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THE GOSPELS IN THE SECOND CENTURY

AN EXAMINATION OF THE CRITICAL PART OF A WORKENTITLED 'SUPERNATURAL RELIGION'

BY

W. SANDAY, M.A.

Rector of Barton-on-the-Heath, Warwickshire;and late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.Author of a Work on the Fourth Gospel.

LONDON:1876.

I had hoped to inscribe in this book the revered and cherishedname of my old head master, DR. PEARS of Repton. His consent hadbeen very kindly and warmly given, and I was just on the point ofsending the dedication to the printers when I received a telegramnaming the day and hour of his funeral. His health had for sometime since his resignation of Repton been seriously failing, but Ihad not anticipated that the end was so near. All who knew himwill deplore his too early loss, and their regret will be sharedby the wider circle of those who can appreciate a life in whichthere was nothing ignoble, nothing ungenerous, nothing unreal. Ihad long wished that he should receive some tribute of regard fromone whom he had done his best by precept, and still more byexample, to fit and train for his place and duty in the world.This pleasure and this honour have been denied me. I cannot placemy book, as I had hoped, in his hand, but I may still lay itreverently upon his tomb.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. INTRODUCTORY

II. ON QUOTATIONS GENERALLY IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITERS

III. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS

IV. JUSTIN MARTYR

V. HEGESIPPUS—PAPIAS

VI. THE CLEMENTINE HOMILIES

VII. BASILIDES AND VALENTINUS

VIII. MARCION

IX. TATIAN—DIONYSIUS OF CORINTH

X. MELITO—APOLLINARIS—ATHENAGORAS—THE EPISTLE OF VIENNE AND LYONS

XI. PTOLOMAEUS AND HERACLEON—CELSUS—THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT

XII. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOURTH GOSPEL

XIII. ON THE STATE OF THE CANON IN THE LAST QUARTER OF THE SECOND CENTURY

XIV. CONCLUSION

[ENDNOTES]

APPENDIX. SUPPLEMENTAL NOTE ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MARCION'S GOSPEL

INDICES

PREFACE.

It will be well to explain at once that the following work hasbeen written at the request and is published at the cost of theChristian Evidence Society, and that it may therefore be classedunder the head of Apologetics. I am aware that this will be adrawback to it in the eyes of some, and I confess that it is notaltogether a recommendation in my own.

Ideally speaking, Apologetics ought to have no existence distinctfrom the general and unanimous search for truth, and in so far asthey tend to put any other consideration, no matter how high orpure in itself, in the place of truth, they must needs stand asidefrom the path of science.

But, on the other hand, the question of true belief itself isimmensely wide. It is impossible to approach what is merely abranch of a vast subject without some general conclusions alreadyformed as to the whole. The mind cannot, if it would, become asheet of blank paper on which the writing is inscribed by anexternal process alone. It must needs have its praejudicia<