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 Introd., 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 asso-
