ble nor right to demand any thing more, though more has been given.

In the first place, the Gospels were received as the genuine works of those whose names they now bear, by the whole Christian world at the earliest period of which any full and distinct accounts have come down to us, and with the understanding everywhere among Christians then, that they always had been so received from the days of the Apostles. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, born in Asia Minor as early as A. D. 140, in his youth a disciple of Polycarp, who had been a hearer of the Apostle John, speaks of the four Gospels, ascribes them to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and gives some few particulars respecting their origin.

"Matthew," he says, 66 among the Hebrews published a Gospel in their own language; while Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel at Rome, and founding a church there. And after their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter (or translator) of Peter, himself delivered to us in writing what Peter preached; and Luke, the companion of Paul, recorded the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who leaned upon his breast, likewise published a Gospel, while he dwelt at Ephesus in Asia."†

In another place ‡ he characterizes the Gospels, and quotes from them in such a way as to leave no doubt that he refers to the same books that we now have.

Here is the testimony of one who, in his nativity, lived (A. D. 160) within sixty years of the death of St. John, as the disciple of one who had been St. John's companion, and who from that source alone must have had ample opportunities to know how the Gospels had been prepared, and whether they had been received from the time of the Apostles. At the age of seventeen he was separated from St. John by an interval of time the same as that which now separates us from Washington, and from the other Apostles by an interval about the same as that which separates us from the time when Washington began to distinguish himself in the Indian and French wars. Now, apart from public documents, we know what innumerable means are now open to us for learning the prominent events of Washington's life,

* Contra Hær., Lib. III. c. 3.

↑ Ibid. Lib. III. c. 1.

Lib. III. c. 2.

the genuineness of his writings, and of all the most im portant works relating to his history. Not only have his great deeds perpetuated themselves in public monuments, and inscribed themselves on public records and in our national history, but they live on in the very atmos phere of our country, and a thousand living men who had known him, who had heard the facts from his lips or the lips of his contemporaries, read them in his writings or received them from other unquestioned authority, would rise before us to contradict and put us down, if we should publicly assign to him any remarkable work to which he had not given his sanction and authority. So in the early days of Irenæus, in Asia Minor, where be dwelt, the acts and words of Jesus and the Apostles lived on in the very atmosphere of every Christian community. If narratives such as the Gospels had come down from the Apostles and their associates, their origin and history would be fresh in the minds of all enlightened believers. If they had not so come down, and an attempt had been made to put them off upon the churches as original and authentic memoirs, a thousand voices would have risen to discredit their authority. Aged men, who had conversed with the Apostles or with their companions and successors, would have testified against them.

Theophilus, who A. D. 168 was made bishop of Antioch where the disciples had first been called Christians, refers, as Irenæus does, to the Gospels as if they were then received with the same respect as the ancient prophecies, and quotes from John and Matthew, though he does not mention the names of the authors in the single work which remains to us of his writings. A few years later, but before the close of the century, that is, before A. D. 200, Tertullian, bishop of Carthage, ascribes the Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, quotes, as Mr. Norton says, from every chapter in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and distinctly asserts that they had always been received as genuine, from the days of the Apostles. We quote on this point a paragraph from Mr. Norton, to whom we are indebted for most of our citations from the Fathers.

"In defending the genuine Gospel of Luke," says Mr. Nor

ton," against the mutilated Gospel used by Marcion, Tertullian has the following passage.....To give the sum of all, if it be certain that that is most genuine which is most ancient, that most ancient which has been from the beginning, and that from the beginning which was from the Apostles; so it is equally certain, that that was delivered by the Apostles, which has been held sacred in the churches of the Apostles.' He then enumerates various churches founded by Apostles, which were still flourishing, and proceeds: 'I affirm, then, that in those churches, and not in those only which were founded by Apostles, but in all which have fellowship with them, that Gospel of Luke which we so steadfastly defend has been received from its first publication.' 'The same authority,' he adds,' of the Apostolic churches will support the other Gospels, which, in like manner, we have from them, conformably to their copies."

Here is an assertion, made by an eminent bishop in the face of the whole Christian world, declaring as a fact universally recognized in all Christian bodies, that these four Gospels were received as genuine and sacred books in all Christian churches, and that they had been so received from the time of the Apostles; and this assertion was thus publicly made within less than a century after the death of St. John, at a time when almost every church must have been able to place in his opponents' hands the means of confuting it, if it were not true. For these were no obscure or unimportant writings; but if his testimony was true, they were held as sacred and authoritative books, towards which all eyes were turned. And if his testimony was not true, the fraud or the mistake was so gross and palpable, that it must at once have been detected and exposed. Nor was Tertullian an obscure or unimportant man, that he should dare thus to trifle with the truth, and hope to escape by his insignificance.

From this time forward, such testimony is so abundant, that no further specimens need to be given. Origen, a most learned, able, and scrupulously conscientious man, born about A. D. 185, has quoted so liberally from the Gospels in his voluminous writings, that, in Mr. Norton's language," supposing all other copies of them to be lost, those of Matthew, Luke, and John might be restored almost entire from his quotations alone." His account

* Genuineness of the Gospels, Vol. I. pp. 139, 140 (2d edit.).

of the way in which they were composed accords with that of Irenæus and Tertullian. Numerous extracts from the writings of Celsus, who wrote against Christianity about A. D. 175, have been preserved, and they nowhere deny the genuineness of the Gospels, or intimate so much as a doubt that they had been always universally received as genuine. Nor from the time of the Apostles to the close of the third century is there anywhere a scrap of testimony to be found from any writer, Christian or Pagan, catholic or heretic, which directly or indirectly calls them in question, while assertions to the contrary were constantly made and reiterated in the face of the whole world. In the controversies of that early period, when this fatal objection might have been so easily raised if it had been true, we have no reason to suppose that it ever was raised. The Christians in their rapid increase were most jealously watched by eyes quick to see any unguarded point that might be exposed, and, if the Gospels had not been received as genuine from the beginning, the fact must at once have been known to learned enemies and apostates; but there is no particle of evidence to show that such a charge was ever brought against them.

Within a few years an ancient manuscript has been discovered at Mount Athos, which is proved, as we think, by the able and accomplished writer who has analyzed its contents, to have been written by Hippolytus, who was Bishop of the Port of Rome (Episcopus Portuensis) at the beginning of the third century; and this, like every other Christian writing which has come. down from that period, bears testimony to the Gospels, and sometimes, as we shall see hereafter, quotes from writers of a much earlier date, in such a way as to confirm the view which we have taken.

Now, if we were obliged to stop here, if, in the wreck which has befallen the writings of the Apostolic Fathers and the suspicions to which the mutilated fragments of most of their works that have come down to us are exposed, we had no other word of testimony to offer, we submit that the external evidence for the genuineness of the Gospels is, beyond comparison, greater than that which we have for the genuineness of any other ancient writings, and far greater than would be required in any VOL. LVI. 4TH S. VOL. XXI. NO. 1.

6

other case to satisfy the most sceptical inquirer. We exaggerate the intervening space between the Apostles and the Fathers whose testimony we have quoted. Abundant means for confirmation and refutation must have been within their reach, living, as the earliest of them did, within a century of the time when the earliest of the Gospels was probably published. It was no obscure fact, buried in the privacy of unimportant or domestic events; but one professing to connect itself, as a most influential agent, with the greatest movement that the world has ever known; and great events, like great mountains, are seen and recognized from afar. The fact of the general reception of the Gospels, proclaimed, so solemnly and so generally within a century of the death of St. John, if a fact at all, was one known and recognized as a most important fact by the whole body of Christian believers from the days of the Apostles. Nothing could be more a matter of all-pervading interest and of universal notoriety among them. For the assertions were not simply, that here were writings which had been prepared by the Apostles and their associates and faithfully preserved to that time, but writings so prepared, and as such received and acknowledged, and their authority respected, in all Christian churches from the time of the Apostles down to that day; and these assertions were made within a period of time from the origin of those writings less by forty years than that which now separates us from the time of Addison and Steele. The Christian communities before whom these assertions were uttered, were not made up of ignorant and sluggish men, who had no special interest in the matter, but they embraced most of the learning and the intelligence of the age, men who put property, friends, and life at stake because of their belief in facts which, it was asserted, had come down to them in these writings. It was not possible that they should have been imposed upon in these matters.

Twelve years ago, we were acquainted with several persons, then in the full possession of all their faculties, who remembered distinctly facts which took place in the famous siege of Londonderry in Ireland, which facts they had received directly from one who himself had witnessed them. Here were men relating, from one who