The Gospels do tell historically the life of our Lord Jesus, showing plainly, John 20:31., that he is Christ or the King of the Jews, whom until then, all the time of the Old Testament, they had expected: and withal, that they of their own mere malice and blindness, the iniquity beginning of the Seniors, but at the length the multitude also consenting, would not receive him, but ever sought his death: which for the redemption of the world, he at length permitted them to compass, they deserving there by most justly to be refused of him, and so his Kingdom or Church to be taken away from them and given to the Gentiles. For the gathering of which Church after him, he chooses twelve and appoints one of them to be the chief of all, with instructions, both to them and him accordingly. The story hereof is written by four: who in Ezekiel and in the Apocalypse are likened to four living creatures, every one according as his book begins. St. Matthew to a man, because he begins with the pedigree of Christ as he is man. St. Mark to a lion, because he begins with the preaching of St. John Baptist, as it were the roaring of a lion in the wilderness. St. Luke to a calf, because he begins with a priest of the Old Testament, Zachariah the father of St. John Baptist, which Priesthood was to sacrifice calves to God. St. John to an eagle, because he begins with the Divinity of Christ, flying so high as more is not possible. The first three do report at large what Christ did in Galilee, after the imprisonment of St. John Baptist. Wherefore St. John the Evangelist writing after them all, does omit his doings in Galilee, except only one which they had not written of, the wonderful bread which he told the Caphamaites he could and would give, John 4., and reports first what he did while John Baptist as yet was preaching and baptizing: then, after John's imprisonment, what he did in Jewry every year about Easter. But of his Passion all four do write at large. Where it is to be noted, that from his baptizing, which is thought to have been upon twelfth day, what time he was beginning to be about thirty years old, Luke 3., unto his passion, are numbered three months and three years, in which there were also four Easters.





Matthew's Gospel may be well divided into five parts. The first part, as touching the infancy of our Lord Jesus: Chap. 1. and 2. The second, of the preparation that was made to his manifestation: Chap. 2 and a piece of the 4. The third, of his manifesting of himself by preaching and miracles, and that in Galilee: the other piece of the 4th Chap, unto the 19. The fourth, of his coming into Jewry towards his Passion: Chap. 19.20. The fifth, of the holy week of his Passion in Jerusalem: Chap. 21. unto the end of the book. Of Saint Matthew we hear, Matt. 9. Mar. 2. Luke 5. How being before a Publican, he was called of our Lord, and made a Disciple. Then Luke 6. Mar. 3. Mat. 10. how out of the whole number of the Disciples he was chosen to be one of the twelve Apostles, and out of them again he was chosen, and none but he and St. John, to be one of the four Evangelists. Among which four also, he was the first that wrote, about eight or ten years after Christ's Ascension.