little account, since his notices of the authors to whom he refers, and of their works, are confessedly imperfect. Eusebius notices, for example, Hist. Eccl. 4. 14, the fact that Polycarp, in his letter to the Philippians, "has used certain testimonies from the First Epistle of Peter;" but says nothing of his many references, in the same letter, to the epistles of Paul, in some of which he quotes the apostle by name. We have, nevertheless, through Eusebius, an indirect but valid testimony from Papias to the authorship of the fourth gospel, resting upon the admitted identity of the author of this gospel with the author of the first of the epistles ascribed to John. Speaking of Papias, Eusebius says: "But the same man used testimonies from the First Epistle of John." Hist. Eccl., 3. 39, end. The ascription to John of this epistle, is virtually the ascription to him of the fourth gospel also. Eusebius speaks of Papias as a man "of very small mind." The correctness of this judgment is manifest from the specimens which he gives of his writings; but it cannot invalidate the evidence we have from the above passages of the existence, in Papias' day, of the gospels to which he refers. As to the question whether these were our present canonical gospels of Matthew and Mark, it is sufficient to say that neither Eusebius nor any of the church fathers understood them differently. 9. A very interesting relic of antiquity is the _Epistle to Diognetus_, of which the authorship is uncertain. Its date cannot be later than the age of Justin Martyr, to whom it is ascribed by some. It is, notwithstanding some erroneous views, a noble defence of Christianity, in which the author shows his acquaintance with the gospel of John by the use of terms and phrases peculiar to him. Thus he calls Christ "the Word," and "the only begotten Son," whom God sent to men. In the words, "not to take thought about raiment and food," section 9, there is an apparent reference to Matt. 6:25, 31. In addition to the above testimonies might be adduced some fragments of early Christian writers which have been preserved to us by those of a later day; but for brevity's sake they are omitted. 10. Following up the stream of testimony, we come now to that of the so-called _apostolic fathers_; that is, of men who were disciples of apostles, and wrote in the age next following them. Holding, as they do, such a near relation to the apostles, and familiar with the oral traditions of the apostolic age, we cannot expect to find in them such frequent and formal references to the books of the New Testament as characterize the works of later writers. They quote, for the most part, anonymously, interweaving with their own words those of the sacred writers.