Cornelius a Lapide
Preface
Here, as is customary, I set forth three things at the outset: first, concerning the authority of the Epistle; second, concerning its author; third, concerning its subject matter.
As to the first. It is a matter of faith that this Epistle is Canonical Scripture. This is the common opinion of the whole Church, expressed both elsewhere and especially in the Council of Trent, Session IV.
Note here that the Canonical books of Holy Scripture are of two kinds: The first are called Protocanonical, as it were of the first canon, because in every age and among all peoples they have been held to be Canonical, so that no orthodox person ever doubted their authority.
The second are called Deuterocanonical, as it were of the second canon, because at some time the Church or the Fathers had doubts about their authority, but in a later age they were received into the canon by all. Such are the book of Esther, Baruch, part of Daniel, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, the two books of Maccabees, certain portions of the Gospels of St. Mark, Luke, and John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, the Second of Peter, the Second and Third of John, the Epistle of Jude, the Apocalypse. All the rest are Protocanonical: therefore among these is also this Epistle of St. John, excepting one particular passage, of which I shall speak in its proper place. See Bellarmine, book I On the Word of God, chapter IV.
This is what Eusebius says about it, in book III of his History, chapter 24: "Among those things which John wrote after the Gospel, his First Epistle is received without any hesitation both by recent writers and by the ancients," and indeed even by heretics, both ancient and modern. And St. Augustine, in tractate 7 on the First Epistle of John: "This Epistle," he says, "is Canonical, recited among all nations, retained by the authority of the whole world, and has itself built up the whole world." And Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius, book VII of his History, chapter 20: "The Gospel and the First Epistle of John not only lack any fault, but moreover have been written with the greatest elegance of words, the utmost weight of sentiments, and a well-arranged disposition of expression: so far is it from being the case that any barbarous word, or solecism, or unskilled or rude speech is found in them."
As to the second, the Orthodox likewise agree that the author of the Epistle is St. John the Apostle, as its inscription indicates. The very same is sufficiently indicated by the style of the Epistle, which agrees in all things with the Gospel of St. John, being candid and honey-sweet with charity, plainly revealing its source, namely the candid and honey-sweet heart of St. John. Moreover, the same things are inculcated in this Epistle as in the Gospel, as Eusebius shrewdly notes in book VII of his History, chapter 25: "Whoever reads attentively," he says, "will find on both sides frequent mention of life, light, the warning away from darkness, very often of truth, grace, joy, the flesh and blood of the Lord, judgment, the remission of sins, the love of God toward us, the commandment to love one another, that all the precepts must be kept, the refutation of the world, of the devil and of Antichrist, the promise of the Holy Spirit, the adoption by God, faith everywhere required of us, the Father and Son everywhere; and if the character of each be noted in every respect, the entirely one and the same color of the Gospel and the Epistle will be found."
Who, of what character, and how great St. John was, may be gathered, first, from his lineage and kinship. For he, beyond the Apostles and all other men, was nearest to Christ in blood, and was His kinsman in the second or third degree. For St. John was the son of Zebedee and of Salome, whom many think to have been the daughter of St. Anne, just as was the Blessed Virgin. Whence St. Chrysostom, on Acts I, 5, calls John the brother of the Lord. And St. Bridget, book I of Revelations, chapter 10, calls St. John the brother-in-law of Christ, because he was born of the sister of Christ's mother, and consequently was the nephew of the Blessed Virgin and the cousin of Christ. The same is held by Bede, Preface on St. John; St. Bernard, On the Lamentation of the Virgin; Hugh of St. Victor, and the Gloss on chapter I of Galatians; Albert the Great on chapter xix of John; Abulensis on chapter xx of Matthew, question 4, question LIV, § 3; St. Antoninus, Gerson and many others: so much so that John Eck, in his second sermon On St. Anne, asserts that those who deny that St. John was the cousin of Christ contradict the Holy Fathers and the Church, and Scripture itself. But this is less pleasing to others, who hold that St. Anne had only one offspring, namely the Blessed Virgin, since this seems more becoming to both the dignity of St. Anne and the dignity of the Blessed Virgin and of Christ, as Euthymius, Theophylact, St. Thomas, Jansenius, Canisius, Baronius, Canus teach, whom Francis Suarez cites and follows in his third Part, volume II, disputation II, section 4. Yet these same authors hold that St. John was a kinsman of Christ.
Furthermore, Lucius Dexter and his continuator Helecas, Bishop of Saragossa, in a Chronicle which recently appeared in Spain, hand down that Zebedee was the brother of St. Barnabas, and had two sons, the Apostles James and John, and two daughters, of whom one was married to St. Peter and the other to St. Andrew. Helecas adds: "Zebedee, also called Aristobulus, the father of the Apostles John and James, was one of the seventy-two disciples. He came with St. Peter to Rome: thence sent into England as bishop, he died a martyr in the second year of Nero. Salome, the wife of Zebedee, the mother of Saints John and James, in the 90th year of her age, in the 42nd year of Christ, on the 24th day of May, most holily departed at Veroli in Italy, having previously traveled with her son James through Germany, England, and Italy preaching." But let the credibility of these matters rest with Dexter and Helecas. For, to pass over other things in silence, at Veroli rests Mary of James, as the Roman Martyrology has it on May 25. But she is generally held to be the mother of James the Less, not the Greater, who was the brother of St. John; for in Mark xv, 40, this Mary is expressly called the mother "of James the Less and of Joseph," and is distinguished from Salome: hence the passing of Mary Salome, who was the mother of Saints John and James the Greater, is recorded in the Roman Martyrology on another day, namely October 22, where she is also said to have died at Jerusalem. Therefore learned men suspect that these and similar things are not genuine works of Lucius Dexter (to whom St. Jerome dedicated his book On Ecclesiastical Writers), but of some left-handed scoundrel who arrogated to himself the name of Dexter, in order thereby to cover and dignify himself and the conceits of his own brain.
From this is gathered the wisdom and sanctity of St. John. For just as the sun illumines with its rays those things more which are nearer to itself, so that the closer anything is to the sun, the more it is illumined by it: so in like manner Christ, as the sun of justice rising from on high through the incarnation, poured forth the rays of His grace more upon those whom He held joined by flesh, and from whose flesh He assumed flesh. Thus He endowed the Blessed Virgin with the highest gifts of grace beyond all men and angels, because He chose her as Mother: in like manner He sanctified St. Joseph beyond other men of that age, because He chose him as His foster father and as it were His father. The same He did for St. Anne as His grandmother, for St. Joachim as His grandfather, for St. James the Greater and the Less, for St. Jude, for St. Simon Thaddaeus, whom He created Apostles as His kinsmen; and for John the Baptist, whom, as His kinsman as is clear from Luke I, 36, He made His paranymph, and therefore among those born of women none has arisen greater than he, Matt. xi, 11.
Secondly, how great St. John was may be gathered from the fact that he was foremost among the Apostles, and after Peter as it were the first, indeed Peter's companion, as is clear from Acts I, 13, and chapter III, 1, and chapter VIII, 14. Whence Paul, Galatians II, 9: "James," he says, "Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave the right hand of fellowship to me and to Barnabas."
Thirdly, from the fact that among the four Cherubim representing the four Evangelists, Ezekiel I, 10, Apocalypse IV, 1, St. John is compared to the eagle, because, transcending all by sharpness of mind and flight, he penetrated to the very bosom of God, and from there thundered forth the mystery of the generation of the Word, saying: "In the beginning was the Word," etc. For the eagle (aquila) is so called from seeing sharply (acute videndo), as it were sharp from sharpness, although some derive the word from the color aquilus: for aquilus is a dusky and somewhat blackish color named from water (aqua), as Pierius says, Hieroglyphica XXIX, chapter xxi.
Whence St. Jerome, in On Ecclesiastical Writers, on John and Papias: "Let the son of thunder," he says, "sound the Gospel trumpet, whom Jesus loved most, who drank streams of doctrines from the bosom of the Savior." Origen, homily 2 on Various Subjects, speaking of St. John: "The voice of the spiritual eagle," he says, "strikes the hearing of the Church, the voice of the high-flying winged one not flying over the corporeal air, or the ether, or the compass of the whole sensible world, but every contemplation, beyond all that is and that is not, with the swift-flying wings of innermost Theology, transcending with the gaze of the most clear and supernal contemplation. So therefore the Blessed John the Theologian flies over not only those things that can be understood and spoken, but is even borne above those things that surpass all understanding and signification, and is exalted beyond all things by the ineffable flight of the mind into the hidden secrets of the one Principle of all." And soon after: "O blessed John, not undeservedly are you called John, that is, one to whom it has been given. For to which of the Theologians has it been given, that has been given to you, namely to penetrate hidden mysteries?" Then when he had said that Peter bears the type of action, but John of contemplation, he adds: "The spiritual leaper, then, the swift-flying, the God-flying, I mean John the Theologian, surpasses every visible and invisible creature, penetrates every intellect, and being deified enters into the God who deifies him, etc.; for he could not otherwise have ascended into God, unless he first became God." And he adds that Paul was caught up into the third heaven and Paradise, but John, more than man, was caught up above all the heavens into the paradise of paradises, that is, in the cause of all things he heard the one word through which all things were made; and therefore he had been as it were transmuted into God. Hence St. Dionysius the Areopagite, in his letter to St. John, calls him "the sun of the Gospel."
Again, that St. John was named by Christ Boanerges, that is, son of thunder, Mark III, 17, that is, lightning. He was therefore himself Ceraunius, that is, like lightning, thundering and flashing; "for his speech was thunder, because his life was lightning;" which Nazianzen says of St. Basil in his Eulogy. Whence St. Epiphanius, heresy 73: "John," he says, "the stern son of thunder, by his own grandiloquence, as it were from certain clouds, by enigmas of wisdom, persuaded us of a pious understanding concerning the Son."
Fourthly, in that he alone deserved all the degrees and laurels of the Saints, and these in their heroic and first rank. For John was, first, on account of the excellent purity of his soul, a terrestrial angel, surpassing the angels, not in nature, but by the virtue of unblemished virginity; secondly, he was likewise a Patriarch, because he alone survived the other Apostles by far the longest, being the common father, foundation and pillar of all the faithful. Whence St. Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, on John: "He founded and ruled," he says, "all the Churches of Asia;" thirdly, he was likewise Apostle, Bishop, Hierarch, Doctor, Evangelist, Prophet in the Apocalypse, Martyr, both because, standing by Christ on the cross, he bore all His sorrows and the agonies of death through compassion and inmost love; and because at Rome he was thrown by Domitian into a vat of boiling oil, even though he came forth unharmed by a miracle. Whence Polycrates in Eusebius, book V of the History, chapter 23, writing to Victor the Roman Pontiff: "To these is added," he says, "John, who reclined on the breast of the Lord, who was a priest, who wore the golden plate, who was both Martyr and Doctor, who at last fell asleep at Ephesus laid to rest in death." Concerning the golden plate which St. John wore on his forehead as a kind of crown, the insignia of the Episcopate, St. Jerome attests, On Ecclesiastical Writers, in Polycrates, and Nicephorus, book II, chapter xliv. I said the same about St. James in the Preface to his Epistle. Therefore he was aptly called John, in Hebrew Jehochanam, and by contraction Jochanan, that is, grace of God, or rather God has had mercy, or pleasing to God; just as that contemporary Baptist was called John by the angel for the same reason, Luke I, 13. For John the Evangelist had the graces and gifts of John the Baptist, and besides others greater, which I have already enumerated and shall enumerate, so that Christ between these two Johns was as it were the sun between Jupiter and Lucina; for the Baptist was the precursor, and the Evangelist the follower of Christ. Therefore John was, as it were, the son of the Graces, the son of graces, in adorning and beautifying whom all the Graces, all the graces, seem to have conspired, so that the three Christian Graces are Christ and both Johns.
Fifthly, because John was familiar to Christ above the other Apostles, and as it were His confidant: whence he calls himself everywhere the disciple whom Jesus loved. Hence he was present at His transfiguration and at His prayer in the garden, and at His secret miracles; he alone reclined upon Christ's breast at the Last Supper, which was the highest sign of mutual and reciprocal love, and indeed its fuel and increase: for from the breast of Christ he drank the secrets of divine wisdom, and the deeper streams of graces beyond the others, as St. Augustine says, in tractate 18 on St. John; and reclining upon the temple of the Word, he searched out the court of the divine fullness, says St. Ambrose on Psalm cxviii, Octave 2, and St. Jerome on chapter II of Ezekiel: "John," he says, "reclined upon His breast, that he might draw streams of wisdom, that he might say: In the beginning was the Word; for since in the breast of Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, deservedly does he recline upon His breast whom He endows with the special gift of wisdom and knowledge above the others," says Bede, in his homily On St. John; and Laurence Justinian, in his book On the Combat of Christ, chapter v: "By contemplating," he says, "you search out the secrets of wisdom, you run through the angels, you pass through the archangels and the other legions of spirits, traversing them by the wing of reflection: now to you are opened the inexpressible treasures of wisdom, to you are unsealed the sacred mysteries of revelations, the height of the Divinity, the eternal generation of the Word, and the triumphant kingdom of heavenly glory." Indeed Plutarch also, book I of his Symposiacs, question III: "The place," he says, "below the lord, of the wife and the children, who were said to be in his bosom." Therefore John was a son of Christ, and so in His bosom; as it were a Benjamin he reclined.
Furthermore, how great the fires of charity and zeal he drew from this is clear from his deeds, not only in founding Churches in every direction, but also in seeking the salvation of individuals, even of lost ones. From one example learn the rest. Eusebius narrates from Clement of Alexandria, in book III of the History, chapter 23, that St. John had commended to a certain Bishop a certain young man, who, seduced by his companions, finally became chief of robbers. When St. John returned to the bishop: "Come," he said, "O Bishop, present the deposit which I and Christ plainly entrusted to you, with the Church as witness over which you preside. I demand of you that young man back and the soul of my brother." And when the bishop with sighing said he was dead, namely to God, and had become chief of robbers, "hearing these things, the Apostle immediately tore the garment with which he was clothed, and with a great groan striking his head: A fine guardian of the soul of my brother," he said, "have I left you. But now let a horse be prepared for me, and a guide of the journey. And immediately rising from the very church he hastened with speed. And when he had come to the place, he was seized by these robbers who kept watch. But he, neither trying to flee nor in any way to turn aside anywhere, with a great voice only kept proclaiming: Because for this very purpose I have come, bring to me your prince. When he came armed and recognized John the Apostle from afar, struck with shame he turned to flight. John, having put his horse after him, immediately pursues the fleeing one, even forgetful of his age, at the same time crying out: Why do you flee, O son, your father? Why do you flee an unarmed old man? Wretched one, halt, fear not, you still have hope of life. I will give an account to Christ for you: and willingly receive death for you, as the Lord received it for us, and I will give my soul for your soul. Only stand fast, and believe me, because Christ has sent me. But he, hearing these things, stopped, and lowered his face to the ground; after this he threw away his weapons, then trembling he wept most bitterly, and threw himself at the knees of the old man approaching him, satisfying himself with such groans and wails as he could; and was again baptized by the most abundant fountains of his own tears, hiding only his right hand. The Apostle, however, promising him with the oath of a sacrament that he would obtain pardon for him from the Savior, and at the same time falling at his knees, and kissing that very right hand, by the consciousness of whose slaughter he was tormented, as if already purged by penance, calls him back to the Church, and pouring forth ceaseless prayers for him, and likewise undertaking with him frequent fasts, sought from God the indulgence which he had promised him. And by various consolations of speeches, as by certain incantations, he calmed his fierce and terrified mind. Nor did he desist before he had set him, in all things amended, even over the Church."
From this example of John, let Bishops, Pastors, Prefects, and Masters learn how much care they ought to take of every faithful one, even a young and lost one, entrusted to their care; and again, if one be lost, that the manner of recalling him is that which St. John here employed, namely the highest compassion, humility, and love. Whence St. Chrysostom, proposing this deed of St. John to the fallen Theodore, and exhorting him to penance, commends St. John's condescension and meekness, and his alluring sweetness, because he first kissed the bloody right hand, clinging in the embrace of the youth, and by this way led him back to lost virtue.
Furthermore, this privilege of the highest love and honor of reclining upon the breast of Christ was granted to John alone above all the Apostles for four reasons.
First, that he himself might be a witness of His incarnation and of His secrets beyond every exception, inasmuch as he had been nearest to Him and most intimate, and so had reclined in His bosom. Whence Rupert, explaining that passage of John xiii, 23: "There was therefore reclining one of His disciples in the bosom of Jesus, whom Jesus loved," says that John says this in order to support the credibility of his Gospel: "For this one," he says, "is especially a worthy witness of the faith, who was so present an eyewitness to the truth which he narrates, that he reclined in His bosom as a familiar and beloved one, and was admitted close to that Word above all mortals, which Word, having been brought forth from the heart of the Father, and made flesh, He had decreed to make resound more deeply through his tongue and pen." Whence St. John, sealing as it were with the same seal the credibility of his Gospel in the last chapter, when in verse 20 he had said of himself: "Who also reclined at the supper upon His breast," he adds in verse 24: "This is that disciple who bears witness of these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true;" and at the beginning of his Epistle: "That which was from the beginning," he says, "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life, etc., we testify and announce to you."
The second, to commend the beauty of virginity: for on account of this he deserved to be loved by Christ above the others, and to recline in His bosom. So in the same place Rupert says that there was fulfilled in St. John that saying of the Wise Man, Proverbs xxii, 11: "He who loves cleanness of heart, for the grace of his lips shall have the king as his friend; because, namely, on account of the excellent beauty of chastity, he was worthy from that very sacred fountain of the Lord's breast to drink the divinity of that same Word, and the secrets of the eternal Principle."
Whence St. Cyril, book IX on John, chapter xv, says that St. John exhorts us to live well, if we wish to attain knowledge of divine things. For he sets himself before us as an example, who was so loved by Christ that he sat in His bosom. For those especially draw near to God who are clean of heart, to whom a special gift is attributed by the Savior. For Blessed, He says, are men of clean heart, for they shall see God. Indeed this true beatification existed in John. For he saw the glory of Christ, as he himself testifies, glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father. For no one has seen the Father, except He who is from God, that is, the Son of God: but to those who remove themselves far from baseness, and are not agitated in mind by the empty cares of this life, Christ is wont to reveal His glory beyond what the human soul of itself can bear. Hence John himself in Apocalypse xiv, 1, saw the virgins near to the Lamb, following Him in all things, and singing a new song which no one else can sing.
Third, John reclined in the bosom of Christ that he might from there draw the more secret and sublime mysteries of the Gospel and the Apocalypse, which he should reveal to the world. Whence the Church in the Office of St. John, in the Responsory of the 8th lesson, sings: "This is John, who reclined upon the breast of the Lord at the supper. Blessed Apostle, to whom the heavenly secrets were revealed: he drank the streams of the Gospel from the very fountain of the Lord's breast." And therefore, as Bede says, the Gospel of St. John transcends all others in sublimity; and St. Augustine, tractate 18 on John: "John the Evangelist," he says, "among his fellow sharers and partners the other Evangelists, received this special and proper gift from the Lord, upon whose breast at the banquet he reclined, that by this it might be signified that he drank the deeper secrets from His inmost breast, that he might say of the Son of God those things which can perhaps stir up the attentive minds of little ones, but not yet fill those not capable of them." St. Chrysostom, in his Preface on St. John, says that the angels learned many things from St. John, and consequently that even the Cherubim and Seraphim themselves eagerly heard him thundering forth his Gospel and Apocalypse.
Fourth, that from the breast of Christ he might suck the delights of that same love, according to that of Canticles II, 5: "Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples, because I languish with love." He adds the cause: "His left hand under my head, and His right hand shall embrace me;" and St. John, Gospel chapter I, giving the cause why grace and truth came through Christ alone, adds: "No one has ever seen God; the Only-Begotten who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him to us," as if to say: Christ in the bosom of the Father drew all the Father's grace, love and wisdom, and communicated these to us, and so John drew the same things from the bosom of Christ, and communicated them to us. They say that the eagle (which is the emblem and insignia of St. John) loves above the others that chick which it has hatched with its own heart: thus Christ loved John more, upon whom He brooded with breast and heart. Whence St. Bernard, sermon 23 on the Canticle, when he had said that Magdalene found the fruit of her devotion at the feet of Christ, adds: "Furthermore, Thomas in the side, John on the breast, Peter in the bosom of the Father, Paul in the third heaven, have obtained the grace of this secret, etc. The first woman (Magdalene) made her bed for herself in the safety of humility and hope, Thomas in the solidity of faith, John in the breadth of charity, Paul in the inmost of wisdom, Peter in the light of truth." The same, or whoever the author is, in sermon 3 On the Lord's Supper: "Jesus," he says, "greatly loved him whom He raised up with such honor. O how well he rested, who rested upon the breast of Christ! O blessed Apostle of God, disciple of Jesus Christ, blessed John, would that I might deserve to bathe with tears, by kissing, those most sweet feet of Him on whose breast you deserved to sleep! Would that I could at least from afar contemplate the face of Him on whose breast you so sweetly deserved to sleep. By the bosom or breast was signified that secret, from which he drank the sacrament of the Divinity. Hence He loved John not more than all, but more familiarly, that he might depart from life through peace, not through passion."
Fifth, Christ, by placing John on His bosom and breast, as it were adopted him as a son. For parents are wont to draw their children as most dear pledges to the breast and bosom, and embrace them. Hence Christ dying on the cross substituted him as a son in His own place to His Mother, saying: "Woman, behold your son;" and to John: "Behold your mother." For grandsons, when a son dies, are wont to succeed grandfathers and grandmothers in his place of sonship and inheritance. O the exchange! exclaims St. Bernard, in the sermon on that passage of the Apocalypse, A great sign appeared in heaven: "John is handed over to you in place of Jesus, a servant for a Lord, a disciple for a Master, the son of Zebedee for the Son of God, a mere man for the true God." Therefore St. John was the Benjamin of the Blessed Virgin, indeed the Benjamin of Christ; and as it were a Benjamin, that is, the youngest born of the Apostles, and beyond all others gracious and tenderly beloved, he rested in the bosom of Christ. He therefore obtained the office of St. Gabriel the Archangel, that he should be the herald of Christ and the guardian of the Blessed Virgin; and therefore some hold that St. John, when he wished to adore the angel, was prohibited by him with
Hence it is clear that St. John was loved by Christ above the other Apostles, as St. Augustine expressly says, tractate 16 and 124 on John, and St. Chrysostom, homily 71 on John, Theophylact and Euthymius on John chapter xiii, and consequently that St. John in turn loved Christ most above the others. For he is loved more by Christ who loves Him more, and who has greater charity, John xiv, 21; and Proverbs viii, 17, Wisdom says: "I love them that love me." Furthermore St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian, holds that John was more loved by Christ because he was a virgin and the youngest of the Apostles. So also Euthymius in chapter xxiii of John asserts that John from boyhood had so much care of purity that he never allowed even an unchaste thought to ascend into his heart. St. Chrysostom adds another cause of love, namely the excellent humility of soul and meekness, which he had attained after he had been corrected concerning preeminence. A third Theophylact indicates: "John," he says, "was the most innocent, the most simple, the most meek of all, and therefore was loved." St. Thomas enumerates among the causes of love singular wisdom and vehemence of the love of God. Elsewhere he says that his youth claimed for him greater signs of benevolence and familiarity.
Sixth, St. John stood by Christ on the cross during the whole time of the Passion until His death, where indeed continually beholding Christ offering Himself as victim, and offered up for the salvation of the human race, he received from Him wonderful insights into divine things, and ardor for all virtues. The same was the first after Christ's resurrection to run with Peter to the tomb, indeed he outran Peter. The same, when Christ appeared to those fishing, was the first to recognize Him, saying: "It is the Lord;" which St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian, attributes to the merit of virginity: "Only," he says, "a virgin recognizes a virgin;" and elsewhere: "Prior virginity recognizes the virginal body;" and Cyril: "John," he says, "on account of the purity of his mind and the sharpness of the eyes of his heart was most apt for understanding; whence he alone immediately understood the sign, and recognized that Christ was present, and signified to the others without any doubting." But Chrysostom compares John with Peter: "Peter and John," he says, "display their own characters; the one was more fervent, the other higher; the one more vehement, the other more perspicacious: therefore John knew Jesus first, Peter hastened to Him first;" and Origen: "Peter," he says, "is set in the form of action and faith, but John imitates the type of contemplation and knowledge: for one reclined upon the Lord's breast, which is the ornament of contemplation; the other often stumbled, as if the symbol of trembling action."
Seventh, that Christ dying on the cross substituted John as it were as a brother for Himself, assigning him for Himself as a son to the Blessed Virgin: "Woman," He says, "behold thy son;" and in turn assigning her to John as a mother: "Behold," He says, "thy mother." Hence John, as the son of the Virgin, took care of her throughout his whole life, and was her custodian, guardian and provider, and dwelt with her at Ephesus; from whose continual familiarity and conversations how great a light of heavenly mysteries, how many fires of charity, how many proofs and incitements of all virtues he drew, anyone may easily conjecture. This is what John adds after citing Christ's words, John XIX, 27: "And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own" (others read in suam, that is, as his mother); in Greek eis ta idia, that is, into his own, namely his goods, says St. Ambrose, Enchir. ad Virgin., not temporal goods, which he had already abandoned for the love of Christ, but spiritual: "Receive," he says, "the Holy Spirit; for the mother of the Lord would not depart except to take possession of grace, where Christ had His dwelling;" and St. Augustine, tract. 119 on John: "The disciple," he says, "received her unto his own — not estates, of which he possessed none of his own, but the duties which by his own arrangement he was to discharge;" and St. Cyril, on chapter xix of St. John: "Christ," he says, "commended His Mother to the disciple, that he might preserve toward her the office of a son. He admonished the Mother likewise to hold the authority of a parent over the disciple: He willed that they should be joined no less by love and charity than if they were united by the closest tie of nature;" and St. Cyprian, in his treatise On the Passion: "Joseph bore equably," he says, "that John was preferred to himself in this service, judging him more worthy, and especially because the Master's choice so ordained the matter."
In the revelations of St. Bridget, which Cardinal Torquemada defends, and which not only learned Theologians approve — such as Michael Medina, Alphonsus Mendoza, Peter Canisius, Martin Delrio, etc. — but also the Pontiffs Boniface IX and Martin V in her Canonization, the following are reported about St. John: St. John appearing to St. Bridget and admonishing her to despise all the goods of the world, and in respect to eternal things to esteem them no more than the husks of swine, and to follow the way of the crucified God, which in its beginning is narrow but in its end joyful: "I," He says, "am he who more fully recognized the golden Scripture, and in recognizing it I increased it. I was stripped ignominiously, but because I bore it patiently, God clothed my soul with the garment of immortality. I was also anointed with oil; therefore now I rejoice in the oil of everlasting gladness. Moreover, after the Mother of God I passed from the world by the gentlest of deaths, because I was made the guardian of the Mother of God, and my body is in a most quiet and most secure place." So St. Bridget reports, book IV of the Revelations, chapter 1; and in chapter xxiii she relates that she heard the Blessed Virgin saying to St. John: "You among the Apostles drew nearer to me than the rest, and you experienced greater signs of love than the others, and the passion of My Son was more bitter to you, since you beheld it more clearly than the rest; and because you have lived longer than the rest of your brethren, and were as it were a martyr in the midst of them all (the Farnese Codex reads more plainly: and among them you were as it were a martyr), therefore it has pleased God to call you out of the world by the gentlest death after me, because a Virgin was commended to a virgin; therefore what you have asked shall be done, and it shall not be delayed."
Finally, that St. John still lives with Elijah and Enoch in the earthly Paradise, and will come with them at the end of the world to fight against Antichrist, was the opinion of Hippolytus in his treatise On the Consummation of the Age, and of many others, as Theophylact and Euthymius testify on chapter xxi of John. But it is certain that St. John has died: for the Church celebrates his feast on December 27th as one already blessed after death and reigning with Christ in heaven. Hear St. Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, on John: "Worn out with old age," he says, "in the sixty-eighth year after the Lord's Passion (which was the year of Christ 101), he died and was buried near the same city." The same is taught by Tertullian, St. Augustine, Chrysostom, Euthymius and others, whom Cardinal Baronius cites and follows at the beginning of tome II of the Annals. I shall say more of St. John in the Preface to the Apocalypse.
As to the third point, the argument of the Epistle is, first, to teach true faith, hope and charity. Faith — both concerning the Holy Trinity and concerning the Word Incarnate: which indeed no one has set forth more abundantly than St. John in the Gospel, and equally in this Epistle; and for that reason John is everywhere surnamed the Theologian, by St. Dionysius in his epistle to St. John, by Athanasius in the Synopsis, by Cyril in his Catechesis 12, by Chrysostom, by Epiphanius and others. Then he excites hope by recalling the excellence of the Evangelical state and the charity of the Father; who has separated us from the sons of the devil and has granted us to be called and to be the sons of God, and therefore sent His Son into the flesh, that by His passion and death He might take away sins and undo the works of the devil. Finally, above all things, he inculcates charity: that we should not love the world, but God who first loved us, and Christ, who died for love of us, and our neighbor, whom God and Christ command to be loved. Almost the whole Epistle, therefore, breathes the ardor and vehemence of charity. Hence St. Augustine in the Preface to this Epistle: "Charity," he says, "is most commended; for he is about to speak many things and almost everything about charity. He who has within himself wherewith to hear, must necessarily rejoice at what he hears. For thus will this lesson be to him as oil upon a flame." St. Jerome reports, on the last chapter to the Galatians, that St. John, weighed down with old age, in the assemblies preached nothing else than: "Little children, love one another." And when his hearers grew tired of always hearing the same thing, and asked the reason, he said: "Because it is the Lord's commandment, and if only this be done, it suffices."
Secondly, he refutes a double heresy then arising. The first was that of Cerinthus, Ebion and their followers, who denied the divinity of Christ. The second was that of Basilides and his followers, who denied the true humanity of Christ.
...at the beginning of the Epistle, and that "to the elect strangers" of the dispersion, as St. Peter says at the beginning of his Epistle. But the Parthians were called exiles by the Scythians, both impious and pious, not by the Greeks or Hebrews, as was St. John: for otherwise St. Peter and James, who write to those dispersed, would also have written to the Parthians: see Serarius. Properly, therefore, here I take Parthians, whose empire and name at that time was so ample as to embrace many nations of the East, even the Persians, as Tertullian testifies, in De Pallio, ch. II; Justin, bks. XLI and XLII; Solinus and Pliny, bk. VI, ch. xxv. That there were many Jews as well as Christians in Parthia, partly from the Jews, partly from the Gentiles, to all of whom St. John here writes, is gathered from Acts II, 9; and from Tertullian, bk. Against the Jews; and Josephus, bk. XIV Antiquities, ch. XII, and bk. XVI, ch. X, and bk. XVIII, ch. XII.
St. John therefore wrote to the Parthians, either because he had previously gone to them and imbued them with the faith of Christ, as Baronius and many others judge; or because the Ephesians and Asians to whom St. John preached, very many of whom were converted by him to Christ, migrated from Asia into neighboring Parthia and Persia; or because the faithful converted in Persia and Parthia by Simon the Cananaean, Bartholomew, and Thomas (for Sophronius, De Viris illustribus, and others, hand down that these preached to the Parthians and Persians), after these had died by martyrdom, asked from the aged St. John some monument of the Church by which they might be confirmed in Christian faith and life, or that St. John spontaneously offered it to them, being most thirsty for the conversion of the Gentiles and the propagation of the Gospel. For since the Apostles could not be present everywhere and evangelize, they performed this when absent through Epistles; therefore apostleship was discharged in place of an epistle, and the Epistle itself was as it were an apostle. Indeed Antonius Quadrius, Provincial of the Society of Jesus in East India, and Michael Barulus in Epistles given at Goa in the year of Christ 1555, write that even now some of the Persians profess the Christian faith, and ascribe it as received from St. John.
Interpreters agree that the Epistle was written in Greek, just as the others of SS. Peter, James, and Jude: for Greek speech, from the time of Alexander the Great, pervaded very many nations.
Moreover, that John kept silent about his own name at the beginning of the Epistle — what wonder is it? St. Paul did the same in the Epistle to the Hebrews. We today do the same, almost all of us, who do not place our name at the head of letters but subscribe it at the end, especially when the author of this Epistle was rather the Holy Spirit than St. John. The author therefore is asked about "most superfluously," says St. Gregory in the preface to Job, ch. I, "since the Holy Spirit is faithfully believed to be the author of the book. He Himself therefore wrote these things who dictated them to be written. If, having received letters from some great man, we read the words and inquired with what pen they had been written, it would surely be ridiculous," etc.
St. John appears, now an old man and as it were forgetful of all earthly things, panting for Christ, here as in the Gospel, absorbed by the greatness of the mystery and charity of Christ, with name and salutation alike omitted, to begin from the mystery itself so sublime, so that He carries the reader with Him, and thus insinuates that he is the author of this Epistle as well as of the Gospel. So Thomas the Englishman. The very words of the First Epistle indicate the same sufficiently, in which he wonderfully delights himself in and is enraptured with Christ incarnate.
Finally, that St. John wrote these Epistles in old age is clear from his very words, by which he calls himself elder, but the faithful little children, and as an old man scarcely inculcates anything but charity. In what year precisely he wrote is uncertain. It appears that he wrote them around the same time he wrote the Gospel; for they have great consonance with the Gospel. Hence Baronius assigns both that and these to the year of Christ 99, which was the seventh year of Pope Clement, of the emperor Nerva...
Let the golden saying of St. Gregory, hom. 15 on Ezekiel, close the argument: "Do we seek," he says, "to set our heart on fire with the fire of charity? Let us weigh the words of John, all of which that he speaks is exhaled with the fire of charity." For he breathes, repeats, and inculcates nothing other than love of God, of Christ, and of neighbor: just as old men and lovers think and speak of nothing other than that which they love and have loved their whole life.