ooks
called the Canonical Gospels, which the whole body of Christians have,
from a very early period indeed, received as written by eye-witnesses,
or by the companions of eye-witnesses, the remaining 800 pages are
occupied with attempts at disparaging the testimony of these writings.
In order to this, the Christian Fathers and heretical writers of a
certain period are examined, to ascertain whether they quoted the four
Evangelists. The period from which the writer chooses his witnesses to
the use of the four Evangelists, is most unwarrantably and arbitrarily
restricted to the first ninety years of the second century (100-185 or
so). We shall have ample means for showing that this limitation was for
a purpose.

The array of witnesses examined runs thus: Clement of Rome, Barnabas,
Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Papias of
Hierapolis, the Clementines, the Epistle to Diognetus, Basilides,
Valentinus, Marcion, Tatian, Dionysius of Corinth, Melito of Sardis,
Claudius Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Epistle of Vienne and Lyons,
Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, Celsus and the Canon of Muratori.

The examination of references, or supposed references, in these books to
the first three Gospels fills above 500 pages, and the remainder (about
220) is occupied with an examination of the claims of the fourth Gospel
to be considered as canonical.

The writer conducts this examination with an avowed dogmatical bias; and
this, as the reader will soon see, influences the manner of his
examination throughout the whole book. For instance, he never fails to
give to the anti-Christian side the benefit of every doubt, or even
suspicion. This leads him to make the most of the smallest discrepancy
between the words of any supposed quotation in any early writer from one
of our Canonical Gospels, and the words as contained in our present
Gospels. If the writer quotes the Evangelist freely, with some
differences, however slight, in the words, he is assumed to quote from a
lost Apocryphal Gospel. If the writer gives the words as we find them in
our Gospels, he attempts to show that the father or heretic need not
have even seen our present Gospels; for, inasmuch as our present Gospels
have many things in common which are derived from an earlier source, the
quoter may have derived the words he quotes from the earlier source. If
the quoter actually mentions the name of the Evangelist whose Gospel he
refers to (say St. Mark), it is roundly