uent, that the pupil should altogether
have lost sight of the master whom he revered, when he migrated to his
new and distant home in the west. But, even though all this be granted,
the fact still remains, that the testimony is exceptionally good and
would in ordinary cases be regarded as quite decisive. I do not say that
it is impossible Irenaeus could have been mistaken; there is always risk
of error in human testimony; but I maintain that, unless we are required
to apply a wholly different standard of evidence here from that which is
held satisfactory in other cases, we approach this Epistle with a very
strong guarantee of its authenticity, which can only be invalidated by
solid and convincing proofs, and against which hypothetical combinations
and ingenious surmises are powerless [105:2]. Whether the objections
adduced by the impugners of this Epistle are of this character, the
reader will see presently.

From the external we turn to the internal evidence. We are asked to
believe that this letter was forged on the confines of the age of
Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria. But can anything be more unlike the
ecclesiastical literature of this later generation, whether we regard
the use of the New Testament, or the notices of ecclesiastical order, or
the statements of theological doctrine? The Evangelical quotations are
still given (as in Clement of Rome) with the formula, 'The Lord said;'
the passages from the Apostolic Epistles are still, for the most part,
indirect and anonymous. Though two or three chapters are devoted to
injunctions respecting the ministry of the Church, there is not an
allusion to episcopacy from beginning to end. Though the writer's ideas
of the Person of Christ practically leave nothing to be desired, yet
these ideas are still held in solution, and have not yet crystallized
into the dogmatic forms which characterize the later generation. And
from first to last this Epistle is silent upon those questions which
interested the Church in the second half of the second century. Of
Montanism, of the Paschal controversy, of the developed Gnostic heresies
of this period, it says nothing. A supposed reference to Marcion I shall
have to discuss presently. For the moment it is sufficient to say that
an allusion so vague and pointless as this would be must certainly have
missed its aim.

But this argument from internal evidence gains strength when considered
from another point of view. The only intelligibl