Gospels then were the same as those we have now. This
rough-and-ready plan must now be given up, since the most learned
Christian writers now agree, with the Freethinkers, that such a method
is thoroughly unsatisfactory.

Yet, again, admitting these writers as witnesses, and allowing that they
quote from the same Gospels, their quotations only prove that the
isolated phrases they use were in the Gospels of their day, and are also
in the present ones; and many such cases might occur in spite of great
variations in the remainder of the respective Gospels, and would by no
means prove that the Gospels they used were identical with ours. If
Josephus, for instance, had ever quoted some sentences of Socrates
recorded by Plato, that quotation, supposing that Josephus were
reliable, would prove that Plato and Socrates both lived before
Josephus, and that Plato wrote down some of the sayings of Socrates; but
it would not prove that a version of Plato in our hands to-day was
identical with that used by Josephus. The scattered and isolated
passages woven in by the Fathers in their works would fail to prove the
identity of the Gospels of the second century with those of the
nineteenth, even were they as like parallel passages in the canonical
Gospels as they are unlike them.

It is "important," says the able anonymous writer of "Supernatural
Religion," "that we should constantly bear in mind that a great number
of Gospels existed in the early Church which are no longer extant, and
of most of which even the names are lost. We will not here do more than
refer, in corroboration of this fact, to the preliminary statement of
the author of the third Gospel: 'Forasmuch as many ([Greek: polloi])
have taken in hand to set forth a declaration of those things which are
surely believed among us, etc.' It is, therefore, evident that before
our third synoptic was written, many similar works were already in
circulation. Looking at the close similarity of the large portions of
the three synoptics, it is almost certain that many of the [Greek:
polloi] here mentioned bore a close analogy to each other, and to our
Gospels; and this is known to have been the case, for instance, amongst
the various forms of the 'Gospel according to the Hebrews,' distinct
mention of which we meet with long before we hear anything of our
Gospels. When, therefore, in early writings, we meet with quotations
closely resembling, or, we may add, even identical with passages