The Gospel according to John deserves a more careful and extended notice, from the fact that it differs in so many particulars from the other three Gospels. There is no evidence of the existence of this writing until A. D. 175, when it was mentioned in the Clementine Homilies,(1) and in 176, Theophilus of Antioch ascribed its authorship to John. But nothing is more certain than that John the Evangelist did not write this little book, as it contains internal evidence of its Grecian origin, and that it could not have been written by one familiar with Judaism and the geography of Palestine. Many of the best biblical scholars, orthodox and rationalistic, admit this fact, and our Methodist friends may amuse themselves at their leisure in reading a learned note from the pen of their great commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, at the close of his exposition of the first chapter of John, in which he points out thirty-five parallels between the writings of Philo the learned Platonist and the Gospel of John, unwittingly showing that it must have been written by an Alexandrian Greek. (1) These were spurious. And right here it is proper to expose an ancient fraud perpetuated in the Church to the present day—to wit, that Papius and Polycarp, early Christian writers, were personally acquainted with and instructed by John, and that therefore a succession was established with the teachings of Jesus himself, whose personal disciple John was. This story was originated by Irenæus, and the fraud consists in confounding John the son of Zebedee and Salome with one John who was said to be a presbyter in Asia Minor. This ingenious device is clearly exposed by Reber in his work—_The Enigmas of Christianity_. Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, may be called one of the _founders_ of the papal hierarchy, as he in the second century attempted, but miserably failed, to furnish a catalogue of bishops in orderly succession from the apostles; and soon after he was followed in the same vain attempt by Tertullian, who first claimed supremacy for the bishop of Rome, calling him “_epis-copus episcoporum_,” a bishop of bishops. The fact is, it is not known who wrote the fourth Gospel, but it is certain that it was not written by the humble, amiable Galilean fisherman, but by a learned neo-Platonist, who was familiar with the dialectics of the learned Gnostic philosophers, and who desired most earnestly their complete suppression as essential to the success of the fixed purpose of priests to establish a Church, under an alleged divine commission, in which they were to be the kings and princes. Priests have always been the corrupters and perverters of truth for their own aggrandizement, and the Grecian treatise palmed upon the Church as the Gospel of St. John is one of the most illustrious examples. But for this so-called “Gospel” the existence of the papal hierarchy, and the consequent priestly pretensions in Protestant churches, would have been impossible. Enough has been