An examination of this subject by the most learned and careful writers, proves that there is no reliable evidence that the fourth Gospel was in existence before A. D. 175, when a direct reference is made to it in the Clementine homilies, a production written in praise of Peter against Marcion. The language quoted is unmistakably the language of John. Tatian, who wrote between A. D. 160 and A. D. 185, quotes from the fourth Gospel: "And this is what was said, Darkness does not comprehend the light; the Logos is the light of God." In the nineteenth chapter we read: "All things were made by him, and without him not a thing was made." These were quotations from John without his being named as the author; but Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote about A. D. 176, especially ascribes the Gospel to him. "In the second book of this treatise addressed to Antolycus, he says: 'Whence the holy Scriptures teach us, and all who carried in them a holy spirit, of whom John says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.'" It may be claimed as an historic fact, that the fourth Gospel was extant in A. D. 175, and that all efforts to give it an early date spring from uncertain data: obscure allusions and doubtful inferences altogether too vague and unreliable to satisfy the mind in pursuit of truth. CHAPTER XIII. Why Irenaeus wrote the fourth Gospel in the name of John.-- He shows that the Gospels could not be less than four, and proves the doctrine of the incarnation by the Old Testament and the Synoptics.--The author of the epistles attributed to St. John. The zeal of Irenaeus against his adversaries had carried him so far in support of the doctrine of the incarnation that he ventured upon a new Gospel, under the name and authority of an Apostle. Without the authority of some one of the Apostles to sustain him, of what consequence would the opinion of one man be, on a question which involved the substance and essence of Christianity? Nothing would be easier than to publish a fourth Gospel in the name of-some one among the disciples. They were all dead a hundred years or more, and the time and place of their death no one knew.