Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/447

 means of detecting the places to which it was addressed in any peculiar passage, except so far as the chief seats of the heretics, against whom he wrote, are supposed to be known. Asia Minor, Syria and the East, were the regions to which the Gnostical errors were mostly confined; and in the former country more especially they were objects of attention, to the ministers of truth, during the apostolic age and in succeeding times. It was probably intended for the same persons to whom Peter wrote; and what has been said on the direction of his two epistles, will illustrate the immediate design of this also.

Its date is involved in the same uncertainty that covers all points in its own history and that of its author; the prominent difficulty being its great brevity, in consequence of which it offers but few characteristics of any kind, for the decision of doubtful points; and the life and works of Juda must therefore be set down among those matters, in which the indifference of those who could once have preserved historical truth for the eyes of posterity, has left even the research of modern criticism, not one hook to hang a guess upon.