then not written
by him, for it is in Greek. And that it has not at all the air of being
a translation is asserted by most of the learned. As it stands then, it
was not written by Matthew: and that it cannot be a translation of
Matthew's Hebrew, is not only plain from the circumstance of its
style, and other marks understood by Biblical Critics, but can also
be proved by another story related by this same Papias concerning
the manner of the death of Judas. "His body, and head (says
Papias) became so swollen, that at length he could not get through
a street in Jerusalem, where two chariots might pass abreast, and
having fallen to the ground, he--burst asunder.

Now though this ridiculous story is undoubtedly false, yet it is not
credible that Papias, who had so great a reverence for the Apostles
as to collect and gather all "their sayings," would so flatly by his
story of the death of Judas contradict the story of Matthew, if the
Hebrew Gospel of Matthew contained that part of the Greek
Gospel of Matthew which relates the manner of Judas' Death.

Justin Martyr lived after Papias, in the middle of the second
century; and though he relates many circumstances agreeing in the
main with those recorded in the Gospels, and appears to quote
sayings of Jesus from some book or books; yet it is substantially
acknowledged by Dr. Marsh, the learned annotator on Michaelis's
Introduction, that these quotations are so unlike the words, and
circumstances in the received Evangelists to which they appear to
correspond, that one of two things must be true; either, that Justin,
who lived 140 years after Jesus, had never seen any of the present
Gospels; or else, that they were in his time in a very different state
from what they now are.

The next Christian father who mentions the Gospel of Matthew is
Irenoeus, who says also that "Matthew wrote his gospel in the
Hebrew Language." The character of Irenoeus is discoverable
from his work against the Heresies of his time, to that I refer the
Reader, who will find him to have been a zealous, though a very
credulous, and ignorant man; for he believed the story of Papias
just quoted, and many others equally absurd. He however furnishes
this important intelligence, that in the second century, the Christian
world was overrun with heresy, and a swarm of apocryphal, and
spurious Books were received by many as genuine.

The next witness in favour of the Gospel is Tertullian, who lived in
the latter