[179]Cf. Tit. ii. 13, 2 Thess. ii. 8, etc.
[180]The reference is to 2 Thess. ii. 1 and 1 John iii. 2.
[181]It does not appear to whom Dionysius addressed this treatise, but he usually did address what he wrote to some particular person.
[182]Here the two offices are conjoined as in 1 Tim. v. 17. The “teacher” as an officer of the Church is mentioned in several of the early Church Orders.
[183]Nothing more is known of him: either he had succeeded to the leadership since the death of Nepos, or on this particular occasion took the lead.
[184]The allusion is probably to Gaius of Rome and his school rather than to the Alogi, as they were called, of the East; but both these bodies were strongly opposed to Millenarian views.
[185]If this refers to a formal division into chapters, it disappeared afterwards, for a new division was devised in the sixth century, on which our present system is partly based.
[186]Dionysius plays here on the meaning of the Greek word for Revelation, ἀποκάλυψις, “unveiling.” He is fond of such a device.
[187]If that is the meaning of the words employed, then “saints” (ἅγιοι) is not used in its New Testament sense for the “faithful” generally, but a distinction is made more like the later use of the word for those who attained higher saintliness than the rest; but perhaps the phrase for “churchmen” implies “clerical or ecclesiastical persons,” and “saints” has its earlier sense.
[188]Cerinthus was the earliest exponent of Gnostic views, and as such much abhorred by St. John the Apostle.