[141] The appeal to the senses of _seeing_ and _hearing_ is a trait common to _all_ the group of St. John's writings (John i. 14, xix. 35; 1 John i. 1, 2, iv. 14; Apoc. i. 2). The true reading (καγω Ιωαννης ὁ ακουων και βλεπων ταυτα. Apoc. xxi. 8, where _hearing_ stands before _seeing_) is indicative of John's style. [142] 1 John v. 6-12. [143] That the "Acts of Paul and Thecla" are of high antiquity there can be no rational doubt. Tertullian writes: "But if those who read St. Paul's writings rashly use the example of Thecla, to give licence to women to teach and baptize publicly, let them know that a presbyter of Asia Minor, who put together that piece, crowning it with the authority of a Pauline title, convicted by his own confession of doing this from love of St. Paul, was deprived of his orders." (Tertullian, _De Baptismo_, xvii.) On which St. Jerome remarks--"We therefore relegate to the class of apocryphal writings, the περιοδος of Paul and Thecla, and the whole fable of the baptized lion. For how could it be that the sole real companion of the Apostle" (Luke) "while so well acquainted with the rest of the history, should have known nothing of this? And further, Tertullian, who touched so nearly upon those times, records that a certain presbyter in Asia Minor, convicted before _John_ of being the author of that book, and confessing that as a σπουδαστης of the Apostle Paul he had done this from loving devotion to that great memory, was deposed from his ministry." (St. Hieron., _de Script. Eccles._, VII.) See the mass of authority for the antiquity of this document, which gives a considerable degree of probability to the statement about St. John, in _Acta Apost. Apoc._, Edit. Tischendorf.--Proleg. xxi., xxvi. [144] John iii, 24, 25.