No less decided is the assertion of Origen, who writes:  ’As I have learnt from tradition concerning the four Gospels, which alone are undisputed in the Church of God under heaven, that the first in order of the scripture is that according to Matthew, who was once a publican but afterwards an Apostle of Jesus Christ ...  The second is that according to Mark, who wrote as Peter suggested to him ...  The third is that according to Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul ...  Last of all that according to John’ [Endnote 319:1].  And again in his commentary upon the Preface to St. Luke’s Gospel he expressly guards against the possibility that it might be thought to have reference to the other (Canonical) Gospels:  ’In this word of Luke’s “have taken in hand” there is a latent accusation of those who without the grace of the Holy Spirit have rushed to the composing of Gospels.  Matthew, indeed, and Mark, and John, and Luke, have not “taken in hand” to write, but have written Gospels, being full of the Holy Spirit ...  The Church has four Gospels; the Heresies have many’ [Endnote 319:2].

But besides the Fathers, and without going beyond the bounds of the second century, there is other evidence of the most distinct and important kind for the existence of a canon of the Gospels.  Among the various translations of the New Testament one certainly, two very probably, and three perhaps probably, were made in the course of the second century.

The old Latin (as distinct from Jerome’s revised) version of the Gospels and with them of a considerable portion of the New Testament was, I think it may be said, undoubtedly used by Tertullian and by the Latin translator of Irenaeus, who appears to be quoted by Tertullian, and in that case could not be placed later than 200 A.D. [Endnote 320:1] On this point I shall quote authorities that will hardly be questioned.  And first that of a writer who is accustomed to weigh, with the accuracy of true science, every word that he puts down, and who upon this subject is giving the result of a most minute and careful investigation.  Speaking of the Latin translation of the New Testament as found in Tertullian he says:  ’Although single portions of this, especially passages which are translated in several different ways, may be due to Tertullian himself, still it cannot be doubted that in by far the majority of cases he has followed the text of a version received in his time by the Africans and specially the Carthaginian Christians, and made perhaps long before his time, and that consequently his quotations represent the form of the earliest Latinized Scriptures accepted in those regions’ [Endnote 320:2].  Again:  ’In the first place we may conclude from the writings of Tertullian, that remarkable Carthaginian presbyter at the close of the second century, that in his time there existed several, perhaps many, Latin translations of the Bible ...  Tertullian himself frequently quotes in his