“Of the Apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first instil faith into us; whilst, of Apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it afterwards.  These all start with the same principles of the faith, so far as relates to the one only God the Creator, and His Christ, how that He was born of the Virgin, and came to fulfil the law and the prophets.  Never mind if there does occur some variation in the order of their narratives, provided that there be agreement in the essential matter of the faith in which there is disagreement with Marcion.” (Tertullian against Marcion, iv. c. ii.)

Such are the explicit declarations of these three writers respecting the number and authorship of the Four.  I shall give at the conclusion of this section some of the references to be found in these writers to the first two or three chapters in each Gospel.

It is but very little to say that they quote the Four as frequently, and with as firm a belief in their being the Scriptures of God, as any modern divine.  They quote them far more copiously, and reproduce the history contained in them far more fully than any modern divine whom I have ever read, who is not writing specifically on the Life of our Lord, or on some part of His teaching contained in the Gospels.

But I have now to consider the question, “To what time, previous to their own day, or rather to the time at which they wrote, does their testimony to such a matter as the general reception of the Four Gospels of necessity reach back?”

Clement wrote in Alexandria, Tertullian in Rome or Africa, Irenaeus in Gaul.  They all flourished about A.D. 190.  They all speak of the Gospels, not only as well known and received, but as being the only Gospels acknowledged and received by the Church.  One of them uses very “uncritical” arguments to prove that the Gospels could only be four in number; but the very absurdity of his analogies is a witness to the universal tradition of his day.  To what date before their time must this tradition reach, so that it must be relied upon as exhibiting the true state of things?

Now this tradition is not respecting a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact—­the fact being no other than the reading of the Gospels or Memoirs of our Lord in the public service of the Church.  The “Memoirs of our Lord,” with other books, formed the Lectionary of the Church.  So that every Christian, who attended the public assemblies for worship, must know whether he heard the Gospels read there or not.

Now any two men who lived successively to the age of sixty-five would be able to transmit irrefragable testimony, which would cover a hundred years, to the use of the Gospels in the lectionary of the Church.