cisely from a friend of Lucian that
the 'Word of Truth' replied to by Origen might be supposed to have
come. Lastly, time and place both support the identification. The
Celsus of Lucian lived under Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and
Dr. Keim decides, after an elaborate examination of the internal
evidence, that the Celsus of Origen wrote his work in the year 178
A.D., towards the close of the reign of Marcus Aurelius.

Such is Dr. Keim's view. In the date assigned to the [Greek: Logos
alaethaes] it does not differ materially from that of the large
majority of critics. Graetz alone goes as far back as to the time
of Hadrian. Hagenbach, Hasse, Tischendorf, and Friedlaender fix
upon the middle, Mosheim, Gieseler, Baur, and Engelhardt upon the
second half, of the second century; while the following writers
assume either generally the reign of Marcus Aurelius, or specially
with Dr. Keim one of the two great persecutions--Spencer,
Tillemont, Neander, Tzschirner, Jachmann, Bindemann, Lommatzsch,
Hase, Redepenning, Zeller. The only two writers mentioned by Dr.
Keim as contending for a later date are Ueberweg and Volkmar, 'who
strangely misunderstands both Origen and Baur' [Endnote 263:1].
Volkmar is followed by the author of 'Supernatural Religion.'

At whatever date Celsus wrote, it appears to be sufficiently clear
that he knew and used all the four canonical Gospels [Endnote 263:2].

3.

The last document that need be discussed by us at present is the
remarkable fragment which, from its discoverer and from its
contents, bears the name of the Canon of Muratori [Endnote 263:3].

Whatever was the original title and whatever may have been the
extent of the work from which it is taken, the portion of it that
has come down to us is by far the most important of all the direct
evidence for the Canon both of the Gospels and of the New
Testament in general with which we have yet had to deal. It is
indeed the first in which the conception of a Canon is quite
unequivocally put forward. We have for the first time a definite
list of the books received by the Church and a distinct separation
made between these and those that are rejected.

The fragment begins abruptly with the end of a sentence apparently
relating to the composition of the Gospel according to St. Mark.
Then follows 'in the third place the Gospel according to St.
Luke,' of which some account is given. 'The fourth of the Gospels'
is that