The Apocalypse of St John Author:George Croly Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AUTHENTICITY OF THE APOCALYPSE. The Apocalypse can be proved to have existed and been received as a portion of the inspired Volume in the earliest period of C... more »hristianity; it is quoted in the first writings of the Church; it became the subject of early commentary, and was fully accepted during the first three centuries, those of the clearest knowledge, and most immediate transmission of authority from the Apostles. It appears from some passages in " The Shepherd of Hermas," a work contemporary with St. John, to have been seen by the writer. About the middle of the second century, scarcely more than fifty years after the death of St. John, there was a persecution under Marcus Antoninus, in which Pothinus Bishop of Lyons, with many others suffered. The Churches of Lyons and Vienne sent an Epistle relating their afflictions to the Churches of Asia, a well known document, and said to have been drawn up by Irenaeus. In this there are obvious references to the Scriptures and, among the rest, to the Apocalypse, " Those are they who follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth10." 10 Ch. xiv. 4. Justin Martyr, still earlier (about A.D. 140,) thus writes : " A man from among us by name John, one of the Apostles of Christ, in the Revelation (Apocalypse) made to him, has prophesied, that the believers in Christ shall live a thousand years in Jerusalem, and after that shall come the general, and in a word the eternal resurrection and judgment of all together11." Irenaeus Bishop of Lyons (successor of Po- thinus, about A.D. 178,) a disciple of Polycarp, who had been the disciple of St. John, thus writes : " We will not run the hazard of too positively affirming any thing of the name of Antichrist, for if his name were to have been declared at this time, it would have been declared b...« less