e date of this fragment is utterly unknown.
In the year 1740 Muratori published this document in a collection of
Italian antiquities, stating that he had found it in the Ambrosian
library at Milan, and that he believed that the MS. from which he took
it had been in existence about 1000 years. It is not known by whom the
original was written, and it bears no date: it is but a fragment,
commencing: "at which, nevertheless, he was present, and thus he placed
it. Third book of the Gospel according to Luke." Further on it speaks of
"the fourth of the Gospels of John." The value of the evidence of an
anonymous fragment of unknown date is simply _nil_. "It is by some
affirmed to be a complete treatise on the books received by the Church,
from which fragments have been lost; while others consider it a mere
fragment itself. It is written in Latin, which by some is represented as
most corrupt, whilst others uphold it as most correct. The text is
further rendered almost unintelligible by every possible inaccuracy of
orthography and grammar, which is ascribed diversely to the transcriber,
to the translator, and to both. Indeed, such is the elastic condition of
the text, resulting from errors and obscurity of every imaginable
description, that, by means of ingenious conjectures, critics are able
to find in it almost any sense they desire. Considerable difference of
opinion exists as to the original language of the fragment, the greater
number of critics maintaining that the composition is a translation from
the Greek, while others assert it to have been originally written in
Latin. Its composition is variously attributed to the Church of Africa,
and to a member of the Church in Rome" ("Sup. Rel.," vol. ii., pp. 238,
239). On a disputable scrap of this kind no argument can be based; there
is no evidence even to show that the thing was in existence at all until
Muratori published it; it is never referred to by any early writer, nor
is there a scintilla of evidence that it was known to the early Church.

After a full and searching analysis of all the documents, orthodox and
heretical, supposed to have been written in the first two centuries
after Christ, the author of "Supernatural Religion" thus sums
up:--"After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on
the point, we have not found a single distinct trace of any one of those
Gospels during the first century and a half after the death of Jesus....
Any argument for the