A Brighter Day Begins with His Word.

Alexander, William • SECTION 12

Footnotes:

← Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John

[2] Cary's _Dante_, _Paradiso_, xxv. 117. Stanley's _Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age_, 242.

[3] Apoc. ii. 24.

[4] John xiii. 30 cf. 1 John ii, 11.

[5] εσκηνωσεν εν ἡμιν.

[6] This characteristic of St. John's style is powerfully expressed by the great hymn-writer of the Latin Church.

"Hebet sensus exors styli; Stylo scribit tam subtili, Fide tam catholicâ, Ne de Verbo salutari Posset quicquam refragari Pravitas hæretica." _Adam of St. Victor, Seq._ xxxii.

[7] John xii. 20-34, especially ver. 24.

[8] Acts i. 13.

[9] Acts iii. 4, v. 13, viii. 14.

[10] Gal. ii. 9.

[11] Acts iii. 4, iv. 13, viii. 14. The singular and interesting manuscript of Patmos (Αι περιοδοι του θεολογου) attributed to St. John's disciple, Prochorus, seems to recognise that St. John's chief mission was not that of working miracles. Even in a kind of duel of prodigies between him and the sinister magician of Patmos, the following occurs. "Kynops asked a young man in the multitude where his father then was. 'My father is dead,' he replied, 'he went down yonder in a storm.' Turning to John, the magician said,--'Now then, bring up this young man's father from the dead.' 'I have not come here,' answered the Apostle, 'to raise the dead, but to deliver the living from their errors.'"

[12] Gal. ii. 9; Acts xxi. 17, _sqq._

[13] John xxi. 7.

[14] Ibid., vers. 17, 18, 19.

[15] The beginning of old age would account sufficiently for the anticipation of death in 2 Peter i. 13, 14, 15.

[16] δοξασει ver. 19. The lifelike _shall_ (not _should_) is part of the many minute but vivid touches which make the whole of this scene so full of motion and reality--"I go a fishing" (ver. 3); "_about_ two hundred cubits" (ver. 8); the accurate αιγιαλος (ver. 4. See Trench, _On Parables_, 57; Stanley, _Apostolic Age_, 135).

[17] διορατικωτερος. S. Joann. Chrysost.--_Hom. in Joann._

[18] _Euseb. H. E._, iii. 23. See other quotations in Bilson, _Government of Christ's Church_, p. 365.

[19] _Ap. Euseb. H. E._, v. 20.

[20] _Adv. Hæres._, lib. iii., ch. 1.

[21] ἱερευς το πεταλον πεφορεκως--"Pontifex ejus (sc. _Domini_) auream laminam in fronte habens." So translated by S. Hieron. _Lib. de Vir. Illust._, xlv. The πεταλον is the LXX. rendering of צִיץ, the projecting leaf or plate of radiant gold (Exod. xxviii. 26, xxxix. 30), associated with the "mitre" (Lev. viii. 9). Whether Polycrates speaks literally, or wishes to convey by a metaphor the impression of holiness radiating from St. John's face, we probably cannot decide.

[22] Acts xix. 20, 21. In this description of Ephesus the writer has constantly had in view the passages to which he referred in the _Speakers Commentary, N.T._, iv., 274, 276. He has also studied M. Renan's _Saint Paul_, chap, xii., and the authorities cited in the notes, pp. 329, 350.

[23] St. John ii. 2, iv. 14.

[24] "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against," etc. Eph. vi. 12-17.

[25] _Saint Paul_, Renan, 318, 319.

[26] For the almost certain reference here to the Chaldean Sybil Sambethe, see Apoc ii. 20, Archdeacon Lee's note in _Speaker's Commentary, N.T._, iv. 527, 534, 535, and Dean Blakesley (art. _Thyatira, Dict. of the Bible_).

[27] 1 John iv. 1, 3.

[28] 1 John ii. 7, ii. 24, iii. 11; 2 John vv. 5, 6. The passage in ii. 24 is a specimen of that simple emphasis, that presentation of a truth or duty under two aspects, which St. John often produces merely by an inversion of the order of the words. "Ye--what ye _heard_ from the beginning let it abide in you. If what from the _beginning_ ye heard abide in you" (ὁ ηκουσατε απ' αρχης ... ὁ απ' αρχης ηκουσατε). The emphasis in the first clause is upon the _fact_ of their having _heard_ the message; in the second upon this feature of the message--that it was given in the _beginning_ of Christianity amongst them, and kept unchanged until the present time. Cf. εντολη παλαια (ii. 7) with αρχαιος = "of the early Christian time," in Polycarp, _Ep. ad Philipp._, i.

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