Section 140
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 109 time saying, " Herod thus added, yet this wickedness above all he had committed, and that he shut up John in prison." For these reasons the apostle John, it is said, being entreated to undertake it, wrote_the account of the time not recorded by the former evangelists, and the deeds done by our Saviour, which they have passed by, (for these were the events that occurred before the imprisonment of John,) and this very fact is intimated by him, when he says, " this beginning of miracles Jesus made ;" and then proceeds to make mention of the Baptist, in the midst of our Lord's deeds, as John was at that time " baptising at ^Enon near Salim." He plainly also shows this in the words : " John was not yet cast into prison." The apostle, therefore, in his gospel, gives the deeds of Jesus before the Baptist was cast into prison, but the other three evangelists mention the circumstances after that event. One who attends to these circumstances, can no longer entertain the opinion, that the gospels are at variance with each other, as the gospel of John comprehends the first events of Christ, but the others, the history that took place at the latter part of the time. It is probable, therefore, that for these reasons John has passed byjjn_silence the genealogy of our Lord, because i^was written by Matthew and Luke^ but that he commenced with the doctrine of the divinity, as a part reserved for him, by the divine Spirit, as if for a superior. Let this suffice to be said respecting the gospel of John. The causes that induced Mark to write his, have already been stated. But Luke also in the commencement of his narrative, premises the cause which led him to write, showing that many others, having rashly un dertaken to compose a narration of matters that he had already completely ascertained, in order to free us from the uncertain suppositions of others, in his own gospel, he delivered the cer tain account of those things, that he himself had fully received from his intimacy and stay with Paul, and also, his intercourse with the other apostles. But this may suffice respecting these. At a more proper time we shall endeavour also to state, by a re ference to some of the ancient writers, what others have said respecting the sacred books. But besides the gospel of John, his first epistle is acknowledged without dispute, both by those of the