Section 4. St. John's Writings.
St. John's writings close the Canon.
The Gospel, Epistles, and Revelation of St. John, written as they were at a long interval after the rest of the New Testament, and closing the Canon of Sacred Scripture, may be usefully referred to, as giving us some idea of the appearance of the Church when its government and theology were finally settled.
How his Gospel differs from the other three.
St. John's Gospel differs from those of the other three Evangelists in having been written for men who from their infancy had grown up in the Faith of Christ, and who were thus more ready to enter into and profit by deep sacramental doctrine; whilst at the same time the dangerous heresies which were beguiling souls from the truth, called for more detailed and dogmatic teaching than had at first been needed. Dwells on our Lord's Divinity, Hence in place of an account of our Lord's Human Birth, St. John sets forth His Eternal Godhead and wonderful Incarnation, leaving no space for unbelief or cavil, when he proclaims for the instruction of the Church, that "the Word was God," and yet that He also "was made Flesh." and on the two Sacraments. Again, the last Gospel does not bring before us the Institution of the two great Sacraments of the Christian Covenant; though it, and it alone, does record the teaching of our Blessed Lord Himself with regard to the New Birth in Holy Baptism, and the constant Nourishment of the renewed life in the Holy Eucharist.
The Epistles correct heresies.
Having established the Faith in His Gospel, St. John in his Epistles sternly censures heresy and schism, thus witnessing to the end of time that the charity of the Church must never lead her to countenance false doctrine.
The Apocalypse sets forth Discipline and Worship.
We may look to the Book of the Revelation for some light as to the discipline and worship of the Church of St. John's days. We have there in the mention of the Seven Angels or Bishops, each ruling over his own Church and answerable for its growth in holiness, a confirmation of the fact that episcopacy was now fully organized as the one form of Church government which had replaced the extinct hierarchy of the former dispensation. Nor does it seem unreasonable to believe that St. John's vision of the Worship of Heaven was intended to supply to the Christian Church a model to be copied so far as circumstances should permit in the courts of the Lord's House on earth, much as the elaborate system of Temple Worship, which was entirely swept away with the destruction of Jerusalem, had been in all things ordered "according to the pattern" which the Lord had "showed" first to Moses and afterwards to David. That the Primitive Church did thus consider the Heavenly Ritual set forth in the Apocalypse as the ideal of worship on earth, is proved by the accounts which have come down to us of the arrangement of Churches and the manner of celebrating the Holy Eucharist in early times.
Arrangement of Churches in primitive times.