wise published a gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus. And all these have taught us that there is one God, the maker of heaven and earth, announced by the Law and the Prophets; and one Christ the Son of God. And he who does not assent to them despises indeed those who knew the mind of the Lord; but he despises also Christ himself, and is self-condemned, resisting and opposing his own salvation, and this all heretics do."*

"In this passage," says Mr. Norton, from whose work on the genuineness of the gospels I have quoted it, "it may be observed that Irenæus, in defending the Christian doctrine, rests it upon the authority of the gospels, that he even does this without mentioning the other books of the New Testament; that he considers the former as having been composed that they might be the foundation and pillar of the faith of Christians; and that he assigns them, without doubt or hesitation, to the authors by whom we believe them to have been written."

There is another passage, if possible, stronger. By a metaphor as bad in taste as the reasons which accompany it are constrained, it speaks of the four gospels not only as the textbook of Christendom, but asserts the impossibility of the number being more or less, the very absurdity of the reasons being a proof of the sense of Christendom on the subject, sc. that it was rather a thing to be accounted for than proved. This is the passage referred to, it is one often cited, and, indeed, as evidence of the common sense of orthodox Christians of the time, nothing can be more conclusive. The thing is supposed to be as accepted a fact with himself and his co-religionists as the sun shining in the sky; there is only the apparent attempt to account for or rather illustrate it by analogies. "Nor can there be more or fewer gospels than these, for as there are four regions of the world in which we live, and four cardinal winds, and the Church is spread over all the earth, and the gospel is the pillar and support of the Church and

*Iren. contra Hæres, lib. iii. c. i.

the breath of life, in like manner is it fit that it should have four pillars breathing on all sides incorruption and refreshing mankind. Whence it is manifest that the Logos, the former of all things, who sits upon the cherubim and holds together all things, having appeared to men, has given us a gospel four-fold in its form, but held together by one spirit." Such is the deposition of Irenæus to the general reception of the gospels in his time. He had spent the earlier part of his life in Asia, and was Bishop of Lyons, in Gaul, when he thus

wrote.

Let us now turn to Asia, the sense of the Church in which quarter, as regards the authority of the gospels, let Theophilus give us. He was made Bishop 168 A.D., and died before the end of the century. "Concerning the righteousness of which the law speaks, the like things are to be found also in the prophets and gospels, because that all spoke by inspiration of one and the same spirit of God"; and that there may be no mistake about what gospels he is speaking of, take the following: "These things, says Theophilus, "the Holy Scriptures teach us, and all who were moved by the Spirit, among whom John says, 'In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God.'"*

From Asia we pass to Africa. The voice of the Church is represented from this quarter by Tertullian, a copious library of whose works has come down to us, and who was one of the most eloquent, as he was one of the most energetic of the Latin Fathers. His celebrity as a writer began at the close of the second century. There is not a chapter from Matthew, Luke, and John from which he does not quote, and from most of them copiously. "Amongst the Apostles, John and Matthew form the faith within us; among the companions of the Apostles, Luke and Mark renovate it." He also testifies that they were read generally in the Christian churches in his

"We

time, as they are in the same churches in our own time. come together," he says, "to bring to mind the Divine Scriptures for the purpose of warning or admonition if the state of the time require it. Certainly we nourish our faith, raise our hopes, and confirm our trust by the sacred words."

From one end of Africa we pass to the other, from Carthage to Alexandria. The head of the celebrated school there for the instruction of Christians was Clement (known as of Alexandria); his quotations are as copious as those of Tertullian, and with as implicit a recognition that he is addressing those who regarded the gospels as the standard of faith. As a test of how he and the Church in his time regarded our gospels as sui generis to the exclusion of all competition, the following passage is striking. When rejecting the authority of a passage quoted from an apocryphal gospel, that according to the Egyptians, he commences his reply in these terms:-“In the first place we have not that saying in the four gospels which have been handed down to us."

The last authority we mention is Origen, the greatest Biblical critic of antiquity, born 185, died 253 A.D. If all our gospels were lost they might be repieced out of his writings, his quotations are so numerous. As regards his testimony to their general reception in his time (if his assumption of the fact did not render quotation unnecessary), such a passage as this would be conclusive. Treating of the composition of our gospels, he professes to give "what we had learnt by tradition concerning the four gospels, which alone are received without controversy by the Church of God under heaven."

Such is a condensed view of the evidence of what no one indeed disputes, the general reception of the gospels as an essential, indeed one of the most essential, of the canonical principles of the Church at the close of the second century.

Inferential History as deducible from the aforesaid Status quo.

The general reception of the gospels in the Christian world at the date mentioned is a fact. But it would be a great mistake to view it simply as a fact which occurred at that date. The fact implies a previous history. It would be about as reasonable for one who saw an oak in 1884 to suppose that that was the date of its origin. Its very existence implies a previous growth. So likewise as concerning the fact of the general reception of the gospels throughout Christendom, it implies a history behind it; it would have taken a century for their dissemination. To hear some people talk, one would think if some sacred books had been accepted in one or two important churches in Christendom, they would have had an instantaneous sweep through all the churches of the Christian community. Such a view is only due to theory, and theories cannot be better corrected than by facts; one of the best tests of the fact we can have the nearest to the point, at least, which can be fetched from our own time-is the probable rate of progress, not, indeed, of a canon, but of a translation of canonical books. Now all fact, all the course of past experience, goes to show that this is an exceedingly slow affair. Let the following, which I quote from an unbiassed periodical of our own time, and from an article therein written with quite a different view from that for which it is here adduced, be taken as evidence.

"The question naturally suggests itself, What is to become of the revised version? That is a question which can, of course, be definitely answered only after the version has passed through the ordeal of public opinion. But judging by analogous cases in the past, there is little reason to be sanguine as to the favourable reception which awaits it at least in the immediate present. We know how high the Vulgate now stands in the estimation of the Church of Rome. Well, that

is substantially the revision of the old Latin made by St. Jerome in the fifth century; and how was his work received when it appeared? Why, it was condemned with the greatest severity, and he himself assailed with the utmost virulence; while the greatly improved version which he produced did not obtain general reception in the Church till after a period of 200 years! Think, again, how dear to everyone is now our existing authorised version; how proud we are of its general faithfulness as well as of its noble style, and how attached to its sweet and solemn utterances. And how was it issued into the world? Why, it lay neglected and despised for the first fifty years of its existence, while one of the greatest scholars of the age declared that he would rather be torn in pieces by wild horses than impose such a version upon the poor churches of England. How, then, can it be expected that the new revision will escape the fate of those which have preceded it? The present writer well remembers that when, as a company of revisers, we first took our seats around the long table in the Jerusalem Chamber, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who has throughout acted as chairman, plainly warned us not to be over sanguine as to the immediate success likely to attend our work; and he had expressed the same thing previously in his "Considerations on the Revision of the English Version of the New Testament." His words (p. 221) were: "Even with the most prospered issues a generation must pass away ere the labours of the present time will be so far recognised as to take the place of the labours of the past. The youngest scholar that may be called upon to bear his part in the great undertaking will have fallen on sleep before the labours in which he may have shared will be regarded as fully bearing their hoped-for fruit. The latest survivor of the gathered company will be resting in the calm of Paradise ere the work at which he toiled will meet with the reception which, by the blessing of God the Holy Ghost, it may ultimately be found to deserve. The bread will be cast upon the waters,