bouring churches within the circuit of his supervision. It was intended for the instruction and edification of the Christians all over that extensive area. And the Epistle is, in the phrase of Lightfoot, a ‘“commendatory postscript’ to the Gospel. This explains the circumstance of its having neither address nor signature. It was not sent to a particular community, and since it was an appendix to the Gospel, it had no need to be inscribed with the author’s name.
The aim of the Epistle is twofold—polemical and religious. Irenzeus says! that ‘‘John the disciple of the Lord desired by the declaration of his Gospel to remove the error which had been sown among men by Cerinthus and, much earlier, by those who are called Nicolaitans’’. And this is borne out by the companion Epistle. It is against these two heresies that the polemic of the latter is directed.
1. It is said that the Nicolaitans were the followers of Nicolas, one of the seven deacons (Acts vi. 5),” and this strange story is told of him by Clement of Alexandria’: ‘‘ He had, they say, a beautiful wife, and after the Ascension of the Saviour, being taunted by the Apostles with jealousy, he brought the woman forward and gave who would permission to marry her. This, they say, is in accordance with that expression of his: ‘We must abuse the flesh’. And indeed the adherents of his sect follow up the incident and the saying abso- lutely and unquestioningly and commit fornication without restraint’. Clement proceeds to attest the moral purity of Nicolas and explain his action as an inculcation of ascetic self-restraint, but certainly the sect which bore his name was given over to licentiousness. Clement says elsewhere‘ that they were ‘dissolute as he-goats,” and others bear like testimony. They were Antinomians, disowning moral obligation, nullam differentiam esse docentes in mechando et idolothy- ton edere ;® herein being forerunners of the Gnostics and justifying Tertullian’s classification of them with the Cainites.’ This heresy was rampant among the churches of Asia Minor in St. John’s day (cf. Rev. ii. 6, 14, 15), and he deals with it in our Epistle. See i. 5- ii. 6, 15-17, iii. 3-10.
2. Cerinthus also was an Antinomian,® but his distinctive heresy was a theory of the Person of Christ. He taught in Asia, but he had been trained in Egypt,? and the foundation of his system, as of
ο xis. 2 Tren. Ἱ. xxiii.
3 Strom. iii. 4; cf. Eus. H. E. iii. 29. 4 Strom. ii. 20, 5 Cf. Tert. Adv. Marc. i. 29; Hippol. Phil. vii. 36. 6Ίτεῃ., l.c. ’ De Prescript. Her. 33.
8 Dionysius of Alexandria in Eus. H. E. iii. 28, ® Theodoret. H. E. ii. 3.