churches.  His work against Marcion, whom he accuses of employing a mutilated gospel of Luke, is particularly instructive as showing how deep and settled was the conviction of the early Christians that nothing could be a gospel which did not proceed from apostles or apostolic men; and how watchful they were against all attempts to mutilate or corrupt the primitive apostolic records.  In defending the true gospel of Luke against the mutilated form of it employed by Marcion, he says:  “I affirm that not in the apostolic churches alone, but in all which are joined with them in the bond of fellowship, that gospel of Luke which we most firmly maintain, has been valid from its first publication; but Marcion’s gospel is unknown to most of them, and known to none, except to be condemned.”  This testimony of Tertullian is very important, as showing his full conviction that Marcion could not deny the universal reception, from the beginning, of the genuine gospel of Luke.  And a little afterwards he adds:  “The same authority of the apostolic churches will defend the other gospels also, which we have in like manner through them, and according to them,” (Against Marcion, 4. 5.) Many more quotations of like purport might be added.

Clement of Alexandria was a pupil of Pantaenus, and his successor as head of the catechetical school at Alexandria in Egypt.  He was of heathen origin, born probably about the middle of the second century, and died about A.D. 220.  He had a philosophical turn of mind, and after his conversion to Christianity made extensive researches under various teachers, as he himself tells us, in Greece, in Italy, in Palestine, and other parts of the East.  At last he met with Pantaenus in Egypt, whom he preferred to all his other guides, and in whose instructions he rested.  The testimony of Clement to the universal and undisputed reception by the churches of the four canonical gospels as the writings of apostles or apostolic men, agrees with that of Tertullian.  And it has the more weight, not only on account of his wide investigations, but because, also, it virtually contains the testimony of his several teachers, some of whom must have known, if not the apostles themselves, those who had listened to their teachings.

In connection with the testimony of the above-named writers, we may consider that of the churches of Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, in a letter addressed by them to “the churches of Asia and Phrygia,” which Eusebius has preserved for us, (Hist.  Eccl., 5. 1,) and which describes a severe persecution through which they passed in the reign of Antoninus Verus, about A.D. 177.  In this they say:  “So was fulfilled that which was spoken by our Lord, ’The time shall come in which whosoever killeth you shall think that he doeth God service.’” In speaking again of a certain youthful martyr, they first compare him to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, affirming, in the very words of Luke,