difficulties which beset him, among these proud and stubborn adherents of the old Mosaic system, to withdraw himself from among them; and during the remainder of his two years’ stay, he devoted himself, for the most part, to the instruction of the willing Greeks, who opened the schools of philosophy for his teachings, with far more willingness than the Jews did their house of religious assembly. And it appears that the greater part of his converts were rather among the Greeks than the Jews; for in the great commotions that followed, the attack upon the preachers of Christianity was made entirely by a heathen mob, in which no Israelite seems to have had any hand whatever; so that Paul had evidently made but little impression, comparatively, on the latter class. Among the Jews then, there was still a wide field open for the labors of one, consecrated, more especially, for the ministry of the circumcision. The circumstances of the times, also, presented many advantages for a successful assault upon the religious prejudices of his countrymen. The great Center of Unity for the race of Israel throughout the world, had now fallen into an irretrievable oblivion, under the fire and sword of the invader. The glories of the ancient covenant seemed to have passed away forever; and in the high devotion of the Jew, a blank was now left, by the destruction of the only temple of his ancient faith, which nothing else on earth could fill. Henceforth he might be trained to look for a spiritual temple,――a city eternal in the heavens, whose lasting foundations were laid by no mortal hand, for the heathen to sweep away in unholy triumph; but whose builder and maker was God. Thus prepared, by the mournful consummation of their country’s utter ruin, for the reception of a pure faith, the condition of the disconsolate Jews must have appeared in the highest degree interesting to the solitary surviving apostle of Jesus; and he would naturally devote the remnant of his days to that portion of the world where he might make the deepest impression on them, and where his influence might spread widest to the scattered members of a people, then as now, eminently commercial.

Under these peculiarly interesting circumstances, the Apostle John is supposed to have arrived at Ephesus, where Timothy, still holding the episcopal chair in which he had been placed by the Apostle Paul, must have hailed with great delight the arrival of the venerable John, from whose instructions and counsels, he might hope to derive advantages so much the more welcome, since the sword of the heathen persecution had removed his original apostolic teacher from the world. John must have been, at the time of his journey to Ephesus, considerably advanced in life. His precise age, and the date of his arrival, are altogether unknown, nor are there any fixed points on which the most critical and ingenious historical investigation can base any certain conclusion whatever, as to these interesting matters. Various and widely different have been the conclusions on these points;――some fixing his journey to Ephesus in the reign of Claudius, long before the destruction of Jerusalem, and even before the council on the question of the circumcision. The true character of this tale can be best appreciated by a reference to another circumstance, which is gravely appended to it by its narrators;――which is, that he was accompanied on this tour by the Virgin Mary, and that she lived there with him for a long time. This journey too, is thus made to precede the journey of Paul to Ephesus, by many years, and yet no account whatever is given of the reasons of the profound silence observed in the Acts of the Apostles, on an event so important to the history of the propagation of the gospel, nor why John could have lived so long at Ephesus, and yet have effected so little, that when Paul came to the same place, the very name of Christ was new there. But such stories are not worth refuting, standing as they do, self-convicted falsehoods. Others however, are more reasonable, and date this journey in the year of the destruction of Jerusalem, supposing that Ephesus was the first place of refuge to which the apostle went. But this conjecture is totally destitute of all ancient authority, and is inconsistent with the very reasonable supposition adopted above,――that he, in the flight from Jerusalem, first journeyed eastward, following the general current of the fugitives, towards the Euphrates. Where there is such a total want of all data, any fixed decision is out of the question; but it is very reasonable to suppose that John’s final departure from the east did not take place till some years after this date; probably not until the reign of Domitian. (A. D. 81 or 82.) He had lived in Babylon therefore, till he had seen most of his brethren and friends pass away from his eyes. The venerable Peter had sunk into the grave, and had been followed by the rest of the apostolic band, until the youngest apostle, now grown old, found himself standing alone in the midst of a new generation, like one of the solitary columns of desolate Babylon, among the low dwelling places of its refugee inhabitants. But among the hourly crumbling heaps of that ruined city, and the fast-darkening regions of that half-savage dominion, there was each year less and less around him, on which his precious labor could be advantageously expended. Christianity never seizes readily on the energies of a broken or degenerating people, nor does it flourish where the influences of civilization are losing their hold. Its exalted and exalting genius rather takes the spirits that are already on the wing for an upward course, and rises with them, giving new energy to the ascending movement. It may exert its elevating influence too, on the yet wild spirit of the uncivilized, and give, in the new conceptions of a pure faith and a high destiny, the first impulse to the advance of man towards refinement, in knowledge, and art, and freedom; but its very existence among them is dependent on this forward and upward movement,――and the beginning of its mortal decay dates from the cessation of the developments of the intellectual and physical resources of the race on which it operates. Among the subjects of the Parthian empire, this downward movement was already fully decided; and they were fast losing those refinements of feeling and thought on which the new faith could best fasten its spiritual and inspiring influences; they therefore soon became but hopeless objects of missionary exertion, when compared with the active and enterprising inhabitants of the still improving regions of the west. “Westward” then, “the star” of Christianity as “of empire, took its way;” and the last of the apostles was but following, not leading, the march of his Lord’s advancing dominion, when he shook off the dust of the darkening eastern lands from his feet, forever; turning his aged face towards the setting sun, to find in his latter days, a new home and a foreign grave among the children of his brethren; and to rejoice his old eyes with the glorious sight of what God had done for the churches, among the flourishing cities of the west, that were still advancing under Grecian art and Roman sway.

Ephesus.――On the importance of this place, as an apostolic station, the Magdeburg Centuriators are eloquent; and such is the classic elegance of the Latin in which these moderns have expressed themselves, that the passage is worth giving entire, for the sake of those who can enjoy the beauty of the original. “Considera mirabile Dei consilium. Joannes in Ephesum ad littus maris Aegei collocatus est: ut inde, quasi e specula, retro suam Asiam videret, suaque fragrantia repleret: ante se vero Graeciam, totamque Europam haberet; ut inde, tanquam tuba Domini sonora, etiam ultra-marinos populos suis concionibus ac scriptis inclamaret et invitaret ad Christum; presertim, cum ibi fuerit admodum commodus portus, plurimique mercatores ac homines peregrini ea loca adierint.” The beauty of such a sentence is altogether beyond the force of English, and the elegant paronomasia which repeatedly occurs in it, increasing the power of the original expression to charm the ear and mind, is totally lost in a translation, but the meanings of the sentences may be given for the benefit of those readers to whom the Latin is not familiar.――“Regard the wonderful providence of God. John was stationed at Ephesus, on the shore of the Aegean sea; so that there, as in a mirror, he might behold his peculiar province, Asia, behind him, and might fill it with the incense of his prayers: before him too, he had Greece and all Europe; so that there, as with the far-sounding trumpet of the Lord, he might summon and invite to Christ, by his sermons and writings, even the nations beyond the sea, by the circumstance that there, was a most spacious haven, and that vast numbers of traders and travelers thronged to the place.”

Chrysostom speaks also of the importance of Ephesus as an apostolic station, alluding to it as a strong hold of heathen philosophy; but there is no reason to think that John ever distinguished himself by any assaults upon systems with which he was not, and could never have been sufficiently acquainted to enable him to attack them; for in order to meet an evil, it is necessary to understand it thoroughly. There is no hint of an acquaintance with philosophy in any part of his writings, nor does any historian speak of his making converts among them. Chrysostom’s words are,――“He fixed himself also in Asia, where anciently all the sects of Grecian philosophy cultivated their sciences. There he flashed out in the midst of the foe, clearing away their darkness, and storming the very citadel of demons. And with this design he went to this place, so well suited to one who would work such wonders.” (Homily 1, on John.)

The idea of John’s visit to Ephesus, where Timothy was already settled over the church as bishop, has made a great deal of trouble to those who stupidly confound the office of an apostle with that of a bishop, and are always degrading an apostle into a mere church-officer. Such blunderers of course, are put to a vast deal of pains to make out how Timothy could manage to keep possession of his bishopric, with the Apostle John in the same town with him; for they seem to think that a bishop, like the flag-officer on a naval station, can hold the command of the post not a moment after a senior officer appears in sight; but that then down comes the broad blue pennon to be sure, and never is hoisted again till the greater officer is off beyond the horizon. But no such idle arrangements of mere etiquette were ever suffered to mar the noble and useful simplicity of the primitive church government, in the least. The presence of an apostle in the same town with a bishop, could no more interfere with the regular function of the latter, than the presence of a diocesan bishop in any city of his diocese, excludes the rector of the church there, from his pastoral charge. The sacred duties of Timothy were those of the pastoral care of a single church,――a sort of charge that no apostle ever assumed out of Jerusalem; but John’s apostolic duties led him to exercise a general supervision over a great number of churches. All those in Little Asia would claim his care alike, and the most distant would look to him for counsel; while that in Ephesus, having been so well established by Paul, and being blessed by the pastoral care of Timothy, who had been instructed and commissioned for that very place and duty, by him, would really stand in very little need of any direct attention from John. Yet among his Jewish brethren he would still find much occasion for his missionary labor, even in that city; and this was the sort of duty which was most appropriate to his apostolic character; for the apostles were missionaries and not bishops.

Others pretend to say, however, that Timothy was dead when John arrived, and that John succeeded him in the bishopric,――a mere invention to get rid of the difficulty, and proved to be such by the assertion that the apostle was a bishop, and rendered suspicious also by the circumstance of Timothy being so young a man.

The fable of the Virgin Mary’s journey, in company with John, to Ephesus, has been very gravely supported by Baronius, (Annals, 44, § 29,) who makes it happen in the second year of the reign of Claudius, and quotes as his authority a groundless statement, drawn from a mis-translation of a synodical epistle from the council of Ephesus to the clergy at Constantinople, containing a spurious passage which alludes to this story, condemning the Nestorians as heretics, for rejecting the tale. There are, and have long been, however, a vast number of truly discreet and learned Romanists, who have scorned to receive such contemptible and useless inventions. Among these, the learned Antony Pagus, in his Historico-Chronological Review of Baronius, has utterly refuted the whole story, showing the spurious character of the passage quoted in its support. (Pagus, Critica Baronius Annals, 42. § 3.) Lampe quotes moreover, the Abbot Facditius, the Trevoltian collectors and Combefisius, as also refuting the fable. Among the Protestant critics, Rivetus and Basnage have discussed the same point.

Of the incidents of John’s life at Ephesus, no well authorized account whatever can be given. Yet on this part of apostolic history the Fathers are uncommonly rich in details, which are interesting, and some of which present no improbability on examination; but their worst character is, that they do not make their appearance until above one hundred years after the date of the incidents which they commemorate, and refer to no authority but loose and floating tradition. In respect to these, too, occurs exactly the same difficulty which has already been specified in connection with the traditionary history of Peter,――that the same early writers, who record as true these stories which are so probable and reasonable in their character, also present in the same grave manner other stories, which do bear, with them, on their very faces, the evidence of their utter falsehood, in their palpable and monstrous absurdity. Among the possible and probable incidents of John’s life, narrated by the Fathers, are a journey to Jerusalem, and one also to Rome,――but of these there is no certainty, nor any acceptable evidence. These long journeys, too, are wholly without any sufficient assigned object, which would induce so old a man to leave his quiet and useful residence at Ephesus, to travel hundreds and thousands of miles. The churches of both Rome and Jerusalem were under well organized governments, which were perfectly competent to the administration of their own affairs, without the presence of an apostle; or, if they needed his counsel in an emergency, he could communicate his opinions to them with great certainty, by message, and with far more quickness and ease, than by a journey to them. Such an occasion for a direct call on him, however, could but very rarely occur,――nor would so unimportant an event as the death of one bishop and the installation of another, ever induce him to take a journey to sanction a mere formality by his presence. His help certainly was not needed by any church out of his own little Asian circle, in the selection of proper persons to fill vacant offices of government or instruction. They knew best their own wants, and the abilities of their own members to exercise any official duty to which they might be called; while John, a perfect stranger to most of them, would feel neither disposed nor qualified for meddling with any part of the internal policy of other churches. But the principal condemnation of the statement of his journey to Rome is contained in the foolish story connected with it, by its earliest narrator,――that on his arrival there, he was, by order of the emperor Domitian, thrown into a vessel full of hot oil; but, so far from receiving the slightest injury from such a frying, he came out of this greasy place of torture, quite improved in every respect by the immersion; and, as the story goes, arose from it perfumed like an athleta anointed for the combat. There are very great variations, however, in the different narrations of this affair; some representing the event as having occurred in Ephesus, under the orders of the proconsul of Asia, and not in Rome, under the emperor, as the earlier form of the fable states. Among the statements which fix the scene of this miracle in Rome, too, there is a very important chronological difference,――some dating it under the emperor Nero, which would carry it back as early as the time of Peter’s fabled martyrdom, and implies a total contradiction of all established opinions on his prolonged residence in the east. In short, the whole story is so completely covered over with gross blunders and contradictions about times and places, that it can not receive any place among the details of serious and well-authorized history.

Thrown into a vessel of oil.――This greasy story has a tolerably respectable antiquity, going farther back with its authorities than any other fable in the Christian mythology, except Justin Martyr’s story about Simon Magus. The earliest authority for this is Tertullian, (A. D. 200,) who says that “at Rome, the Apostle John, having been immersed in hot oil, suffered no harm at all from it.” (De Praescriptionibus adversus Haereticos, c. 36.) “In oleum igneum immersus nihil passus est.” But for nearly two hundred years after, no one of the Fathers refers to this fable. Jerome (A. D. 397.) is the next of any certain date, and speaks of it in two passages. In the first (Against Jovinianus I. 14,) he quotes Tertullian as authority, but bunglingly says, that “he was thrown into the kettle by order of Nero,”――a most palpable error, not sanctioned by Tertullian. In the second passage, (Commentary on Matthew xx. 23,) he furthermore refers in general terms to “ecclesiastical histories, in which it was said that John, on account of his testimony concerning Christ, was thrown into a kettle of boiling oil, and came out thence like an athleta, to win the crown of Christ.” From these two sources, the other narrators of the story have drawn it. Of the modern critics and historians, besides the great herd of Papists, several Protestants are quoted by Lampe, as strenuously defending it; and several of the greatest, who do not absolutely receive it as true, yet do not presume to decide against it; as the Magdeburg Centuriators, (Century 1, lib. 2. c. 10,) who however declare it very doubtful indeed, “rem incertissimam;”――Ittig, Le Clerc and Mosheim taking the same ground. But Meisner, Cellarius, Dodwell, Spanheim, Heumann and others, overthrow it utterly, as a baseless fable. They argue against it first, from the bad character of its only ancient witness. Tertullian is well known as most miserably credulous, and fond of catching up these idle tales; and even the devoutly credulous Baronius condemns him in the most unmeasured terms for his greedy and undiscriminating love of falsehood. Secondly, they object the profound silence of all the Fathers of the second, third and fourth centuries, excepting him and Jerome; whereas, if such a remarkable incident were of any authority whatever, those numerous occasions on which they refer to the banishment of John to Patmos, which Tertullian connects so closely with this story, would suggest and require a notice of the causes and attendant circumstances of that banishment, as stated by him. How could those eloquent writers, who seem to dwell with so much delight on the noble trials and triumphs of the apostles, pass over this wonderful peril and miraculous deliverance? Why did Irenaeus, so studious in extolling the glory of John, forget to specify an incident implying at once such a courageous spirit of martyrdom in this apostle, and such a peculiar favor of God, in thus wonderfully preserving him? Hippolytus and Sulpitius Severus too, are silent; and more than all, Eusebius, so diligent in scraping together all that can heap up the martyr-glories of the apostles, and more particularly of John himself, is here utterly without a word on this interesting event. Origen, too, dwelling on the modes in which the two sons of Zebedee drank the cup of Jesus, as he prophesied, makes no use of this valuable illustration.

On the origin of this fable, Lampe mentions a very ingenious conjecture, that some such act of cruelty may have been meditated or threatened, but afterwards given up; and that thence the story became accidentally so perverted as to make what was merely designed, appear to have been partly put in execution.

In this decided condemnation of the venerable Tertullian, I am justified by the example of Lampe, whose reverence for the authority of the Fathers is much greater than that of most theologians of later days. He refers to him in these terms: “Tertullianus, cujus credulitas, in arripiendis futilibus narratiunculis alias non ignota est.”――“Whose credulity in catching up idle tales is well known in other instances.” Haenlein also calls him “der leichtglaubige Tertullian,”――“the credulous Tertullian.” (Haenlein’s Einleitung in Neuen Testamentes vol. III. p. 166.)

This miraculous event procured the highly-favored John, by this extreme unction, all the advantages with none of the disadvantages of martyrdom; for in consequence of this peril he has received among the Fathers the name of a “living martyr.” (ζοων μαρτυρ) Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Theophylact and others, quoted by Suicer, [sub voc. μαρτυρ,] apply this term to him. “He had the mind though not the fate of a martyr.” “Non defuit animus martyrio,” &c. [Jerome and Cyprian.] Through ignorance of the meaning of the word μαρτυρ, in this peculiar application to John, the learned Haenlein seems to me to have fallen into an error on the opinion of these Fathers about his mode of death. In speaking of the general testimony as to the quiet death of this apostle, Haenlein says: “But Chrysostom, only in one ambiguous passage, (Homily 63 in Matthew) and his follower Theophylact, number the Apostle John among the martyrs.” [Haenlein’s Einleitung in Neuen Testamentes vol. III. chap. vi. § 1, p. 168.] The fact is, that not only these two, but several other Fathers, use the term in application to John, and they all do it without any implication of an actual, fatal martyrdom; as may be seen by a reference to Suicer, sub voc.

So little reverence have the critical, even among the Romanists, for any of these old stories about John’s adventures, that the sagacious Abbot Facditius (quoted by Lampe) quite turns these matters into a jest. Coupling this story with the one about John’s chaste celibacy, (as supported by the monachists,) he says, in reference to the latter, that if John made out to preserve his chastity uncontaminated among such a people as the Jews were, in that most corrupt age, he should consider it a greater miracle than if John had come safe out of the kettle of boiling oil; but on the reverend Abbot’s sentiment, perhaps many will remark with Lampe,――“quod pronuntiatum tamen nimis audax est.”――“It is rather too bold to pronounce such an opinion.” Nevertheless, such a termination of life would be so much in accordance with the standard mode of dispatching an apostle, that they would never have taken him out of the oil-kettle, except for the necessity of sending him to Patmos, and dragging him on through multitudes of odd adventures yet to come. So we might then have had the satisfaction of winding up his story, in the literal and happy application of the words of a certain venerable poetical formula for the conclusion of a nursery tale, which here makes not only rhyme but reason,――

HIS BANISHMENT.

This fable of his journey to Rome is by all its propagators connected with the well-authorized incident of his banishment to Patmos. This event, given on the high evidence of the Revelation which bears his name, is by all the best and most ancient authorities, referred to the period of the reign of Domitian. The precise year is as much beyond any means of investigation, as most other exact dates in his and all the other apostles’ history. From the terms in which the ancient writers commemorate the event, it is known, with tolerable certainty, to have occurred towards the close of the reign of Domitian, though none of the early Fathers specify the year. The first who pretend to fix the date, refer it to the fourteenth year of that emperor, and the most critical among the moderns fix it as late; and some even in the fifteenth or last year of his reign; since that persecution of the Christians, during which John seems to have been banished, may be fairly presumed, from the known circumstances as recorded in history, to have been the last great series of tyrannical acts committed by this remarkably wicked monarch. It certainly appears, from distinct assertions in the credible records of ecclesiastical history, that there was a great persecution begun about this time by Domitian, against the Christians; but there is no reasonable doubt that the extent and vindictiveness of it has been very much overrated, in the rage among the later Fathers, for multiplying the sufferings of the early Christians far beyond the truth. The first Christian writers who allude to this persecution very particularly, specify its character as far less aggravated than that of Nero, of which they declare it to have been but a shadow,――and the persecutor himself but a mere fraction of Nero in cruelty. There is not a single authenticated instance of any person’s having suffered death in this persecution; all the creditable historians who describe it, most particularly demonstrate that the whole range of punishments inflicted on the subjects of it, was confined to banishment merely. Another reason for supposing that this attack on the Christians was very moderate in its character, is the important negative fact, that not one heathen historian makes the slightest mention of any trouble with the new sect, during that bloody reign; although such repeated, vivid accounts are given of the dreadful persecution waged by Nero, as related above, in the Life of Peter. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that there were no great cruelties practised on them; but that many of them, who had become obnoxious to the tyrant and his minions, were quietly put out of the way, that they might occasion no more trouble,――being sent from Rome and some of the principal cities, into banishment, along with many others whose removal was considered desirable by the rulers of Rome or the provinces; so that the Christians, suffering with many others, and some of high rank and character, a punishment of no very cruel nature, were not distinguished by common narrators, from the general mass of the banished; but were noticed more particularly by the writers of their own order, who thus specified circumstances that otherwise would not have been made known. Among those driven out from Ephesus at this time, John was included, probably on no special accusation otherwise than that of being prominent as the last survivor of the original founders, among these members of the new faith, who by their pure lives were a constant reproach to the open vices of the proud heathen around them; and by their refusal to conform to idolatrous observances, exposed themselves to the charge of non-conformity to the established religion of the state,――an offence of the highest order even among the Romans, whose tolerance of new religions was at length limited by the requisition, that no doctrine whatever should be allowed to aim directly at the overthrow of the settled order of things. When, therefore, it began to be apprehended that the religion of Jesus would, in its progress, overcome the securities of the ancient worship of the Olympian gods, those who felt their interests immediately connected with the system of idolatry, in their alarmed zeal for its support, made use of the worst specimens of imperial tyranny to check the advancing evil.

PATMOS.

The place chosen for his banishment was a dreary desert island in the Aegean sea, called Patmos. It is situated among that cluster of islands, called the Sporades, about twenty miles from the Asian coast, and thirty or forty southwest of Ephesus. It is at this day known by the observation of travelers, to be a most remarkably desolate place, showing hardly anything but bare rocks, on which a few poor inhabitants make but a wretched subsistence. In this insulated desert the aged apostle was doomed to pass the lonely months, far away from the enjoyments of Christian communion and social intercourse, so dear to him, as the last earthly consolation of his life. Yet to him, his residence at Ephesus was but a place of exile. Far away were the scenes of his youth and the graves of his fathers. “The shore whereon he loved to dwell,”――the lake on whose waters he had so often sported or labored in the freshness of early years, were still the same as ever, and others now labored there, as he had done ere he was called to a higher work. But the homes of his childhood knew him no more forever, and rejoiced now in the light of the countenances of strangers, or lay in blackening desolation beneath the brand of a wasting invasion. The waters and the mountains were there still,――they are there now; but that which to him constituted all their reality was gone then, as utterly as now. The ardent friends, the dear brother, the faithful father, the fondly ambitious and loving mother,――who made up his little world of life, and joy, and hope,――where were they? All were gone; even his own former self was gone too, and the joys, the hopes, the thoughts, the views of those early days, were buried as deeply as the friends of his youth, and far more irrevocably than they. Cut off thus utterly from all that once excited the earthly and merely human emotions within him, the whole world was alike a desert or a home, according as he found in it communion with God, and work for his remaining energies, in the cause of Christ. Wherever he went, he bore about with him his resources of enjoyment,――his home was within himself; the friends of his youth and manhood were still before him in the ever fresh images of their glorious examples; the brother of his heart was near him always, and nearest now, when the persecutions of imperial tyranny seemed to draw him towards a sympathetic participation in the pains and the glories of that bloody death. The Lord of his life, the author of his hopes, the guide of his youth, the cherisher of his spirit, was over and around him ever, with the consolations of his promised presence,――“with him always, even to the end of the world.”

THE APOCALYPSE.

The Revelation of John the Divine opens with a moving and splendid view of these circumstances. Being, as it is recorded, in the isle that is called Patmos, for preaching the word of God, and for bearing witness of Jesus Christ, he was in his lonely banishment, one Lord’s day, sitting wrapped in a holy spiritual contemplation, when he heard behind him a great voice, as of a trumpet, which broke upon his startled ear with a most solemnly grand annunciation of the presence of one whose being was the source and end of all things. As the amazed apostle turned to see the person from whom came such portentous words, there met his eye a vision so dazzling, yet appalling in its beauty and splendor, amid the bare, dark rocks around, that he fell to the earth without life, and lay motionless until the heavenly being, whose awful glories had so overwhelmed him, recalled him to his most vivid energies, by the touch of his life-giving hand. In the lightning-splendors of that countenance, far outshining the glories of Sinai, reflected from the face of Moses, the trembling eye of the apostolic seer recognized the lineaments of one whom he had known in other days, and upon whose bosom he had hung in the warm affection of youth. Even the eye which now flashed such rays, he knew to be that which had once been turned on him in the aspect of familiar love; nor did its glance now bear a strange or forbidding expression. The trumpet-tones of the voice, which of old, on Hermon, roused him from the stupor into which he fell at the sight of the foretaste of these very glories, now recalled him to life in the same encouraging words, “Be not afraid.” The crucified and ascended Jesus, living, though once dead, now called on his beloved apostle to record the revelations which should soon burst upon his eyes and ears; that the churches that had lately been under his immediate attention, might learn the approach of events which most nearly concerned the advance of their faith. First, therefore, addressing an epistolary charge to each of the seven churches, he called them to a severe account for their various errors, and gave to each such consolations and promises as were suited to its peculiar circumstances. Then dropping these individualizing exhortations, he leaves all the details of the past, and the minutiae of the state of the seven churches, for a glance over the events of coming ages, and the revolutions of empires and of worlds. The full explanation of the scenes which follow, is altogether beyond the range of a mere apostolic historian, and would require such ability and learning in the writer,――such a length of time for their application to this matter, and such an expanse of paper for their full expression, as are altogether out of the question in this case. Some few points in this remarkable writing, however, fall within the proper notice of the apostle’s biographer, and some questions on the scope of the Apocalypse itself, as well as on the history of it, as a part of the sacred canon, will therefore be here discussed.

The minute history of the apostolic writings,――the discussion of their particular scope and tenor,――and the evidences of their inspiration and authenticity,――are topics, which fall for the most part under a distinct and independent department of Christian theology, the common details of which are alone sufficient to fill many volumes; and are of course altogether beyond the compass of a work, whose main object is limited to a merely historical branch of religious knowledge. Still, such inquiries into these deeper points, as truly concern the personal history of the apostles, are proper subjects of attention, even here. The life of no literary or scientific man is complete, which does not give such an account of his writings as will show under what circumstances,――with what design,――for what persons,――and at what time, they were written. But a minute criticism of their style, or illustrations of their meaning, or a detail of all the objections which have been made to them, might fairly be pronounced improper intrusions upon the course of the narrative. With the danger of such an extension of these investigations, in view, this work here takes up those points in the history of John’s writings, that seem to fall under the general rule in making up a personal and literary biography.

In the case of this particular writing, moreover, the difficulties of an enlarged discussion are so numerous and complicated, as to offer an especial reason to the apostolic historian, for avoiding the almost endless details of questions that have agitated the greatest minds in Christendom, for the last four hundred years. And the decision of the most learned and sagacious of modern critics, pronounces the Apocalypse of John to be “the most difficult and doubtful book of the New Testament.”

The points proper for inquiry in connection with a history of the life of John, may be best arranged in the form of questions with their answers severally following.

I. Did the Apostle John write the Apocalypse?

Many will doubtless feel disposed to question the propriety of thus bringing out, in a popular book, inquiries which have hitherto, by a sort of common consent, been confined to learned works, and wholly excluded from such as are intended to convey religious knowledge to ordinary readers. The principle has been sometimes distinctly specified and maintained, that some established truths in exegetical theology, must needs be always kept among the arcana of religious knowledge, for the eyes and ears of the learned few, to whom “it is given to know these mysteries;” “but that to them that are without,” they are ever to remain unknown. This principle is often acted on by the theologians of Germany and England, so that a distinct line seems to be drawn between an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine,――a public and a private belief,――the latter being the literal truth, while the former is such a view of things, as suits the common religious prejudices of the mass of hearers and readers. But such is not the free spirit of true Protestantism; nor is any deceitful doctrine of “accommodation” accordant with the open, single-minded honesty of apostolic teachings. Taking from the persons who are the subjects of this history, something of their simple freedom of word and action, for the reader’s benefit, several questions will be boldly asked, and as boldly answered, on the authorship, the scope, and character of the Apocalypse. And first, on the present personal question in hand, a spirit of tolerant regard for opinions discordant with those of some readers, perhaps may be best learned, by observing into what uncertainties the minds of the greatest and most devout of theologians, and of the mighty founders of the Protestant faith, have been led on this very point.

The great Michaelis (Introduction to the New Testament, vol. IV. c. xxxiii. § 1.) apologizes for his own doubts on the Apocalypse, justifying himself by the similar uncertainty of the immortal Luther; and the remarks of Michaelis upon the character of the persons to whom Luther thus boldly published his doubts, will be abundantly sufficient to justify the discussion of such darkly deep matters, to the readers of the Lives of the Apostles.

Not only Martin Luther as here quoted by Michaelis, but the other great reformers of that age, John Calvin and Ulric Zwingle, boldly expressed their doubts on this book, which more modern speculators have made so miraculously accordant with anti-papal notions. Their learned cotemporary, Erasmus, also, and the critical Joseph Scaliger, with other great names of past ages, have contributed their doubts, to add a new mark of suspicion to the Apocalypse.

“As it is not improbable that this cautious method of proceeding will give offense to some of my readers, I must plead in my behalf the example of Luther, who thought and acted precisely in the same manner. His sentiments on this subject are delivered, not in an occasional dissertation on the Apocalypse, but in the preface to his German translation of it, a translation designed not merely for the learned, but for the illiterate, and even for children. In the preface prefixed to that edition, which was printed in 1522, he expressed himself in very strong terms. In this preface he says: ‘In this book of the Revelation of St. John, I leave it to every person to judge for himself: I will bind no man to my opinion; I say only what I feel. Not one thing only fails in this book; so that I hold it neither for apostolical, nor prophetical. First and chiefly, the apostles do not prophesy in visions, but in clear and plain words, as St. Peter, St. Paul, and Christ in the gospel do. It is moreover the apostle’s duty to speak of Christ and his actions in a simple way, not in figures and visions. Also no prophet of the Old Testament, much less of the New, has so treated throughout his whole book of nothing but visions: so that I put it almost in the same rank with the fourth book of Esdras, and cannot any way find that it was dictated by the Holy Ghost. Lastly, let every one think of it what his own spirit suggests. My spirit can make nothing out of this book; and I have reason enough not to esteem it highly, since Christ is not taught in it, which an apostle is above all things bound to do, as he says, (Acts i.) Ye are my witnesses. Therefore I abide by the books which teach Christ clearly and purely.’

“But in that which he printed in 1534, he used milder and less decisive expressions. In the preface to this later edition, he divides prophecies into three classes, the third of which contains visions, without explanations of them; and of these he says: ‘As long as a prophecy remains unexplained and has no determinate interpretation, it is a hidden silent prophecy, and is destitute of the advantages which it ought to afford to Christians. This has hitherto happened to the Apocalypse: for though many have made the attempt, no one to the present day, has brought any thing certain out of it, but several have made incoherent stuff out of their own brain. On account of these uncertain interpretations, and hidden senses, we have hitherto left it to itself, especially since some of the ancient Fathers believed that it was not written by the apostle, as is related in Lib. III. Church History. In this uncertainty we, for our part, still let it remain: but do not prevent others from taking it to be the work of St. John the apostle, if they choose. And because I should be glad to see a certain interpretation of it, I will afford to other and higher spirits occasion to reflect.’

“Still however, he declared he was not convinced that the Apocalypse was canonical, and recommended the interpretation of it to those who were more enlightened than himself. If Luther then, the author of our reformation, thought and acted in this manner, and the divines of the last two centuries still continued, without the charge of heresy, to print Luther’s preface to the Apocalypse, in the editions of the German Bible of which they had the superintendence, surely no one of the present age ought to censure a writer for the avowal of similar doubts. Should it be objected that what was excusable in Luther would be inexcusable in a modern divine, since more light has been thrown on the subject than there had been in the sixteenth century, I would ask in what this light consists. If it consists in newly discovered testimonies of the ancients, they are rather unfavorable to the cause; for the canon of the Syrian church, which was not known in Europe when Luther wrote, decides against it. On the other hand, if this light consists in a more clear and determinate explanation of the prophecies contained in the Apocalypse, which later commentators have been able to make out, by the aid of history, I would venture to appeal to a synod of the latest and most zealous interpreters of it, such as Vitringa, Lange, Oporin, Heumann, and Bengel, names which are free from all suspicion; and I have not the least doubt, that at every interpretation which I pronounced unsatisfactory, I should have at least three voices out of the five in my favor. At all events they would never be unanimous against me, in the places where I declared that I was unable to perceive the new light, which is supposed to have been thrown on the subject since the time of Luther.

“I admit that Luther uses too harsh expressions, where he speaks of the epistle of St. James, though in a preface not designed for Christians of every denomination: but his opinion of the Apocalypse is delivered in terms of the utmost diffidence, which are well worthy of imitation. And this is so much the more laudable, as the Apocalypse is a book, which Luther’s opposition to the church of Rome must have rendered highly acceptable to him, unless he had thought impartially, and had refused to sacrifice his own doubts to polemical considerations.”

To pretend to decide with certainty on a point, which Martin Luther boldly denied, and which John David Michaelis modestly doubted, implies neither superior knowledge of the truth, nor a more holy reverence for it; but rather marks a mere presumptuous self-confidence, and an ignorant bigotry, arising from the prejudices of education. Yet from the deep researches of the latter of these writers, and of other exegetical theologians since, much may be drawn to support the view taken in the text of this Life of John, which is accordant with the common notion of its authorship. The quotation just given, however, is valuable as inculcating the propriety of hesitation and moderation in pronouncing upon results.

The testimony of the Fathers, on the authenticity of the Apocalypse as a work of John, the apostle, may be very briefly alluded to here. The full details of this important evidence may be found by the scholar in J. D. Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament (Vol. IV. c. xxxiii. § 2.) Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament (Vol. II. § 176.) Lardner’s Credibility of Gospel History (Supplement, chapter 22.) Fabricii Bibliotheca Graeca. (Harles’s 4to. edition with Keil’s, Kuinoel’s, Gurlitt’s, and Heyne’s notes, vol. IV. pp. 786‒795, corresponding to vol. III. pp. 146‒149, of the first edition.) Lampe, Prolegomena to a Johannine Theology.

Justin Martyr (A. D. 140,) is the first who mentions this book. He says, “A man among us, named John, one of the apostles of Christ, has, in a revelation which was made to him, prophesied,” &c. Melito (A. D. 177.) is quoted by Eusebius and by Jerome, as having written a treatise on the Revelation. He was bishop of Sardis, one of the seven churches, and his testimony would be therefore highly valuable, if it were certain whether he wrote for or against the authenticity of the work. Probably he was for it, since he calls it “the Apocalypse of John,” in the title of his treatise, and the silence of Eusebius about the opinion of Melito may fairly be construed as showing that he did not write against it. Irenaeus, (A. D. 178,) who in his younger days was acquainted with Polycarp, the disciple and personal friend of John, often quotes this book as “the Revelation of John, the disciple of the Lord.” And in another place, he says, “It was seen not long ago, almost in our own age, at the end of the reign of Domitian.” This is the most direct and valuable kind of testimony which the writings of the Fathers can furnish on any point in apostolic history; for Irenaeus here speaks from personal knowledge, and, as will be hereafter shown, throws great light on the darkest passage in the Apocalypse, by what he had heard from those persons who had seen John himself, face to face, and who heard these things from his own lips. Theophilus of Antioch, (A. D. 181,)――Clemens of Alexandria, (A. D. 194,――Tertullian of Carthage, (A. D. 200,)――Apollonius of Ephesus, (A. D. 211,)――Hippolytus of Italy, (A. D. 220,)――Origen of Alexandria and Caesarea, (A. D. 230,)――all received and quoted it as a work of John the apostle, and some testify very fully as to the character of the evidence of its authenticity, received from their predecessors and from the contemporaries of John.

But from about the middle of the third century, it fell under great suspicion of being the production of some person different from the apostle John. Having been quoted by Cerinthus and his disciples, (a set of Gnostical heretics, in the first century,) in support of their views, it was, by some of their opponents, pronounced to be a fabrication of Cerinthus himself. At this later period, however, it suffered a much more general condemnation; but though denied by some to be an apostolic work, it was still almost universally granted to be inspired. Dionysius of Alexandria, (A. D. 250,) in a book against the Millenarians, who rested their notions upon the millenial passages of this revelation, has endeavored to make the Apocalypse useless to them in support of their heresy. This he has done by referring to the authority of some of his predecessors, who rejected it on account of its maintaining Cerinthian doctrines. This objection however, has been ably refuted by modern writers, especially by Michaelis and Hug, both of whom, distinctly show that there are many passages in the Revelation, so perfectly opposite to the doctrines of Cerinthus, that he could never have written the book, although he may have been willing to quote from it such passages as accorded with his notions about a sensual millenium,――as he could in this way meet those, who did take the book for an inspired writing.

Dionysius himself, however, does not pretend to adopt this view of the authorship of it, but rather thinks that it was the work of John the presbyter, who lived in Ephesus in the age of John the apostle, and had probably been confounded with him by the early Fathers. This John is certainly spoken of by Papias, (A. D. 120,) who knew personally both him and the apostle; but Papias has left nothing on the Apocalypse, as the work of either of them. (The substance of the whole argument of Dionysius is very elaborately given and reviewed, by both Michaelis and Hug.) After this bold attack, the apostolic character of the work seems to have received much injury among most of the eastern Fathers, and was generally rejected by both the Syrian and Greek churches, having no place in their New Testament canon. Eusebius, (A. D. 315,) who gives the first list of the writings of the New Testament, that is known, divides all books which had ever been offered as apostolical, into three classes,――the universally acknowledged, (ὁμολογουμενα homologoumena,)――the disputed, (αντιλεγομενα antilegomena,)――and the spurious, (νοθα notha.) In the first class, he puts all now received into the New Testament, except the epistle to the Hebrews, the epistles of James and Jude, the second of Peter, the second and third of John, and the Revelation. These exceptions he puts into the second, or disputed class, along with sundry writings now universally considered apocryphal. Eusebius says also, “It is likely that the Revelation was seen by John the presbyter, if not by John the apostle.”――Cyril of Jerusalem, (A. D. 348,) in his catalogue of the Scriptures, does not allow this a place. Epiphanius of Salamis, in Cyprus, (A. D. 368,) though himself receiving it as of apostolic origin, acknowledged that others in his time rejected it. The council of Laodicea, (A. D. 363,) sitting in the seat of one of the seven churches, did not give the Revelation a place among the sacred writings of the New Testament, though their list includes all others now received. Gregory, of Nazianzus, in Cappadocia, (A. D. 370,) gives a catalogue of the canonical scriptures, but excludes the Revelation. Amphilochius, of Iconium, in Lycaonia, (A. D. 370,) in mentioning the canonical scriptures, says, “The Revelation of John is approved by some; but many say it is spurious.” The scriptural canon of the Syrian churches rejects it, even as given by Ebed Jesu, in 1285; nor was it in the ancient Syriac version completed during the first century; but the reason for this may be, that the Revelation was not then promulgated.――Jerome of Rome, (A. D. 396,) receives it, as do all the Latin Fathers; but he says, “the Greek churches reject it.”――Chrysostom (A. D. 398,) never quotes it, and is not supposed to have received it. Augustin, of Africa, (A. D. 395,) receives it, but says that it was not received by all in his time. Theodoret, (A. D. 423,) of Syria, and all the ecclesiastics of that country, reject it also.

The result of all this evidence is, as will be observed by glancing over the dates of the Fathers quoted, that, until the year 250, no writer can be found who scrupled to receive the Apocalypse as the genuine work of John the apostle,――that the further back the Fathers are, the more explicit and satisfactory is their testimony in its favor,――and that the fullest of all, is that of Irenaeus, who had his information from Polycarp, the most intimate and beloved disciple of John himself. Now, where the evidence is not of the ordinary cumulative character, growing weighty, like a snowball, the farther it travels from its original starting-place, but as here, is strongest at the source,――it may justly be pronounced highly valuable, and an eminent exception to the usual character of such historical proofs, which, as has been plentifully shown already in this book, are too apt to come “but-end first,” as the investigator travels from the last to the first. It will be observed also, by a glance at the places where these Fathers flourished, that all those who rejected the Apocalypse belonged to the EASTERN section of the churches, including both the Greeks and the Syrians, while the WESTERN churches, both the Europeans and Latino-Africans, adopted the Apocalypse as an apostolic writing. This is not so fortunate a concurrence as that of the dates, since the easterns certainly had better means of investigating such a point than the westerns. A reason may be suggested for this, in the circumstance, that the Cerinthians and other heretics, who were the occasion of the first rejection of the Apocalypse, annoyed only the eastern churches, and thus originated the mischief only among them. Lampe, Michaelis and others, indeed, quote Caius of Rome, as a solitary exception to this geographical distribution of the difficulty, but Paulus and Hug have shown that the passage in Caius, to which they refer, has been misapprehended, as the scholar may see by a reference to Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament, vol. II. pp. 647‒650, [Wait’s translation,] pp. 593‒596, [original.] There is something in Jerome too, which implies that some of the Latins, in his time, were beginning to follow the Greek fashion of rejecting this book, but he scouts this new notion, and says he shall stick to the old standard canon.

The internal evidence is also so minutely protracted in its character, that only a bare allusion to it can be here permitted, and reference to higher and deeper sources of information, on such an exegetical point, may be made for the benefit of the scholar. Lampe, Wolf, Michaelis, Mill, Eichhorn and others, quoted by Fabricius, [Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. IV. p. 795, note 46.] Hug and his English translator, Dr. Wait, are also full on this point.

This evidence consists for the most part in a comparison of passages in this book with similar ones in the other writings of John, more especially his gospel. Wetstein, in particular, has brought together many such parallelisms, some of which are so striking in the peculiar expressions of John, and yet so merely accidental in their character, as to afford most satisfactory evidence to the nicest critics, of the identity of authorship. A table of these coincidences is given from Wetstein, by Wait, Hug’s translator, (p. 636, note.) Yet on this very point,――the style,――the most serious objection to the Apocalypse, as a work of the author of John’s gospel, has always been founded;――the rude, wild, thundering sublimity of the vision of Patmos, presenting such a striking contrast with the soft, love-teaching, and beseeching style of the gospel and the epistles of John. But such objectors have forgotten or overlooked the immense difference between the circumstances under which these works were suggested and composed. Their period, their scene, their subject, their object, were all widely removed from each other, and a thoughtful examination will show, that writings of such widely various scope and tendency could not well have less striking differences, than those observable between this and the other writings of John. In such a change of circumstances, the structure of sentences, the choice of words, and the figures of speech, could hardly be expected to show the slightest similarity between works, thus different in design, though by the same author. But in the minuter peculiarities of language, certain favorite expressions of the author,――particular associations of words, such as a forger could never hit upon in that uninventive age,――certain personal views and sentiments on trifling points, occasionally modifying the verbal forms of ideas――these and a multitude of other characteristics, making up that collection of abstractions which is called an author’s style,――all quite beyond the reach of an imitator, but presenting the most valuable and honest tests to the laborious critic,――constitute a series of proofs in this case, which none can fully appreciate but the investigators and students themselves.

II. With what design was the Apocalypse written?

There is no part of the Bible which has been the subject of so much perversion, or on which the minds of the great mass of Christian readers have been suffered to fall into such gross errors, as the Apocalypse. This is the opinion of all the great exegetical theologians of this age, who have examined the scope of the work most attentively; and from the time of Martin Luther till this moment, the opinions of the learned have for the most part been totally different from those which have made up the popular sentiment,――none or few, caring to give the world the benefit of the simple truth, which might be ill received by those who loved darkness rather than light; and those who knew the truth, have generally preferred to keep the quiet enjoyment of it to themselves. This certainly is much to be regretted; for in consequence of this culpable negligence of the duty of making religious knowledge available for the good of the whole, this particular apostolic writing has been the occasion of the most miserable and scandalous delusions among the majority even of the more intelligent order of Bible readers,――delusions, which, affecting no point whatever in creeds and confessions of faith, those bulwarks of sects, have been suffered to rage and spread their debasing error, without subjecting those who thus indulged their foolish fancies, to the terrors of ecclesiastical censure. The Revelation of John has, accordingly, for the last century or two, been made a licensed subject for the indulgence of idle fancies, and used as a grand storehouse for every “filthy dreamer” to draw upon, for the scriptural prophetical supports of his particular notions of “the signs of the times,” and for the warrant of his special denunciations of divine wrath and coming ruin, against any system that might happen to be particularly abominable in his religious eyes. Thus, a most baseless delusion has been long suffered to pervade the minds of common readers, respecting the general scope of the Apocalypse, perverting the latter parts of it into a prophecy of the rise, triumph and downfall of the Romish papal tyranny; while in respect to the minor details, every schemer has been left to satisfy himself, as his private fancy or sectarian zeal might direct him. Now, not only is all this ranting trash directly opposed to the clear, natural and simple explanations, given by those very persons among the earliest Christian writers, who had John’s own private personal testimony as to his real meaning, in the dark passages which have in modern times been made the subject of such idle, fanciful interpretations; but they are so palpably inconsistent both with the general scope and the minute details of the writing itself, that even without the support of this most incontrovertible evidence of the earliest Christian antiquity, the falsehood of the idea of any anti-papal prophecy can be most triumphantly and unanswerably settled; and this has been repeatedly done, in every variety of manner, by the learned labors of all the sagest of the orthodox theologians of Germany, Holland, France and England, for the last three hundred years. A most absurd notion seems to be prevalent, that the idea of a rational historical interpretation of the Apocalypse, is one of the wicked results of that most horrible of abstract monsters, “German neology;” and the dreadful name of Eichhorn is straightway referred to, as the source of this common sense view. But Eichhorn and all those of the modern German schools of theology, who have taken up this notion, so far from originating the view or aspiring to claim it as their invention, were but quietly following the standard authorities which had been steadily accumulating on this point for sixteen hundred years; and instead of being the result of neology or of anything new, it was as old as the time of Irenaeus. The testimony of all the early writers on this point, is uniform and explicit; and they all, without a solitary exception, explain the great mass of the bold expressions in it, about coming ruin on the enemies of the pure faith of Christ, as a distinct, direct prophecy of the downfall of imperial Rome, as the great heathen foe of the saints. There was among them no very minute account of the manner in which the poetical details of the prophecy was to be fulfilled; but the general meaning of the whole was considered to be so marked, dated, and individualized, that to have denied this manifest interpretation in their presence, must have seemed an absurdity not less than to have denied the authentic history of past ages. Not all, nor most of the Christian Fathers however, have noticed the design and character of the Apocalypse, even among those of the western churches; while the scepticism of the Greek and Syrian Fathers, after the third century, about the authenticity of the work, has deprived the world of the great advantage which their superior acquaintance with the original language of the writing, with its peculiarly oriental style, allusions and quotations, would have enabled them to afford in the faithful interpretation of the predictions. From the very first, however, there were difficulties among the different sects, about the allegorical and literal interpretations of the expressions which referred to the final triumph of the followers of Christ; some interpreting those passages as describing an actual personal reign of Christ on earth, and a real worldly triumph of his followers, during a thousand years, all which was to happen shortly;――and from this notion of a Chiliasm, or a Millennium, arose a peculiar sect of heretics, famous in early ecclesiastical history, during the two first centuries, under the name of Chiliasts or ♦Millenarians,――the Greek or the Latin appellative being used, according as the persons thus designated or those designating them, were of eastern or western stock. Cerinthus and his followers so far improved this worldly view of the subject, as to inculcate the notion that the faithful, during that triumph, were to be further rewarded, by the full fruition of all bodily and sensual pleasures, and particularly that the whole thousand years were to be passed in nuptial enjoyments. But these foolish vagaries soon passed away, nor did they, even in the times when they prevailed, affect the standard interpretation of the general historical relations of the prophecy.

It was not until a late age of modern times, that any one pretended to apply the denunciations of ruin, with which the Apocalypse abounds, to any object but heathen, IMPERIAL Rome, or to the pagan system generally, as personified or concentrated in the existence of that city. During the middle ages, the Franciscans, an order of monks, fell under the displeasure of the papal power; and being visited with the censures of the head of the Romish church, retorted, by denouncing him as an Anti-Christ, and directly set all their wits to work to annoy him in various ways, by tongue and pen. In the course of this furious controversy, some of them turned their attention to the prophecies respecting Rome, which were found in the Apocalypse, then received as an inspired book by all the adherents of the church of Rome; and searching into the denunciations of ruin on the Babylon of the seven hills, immediately saw by what a slight perversion of expressions, they could apply all this dreadful language to their great foe. This they did accordingly, with all the spite which had suggested it; and in consequence of this beginning, the Apocalypse thenceforward became the great storehouse of scriptural abuse of the Pope, to all who happened to quarrel with him. This continued the fashion, down to the time of the Reformation; but the bold Luther and his coadjutors, scorned the thought of a scurrilous aid, drawn from such a source, and with a noble honesty not only refused to adopt this construction, but even did much to throw suspicion on the character of the book itself. Luther however, had not the genius suited to minute historical and critical observations; and his condemnation of it therefore, though showing his own honest confidence in his mighty cause, to be too high to allow him to use a dishonest aid, yet does not affect the results to which a more deliberate examination has led those who were as honest as he, and much better critics. This however, was the state in which the early reformers left the interpretation of the Apocalypse. But in later times, a set of spitefully zealous Protestants, headed by Napier, Mede, and bishop Newton, took up the Revelation of John, as a complete anticipative history of the triumphs, the cruelties and the coming ruin of the Papal tyranny. These were followed by a servile herd of commentators and sermonizers, who went on with all the elaborate details of this interpretation, even to the precise meaning of the teeth and tails of the prophetical locusts. These views were occasionally varied by others tracing the whole history of the world in these few chapters, and finding the conquests of the Huns, the Saracens, the Turks, &c. all delineated with most amazing particularity.

But while these idle fancies were amusing the heads of men, who showed more sense in other things, the great current of Biblical knowledge had been flowing on very uniformly in the old course of rational interpretation, and the genius of modern criticism had already been doing much to perfect the explanation of passages on which the wisdom of the Fathers had never pretended to throw light. Of all critics who ever took up the Apocalypse in a rational way, none ever saw so clearly its real force and application as Hugo Grotius; and to him belongs the praise of having been the first of the moderns to apprehend and expose the truth of this sublimest of apostolic records. This mighty champion of Protestant evangelical theology, with that genius which was so resplendent in all his illustrations of Divine things as well as of human law, distinctly pointed out the three grand divisions of the prophetical plan of the work. “The visions as far as to the end of the eleventh chapter, describe the affairs of the Jews; then, as far as to the end of the twentieth chapter, the affairs of the Romans; and thence to the end, the most flourishing state of the Christian church.” Later theologians, following the great plan of explanation thus marked out, have still farther perfected it, and penetrated still deeper into the mysteries of the whole. They have shown that the two cities, Rome and Jerusalem, whose fate constitutes the most considerable portions of the Apocalypse, are mentioned only as the seats of two religions whose fall is foretold; and that the third city, the New Jerusalem, whose triumphant heavenly building is described in the end, after the downfall of the former two, is the religion of Christ. Of these three cities, the first is called Sodom; but it is easy to see that this name of sin and ruin is only used to designate another devoted by the wrath of God to a similar destruction. Indeed, the sacred writer himself explains that this is only a metaphorical or spiritual use of the term,――“which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt;”――and to set its locality beyond all possibility of doubt, it is furthermore described as the city “where also our Lord was crucified.” It is also called the “Holy city,” and in it was the temple. Within, have been slain two faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ; these are the two Jameses,――the great apostolic proto-martyrs; James the son of Zebedee, killed by Herod Agrippa, and James the brother of our Lord, the son of Alpheus, killed by order of the high priest, in the reign of Nero, as described in the lives of those apostles. The ruin of the city is therefore sealed. The second described, is called Babylon; but that Chaldean city had fallen to the dust of its plain, centuries before; and this city, on the other hand, stood on seven hills, and it was, at the moment when the apostle wrote, the seat of “the kingdom of the kingdoms of the earth,” the capital of the nations of the world,――expressions which distinctly mark it to be imperial Rome. The seven angels pour out the seven vials of wrath on this Babylon, and the awful ruin of this mighty city is completed.

To give repetition and variety to this grand view of the downfall of these two dominant religions, and to present these grand objects of the Apocalypse in new relations to futurity, which could not be fully expressed under the original figures of the cities which were the capital seats of each, they are each again presented under the poetical image of a female, whose actions and features describe the fate of these two systems, and their upholders. First, immediately after the account of the city which is called Sodom, a female is described as appearing in the heavens, in a most peculiar array of glory, clothed in the sun’s rays, with the moon beneath her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. This woman, thus splendidly arrayed, and exalted to the skies, represents the ancient covenant, crowned with all the old and holy honors of the twelve tribes of Israel. A huge red dragon (the image under which Daniel anciently represented idolatry) rises in the heavens, sweeping away the third part of the stars, and characterized by seven heads and ten horns, (thus identified with a subsequent metaphor representing imperial Rome;)――he rages to devour the offspring to which the woman is about to give existence. The child is born destined to rule all nations with a rod of iron,――and is caught up to the throne of God, while the mother flees from the rage of the dragon into the wilderness, where she is to wander for ages, till the time decreed by God for her return. Thus, when from the ancient covenant had sprung forth the new revelation of truth in Jesus, it was driven by the rage of heathenism from its seat of glory, to wander in loneliness, unheeded save by God, till the far distant day of its blissful re-union with its heavenly offspring, which is, under the favor of God, advancing to a firm and lasting dominion over the nations. Even in her retirement, she is followed by the persecutions of the dragon, now cast down from higher glories; but his fury is lost,――she is protected by the earth, (sheltered by the Parthian empire;) yet the dragon still persecutes those of her children who believe in Christ, and are yet within his power; (Jews and Christians persecuted in Rome, by Nero and Domitian.)

Again, after the punishment and destruction of imperial Babylon have been described, a second female appears, not in heaven, like the first, but in an earthly wilderness, splendidly attired, but not with the heavenly glories of the sun, moon and stars. Purple and scarlet robes are her covering, marking an imperial honor; and gold, silver, and all earthly gems, adorn her,――showing only worldly greatness. In her hand is the golden cup of sins and abominations, and she is designated beyond all possibility of mistake, by the words, “Mystery, Babylon the Great.” This refers to the fact, that Rome had another name which was kept a profound secret, known only to the priests, and on the preservation of which religious “mystery,” the fortunes of the empire were supposed to depend. The second name also identifies her with the city before described as “Babylon.” She sits on a scarlet beast, with seven heads and ten horns. The former are afterwards minutely explained, by the apostle himself, in the same chapter, as the seven hills on which she sits; they are also seven kings, that is, it would seem, seven periods of empire, of which five are past, one now is, and one brief one is yet to come, and the bloody beast itself――the religion of heathenism――is another. The ten horns are the ten kings or sovrans who never received any lasting dominion, but merely held the sway one after another, a brief hour, with the beast, or spirit of heathenism. These, in short, are the ten emperors of Rome before the days of the Apocalypse;――Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian and Titus. These had all reigned, each his hour, giving his power to the support of heathenism, and thus warring against the faith of the true believers. Still, though reigning over the imperial city, they shall hate her, and make her desolate; strip her of her costly attire, and burn her with fire. How well expressed here the tyranny, of the worst of the Caesars, plundering the state, banishing the citizens, and, in the case of Nero, “burning her with fire!”

Who can mistake the gorgeously awful picture? It is heathen, imperial Rome, desolating and desolated, at that moment suffering under the tyrannic sway of him whom the apostle cannot yet number with the gloomy TEN, that have passed away to the tomb of ages gone. It is the mystic Babylon, drunk with the blood of the faithful witnesses of Christ, and triumphing in the agonies of his saints, “butchered to make a Roman holiday!” No wonder that the amazement of the apostolic seer should deepen into horror, and highten to indignation. Through her tyranny his brethren had been slaughtered, or driven out from among men, like beasts; and by that same tyranny he himself was now doomed to a lonely exile from friends and apostolic duties, on that wild heap of barren rocks. Well might he burst out in prophetic denunciation of her ruin, and rejoice in the awful doom, which the angels of God sung over her; and listen exultingly to the final wail over her distant fall, rolling up from futurity, in the coming day of the Gothic and Hunnish ravagers, when she should be “the desolator desolate, the victor overthrown.”

As there are three mystically named cities――Sodom, Babylon, and the New Jerusalem; so there are three metaphoric females,――the star-crowned woman in heaven, the bloody harlot on the beast in the wilderness, and the bride, the Lamb’s wife. A peculiar fate befalls each of the three pairs. The spiritual Sodom falls under a temporary ruin, trodden under foot by the Gentiles, forty-two mystic months; and the star-crowned daughter of Zion wanders desolate in the wilderness of the world, for twelve hundred and sixty days, till the hand of her God shall restore her to grace and glory. The great Babylon of the seven hills, falls under a doom of far darker, and of irrevocable desolation,――like the dashing roar of the sinking rock thrown into the sea, she is thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And such too, is the doom of the fierce scarlet rider of the beast,――“Rejoice over her, O heaven! and ye holy apostles and prophets! for God has avenged you on her.” But beyond all this awful ruin appears a vision of contrasting, splendid beauty.

“The first two acts already past,

The third shall close the drama with the day;――

Time’s noblest offspring is the last.”

The shouts of vindictive triumph over the dreadful downfall of the bloody city, now soften and sweeten into the songs of joy and praise, while the New Jerusalem, the church of God and Christ, comes down from the heavens in a solemn, glorious mass of living splendor, to bless the earth with its holy presence. In this last great scene, also, there is a female, the third of the mystic series; not like her of the twelve stars, now wandering like a widow disconsolate, in the wilderness;――not like her of the jeweled, scarlet and purple robes, cast down from her lofty seat, like an abandoned harlot, now desolate in ashes, from which her smoke rises up forever and ever;――but it is one, all holy, happy, pure, coming down stainless from the throne of God,――a bride, crowned with the glory of God, adorned for her husband,――the One slain from the foundation of the world. He through the opening heavens, too, has come forth before her, the Word of God, the Faithful and the True,――known by his bloody vesture, stained, not in the gore of slaughtered victims, but in the pure blood poured forth by himself, for the world, from its foundation. Yet now he rode forth on his white horse, as a warrior-king, dealing judgment upon the world with the sword of wrath,――with the sceptre of iron. Behind him rode the armies of heaven,――the hallowed hosts of the chosen of God,――like their leader, on white horses, but not like him, in crimson vesture; their garments are white and clean; by a miracle of purification, they are washed and made white in blood. This mighty leader, with these bright armies, now returns from the conquests to which he rode forth from heaven so gloriously. The kings and the hosts of the earth have arrayed themselves in vain against him;――the mighty imperial monster, in all the vastness of his wide dominion,――the false prophets of heathenism, combining their vile deceptions with his power, are vanquished, crushed with all their miserable slaves, whose flesh now fills and fattens the eagles, the vultures, and the ravens. The spirit of heathenism is crushed; the dragon, the monster of idolatry, is chained, and sunk into the bottomless pit,――yet not for ever. After a course of ages,――a mystic thousand years,――he slowly rises, and winding with serpent cunning among the nations, he deceives them again; till at last, lifting his head over the world, he gathers each idolatrous and barbarous host together, from the whole breadth of the earth, encompassing and assaulting the camp of the saints; but while they hope for the ruin of the faithful, fire comes down from God, and devours them. The accusing deceiver,――the genius of idolatry and superstition,――is at last seized and bound again; but not for a mere temporary imprisonment. With the spirit of deception and imposture, he is cast into a sea of fire, where both are held in unchanging torment, day and night, forever. But one last, awful scene remains; and that is one, that in sublimity, and vastness, and overwhelming horror, as far outgoes the highest effort of any genius of human poetry, as the boundless expanse of the sky excels the mightiest work of man. “A great white throne is fixed, and One sits on it, from whose face heaven and earth flee away, and no place is found for them.” “The dead, small and great, stand before God; they are judged and doomed, as they rise from the sea and from the land,――from Hades, and from every place of death.” Over all, rises the new heaven and the new earth, to which now comes down the city of God,――the church of Christ,――into which the victorious, the redeemed, and the faithful enter. The Conqueror and his armies march into the bridal city of the twelve jewelled gates, on whose twelve foundation-stones are written the names of the mighty founders, the twelve apostles of the slain one. The glories of that last, heavenly, and truly eternal city, are told, and the mighty course of prophecy ceases. The three great series of events are announced; the endless triumphs of the faithful are achieved.

III. What is the style of the Apocalypse?

This inquiry refers to the language, spirit and rhetorical structure of the writing, to its rank as an effort of composition, and to its peculiarities as expressive of the personal character and feelings of its inspired writer. The previous inquiry has been answered in such a way as to illustrate the points involved in the present one; and a recapitulation of the simple results of that inquiry, will best present the facts necessary for a satisfactory reply to some points of this.

First, the Apocalypse is a prophecy, in the common understanding of the term; but is not limited, as in the ordinary sense of that word, to a mere declaration of futurity; it embraces in its plan the events of the past, and with a glance like that of the Eternal, sweeps over that which has been and that which is to be, as though both were now; and in its solemn course through ages, past, present, and future, it bears the record of faithful history, as well as of glorious prophecy.

Second, the Apocalypse is poetry, in the highest and justest sense of the word. All prophecy is poetry. The sublimity of such thoughts can not be expressed in the plain unbroken detail of a prose narrative; and even when the events of past history are combined in one harmonious series with wide views of the future, they too rise from the dull unpictured record of a mere narrator, and share in the elevation of the mighty whole. The spirit of the writer, replete, not with mere particulars, but with vivid images, seeks language that paints, “thoughts that breathe, and words that burn;” and thus the writing that flows forth is poetry,――the imaginative expression of deep, high feeling――swelling where the occasion moves the writer, into the energy of passion, whether dark or holy.

The character of the Apocalypse, as affected by the passionate feelings of the writer, is also a point which has been illustrated by foregoing historical statements of his situation and condition at the time of the Revelation. He was the victim of an unjust and cruel sentence, deprived of all the sweet earthly solaces of his advanced age, and left on a desert rock,――useless to the cause of Christ and beyond even the knowledge of its progress. The mournful sound of sweeping winds and dashing waves, alone broke the dreary silence of his loneliness, and awaking sensations only of a melancholy order, sent back his thoughts into the sadder remembrances of the past, and called up also many of the sterner emotions against those who had been the occasions of the past and present calamities which grieved him. The very outset is in such a tone as these circumstances would naturally inspire. A deep, holy indignation breaks forth in the solemn annunciation of himself, as their “brother and companion in tribulation.” Sadness is the prominent sentiment expressed in all the addresses to the churches; and in the prelude to the great Apocalypse, while the ceremonies of opening the book which contains it are going on, the strong predominant emotion of the writer is again betrayed in the vision of “the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they bore;” and the solemnly mournful cry which they send up to him for whom they died, expresses the deep and bitter feeling of the writer towards the murderers,――“How long, O Lord! holy and true! dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” The apostle was thinking of the martyrs of Jerusalem and Rome,――of those who fell under the persecutions of the high priests, of Agrippa, and of Nero. And when the seven seals are broken, and the true revelation, of which this ceremony was only a poetical prelude, actually begins, the first great view presents the bloody scenes of that once Holy city, which now, by its cruelties against the cause which is to him as his life,――by the remorseless murder of those who are near and dear to him,――has lost all its ancient dominion over the affections and the hopes of the last apostle and all the followers of Christ.

Again the mournful tragedies of earlier apostolic days pass before him. Again he sees his noble brother bearing his bold witness of Jesus; and with him that other apostle, who in works and fate as much resembled the first, as in name. Their blood pouring out on the earth, rises to heaven, but not sooner than their spirits,――whence their loud witness calls down woful ruin on the blood-defiled city of the temple. And when that ruin falls, no regret checks the exulting tone of the thanksgiving. All that made those places holy and dear, is gone;――God dwells there no more; “the temple of God is opened in heaven, and there is seen in his temple the ark of his covenant,” and all heaven swells the jubilee over the destruction of Jerusalem. And after this, when the apostle’s view moved forward from the past to the future, and his eye rested on the crimes and the destiny of heathen Rome, the bitter remembrance of her cruelties towards his brethren, lifted his soul to high indignation, and he burst forth on her in the inspired wrath of a Son of Thunder;――

“Every burning word he spoke,

Full of rage, and full of grief.

“Rome shall perish; write that word

In the blood that she has spilt.

Rome shall perish,――fall abhorred,――

Deep in ruin as in guilt.”

In respect to the learning displayed in the Apocalypse, some most remarkable facts are observable. Apart from the very copious matters borrowed from the canonical writings of the Old Testament, from Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and other prophets, from which, as any reader can see, some of the most splendid imagery has been taken almost verbatim,――it is undeniable, that John has drawn very largely from a famous apocryphal Hebrew writing, called the Book of Enoch, which Jude has also quoted in his epistle; and in his life it will be more fully described. The vision of seven stars, explained to be angels,――of the pair of balances in the hand of the horseman, after the opening of the third seal,――the river and tree of life,――the souls under the altar, crying for vengeance,――the angel measuring the city,――the thousand years of peace and holiness,――are all found vividly expressed in that ancient book, and had manifestly been made familiar to John by reading. In other ancient apocryphal books, are noticed some other striking and literal coincidences with the Apocalypse. The early Rabbinical writings are also rich in such parallel passages. The name of the Conqueror, “which no one knows but himself,”――the rainbow stretched around the throne of God,――the fiery scepter,――the seven angels,――the sapphire throne,――the cherubic four beasts, six-winged, and crying Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts,――the crowns of gold on the heads of the saints, which they cast before the throne,――the book with seven seals,――the souls under the altar,――the silence in heaven,――the Abaddon,――the child caught up to God,――Satan, as the accuser of the saints, day and night before God,――the angel of the waters,――the hail of great weight,――the second death,――the new heaven and earth,――the twelve-gated city of precious stones,――and Rome, under the name of “Great Babylon,”――are all found in the old Jewish writings, in such distinctness as to make it palpable that John was deeply learned in Hebrew literature, both sacred and traditional.

Yet all these are but the forms of expression, not of thought. The apostle used them, because long, constant familiarity with the writings in which such imagery abounded, made these sentences the most natural and ready vehicles of inspired emotions. The tame and often tedious details of those old human inventions, had no influence in moulding the grand conceptions of the glorious revelation. This had a deeper, a higher, a holier source, in the spirit of eternal truth,――the mighty suggestions of the time-over-sweeping spirit of prophecy,――the same that moved the fiery lips of those denouncers of the ancient Babylon, whose writings also had been deeply known to him by years of study, and had furnished also a share of consecrated expressions. That spirit he had caught during his long eastern residence in the very scene of their prophecy and its awful fulfilment. If this notion of his dwelling for a time with Peter in Babylon is well founded, as it has been above narrated, it is at once suggested also, that in that Chaldean city,――then the capital seat of all Hebrew learning, and for ages the fount of light to the votaries of Judaism,――he had, during the years of his stay, been led to the deep study and the vast knowledge of that amazing range of Talmudical and Cabbalistical learning, which is displayed in every part of the Apocalypse. But how different all these resources in knowledge, from the mighty production that seemed to flow from them! How far are even the sublimest conceptions of the ancient prophets, in their unconnected bursts and fragments of inspiration, from the harmonious plan, the comprehensive range, and the faultless dramatic unity, or rather tri-unity, of this most perfect of historical views, and of poetical conceptions!