But, supposing that instead of a change in the mere selections from the Gospels, the very Gospels themselves had been changed, could such a thing have occurred unnoticed, and the memory of it be so absolutely forgotten that neither history nor tradition preserved the smallest hint of it at the end of a short century?

Now this, and far more than this, is what the author of "Supernatural Religion" asks his readers to believe throughout his whole work.

We have seen how, before the end of this century, no other authoritative memoirs of Christ were known by the Church, and these were known and recognized as so essential a part of the Christian system, that their very number as four, and only four, was supposed to be prefigured from the very beginning of the world.

Now Justin lived till the year 165 in this century. He was martyred when Irenaeus must have been twenty-five years old. Both Clement and Tertullian must have been born before his martyrdom, perhaps several years, and yet the author of "Supernatural Religion" would have us believe that the books of Christians which were accounted most sacred in the year 190, and used in that year as frequently, and with as firm a belief in their authenticity as they are by any Christians now, were unused by Justin Martyr, and that one of the four was absolutely unknown to him--in all probability forged after his time.

We are persistently told all this, too, in spite of the fact that he reproduces the account of the Birth, Teaching, Death, and Resurrection of Christ exactly as they are contained in the Four, without a single additional circ.u.mstance worth speaking of, making only such alterations as would be natural in the reproduction of such an account for those who were without the pale of the Church.

But even this is not the climax of the absurdity which we are told that, if we are reasonable persons, we must accept. It appears that the "Memoirs" which, we are told, Justin heard read every Sunday in the place of a.s.sembly in Rome or Ephesus which he frequented, was a Palestinian Gospel, which combined, in one narrative, the accounts of the Birth, Life, Death, and moral Teaching of Jesus, together with the peculiar doctrine and history now only to be found in the Fourth Gospel.

Consequently this Gospel was not only far more valuable than any one of our present Evangelists, but, we might almost say, more worthy of preservation than all put together, for it combined the teaching of the four, and no doubt reconciled their seeming discrepancies, thus obviating one of the greatest difficulties connected with their authority and inspiration; a difficulty which, we learn from history, was felt from the first. And yet, within less than twenty years, this Gospel had been supplanted by four others so effectually that it was all but forgotten at the end of the century, and is referred to by the first ecclesiastical historian as one of many apocrypha valued only by a local Church, and has now perished so utterly that not one fragment of it can be proved to be authentic.

But enough of this absurdity.

Taking with us the patent fact, that before the end of the second century, and during the first half of the third, the Four Gospels were accepted by the Church generally, and quoted by every Christian writer as fully as they are at this moment, can there be the shadow of a doubt that when Justin wrote the account of our Lord's Birth, which I have given in page 22, he had before him the first and third Evangelists, and combined these two accounts in one narrative? Whether he does this consciously and of set purpose I leave to the author of "Supernatural Religion," but combine the two accounts he certainly does.

Again, when, in the accounts of the events preceding our Lord's Death, Justin notices that Jesus commanded the disciples to bring forth an a.s.s and its foal (page 33), can any reasonable man doubt but that he owed this to St. Matthew, in whose Gospel alone it appears?

Or when, in the extract I have given in page 20, he notices that our Lord called the sons of Zebedee Boanerges, can there be any reasonable doubt that he derived this from St. Mark, the only Evangelist who records it, whose Gospel (in accordance with universal tradition), he there designates as the "Memoirs of Peter?"

Or again, when, in the extract I have given in page 34, he records that our Lord in His Agony sweat great drops [of blood], can there be a doubt but that he made use of St. Luke, especially since he mentions two or three other matters connected with our Lord's Death, only to be found in St. Luke? Or, again, why should we a.s.sume the extreme improbability of a defunct Gospel to account for all the references to, and reminiscences of, St. John's Gospel, which I have given in Sections VIII. and IX. of this work?

So far for Justin Martyr.

We will now turn to references in three or four other writers.

In the Epistle of Vienne and Lyons we find the following:--

"And thus was fulfilled the saying of our Lord: 'The time shall come in which every one that killeth you shall think that he offereth a service to G.o.d.'"

This seems like a reference to John xvi. 2. The words, with some very slight variation, are to be found there and not to be found elsewhere.

The letter of the Churches was written about A.D. 178 "at the earliest,"

we are told by the author of "Supernatural Religion." Well, we will make him a present of a few years, and suppose that it was written ten or twelve years later, _i.e._ about A.D. 190. Now we find that Irenaeus had written his great work, "Against Heresies," before this date. Surely, then, the notion of the writer of "Supernatural Religion," that we are to suppose that this was taken from some lost Apocryphal Gospel when Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, had actually used a written Gospel which contains it, refutes itself.

We turn to Athenagoras.

We find in his work, "Plea (or Emba.s.sy) for the Christians" (ch. x.), the following:--

"But the Son of G.o.d is the Logos of the Father in idea and in operation, for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one [I and My Father are one], and the Son being in the Father, and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit," &c. (John xiv. 10.)

Again (ch. xii.):--

"Men who reckon the present life of very small worth indeed, and who are conducted to the future life by this one thing alone, that they know G.o.d and His Logos." [This is life eternal, that they may know Thee the only true G.o.d, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.]

Can the writer of "Supernatural Religion" be serious when he writes, "He nowhere identifies the Logos with Jesus?" Does the writer of "Supernatural Religion" seriously think that a Christian writer, living in 177, and presenting to the emperor a plea for Christians, would have any difficulty about identifying Jesus with that Son of G.o.d Whom he expressly states to be the Logos of G.o.d?

The following also are seeming quotations from the Synoptics in Athenagoras.

"What, then, are those precepts in which we are instructed? 'I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse, pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in the heavens, who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.'

"'For if ye love them which love you, and lend to them which lend to you, what reward shall ye have?'

"'For whosoever, He says, looketh on a woman to l.u.s.t after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart.'

"'For whosoever, says He, putteth away his wife and marrieth another, committeth adultery.'"

When we consider that in the time of Athenagoras, or very soon after, there were three authors living who spoke of the Gospels in the way we have shown, and quoted them in the way we shall now show, why a.s.sign these quotations to defunct Gospels of whose contents we are perfectly ignorant, when we have them substantially in Gospels which occupied the same place in the Church then as now?

NOTE ON SECTION XIX.

I have a.s.serted that the three authors, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus, all flourishing before the close of the second century, quote the four Gospels, if anything, more frequently than most modern Christian authors do. I append, in proof of this, some of the references in these authors to the first two or three chapters of our present Gospels.

IRENAEUS.

Matthew, i.

"And Matthew, too, recognizing one and the same Jesus Christ, exhibiting his generation as a man from the Virgin ... says, 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.' Then, that he might free our mind from suspicion regarding Joseph, he says, 'But the birth of Christ was on this wise: when His mother was espoused,'" &c. (iii. xvi.)

Then he proceeds to quote and remark upon the whole of the remainder of the chapter.

"Matthew again relates His generation as a man." For remainder, see page 128.

"For Joseph is shown to be the son of Joachim and Jeconiah, as also Matthew sets forth in his pedigree." (iii. 21, 9.)

"Born Emmanuel of the Virgin. To this effect they testify that before Joseph had come together with Mary, while she therefore remained in virginity, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost."

(iii. 21, 4.)

"Then again Matthew, when speaking of the angel, says, 'The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in sleep.' (iii. 9, 2.)

"The angel said to him in sleep, 'Fear not to take to thee Mary, thy wife'" (and proceeding with several other verses of the same chapter). (iv. 23, l.)

Matthew, ii.

"But Matthew says that the Magi, coming from the East, exclaimed, 'For we have seen His star in the East, and are come to worship Him.'" (iii. 9, 2.)

"And that having been led by the star unto the house of Jacob to Emmanuel, they showed, by those gifts which they offered, who it was that was worshipped; myrrh, because it was He who should die and be buried for the human race; gold, because He was a king," &c., &c.

(iii. 9, 2)

"He, since He was Himself an infant, so arranging it that human infants should be martyrs, slain, according to the Scriptures, for the sake of Christ." (iii. 16, 4.)

Matthew, iii.

"For Matthew the apostle ... declares that John, when preparing the way for Christ, said to them who were boasting of their relationship according to the flesh, &c., 'O generation of vipers, who hath shown you to flee from ... raise up children unto Abraham.' (iii. 9, 1.)