Moreover, when we consider the kind of teaching against which St. Peter's epistle is directed, it is difficult to place it anywhere except at about the same date as St. Paul's epistles. It speaks of the "fables" mῦθοι, i. 16), the groundless, baseless fancies, of the early heretics in the same manner which we find in St. Paul (cf. 1 Tim. i. 4; iv. 7). The same greed and covetousness (πλεονεξία) is noted by both the Apostles in the teachers against whom their voice is raised (cf. 2 Peter ii. 3; 1 Tim. vi. 5; Titus i. 11). There are the same beguiling promises of liberty (cf. 2 Peter ii. 19; 1 Cor. x. 29; Gal. v. 13), a perversion of the freedom of which St. Paul speaks so much to the Galatian converts; and just as he warns against "false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty" (Gal. ii. 4), so does St. Peter condemn those "who privily bring in heresies of destruction" (2 Peter ii. 1). With so many common features in the two pictures, we can scarcely be wrong in referring them to the same times. No other period in early Church history suits the language of St. Peter so well as the few years before his martyrdom. The First Epistle may be dated eight or ten years earlier. There is another morsel of evidence from the New Testament which is worth notice. St. Peter describes the heretics against whom he writes as following the error of Balaam the son of Beor, and notes this among the tokens of their covetousness. In the Apocalypse (ii. 14, 15) the same people are described, and in the same terms, but with an addition. They have received a definite name, and St. John terms them several times over "the Nicolaitanes." Such a distinctive title marks a later date than St. Peter's descriptive one, which is drawn from the Old Testament. The Apocalypse was assuredly written before the destruction of Jerusalem. If then we may take the mention of the Nicolaitanes by that designation as an indication of a later date than 2 Peter, we are again brought to the time to which we have already referred the Epistle: some time between 68 and 70 A.D.