We have now shown that Justin Martyr, the principal witness brought
forward by the author of "Supernatural Religion" to discredit the Four
Evangelists, either made use of the very books which we now possess, or
books which contain exactly the same information respecting our Lord's
miraculous Birth, Death, Resurrection, and moral teaching. We have seen,
also, that Justin gives us, along with the teaching of the Synoptics,
that peculiar teaching respecting the pre-existent Divine nature of
Jesus which, as far as can be ascertained, was to be found only in the
Fourth Gospel, and which is consequently called Johannean; and that,
besides this, he refers to the history, and adopts the language, and
urges the arguments which are to be found only in St. John.

We have also shown that there are no internal considerations whatsoever
for supposing that Justin did not make use of the Fourth Gospel.
Instead, for instance, of the doctrine of St. John being a development
of that held by Justin Martyr, the facts of the case all point to the
contrary.

We must now see whether there is external evidence which makes it not
only probable, but as certain as any fact in literary history can be,
that Justin must have known and made use of our present Evangelists;
that if he was a teacher in such an acknowledged centre of
ecclesiastical information or tradition as Rome, and _appears_ to quote
our Gospels (with no matter what minor variations and inaccuracies), he
did actually quote the same and no other; and if his inaccuracies, and
discrepancies, and omissions of what we suppose he ought to have
mentioned, were doubled or trebled, it would still be as certain as any
fact of such a nature can be, that he quoted the Four Evangelists,
because they must have been read and commented on in his day and in his
church as the Memoirs of the Apostles, which took their place by the
side of the prophets of the Old Testament in the public instruction of
the Church. In order to this I shall have to examine the external
evidence for the Canon of the New Testament--so far, that is, as the
Four Gospels are concerned.

In doing this I shall not take the usual method of tracing the evidence
for the various books in question downwards from the Apostolic time--the
reader will find this treated exhaustively in "Dr. Westcott on the
Canon"--but I shall trace it upwards, beginning at a time at which there
cannot be the smallest doubt that the New Testament was exa