CHAPTER III.
THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS.
To go at all thoroughly into all the questions that may be raised as to the date and character of the Christian writings in the early part of the second century would need a series of somewhat elaborate monographs, and, important as it is that the data should be fixed with the utmost attainable precision, the scaffolding thus raised would, in a work like the present, be out of proportion to the superstructure erected upon it.

These are matters that must be decided by the authority of those who have made the provinces to which they belong a subject of special study: all we can do will be to test the value of the several authorities in passing.
In regard to Clement of Rome, whose First (genuine) Epistle to the Corinthians is the first writing that meets us, the author of 'Supernatural Religion' is quite right in saying that 'the great mass of critics ...

assign the composition of the Epistle to the end of the first century (A.D.

95-100)' [Endnote 58:1].

There is as usual a right and a left wing in the array of critics.