saying was the source of the quotation. And even where explicit quotations occur, no light may be thrown on the authorship of the book quoted, except in so far as they indicate the date of its com- position.
It is not questioned that in the last quarter of the second century the Fourth Gospel was accepted by the Church as the work of the Apostle John, and was recognised as canonical. This is a fact not questioned, but its importance may easily be underrated and its - significance missed. Opponents of the Johannine authorship have declared it to be “totally unnecessary to account” for this remark- able consent of opinion. But the very fact that a Gospel so obviously different from the synoptic Gospels should have been unanimously received as Apostolic is a weighty testimony. Its significance has been admirably summarised by Archdeacon Watkins (Bampton Lectures, p. 47): “It is not that the Fourth Gospel was known and read as the work of St. John in the year Α.Ρ. 190 or 180 or 170; but that it was known and read through all the extent of Christendom, in churches varying in origin and language and history, in Lyons and Rome, in Carthage and Alexandria, in Athens and Corinth, in Ephesus and Sardis and Hierapolis, in Antioch and Edessa; that the witness is of Churches to a sacred book which was read in their services, and about which there could be no mistake, and of individuals who had sacrificed the greatest good of temporal life, and were ready to sacrifice life itself as a witness to its truth ; that these individual witnesses were men of culture and rich mental endowment, with full access to materials for judgment, and full power to exercise that judgment; that their witness was given in the face of hostile heathenism and opposing heresy, which demanded caution in argument and reserve in statement; and that this witness is clear, definite, unquestioned ”.
To this universal consent the sole exceptions were Marcion and the Alogi, and possibly Gaius.! During the decade Α.Ρ. 160-170 there existed in Asia Minor some persons who discovered in the Gospel traces of Gnostic and Montanistic teaching. They held their place in the Christian Church, but discarded the Johannine writings and ascribed them to Cerinthus. Epiphanius gives them the name of "Ἄλογοι [unreasonable, irrational] because they did not accept the Logos proclaimed by John.2- Harnack justly maintains that this is
1 See Rendel Harris’ Hermas in Arcadia and other Essays, 1896.
2 Epiphan., Haeres., 51, 3, defines this heresy as ἀποβάλλονσαν Ιωάννου τὰς βίβλους. “Eel οὖν τὸν λόγον οὐ δέχονται τὸν παρὰ “lwdvvov κεκηρυγµένον, "λογοι κληθήσονται. See Harnack, Das N. Test. um ᾱ. ¥ahr 200, pp. 58-70;