Nor is it true that these apostles were "martyrs [their
martyrdom being unproved] without the least prospect of honour or
advantage;" on the contrary, they desired to know what they would get by
following Jesus. "_What shall we have_, therefore?... Ye which have
followed me shall sit upon twelve thrones" (Matt. xix. 27-30); and,
further, in Mark ix. 28-31, we are told that any one who forsakes
anything for Jesus shall receive "an hundredfold _now in this time,"_ as
well as eternal life in the world to come. Surely, then, there was
"prospect" enough of "honour and advantage"? These remarks apply quite
as strongly to Mark and Luke, neither of whom are pretended to be
eye-witnesses. Of Mark we know nothing, except that it is said that
there was a man named John, whose surname was Mark (Acts xii. 12 and
25), who ran away from his work (Acts xv. 38); and a man named Marcus,
nephew of Barnabas (Col. iv. 10), who may, or may not, be the same, but
is probably somebody else, as he is with Paul; and one of the same name
is spoken of (2 Tim. ii.) as "profitable for the ministry," which John
Mark was not, and who (Philemon 24) was a "fellow-labourer" with Paul in
Rome, while John Mark was rejected in this capacity by Paul at Antioch.
Why Mark, or John Mark, should write a Gospel, he not having been an
eye-witness, or why Mark, or John Mark, should be identical with Mark
the Evangelist, only writers of Christian evidences can hope to
understand.

A. _That forgeries, bearing the names of Christ, of the apostles, and of
the early Fathers, were very common in the primitive Church_.

"The opinions, or rather the conjectures, of the learned concerning the
time when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume,
as also about the authors of that collection, are extremely different.
This important question is attended with great and almost insuperable
difficulties to us in these latter times" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist.," p.
31). These difficulties arise, to a great extent, from the large number
of forgeries, purporting to be writings of Christ, of the apostles, and
of the apostolic Fathers, current in the early Church. "For, not long
after Christ's ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and
doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by
persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose writings
discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance. Nor was this all;
productions a