With the Lord's help, as we are about to treat of it, we must necessarily interpret the title, designate the place, relate the discourse, and make known the person, so that by its name the contents may be announced, by its place it may be recognized, and by its time. Through the occasion let the dignity of merits shine forth, and let the person signify one in the company of the rest, to whom one ought specially to assign the gift bestowed. For since it is established that each several book is entitled with diverse names, it was fitting to call the heading, that is, the superscription, of this one 'Apocalypse.' For John, though a Hebrew, being set among the Greeks, expressed the tenor of the book by the property of the Greek tongue; for 'Apocalypse' is interpreted 'revelation.' And to whom should the Lord Jesus Christ reveal such and so great things,
if not to him whom, above the other disciples, He loved with such special love, that while he was still in this life, by a happy lot He caused him to recline in bodily presence upon His breast, and abundantly to draw the secrets of spiritual truth from the very fountain of life, so that, this token of His love going before, it might be thought doubtful to no one that John was worthy of such a revelation? For it was fitting first to commend the greatness of the revelation by the greatness of His love. Now he was deemed worthy to see these things at that time when, for Christ's sake, he was sent into exile on the island of Patmos by Domitian Caesar and condemned to the mines, shut up and confined within its bounds.
Fittingly indeed are both time and place applied, so that where and when he was thought to be bound by human custody, there, transcending in mind the bounds of humanity, he might deserve to see divine things with free contemplation, and he to whom fixed spaces of earth were then denied to pass beyond, might be granted to penetrate the heavenly secrets. Thus the faith of Christ claims heaven for itself even on earth, when, using temporal evils well, it enjoys eternal goods. And so the general goods of the universal Church are indeed revealed to one, but are proclaimed as destined to profit all. What, in the end, he alone saw, he transmitted in writing to the seven Churches, so that one might take counsel for unity, and might teach that he had laboured not for himself alone, but for all.
But afterward he wrote the Gospel, when, after the death of Domitian, an assembly of many priests entreated him—now free from exile—not to allow the ignorant to be deceived by the corruption of false preachers. For Valentinus, Cerinthus, and Ebion had already begun to ensnare many of their own with falsehoods, whom it was right to refute by the newness of the true Gospel, so that they might be brought to naught.