ther the light and airy
arches on which the huge pretences of the Church of Rome have reared
themselves. If the Babylon of the Epistle was Babylon on the
Euphrates--and there is not the slightest historical reason to suppose
it to have been anything else--the story of the origin of St. Mark's
Gospel perishes with the legend to which it was inseparably attached by
Church tradition.

Of St. John's Gospel we do not propose to speak in this place; it forms
a subject by itself; and of that it is enough to say that the defects of
external evidence which undoubtedly exist seem overborne by the
overwhelming proofs of authenticity contained in the Gospel itself.

The faint traditionary traces which inform us that St. Matthew and St.
Mark were supposed to have written Gospels fail us with St. Luke. The
apostolic and the immediately post-apostolic Fathers never mention Luke
as having written a history of our Lord at all. There was indeed a
Gospel in use among the Marcionites which resembled that of St. Luke, as
the Gospel of the Ebionites resembled that of St. Matthew. In both the
one and the other there was no mention of our Lord's miraculous birth;
and later writers accused Marcion of having mutilated St. Luke. But
apparently their only reason for thinking so was that the two Gospels
were like each other; and for all that can be historically proved, the
Gospel of the Marcionites may have been the older of the two. What is
wanting externally, however, is supposed to be more than made up by the
language of St. Luke himself. The Gospel was evidently composed in its
present form by the same person who wrote the Acts of the Apostles. In
the latter part of the Acts of the Apostles the writer speaks in the
first person as the companion of St. Paul; and the date of this Gospel
seems to be thus conclusively fixed at an early period in the apostolic
age. There is at least a high probability that this reasoning is sound;
yet it has seemed strange that a convert so eminent as 'the most
excellent' Theophilus, to whom St. Luke addressed himself, should be
found impossible to identify. 'Most excellent' was a title given only to
persons of high rank; and it is singular that St. Paul himself should
never have mentioned so considerable a name. And again, there is
something peculiar in the language of the introduction to the Gospel
itself. Though St. Luke professes to be writing on the authority of
eye-witnesses, he does not say he had spoken wit