The issue raised is not whether the followers of Basilides or the followers of Valentinus may have used these gospels, but whether there is a particle of evidence to justify Dr. Tischendorf s declaration, that Basilides and Valentinus themselves used the above-named gospels. That the four Gospels were well known during the second half of the first century is what Dr. Tischendorf undertook to prove, and statements attributed to Basilides and Valentin us, but which ought to be attributed to their followers, will go but little way as such proof (see "Supernatural Religion" vol. ii., pp. 41 to 63). It is pleasant to find a grain of wheat in the bushel of Tischendorf chaff. On page 98, and following pages, the erudite author applies himself to get rid of the testimony of Papias, which was falsified and put forward by Paley as of great importance. Paley says the authority of Papias is complete; Tischendorf declares that Papias is in error. Paley says Papias was a hearer of John, Tischendorf says he was not. We leave the champions of the two great Christian evidence-mongers to settle the matter as best they can. If, however, we are to accept Dr. Tischendorf's declaration that the testimony of Papias is worthless, we get rid of the chief link between Justin Martyr and the apostolic age. It pleases Dr. Tischendorf to damage Papias, because that father is silent as to the gospel of John; but the Religious Tract Society must not forget that in thus clearing away the second-hand evidence of Papias, they have cut away their only pretence for saying that any of the Gospels are mentioned by name within 150 years of the date clfor the birth of Jesus. In referring to the lost work of Theophilus of Antioch, which Dr. Tischendorf tells us was a kind of harmony of the Gospels, in which the four narratives are moulded and fused into one, the learned Doctor forgets to tell us that Jerome, whom he quotes as giving some account of Theophilus, actually doubted whether the so-called commentary was really from the pen of that writer. Lardner says: "Whether those commentaries which St. Jerome quotes were really composed by Theophilus may be doubted, since they were unknown to Eusebius, and were observed by Jerome to differ in style and expression from his other works. However, if they were not his, they were the work of some anonymous ancient." But if they were the work of an anonymous ancient after Eusebius, what becomes of Dr. Tischendorf's "as early as a.d. 170?"