the fact that they are almost alone in advancing this testimony, which Dr. Lightfoot describes as having “a vital bearing on the main question at issue, the date of the fourth Gospel.”  The reader who had not the work of Irenaeus before him to estimate the justness of the ascription of this passage to Papias, and who was not acquainted with all the circumstances, and with the state of critical opinion on the point, could scarcely, on reading such statements, understand the real position of the case.

Now the facts are as follows:  Routh [4:4] conjectured that the whole passage in Irenaeus was derived from the work of Papias, and in this he was followed by Dorner, [4:5] who practically introduced the suggestion to the critics of Germany, with whom it found no favour, and no one whom I remember, except Tischendorf and perhaps Professor Hofstede de Groot, now seriously supports this view.  Zeller, [5:1] in his celebrated treatise on the external testimony for the fourth Gospel, argued against Dorner that, in spite of the indirect construction of the passage, there is not the slightest certainty that Irenaeus did not himself interpolate the words from the fourth Gospel, and he affirmed the fact that there is no evidence whatever that Papias knew that work.  Anger, [5:2] discussing the evidence of the presbyters quoted by Irenaeus in our Gospels, refers to this passage in a note with marked doubt, saying, that fortasse (in italics), on account the chiliastic tone of the passage, it may, as Routh conjectures, be from the work of Papias; but in the text he points out the great caution with which these quotations from “the presbyters” should be used.  He says, “Sed in usu horum testimoniorum faciendo cautissime versandum est, tum quod, nisi omnia, certe pleraque ab Irenaeo memoriter repetuntur, tum quia hic illic incertissimum est, utrum ipse loquatur Irenaeus an presbyterorum verba recitet.”  Meyer, [5:3] who refers to the passage, remarks that it is doubtful whether these presbyters, whom he does not connect with Papias, derived the saying from the Gospel or from tradition.  Riggenbach [5:4] alludes to it merely to abandon the passage as evidence connected with Papias, and only claims the quotation, in an arbitrary way, as emanating from the first half of the second century.  Professor Hofstede de Groot, [5:5] the translator of Tischendorf’s work into Dutch, and his warm admirer, brings forward the quotation, after him, as either belonging to the circle of Papias or to that Father himself.  Hilgenfeld [5:6] distinctly separates the presbyters of this passage from Papias, and asserts that they may have lived in the second half of the second century.  Luthardt, [6:1] in the new issue of his youthful work on the fourth Gospel, does not attempt to associate the quotation with the book of Papias, but merely argues that the presbyters to whom Irenaeus was indebted for it formed a circle to which Polycarp and Papias belonged.  Zahn [6:2] does not go beyond him in