We have thus far seen that the five earliest Fathers of the Christian
Church have no claim to be considered Apostolic, and that, so far from
bearing testimony to the authenticity of our canonical Gospels, their
own age and authorship are disputed. We have noticed that their works
never mention by name any of the writers of the New Testament with the
exception of Paul; that the sayings they ascribe to Jesus, while often
similar to those found in our Gospels, are never identical with them,
and that they contain much that is evidently derived from other sources.
We have in addition seen that there were numerous Gospels current in the
early days of the Christian Church; thus confirming the account of Luke
that _many_ had taken in hand to set forth in order the things believed
among them.
The early Christian ages were characterised by anything rather than
by investigation, or even by accuracy of representation. Deception
in literary productions appears to have been the rule rather than
the exception. It was not only practised but defended. The author of
"Supernatural Religion" says of these Fathers (pp. 460--1, vol. 1,
1879):--"No fable could be too gross, no invention too transparent, for
their unsuspicious acceptance, if it assumed a pious form or tended to
edification. No period in the history of the world ever produced so many
spurious works as the first two or three centuries of our era. The name
of every Apostle, or Christian teacher, not excepting that of the great
Master himself, was freely attached to every description of
religious forgery. False gospels, epistles, acts, martyrologies, were
unscrupulously circulated, and such pious falsification was not even
intended or regarded as a crime, but perpetrated for the sake of
edification. It was only slowly and after some centuries that many of
these works, once, as we have seen, regarded with pious veneration, were
excluded from the canon; and that genuine works shared this fate, whilst
spurious ones usurped their places, is one of the surest results of
criticism."
Yet we are to suppose that while words written for edification were
falsely ascribed to other Apostles, it was utterly impossible with
regard to our four Evangelists. We shall be better able to judge this
question upon examining the testimony of the first person who mentions
the writings of the first two.