One to the Father of all things, being in a peculiar sense begotten of him as Word and Power, and afterwards made man through the Virgin;” and calling him “the good Rock that sends forth (literally, causes to bubble forth—­compare John 4:14) living waters into the hearts of those who through him have loved the Father of all things, and that gives to all who will the water of life to drink.”  These and other references to John may be seen in Kirchhofer’s Quellensammlung, pp. 146, 147.

8.  Another early witness is Papias, who was bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, in the first half of the second century.  He wrote “An Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord,” in five books.  This work has perished; but fragments of it, with notices of its contents, are preserved to us by Eusebius and other writers.  As Papias, according to his own express testimony, gathered his materials, if not from apostles themselves, yet from their immediate disciples, his statements are invested with great interest.  Of Matthew he says, Eusebius Hist.  Eccl., 5. 39, that he “wrote the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and every one interpreted them as he could.”  He speaks of this interpretation by each one as he could as something past, implying that in his day our present Greek gospel of Matthew (of the apostolic authority of which there was never any doubt in the early churches) was in circulation, whether it was or was not originally composed in Hebrew, a question on which learned men are not agreed.  Of Mark he affirms that, “having become Peter’s interpreter, he wrote down accurately as many things as he remembered; not recording in order the things that were said or done by Christ, since he was not a hearer or follower of the Lord, but afterwards”—­after our Lord’s ascension—­“of Peter, who imparted his teachings as occasion required, but not as making an orderly narrative of the Lord’s discourses.”  Hist.  Eccl., 3. 39.  The fact that Eusebius gives no statement of Papias respecting the other two gospels is of little account, since his notices of the authors to whom he refers, and of their works, are confessedly imperfect.

Eusebius notices, for example, Hist.  Eccl. 4. 14, the fact that Polycarp, in his letter to the Philippians, “has used certain testimonies from the First Epistle of Peter;” but says nothing of his many references, in the same letter, to the epistles of Paul, in some of which he quotes the apostle by name.  We have, nevertheless, through Eusebius, an indirect but valid testimony from Papias to the authorship of the fourth gospel, resting upon the admitted identity of the author of this gospel with the author of the first of the epistles ascribed to John.  Speaking of Papias, Eusebius says:  “But the same man used testimonies from the First Epistle of John.”  Hist.  Eccl., 3. 39, end.  The ascription to John of this epistle, is virtually the ascription to him of the fourth gospel also.  Eusebius speaks of Papias as a man “of very small