by succe:;;si 1·c opponents of lhc i;nystery of God thcrciu revealed is hopelessly shl\tterod. Consequentl~-. there is, to sl\y the least, as much room for predispos1tion l\nd bias on the one side as on the other.
III. EXTERNAL EVIDENCE OP THE EARLY ExrSTEN'OE 011' TIIE FottR Gol!PELI!. 1. Introd,u:wry remarks. (1) la discussing the question of the genuineness of any ancient writing, we are confronted with the positive and negative evidence of its existence at a time consistent with the alleged authorship. The external evidence of the existence at any particular date of any ancient document, to bo absolutely satis- factory, would be the existence of other ancient trustworthy documents, whose date can be npproximatcly fixed near the date of the life of the supposed author,Jn which quotations from the work iu question occur, and wherein such_ quotations are definitely ascribed to a work which can be, without reasonable doubt, identified with that about which we make the inquiry. If an unimpeachable contemporary authority, either with favourable or hostile intent, bas loft behind him such a quotation from one of Paul's Epistles or from one of Plato's dialogues or Horace's odes, the question of the existence of citbC'r of these documents at the period when the quotation was made would be practknlly settled. , lt is not often possible to arrive at evidence so entirely conclusive as this. We may have to tra-vel down the stream of time for a whole generation or more before .we find a single trustworthy quotation, and, when we discover one, wo may be surprised to see that it is not accurate, and that it is not referred to the previous author. Still, from the manner of its introduction, tbo second authority may reveal. the place which the former writing heJd in the opinion of his contemporaries; and it may happen that obvious reasons occur why the authorship of such quotation should not have been cited or apptaled to; e.nd yet sucb a citation may prove to be of very c9nvincing and impor• tant character. (2) The non-existence of the evidence which we have described as unimpeachable by no means establishes tbe spuriousness or later origin of the document whoso date we wish to verify. The letter to Diognetus, which has taken its place among the sub~ apostolic literature--a position, we admit, by no means unquestioned-does not appear to have been quoted, or copied, or referred to by any ancient writer, nor. by &llY writer at all till the sixteenth century. The Second Epistle of Peter was ,not. mentioned, nor quoted from, nor, so far as wo know,.tra.Dslated ll\to any other ,language until the beginning of the fourth century ; yet it wonld. bo. the height of hypercriticism, oven among those who doubt its apostolic origin, to refer _its production. by a.fa.lsWFi!!,s to a date later than the second century. Positive evidence of an external kinq may not.be forthcoming, but this circnmstance wil). not provo,;tho non-existence of the documen,t; .All that can be deduced from s □ ch a fact is that the authors_ of the few and frag~ mentary treatises which have survived_did not in them allude. to or quote from the document we are anxious to identify. . (3) Further, we see, at e. glance,' that the writers Vl'.ho do quote a more ancient authority may, when they made their citation, have had no reason for any specifi.o mention of the name of the previous writer. If Justin Martyr, e.g,, had called the attention of the Roman emperors to the obscure names of Matthew, -Ma;rk, or John, it would not have conciliated their regard. The more general title of "memorials by, the apostles of Christ and by their companions "-a phrase peculiarly applicable to our foµr Gospels-was much more likely to secure attention from his readers, although, .it may fail w satisfy the demand of modem criticism and of technical accuracy. . . (4) .A.gain, we may find that some of the quotations are inaccurately made.. ; '!'.hoy may be rather the transfusion into the language of the later writer of, the thought of the older writer, with only a few verbal coincidences,. aud yet they may furnish us oven now with powerful evidence of the kind we seek. The books were often quoted from memory-a practice stimulated by the difficulty of makillg accurate citations at any time by the cumbrous form, difficult caligraphy, and great rarity of the books themselves. Lengthened passages, suoh as Pe. xxii. nud Isa. liii, which are quoted in extenso, accurately correspond with the LXX. Version; but numerous quotations are made froJn the Old Testament with the same vaguenes1;1 ·nm GOSPEL ACCORDING TO 8'1'..JOHN. xi:c