Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/371

 John the Baptist, himself somewhat inferior, is called the "Apostle of ,"—and is said to have received his peculiar glorified transfiguration, from a body of flesh to a body of light, from Jesus at the time of his baptism in the Jordan; and yet is represented as distinguished from the "Disciple of ," by possessing this peculiar attribute of Light.

This mystical error is distinctly characterized in the first chapter of this gospel, and is there met by the direct assertions, that in Jesus Christ, the Word, and the God, was not only life, but that the itself was the  of men;—and that John the Baptist "was not the, but was only sent to bear witness of the ;" and again, with all the tautological earnestness of an old man, the aged writer repeats the assertion that "this was the true Light, which enlightens every man that comes into the world." Against these same sectaries, the greater part of the first chapter is directed distinctly, and the whole tendency of the work throughout, is in a marked manner opposed to their views. With them too, John had had a local connection, by his residence in Ephesus, where, as it is distinctly specified in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul had found the peculiar disciples of John the Baptist long before, on his first visit to that city; and had successfully preached to some of them, the religion of Christ, which before was a strange and new thing to them. The whole tendency and scope of this gospel, indeed, as directed against these two prominent classes of heretics, both Gnostics and Sabians, are fully and distinctly summed up in the conclusion of the twentieth chapter;—"These things are written, that ye might believe that is the, the , and that in believing on him, ye might have through his name."

As to the place where this gospel was written, there is a very decided difference of opinion among high authorities, both ancient and modern,—some affirming it to have been composed in Patmos, during his exile, and others in Ephesus, before or after his banishment. The best authority, however, seems to decide in favor of Ephesus, as the place; and this view seems to be most generally adopted in modern times. Even those who suppose it to have been written in Patmos, however, grant that it was first given to the Christian world in Ephesus,—the weight of early authority being very decided on this latter point. This distinction between the place of composition and the place of publication, is certainly very reasonable on some accounts, and is sup