schools are
substantially agreed. However much they may differ in other
respects, no one of them has ever thought of taking the text of
the Old Syriac and Old Latin translations as the basis of an
edition. There can be no question that this text belongs to an
advanced, though early, stage of corruption.

At the same stage of corruption, then, Justin's quotations from
the Gospels are found, and this very fact is a proof of the
antiquity of originals so corrupted. The coincidences are too many
and too great all to be the result of accident or to be accounted
for by the parallel influence of the lost Gospels. The presence,
for instance, of the reading [Greek: o haetoimasen ho pataer] for
[Greek: to haetoimasmenon] in Irenaeus and Tertullian (who has
both 'quem praeparavit deus' and 'praeparatum') is a proof that it
was found in the canonical text at a date little later than
Justin's. And facts such as this, taken together with the
arguments which make it little less than certain that Justin had
either mediately or immediately access to our Gospels, render it
highly probable that he had a form of the canonical text before
him.

And yet large as is the approximation to Justin's text that may be
made without stirring beyond the bounds of attested readings
within the Canon, I still retain the opinion previously expressed
that he did also make use of some extra-canonical book or books,
though what the precise document was the data are far too
insufficient to enable us to determine. So far as the history of
our present Gospels is concerned, I have only to insist upon the
alternative that Justin either used those Gospels themselves or
else a later work, of the nature of a harmony based upon them
[Endnote 136:1]. The theory (if it is really held) that he was
ignorant of our Gospels in any shape, seems to me, in view of the
facts, wholly untenable.

CHAPTER V.

HEGESIPPUS--PAPIAS.

Dr. Lightfoot has rendered a great service to criticism by his
masterly exposure of the fallacies in the argument which has been
drawn from the silence of Eusebius in respect to the use of the
Canonical Gospels by the early writers [Endnote 138:1]. The author
of 'Supernatural Religion' is not to be blamed for using this
argument. In doing so he has only followed in the wake of the
Germans who have handed it on from one to the other without
putting it to a test so thorough and conclusive as that which has
now been applied [Endnote 138