St. John’s Gospel has this peculiarity, that it is made up, in great part, of Christ’s discourses. Judging from the attention which the Evangelist seems to pay to the order of time, we feel sure that these discourses are reported in the chronological order in which they were delivered. But are they reported in the very words used by Christ? We feel convinced that they are not. The important heads of doctrine, such as iii. 3, 5, bearing on baptism; or vi. 48, 52, regarding the Blessed Eucharist, are, doubtless, reported in almost(12) the exact words of our Lord. But the discourses generally we believe to be reported merely in substance. For this was sufficient for the Evangelist’s purpose; and, therefore, we have no reason to suppose a miraculous assistance which would enable him to remember every word. No doubt the Evangelist had the assistance of inspiration; but the Catholic view of inspiration warrants us in believing that in general the ideas only, and not the words, were inspired. We thus get rid of the Rationalist difficulty that the discourses must be fictitious, because, they say, no human memory could retain such long discourses for more than half a century. For in our view it is only the substance of the discourses that is handed down, and, even if we abstracted altogether from the assistance given him by inspiration, it is not difficult to believe that the young and retentive mind of a loving disciple would treasure up and retain the substance of his Divine Master’s discourses, aided as it must have been by the fact that these discourses, besides being the food of his daily meditation, were doubtless again and again repeated in his apostolic preaching. IX.—Errors Combated In The Gospel. There is not one of all the many heresies that have arisen regarding the Person and natures of Jesus Christ that may not be refuted from the Gospel of St. John. We intend, however, to speak here only of those errors which had already arisen in the time of the Evangelist, and against which, therefore, his Gospel was immediately directed. What these were we learn from SS. Irenæus and Jerome. The former distinctly says that our Gospel was directed against the errors of *Cerinthus*, and of “those who are called *Nicolaites*” (see above, III. 2, note); while the latter says that it was directed against *Cerinthus*, and *other heretics, especially the Ebionites*.(13) It is important for us, then, in approaching the study of this Gospel to understand what was the nature of these errors against which it was directed.