165 and 220, and became head of the Alexandrian School in A.D. 187. Origen, his successor, with his great genius and acquirements, and extensive travel, and from his father Leonides, and his predecessors Clement and Pantænus, must have been fully informed of the “Memoirs” which were in the churches in the year one hundred and forty. And he says, that he has “understood _from tradition_, respecting the Four Gospels, _which are the only undisputed ones in the whole church of God throughout the world_,” that the first was by Matthew, the second by Mark, “who composed it as Peter explained to him,” the third by Luke, the companion of Paul, and “last of all” John “who reclined upon the breast of Jesus,” has left one Gospel, in which he confesses that he could write so many that the whole world could not contain them. Tertullian, the celebrated lawyer, says, “Of the Apostles, John and Matthew published the faith to us.” In defending the Gospel of Luke against the mutilation of the heretic Marcion, he positively affirms that all the churches founded by the Apostles accepted, not Marcion’s abridgment of Luke, but a well-known form which had been “_received from its first publication_;” and that the other Gospels had been received from the same sources in authenticated copies. “In his abundant writings,” says Norton,[2] “there is not a chapter in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John, from which he does not quote,” and from most of them his quotations are numerous. Tertullian was born at Carthage about A.D. 160, and from his conversion, about the year one hundred and eighty-five, he entered with great earnestness and ability into a vindication of Christianity, and the discussion of various questions connected with it. This able advocate could not have been misinformed of the usages of the churches less than half a century previous to the time when he entered upon his work.