s bishop of Lyons. In his youth he
had been a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John. In the time
in which he lived, he was distant not much more than a century from the
publication of the Gospels; in his instruction only by one step
separated from the persons of the apostles. He asserts of himself and
his contemporaries, that they were able to reckon up, in all the
principal churches, the succession of bishops from the first. (Adv.
Haeres. 1. iii. c. 3.) I remark these particulars concerning Irenaeus
with more formality than usual, because the testimony which this writer
affords to the historical books of the New Testament, to their
authority, and to the titles which they bear, is express, positive, and
exclusive. One principal passage, in which this testimony is contained,
opens with a precise assertion of the point which we have laid down as
the foundation of our argument, viz., that the story which the Gospels
exhibit is the story which the apostles told. "We have not received,"
saith Irenaeus, "the knowledge of the way of our salvation by any others
than those by whom the Gospel has been brought to us. Which Gospel they
first preached, and afterwards, by the will of God, committed to
writing, that it might be for time to come the foundation and pillar of
our faith.--For after that our Lord arose from the dead, and they (the
apostles) were endowed from above with the power of the Holy Ghost
coming down upon them, they received a perfect knowledge of all things.
They then went forth to all the ends of the earth, declaring to men the
Message of heavenly peace, having all of them, and every one, alike the
Gospel of God. Matthew then, among the Jews, wrote a Gospel in their own
language, while Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel at Rome, and
founding a church there: and after their exit, Mark also, the disciple
and interpreter of Peter, delivered to us in writing the things that had
been preached by Peter and Luke, the companion of Paul, put down in a
book the Gospel preached by him (Paul). Afterwards John, the disciple of
the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a
Gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus in Asia." If any modern divine should
write a book upon the genuineness of the Gospels, he could not assert it
more expressly, or state their original more distinctly, than Irenaeus
hath done within little more than a hundred years after they were
published.

The correspondency, in the da