1. St. John’s Ghospel may be divided into four parts.

2. The first part is, of the Acts of Christ before his solemn manifestation of himself, while John Baptist was yet baptizing: Chap. 1. 2. 3. 4.

3. The second, of his Acts in Jewry (having now begun his solemn manifestation in Galilee, Mat. 4, 12.) the second Easter or Pasch of his preaching: Chap. 5. For of the first Pasch, we had in the first part. chap. 2, 13: And the Pasch of * the Jews was at hand. And that feast whereof we have in this second part, chap. 5, 1: After this there was a festival day of * the Jews, is thought of good Authors, to be the feast of Pasch.

4. The third part is, of his Acts in Galilee, and in Jewry, about the third Pasch, and after it: chap. 6, to the 12. For so we have chap. 6, 4: And Pasch the festival day of * the Jews was at hand.

5. The fourth part is of the fourth Pasch (which we have in the end of the chap. 11, 55: And the Pasch of * the Jews was at hand) that is to say, of the Holy week of his Passion in Jerusalem: chap. 12. unto the end of the book.

6. By which division it is manifest, that the intent of this Evangelist writing after the other three, was, to omit the Acts of Christ in Galilee, because the other three had written them at large: and to report his Acts done in Jewry, which they had omitted.

7. And this he doth, because Jewry with Jerusalem and the Temple, being the principal part of the Country, there abode the principal of the Jews, both for authority, and also for learning in the law or knowledge of the Scriptures, and therefore that was the place, where our Lord Jesus finding in the Head itself and in the leaders of the rest, such wilful obstinacy and desperate resistance, as the Prophets had foretold, did by this occasion, much more plainly than in Galilee, both say and prove, at sundry times, even every year of his preaching, himself to be the Christ that had been so long promised unto them, and expected of them: and the same Christ to be not only a man, as they imagined, but also the natural, consubstantial, and co-eternal Son of God the Father, who now had sent him. Therefore these were the words and deeds that served best the purpose of this Evangelist, being to show the glory and excellence of this person Jesus: that thereby the Gentiles might see how worthily Jerusalem and the Jews were reprobated who had refused yea and crucified such an one: and how well and to their own salvation themselves might do, to receive him and to believe in him. For this to have been his purpose, himself declareth in the end, saying: These are written, that you may believe that Jesus is Christ the Son of God: and that believing, you may have life in his name.

8. And hereupon it is, that St. Jerome writeth thus in his life: John the Apostle, ^a whom Jesus loved very much, the ^b son of Zebedee, ^b the brother of James the Apostle ^c whom Herod after our Lord’s Passion beheaded, last of all wrote the Ghospel, at the request of the Bishops of Asia, against Cerinthus, and other Heretics, and specially against the assertion of the Ebionites then rising, who say that Christ was not before MARIE. Whereupon also he was compelled to utter his Divine Nativity.

9. Of his three Epistles, and of his Apocalypse, shall be said in their own places.

10. It followeth in St. Jerome, that In the Second persecution under Domitian, fourteen years after the persecution of Nero he was exiled into the isle Patmos. But after that Domitian was slain, and his acts for his passing cruelty repealed by the Senate; under Nerva the Emperor he returned to Ephesus, and there continuing unto the time of Trajan the Emperor, he founded and governed all the Churches of Asia: and worn with old age, he died the threescore and eight year after the Passion of our Lord, and was buried besides the same city.

11. Whose excellence the same holy Doctor thus briefly describeth. lib. 1. Advers. Jovinianum.

12. JOHN the Apostle, one of our Lord’s Disciples, who was the yongest among the Apostles, and whom the faith of Christ found a virgin, remained a virgin, and therefore is ^a more loved of our Lord, and ^a lieth upon the breast of Jesus: and that which Peter durst not ask, ^a he desireth him to ask. And after the resurrection, when Mary Magdalen had reported that our Lord was risen again, both of them ran to the Sepulchre, ^b but he came thither first: and when they were in the ship and fished in the lake of Genesareth, Jesus stood on the shore, neither did the Apostles know whom they saw: ^c only the virgin, knoweth the virgin and saith to Peter: It is our Lord. This John was both an Apostle, and Evangelist, and Prophet. An Apostle, because he wrote to the Churches as a Master: an Evangelist, because he compiled a book of the Ghospel, which (except Matthew) none other of the Twelve Apostles did: a Prophet, for he saw in the isle Patmos, where he was banished by Domitian the Emperor for the testimony of our Lord, the Apocalypse, containing infinite mysteries of things to come. Tertullian also reporteth, that at Rome being cast into a barrel of hot boiling oil, he came forth more pure and fresher or livelier, than he went in. Yea and his Ghospel itself much differeth from the rest. Matthew beginneth to write as of a man: Mark of the prophecy of Malachy and Esay. Luke of the Priesthood of Zachary: The first hath the face of a man, because of the genealogy: the second the face of a lion, for the voice of one crying in the desert: the third the face of a calf, because of the Priest-hood. But John as an Eagle flieth to the things on high, and mounteth to the Father himself, saying: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. Thus far St. Jerome.

13. Upon this Ghospel there are the famous commentaries of St. Augustine called Tractatus in Evang. Joan. to. 9. and twelve books of St. Cyril’s commentaries.