Ess. 1.] Quotations in the Works of the Fathers.

7

ber of allusions to the contents of the New Testament, especially to those of the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, are to be discovered in the writings still extant of Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp. Several of these allusions are of a nature very precise and definite. When, for example, we read in the Epistle attributed to Barnabas, (a treatise which, almost beyond question, was composed during the first century)-"It is written, There are many called, but few chosen" we cannot refuse to allow, that such a passage affords a very pointed evidence of the genuineness of the Gospel of Matthew: comp. Matt. xxii, 14. When, again, we find Clement (A.D. 96) exhorting the Corinthians to take in their hands "the Epistle of the blessed Paul the apostle," and to mark his admonition "respecting himself, and Cephas, and Apollos," we cannot, with any reason, doubt the genuineness of the Epistle which Paul had previously addressed to the same church: comp. 1 Cor. i, 12. In the second century, our evidences gradually become larger and clearer. To select a few of the principal of them: we are informed by Eusebius, that Papias, an Asiatic Bishop, (A.D. 116) referred in his writings to several distinct parts of the New Testament.3 Justin Martyr (A.D. 147) has alluded to many of the Epistles of Paul, and has quoted extensively (though somewhat loosely and inaccurately) from the four Gospels, which he denominates the memoirs of Christ, or the memoirs of the apostles and their companions. In the remaining works of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, (A.D. 170) we find large extracts from the New Testament; and we are in possession of his testimony to the authority of nearly all the writings contained in it. Tertullian of Carthage and Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 200) have each of them transcribed, in vari3 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iii, cap. 39.

8

Catalogues, Commentaries, &c.

[Ess. I. ous parts of their theological treatises, a very large proportion of the whole New Testament: and Lardner justly observes, that the quotations from it, adduced by Tertullian alone, may be deemed greatly to exceed in number those made from the works of Cicero, by all the writers combined, who have ever cited him. The same may, with equal propriety, be said of Origen, (A.D. 230) whose citations from the various parts of the New Testament are exceedingly abundant: and, after him, we have a host of writers in all the departments of the multiplied and extended church, whom it would be tedious to name, and by whom the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and the Revelation, are quoted to the same extent, and with the same variety, as by modern theologians: see Lardner's Cred., 4to ed., vols. i, ii.

But the testimonies borne by Christian writers, during the first four centuries, to the genuineness of the New Testament are by no means confined to the quotation of particular passages. Many of them, like Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, and Cyril, have given catalogues or canons of the books of the New Testament; a measure which was also taken by the council of ecclesiastics, held at Laodicea, (A.D. 363). Others, like Titian, (A.D. 170) composed harmonies of the four Gospels and many more wrote commentaries on the several constituent parts of this sacred volume.

Now, as the evidences thus afforded by Christian writers, during the first four centuries, are very abundant, and various in form and manner, so it is to be remembered that this vast company of witnesses consisted of individuals, who lived at different times, were scattered over widely separated countries, occupied

4 "Tatian," says Eusebius, "composed I know not what harmony and collection of the four Gospels, which he called Dia Tessaron, and which is still in the hands of some." Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iv, cap. 29.

Ess. 1.]

Versions.

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very different stations in the church and in the world, and were, in general, totally independent one of another. But, diversified as they were in almost every respect, yet, in the testimony which they bear to the genuineness and authority of the New Testament, there is an entire and uninterrupted harmony. What can account for such a harmony, but truth?

II. During the first few centuries of the Christian era, while revealed religion was gradually spreading in the world, many versions of the New Testament were made into the vernacular dialects of those nations among whom a knowledge of divine truth was disseminated. The old Syriac version contains the whole of the New Testament, except the Revelation and four of the Catholic Epistles, viz. the second of Peter, the first and second of John, and the Epistle of Jude. It is remarkably accurate and faithful, and was probably written during the second century. The same period is supposed to have given birth to those numerous Latin versions, and especially the Vetus Itala, mentioned by Augustine, which formed the basis of the Vulgate of Jerome. The existing translation of the New Testament into Sahidic, the language of Upper Egypt, is traced by the learned Woide to the same ancient date. The Ethiopic and Coptic versions also are of great and allowed antiquity. Now, these versions could not have been made, if the original of the New Testament had not existed previously; and it is quite obvious that they would not have been made, if that volume had not in those early ages been generally received as truly the work of the apostles and evangelists.

III. The genuineness of the books of the New Testament was allowed by the enemies of Christianity, as well as by its friends. Among the early heretics, who fell away from the truths of the Gospel into

10

Testimony of Enemies.

[Ess. 1. the most absurd and unscriptural errors, there were many who rejected the divine authority of those parts of the New Testaments which did not comport with their own creeds. But, that its contents were the real productions of their supposed authors, seems to have been a point generally admitted by these bewildered disputants, as Michaelis shows to have been the case, in reference to particular parts of the New Testament, with the Ebionites, with Cerinthus, and with Marcion: Introd. to New Test., vol. 1, ch. ii, § 7, by Marsh.

Still more important is the testimony of the heathen enemies of Christianity. From the works of Origen we learn that his opponent, the acute and bitter Celsus, quoted largely from the New Testament, and argued against Christianity on the allowed principle, that the Gospels and Epistles were actually written by the apostles and their companions: and the same observation applies to those still more powerful enemies of our religion, Porphyry and Julian: Michaelis, vol. 1, ch. ii, § 8. It is a triumphant argument in favour of the New Testament, that, during the first three centuries and a half after the Christian era, almost the whole of it was admitted to be genuine by the opposers, as well as by the defenders, of Christianity; and that the first person of whom we read, as venturing to advance a contrary sentiment, was Faustus, an illiterate Manichæan, who lived at the close of the fourth century.

IV. The strong and satisfactory testimonies to which we have now adverted are confirmed by a variety of internal evidences of a very convincing character. The first of them is the dialect in which the whole New Testament is written. Greek was the language more generally spoken than any other in those various countries (considered as a whole) where the Gospel was first propagated. Since, therefore, it was the intention of the apostles and evangelists to be as exten

Ess. I.]

Correspondence with Josephus, &c.

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sively useful as possible, it was to be expected that they should write their histories and epistles in Greek. But the Greek, in which the New Testament is composed, is not classical Greek; it is the Greek which comes from the pen of Hebrews-with a very large infusion of their national phraseology. From this circumstance we derive a strong confirmatory evidence, that the New Testament was truly the work of the apostles and their companions. Certainly it could not have been written in those later periods of the church, when there were no longer to be found any Hebrew Christians. The Christian fathers of the second, third, and fourth, centuries, were utterly incapable of writing in any such dialect.

V. Another plain internal indication of the genuineness of the New Testament may be found in the very numerous allusions, contained in its several parts, to the habits and condition of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans, at the time when it is considered to have been written, as well as to many minor historical circumstances which happened during the life, or soon after the death, of Jesus Christ. The variety and particularity of these allusions are such as would never have been ventured on by a forger in an after age; and their correctness and freedom from anachronism, as evinced by the correspondent testimonies of Josephus and other authors, plainly prove that the New Testament was composed by individuals who were personally conversant with the subjects on which they

wrote.

To point out a few particulars: a very considerable intricacy attaches to the history of the family of Herod: in the works of Josephus and other historians, we read of Herod the great, whom the senate of Rome, at the instigation of Marcus Antonius, appointed to be king of Judea of his three sons Archelaus, Philip,