assigned between A.D. 89 and 120. One thing the testimony of Justin places beyond dispute, that is that he derived his information not merely from oral tradition handed down in the Church, but from written documents of some kind. These written documents he calls "Memoirs of the Apostles," in which as he says he found written "all things concerning Jesus Christ." In ten places he quotes them under this title, and in five others simply as The Memoirs. Here the important question arises-Were these "Memoirs" the same books as our own Gospels? If they were this would afford evidence of their composition before the commencement of the second century, and would go far to establish the fact that they were the compositions of the writers whose names they bear. In one place he tells us that these Memoirs were composed by the Apostles and their followers; in another he says expressly that they were "called Gospels;" and elsewhere still he tells us that they were publicly read together with the writings of the Prophets in the weekly services of the Christians. These writings, therefore, were complete in their contents and publicly attested, and it would not be easy to introduce into them new facts and documents.

Now the way to find out still further whether these Memoirs and our Gospels are the same, would be to collect from all the genuine writings of Justin the references to the life and teachings of Christ which he gives, and see whether they agree with the narratives of the Gospels. It so happens that this has been done. Credner and Hilgenfeld have carefully collected all the evangelical references and allusions in these writings, and just as carefully Dr. Westcott1 and Mr. Sanday have each woven them into a continuous narrative. I have read both these, and it seems to me that the conclusion of ninety-nine men out of a hundred would be that Justin Martyr used the same Gospels we do. Everything of importance in the life of Christ is there, and there is

I Canon of the New Testament. 2 The Gospels in the Second Century.

nothing of any consequence there which we have not in our own Gospels. It is true that in a narrative extending over several pages there are a few references which we have not in the New Testament, such as that Jesus was born in a cave near the village of Bethlehem, that He followed the trade of a carpenter, "making ploughs and yokes, emblems of righteousness," and that at His baptism "a fire was kindled on the Jordan." But these may have been traditions Justin heard in Palestine, or additions given by some early manuscript of the Gospels. If, for example, we had read the following in Justin as a passage of scripture, 'Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before you open your mouth;' or this, that when Herod heard of the fame of Jesus he said to his servants Can this be John the Baptist whom I beheaded?' or that the stone placed upon the sepulchre was one which twenty men could scarcely roll,' we should have said, perhaps, that he used Apocryphal Gospels, not a genuine manuscript, yet these very additions are in the celebrated manuscript of the New Testament— the Codex Bezae, which I have said is now in the University Library at Cambridge, and which probably came originally from that very Church at Lyons of which Irenæus was Bishop.

So that these few divergences I have mentioned amount to very little, and it would be possible to construct from Justin's writings a tolerably complete account of our Lord's life and teachings which most men would say had been taken from the Gospels we have to-day, leading us to infer, very fairly, I think, that the Memoirs he used, and the Gospels we use, are really the same books. This brings us with some degree of certainty as far back as the year A.D. 120 or A.D. 130, which is very near indeed to the time of the supposed publication of the Gospels.

But there is no need to stop even here in our line of proof. We bridged over the years A.D. 177-120 by three witnesses from the three different centres of Lyons, Alexandria, and Rome, we can also bridge over the years between A.D. 120 and

probably A.D. 80,-even sceptical writers admit A.D. 90—by four witnesses from four different centres. We happen to have letters admittedly written by the Christian teachers, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Barnabas of Alexandria, and Clement of Rome. These letters are of a brotherly sort, filled with the feeling of the new fellowship in Christ, and though they only incidentally refer, as we might expect, to the Scriptures of the New Testament, yet it is clear, I think, that they had these Scriptures, and recognised their authority in the Church. Clement who goes farthest back, even to the very times of the Apostles themselves, quotes long extracts from Matthew and Luke, though he does not mention them by name. There is a quotation in Mark vii. 6 from Isaiah xxix. 13 which is very different in the Gospel from what it is in the prophet, and Clement quotes the passage as it is found in Mark, and not as it is found in the Old Testament. Barnabas quotes the passage from Matthew "Many are called but few chosen," and introduces it by saying "As it is written," which is the usual expression with which New Testament writers quote from the Old Testament as a book of authority. The influence of Paul, and Peter, and John is clearly traceable in all the letters. "Take up the Epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle" says Clement. Ignatius writing to the Christians at Ephesus makes mention of Paul " the sanctified, the martyred, worthy of all blessing who

in every part of his letter makes mention of you in Christ Jesus." "The blessed and glorious Paul" says Polycarp to the Philippians "wrote letters to you into which if ye look diligently ye will be able to be built up to the faith given to you.' Elsewhere in these four writers there are clear traces of a knowledge of the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Hebrews, and those to Timothy, and also of the Epistle of James, the first of Peter, and the first of John, and they refer to all the great facts of the life and death of Christ as we have them in the Canonical Gospels. Dr. Westcott thus sums up the question of the

value of the writings of these four Apostolic Fathers who take us quite up to the times of the Apostles themselves:-"They illustrate alike the language and the doctrines of the New Testament. They prove that Christianity was universal in its character from the very first, uniting a variety of forms in one faith. They shew that the great facts of the Gospel narrative and the substance of the Apostolic letters formed the basis and moulded the expression of the common creed. They recognize the fitness of a Canon, and indicate the unity within which it must be fixed. And their evidence is the more important when it is remembered that they speak to us from four great centres of the Ancient Church-from Antioch and Alexandria, from Ephesus and Rome." What is specially worthy of note these four Christian writers who lived in the very next generation to the Apostles themselves, by a sort of instinct draw a distinct line between themselves and the writers of the New Testament, definitely placing themselves on a lower level, and attributing to their predecessors a power and wisdom to which they made no claim for themselves. Clement apologizes to the Corinthians for the tone of reproof he uses, and refers his readers to the Epistle of the blessed Paul who wrote to them "spiritually." Polycarp says that "neither he nor any like him is able to attain fully to the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul." Ignatius twice disclaimed in memorable words the idea that he wished to impose his commands like Peter and Paul. They were Apostles, while I" he adds "am a condemned man." Twice also Barnabas reminds his readers that he speaks as one of them, not as a teacher, but as a member of Christ's Church.

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It would be easy to strengthen this continuous line of proof by other lines converging in the same direction. For example, a very precious relic was discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, called the Muratorian Fragment on the Canon. It was written in Latin, but evidently a version from the Greek, and is mutilated both at the beginning and end. Its value consists in this, that a reference in it, of an historical character,

fixes its date about A.D. 170, and internal evidence fully confirms its claim to this high antiquity. The document is mutilated at the beginning as I have said, but it places the Gospel of St. Luke as third and that of St. John as fourth in order in the Canon. Next to the Gospels it mentions the Acts and thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, giving the names in somewhat different order to that we have. It omits 1 John and 1 Peter in the list, the Epistle of James, 2 Peter and that to the Hebrews, but there is very probably a chasm in the fragment, and the omitted books are amply sustained by other evidence. Here in this document we have as early as A.D. 170 the conception of a Canon quite unequivocally put forward, a definite list of books received by the Church, and a distinct separation made between these and those that are rejected.

Then again heresies sprang up in the Church on the side of mysticism or legalism, and there were antichristian elements which came in conflict with the Church both from the Gentile world and from Judaism. It might easily be shown that these writers in their arguments make use of the same books as the orthodox teachers of the Church, thus showing that they regarded them as authoritative even while they sought to put a different meaning upon them.

Then there were Old Versions of the New Testament made at an early period of the second century, the Peshito for the Syrian Church and the Old Latin for the African Church. The Canons which these exhibit agree with remarkable exactness with the scattered and casual notices of ecclesiastical writings. In common and yet as separate and independent offshoots, they contain at that early time the four Gospels, the Acts, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, the first general Epistles of St. Peter and St. John, showing what in the opinion, not of individuals but of the Church as a whole, constituted a Canon of acknowledged books.

Let all these different lines of testimony be taken together, and the evidence in favour of the authenticity of the books of the New Testament becomes cumulative in a high degree,