THREE CAUSES, ESPECIALLY, PRODUCED THIS PROVIDENTIAL UNANIMITY.

SECTION. I.

THE LONG CAREER OF THE APOSTLES.

126. THE first leading fact which pre-eminently affected the character and condition of the primitive Church, and which was necessary to produce throughout the whole Christian community the unanimity to which we refer, was the great length of the career of the apostles, notwithstanding the unceasing toils of their lives, and the numberless perils of their ministry. This fact appears still more remarkable when we consider their position in the world, “as sheep among wolves.” “Alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake,” as they themselves tell us; “persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed,” “accounted as sheep for the slaughter,” they were nearly all, by the providence of God, spared for a ministry of thirty, fifty, and sixty years.

127. From the earliest ages of the world, God, we perceive, whenever He intended to effect any great and enduring revival, always took care to bestow a long career on the individuals appointed to accomplish it, and thus granted to them the necessary time to consummate and consolidate the work.

After driving man from Paradise, He granted to each of the early patriarchs a life of nearly nine hundred years, to enable them to maintain among their children’s children, to the twentieth generation, the knowledge of the fall and of the promise. The son of Enoch, who had been for two centuries and a half a contemporary of Adam, was likewise, for nearly six centuries, a contemporary of Noah, appointed to be to a new world “the preacher of that righteousness which is by faith.” When the earth had been purified by the deluge, God thought proper to spare Noah for three centuries and a half more to instruct the new generations that sprung from his loins; and preserved Shem, Noah’s second son for seventy-five years, to the call of Abraham, the father of believers. At a later period, when God brought His people out of Egypt, to give them their institutions, laws, and promises of grace, He added forty years to the venerable age of Moses, and likewise twenty-four years to that of Joshua, the son of Nun, that these two great men might have full time — the one in the desert, and the other in Canaan — to train Israel to the new discipline of the written Word. When, at the end of the rule of the Judges, He resolved, as a preparation for the line of the prophets, to effect that revival in which “all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord,” He placed at the head of the nation, for fifty years, the prophet Samuel. When He introduced the regal order, and the temple worship, He gave Israel two prophet-kings, each of whom reigned forty years. When, finally, He determined to rally His people round His Word of Life in their Babylonish captivity, He preserved to them Daniel for seventy years. If we come down to more recent times, we shall perceive that, in like manner, at the holy Reformation of His Church through the gospel, God gave to the churches of Germany, on the one hand, and to those of Geneva and France, on the other, thirty years of the ministry of Luther, thirty years of that of Calvin, thirty-three of that of Farel, and forty-six of that of Beza.

128. Now, if such an arrangement was so often required to accomplish in the Church great changes decreed from on high, it was especially required in the first century when God was to constitute the Christian people among the Jews and among the Gentiles, intrusting to believers for all succeeding ages the oracles of the New Testament, and impressing on the whole Christian community, in the vast renovation that was taking place, a powerful and majestic unity. It was necessary that the apostles, appointed to this great work, should be granted a long life for the purpose of watching, continuously and in concert, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, over the progress of the churches, the arrangements of their worship, and, above all, the universal reception of the Holy Scriptures. It was necessary that the churches, duly exercised in the life of faith previously to the decease of the apostles, should be left, till Christ’s second coming, to the sole direction of the Holy Spirit and the written word. And this is what took place.

129, With the single exception of the brother of John, James the Greater, (who suffered martyrdom by order of Herod Agrippa only ten years after the ascension of our Saviour,) all the apostles exercised a very long ministry in the Church.

James the Less, the brother of our Lord, and the first of the three pillars of the primitive Church, (Gal. i. 18,) remained eight and twenty years at the head of the churches of the circumcision, and died only in the year 62; and yet all the other apostles survived him, some of them even thirty and some forty years. Esteemed by the Jews, and styled by them “the Just,” he was so revered that the Talmud mentions certain miracles “wrought by James, the disciple of Jesus the carpenter;” and Josephus, relating, according to his own notions, James’s martyrdom, (Antiq. xx. 8,) declares that the wisest of the nation deplored his death as one of the principal causes of the ruin of Jerusalem, and of the wrath of God against the Jews. Simeon, who was, like him, one of the brothers of the Lord, became, as historians inform us,¹ bishop of Jerusalem immediately after the death of James, and, if the statement of Eusebius be correct, was crucified in 107, when much more than one hundred years old, after having presided over the Christians in Jerusalem during forty-five years. Peter and Paul superintended the churches of the Gentiles as well as those of the Jews, during a ministry of thirty years and more; for we must fix the martyrdom of both between the burning of Rome in July 64 and the death of Nero in June 68. Besides, it appears that most of the apostles attained a still greater age. Though we cannot place entire confidence in the too varied traditions of the Fathers, according to whom Mark died at Alexandria in 68, Timothy in 97, Thomas and Bartholomew in India, Jude in Lybia, Matthew, according to Rufinus, among the Ethiopians, or, according to others, among the Parthians; the infallible books of the Acts and the Revelation of St John are sufficient to put it beyond doubt, first, that all the rest of the apostles survived Paul, Peter, and the two Jameses; and, secondly, that John, banished to Patmos, during a persecution which began under Domitian, and terminated in 96, returned to the shores of Asia to write his “Revelation,” and end his days there. His brother James had, forty years before, opened the list of apostolic martyrs, (in 43,) and he himself was to complete that list of the sufferings of the apostles long afterwards, at the beginning of the second century.² All ancient traditions agree in representing him as having reached an extreme old age. He could no longer walk, says Jerome, and was carried to the meetings of the faithful³ He had, it is said, preached among the Parthians, and even in India; but what seems incontestable is, that, having settled at Ephesus with the mother of Jesus, and there terminated his earthly career at a very advanced age. Jerome tells us that his tomb was to be seen there. Both Irenaeus and Eusebius⁴ assure us that he died there under Trajan, in the third year of his reign. According to others, he died in 103. If Epiphanius is correct, (Hær. 51,) he was then ninety-four. According to others, he was still more.

130. When we consider the uninterrupted intercourse of the apostles with the churches they planted, their long career is a fact of vast importance, as it gives irresistible force to the unanimous testimony of Christendom regarding the twenty-two homologoumena. It explains that otherwise inexplicable unanimity. It makes it not only easy to conceive, but a matter of course. If it is admitted that the apostles and their inspired assistants exercised so long and so genial a ministry in the churches for more than half a century, it becomes abundantly obvious that all the churches would in consequence exhibit the most perfect agreement in. their views of the twenty-two books already put forth by the apostles and evangelists before their decease. On the other hand, follow the inverse line of argument, the striking fact. of such unanimity throughout the churches, and we perceive, in like manner, that these twenty-two books must have been communicated by the apostles, and that these men of God had superintended the use of them in the Christian community. It is equally clear that, after so long an apostolic superintendence, none of the churches could, after the death of the apostles, have been induced to receive any additional book, which none of the apostles had ever mentioned, and that, most especially, a large number of churches could not have received it, and certainly could not have received it without objection or opposition, or without a surviving trace that any objection to it had ever been made.

We have already said — but it is well to repeat — that there is not in history, there is not in criticism, a supposition so absurd as not to be admissible, if we are to regard the possibility of such reception as having even the slightest shadow of probability. Let us, for a moment, place ourselves in the situation of those primitive Christians, and ask how, after half-a-century’s ministry of so many inspired men, we could have received, after the death of the apostles, any additional book which they had not communicated during their lives. With what spirit of holy jealousy should we have armed ourselves to repel every novelty, to protest against every intrusion, to reject every book that had not in its favour the clear sanction of these men of God!

We shall have occasion to point out afterwards how much force this argument receives from the history of the five late epistles.

131. It is thus manifest that there exists a logical connexion between these two unquestioned facts — the long ministry of the apostles in the primitive Church, and the perfect uniformity of that entire Church regarding the homologoumena, and, in addition, a still more necessary connexion between these two facts and the authenticity of all these books.

Were we told at the present day that the author of a modern work had for forty years watched over all its successive editions all over Europe, and were we informed, moreover, that, at the end of these forty years, no bookseller in Europe had the slightest doubt of the authenticity of the book in question, would not such unanimity be considered sufficient and unquestionable evidence? And yet, in how much more complete a form is this twofold guarantee — the long superintendence of the author and the unanimity of booksellers — exhibited in favour of the New Testament? Instead of one author, we have eight. We have all the apostles jointly and severally guaranteeing the work. We have men of God, we have their inspired companions — Mark, Luke, Simeon, Timotheus, Apollos, Silas, Barnabas,⁵ and so many others — who presided over the churches during half a century. Instead of the booksellers of Europe, we have all the churches — all the churches in the world. And, instead of one book, we have twenty books, in reference to which the most complete unanimity of testimony is direct, universal, unvaried, and immovable.

132. There is another characteristic feature of the primitive Church that must be kept in view, in order to feel all the force of this double guarantee, — long superintendence and complete unanimity. This is the intercourse so uninterrupted, so intimate, so varied, that existed between the apostles and the churches, and between the churches themselves. This feature appears in all the details of their history, and in all existing traditions respecting them. Numberless facts bearing on this point have been recorded, of which we do not warrant the authenticity. We are told, for example, that the apostle John, in the last part of his career, settled at Ephesus, as at a common centre of Eastern and Western Christendom, where he might stretch out both his arms to the churches of the East and of the West. We are told by numerous ancient witnesses (Caius,⁶ Eusebius⁷ Jerome,⁸ Victorinus,⁹ Chrysostom,¹⁰ Theodorus of Mopsuestia¹¹) that the bishops of Asia presented themselves to him at Ephesus, and requested him to draw up for the use of the churches of God a gospel that might complete the Gospels already published. Tertullian¹² and Jerome¹³ inform us that a presbyter of Ephesus having put forth a book entitled “The Acts of Paul,” was by the apostle convicted of imposture, though the writer tried to excuse himself by alleging a pious intention of doing honour to the memory of Paul. In selecting these statements from a collection of so many similar traditions, our object is simply to shew what vigilance the apostles exercised for half a century. We seldom appeal to mere traditions, and usually refer only to the facts of Scripture as authentic history; but the tradition we here repeat serves of itself to throw light on the subject. Indeed, the Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles fully shew the unceasing solicitude of these men of God, and particularly of Paul, for the welfare of the churches they had planted, He himself tells us that he had continually “the care of all the churches,” from Jerusalem to Illyricum, from Rome to Macedonia and Asia. He was constantly visiting them. He traversed for this purpose the whole empire. He suffered shipwreck, in the discharge of his apostolic duty, four times.¹⁴ He was often “in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by the Jews, in perils by the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in cold and nakedness.” He sent to the churches his companions in the ministry; he received from them letters and messages; he required to know their condition;¹⁵ he wept in his prison at Rome on hearing of the waywardness of certain Philippians; he was refreshed when he received good news from the churches; he was incessantly struggling in prayer for each of them, and even for such of their members as he had never seen; he adjured them in the name of the Lord that his epistles should be read by all the brethren, and that they should be communicated by one church to another,¹⁶ just as Peter afterwards recommended the reading of the epistles of Paul as well as of the rest of the Scriptures;¹⁷ he constantly inquired into their condition with the solicitude of a mother desiring to know the state of the child at her breast;¹⁸ he watched over their religious views with a holy jealousy; he was in the deepest concern when they were wandering from the truth;¹⁹ “who is weak,” he exclaimed, “and Iam not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?”²⁰ “My little children,” he says to the Galatians, “of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.”²¹

133. It is easy, then, to perceive that, during such a ministry, which, in the case of some of the apostles, was extended to periods of fifty, sixty, and almost seventy years, it was impossible that any spurious book could be introduced into the Church; and that the churches should unanimously ratify a book that had not been acknowledged by these men of God.

134, It is, in like manner, easy to perceive that, after the death of the apostles, at the conclusion of so lengthened a ministry, all the churches would inevitably be deeply imbued with a religious respect for all apostolic institutions, and a conservative spirit carried to the greatest height, and a jealous distrust regarding every article of doctrine that had not been sanctioned by the apostles during their lives, and, above all, suspicion regarding every book which, previously to the death of the apostles, had not obtained a place in the sacred canon. Owing to these causes, the latest writings of some of the apostles, which, shortly before their death, they had addressed to various churches, encountered opposition down to the time of the Council of Nice, as we shall have occasion to state more in detail, and only mention here by anticipation. We shall, however, at the same time, shew that these five short books were received by the great majority of Christians, owing to the positive proofs of their authenticity, and received, in particular, by those churches whose position best enabled them to decide, as it was to them that the books in question were addressed, as they were thus most interested in rejecting them if spurious. We shall, further, shew that these same facts afford an admirable proof of the vigilance of the churches, of the freedom of their action, and of the thorough conviction that produced their unanimity regarding the twenty-two homologoumena.

We have, however, to consider two other historical facts still more important, which furnish additional evidence regarding our sacred canon; and which, combined with the great fact of the unanimity of all the churches of the first centuries in reference to the homologoumena, demonstrate with a force that is irresistible the authenticity of all these books.

SECTION II.

THE IMMENSE NUMBER OF CHURCHES AT THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES.

135, The triumphant rapidity of the conquests of the Church previously to the death of the apostles, and its immense extent at the end of the first century, form an amazing fact, but a fact as unquestionable as prodigious.

136. This new religion, which avowedly aimed at the annihilation of all others, and which, taking its rise among persons of humble condition, and in the most despised of all the nations of the earth, denounced all error, openly assailed every evil passion of the human heart, and spared neither the pride of the great, nor the pretensions of the priesthood, nor the prejudices of the multitude; — that religion which, while it declared war against all the false deities that had been worshipped with so much splendour from the most remote ages, was at first preached only by persons of low degree, and yet called upon mankind to recognise their God in the person of a Jewish carpenter, who had been rejected by his own people, and through them brought to capital punishment; that religion which was opposed by the people, the priests, the religious teachers, the magistrates and kings, of every nation; that religion which required every individual to regard himself as a criminal in the sight of God, and to give up for its sake his property and his life; that religion which, though unceasingly persecuted, had for three centuries shed no blood but its own; — that religion had already in forty years put forth a power that foreboded the conquest of the world. In forty years it had traversed the globe; it had overflowed its surface as the Nile overflows Egypt; it had spread itself everywhere like a river of life. The apostles had not yet terminated their career when there appeared in every land missionary churches, devoted, and without number.

Perhaps this remarkable fact does not occupy an adequate place in the minds of those who turn their attention to the study of the canon. It is, however, a fact of vast significance; and at the same time it is abundantly established from both those sources of proof — between which the investigators of Christian antiquity divide their preferences — the declarations of Scripture, and the testimonies of history.

137. Scripture leaves no doubt on this subject. Paul, after only seventeen years of his ministry, states, in addressing the Christians at Rome, (xvi. 26,) that the “gospel had been already made known to all nations;” that he himself (xv. 19) “strove to carry it exclusively to parts where it was previously unknown; and yet that he had fully preached it in all the regions “from Jerusalem to Illyricum.” The voice of the messengers of the glad . tidings had gone forth, like the light of the sun, “through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world,” (Rom. x. 18.) This statement was no poetic hyperbole; and from his success may be inferred what had been achieved by the labours of all the other apostles and evangelists. Besides, in thus spreading the gospel all over the earth, they had been- merely carrying out the command and fulfilling the promise of their Master. Jesus, in foretelling to them the destruction of Jerusalem, that was to take place thirty-six years after His death, had declared to them that, previous to that event, the “gospel of the kingdom should be preached all over the world as a testimony to all nations.” “Go, then,’ He had said to them, “and convert all nations.” This command was in a short space of time so fully carried into effect, that Mark, in writing his Gospel, (xvi. 20,) could already say of the apostles, “They went forth and preached everywhere,” (ἐκήρυξαν πανταχοῦ.) Paul, in his Epistle to the Colossians, says to them, (about the year 60,) “The gospel is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit.” He adds, in ver. 23, “The gospel, which ye have heard, and which has been preached to every creature that is under heaven.”

Only four years after these words had been written, the same gospel, though violently persecuted by the Emperor Nero, already counted, as Tacitus informs us, “an immense multitude” of followers in the city of Rome alone. Paul, six years before he wrote to the Colossians, was preparing to proceed to Spain,²² and there is nothing improbable in the supposition that he actually did proceed thither, as Clement of Rome²³ tells us that he went to the utmost bounds of the West, (ἐπὶ τὸ τερμα τῆς Δύσεως.) But even if Paul’s journey to Spain may be considered uncertain, it is an unquestionable fact, that, in the year in which he was preparing to go to that country, the Christian Jews in Jerusalem alone amounted to at least fifty or sixty thousand, (how many myriads, πόσαι μύριαδες εἰσὶν πεπιστευκότων, said’ James.)²⁴ So extensively had the gospel been propagated at the same period in Italy, through the humble but incessant labours of believers, that, long before the appearance of any apostle in that country,²⁵ very numerous conversions had taken place. “The faith of the Romans was spoken of throughout all the world” when Paul wrote to them, (Rom. i. 8.) When, three years afterwards, he landed in Italy for the first time, he already found near Naples, at Puteoli, brethren to receive him, as also at the distance of seventeen leagues from Rome — at “Appi forum,” and, still nearer, at “the Three Taverns.” Six years afterwards, but before Paul had laid down his life for Jesus Christ, the Christian inhabitants of Rome, forming “an immense multitude,” were enduring in masses the most fearful tortures inflicted by imperial madness.

138. It is fortunate, we have already said, that, in proof of these incontestable facts, we have, in addition to the testimony of Scripture, that of two of the most illustrious personages of Roman antiquity — both contemporaries of Paul,²⁶ both heathens, both deeply prejudiced against Christianity, both men of consular dignity,²⁷ both men of letters, both practical statesmen, and both testifying what they had seen. I allude to Tacitus and Pliny the Younger.

139. It is well known that Tacitus has written, in the form of “Annals,” a history of his own time, from the death of Augustus to that of Nero. In book fifteenth, which comes down to the eleventh year of the latter emperor's reign, that is, A.D. 64, when Paul was still preaching the gospel, Tacitus mentions the terrible conflagration that ravaged the capital of the empire, and which all attributed to Nero. “Eleven of the fourteen quarters of Rome had been destroyed by it. To remove suspicion from himself, Nero,” says Tacitus, “sought for persons to be believed the guilty authors of the devastation, and subjected to the most cruel tortures unfortunate beings, abhorred, indeed, for their abominations, and called Chrestians by the common people, (quœsitissimis poenis affecit quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat.) Chrestus, after whom they were called, having been put to death under Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate, a measure which for a time checked that execrable superstition. But soon the torrent burst forth anew, not only in Judea, where it had originated, but even in Rome itself — that centre where all the abominations of the universe are ultimately collected (superstitio rursus erumpebat, non modo per Judæam, originem mali, sed per urbem upsam . . . .) Those who avowed themselves to be Christians -were first taken up, and, afterwards, on their depositions, an immense multitude, convicted, less of having been implicated in burning Rome than of hating all mankind.”

An immense multitude, (multitudo ingens,) — such is the testimony of Tacitus regarding the number of Christians living in Rome even in the time of Paul.

“The most obstinate scepticism,” says the infidel Gibbon on this subject, “is compelled to respect the truth of this extraordinary fact, which is further confirmed by the accurate Suetonius, for that historian likewise mentions the punishments inflicted by Nero on the Christians,” (ch. xvi.)

140. As to the multitude of Christians in Asia, we have, in like manner, a testimony of Pliny, no less authentic and precious. An intimate friend of Tacitus, and high in the favour and confidence of Trajan, Pliny was then proconsular governor of the beautiful provinces of Bithynia and Pontus, and had received from his master instructions to prosecute the Christians, and inflict on them capital punishment, should they persist in the faith, When, however, he commenced the iniquitous task, the immense number of the victims appalled his conscience. This led him to address to the emperor a letter, still extant, (lib. x., epist. 97,) in order to obtain some mitigation of the rigour of his first instructions. That remarkable letter, written while John was still alive, (in the year 108,) well deserves an attentive perusal, We shall merely present, in an abridged form, that part which mentions the innumerable multitude of the Christians, and their steadfastness in the faith, for on the shores of the Black Sea, as on the banks of the Tiber, whenever it was necessary to confess Jesus Christ, their persecutors beheld them (to use the words attributed to Julian the Apostate) coming in haste, like bees to the hive, to meet martyrdom for the name of Jesus, (tanquam apes ad alvearia, sic illi ad martyria.)

On commencing proceedings against the Christians, he was startled at once by the number and the harmlessness of the crowds he had to punish, “What is to be done, my lord?” said he to Trajan. “The manner in which I have acted towards those denounced as Christians has been this: I ask them whether or not they are Christians. On their replying in the affirmative, I repeat the question once, and afterwards again, threatening to put them to death if they persist. As to those who continue obstinate, I order them to be led to punishment, for whatever may be the nature of their religion, I have thought that their opposition and obstinacy at least deserve to be punished. They declare that their only offence consists in meeting together on a certain day before sunrise, to sing hymns alternately to Christ as to a God, and to pind themselves by an oath not to commit perjury, nor adultery, nor theft, nor falsehood. After this they separate to meet again, without any disorder, at a repast which they take in common. Having ascertained these particulars, I deemed it necessary to question by torture two female slaves from among those who are said to exercise a certain ministry among them; but I could discover nothing but an extreme and wretched superstition. What must I, then, do? The case appears to me very serious, especially on account of the vast number of persons of both sexes, of every rank and every age, who are already or will be under persecution, (multi envm omnis wetatis, omnis ordins, utriusque seaus, etiam vocantur in periculum et vocabuntur.) It is not merely in the cities that this superstition has spread, but also in the towns and villages, and even jn rural districts, (neque enim civitatis tantum, sed vicos etiam atque agros swperstitionts istvus contagio pervagata est.”)

141; In a word, this great fact which we have pointed out is constantly appealed to as an unparalleled event by all the ancient apologists, often with eloquence and exultation, as it deserves. Read, for example, the noble passages in Tertullian, or in Arnobius,²⁸ or in Minutius Felix.²⁹ “We are so numerous,” they say to the Romans, “that if we were to secede from your state, we should cause its ruin.”

“We are but of yesterday,” said Tertullian³⁰ to the Roman government, “and we have filled your empire — all that is yours, — towns, islands, fortresses, municipal towns, market-places, the senate, the forum. We have only left you the temples, (sola vobis relinquimus templa.) We can make war upon you without taking arms; it is enough not to live with you; for if the Christians who compose so great a multitude (tanta vis hominum) should abandon you and retire into some other country, it would be the ruin of your power, and you would be terrified at your own solitude.” “The Gothic nations,” he says elsewhere,³¹ “the various Moorish tribes, all the regions of Spain and Gaul, and places in Britain inaccessible to the Romans, have been subjected to Christ, as well as the Sarmatians, Dacians, Germans, Scythians, and nations yet unknown.” After this survey, he expresses his admiration that in so short a time the empire of Jesus Christ was far more extensive than that of Nebuchadnezzar, of Alexander, or of the Romans.

142. This period of the Church, signalised by such a marvellous increase, reaches to the reign of Hadrian, (117-1 38.) Christianity had then made its way even to barbarous nations, and numerous churches had been founded among the Egyptians, Celts, and Germans. We may here notice “those many nations of barbarians” (πολλὰ ἔθνη τῶν βαρβάρων) to whose judgment Irenæus³² appeals against the Gnosis of the heretics of his

THREE GREAT FACTS. i |

time,³³ affirming that these nations had been christianised before the appearance of the Gnostic sects. But it is well known that scholars place the birth of these sects in the age of St John, and even before the publication of the fourth Gospel.³⁴ If we believe the most trustworthy statements of the learned Armenian, Moses of Chorene,³⁵ Christianity had penetrated the East very early among the people using the Syriac language, the Armenians, and the Persians. We must read the thirty-seventh chapter of the third book of Eusebius to form a just idea of the prodigious extension of the gospel in Trajan’s reign, and the admirable activity of the churches to effect it. Allowing for some inflation of language, this grand historic fact is brought to light, that “the immediate disciples of the apostles, building on the foundation laid by those men of God, had scattered the seed of the kingdom of heaven throughout the whole extent of the habitable globe,” (τὰ, ’σωτήρια σπέρματα τῆς τῶν οὐρανῶν βασιλείας ἀνὰ ’πᾶσαν εἰς πλάτος ἐπισπείροντες τὴν οἰκουμένην.) Many of them, he says, sacrificed their property to follow the vocation of evangelists, to announce Christ to those who knew Him not, and to communicate to them the scriptures of the divine Gospels, (kat rv Oetov Evayyeriov rapadisovat Ipadnp.)

143. It will be perceived what additional strength this wonderful fact gives to the testimony rendered by the universal Church to the homologoumena of our sacred canon. But to apprehend the full force of the argument, the three great facts we have been dwelling upon must be taken in combination; for then, it seems to us, they will form a powerful threefold cable round these twenty-two homologoumena to maintain their apostolic authenticity, and render them immovable. There is, first, the continuity, during the whole of the first century, of the personal ministry of the apostles in the churches; then there is the immense number of churches founded in all parts of the world during this long and vigilant ministry; and lastly, there is the constant, perfect, universal unanimity of these innumerable churches on the question of these books during the lifetime and after the decease of the apostles, and in the following age. Whoever attentively considers these three combined facts will acknowledge that, for splendid guarantees, none like them are to be found in the literary history of the whole world in any age.

144, We here quote with pleasure the words of Dr Thiersch.³⁶ After employing similar arguments, “I hope,” he says, “I have succeeded in shewing the opponents of the first canon how far their suppositions on the characters of the first half of the second century have wandered from the domain of history into that of fable. They would have us suppose that, at a time when, certainly, the general body of Christians and their bishops did not look like a gang of false coiners, men were to be found among them so exceedingly clever, (religious men, too,) that, in some incomprehensible manner, they were able to impose their fictions on all the Christians in the world as on a stupid multitude, blind and dumb to insanity, and to make them receive with closed eyes their forgeries, under the title of apostolic scriptures, and of scriptures transcribed by a believing antiquity! And when the light of history is brought to bear upon it, this is the drift of the strange idea that a single one of the homologowmena may have been a forgery. And we must avow, that incredulity in reference to the first canon, when persisted in, requires the admission of such incredible and preposterous things, that, in comparison with such gullibility, the blindest belief of some Christians in certain miraculous legends is a mere trifle.”

But we have not yet done with the facts; we have still another to bring forward, perhaps more important than all the preceding, It will make our proofs superabound. We wish to speak of what is termed Anagnosis, or the public reading of the Scriptures, (ἀνάκγνωσις.)

SECTION III.

ANAGNOSIS.

145. The regular and constant practice of publicly reading the Scriptures in all the churches of the New Testament is a cardinal and pregnant fact in the question of the canon. This fact is so important, that it justly claims the first place; for we must perceive that on this institution actually rests the whole history of the sacred volume. Anagnosis is its formative cause and true foundation; this alone explains its truth — this alone its perpetual preservation — this alone the admirable unanimity of the churches in acknowledging from the first, and for two centuries, all the homologoumena — this alone explains the œcumenical unanimity of all the churches, at a later period, in receiving the entire canon,

146. The modern opponents of our sacred books, especially in Germany, have so well understood the competency of this great fact to establish invincibly the authenticity of the first canon, that " they have done their utmost to gainsay the reading of the New Testament in the primitive churches, and to fabricate an apocryphal and tardy birth of such a practice in the latter half of the second century. But these efforts have been in vain. The existence of this institution, and its universality from the earliest period, can be clearly demonstrated. We shall see that it goes back to the apostolic times — that it belongs to the very genesis of the universal Church — that, at the beginning of the second century, in all the churches then ancient, it had been perfectly established, and that in all those founded since, by thousands in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, (that is to say, from 98 to 138,) anagnosis had begun with their very existence, and formed an essential part of it.

147. It was very naturally, and in the logical course of events, that this usage took its rise with the Church itself. The apostles and their divine Master had already found it established in the synagogues of Israel. Anagnosis had been for ages one of the universal practices of the ancient worship as regards Moses and the prophets. All the synagogues were founded for this purpose. Orders were given, the Jewish doctors say, to erect a synagogue wherever ten Jews could be found; and wherever a synagogue existed, it was furnished with a chest containing the Scriptures, and everywhere these Scriptures were publicly read to the faithful every Sabbath-day. And it is well known that, in the days of Jesus Christ, the Jews were spread over the whole world, and that “Moses,” as St James expressed it, (Acts xv. 21,) “hath of old time in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day.”

And, on the other hand, it is a historical fact that the primitive Church was from the first modelled on the synagogue.³⁷ All the Christian Churches, for many years, consisted entirely of Jews. The Church was originally composed only of Israelites brought in a short time by myriads to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, either at Jerusalem and in Judea, or in Samaria, or in the cities of the Gentiles. On receiving the gospel, all these new Christians preserved the forms and practices of their worship to which they had been used in the synagogue. Their ministers were called Chazun in the Aramean congregations, or Episcopoi among the Hellenists. Each of them had three parnasin or deacons. The  Chazan every Sabbath-day appointed seven Koreim or readers (anagnostœ) to attend to the reading of the Holy Word. He kept himself near the reader, watching if he read correctly, and correcting him if he made a mistake. On the other days of the week there were readers, but not so many.³⁸ Thus this sacred usage, which had prevailed in all the synagogues as the most indispensable part of the service, passed into the Christian Churches formed at first in the Synagogue, continued after its pattern, and composed entirely of Jewish converts. These first Christians could not imagine an assembly without these sacred readings; the idea of public worship without anagnosis could not have entered their minds. It was thus that this institution, being naturally established in all the assemblies of the new people of God, necessarily gave them their form, so that it would have been practised as a matter of course, even had there been no injunction on the subject in the apostolic writings; but there was one, as we are about to shew.

148. Anagnosis, then, in the Christian assemblies, preceded the appearance of the New Testament, instead of a long time having elapsed, as has been asserted, before it was practised. The Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament were read as in the synagogues; and that regular reading of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, was exclusively in use during the fifteen years which preceded the appearance of the first apostolic epistles, in the innumerable churches formed by the apostles, and particularly in those founded by Paul before the year 49 or 54 in Samaria, Syria, Arabia, Cyprus, Galatia, Lycaonia, Mysia, Pisidia, Thrace, and Macedonia.

It is, in fact, in 49 that we think (according to Orosius³⁹) the decree of Claudius against the Jews of Rome (Acts xviii. 2) must be placed; and we know it was then that Paul, with Silas and Timothy, wrote those two beautiful epistles to the Thessalonians, which were, it would seem, the beginning of the written word of the New Testament.⁴⁰

149, As we have said, it was necessarily from the time of the apostles and the first promulgation of the gospel that the custom of reading the Scriptures of the Old Testament passed from the assemblies of the synagogue into the assemblies of the Church; for no sooner had the year 70 arrived, no sooner had Jerusalem been destroyed, the temple burnt, the Jewish believers dispersed, and all the apostles gone to their rest, than the spirit of the Christian churches (as all history testifies) became too hostile to the Hebrew nation and to the Judaising Christians, to allow henceforth of borrowing anything from their institutions.

150. Moreover, the custom of reading in these assemblies of the Church, besides the scriptures of the prophets of the Old Covenant, the scriptures of the apostles and prophets of the New, (as far as they were published,) was one which must necessarily have approved itself to all the churches and to all the faithful, as at once. most natural and indispensable. Were not the writings of the apostles superior in their eyes even. to the writings of the Old Testament? Did not these men of God, at the time when they wrote, perform works of power much more wonderful than the greatest of the ancient prophets had ever accomplished? Were they not, as apostles and prophets, the twelve founders of the Church 2 (Eph. ii 20.) And besides, did not their writings (the Gospel of John, for example, and the Apocalypse of John) claim to be ‘nspired from on high as much as Isaiah or the Pentateuch? Why, then, and how, by what right and for what reasons, was it possible, while they read every Lord’s-day the scriptures of the ancient prophets, to leave unread the scriptures of the new, and while they listened to those prophets who had divinely announced the Son of man, to doom to silence those prophets who had heard His own voice, and had divinely proclaimed Him, “God bearing them witness with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost?” (Heb. ii. 3, 4.)

Can we believe that all these Christian societies, after the death of their founders, the apostles, could be content to read publicly only the Old Testament, and to hear, after that reading, nothing but the discourse — the λόγος of which Justin Martyr⁴¹ speaks — the unpremeditated discourses of ministers who had neither the miraculous spirit with which the departed apostles had been filled, nor even the charisms of the apostolic men who followed them. This cannot be admitted; even the bare thought of it must not be entertained.

151. If, as certain opponents of the canon would have it, the public recognition of the books of the New Testament by anagnosis did not take place till the latter half of the second century, they must solve for us two historical impossibilities, In the first place, how can it be admitted by any one who has studied the character of the second century in the original authorities, that such a revolution was effected in the public worship of all the churches in the world — a change so important that it would be absolutely incompatible with the conservative and traditional spirit that history attributes to the Christians of that epoch? And, in the second place, how would it be possible that so great an event, which has not its parallel in the annals of that epoch, could take place without any commotion, without any report of it having come down to us, without any of the fathers having spoken of it, without even Eusebius, who relates so much in detail all the reminiscences of those primitive times, being apprised. of it, and without Irenzeus, in whose youth this astounding fact must have occurred, saying a word about it? Noone can give an answer to these simple questions. It is sufficient for us to enunciate them, to shew that they do not allow of one.

152. Thus for any one who contemplates by the light of these facts the primitive Church performing its worship, and reverently listening every Sunday to the voice of the readers, nothing is more easy to conceive than the successive formation of the first canon; nothing can be more naturally explained than the unanimity of all the churches as to its contents and constant preservation. All was accomplished without dispute or noise, by the calm and regular course of anagnosis. Only suppose ourselves present at this consecrated practice of the first century, and all is explained. To settle this great affair, we have no need of councils, or of agitation, or of efforts, or of decrees. The apostles had not even to create the institution by their directions, (though they really have given them;) it existed before their time — “from ancient generations” (ἐκ γενέωυ ἀρχαίων);⁴² it maintained itself during their life; it acquired permanence after their death. At the most, they had only to sanction it by their approval, and by the part which they took in it. And when, after a half-century of anagnosis, they all disappeared from the earth, the Christian churches had everywhere such a perfect knowledge of their sacred canon by continual reading, that simple believers were often to be met with who had thus learnt their scriptures by heart, and could correct the anagnostes (the reader) if he mistook a single word.⁴³ Historians attest this fact. We can thus understand that nothing but this practice was needed to create the canon, and to make it known in its purity, to sanction it in every place, and to render it irrevocable.

153. We see, then, that the reading of the Old Testament never ceased, either in the synagogue or the church; it existed in the first assemblies at Jerusalem; it was always an indispensable part of their service; it passed afterwards from the congregations of Jewish Christians to those of the Gentiles; for example, it followed the Corinthian believers into the house of Justus,⁴⁴ and from the synagogue of Ephesus entered the school of Tyrannus,⁴⁵ for all knew, as St Paul had said,⁴⁶ that by the reading of the Holy Scriptures, “the man of God is perfected, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, and made wise to salvation through faith, that is in Christ Jesus.” Ata later period, as a new epistle or a, new gospel was given by the apostles to the churches, believers were anxious to add to the reading of the Old Testament that of these new prophets, whose writings, they knew, proceeded from the same Spirit which had been shed upon them in greater abundance and plenitude.

154, Possibly, though we do not affirm it, the anagnosis of these new books was not so frequent as long as the churches had still in their midst either the apostles possessed of the great signs of apostleship⁴⁷ or men invested with those charisms (or supernatural gifts) which the apostles had conferred upon them by imposition of hands for the common benefit. Yet it remains evident that the churches, when deprived of the personal teaching of these men of God, and only having in their possession the writings they had left, took good care not to abandon the usage to the individual piety of every Christian in his own house, and offered them publicly for the edification of all by a solemn and regular anagnosis.

155. In this manner the successive recognition of all the books of our sacred canon prevailed in the churches of God effectively, but without any parade; and, as Dr Hug has remarked, (in his Introduction to the New Testament,⁴⁹) as the publication of a work of profane literature was anciently made by its recital before an assembly of the author’s friends,⁵⁰ so for the books of the New Testament, it was their anagnosis in the church to which they had been originally sent, that very soon consigned them for the use of all the people of God to the œcumenical treasury of their sacred books.

156. Yet though we have shewn, by the simple logic of facts, how this anagnosis of the apostolic scriptures would necessarily be established in the primitive churches, even had there existed no injunction of the apostles on this point, we ought not to forget that such an injunction was actually given by them; and any one may be convinced that they composed their epistles and their other writings with the intention that they should be read in the assemblies for worship.

157. As to the apostolic injunction, we must carefully observe that it was given by Paul with remarkable solemnity in the very epistle which was the first published of the writings of the New Testament: “I charge (or adjure) you by the Lord,” he wrote to the Thessalonidns,⁵¹ “(Ὁρκίζω ὑμᾶς τὸν Κύριον) that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.” He adjures them by the Lord. And when, towards the end of his career, he wrote from Rome to the Colossians, he gave them the same injunction: “And when this epistle is read amongst you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans (καὶ ἐν τῇ Λαοδικέων ἐκκλησία ἀναγνωσθῇ); and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea” (τὴν ἐκ Λαοδικείας).⁵²

Could the churches on receiving such orders fail to perceive that these letters of Christ’s apostles ought to make a part of their sacred anagnosis?

It must also be observed that the greater part of the books of the New Testament were addressed, not to individuals, but to public men, or to particular churches, or to all the Christian churches in general.

158. We are able also to point out in our Scriptures, as Dr Thiersch has done, many expressions which allude to the anagnosis as a, fact already fixed in the habits of the worship of the age. They shew us that the apostles, without giving orders that were superfluous on this point, since the usage was universal, speak as if expecting that their books would be publicly read in Christian assemblies. To this usage the words at the beginning of the Apocalypse⁵³ seem to refer: “Blessed is he that readeth,” (the word here is singular, Dr Thiersch remarks, as if designating the public reader,) “and they that hear the words of this prophecy,” (here the verb is plural, as designating his hearers.) Why, asks Dr Thiersch, this difference, if there is not an allusion to the anagnosis? To this usage the seven-times-repeated call⁵⁴ in the same book refers: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” The book, then, is for the churches. To this usage the words in the Gospel of John⁵⁵ refer, which very clearly shew that the apostle in writing them had before his mind’s eye the assemblies of the faithful and their sacred readings: “But these are written that ye might believe;” and again in chap. xix., “that ye might believe.” To this usage the words refer in the Epistle to the Colossians,⁵⁶ addressed to Archippus, and connected immediately by the copulative with the injunction he had given them to read this epistle in the church: “And that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea; and say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it.” “In this position,’ Dr Thiersch again remarks,⁵⁷ “these words appear to be addressed to Archippus as the person who directed the readings in public worship, and they are an exhortation to acquit himself with care in this important office.”

159. But what quotation from Scripture is comparable as a recognition of the anagnosis to that famous-passage of Peter (2 Pet. iii, 16) where the writer mentions all the epistles of Paul, and complains of their abuse by many “unlearned and unstable” persons. We see clearly in this passage, (1.) that the author addressed himself to the general body of Christian assemblies; (2.) that already in his time Paul had written to these assemblies, and that all the epistles then known were read among them; for the author mentions all, (πάσας,) without determining how many; (3.) that Paul had written them long enough for them to be known to all by the anagnosis; (4.) that if many members of these churches misunderstood and wrested them to their own destruction, yet it was always a matter received by them, as well as the judgment of the author, that all these epistles of Paul ought to hold among them the same rank as all the other writings of the Old Testament (ὡς καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς γραφὰς) which had been read for ages in all the assemblies of God’s people.

It is scarcely possible to imagine more positive testimony, taking this epistle simply as a document of the first century, and without regard to its author; for we shall elsewhere prove its priority to the Epistle of Jude;⁵⁸ and Thiersch, quoting it as we have done, and for the same object, takes care to add, “And let no one object that he rejects the canonicity of this epistle. What does it signify, since we can compel the most incredulous criticism not to place this writing later than the appearance of the Gnostic sect, that is, in the second part of the apostolic age?”

Thus, then, this epistle, even for those who refuse to ascribe it to the apostle Peter, its professed author, is an irrefragable memorial of the anagnosis in the first age of the Church.

160. Moreover, if we study the first Christians, in their habits and languages, we shall recognise a people among whom the public use of the Scriptures had long prevailed. For example, the frequent mention of the anagnostae,⁵⁹ or readers, who held a higher rank than the deacons.⁶⁰ For example, the use in the East among all the Christian congregations, even the-poorest, to keep in their places of worship a collection of the sacred books.⁶¹ For example, also, the mention of persons (even the blind) entirely uneducated, who, like John the Martyr, of Palestine, had learnt the Scriptures by heart, by the simple means of constantly attending the offices of public worship.⁶² For example, equally, the fact that these simple members corrected the anagnostes if he happened to say one word for another.⁶³ For example, again, those translators who were retained in their assemblies for those of the hearers who did not understand the language of the anagnostes: as in Syria for those who did not know Greek, or for those who did not know Aramaic; and as in Africa, for those who only spoke the Punic language, or the Latin.⁶⁴ And for example, lastly, the usage, kept up till the time of Tertullian,⁶⁵ in the churches founded by the apostles, of guarding with veneration the autographs of the epistles they had received from these men of God. This appears to be the meaning of the language of this father, when he says, “(Go through the apostolic churches, where the very chairs of the apostles are still preserved in the same places, and where their authentic epistles are recited.”⁶⁶

161. But the testimony of Justin Martyr, thirty-six years only after the death of St John, will, perhaps, better satisfy some minds as to the high antiquity of the anagnosis of the New Testament. This distinguished man belonged to Palestine by his birth, to Egypt by his studies, to Asia Minor by his travels, and to the church of Italy by his long residence in Rome, as the head of a school of Christianity. He was converted from the Pagan philosophy to the Christian faith in 133; it is in his famous Apology, presented to Antoninus Pius, (in the year 139,) that he speaks of the anagnosis.⁶⁷ His defence of primitive Christianity is the most ancient that has been handed down to us; and what renders it particularly valuable on the question now before us is not only its high antiquity, together with his eminently public, and, so to speak, official character; it is the fact that monuments of this epoch, whether of profane or ecclesiastical history, are of extraordinary rarity. The epoch of the death of the last apostles, like that of the reigns of Nerva and Trajan,⁶⁸ is historically very obscure,⁶⁹ although immediately preceded, and soon followed by times abundantly illustrated, whether by the annals of the Church, or those of the empire. As to documents, which can make us acquainted with the practices of the first Christians in their public worship, we are reduced to the greatest destitution. Starting . from the year 53, when Paul describes what took place in the Corinthian Church,⁷⁰ down to the year 217, when Tertullian lays before us the forms of worship in his age, we can find in the archives of human knowledge but two other descriptions of the Christian assemblies of these remote days. And yet the first is only that of a Pagan, the proconsul Pliny;⁷¹ whilst the other is that of Justin Martyr, thirty-two years after Pliny.

The following is the testimony of Justin; and we may observe that, if he describes the public worship of the Christians of his age, it is not for the purpose of transmitting the knowledge of it to future generations; it is only to demonstrate their innocence to their persecutors, and particularly to the Emperor Antoninus: —

“On the day called Sunday,” he says, “there is a gathering⁷² to the same place of all who live either in the towns or country, and then the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets⁷³ are read as long as the time allows. Then, when the reader has finished, the president, by an address, makes an exhortation and an appeal to prompt to an imitation of these noble examples.”⁷⁴

Nothing can be more decisive than this short description, to shew us the rank and high place which the reading of the apostles and prophets already held in their religious meetings, only thirty-six years after the death of St John.

We may here also recognise at a glance the perfect resemblance of this primitive worship to that of the synagogue; for, in reading Justin Martyr, we might suppose we were present with Paul and Barnabas at that assembly in Pisidia, so well described by St Luke seventy-five years before: “They went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and sat down. And after the reading of the law and the prophets,” (or, as Justin says, “the anagnostes having finished,”) “the rulers of the synagogue” (the προεστῶτες of Justin) “sent unto them, saying, Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on,” (εἰ ἔστι λόγος ἐν ὑμῖν παρακλήσεως.) (It is the διὰ λόγου of Justin.)

162. Many efforts have been made of late in Germany to evade the irresistible force of this testimony of Justin. Some have endeavoured to see in these Memoirs of the Apostles only apocryphal Gospels; but Hug, Winer, Biedermann, Otto, and others, have treated this curious evasion as it deserves. Others would recognise in it only the four Gospels, to the exclusion of the other books of the New Testament; but Credner⁷⁵ and Thiersch⁷⁶ have had no difficulty in shewing, by apt quotations from Irenaeus, (lib. ii, cap. 27,) and the Apostolic Constitutions, (lib. ii, cap. 59,) that by such expressions Justin evidently intended the scriptures of the Old and the New Testament.

163. We, therefore, once more infer that this great fact of the regular and public reading of the New Testament is an institution as old as the Church itself; that it explains the perfect unanimity (which without it is inexplicable) of all the churches on the subject of the twenty-two homologoumena; that, joined to this unanimity, it will be an irrefragable proof of the authenticity of these holy books; and that it renders impossible the intrusion of an illegitimate book into the sacred canon after the death of the apostles, — impossible that such an intrusion could succeed in being admitted into all the churches on the face of the earth, — impossible, above all, that it could take place without exciting innumerable protests, — impossible, lastly, that if these protests had been made, the report of them should not have come down to us.

But we pass on to the monuments of the canon — that is to say, the traces it has left in the literature of the first ages.

1) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii., 2, 32, 11.

2) He was sentenced several times, but died a natural death.

3) See Jerome on the Epistle to the Galatians, and De Viris Illust., cap. ix.

4) Irenaeus — Hæres,, iii, 3; ii, 39. Eusebius — Hist. Eccl., iii, 23 — Chron. Euseb. See also Augustin, Serm 253, chap. iv.

5) Acts xiii. 1 — πξορῆται — 2 Tim. i. 6; 1 Tim. iv. 14.

6) About 196. In the famous Canon called Muratori’s, which many attribute to him.

7) H, E., ti., 24.

8) In Matt. Procem.

9) In Apocal. Bibl. Patr., iii., 418;

10) Auct. Incert. Montfaucon, viii., 132.

11) Cabena in Joan. Corderii. Mill. N. T., p. 198. Edit. 1723,

12) If this fact were admitted, it would not at all affect the inspiration of this fourth Gospel.

13) Tertull, De Baptismo, 15 and 17. Jerome, Catal. Vir. Ill, in Luc, 7.

14) 2 Cor. xi. 25-27; Acts xxvii. 41.

15) 1 Thess, iii. 5-8; Philip. ii. 19-29,

16) Philip. iii. 18; 1 Thess. iii. 8; Col. i. 9, ii 1-5, iv. 12; Rom. xv. 30; Philip, i. 8; 1 Thess. i, 2; v.27; Col. iv. 16.

17) 2 Pet. iii, 16,

18) Gal. iv.18; Philip. iv. 17, ii. 28, iii.18; Col. i. 8,9, 24; 1 Thess, iii, 6-10.

19) Gal. iv. 19, 20.

20) 2 Cor. xi. 29.

21) Gal. iv. 19.

22) Rom. xv. 24.

23) Chap. v. of his First Epistle to the Corinthians.

24) Acts xxi. 20.

25) Rom. xv. 20; 2 Co. x. 15, 16.

26) One born in the year 61, and the other in 64.

27) Tacitus was consul in 97, and Pliny three years later.

28) Adv. Gentes, lib. ii, p, 44,45. Lugd. Batay., 1651.

29) In his dialogue, entitled, Octavius.

30) Apologet., ii., cap. 37.

31) In his book Adversus Judæos, chap. 7.

32) Hæres., iii, 4,2. He also says, (i., 2,) “The Church is disseminated throughout the whole habitable world, . (καθ’ ὅλης τῆς οἰκονμὲνης,) and even to the extremities of the earth,” (ἕως περάτων τῆς γῆς διεσπαρμένης).

33) The heretics of his time, like those of the present day, called their systems science or knowledge, Γνῶσις, Gnosis, and denominated themselves “men of Gnosis.”

34) See Bunsen in his Hippolytus, i., 236.

35) He has left a history of Armenia. Born, it is said, in 370, he kept the archives before being made archbishop of Bagrevand. See Neander’s Church History, vol. iii., 162. Bohn’s ed.

36) Versuch zur Wiederherstellung dos hist. Standpuncts für die Kritik der N. T. Schriften, 1845, ch. 6.

37) On the derivation of Christian churches from the synagogue, see Archbishop Whately’s Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, pp. 7 8-82, second ed., 1842; or the French translation by Burnier, 1848, pp. 66, 67.

38) See Lightfoot’s Harmony, p. 479, and his Hore Hebr. et Talmudic in Evang., &c., vol. xi., p. 88, quoted by Whately in the appendix to his Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, p. 256, (or 215 of the French translation.)

39) VII. 6. The third year of Claudius. Others place it in the second year. Suetonius speaks of the decree in his life of Claudius, but without giving the date.

40) We do not pretend to fix the date of Matthew's Gospel; for it is very probable, as Lardner thinks, that none of the four Gospels preceded the Council of Jerusalem, (Acts xv.,) if that of Mark must be placed late, (Mark xvi. 20,) and that of Luke at a later distance of time from the publication of the Acts, (the years 60, 61, 62.) Yet the fact reported by Eusebius (H. E., v. 10) of the Gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew language, (Εβραίων γράμμασι,) which the apostle Bartholomew carried to India, seems to place the first Gospel very near St Paul’s first epistles, or rather even before them.

41) In his First Apology, chap. 67.

42) Acts xv. 21.

43) Such, for example, as John the Blind in Palestine, St Anthony in Egypt, and Servulus at Rome. Eusebius, De Martyr. Palest., xiii, p. 344; Augustin, De Doct. Christ., in prologo., tom. iii., p. 8; Greg. Mag., Hom. xy., in Evangelia., tom. iii., p. 40.

44) Acts xviii. 7.

45) Acts xix. 9, 10,

46) 2 Tim. iii. 15,16.

47) 1 Cor, xii. 2; 2 Cor. xii, 12,

49) Leonard Hug, Einleitung, &c., i, 108. Stuttgard.

50) We have an instance in Tacitus, De Oratoribus, c. 7.

51) 1 Thess. v. 27. See Propp. 16, 17.

52) Which is believed to be the Epistle to the Ephesians. See Prop. 427.

53) Apoc. i. 3.

54) Apoe. ii, 7, 11, 17, 29, iii. 6, 18, 22.

55) John xx. 31, and also xix, 35.

56) Col. iv. 17.

57) Versuch, &c., p. 349.

58) Book IV., Chap. III, V.

59) Cyprian, Epistles 24, 33, 34, 29, 38, (others 33.) Bingham’s Antiquities, ii., 27.

60) “Hodie Diaconus qui cras Lector.’ — Tertull., De Prescript., 41.

61) Scholz, Prolegomena to his Critical Edition of the New Testament,

62) Eusebius, De Martyr. Palest., cap. xiii.

63) Bingham, vii., 3, 17, xiii., 4, 10. — We may cite as a continuation of habits thus formed, and as a specimen of the scrupulous attention which would not allow the slightest change in the sacred text, the zeal with which Spiridion opposed Triphilus when, in a discourse delivered before several bishops, he substituted for a phrase in the Gospel one that he believed more elegant. — Sozomen, Hist., xi, 1. We may also cite with St Augustine (Epist. 71 and 85) the excitement occasioned in the African Church by the change of a single word, which yet was of no im- portance as to faith or practice. The faithful demanded a reason from their bishop, and obliged him to repair the scandal by a serious apology. We see from all these incidents how familiar the text of Scripture was to Christians of the first ages.

64) Bingham, xiii., 4, 5, iii, 18, 4.

65) De Prescrip. Hæretic., cap. xxx., p. 212.

66) “Percurre ecclesias apostolicas apud quas ipse adhue cathedræ apostolorum suis locis president,” (or preesidentur.)

67) In chap. lxvii. This is the largest and the first, though generally printed after the other, which was composed twenty-four years later, and presented to the Roman senate under the reign of Marcus Aurelius.

68) From the year 96 to the year 117.

69) The great number of eminent historians of this epoch, so brilliant in the annals of Rome, has not prevented this strange obscurity; the greater part have perished, and the glorious reign of Trajan is scarcely to be studied except in the letters of Pliny, in medals, and in the abridgment which is left us of Dion.

70) 1 Cor, xi., xiv.

71) Book I., Chap. IV. See Prop. 140.

72) Συυέλευσις γίνεται.

73) Καὶ τὰ ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων ἥ τὰ συγγάιὶμματα τῶι πξοφητῶν ἀναγινώσκεται μέχςις ἐγχωξεῖ.

74) Διὰ λόγου τὴν νουθεσίαν καί πξόκλησιν τῆς τῶν καλῶν τούτων μιαήσεως ποιεῖται.

75) Beiträge zur Einleitung in die biblischen Schriften, i., p.60. (1832.) — Credner speaks only of Irenaeus.

76) In the work quoted above, vi., 350.