In the preliminary remarks with which he opens the second part, he says: "When such writers, quoting largely from the Old Testament and other sources, deal with subjects which would naturally be assisted by references to our Gospels, and still more so by quoting such works as authoritative, and yet we find that not only _they do not show any knowledge of those Gospels_, but actually quote passages from unknown sources, or sayings of Jesus derived from tradition, the inference must be that our Gospels were either unknown, or not recognised as works of any authority at the time." In reference to this sentence I remark that many of the passages he specifies and examines are _not_ from _unknown sources_, but from the Gospels, because, if not strictly verbatim, they are in the _sense_ identical, and almost identical in the language; therefore such quotations are evidence that the Gospels existed at the time. The insinuation that they are from tradition is purely conjecture, and altogether improbable, because our Gospels contain the passages. There is not the slightest reason for looking away from our gospels, and imagining the quotations to be either from unknown sources or tradition. This will appear as we proceed. I will give in his own words the results of his examination of what he designates "evidence for the Synoptic Gospels," and then follow him step by step through the journey he takes into early Patristic Church history. He says (vol. ii. page 248): "We may now briefly sum up the results of our examination of the evidence for the Synoptic Gospels. After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on the point, we _have not found a single distinct trace of any of those Gospels during the first century and a half after the death of Jesus_. Only once during the whole of that period do we find any tradition even that any one of our Evangelists composed a Gospel at all, and that tradition, so far from favouring our Synoptics, is fatal to the claims of the first and second. Papias, about the middle of the second century, on the occasion to which we refer, records that Matthew composed the Discourses of the Lord in the Hebrew tongue, a statement which _totally excludes the claim of our Greek Gospel to apostolic origin_. Mark, he said, wrote down from the casual preaching of Peter the sayings and doings of Jesus, but without orderly arrangement, as he was not himself a follower of the Master, and merely recorded what fell from the apostle. This description likewise shows that our actual Second Gospel could not in its present form have been the work of Mark. There is no other reference during the period to any writing of Matthew or Mark, and no mention at all of any work ascribed to Luke. If it be considered that there is any connection between Marcion's Gospel and our Third Synoptic, any evidence so derived is of an unfavourable character for that Gospel, as it involves a charge