Philip Schaff

“ Nevertheless the truth is to be prized and reverenced above all things else. And while it is indeed proper to praise and approve ungrudgingly anything that is said aright, it is no less proper to examine and correct anything which may appear to have been written unsoundly. ”

“ I am also of opinion that there were many persons of the same name with John the apostle, who by their love for him, and their admiration and emulation of him, and their desire to be loved by the Lord as he was loved, were induced to embrace also the same designation, just as we find many of the children of the faithful called by the names of Paul and Peter. ”

“ Irenæus was certainly of the number of those who held millennial views, and who had been persuaded to embrace such by Papias, as Jerome himself tells us in the Catalogus and as Eusebius explains towards the close of the third book of his History. But that this book by Dionysus was written not against Irenæus but against Nepos, is evident, not only from this passage in Eusebius, but also from Jerome himself, in his work On Ecclesiastical Writers, where he speaks of Dionysius.—Vales. ”

“ And likewise toward the end he speaks thus: “Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book; and I John who saw these things and heard them.” [20] That it is a John, then, that writes these things we must believe, for he himself tells us.
5. What John this is, however, is uncertain. For he has not said, as he often does in the Gospel, that he is the disciple beloved by the Lord, or the one that leaned on His bosom, or the brother of James, or one that was privileged to see and hear the Lord. ”

“ For the evangelist nowhere else subjoins his name, and he never proclaims himself either in the Gospel or in the epistle.
And a little further on he adds:—John, moreover, nowhere gives us the name, whether as of himself directly (in the first person) , or as of another (in the third person) . But the writer of the Revelation puts himself forward at once in the very beginning, for he says: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which He gave to him to show to His servants quickly ”

“ Christophorsonus interprets this of psalms and hymns composed by Nepos. It was certainly the practice among the ancient Christians to compose psalms and hymns in honour of Christ. Eusebius bears witness to this in the end of the fifth book of his History. Mention is made of these psalms in the Epistle of the Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, and in the penultimate canon of the Council of Laodicea, where there is a clear prohibition of the use of ψαλμοὶ ἰδιωτικοί in the church, i.e., of psalms composed by private individuals. ”