ceived their knowledge, then, both of the facts and truths of the Gospel, from the testimony, or witnessbearing, of the Apostles:that which they knew, had been declared unto them by others.-The meaning, then, seems to be this. It was in connexion with "the truth as it is in Jesus," that they had received the "unction from the Holy One." The truth was imparted to them by the commissioned teachers; and the anointing of the Spirit came along with it, enlightening their minds to discern its divine excellence, and giving them, in its felt influence upon their hearts, the experimental evidence of its divine origin and authority. "I have not written unto you," says John, "because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth." They so knew the truth, spiritually and experimentally, under divine teaching, that they might well be proof against the seducing influence of new and false instructors, -the instructors whom he designates by the general name of Antichrist.-These teachers came to them with doctrines of their own. But they needed no such instructors. The gospel of the Apostles, ("our gospel," says Paul) "had come to them, not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance:"-having "heard the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation," and "having believed in Christ" of whom it testified," they had been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." By

this "unction from the Holy One," they "knew the certainty of those things wherein they had been instructed;" they "had the witness in themselves." To listen to other teachers, was to doubt the testimony of God, who had accompanied his own truth with the most unequivocal evidence. So that, instead of listening to "those that seduced them," they had good reason to act as John enjoins in his second epistle" If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine," (the "doctrine of Christ" delivered by Apostles,) "receive him not into your house, neither bid him God-speed." There were some who had " gone out from" the communion of Apostles and Christians, and had thus shown that "they were not of them :"--but he was "persuaded better things" of them to whom he wrote-persuaded, that, having the anointing of the Spirit abiding in them, they would not hearken to the counsel that causeth to err from the way of knowledge, but would "continue in the Son and in the Father."-But, make of John's language what you will, it is enough for my present purpose to have shown, that it can neither mean that they had received their knowledge immediately from the Spirit, nor that all farther instructions were superfluous; inasmuch as both of these things stand contradicted by the Apostle himself in the very epistle where the words are found.

Of the tendency of the doctrine of immediate

revelation, or inward light, to depreciate the Scriptures, we have an exemplification, which, to my mind, is very shocking, in the manner in which Barclay speaks of the use made by the Apostle Paul of the Old Testament writings, in his communings with the Jews. He is answering the objection to his doctrine, (the doctrine that the Scriptures are not the primary rule and test of truth) drawn from what is said of the Bereans, that, when Paul preached to them, "they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily whether these things were so." His third reply to the objection is-" If this commen"dation of the Jewish Bereans might infer that the "Scriptures were the only and principal rule to try "the Apostle's doctrine by, what should become of "the Gentiles?"-who were not previously, like the Jews, believers in the divine authority of the Old Testament Scriptures; so that an appeal to these Scriptures could not be supposed to have any weight with them. Now, although the Apostle does not omit this description of evidence even with Gentiles, -for it is to Gentiles he says "I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures ;"-yet I readily grant, he does in general reason differently with Jews and with Gentiles-with the former, "out of the

Scriptures ;"-with the latter, on principles taught by the light of natural reason and conscience. But what shall we say of the following comparison? "Now certainly the principal and only rule is not "different; one to the Jews, and another to the "Gentiles; but is universal, reaching both; though "secondary and subordinate rules may be various, "and diversely suited, according as the people they 66 are used to are stated and circumstantiated: even so we see that the Apostle to the Athenians used a testimony of one of their own poets, which he "judged would have credit with them; and no doubt "such testimonies, whose authors they esteemed, had

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more weight with them than all the sayings of "Moses and the prophets, whom they neither knew, nor would have cared for. Now, because the

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Apostle used the testimony of a poet to the Athe"nians, will it therefore follow he made that the

principal or only rule to try his doctrine by? So "neither will it follow, that though he made use of "the Scripture to the Jews, as being a principle al"ready believed by them, to try his doctrine, that "from thence the Scriptures may be accounted the

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principal or only rule." *-Is it come to this!that Paul's reasoning with the Jews from the Old Testament Scriptures, no more implies his acknow

* Ibid. page 90.

ledging these writings as the rule or test by which he consented his doctrine should be tried,—than his quoting with approbation a saying of the Athenian Menander implies his acknowledging as such a rule or test the testimony of that heathen poet! Assuredly, when Paul "reasoned with the Jews out of the Scriptures" in proof of his two leading positions,"that the Christ was to suffer and to rise from the dead, and that Jesus whom he preached to them was the Christ," he proceeded upon the assumption, that if his doctrine did not agree with the typical and prophetic intimations of these Scriptures, it had no title to be received as true, and his unbelieving countrymen were justified in rejecting it. Surely this was admitting the Old Testament Scriptures to be a legitimate test of his doctrine. Who questions that? you may say that which we insist on is, their not being the only or the primary test. I answer, if by a test is to be understood merely an evidence of truth, then certainly they were not the only test. There were other proofs of the divinity of Paul's doctrine; and to them, perhaps, as being more direct and immediate, the epithet of "primary" might even more appropriately be applied. I allude to the miracles, by which the divinity of his commission, and the truth of his message, were alike attested. But if by a test is meant a legitimate or authorized standard of comparison, by their conformity or discon