duration of our Lord's ministry, as indicated by the Fourth Gospel
[16:2]. If so, the coincidence is the more remarkable, because it does
not appear that St Luke himself, while recording these prophetic words,
was aware of their full historical import. But whatever may be thought
of this last point, the contention of 'apologetic' writers is that here,
as elsewhere, the Fourth Gospel supplies the key to historical
difficulties in the Synoptic narratives, which are not unlocked in the
course of those narratives themselves, and this fact increases their
confidence in its value as an authentic record [16:3].

Again: he refers several times to the Paschal controversy of the second
century as bearing on the authorship of the Fourth Gospel. On one
occasion he devotes two whole pages to it. [17:1] Why then does he not
mention that 'apologetic' writers altogether deny what he states to be
absolutely certain; maintaining on the contrary that the Christian
Passover, celebrated by the Asiatic Churches on the 14th Nisan,
commemorated not the Institution of the Lord's Supper, but, as it
naturally would, the Sacrifice on the Cross, and asserting that the main
dispute between the Asiatic and Roman Churches had reference to the
question whether the commemoration should take place always on the 14th
Nisan (irrespective of the day of the week) or always on a Friday? Thus,
they claim the Paschal controversy as a witness on their own side. This
view may be right or wrong; but inasmuch as any person might read the
unusually full account of the controversy in Eusebius from beginning to
end, without a suspicion that the alternative of the 14th or 15th Nisan,
as the day of the Crucifixion, entered into the dispute at all, the
_onus probandi_ rests with our author, and his stout assertions were
certainly needed to supply the place of arguments. [17:2]

The same reticence or ignorance respecting the arguments of 'apologetic'