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S. Paul, we have seen, was accused by the Jews, before Felix, the Governor of Judea, of being the author of the seditious sect of the Nazarenes. He nevertheless boldly preached the Christian faith to the Governor, who found no wrong in him, but kept him bound to please the Jews. Two years later, Festus, the new Governor, was besought by the Jews, who wanted to kill S. Paul. Festus brought him to trial, but as S. Paul, a Roman citizen, appealed to Cæsar, the Governor decided to send him to Cæsar. This Cæsar was Nero. King Agrippa and his wife, Bernice, in the company of Festus, again examined S. Paul, before he left for Rome. Again S. Paul publicly preached Jesus of Nazareth. "And Agrippa said to Paul, In a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian. And Agrippa said to Festus, This man might have been set at liberty if he had not appealed to Cæsar" (Acts xxvi. 28 f.). This happened about A.D. 61. It shows that no edict of Nero's against Christianity was then known at Jerusalem, or consequently at Ephesus. S. Paul when at Rome was allowed to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him. Here he wrote his epistles and preached the Gospel of Christ, "without prohibition" (Acts xxviii. 30, 31).

When S. John came to Ephesus a new civilization opened out before him. He found a city in which the arts of Greece and Rome were wedded to the gorgeous inspiration of the East by wealth and power; a city steeped in luxury and vice. Its temple of Diana was one of the wonders of the world. Several of its hundred columns were adorned with life-size figures, sculptured in bold relief. On its altars were statues by Praxiteles and Phidias. It had its stadia, baths, basilicas, temples, and private mansions, rivalling those of Rome. Great streams of commerce flowing west to Rome, passed through its port, merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and silk, purple and scarlet, vessels of ivory, brass, and iron, etc. (R. xviii. 12).

Smyrna and Pergamos rivalled Ephesus in wealth and magnificence. This rivalry was especially marked as regards the Niokórate. The title of Newkopos was conferred by the Senate upon a provincial town which erected and dedicated a temple and games to the Imperial Gods. Smyrna, Pergamos, and Sardis had each in turn obtained the Niokórate. When S. John came upon the scene all the great cities around him were devoted to Cæsar worship. The Hellenised Asiatics were used to hero worship. They liked it. They even clamoured for the honour of erecting temples to the Cæsars, as soon as their apotheosis came into view. S. John saw that Cæsar worship was the chief obstacle to the spread of Christianity.

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not only identified the Imperial religion with loyalty to the Empire. It subjected both religion and loyalty to the sway of one whose vices were hallowed by the honour which clothes a divinity.

S. John's Revelation shows how he was moved to fight against it with all the energy and fire of prophetic denunciation. The time was at hand when the conflict between Cæsar worship and Christianity would soak the stadia of Rome with Christian blood. At the close of the year 64 news reached Ephesus of startling events at Rome; how the Christians were accused of having set fire to Rome, and were being massacred by order of Nero and how the chief of the Apostles, S. Peter, was first among the slain.

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Some two years later, at the beginning of 67, S. John is believed to have been arrested at Ephesus and banished to Patmos "for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus (R. i. 9). Persecution spread slowly from Rome to Ephesus. The charge of arson which gave rise to the attack on the Christians of Rome, and gave some apparent justification to the severity of their treatment, could not be laid against their co-religionists in the Province of Asia. Religious persecution was in those days contrary to the foreign policy of the Empire. The Roman world was getting tired of the tyranny of Nero. The frequent executions of Christians, who were for the most part Italians or barbarians, produced a reaction against Nero. The formidable conspiracy of Piso, which took place in the year 65, showed that public opinion was turning against him. Tacitus puts it on record that "It was evident that they (the Christians) fell a sacrifice, not to the public good, but to glut the rage and cruelty of one man" (Anls. xiv. 44).

The circumstances of S. John's banishment to Patmos are not exactly known. His own statement, "I John ... was in the island which is called Patmos, for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus" (R. i. 9) is open to the interpretation that he went to Patmos to receive the Revelation. But there is the unanimous tradition of the early Church that he was banished to Patmos for the word of God as an act of persecution. If Nero's edicts regarding Christians were enforced in Asia Minor that might be. But Nero was at that time, the end of A.D. 66, so proud of his Olympian successes, that he enfranchised the Greeks, who were high in his favour. But Hellenised Asia was to Greece what Canada is to England, and persecution there would not be in harmony with Nero's attitude towards Greece.

It is very important to note the chief political and social events which impressed S. John's mind when he was exiled to

Patmos. They gave him his last impressions of the world beyond his prison. They were fixed as a photograph on his mind, and would naturally be reflected in his writings.

Tiridates, the Arsacid, had just gone to Rome to be crowned King of Armenia. Nero strove to turn this incident into a Roman triumph by a lavish display of pomp and pageantry. The signs of the impending fall of Jerusalem were as the writing on the wall at Baltassar's feast. In the year 65 Gessius Florus, the Roman Procurator of Jesusalem so maltreated the Jews that he tried to procure them to make a revolt (Josephus Wars ii. 15). In the year 66 he seized the Temple treasure and crucified many of the Jews. Seditions and fighting followed. Florus was driven out of Jerusalem. Then Eleazar, Governor of the Temple, refused to offer up the customary sacrifice for Cæsar. Josephus says, "This was the true beginning of our war with the Romans" (Wars ii. 17). Late in the year 66, Cestius appeared before the walls of Jerusalem, with an army. These were the signs foretold to S. John, of the fall of the Temple (Luke xxi. 20). For two long years the bitter cry of the martyrs of Rome, "How long O Lord," had been ringing in his ears. S. Peter was dead. S. John stood alone, the last of the Apostles, who had seen and handled the Word of life (1 Jhn. 1). The burthen of the Church seemed to rest upon his shoulders. The contest between Cæsar Worship and Christianity had reached the shores of Asia. He was a prisoner, sentenced to exile. The outlook of the Church was of the blackest. But the darkest hour comes before the dawn. The magisterial decree which transferred S. John from the stress of Church leadership at Ephesus to a lonely island in the neighbouring Ægean Sea, was in the design of Providence a preparation for his great Revelation.

Whether owing to persecution, or not, S. John went to Patmos at a most important crisis in the history of the Church. We must look for the genesis of his Revelation in the circumstances of the time. His life had been spared by our Lord, in order that he might warn the Nazarene Church of the advent of the great catastrophe which was to befall the Temple and the Jewish race. It was about to come to pass. The Revelation is addressed to the Servants of God, the Jewish leaders of the Church, "to make known to his servants the things which must shortly come to pass" (R. i. 1). That appears to be the immediate cause of the Revelation. The denunciation of Cæsar worship seems to have been its secondary cause.

Victorinus, in his Latin Commentary on the Apoc. (c. 300) says that S. John was condemned to "the mines of Patmos" in metallum damnatus. This would indicate hard labour. A

visitor to Patmos, some twenty-five years ago, found stone quarries of uncertain date, in the hills in the north of the island, but no trace of mines (T. C. Fitzpatrick, Christ Coll. Mag., 1867). The Romans had two forms of banishment, one deportatio, which was for life, with loss of rights and property. This sentence was reserved to the Emperor and the City Prefect of Rome. The other, relegatio, was not always for life, and did not interfere with civil rights and property. S. John was not banished from Rome, or by direct sentence of the Emperor. The Romans were not banished to Patmos. He therefore suffered relegatio. Tertullian twice applies the term relegatio to the banishment of S. John (Apol. 5 De Praes Haeret c. 36) and S. Jerome uses the same word. There is reason to believe that exiled Bishops of the early Church were allowed a good deal of latitude. Dionysius of Alexandria was permitted to preach the Gospel to the Libyans, whilst suffering banishment (Euseb. H. E. vii. 11). It is possible that S. John, at Patmos, had equal freedom.

S. John's first care, at Patmos, would be to warn his beloved Nazarene Church to flee from Jerusalem. On the Lord's day, or Christian Sunday, he sought guidance in fervent prayer. He was in the Spirit and heard behind him "a great voice" which gave him this Revelation (R. i. 10). He was told of the completion of the martyr's roll, of the destruction of the Temple and the punishment of the Jews, of the ruin of Rome and fall of the Empire. And he was ordered to write a Book about it. "Write therefore the things which thou hast seen and which are and which must be done hereafter" (R. i. 19). This Book, "the Revelation," contained so much matter that would be considered treasonable by Roman magistrates, that he veiled its meaning in a cypher of Old Testament symbolism, intelligible to the Servants of God, but unknown to the Roman world.

The Book was a manuscript, written on papyrus, a paper made on the banks of the Nile from the Egyptian paper reed. The Apocalypse formed a bulky volume. It was laboriously inscribed in Greek uncials, or capital letters, and must have taken a long time to write. Papyrus paper was very awkward to manipulate, requiring the smooth support of a board or table on which to write. It would not lend itself to hurried or secret writing. S. John's book and his labours upon it must have attracted public attention. Under no system of Roman discipline could his writing have passed unchallenged. It is probable that some of S. John's guards and fellow exiles were converted to Christianity and with their aid the book was written and smuggled off to Ephesus. The passage of ships from the safe harbour of Patmos to the neighbouring port of Ephesus,

would facilitate the transmission, and changing guards and the release of exiles would afford the opportunity. The Book was sent to S. John's followers at Ephesus, probably with verbal instructions to keep it a profound secret. It was a dangerous charge. If its meaning leaked out it would involve everyone in any way connected with it, in the penalty of death.

A copy of it should be sent at once to the Churches of Jerusalem and Rome. That was not an easy task, for Jerusalem was at war with Rome, and Rome was at war with the Church. There is evidence, however, that the Book was despatched and reached Jerusalem and Rome early in the year 67 A.D.

In the month of June, 68, Nero died by the sword, hated and despised. S. John was released from Patmos and returned to Ephesus. He probably then took the safe custody of his book into his own hands. The denunciations of Cæsar worship in it are but thinly veiled. Although persecutions ceased, the institutes of Nero-Institutum Neronianum-regarding Christianity, remained unrepealed and constituted a species of outlawry against Christians (Tertullian Ad Nat. i. 17). For the time being a dead letter, they might easily be revived if the passions of the mob were again inflamed against Christians. There were Hellenised Jews in the Cities of Asia, who could understand the Revelation, and who would gladly wrest it to the destruction of Christianity.

There was a custom observed in the early Church of concealing from unseasoned Christians as well as from pagans the more intimate mysteries of religion. Political dangers as well as the fear of sacrilege prompted this secretiveness. It rested also on the words of our Saviour (Matt. vii. 6). S. Paul alludes to it in 1 Cor. iii. 1-2 and in Heb. v. 12-14. It was known as "the Discipline of the Secret." Catechumens were not taught the doctrines of confirmation, holy orders, and the Holy Eucharist until they were considered worthy of being made full members of the Church. The graphic art of the early church illustrates the same law. It was symbolism of the most recondite character. A common symbol was a fish. The Greek word for fish is 'Ix0ús. These Greek letters form the initials of a sentence. ̓Ιησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ Ψιός Σωτήρ. " Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." A fish painted over a tomb signified a baptised christian.

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Apart from political and religious motives of secrecy, there were insuperable difficulties in the way of explaining the Apocalypse to the men of the first century. They could not understand events which were to happen centuries after their time. Even the "Servants of God" could not know anything

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