[14:2] 1 Cor. x. 7, 8, 14, 21. When the season of persecution arrived, and the constancy of Christians was tested in this very way, St Paul's own principles would require a correspondingly rigid abstinence from even apparent complicity in idolatrous rites. There is every reason therefore to believe that, if St Paul had been living when the Apocalypse was written, he would have expressed himself not less strongly on the same side. On the other hand these early Gnostics who are denounced in the Apocalypse seem, like their successors in the next generation, to have held that a Christian might conform to Gentile practices in these matters to escape persecution. St Paul combats this spirit of license, then in its infancy, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians.
[14:3] [On the diction of the Fourth Gospel see below, p. 131 sq.]
[14:4] II. p. 445.
[15:1] [The Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel (1872). Macmillans.]
[15:2] Our author (II. p. 444) speaks of 'the works of imagination of which the world is full, and the singular realism of many of which is recognized by all.' Is this a true description of the world in the early Christian ages? If not, it is nothing to the purpose.
[15:3] II. p. 389. 'Apologists' lay stress on the difference of theme. [See below, p. 131 sq.]
[15:4] [He does however mention the term elsewhere; see below, p. 123.]
[15:5] II. p. 468, and elsewhere.
[16:1] II. p. 451.
[16:2] [These passages are added without comment in the Complete Edition in a note on II. p. 453.]