which he and other Christians derived their knowledge of the history and doctrines of Christ. They were relied upon by him as primary and decisive evidence in his explanations of the character of Christianity. They were regarded as sacred books. They were read, as he informs us, in the assemblies of Christians on the Lord's day, in connexion with the Prophets of the Old Testament. Let us now consider the manner in which we know that our present Gospels were regarded by the contemporaries of Justin. Irenæus was in the vigor of life before Justin's death; and the same was true of many thousands of Christians living when Irenæus wrote. But he tells us, that the four Gospels are the four pillars of the church, the foundation of Christian faith, written by those who had first orally preached the gospel, by two apostles and two companions of apostles.* It is incredible that Irenæus and Justin should have spoken of different books. We cannot suppose that writings, such as the Memoirs of which Justin speaks, believed to be essentially the work of apostles, read in Christian churches, and received as sacred books of the highest * See p. 112 seqq. authority, should, immediately after he wrote, have fallen into neglect and oblivion, and been superseded by another set of books. The strong and apparently just sentiment of their value could not so silently and so unaccountably have changed into entire disregard. The copies of them spread over the world could not so suddenly and so mysteriously have disappeared, that no subsequent trace of their existence should be clearly discoverable. When, therefore, we find Irenæus, the contemporary of Justin, ascribing to the four Gospels, the same character, the same authority, and the same authors, as are ascribed by Justin to the Memoirs quoted by him, it would seem that there can be no reasonable doubt, that the Memoirs of Justin are the Gospels of Irenæus. The conclusion, to which we have arrived, is well worth the labor of a patient and minute examination. If Justin had quoted his accounts of Christ, not from the Gospels, but from some other memoirs of him, this fact would have tended, more than any other, to throw doubt and obscurity upon the history of the reception of the Gospels among Christians. Still, even this fact, though it might have presented a difficulty not easy to be solved, would have afforded evidence of the truth of the accounts contained in the Gospels. For in the case supposed, it would have appeared that those accounts were strikingly confirmed by another set of ancient books, which at a very early period were held in high respect by Christians. The argument urged in the last chapter is, in its nature, cumulative; and the accession of force to be derived from the evidence afforded by the writings of Justin Martyr is not to be disregarded. He carries us one step higher in our advances toward the apostolic age. What was before a matter of inference, it may be thought of necessary inference, becomes a matter of testimony. We learn directly from his writings, that the Gospels were received by Christians of his age, that is by those Christians, who lived during the first half of the second century, as the authentic and sacred records of the history of their master, the works of his apostles and their companions. We shall next consider a portion of the evidence for the genuineness of the Gospels, to be gathered from a still earlier period. 240 CHAPTER III. EVIDENCE OF PAPIAS. ST. LUKE'S OWN TESTIMONY TO THE GENUINENESS OF HIS GOSPEL. IT has been asserted, as we have seen, by Eichhorn, that "there are no traces of our present Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke before the end of the second and the beginning of the third century."* No meaning can be put upon these words, not obviously irreconcilable with well known and undisputed facts, except by viewing them in connexion with his theory of the formation of those Gospels as they now exist, through a series of corruptions and additions. He must be understood as intending to say, that no traces of those Gospels as they now exist, no clear notices of them in their present form, are to be found before the close of the second century. But if the proposition have been established, that the Gospels, since their first compo *Sec sition, have existed in the same form as at present, then whatever notices we find of them, in any period of their history, must relate to our present Gospels. Between the publication of St. John's Gospel, and the time when Justin wrote, an interval, probably, of about fifty years, we find very few Christian writers, of whose works any considerable remains are extant. It was a period of distress and confusion. Our religion, left upon the death of that apostle without any powerful and distinguished advocate, was struggling for establishment against the opposition and persecution of the world. A great revolution was taking place in the minds of those who had been acted upon by the preaching of the apostles. Their opinions, like their circumstances, were unsettled. The separation or the union, which was afterwards effected, between ancient errors and the new doctrines of our faith, was as yet undecided. Our religion had not assumed among its professed followers, a well defined character; and its sublime truths were not so fully comprehended, as when men had become more familiar with the conception of them. It had not yet secured possession of the minds and hearts of many converts well qualified by their literary eminence to explain and defend it. These |