but to the Baptist.  And so on.  The allusions are all made in this incidental manner; and the life of Origen, if he was born, as is supposed, about 185 A.D., would overlap that of Heracleon.  What evidence could be more sufficient? or if such evidence is to be discarded, what evidence are we to accept?  Is it to be of the kind that is relied upon for referring quotations to the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or the Gospel according to Peter, or the [Greek:  Genna Marias]?  There are sometimes no doubt reasonable grounds for scepticism as to the patristic statements, but none such are visible here.  On the contrary, that Heracleon should have written a commentary on the fourth Gospel falls in entirely with what Irenaeus says as to the large use that was made of that Gospel by the Valentinians.

* * * * *

As we approach the end of the third and beginning of the fourth quarter of the second century the evidence for the fourth Gospel becomes widespread and abundant.  At this date we have attention called to the discrepancy between the Gospels as to the date of the Crucifixion by Claudius Apollinaris.  We have also Tatian, the Epistle of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, the heathen Celsus and the Muratorian Canon, and then a very few years later Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus.

I imagine that there can be really no doubt about Tatian.  Whatever may have been the nature of the Diatessaron, the ’Address to the Greeks’ contains references which it is mere paradox to dispute.  I will not press the first of these which is given by Dr. Westcott, not because I do not believe that it is ultimately based upon the fourth Gospel, still less that there is the slightest contradiction to St. John’s doctrine, but because Tatian’s is a philosophical comment perhaps a degree too far removed from the original to be quite producible as evidence.  It is one of the earliest speculations as to the ontological relation between the Father and the Son.  In the beginning God was alone—­though all things were with Him potentially.  By the mere act of volition He gave birth to the Logos, who was the real originative cause of things.  Yet the existence of the Logos was not such as to involve a separation of identity in the Godhead; it involved no diminution in Him from whom the Logos issued.  Having been thus first begotten, the Logos in turn begat our creation, &c.  The Logos is thus represented as being at once prior to creation (the Johannean [Greek:  en archae]) and the efficient cause of it—­which is precisely the doctrine of the Prologue.

The other two passages are however quite unequivocal.

Orat. ad Graecos, c. xiii.

And this is therefore that saying:  The darkness comprehends not the light.

[Greek:  Kai touto estin ara to eiraemenon Hae skotia to phos ou katalambanei.]

John i. 5.

And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness
comprehended it not.