Going back still another hundred years we come to the times of the notorious apostate, Marcion. Several of the apostles were alive at the time Marcion was born; and his works date back to within twenty years of the latest apostolical writings. Having been cut off from the church, he was greatly enraged and said the worst he could about it. He traveled all the way from Sinope, on the Black Sea, to Rome, through Galatia, Bythynia, Asia-Minor, Greece and Italy, the very countries where the apostles preached, and the churches to which they wrote. He endeavored in many places to wrest the scriptures from their rightful meaning; but nowhere attempted to deny their authority (_see Lardner, Vol. ix, page_ 358). Thus in the writings of Celsus and Marcion we have the most indubitable evidence, even the admission of enemies, that these books were in existence and universally received as true, by the early Christians, within twenty years of the time when they were written and by the very churches to which they were addressed. As printing was then unknown, and all important doctrines were written upon {97} parchment, the books of that period presented rather a bulky appearance. Probably for this reason the four books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were commonly joined together in one volume and named _The Gospel_. The Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles to the churches of Thessalonica, Galatia, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Collosse, the First Epistle of Peter, the First Epistle of John, together with those written to Philemon, Timothy and Titus, comprised a second volume called _The Apostles_. The remaining books of the New Testament, being the last written, usually formed a third volume and were known as _Apostolical Writings_. This arrangement did not injure the meaning but rather benefitted it by showing the relative dates of the various books comprising the New Testament.