Matthew then, among the Jews, wrote a Gospel in their own
language, while Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel at Rome, and
founding a church there: and after their exit, Mark also, the disciple
and interpreter of Peter, delivered to us in writing the things that had
been preached by Peter and Luke, the companion of Paul, put down in a
book the Gospel preached by him (Paul). Afterwards John, the disciple of
the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a
Gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus in Asia." If any modern divine should
write a book upon the genuineness of the Gospels, he could not assert it
more expressly, or state their original more distinctly, than Irenaeus
hath done within little more than a hundred years after they were
published.
The correspondency, in the days of Irenaeus, of the oral and written
tradition, and the deduction of the oral tradition through various
channels from the age of the apostles, which was then lately passed,
and, by consequence, the probability that the books truly delivered what
the apostles taught, is inferred also with strict regularity from
another passage of his works.
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