Cornelius a Lapide
Preface
In former times some doubted about the authority of these two following Epistles, and judged that they were of John not the Apostle, but the Presbyter, because at the beginning he calls himself elder, in Greek πρεσβύτερον: so Eusebius reports, Histor. bk. III, last chapter, and St. Jerome, De Script. Eccles., on John, and so Erasmus thinks and Cajetan doubts. But now it is of faith that both are Canonical Scripture, written by St. John the Apostle. This is plain first, from the definition of the Council of Trent, session IV, and of the Third Council of Carthage, ch. XLVII, and of Laodicea, ch. LIX, and the 84th Apostolic canon, from St. Athanasius, epist. 39, where he reviews the books of the New Scripture, and from Gregory of Nazianzus in his poem De Libris S. Script.
Second, from the Fathers, namely Irenaeus, bk. III, ch. xiii; St. Augustine, De Doctr. Christ. bk. II, ch. viii; Damascene, De Orthod. fide bk. IV, ch. xviii, Didymus, Clement of Alexandria, Oecumenius, Bede, and others here. So also Beza and the modern heretics judge. Hear St. Jerome, epist. to Paulinus: "James, Peter, John, and Jude the Apostles published seven Epistles, as mystical as they are succinct and short, and at once long: short in words, long in meanings, so that he is rare who does not grow blind from their reading." Elsewhere in the epist. to Evagrius, which is the 85th: "The son of thunder sounds the trumpet, whom Jesus loved most, who from the breast of the Savior drank the streams of doctrines: The Presbyter to the Elect Lady and to her sons, whom I love in truth." Hence Tertullian cites the sayings of these two Epistles as if of Holy Scripture, De Præscript., ch. XXXIII; St. Chrysostom, hom. 19 on Matthew; St. Cyril, bk. VIII De Adoratione in spiritu et veritate; St. Ambrose on Psalm xxxvi; St. Gregory, Moral. XXXI, vii; St. Ephrem in Interrogationibus et Responsionibus; Rufinus, Idacius, Cassiodorus and others, whom Jodocus Coccius cites in his Thesaurus Catholicus, bk. VI, art. 26. The Syriac version of these two Epistles and of St. Jude, which is missing in the Complutensian Bibles, our Serrarius published in his Commentary on them.
Third, the similarity of style and matter shows that these two Epistles are by the same author as the first, namely St. John the Apostle. Hear Baronius, in the year of Christ 99, ch. IX: "Surely, if ever it has been permitted to judge sons begotten of the same parent from the resemblance of their faces, anyone may easily understand that those three Epistles, presenting one and the same image in words, sentences, style, and character, were written by one and the same author. First of all, as regards the words and sentences, this can be shown in many places; as when he says in the first: I am not writing you a new commandment, but an old commandment; and in the second likewise: not as writing you a new commandment, but that which we have had from the beginning. Again in the first: Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; whoever confesses the Son also has the Father. And in the second he renders the same meaning in nearly these very words: Whoever departs and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, does not have God; whoever abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. Likewise what he has in the first: Everyone born of God does not commit sin, in the third he has the same in these words: Whoever does good is of God; and whoever is born of God does not commit sin. And what he has in the first: That we love in deed and in truth, the same he frequently inculcates in the second and third regarding loving in truth. Again, while in the first he has these words: Many false prophets have gone out into the world: By this is the Spirit of God known: Every spirit who confesses that Christ has come in the flesh is of God; and every one who dissolves Jesus, is not of God, and this is Antichrist; in the second, rendering the same meaning in nearly the same words, he says: Many seducers have gone out into the world: Whoever does not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh, this is the seducer and Antichrist. Again in the first: This is charity, that we keep his commandments; and in the second: This is charity, that we walk
according to His commandments. But the frequent inculcation of charity, of love, and of truth that is made in those three Epistles plainly declares that in those two Epistles the same genuine image of John shines forth and is clearly seen as in the first."
To the objection I reply that St. John inscribes himself as "Presbyter," that is elder, both because in that age Presbyter and Bishop were used for the same thing, as I have shown on 1 Timothy IV, 14, and as St. Jerome teaches in the same place, epist. 85 to Evagrius; and because St. John, already decrepit and senior in apostolic dignity and in fullness of years, was the elder of all Christians. For he was the last of the Apostles to live, surviving even to the reign of Trajan, dying about the year 101 from the incarnation of Christ, which was 68 from Christ's passion: so St. Jerome in the place cited, and Baronius.