and memories, to which Irenaeus would have constant access. We know also that after the persecution Irenaeus was in Rome; and there is some reason to think that he had resided there more than twenty years before[23]. This was another great centre with which he was familiar, and to which news and traditions of the past came streaming in from every quarter of the Christian world. And yet we are asked to believe that Irenaeus was the victim of a confusion that in any number of ways might have been corrected. As Dr. Drummond well says, ‘Critics speak of Irenaeus as though he had fallen out of the moon, paid two or three visits to Polycarp’s lecture-room, and never known any one else. In fact, he must have known all sorts of men, of all ages, both in the East and the West, and among others his venerable predecessor Pothinus, who was upwards of ninety at the time of his death. He must have had numerous links with the early part of the century[24].’ Again the same writer says: ‘The testimonies of Irenaeus, of Polycrates, and of Clement are those on which we must mainly rely. In judging of the collective force of the evidence, we must not forget that the second century was a literary age. The churches freely communicated with one another by letters, and there was an abundant theological literature of which only a few fragments have survived. I see no reason why the churches of Asia should not have had as well-grounded a certainty that John had been once among them as we have that Goldsmith was once in London[25].’ To deal with all this body of evidence as Harnack deals with it is very like ‘arguing on the strength of a few particulars in the face of clear and decisive indications[26].’ Here is another instance of the very thing that Harnack himself complained of. He has made up his mind that chap. xxi of the Gospel could not have been written until after the death of the author. But in ver. 24 the editors of the Gospel say expressly that the Apostle who figures so conspicuously in it was the author of the whole book (‘this is the disciple who beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things’). This, according to Harnack, only convicts them of a deliberate untruth, contradicted by the verses immediately preceding. If we must needs accuse the unfortunate editors of falsification, we might at least give them credit for the sense to take care that their falsehood was not exposed by their own words, and almost (as it were) in the same breath. But the fact is that the premiss, from which Harnack argues, is purely gratuitous, as I hope to show in the next lecture.