three writers respecting the
number and authorship of the Four. I shall give at the conclusion of
this section some of the references to be found in these writers to the
first two or three chapters in each Gospel.

It is but very little to say that they quote the Four as frequently, and
with as firm a belief in their being the Scriptures of God, as any
modern divine. They quote them far more copiously, and reproduce the
history contained in them far more fully than any modern divine whom I
have ever read, who is not writing specifically on the Life of our Lord,
or on some part of His teaching contained in the Gospels.

But I have now to consider the question, "To what time, previous to
their own day, or rather to the time at which they wrote, does their
testimony to such a matter as the general reception of the Four Gospels
of necessity reach back?"

Clement wrote in Alexandria, Tertullian in Rome or Africa, Irenaeus in
Gaul. They all flourished about A.D. 190. They all speak of the Gospels,
not only as well known and received, but as being the only Gospels
acknowledged and received by the Church. One of them uses very
"uncritical" arguments to prove that the Gospels could only be four in
number; but the very absurdity of his analogies is a witness to the
universal tradition of his day. To what date before their time must this
tradition reach, so that it must be relied upon as exhibiting the true
state of things?

Now this tradition is not respecting a matter of opinion, but a matter
of fact--the fact being no other than the reading of the Gospels or
Memoirs of our Lord in the public service of the Church. The "Memoirs of
our Lord," with other books, formed the Lectionary of the Church. So
that every Christian, who attended the public assemblies for worship,
must know whether he heard the Gospels read there or not.

Now any two men who lived successively to the age of sixty-five would be
able to transmit irrefragable testimony, which would cover a hundred
years, to the use of the Gospels in the lectionary of the Church.

During the last five years we have had a change in our Lectionary, which
change only affects the rearrangement of the portions read each day out
of the same Gospels, and every boy and girl of fifteen years old at the
time would recognize the alteration when it took place. If it had
occurred fifty years ago, any man or woman of sixty-five would perfectly
remember the change. If it had occurred wit