possible that, coming from the orthodox side, they may have been used in the sense which Tischendorf attributes to them.  There can be no question that Irenaeus used [Greek:  to euangelion] for the canonical Gospels collectively, and Justin Martyr may perhaps have done so.  Tischendorf himself does not maintain that it refers to our Gospels exclusively.  Practically the statements in regard to the Commentary of Basilides lead to nothing.

Neither does it appear any more clearly what was the nature of the Gospel that Basilides wrote.  The term [Greek:  euangelion] had a technical metaphysical sense in the Basilidian sect and was used to designate a part of the transcendental Gnostic revelations.  The Gospel of Basilides may therefore, as Dr. Westcott suggests, reasonably enough, have had a philosophical rather than a historical character.  The author of ‘Supernatural Religion’ censures Dr. Westcott for this suggestion [Endnote 189:4], but a few pages further on he seems to adopt it himself, though he applies it strangely to the language of Eusebius or Agrippa Castor and not to Basilides’ own work.

In any case Hippolytus expressly says that, after the generation of Jesus, the Basilidians held ’the other events in the life of the Saviour followed as they are written in the Gospels’ [Endnote 190:1].  There is no reason at all to suppose that there was a breach of continuity in this respect between Basilides and his school.  And if his Gospel really contained substantially the same events as ours, it is a question of comparatively secondary importance whether he actually made use of those Gospels or no.

It is rather remarkable that Hippolytus and Epiphanius, who furnish the fullest accounts of the tenets of Basilides (and his followers), say nothing about his Gospel:  neither does Irenaeus or Clement of Alexandria; the first mention of it is in Origen’s Homily on St. Luke.  This shows how unwarranted is the assumption made in ‘Supernatural Religion’ [Endnote 190:2] that because Hippolytus says that Basilides appealed to a secret tradition he professed to have received from Matthias, and Eusebius that he set up certain imaginary prophets, ‘Barcabbas and Barcoph,’ he therefore had no other authorities.  The statement that he ‘absolutely ignores the canonical Gospels altogether’ and does not ‘recognise any such works as of authority,’ is much in excess of the evidence.  All that this really amounts to is that neither Hippolytus nor Eusebius say in so many words that Basilides did use our Gospels.  It would be a fairer inference to argue from their silence, and still more from that of the ’malleus haereticorum’ Epiphanius, that he did not in this depart from the orthodox custom; otherwise the Fathers would have been sure to charge him with it, as they did Marcion.  It is really I believe a not very unsafe conclusion, for heretical as well as orthodox writers, that where the Fathers do not say to the contrary, they accepted the same documents as themselves.