There is only one other point to mention. Canon Westcott refers to the passage in the Epistle of Dionysius, which has already been quoted in this work regarding the reading of Christian writings in churches. "Today," he writes to Soter, "we have kept the Lord's holy day, in which we have read your Epistle, from the reading of which we shall ever derive admonition, as we do from the former one written to us by Clement."(4) It is evident that there was no idea, in selecting the works to be read at the weekly assembly of Christians, of any {168} Canon of a New Testament. We here learn that the Epistles of Clement and of Soter were habitually read, and while we hear of this, and of the similar reading of Justin's "Memoirs of the Apostles,"(1) of the Pastor of Hermas,(2) of the Apocalypse of Peter,(3) and other apocryphal works, we do not at the same time hear of the public reading of our Gospels. {169} CHAPTER IX. MELITO OF SARDIS--CLAUDIUS APOLLINARIS--ATHENAGORAS--THE EPISTLE OF VIENNE AND LYONS. We might here altogether have passed over Melito, Bishop of Sardis in Lydia, had it not been for the use of certain fragments of his writings made by Canon Westcott. Melito, naturally, is not cited by Tischendorf at all, but the English Apologist, with greater zeal, we think, than critical discretion, forces him into service as evidence for the Gospels and a New Testament Canon. The date of Melito, it is generally agreed, falls after a.d. 176, a phrase in his apology presented to Marcus Antoninus preserved in Eusebius(l) [------] indicating that Commodus had already been admitted to a share of the Government.(3) Canon Westcott affirms that, in a fragment preserved by Eusebius, Melito speaks of the books of the New Testament in a collected form. He says: "The words of Melito on the other hand are simple and casual, and yet their meaning can scarcely be mistaken. He writes to Onesimus, a fellow-Christian who had urged him 'to {170}