However this may be, the evidence of the fragment is of more real importance and value, as showing the estimation in which at this date the Gospel was held.

It corresponds very much to what is now implied in the word 'canonical,' and indeed the Muratorian fragment presents us with a tentative or provisional Canon, which was later to be amended, completed, and ratified.

So far as the Gospels were concerned, it had already reached its final shape.

It included the same four which now stand in our Bibles, and the opposition that they met with was so slight, and so little serious, that Eusebius could class them all among the Homologoumena or books that were universally acknowledged..