therefore consider his objections. They are twofold.

1. He urges that the external testimony to their authorship is
defective. His reasoning is as follows [242:2]:--

Eusebius was acquainted with the work of Melito on the Passion, and
quotes it, which must have referred to his contemporary and
antagonist, Apollinaris, had he written such a work as this
fragment denotes. Not only, however, does Eusebius know nothing of
his having composed such a work, but neither do Theodoret, Jerome,
Photius, nor other writers, who enumerate other of his works; nor
is he mentioned in any way by Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, nor
by any of those who took part in the great controversy.

Here is a tissue of fallacies and assumptions. In the first place, it is
a _petitio principii_, as will be seen presently, that Apollinaris was
an antagonist of Melito. Even, if this were so, there is not the
smallest evidence, nor any probability, that Apollinaris would have
written before Melito, so that the latter could have quoted him. How,
again, has our author learnt that Eusebius 'knows nothing of his having
composed such a work'? It is certain, indeed, that Eusebius had not seen
the work when he composed his list of the writings of Apollinaris; but
it nowhere appears that he was unaware of its existence. The very
language in which he disclaims any pretension of giving a complete list
seems to imply that he had observed other books quoted in other writers,
which he had not read or seen himself. Theodoret does not 'enumerate
other of his works,' as the looseness of the English would suggest to
the reader. He only mentions incidentally, when describing the sects of
the Severians and Montanists respectively, that Apollinaris had written
against them [243:1]. There is not the smallest reason why he should
have gone out of his way in either passage to speak of the work on the
Paschal Festival, supposing him to have known of it. And if not, where
else does our author find in Theodoret any notice which can be made to
yield the inference that he was unacquainted with this treatise? Nor
again does Jerome, in the passage to which our author refers in his note
[243:2], allude to a single work by this writer, but simply mentions him
by name among those versed in profane as well as sacred literature.
Elsewhere indeed he does give a catalogue of Apollinaris' writings
[243:3], but there he simply copies Eusebius. With r