The Historical Proofs of Christianity [pp. 51-84]

THE HISTORICAL PROOFS OF CHRISTIANITY.
FOURTH ARTICLE: THE FOURTH GOSPEL THE WORK OF THE
APOSTLE JOHN.
USEBIUS places the Gospel of John in the catalogue of the
"Homologoumena"-books received without dispute by
all Christian people. Its authorship had never been questioned,
except in the solitary instance of an insignificant sect which
Epiphanius terms "Alogi;"2 for there is no reason to doubt
that these persons, who lived at Thyatira in Lydia, are the same
to whom Irenaeus refers;3 who are noticed, also, later by Philastrius,4 and against whom, not improbably, Hippolytus wrote.
They were carried in their opposition to Montanism, with its
doctrine of prophetical gifts and of the Paraclete, into an
antipathy to both the Apocalypse and the Gospel; and their
tendencies of thought sooner or later awakened in them a repugnance to the conception of the Logos or of the pre-existence
of Christ as a person. Critical objections, on their part, to the
Gospel seem to have been an after-thought, due to an antagonism which had its origin in a purely subjective and dogmatic
prejudice. Since they discarded the Apocalypse as well as the
Gospel, and absurdly ascribed them both to Cerinthus, a contemporary of John, their protest, as Zeller allows,5 affords no
indication that any other tradition as to the authorship of the
Gospel existed save that accepted by the church. No importance, then, attaches to the dissent of this obscure party, on
which Irenaeus thinks it necessary to bestow but a few lines.
The ancient church is united in its testimony to the genuine
1 H. E., iii. 24, 25. 8Adv. Her., iii. 2, 9.
2 Haer., li. 3; liv. I. 4 Haer., 6o.
5 Theol. 7ahrbb., I845, p. 645, set.