This fable of his journey to Rome is by all its propagators connected
with the well-authorized incident of his banishment to Patmos. This
event, given on the high evidence of the Revelation which bears his
name, is by all the best and most ancient authorities, referred to the
period of the reign of Domitian. The precise year is as much beyond any
means of investigation, as most other exact dates in his and all the
other apostles’ history. From the terms in which the ancient writers
commemorate the event, it is known, with tolerable certainty, to have
occurred towards the close of the reign of Domitian, though none of the
early Fathers specify the year. The first who pretend to fix the date,
refer it to the fourteenth year of that emperor, and the most critical
among the moderns fix it as late; and some even in the fifteenth or
last year of his reign; since that persecution of the Christians,
during which John seems to have been banished, may be fairly presumed,
from the known circumstances as recorded in history, to have been
the last great series of tyrannical acts committed by this remarkably
wicked monarch. It certainly appears, from distinct assertions in the
credible records of ecclesiastical history, that there was a great
persecution begun about this time by Domitian, against the Christians;
but there is no reasonable doubt that the extent and vindictiveness of
it has been very much overrated, in the rage among the later Fathers,
for multiplying the sufferings of the early Christians far beyond the
truth. The first Christian writers who allude to this persecution very
particularly, specify its character as far less aggravated than that
of Nero, of which they declare it to have been but a shadow,――and the
persecutor himself but a mere _fraction_ of Nero in cruelty. There is
not a single authenticated instance of any person’s having suffered
death in this persecution; all the creditable historians who describe
it, most particularly demonstrate that the whole range of punishments
inflicted on the subjects of it, was confined to banishment merely.
Another reason for supposing that this attack on the Christians was
very moderate in its character, is the important negative fact, that
not one heathen historian makes the slightest mention of any trouble
with the new sect, during that bloody reign; although such repeated,
vivid accounts are given of the dreadful persecution waged by Nero,
as related above, in the Life of Peter. It is reasonable to suppose,
therefore, that there were no great cruelties practised on them; but
that many of them, who had become obnoxious to the tyrant and his
minions, were quietly put out of the way, that they might occasion
no more trouble,――being sent from Rome and some of the principal
cities, into banishment, along with many others whose removal was
considered desirable by the rulers of Rome or the provinces; so that
the Christians, suffering with many others, and some of high rank and
character, a punishment of no very cruel nature, were not distinguished
by common narrators, from the general mass of the banished; but were
noticed more particularly by the writers of their own order, who thus
specified circumstances that otherwise would not have been made known.
Among those driven out from Ephesus at this time, John was included,
probably on no special accusation otherwise than that of being
prominent as the last survivor of the original founders, among these
members of the new faith, who by their pure lives were a constant
reproach to the open vices of the proud heathen around them; and by
their refusal to conform to idolatrous observances, exposed themselves
to the charge of non-conformity to the established religion of the
state,――an offence of the highest order even among the Romans, whose
tolerance of new religions was at length limited by the requisition,
that no doctrine whatever should be allowed to aim directly at the
overthrow of the settled order of things. When, therefore, it began
to be apprehended that the religion of Jesus would, in its progress,
overcome the securities of the ancient worship of the Olympian gods,
those who felt their interests immediately connected with the system of
idolatry, in their alarmed zeal for its support, made use of the worst
specimens of imperial tyranny to check the advancing evil.