2. In the first place, there is no disputing the fact that the authorship of the Gospels has not only been ascribed to these four men, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but that they, and they alone, did write them in very deed. And to this fact the Fathers of the Church who lived and wrote in the time immediately succeeding the apostolic ages, and numerous Christian theologians who shed their blood for the Faith, bear unhesitating witness; heretics, moreover, do the same, inasmuch as they endeavor to prove their false religious opinions by quotations from the Gospel; the Talmud also, the modern legal code of the Jews, acknowledges the gospel miracles as facts; finally., the heathen sages, Celsus and Porphyrius, and even the apostate emperor, Julian, who poured scorn and contempt upon the religion he had so basely abandoned, did not attempt to deny that the life of Christ was written by the four evangelists.
3. Furthermore, these writers of the Gospel, these witnesses for the truth of it, are entirely trustworthy; their testimony is absolutely reliable. In the first place, they were in a position to tell the truth, since they were well acquainted with the facts. Who indeed could better know the truth than St. Matthew and St. John, who received their vocation as apostles from the divine Redeemer Himself, and who were privileged to be His constant companions, to hear His words and behold His wonderful works? And the two other evangelists, St. Mark and St. Luke, were fully acquainted with the life of Christ, because they wrote their gospels at the suggestion and under the direction of two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul.
4. No reasonable man can doubt that the holy
