being full and vivid, but it blends together, without mucli regard to harmony, things probable and improba- ble. He is shipwrecked off Ephesus (Simeon Jletaph. Jn vita Johann. c. 2 ; Lampe, i, 47), and arrives there in time to check the progress of the heresies which sprang up after I'auVs departure. Then, or at a later period, he numbers among his disciples men like Polycarp, Pa- pias, Ignatius (Jerome, De vir. Illust. c. xvii). In the persecution under Domitian he is taken to Rome, and there, by his boldness, though not by death, gains the crown of martyrdom. The boiling oil into which he is thrown lias no power to hitrt him (Tertull. De Prasaipt. c. xxxvi). The scene of the supposed miracle was outside the Porta Latina, and hence the Western Church commemorates it by the special festival of "St. John Port. Latin." on May 6th. He is then sent to labor in the mines, and Patmos is the place of his exile (Yicto- rinus, In Apoc. ix ; Lampe, i, G6). The accession of Nerva frees him from danger, and lie returns to Ephesus. There he settles the canon of the Gospel history by for- mally attesting the truth of the lirst three Gospels, and writing his own to supply what they left wanting (Eu- seb. //. A', iii, 24). The elders of the Church are gath- ered together, and he, as by a sudden inspiration, begins with the wonderful opening, " In the beginning was the word" (Jerome, De vir. Illust. 29). Heresies continue to show themselves, but he meets them with the strongest possible ]>rotest. He refuses to pass under the same roof (that of the public baths of Ephesus) with their foremost leader, lest the house should fall down on them and crush them (Iren. iii, 3 ; Euseb. //. K. iii, 28; iv, 14). Eusel)ius and Irena;us make Cerinthus the heretic. In Epiphanius {llcer, xxx, c. 24) Ebion is the hero of the stor}'. To modem feelings the anecdote may seem at variance with the character of the apostle of love, but it is hardly more than the development in act of the prin- ciple of 2 John 10. To the mind of Epiphanius there was a dirticulty of another Idnd : nothing less than a special inspiration coidd account for such a departure from an ascetic life as going to a bath at all. Through his agency the great temple of Artemis is at last reft of its magnificence, and even (!) levelled with the ground (Cyril. Alex. Orat. de Mar. Virr/. ,■ Nicephor. //. I-J. u. 42 ; Lampe, i, 90). He introduces and perpetuates the Jew- ish mode of celebrating the Easter feast (Eusebius, II. E. iii, .5) — at Ephesus, if not before, as one who was a true priest of the Lord, bearing on his brow the plate of gold (^TriraXop; compare Suicer. Thes. s.r.),with the sacred name engraved on it, which was the badge of the Jew- ish pontiff (Polycrates, in Eusebius, H. E. iii, 31 ; v, 24). In strange contrast with this ideal exaltation, a later tradition tells how the old man used to find pleasure in the playfulness and fondness of a favorite bird, and de- fended himself against the charge of unworthy trifling by the familiar apologue of the bow that must some- times be unbent (Cassian. Collat. xxiv, c. 2). Jlorc true to the N.-T. character of the apostle is the story, told with so much power and beauty by Clement of Alexan- dria (^Qins dives, c.42), of his special and loving interest in the younger members of his flock — of his eagerness and courage in the attempt to rescue one of them who had fallen into evil courses. The scene of the old and loving man, standing face to face ■v\ith the outlaw -chief whom, in days gone by, he had baptized, and winning him to repentance, is one which we could gladly look on as belonging to his actual life — part of a story which is, in Clement's words, oh fxvOog c'tWd Xoyog. Not less beautifiU is that other scene which comes before us as the last act of his life. When all capacity to work and teach is gone — when there is no strength even to stand — the spirit still retains its power to love, and the lips are still opened to repeat, without change and variation, the command which summed up all his Master's will, " Little chdihen, love one another" (Jerome, in Gal. vi). Other stories, more apocrj-phal and less interesting, we may pass over rapidly. That he put forth his power to raise the dead to Hfc "(Euseb. //. /;. v. 18) ; that he drank the lY.— O o o
cup of hemlock which was intended to cause his death, and suffered no harm from it (Pseudo-August. Soliloq.; Isidor. Hispal.ZJe Morte Sand. c. 73) ; that when he felt his death approaching he gave orders for the construction of his own sepidchrc, and when it was finished calmly laid himself down in it and died (Augustin. Tract, in Joann. cxxiv) ; that after his interment there were strange movements in the earth that covered him (ift.) ; that when the tomb v/as subsequently opened it was found empty (Niceph. II. E. ii, 42) ; that he was reserved to reappear again in conflict with the personal anti- christ in the last days (Suicer, Thes. s. v. 'lioc\vvi]q) — these traditions, for the most part, indicate little else than the uncritical spirit of the age in which they passed current. The very time of his death lies within the re- gion of conjecture rather than of history, and the dates that have been assigned for it range from A.D. 89 to A.D. 120 (Lampe, i, 92).— Smith.