Irenaeus was a native of Asia Minor, of Greek descent; but the seat of his labors was Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, of the former of which places he became bishop after the martyrdom of Pothinus, about A.D. 177.  He was born about A.D. 140, and suffered martyrdom under Septimius Severus A.D. 202.  In his youth he was a disciple of Polycarp, who was in turn a disciple of the apostle John.  In a letter to one Florinus, which Eusebius has preserved, (Hist.  Eccl., 5. 20,) he gives, in glowing language, his recollections of the person and teachings of Polycarp, and tells with what interest he listened as this man related his intercourse with the apostle John and the others who had seen the Lord, “how he recounted their words, and the things which he had heard from them concerning the Lord, and concerning his miracles and teaching.”  And he adds that these things which Polycarp had received from eye-witnesses he related “all in agreement with the Scriptures;” that is, obviously, with the gospel narratives.  Pothinus, the predecessor of Irenaeus at Lyons, was ninety years old at the time of his martyrdom, and must have been acquainted with many who belonged to the latter part of the apostolic age.  Under such circumstances, it is inconceivable that Irenaeus, who knew the Christian traditions of both the East and the West, should not have known the truth respecting the reception of the gospels by the churches, and the grounds on which this reception rested, more especially in the case of the gospel of John.  Tischendorf, after mentioning the relation of Irenaeus to Polycarp the disciple of John, asks, with reason:  “Are we, nevertheless, to cherish the supposition that Irenaeus never heard a word from Polycarp respecting the gospel of John, and yet gave it his unconditional confidence—­this man Irenaeus, who in his controversies with heretics, the men of falsification and apocryphal works, employs against them, before all other things, the pure Scripture as a holy weapon?” (Essay, When were Our Gospels Written, p. 8.) The testimony of Irenaeus is justly regarded as of the most weighty character.  The fact that he gives several fanciful reasons why there should be only four gospels, (Against Heresies, 3. 11,) does not invalidate his statement of the fact that the churches had always received four, and no more.  We always distinguish between men’s testimony to facts of which they are competent witnesses, and their philosophical explanations of these facts.

Tertullian was born in Carthage about A.D. 160, and died between A.D. 220 and 240.  About A.D. 202 he joined the sect of the Montanists; but this does not affect his testimony respecting the origin and universal reception of the four canonical gospels.  His works are very numerous, and in them all he insists with great earnestness that the gospel narratives, as also the other apostolic writings, have been received without corruption, as a sacred inheritance, from the apostolic