Polycarp, who was the friend and pupil of John the Apostle, was born about the year 69, and suffered martyrdom about 155. In his writings we find no express mention of the Gospels, but we do find verbally accurate quotations from them. It is clear that he was acquainted with the books. Polycarp was the teacher of Irenæus of Lyons whom I first quoted, and he was the pupil and friend of St. John and the other apostles; and Irenæus, who quotes all these Gospels so freely, bears this testimony respecting Polycarp, in a letter which he wrote to Florinus. "I saw you, when I was yet a boy, in Lower Asia with Polycarp.... I could even point out now the place where the blessed Polycarp sat and spoke, and describe his going out and coming in, his manner of life, his personal appearance, the addresses he delivered to the multitude, how he spoke of his intercourse with John, and with the others who had seen the Lord, and how he recalled their words, and everything that he had heard about the Lord, about his miracles and his teaching. Polycarp told us, as one who had received it from those who had seen the Word of Life with their own eyes, and all this in complete harmony with the Scriptures. To this I then listened, through the mercy of God vouchsafed to me, with all eagerness, and wrote it not on paper, but in my heart, and still by the grace of God I ever bring it into fresh remembrance." These living witnesses give us solid ground for our statement that the Gospels--the first three of them at any rate--were in existence during the last years of the first century. Indeed, not to prolong this search for the origin of the books, it is now freely admitted, by many of the most radical critics, that the first three Gospels were written before the year 80, and that Mark must have been written before 70. It is interesting to contrast the course of New Testament criticism with that engaged upon the Old Testament. In the study of the origin of the Pentateuch the gravitation of opinion has been steadily downward, toward a later date, so that the great majority of scholars are now certain that the books must have been put into their present form long after the time of Moses. In the study of the origin of the Gospels the date has been steadily pushed upward, to the very age of the apostles. The earlier critics, Strauss and Baur, insisted that they must have appeared much later, far on in the second century; but the more recent and more scientific criticism has demolished or badly discredited their theories, and has carried the Gospels back to the last part of the first century.