in favour of his system 9. Before Basilides, in the two first decades of the century, we find Ophitic Gnostics, the Naasenians, and the Peratæ, appealing to passages in St. John's Gospel, which was thus already, we may say in the year 110, a recognised authority among sects external to the Catholic Church.

It may further be observed that the whole doctrine of the Paraclete in the heresy of Montanus is a manifest perversion of the treatise on that subject in St. John's Gospel, the wide reception of which it accordingly presupposes t. The Alogi, who were heretical opponents of Montanism, rejected St. John's Gospel for dogmatic reasons, which are really confirmatory of the general tradition in its favour ". Nor may we forget Celsus, the keen and satirical opponent of the Christian faith, who wrote, even according to Dr. Hilgenfeld, between 160 and 170, but more probably, as is held by other authorities, as early as 150. Celsus professes very ostentatiously to confine himself to the writings of the disciples of Jesus; but he refers to St. John's Gospel in a manner which would be utterly inconceivable if that book had been in his day a lately completed, or indeed a hardly completed forgery v.

This evidence might be largely reinforced from other quarters,

4 Refut. Hær. vii. 22, where Basilides uses St. John i. 9, ii. 4. That Basilides, not his disciples, makes the citation, see Sanday, Gospels in Second Century, pp. 298-301.

r Refut. Hær. v. 6 sqq., 8 (St. John i. 3, 4); c. 9 (Ibid. iv. 21, and iv. 10): quoted by Tischendorf.

Ibid. v. 12 sqq., 16 (St. John iii. 17, i. 1-4); c. 17 (Ibid. viii. 44).

* See however Meyer, Einl. in Joh. p. 13, for the opinion that Montanism originally grew out of belief in the Parousia of our Lord. Baur, Christenthum, p. 213. The Paraclete of Montanus was doubtless very different from the Paraclete of St. John's Gospel. Still St. John's Gospel must have furnished the name; and it is probable that the idea of the Montanistic Paraclete is originally due to the same source, although by a rapid development, contortion, or perversion, the Divine Gift announced by our Lord had been exchanged for Its heretical caricature. The rejection of the promise of the Paraclete alluded to by St. Irenæus (adv. Hær. iii. 11. 9) proceeded not from Montanists, but from opponents to Montanism, who erroneously identified the teaching of St. John's Gospel with that heresy.

St. Epiph. Hær. li. 3. Cf. Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 227.

Origen, contr. Celsum, ii. 74.

Ibid. i. 67; cf. St. John ii. 18. Contr. Celsum, ii. 31, 36, 55; cf. St. John xx. 27.

E. g. the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, Eus. v. I, which quotes St. John xvi. 2 as an utterance of our Lord Himself. Athenagoras, Leg. pro Christianis, 10: cf. St. John i. 1-11, xvii. 21-23. The Clementine Homilies, xix. 22; cf. St. John ix. 2, 3, iii. 52, x. 9, 27. Recognitions, vi. 9; cf. St. John iii. 3-5, ii. 48, v. 23. Ibid. v. 12; cf. St. John viii. 34.

and especially by an examination of that mass of apocryphal literature which belongs to the earlier half of the second century, and the relation of which to St. John's Gospel has lately been very clearly exhibited by an accomplished scholar. But we are already in a position to admit that the facts before us force back the date of St. John's Gospel within the lines of the first century b. And when this is done the question of its authenticity is practically decided. It is irrational to suppose that a forgery claiming the name and authority of the beloved disciple could have been written and circulated beneath his very eyes, and while the Church was still illuminated by his oral teaching. Arbitrary theories about the time which is thought necessary to develope an idea cannot rightly be held to counterbalance such a solid block of historical evidence as we have been considering. This evidence shews that, long before the year 160, St. John's Gospel was received throughout orthodox and heretical Christendom, and that its recognition may be traced up to the Apostolic age itself. Ewald shall supply the words with which to close the foregoing considerations. 'Those who since the first discussion of this question have been really conversant with it, never could have had and never have had a moment's doubt. As the attack on St. John has become fiercer and fiercer, the truth during the last ten or twelve years has been more and more solidly established, error has been pursued into its last hiding-places, and at this moment the facts before us are such that no man who does not will knowingly to choose error and to reject truth, can dare to say that the fourth Gospel is not the work of the Apostle John ".'

a

Tischendorf, Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst? p. 35, sqq. That the Acta Pilati in particular were composed at the beginning of the second century, appears certain from the public appeal to them which St. Justin makes in his Apology to the Roman Emperor. The Acta Pilati 'presuppose not only the synoptists, but particularly and necessarily the Gospel of St. John. It is not that we meet with a passage here and there quoted from that Gospel. If that were the case we might suspect later interpolation. The whole history of the condemnation of Jesus is based essentially upon St. John's narrative; while in the accounts of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, it is rather certain passages of the synoptists which are particularly suggested.'

b Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 232. 'Rien n'est plus vain que de vouloir faire sortir du mouvement des idées au second siècle l'Évangile, qui a précisément donné le branle à ce mouvement, et le domine après l'avoir enfanté.'

• Review of Renan's Vie de Jésus, in the Gottingen Scientific Journal, 5 Aug. 1863; quoted by Gratry, Jésus-Christ, p. 119.

Certainly Ewald here expresses himself with vehemence. Some among yourselves may possibly be disposed to complain of him as being too dogmatic. For it may be that you have made impatience of certainty a part of your creed; and you may hold that a certain measure of cautious doubt on all subjects is inseparable from true intellectual culture. You may urge in particular that the weight of external testimony in favour of St. John's Gospel does not silence the difficulties which arise upon an examination of its contents. You point to the use of a mystical and metaphysical terminology, to the repetition of abstract expressions, such as Word, Life, Light, Truth, Paraclete. You remark that St. John's Gospel exhibits the Life of our Lord under an entirely new aspect. Not to dwell immoderately upon points of detail, you insist that the plan of our Lord's life, the main scenes of His ministry, all His exhibitions of miraculous power save two, the form and matter of His discourses, nay, the very attitude and moral physiognomy of His opponents, are so represented in this Gospel as to interfere with your belief in its Apostolical origin.

But are not these peculiarities of the Gospel explained when we consider the purpose with which it was written?

1. St. John's Gospel is in the first place an historical supplement. It was designed to chronicle discourses and events which had been omitted in the narratives of the three preceding Evangelists. Christian antiquity attests this design with remarkable unanimity d. It is altogether arbitrary to assert that if St. John had seen the works of earlier Evangelists he would have alluded to them; and that if he had intended to supply the omissions of their narratives he would have formally announced his intention of doing so. It is sufficient to observe that the literary conventionalities of modern Europe were not those of the sacred writers, whether of the Synagoguef or of the Church. An inspired writer does his work without the selfconsciousness of a modern composer; he is not necessarily careful to define his exact place in literature, his precise obligations to, or his presumed improvements upon, the labours of his

d See especially the remarkable passage in Eus. Hist. Eccl. iii. 24, St. Epiph. Hær. ii. 51.

• These arguments of Lücke are noticed by Bp. Wordsworth, New Test. part i. p. 206.

"The later prophets of the Old Testament enlarge upon and complete the prophecies of the earlier. But they do not mention their names, or declare their own purpose to do what they do.' Townson, pp. 134-147; quoted by Bp. Wordsworth, ubi supr.

predecessors. He is the organ of a Higher Intelligence; he owes both what he borrows and what he is believed to originate to the Mind Which inspires him to originate, or Which guides him to select. While the stream of sacred truth is flowing forth from his entranced and burning soul, and is being forthwith crystallized in the moulds of an imperishable language, the eagle-eyed Evangelist does not stoop from heaven to earth for the purpose of guarding or reserving the rights of authorship, by displaying his care to acknowledge its obligations. Certainly St. John does repeat in part the narratives of his predecessors 5. But this repetition does not interfere with the supplementary character of his work as a whole h. And yet his Gospel is not only or mainly to be regarded as an historical supplement. It exhibits the precision of method and the orderly development of ideas which are proper to a complete doctrinal essay or treatise. It is indeed rather a treatise illustrated by history, than a history written with a theological purpose. Viewed in its historical relation to the first three Gospels, it is supplemental to them; but this relative character is not by any means an adequate explanation of its motive and function. It might easily have been written if no other Evangelist had written at all 11; it has a character and purpose which are strictly its own; it is part of a great whole, yet it is also, in itself, organically perfect.

2. St. John's Gospel is a polemical treatise. It is addressed to an intellectual world widely different from that which had been before the minds of the earlier Evangelists. The earliest forms of Gnostic thought are recognisable in the Judaizing theosophists whom St. Paul has in view in his Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. These Epistles were written at the least some thirty years before the fourth Gospel. fourth Gospel confronts or anticipates a more developed Gnosticism; although we may observe in passing that it certainly

As in chaps. vi. and xii.

The

h M. Renan admits the supplementary character of St. John's Gospel, but attributes to the Evangelist a motive of personal pique in writing it. He was annoyed at the place assigned to himself in earlier narratives! 'On est tenté de croire, que Jean, dans sa vieillesse, ayant lu les récits évangéliques qui circulaient, d'une part, y remarqua diverses inexactitudes, de l'autre, fut froissé de voir qu'on ne lui accordait pas dans l'histoire du Christ une assez grande place; qu'alors il commença à dicter une foule de choses qu'il savait mieux que les autres, avec l'intention de montrer que, dans beaucoup de cas où on ne parlait que de Pierre, il avait fiquré avec et avant lui.' Vie de Jésus, pp. xxvii. xxviii.

does not contain references to any of the full-grown Gnostic systems which belong to the middle of the second century. The fourth Gospel is in marked opposition to the distinctive positions of Ebionites, of Docetæ, of Cerinthians. But among

these the Cerinthian gnosis appears to be more particularly contemplated. In its earlier forms especially, Gnosticism was as much a mischievous intellectual method as a formal heresy. The Gnostic looked upon each revealed truth merely in the light of an addition to the existing stock of materials ready to his hand for speculative discussion. He handled it accordingly with the freedom which was natural to a belief that it was in no sense beyond the range of his intellectual grasp. He commingled it with his cosmical or his psychological theories; he remodelled it; he submitted it to new divisions, to new combinations. Thus his attitude toward Christianity was friendly and yet supercilious. But he threatened the faith with utter destruction, to be achieved by a process of eclectic interpretation. Cerinthus was an early master of this art. Cerinthus as a Chiliastic Judaizer was naturally disposed to Humanitarianism. As an eclectic theorist, who had been trained in the 'teaching of the Egyptians,' he maintained that the world had been created by some power separate and distinct from Him Who is above all.' Jesus was not born of a virgin; He was the son of Joseph and Mary; He was born naturally like other men. But the Æon Christ had descended upon Jesus after His baptism, in the form of a dove, and had proclaimed the unknown Father, and had perfected the virtues of Jesus. The spiritual impassible Christ had flown back to heaven on the eve of the Passion of Jesus; the altogether human Jesus of Cerinthus had suffered and had risen alone k. To this fantastic Christ of the Cerinthian

6

1 St. Hippolytus, Refut. Hær. vii. 33.

St. Irenæus, i. 26: Et Cerinthus autem quidam in Asiâ non a primo Deo factum esse mundum docuit, sed a virtute quâdam valde separatâ et distante ab eâ principalitate, quæ est super universa, et ignorante eum qui est super omnia, Deum. Jesum autem subjecit, non ex virgine natum (impossibile enim hoc ei visum est); fuisse autem Eum Joseph et Mariæ filium similiter ut reliqui omnes homines, et plus potuisse justitiâ et prudentiâ et sapientiâ ab hominibus. Et post baptismum descendisse in eum ab ea principalitate quæ est super omnia, Christum figurâ columbæ; et tunc annuntiasse incognitum Patrem et virtutes perfecisse; in fine autem revolâsse iterum Christum de Jesu, et Jesum passum esse et resurrexisse; Christum autem impassibilem perseverâsse, existentem spiritalem.' When St. Epiphanius represents Cerinthus as affirming that Jesus would only rise at the general resurrection, he seems to be describing the logical results of the heresy, not the actual doctrine which it embraced. (Hær. xxviii. 6.)