rdingly, he drew the larger share of his materials. Now,
if there is any one conclusion concerning the New Testament literature
which must be regarded as incontrovertibly established by the labours of
a whole generation of scholars, it is this, that the fourth gospel was
utterly unknown until about A. D. 170, that it was written by some
one who possessed very little direct knowledge of Palestine, that its
purpose was rather to expound a dogma than to give an accurate record of
events, and that as a guide to the comprehension of the career of
Jesus it is of far less value than the three synoptic gospels. It
is impossible, in a brief review like the present, to epitomize the
evidence upon which this conclusion rests, which may more profitably
be sought in the Rev. J. J. Tayler's work on "The Fourth Gospel," or
in Davidson's "Introduction to the New Testament." It must suffice to
mention that this gospel is not cited by Papias; that Justin, Marcion,
and Valentinus make no allusion to it, though, since it furnishes so
much that is germane to their views, they would gladly have appealed
to it, had it been in existence, when those views were as yet under
discussion; and that, finally, in the great Quartodeciman controversy,
A. D. 168, the gospel is not only not mentioned, but the authority of
John is cited by Polycarp in flat contradiction of the view afterwards
taken by this evangelist. Still more, the assumption of Renan led at
once into complicated difficulties with reference to the Apocalypse. The
fourth gospel, if it does not unmistakably announce itself as the work
of John, at least professes to be Johannine; and it cannot for a moment
be supposed that such a book, making such claims, could have gained
currency during John's lifetime without calling forth his indignant
protest. For, in reality, no book in the New Testament collection would
so completely have shocked the prejudices of the Johannine party. John's
own views are well known to us from the Apocalypse. John was the most
enthusiastic of millenarians and the most narrow and rigid of Judaizers.
In his antagonism to the Pauline innovations he went farther than Peter
himself. Intense hatred of Paul and his followers appears in several
passages of the Apocalypse, where they are stigmatized as "Nicolaitans,"
"deceivers of the people," "those who say they are apostles and are
not," "eaters of meat offered to idols," "fornicators," "pretended
Jews," "liars," "synagogue o