Paul, for his Christian consciousness was not formed in direct opposition to an earlier and tenaciously held Judaism. His whole character and mental formation disposed him to a different development. The mystical contemplative element which finds its archetype in John, is more prone to adopt outward forms (attributing to them a spiritualized, elevated meaning) than to disown them, and John, whom Judaism had led to the Saviour as its ultimate object, found no difficulty in employing the forms of the Jewish cultus as the prefiguring symbols of his Christian views. It was not expected, therefore, from him that he should, like a Paul, abolish those forms with which the Christian spirit was yet enveloped.' Though John (Gal. ii. 9) appears as one of the three pillars of the church among the Jewish Christians, yet it never happened that they appealed to him as to Peter and James; but it may be explained from the peculiar standing-point and character of this apostle, and serves to set in a clear light his relation to the contending parties. Hence also we gather, that though

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1 Irenæus, after taking a sound survey of the process of development of the Christian church, says: "Hi autem qui circa Jacobum Apostoli (among whom he also ranks John) gentibus quidem libere agere permittebant, concedentes nos Spiritui Dei. Ipsi vero perseverabant in pristinis observationibus." And a little afterwards, "Religiose agebant circa dispositionem legis," iii. 12. But what Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, says of John, in his letter to Victor, Bishop of Rome, in Euseb. v. 24, ὃς ἐγενήθη ἱερεὺς τὸ πέταλον πεφορηκώς, is untrue if taken literally, as it insinuates something far beyond the presumption that John was a faithful observer of the Jewish law so long as he remained at Jerusalem. It would follow that he had held the office of High Priest among the Jews, for this TÉTαλOV 2, the golden front-plate, which was one of the distinctive insignia of this office. Such a presumption would, however, be in contradiction to history and all historical analogy. Nor can Polycrates himself, however credulous we may think him to have been, have meant it. It is moreover clear from the context, that he affirms of John only such things as would be consistent with his Christian standing-point. Or, are we to assume that John, as the President of all the Christian communities in Lesser Asia, adopted, as a symbolical token of his position in the guidance of the Church, the insignia of the Jewish High Priest? This would be in direct contradiction to the apostolic, and especially the Johannean views, for these included the acknowledgment of the sole high-priesthood of Christ, and the universal priesthood, founded upon it, of all believers. Polycrates, therefore, could have said this of John only with a symbolical reference, whether he intended to denote by it what he had suffered for the confession of the Christian faith, or the place which he occupied at the head of the guidance of the church.

John had formed a scheme of doctrine so decidedly marked, and though in relation to the other great publishers of the gospel, he might have formed a party who would have attached themselves particularly to him, and principally or exclusively have valued his idea of Christianity, yet in the Pauline age, we see no Johannean party come forward by the side of the Jacobean, the Petrine, and the Pauline. The peculiar doctrinal type of John was also of a kind little suited to find acceptance with the peculiar tendencies of the Jewish Christians in Palestine, and its influence would be more powerfully felt, where a Christian element had already combined itself with the form of the Grecian mind.

Thus John disappears from public history, till he was led by the divine call to other regions, where the minds of the people were already prepared for his peculiar influence, and where the deep traces of his operations, undeniable to every one capable of historical investigations, were still visible far in the second century. After the martyrdom of Paul, the bereaved scene of his labours, so important for the development and spread of the kingdom of God, and exposed to so many polluting and destructive influences, required above all things the guiding, protecting, and healing hand of apostolic wisdom. The Epistle of Peter to the churches in that region, and the journey of Silvanus thither, show how much this necessity was felt. It is probable, that John was called upon by the better part of the churches, to transfer the seat of his activity to this quarter. All the ancient traditions, which may be traced back to his immediate disciples, agree in stating that Lesser Asia was the scene of his labours to the end of the first century, and Ephesus its central point.

The constitution of the churches of Lesser Asia, as it appeared soon after the age of John in the time of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, was altogether different from that which originated in the Pauline age, in which these churches were founded, and we are obliged to presuppose some intervening influences by which this alteration was produced. Originally these churches formed, as we have seen above, a pure opposition against the Jewish-Christian form of cultus. They had no day excepting Sunday devoted to religious celebration, no kind of yearly feast; but afterwards we find among them a paschal feast transferred from the Jews, and receiving a Christian

meaning, though imitating the Jewish reckoning, as to the time of its celebration, to which probably a feast of Pentecost was annexed, and in their disputes with the Roman church they appealed particularly to a tradition originating with this apostle. Now we can readily imagine that the fourteenth day of the month Nisan,' on which he was an eyewitness of the sufferings of Christ, would excite a deep interest in his Christian feelings. It is self-evident how those Jewish feasts, which had gained a new importance for him by their association with those great facts of the Christian faith of which he had been an eye-witness, and which he had been wont to celebrate with Christian devotion, might be introduced by him into these churches founded on Pauline principles.

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From the state of the church at that time in these parts, may be concluded that John must have had to endure many conflicts, both from within and without, in his new field of labour. After licence had once been granted under Nero to public attacks on the Christians, persecutions were carried on in various parts. In lesser Asia, many circumstances combined, then as in later times, to excite a more vehement persecution: fanatical zeal for the ancient idolatry—the danger which threatened the pecuniary interests of those who were gainers by the popular worship, from the rapid progress of Christianity-the hatred of the Jews widely scattered through Lesser Asia, who blasphemed Christianity, and stirred up the heathen populace against it. Hence in the Apocalypse the rebukes uttered against the synagogues of Satan, against those who "say they are Jews, but are not and do lie;" Rev. iii. 9. The civil wars and the universal misery that followed, contributed still more to excite the popular fury against the enemies of the gods, to whom they readily ascribed the origin of all their misfortunes. Thus, indeed, the Apocalypse testifies (which was probably written in the first period after John's arrival in Lesser Asia) throughout of the flowing blood of the martyrs, and of the tribulation which threatened Christians in prison, as well as of the fresh recollections of Nero's cruelties. In the churches themselves, those conflicts continued which we noticed at the close of the Pauline age,

1 The gospel to which Polycrates appeals in Eusebius, v. 24, may certainly be that of John; see my Leben Jesu, p. 712.

and the seeds of discord and heresy then germinating had now sprung up and advanced towards maturity. Falsifiers of the original truth, who gave themselves out for apostles, had come forth; Rev. ii. 2. Various kinds of enthusiasm had mingled with the genuine Christian inspiration, against which Paul had already raised a warning voice. Pretended prophets and prophetesses, who, under the appearance of divine illumination, threatened to plunge the churches into errors both theoretical and practical; 1 John iv. 1; Rev. ii. 20.

In Lesser Asia, the most opposite deviations from the genuine evangelical spirit sprang up together. On the one side, the Judaizing tendency, as we have noticed it in the Pauline age; on another side, in opposition to it, the tendency of an arrogant licentiousness of opinion, such as we have noticed in the freethinkers of the Corinthian church, only carried to greater lengths, and mingled probably with many theoretical errors; persons who taught that whoever penetrated into the depths of knowledge,1 need no longer submit to the apostolic ordinances, as he would be free from all the slavery of the law, which freedom they understood in a carnal sense, and misinterpreted to an immoral purpose. Such a one need no longer fear the contact with heathenism or with the kingdom of Satan; in the consciousness of his own mental strength he could despise all temptations, partake of the meat offered to idols, and indulge in sensual pleasures without being injured thereby. In the Apocalypse these people are called Nicolaitanes, whether because they were really the adherents of a certain Nicolaus,2 and that this name as a trans

1 Rev. ii. 24, they are described as such, οἵτινες ἔγνωσαν τὰ βάλεα τοῦ σaтavâ, is λéyovou. But a doubt here arises, whether these persons made it their peculiar boast that they knew the depths of the Deity; but the author of the Apocalypse, as if in mockery of their pretensions, substitutes for the depths of the Deity the depths of Satan (as Ewald thinks), (for which interpretation the analogy may be adduced where the synagogue of God is converted into the synagogue of Satan);—or whether they really boasted that they knew the depths of Satan, and hence could tell how to combat Satan aright,-that they could conquer him by pride and contempt,-that they could indulge in sensual peasures, and maintain the composure of their spirit unaltered,—that the inner man might attain such strength that it was no longer moved by what weaker souls, who were still under the servitude of the law, anxiously shunned,-and thus could put Satan to scorn even in his own domains.

2 We are by no means justified in confounding this Nicolaus with the

lation of the Hebrew ?, occasioned an allusion to the meaning of the name, and a comparison with Balaam, or that the name was altogether invented by the author with a symbolical design, a seducer of the people like Balaam.

With these practical errors were connected various theoretic tendencies of a false gnosis, which since the close of the Pauline, age had extended more widely in opposition to one another. We have noticed in the church at Colossæ the adherents of a Judaizing gnosis, who probably considered Judaism to be a revelation from God communicated by angels, attached a perpetual value to it as well as to Christianity, and pretended that they possessed peculiar information respecting the various classes of angels. To this Jewish angel-worship, Paul opposes the doctrine of Jesus as the Son of God, the one head of the church of God, on whom angels also are dependent, the common head of that universal church to which men and angels belong. He extols him as the being who has triumphed over all the powers which would make men dependent on themselves, over all the powers that set themselves in opposition to the kingdom of God, so that men need no longer fear them. He then infers the doctrine grounded on this, of the high degree and freedom of the redeemed through Christ, the children of God, who are become companions of angels in the kingdom of God. But this elevated doctrine of the dignity and freedom of Christians was perverted by those who confronted the limited Jewish standing-point by a bold antinomian gnosis, and affirmed that Judaism was to be despised as the work of limited spirits; that the sons of God were more than these spirits and exalted above their maxims. They thought themselves sufficiently exalted to insult these higher powers, and to ridicule all law as a work of these limited and limiting powers. With this was connected that reckless immoral tendency which we have before noticed, and which presented itself in opposition to the legal asceticism, which we find connected with the Judaizing gnosis in the church at Colossæ. This is the tendency which is combated on the side of its blended theoretical and practical errors, in the warning Epistle of Jude addressed probably to the Christians in these

well-known deacon of this name. But in this case, it is more probable that the Nicolaitanes of the second century originated from this sect.