Lardner only professes to discover two instances in which the word anglicised by Tischendorf as “Evangel,” occurs; [--Greek--] and [--Greek--] the second being expressly pointed out by Schleiermacher as an interpolation, and as an instance in which a marginal note has been incorporated with the text; nor would one occurrence of such a word prove that any book or books were so known by Justin, as the word is merely a compound of good and [--Greek--] message; nor is there the slightest foundation for the statement that in the time of Justin the word Evangel was ever applied to designate the four Gospels now attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Dr. Tischendorf (p. 46) admits that the “faith of the Church... would be seriously compromised” if we do not find references to the Gospels in writings between A.D. 100 and A.D. 150; and—while he does not directly assert—he insinuates that in such writings the Gospels were “treated with the greatest respect,” or “even already treated as canonical and sacred writings;” and he distinctly affirms that the Gospels “did see the light” during the “Apostolic age,” “and before the middle of the second” century “our Gospels were held in the highest respect by the Church,” although for the affirmation, he neither has nor advances the shadow of evidence. The phrases, “Apostolic age” and “Apostolic fathers” denote the first century of the Christian era, and those fathers who are supposed to have flourished during that period, and who are supposed to have seen or heard, or had the opportunity of seeing or hearing, either Jesus or some one or more of the twelve Apostles. Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, are those whose names figure most familiarly in Christian evidences as Apostolic fathers. But the evidence from these Apostolic fathers is of a most unreliable character. Mosheim (“Ecclesiastical History,” cent. 1, cap. 2, sec. 3, 17) says that “the Apostolic history is loaded with doubts, fables, and difficulties,” and that not long after Christ’s ascension several histories were current of his life and doctrines, full of “pious frauds and fabulous wonders.” Amongst these were “The Acts of Paul,” “The Revelation of Peter,” “The Gospel of Peter,” “The Gospel of Andrew,” “The Gospel of John,” “The Gospel of James,” “The Gospel of the Egyptians,” etc. The attempts often made to prove from the writings of Barnabas, Ignatius, etc., the prior existence of the four Gospels, though specifically unnamed, by similarity of phraseology in quotations, is a failure, even admitting for the moment the genuineness of the Apostolic Scriptures, if the proof is intended to carry the matter higher than that such and such statements were current in some form or other, at the date the fathers wrote. As good an argument might be made that some of the Gospel passages were adopted from the fathers. The fathers occasionally quote, as from the mouth of