tinct histories, the genuineness of any one
of which is perfectly sufficient.

If, therefore, we must be considered as encountering the risk of error
in assigning the authors of our books, we are entitled to the advantage
of so many separate probabilities. And although it should appear that
some of the evangelists had seen and used each other's works, this
discovery, whist it subtracts indeed from their characters as
testimonies strictly independent, diminishes, I conceive, little either
their separate authority, (by which I mean the authority of any one that
is genuine,) or their mutual confirmation. For, let the most
disadvantageous supposition possible be made concerning them; let it be
allowed, what I should have no great difficulty in admitting, that Mark
compiled his history almost entirely from those of Matthew and Luke; and
let it also for a moment be supposed that were not, in fact, written by
Matthew and Luke; yet, if it be true that Mark, a contemporary of the
apostles, living, in habits of society with the apostles, a
fellow-traveller and fellow-labourer with some of them; if, I say, it be
true, that this person made the compilation, it follows, that the
writings from which he made it existed in the time of the apostles, and
not only so, but that they were then in such esteem and credit, that a
companion of the apostles formed a history out of them. Let the Gospel
of Mark be called an epitome of that of Matthew; if a person in the
situation in which Mark is described to have been actually made the
epitome, it affords the strongest possible attestation to the character
of the original.

Again, parallelisms in sentences, in word, and in the order of words,
have been traced out between the Gospel of Matthew and that of Luke;
which concurrence cannot easily be explained, otherwise than by
supposing, either that Luke had consulted Matthew's history, or, what
appears to me in nowise incredible, that minutes of some of Christ's
discourses, as well as brief memoirs of some passages of his life, had
been committed to writing at the time; and that such written accounts
had by both authors been occasionally admitted into their histories.
Either supposition is perfectly consistent with the acknowledged
formation of St. Luke's narrative, who professes not to write as an
eye-witness, but to have investigated the original of every account
which he delivers: in other words, to have collected them from such
documents and t