extract, which is short, contains only two references to the writings of the New Testament. The one is to the Fourth Gospel; St John is described in the very words of this Gospel, as 'he that leaned on the bosom of the Lord' (ó ẻπì tò otĥlos τοῦ Κυρίου ἀναπεσών). The other is to a book of the Pauline cycle, the Acts of the Apostles; 'They that are greater than I,' writes Polycrates, 'have said, We must obey God rather than men'.' We have now reached the close of the second century, and it is not necessary to pursue the history of the School of St John in their Asiatic home beyond this point. But in the meantime a large and flourishing colony had been established in the cities of southern Gaul, and no account of the traditions of the school would be adequate which failed to take notice of this colony. This part of the subject however must be left for a subsequent paper. Meanwhile the inferences from the notices passed. under review cannot, I think, be doubtful. Out of a very extensive literature, by which this school was once represented, the extant remains are miserably few and fragmentary; but the evidence yielded by these meagre relics is decidedly greater, in proportion to their extent, than we had any right to expect. As regards the Fourth Gospel, this is especially the case. If the same amount of written matteroccupying a very few pages in all-were extracted accidentally from the current theological literature of our own day, the chances, unless I am mistaken, would be strongly against our finding so many indications of the use of this Gospel. In every one of the writers, from Polycarp and Papias to Polycrates, we have observed phenomena which bear witness directly or indirectly, and with different degrees of distinctness, to its recognition. It is quite possible for critical ingenuity to find a reason for discrediting each instance in turn. An objector may urge in one case, that the writing itself is a forgery; in a second, that the particular passage is an interpolation; in a 1 John xxi. 20; comp. xiii. 25. • Acts v. 29. third, that the supposed quotation is the original and the language of the Evangelist the copy; in a fourth, that the incident or saying was not deduced from this Gospel but from some apocryphal work, containing a parallel narrative. By a sufficient number of assumptions, which lie beyond the range of verification, the evidence may be set aside. But the early existence and recognition of the Fourth Gospel is the one simple postulate which explains all the facts. The law of gravitation accounts for the various phenomena of motion, the falling of a stone, the jet of a fountain, the orbits of the planets, and so forth. It is quite possible for any one, who is so disposed, to reject this explanation of nature. Provided that he is allowed to postulate a new force for every new fact with which he is confronted, he has nothing to fear. He will then "gird the sphere With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," happy in his immunity. But the other theory will prevail nevertheless by reason of its simplicity. IN VIII. THE CHURCHES OF GAUL. [AUGUST, 1876.] the preceding papers I have investigated the testimony borne by the Churches of Asia Minor to the Canonical Gospels, and more especially to the Fourth Evangelist. The peculiar value of this testimony is due to the close personal relations of these communities with the latest surviving Apostles, more particularly with St John. At the same time I took occasion incidentally to remark on their attitude towards St Paul and his writings, because an assumed antagonism between the Apostle of the Gentiles and the Twelve has been adopted by a modern school of critics as the basis for a reconstruction of early Christian history. I purpose in the present paper extending this investigation to the Churches of Gaul. The Christianity of Gaul was in some sense the daughter of the Christianity of Asia Minor. Of the history of the Gallican Churches before the middle of the second century we have no certain information. It seems fairly probable indeed that, when we read in the Apostolic age of a mission of Crescens to 'Galatia' or 'Gaul',' the western country is meant rather than the Asiatic settlement which bore the same name; and, if so, this points to some relations with St Paul himself. But, even though this explanation should be accepted, the notice stands quite alone. Later tradition indeed supplements it with legendary matter, 1 2 Tim. iv. 10. Gaul was almost universally called Galatia' in Greek at this time and for many generations afterwards. but it is impossible to say what substratum of fact, if any, underlies these comparatively recent stories. The connection between the southern parts of Gaul and the western districts of Asia Minor had been intimate from very remote times. Gaul was indebted for her earliest civilization to her Greek settlements like Marseilles, which had been colonized from Asia Minor some six centuries before the Christian era; and close relations appear to have been maintained even to the latest times. During the Roman period the people of Marseilles still spoke the Greek language familiarly along with the vernacular Celtic of the native population and the official Latin of the dominant power'. When therefore Christianity had established her head-quarters in Asia Minor, it was not unnatural that the Gospel should flow in the same channels which had already conducted the civilization and the commerce of the Asiatic Greeks westward. At all events, whatever we may think of the antecedent probabilities, the fact itself can hardly be disputed. In the year A.D. 177, under Marcus Aurelius, a severe persecution broke out on the banks of the Rhone in the cities of Vienne and Lyons-a persecution which by its extent and character bears a noble testimony to the vitality of the Churches in these places. To this incident we owe the earliest extant historical notice of Christianity in Gaul. A contemporary record of the martyrdoms on this occasion is preserved in the form of a letter from the persecuted Churches, addressed to the brethren that are in Asia and Phrygia?' The communities thus addressed, it will be observed, belong to the district in which St John's influence was predominant, and which produced all the writers of his school who have been discussed in the preceding papers-Polycarp, Papias, Melito, Apollinaris, Polycrates. Of the references to the Canonical Scriptures in this letter I shall speak presently. For the moment it is sufficient to say that 1 They are called 'trilingues,' Varro in Isid. Etym. xv. 1. 2 It is preserved in great part by Eusebius, H. E. v. 1, and may be read conveniently in Routh Rel. Sacr. 1. p. 295 sq. 253 the very fact of their addressing the communication to these distant Churches shows the closeness of the ties which connected the Christians in Gaul with their Asiatic brethren. Moreover, in the body of the letter it is incidentally stated of two of the sufferers, that they came from Asia Minor-Attalus a Pergamene by birth, and Alexander a physician from Phrygia who had lived many years in the provinces of Gaul;' while nearly all of them bear Greek names. Among these martyrs the most conspicuous was Pothinus, the aged bishop of Lyons, who was more than ninety years old when he suffered. A later tradition makes him a native of Asia Minor1; and this would be a highly probable supposition, even if unsupported by any sort of evidence. Indeed it is far from unlikely that the fact was stated in the letter itself, for Eusebius has not preserved the whole of it. But whether an Asiatic Greek or not, he must have been a growing boy when St John died; and through him the Churches of Southern Gaul, when they first appear in the full light of history, are linked directly with the Apostolic age. Immediately after this persecution the intimate alliance between these distant parts of Christendom was manifested in another way. The Montanist controversy was raging in the Church of Phrygia, and the brethren of Gaul communicated to them their views on the controverted points. To this communication they appended various letters of the martyrs, 'which they penned, while yet in bonds, to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia.' About the same time the martyrs sent Irenæus, then a presbyter, as their delegate with letters of recommendation to Eleutherus, bishop of Rome, for the sake of conferring with him on this same subject3. Some twenty years later, as the century was drawing to a close, another controversy broke out, relating to the observance of Easter, in which again the Asiatic Churches were mainly concerned; and here too we find the Christians of Gaul interposing with their counsels. When Victor of Rome issued his 1 See the references in Tillemont Mémoires 11. p. 343. 2 Euseb. H. E. v. 3. |