[409] Rev. 1:9-11.
[410] Dr. Bloomfield, though himself of a different opinion, speaks thus of the views of others concerning the date of John’s gospel: “It has been the general sentiment, both of ancient and modern inquirers, that it was published about the close of the first century.”—Greek Testament with English Notes, vol. i. p. 328.
Morer says that John “penned his gospel two years later than the Apocalypse, and after his return from Patmos, as St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and Eusebius, affirm.”—Dialogues on the Lord’s Day, pp. 53, 54.
The Paragraph Bible of the London Religious Tract Society, in its preface to the book of John, speaks thus: “According to the general testimony of ancient writers, John wrote his gospel at Ephesus, about the year 97.”
In support of the same view, see also Religious Encyclopedia, Barnes’ Notes (gospels), Bible Dictionary, Cottage Bible, Domestic Bible, Mine Explored, Union Bible Dictionary, Comprehensive Bible, Dr. Hales, Horne, Nevins, Olshausen, &c.
[411] The Encyclopedia Britannica, in its article concerning the Sabbath, undertakes to prove that the “religious observation of the first day of the week is of apostolical appointment.” After citing and commenting upon all the passages that could be urged in proof of the point, it makes the following candid acknowledgment: “Still, however, it must be owned that these passages are not sufficient to prove the apostolical institution of the Lord’s day, or even the actual observation of it.”
The absence of all scriptural testimony relative to the change of the Sabbath, is accounted for by certain advocates of that theory, not by the frank admission that it never was changed by the Lord, but by quoting John 21:25, assuming the change of the Sabbath as an undoubted truth, but that it was left out of the Bible lest it should make that book too large! They think, therefore, that we should go to Ecclesiastical history to learn this part of our duty; not seeing that, as the fourth commandment still stands in the Bible unrepealed and unchanged, to acknowledge that that change must be sustained wholly outside of the Bible, is to acknowledge that first-day observance is a tradition which makes void the commandment of God. The following chapters will, however, patiently examine the argument for first-day observance drawn from ecclesiastical history.
[412] Gen. 2:3.
[413] Ex. 16:23.
[414] Ex. 20:8-11.