[54] The word Synoptics, applied to Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Gospels, indicates abridgment--the bringing of all parts under one view.--_See Dr. Hyde Clark's Dictionary_.
[55] "Negative critics, as we have seen, have been compelled again to raise the age of the Gospels, and to place them in the apostolic age, between A.D. 50 and A.D. 100."--_Dr. Christlieb_, p. 541.
This is a sensible comment on our author's general argument.
_"Every trace has vanished of the great nameless one."_
_"The denial of the authenticity of John's Gospel is a source of far greater difficulties than its acknowledgment."_
_"The doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is the fundamental doctrine of Christianity. Without it Christianity, as a theological and as a philosophical system, cannot rank above Rabbinism and Mahommedanism."_
The evidence that to John the Apostle is to be ascribed the Fourth Gospel, is worthy of the best attention we can bestow upon it. After that apostle had been dead half a century, this book, as is acknowledged by our author and all other critics, occupied a prominent place among the manuscripts of the Christians, with the name of John, as the author, attached; and the question now arises, after nearly eighteen centuries of belief in its authorship and authority, is there reasonable ground for doubting that it can be properly attributed to the apostle who was the companion, disciple, and bosom friend of Jesus? I think the question may be answered with confidence upon the evidence within our reach.
In the first place, Irenæus believed it was the Gospel according to John the Apostle; and who was Irenæus, that his belief in it should be good evidence? He was not John's contemporary, but there was one between John and Irenæus who was so intimate with both that the link of evidence is fully to be relied upon, and that link is Polycarp. Therefore, Irenæus, who was a hearer of Polycarp, can tell us something about it. Now Polycarp was born in the time of Nero, so he was for thirty-two years a contemporary of John's, and was his disciple. And Irenæus says in a letter written to a person called Florinus, and preserved by Eusebius: "When I was yet a youth, I saw thee in Asia Minor, at Polycarp's house, where thou wert distinguished at court, and obtained the regard of the bishop. I can more distinctly recollect things which happened then than others more recent, for events which happened in youth seem to grow with the mind, and to become part of ourselves. So I can tell the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse, and his going out and coming in, and the manner of his life, and his personal appearance, and his discourses to the people, and how he related his intercourse _with John_, and the rest who had seen the Lord; and how he rehearsed their sayings, and what things there were which he had heard from them about the Lord, and about His _miracles_, and about His doctrine; and how Polycarp, having learned from the eye-witnesses of the Word of Life, narrated all things agreeably with the Scriptures. And to these things, by God's mercy bestowed on me at that time, I used diligently to listen, writing the remembrance of them, not on paper, but in my heart; and, by God's grace, I am always meditating affectionately upon them."[56]