As evidence to those facts a document dating some hundred years after the composition of the Gospel is not of course very weighty; its real importance is as showing the authority which the Gospel at this date possessed in the Church.

That authority cannot have been acquired in a day, but represents the culmination of a long and gradual movement.

What we have to note is that the movement, some of the stages of which we have been tracing, has now definitely reached its culmination.
In regard to the fourth Gospel the Muratorian fragment has a longer story to tell, but before we touch upon this, and before we proceed to draw together the threads of the previous enquiry, it will be well for us first to bring up the evidence for the fourth Gospel to the same date and position as that for the other three.
This then will be the subject of the next chapter..