common experience of the senses,(3) and Peter replies: "If, therefore, our Jesus indeed was seen in a vision, was known by thee, and conversed with thee, it was only as one angry with an adversary.... But can any one through a vision be made wise to teach? And if thou sayest: 'It is possible,' then wherefore did the Teacher remain and discourse for a whole year to us who were awake? And how can we believe thy story that he was seen by thee? And how could he have been seen by thee when thy thoughts are contrary to his teaching? But if seen and taught by him for a single hour thou becamest an apostle:(4) preach his words, interpret his sayings, love his

apostles, oppose not me who consorted with him. For thou hast directly withstood me who am a firm rock, the foundation of the Church. If thou hadst not been an adversary thou wouldst not have calumniated me, thou wouldst not have reviled my teaching in order that, when declaring what I have myself heard from the Lord.

I might not be believed, as though I were condemned.... But if thou callest me condemned, thou speakest against God who revealed Christ to me,'"(1) &c. This last phrase: "If thou callest me condemned" [———] is an evident allusion to Galat. ii. II: "I withstood him to the face, because he was condemned" [———].

We have digressed to a greater extent than we intended, but it is not unimportant to show the general character and tendency of the work we have been examining. The Clementine Homilies,—written perhaps about the end of the second century, which never name nor indicate any Gospel as the source of the author's knowledge of evangelical history, whose quotations of sayings of Jesus, numerous as they are, systematically differ from the parallel passages of our Synoptics, or are altogether foreign to them, which denounce the Apostle Paul as an impostor, enemy of the faith, and disseminator of false doctrine, and therefore repudiate his Epistles, at the same time equally ignoring all the other writings of the New Testament,—can scarcely be considered as giving much support to any theory of the early formation of the New Testament Canon, or as affording evidence even of the existence of its separate books.

2.

Among the writings which used formerly to be ascribed to Justin Martyr, and to be published along with his genuine works, is the short composition commonly known as the "Epistle to Diognetus." The ascription of this composition to Justin arose solely from the fact that in the only known MS. of the letter there is an inscription [———] which, from its connection, was referred to Justin.(1) The style and contents of the work, however, soon convinced critics that it could not possibly be written by Justin,(2) and although it has been ascribed by various isolated writers to Apollos, Clement, Marcion, Quadratus, and others, none of these guesses have been seriously supported, and critics are almost universally agreed in confessing that the author of the Epistle is entirely unknown.

Such being the case, it need scarcely be said that the difficulty of assigning a date to the work with any degree of certainty is extreme, if it be not absolutely impossible to do so. This difficulty, however, is increased by several circumstances. The first and most important of these is the fact that the Epistle to Diognetus is neither quoted nor mentioned by any ancient

writer, and consequently there is no external evidence whatever to indicate the period of its composition.(1) Moreover, it is not only anonymous but incomplete, or, at least, as we have it, not the work of a single writer. At the end of Chapter x. a break is indicated, and the two concluding chapters are unmistakably by a different and later hand.(2) It is not singular, therefore, that there exists a wide difference of opinion as to the date of the first ten chapters, although all agree regarding the later composition of the concluding portion. It is assigned by critics to various periods ranging from about the end of the first quarter of the second century to the end of the third century or later,(3) whilst some denounce it as a mere modern forgery.(4) Nothing can be more insecure in one

direction than the date of a work derived alone from internal evidence. Allusions to actual occurrences may with certainty prove that a work could only have been written after they had taken place. The mere absence of later indications in an anonymous Epistle only found in a single MS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, however, and which may have been, and probably was, written expressly in imitation of early Christian feeling, cannot furnish any solid basis for an early date. It must be evident that the determination of the date of this Epistle cannot therefore be regarded as otherwise than doubtful and arbitrary. It is certain that the purity of its Greek and the elegance of its style distinguish it from all other Christian works of the period to which so many assign it.(1)

The Epistle to Diognetus, however, does not furnish any evidence even of the existence of our Synoptics, for it is admitted that it does not contain a single direct quotation from any evangelical work.(2)We shall hereafter have to refer to this Epistle in connection with the fourth Gospel, but in the meantime it may be well to add that in Chapter xii., one of those, it will be remembered, which are admitted to be of later date, a brief quotation is made from 1 Cor. viii. 1, introduced merely by the words, [———].