THE SECOND CLASS OF PROOFS FOUNDED ON THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

433. Do you wish for a demonstration, at once the most powerful

and the simplest, of the sovereign Providence which watches over the canon; and of the profound conviction on this point maintained by all the saints, prophets, and apostles, and by the Son of God himself? Observe what has occurred during thirty-three centuries in reference to the sacred oracles of the Old Testament.

We shall make this proof apparent to all Christian readers, by simply bringing under their notice three or four incontestable facts.

SECTION FIRST.

THE ASTONISHING AND IMMOVABLE UNANIMITY OF THE JEWS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CANON.

434, The perfect and constant preservation of the canon for thirty-three centuries and a half is a most astonishing fact in the history of Israel, not less wonderful than that of the preservation of this race of Abraham, which has maintained itself for three thousand one hundred and eighty years in the midst of the nations as a single family, infusible and indestructible.

From the time of Moses to our own day, we have beheld among this singular people, in spite of all their sins and awful calamities, a constant unanimity in acknowledging, without any variation, the sacred collection of their Scriptures during its gradual formation, and the entire collection since its completion — that is to say, for thirty-three centuries. This canon, which our Bibles divide into thirty-nine portions, but which the Jews are accustomed to arrange in twenty-two¹ books, as the ancient fathers² also did after them — this canon, we say, was completed 400 years before Jesus Christ, and has never ceased to be read since that epoch in all their synagogues throughout the world as “The Book of God.” The nation of the Jews, even before their final catastrophe, was spread over all the countries then known. “Moses,” said St James, speaking of the Gentiles, “of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day,” (Acts xv. 21.) “We see no Grecian cities, and scarcely any cities of the barbarians,” says also the historian Josephus, “where the rest of the Sabbath is not observed through the influence of the Jews.”³ That all these Israelites received the same canon of the Scriptures with the most perfect unanimity, is a fact abundantly attested by Jews who were contemporaries of the apostles — Philo in Egypt, and Josephus in Egypt and Rome. And there is, besides, another fact universally admitted, that, a very long time before the apostolic age, the Old Testament, both in Hebrew and Greek, existed in its twenty books, just as we now possess it.

435. The testimony of Josephus is worthy of being repeated here; for this historian was only thirty years old at the death of St Paul. “Nothing,” he says to Apion,⁴ “can be better attested than the writings authorised among us. In fact, they were never subject to any difference of opinion, (μήτε τινὸς ἐν τοῖς γραφόνμένοις ἐνούσης διαφωνίας,) for only that has been approved among us which the prophets, many ages ago taught, as they were, by the inspiration of God, (κατὰ τὴν ἐπίπνοιαν τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ μαθόντων.) It is, therefore, impossible to see among us, as among the Greeks, a vast multitude of books disagreeing, and combating one another, (οὐ μυριάδες βυβλίων εἶσὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἀσυμφώνων καὶ μαχομένων.) We have only twenty-two, which comprehend all that has taken place among us, and which we have just grounds for believing, (καὶ δικαίως πεπιστευμένα.) Five are by Moses. The prophets who came after Moses have written, in thirteen other books,⁵ what has transpired since his death, to the reign of Artaxerxes; . . . . while the four other books⁶ contain hymns in praise of God, and precepts for the regulation of manners. Moreover, all that has happened since Artaxerxes to our own time, has been written; but, because there has not been an exact succession of prophets, these books have not been thought worthy of the same faith as those that preceded them, (πίστεως δὲ οὐχ ὁμοίας ἠξίωται ταῖς πρὸ ἑαυτῶν.)

“But it is sufficiently manifest by these facts to what extent we have given our faith to our own Scriptures (πῶς ἡμεῖς τοῖς ἰδίοις γράμμασι πεπιστεύκαμεν;) for, although so many centuries have already passed away, no person has ever dared to add, or to take away, or transpose anything, (οὔτε προσθεῖναι τίς οὐδέν, οὔτε ἀφελεῖν αὐτῶν, οὔτε μεταθεῖναι τετόλμηκεν;) and it has been as an innate thought for all the Jews, (πᾶσι γὰρ σύμφυτον,) from the first generation, or, from their very birth, (εὐθὺς ἐκ τῆς πρώτης γενέσεως) to call them the doctrines of God, (Θεοῦ δόγματα) to abide by them, and, if necessary, to die cheerfully for them, (καὶ περὶ αὐτῶν, εἰ δέοι, θνήσκειν ἡδέως.)”

This testimony clearly shews that, in the time of Josephus, the whole-Bible was composed of the same twenty-two books as for the modern Jews, or the thirty-nine books for ourselves; and that, to whatever set they belonged, and wherever they erred, the Jews never betrayed the least disagreement respecting their sacred canon; that the most familiar, or the most historical books of the Bible — Ruth, Esther, or Nehemiah, as well as the Psalms of David, or the visions of Isaiah were, in their eyes, alike written by the succession of the prophets, (διὰ. τὸ γενέσθαι τὴν τῶν προφητῶν διαδοχήν,) and under the inspiration which comes from God, (κατὰ τὴν ἐπιπνοιαν τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ,) and were alike called the doctrines of God, (Θεοῦ δόγματα;) that, lastly, this common conviction was through all ages so inherent in the very existence of the Israelitish nation, that it might be said to be born with them from their first generation, (σύμφυτον,) and that they were always ready to die rather than renounce it.

And what Josephus said 1800 years ago, may be asserted equally of the modern Jews, from the siege of Jerusalem by Titus to our own days.

SECTION SECOND.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES TO THE CANON.

436. Yet another divine fact still more worthy of all our attention is, that the apostles shared in this full and perfect confidence of the Jewish people in reference to the canon. These men of God, commissioned by the Holy Spirit to announce His eternal truth to the whole world, to bind and loose, to discern spirits, and to become themselves, as apostles and prophets, “the twelve foundations of His universal Church,” — these men of God never ceased to regard the twenty-two books of the Old Testament as constituting a unique whole — an entire whole, sacred and perfect, which they denominated the Scripture, the Word of God, the Oracles of God, and of which they said, “All Scripture is inspired by God;” “all the prophets who wrote it had in them the spirit of Christ;” “all the Old Testament is a written prophecy,” (προφητεία τραφῆπ) “God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.”

This fact, so highly important, comes then to sanction, in its turn, the unanimous and invariable testimony which the Jews have always borne to their canon; and we must, therefore, soon apply ourselves to examine what was the real foundation of this absolute confidence of the apostles and the Israelitish nation in the perfect integrity of the Old Testament. But before we come to that, there is another still more significant fact, which demands our most devout attention, since it tends to impress, more than any other, on the canon of the scriptures of the Old Testament a divine character of infallibility.

SECTION THIRD.

THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS CHRIST.

437. The incomparable fact to which we now appeal, is the belief of our Redeemer himself respecting the Scriptures; it is the judgment of Emmanuel, “the God of the holy prophets;” it is His whole conduct in reference to the canon. By Him its integrity or legitimacy was never questioned; by Him the least hesitation was never manifested as to the Divine authenticity of any of the twenty-two books of which it consisted; He cited all, or nearly all, with His own lips. Who shall discern the spirits of the prophets, if not He whose eternal Spirit animated them all?⁷ Who shall better inform us whether such a book is of God, or whether it is of man? “The chief Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the everlasting covenant,” came in His own person to dwell among men, and who shall better distinguish than He the voice of His own messengers from that of strangers and robbers?⁸

He was heard Himself preaching these scriptures; He was seen taking from the hands of the Jews in their synagogues the sacred roll which they “delivered to Him,”⁹ and unfolding it before all, He cried, “In the volume of the book it is written of me!” He was heard crying at the feast, “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life.”¹⁰ He was even seen to expound them from one end to the other, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.”¹¹ Did He ever suppose the least alteration on the part of the Jews? Never. He reproached them with having continually resisted this divine book, but never with having altered it. God suffered them to commit all crimes excepting this. They rejected Jehovah — they committed abominations with their infamous gods, and made their children pass through the fire; but they never made themselves chargeable with the much easier crime of altering the Scriptures, and foisting in spurious books.

Christ’s whole career as the Son of man, attests that no human teacher ever held the Sacred Volume in greater reverence. Which ever of the sacred books He cites, it is for Him always God who speaks; this scripture is the rule of His life. It is by the whole of this book that He regulates His holy humanity, and that He wishes us to submit our own, in order to be saved. The least word of this book possesses in His eyes an authority of greater permanence than the heavens and the earth. When He wishes to convince the Sadducees and Pharisees, at one time He proves the resurrection by a single word from Exodus;¹² at another, the true doctrine of marriage by a single word from Genesis;¹³ at another, His own divinity by a single word from the 110th Psalm, or by another word from the 82d Psalm; and yet, before pronouncing this word, He interrupts Himself to exclaim, “And the scripture cannot be broken, (καὶ οὐ δύνατοι ἡ γραφὴ λυθῆναι.)”¹⁴ At the commencement of His ministry, He knew all these scriptures without having studied them.¹⁵ In His conflict with Satan He combats him by citing them three times with this simple and powerful formula — “It is written.” When He closes His ministry on the cross, He quotes the twenty-second psalm, and when He recommences it for some days after His resurrection, He still expounds the series of sacred books, “beginning at Moses,¹⁶ and continuing through all the prophets and the psalms.” In a word, He has cited as from God, Genesis,¹⁷ Exodus,¹⁸ Leviticus,¹⁹ Numbers,²⁰ Deuteronomy,²¹ the Book of Samuel,²² of Kings,²³ of Jonah,²⁴ and of Daniel.²⁵ He has cited Isaiah,²⁶ Hosea,²⁷ Jeremiah.²⁸ He has cited as from God,²⁹ Psalms viii, xxi, xxv., xxxi, xli, lxix., lxxviii., lxxxii, xci, cx., and exviil, and cites them, saying, “Have ye not read these words of David, saying by the Spirit?” “Have ye not read what God said by the mouth of David?”

We see, then, what was our Master's firm belief respecting the canon of the Old Testament. We have before us His science on this question. We have His sacred criticism: it involved the reception of all the sacred books of the Jews; .it called them all in detail, and as a collection, THE LAW;³⁰ it declared that heaven and earth should pass away, but not one jot or tittle of the law should pass till all be fulfilled.³¹

SECTION FOURTH.

FIRST INFERENCE RELATIVE TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.

438. Christians! what do you infer from this, except to receive it as your Master received it? We must either rank ourselves among His scholars, or cease to bear His name; and when a student of the Scriptures examines in the schools of theology whether he should acknowledge as canonical such or such a book of this holy law, which his Master acknowledged, he will act a more logical, and, at the same time, more honourable, part, to examine whether he will acknowledge Jesus Christ, and continue to call himself a Christian.

439. Supported, then, by this Divine authority, we assert not only that the ancient people of the Jews, when they received so unanimously their sacred collection of twenty books, were in the right, since Christ himself — God manifest in the flesh — received them all as canonical, but further, that this astonishing and perpetual unanimity of the Jewish people must have had a Divine cause, and was founded on the power as well as on the promise and faithfulness of God. “We know what we worship,” said Jesus Christ, speaking of the Jews, “and they are they who gave us the Scriptures; for salvation is of the Jews,” (John iv. 22 ) and “unto them were committed the oracles of God,” (Rom. iii. 2.) In worshipping God according to the whole canon of their Scriptures, the Jews therefore “knew what they worshipped, and salvation for the world was of them.”

440, And now, whence could come this marvellous agreement of a whole people, in other respects almost always rebellious, to receive and maintain without the slightest variation one sole canon of Scripture, a unanimous agreement through 3300 years? Certainly it could come only from God. But at the same time, under this Divine agency, there must have been a common thought, an intelligent principle in reference to the canon, among this people, on which was founded the certainty of all classes — of the little and the great, of the wise and the simple, of the great Sanhedrim that solemnly reported to their king the prophecy of Micah,³² as well as that of the humblest synagogue, — the certainty of the poorest Jews of the dispersion at Berea “searching the Scriptures daily (τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἀνακρίνοντες τὰς γραφάς)” to see whether Paul’s discourses were conformable to them,³³ as well as that of the pious Israelitish mother, married to a Greek in Asia Minor, but aided herself by her venerable mother, who brought up her little son (ἀπὸ βρέφους) in the knowledge of the true God, by making him learn the Holy Scriptures every day, (2 Tim. iii. 15.)

But this common thought of certainty among all this people, what could it be? We shall soon prove that it was a doctrine; and that the minds of the Israelitish nation rested, by its means, on the character of God, on His promises, and His faithfulness.

441, And let it be carefully observed, that this could not be a knowledge of the history of the canon, such as we have been able to present for the New Testament in the First Part of the present work, By no means. The canon of the Old Testament had no history. The Hebrews, in the time of Jesus Christ, possessed no literary monuments besides those which the Holy Scripture itself can still offer to the men of our own time. Josephus, in his History of the Jews, indicates none. It was, therefore, impossible for any one to demonstrate the authenticity of the sacred books by such documents as modern criticism employs for the New Testament. The holy books were of too high antiquity to present a contemporaneous literature, or even a literature of many ages after them. The writings of the ancient Greeks, cited by Josephus, were too recent to have anything to say of weight; while those of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians had no religious relation to the sacred literature of the Hebrews. There was no document by which to judge the Old Testament but the Old Testament itself. But who could tell, in the time of Josephus and the apostles, any more than at the present day, by what human means Moses provided for the guardianship of his books after they had been placed by the Levites “in the side of the ark of the covenant?” (Deut. xxxi. 25.) By means of the priests, Josephus seems to believe;³⁴ but who can affirm it? What prophet wrote the last particulars in the Pentateuch; the death of Moses; his burial; the long mourning that followed; and the ignorance, which has never been removed, respecting his sepulchre; and the declaration, “that there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses?” (Deut. xxxiv. 10.) Joshua, do you say? It may be so; but who can affirm it? Again, what prophet was the writer of the sacred book of Job? Job himself? Moses? Elihu? Solomon? Isaiah? Ezekiel? Esra? Each of them has been named, and may have been, the author; but who can affirm it? And who wrote the book of Joshua? and of Judges? and of Ruth? Daniel has been named.³⁵ This also may be true; but who can affirm it? And the books of Samuel, of Kings, of Chronicles, of Esther, of Jonah? For Esther, some have named Mordecai, others Nehemiah, others Malachi. It has been thought that the history of Solomon and of his successors may have been the work of Nathan, of Ahijah, of Shemaiah, or of Iddo.³⁶ Esra, especially, has been often spoken of for the books of Kings and Chronicles. But still, who can affirm it? And as to the Psalms — if we know that, at least, 71 were by David, (without speaking of the 2d and 95th;) if we know that there is one by Moses, one by Heman, one by Ethan, twelve by Asaph, and eleven by the sons of Korah, who shall teach us the author of the anonymous psalms. In a word, no one can tell what prophets put the last hand to the twenty books of the Old Testament, to leave them to us in that state in which the Church of God has possessed them for twenty-three centuries. Esra has been often mentioned; and even the rabbins, as well as Jerome,³⁷ have made this prophet and Malachi to be one and the same person. But who can found anything on these surmises?

And if you do not know the authors of all these scriptures, it ought to satisfy you entirely to be able to say, with Jesus Christ, that they were the prophets.³⁸ Much less do you know how they passed from the hands of the authors into those of the nation. You are equally ignorant what interval, more or less, elapsed between the year of their first appearance in the Jewish Church, and that of the universal assent, which they afterwards obtained. Was there not under the Old Testament, for many of these writings, what was seen, at a later period, under the New, for the smaller late epistles of James and Jude, Peter and John — I mean a time, longer or shorter, of examination, the days of homologoumena and antilegomena, until the final adhesion of the whole nation, given under the care and sanction of God, given freely, and without resumption?

All these elements of a science of the canon were then wanting to the Church of the Old Testament. But they did not even ask for them; they knew better than all that. They firmly believed in the canonicity of all these books, because their security was established on something totally different from the decisions of human schools. They founded it on the declarations of God, on His character, and on His acts. They believed that these scriptures were all guarded by God, because they had been given by God. One of these miraculous facts served as a guarantee for the other; and they all believed that the Lord had pledged Himself io preserve them, since He had given them for the revelation of His glory, and the gathering together of His elect. In a word, if you had lived as a believer in the days of Jesus Christ, you must have believed, like all the Jews, and like your Master himself, in the canon of the Scriptures. And if you had doubted of this canon, Jesus would have said to you, as He did to the Sadducees — “Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God?” (Mark xii. 24.)

SECTION FIFTH.

THE SECOND INFERENCE, RELATING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT.

442, From these facts and primary inferences, which have just presented themselves to us with so much evidence in relation to the Old Testament, the most complete, legitimate, and necessary analogy will soon lead us to acknowledge that it must be absolutely thus with the New Testament; and that what constitutes, © as to its canon, the true security of a Christian, when he has perceived, by his own experience, the Divine power of the Scriptures, will be much more faith than science; more a doctrine than a history; much more the faithfulness of God than quotations from the Fathers, and all the documents of Christian antiquity.

443. And how, in fact, should it be otherwise? If the Old Testament has been preserved by God for thirty-four centuries by the continual agency of an invisible Providence, to be transmitted in its integrity from generation to generation by the nation which was divinely charged with this deposit, can we admit that the New Testament has had less care taken of it? Would it be less precious in the eyes of its Author? and is it not much more so, if possible? Has not God moved heaven and earth to give it to us? Has He not destined it to transmit to us the very words of His only Son? Were “the apostles and prophets,” who were commissioned to write it, inferior to those of the Old? On the contrary, they were far superior. Their ministry was more illustrious and miraculous than that of Isaiah and Elisha; they were “more than prophets,” Jesus Christ tells us; and the God of the second Pentecost did greater things than the God of the first. In a word, the Scripture, whenever it institutes any comparison between the writers of the two Testaments, only does it to put the latter above the former; to exalt their charisms and their works; and asserts that, even in the kingdom of heaven, they will be placed on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, (Matt. xix. 28.)

444, If, then, it has been clearly proved that God has never ceased, by the secret but sovereign agency of His Providence, to make invariably faithful on this point the people who, above all others, were the most unruly and inconstant — we ask, is it possible to believe that this same God has not done as much for His New Testament, which He willed to do for so many ages, and still continues at the present day to do, for the Old? This cannot be admitted. Who can suppose that He has guarded the books of Moses and the prophets for fifteen hundred years anterior to the coming of Jesus Christ, and then for nineteen centuries more. down to our own day, and, having prosecuted this amazing work for one of the Testaments, has not done it for the other, — that He has changed His method for the latter, which continues the former — for the latter, still more precious, which explains, completes, and consummates the first, Again, we say, this is impossible.

445, And let no one say that this difference exists between the two covenants and their respective canons — that in the one God has proceeded by miraculous methods, but employs in the other agents more spontaneous and means more natural. It is by no means so. His government, which is carried on by prodigies only at the epochs of new revelations, has, on the contrary, shewn itself more miraculous in the latter than in the ancient; for “if the ministration of the law was glorious, the ministration of the Spirit,” St Paul says, “is much more glorious,” (2 Cor. iii. 8, 9;) and the second scriptures were brought into the world by dispengations more excellent and more striking than the first. If in those “God at sundry times and in divers manners spake by the prophets, he has spoken to us in these last days by his Son, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, who upholds all things by the word of his power,” (Heb. i. 1-3.) And these scriptures, given by the Son and by those who had heard Him, God giving them witness by the distribution of His Spirit according to His will — were these scriptures to be less protected than the others? Far from us be such a thought! In order to give them to us, the “Word was made flesh.” He quitted the glory He had. with the Father before the world was, and when He humbled Himself to take the form of the Son of man, the heavenly host rendered Him adoration by their songs. Angels were seen to ascend and descend upon Him; several times the voice of the Father was heard pointing Him out to the world; the tomb could not hold Him; and His apostles, after having conversed with Him forty days, saw Him reascend to heaven. Thus “the great mystery of godliness, God himself manifested in the flesh, was seen of angels, believed on in the world, and received up into glory.” From that time He appeared very often to His apostles, in the course of the sixty years of their ministry, to assist them — at Damascus, at Caesarea, at Jerusalem, at Corinth, and at Patmos.³⁹ When He commissioned them to “teach all nations,” He promised to be with them — that is, with their testimony and their scriptures — even to the end of the world.⁴⁰ The Holy Spirit also rested on each of them as with tongues of fire. They were even endowed with an unheard-of privilege, which never belonged to the most illustrious of the ancient prophets; they, and they alone, were able, during a ministry of from thirty to fifty years, to cause, by the imposition of their hands, miraculous charisms to descend on the believers who immediately followed them, and who were the first to transmit to us the scriptures of the New Testament,⁴¹ (Acts viii. 17, 19; Gal. iii. 2.)

446. Let any one say, after all this, whether it can be admitted that the collection of these books, given with such prodigies, was not guarded by God from age to age, when it has been clearly proved that the Old Testament had never ceased to be so; let any one say whether it can be admitted that God watched miraculously over the Jews of the dispersion, to maintain their testimony unalterable for ever, and that He did not watch with the same jealousy over the Christian churches, to make them not less faithful guardians of a deposit more miraculous in its origin, and more indispensable in its integrity; — this cannot be allowed.

We must repeat it, then, the divine preservation of the Old Testament being properly established, it becomes a certain pledge of that of the New. For if it is certain that the Old Testament was guarded by power from on high during thirty-three centuries, in order that its canon might remain for ever free from all retrenchment and from all mixture, it must be equally evident to us that the canon of the New can never have ceased to be the object of a vigilance not less admirable and faithful.

447, Therefore, though you knew nothing more respecting the origin of the New Testament or its history than you knew respecting that of the Old, — though, for example, the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius of Caesarea, which constitutes at least three-fourths of our knowledge upon the canon, had been entirely lost; though we had nothing left of the three or four fathers of the apostolic age, nothing of Origen, nothing of Jerome; and though, finally, we knew not who were the authors of the greater part of the scriptures of the New Testament, as we know not those who wrote at least one-half of the Old; — yet we should have the same reasons of certainty respecting its canon which the Jews, and the apostles, and the Son of God had for the books of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. In this case, too, our confidence ought to be founded entirely, like theirs, on the principles of faith.

448. The connexion of the two doctrines of the inspiration of the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit, and their miraculous preservation by the secret providence of the same Spirit, is so logically necessary, that a very significant twofold experiment can be made upon it at all times, '

In the first place, we have never seen the Church disquiet herself about the canon in her days of living piety, when, feeling the divine power of the Scriptures, she could have no doubt of their inspiration. And, on the other hand, it has always been in her days of languor and death, when not familiar with the Scriptures, that she no longer felt their divine inspiration, that she began to entertain doubts about the canon. So true it is that the integrity of this sacred volume of the Scriptures is a natural and necessary consequence for a Christian persuaded of their inspiration. The reading of this or the other portion of this collection has convinced. him of the Divine power concealed in it; for, in converting him, it has made him feel even to the joints and marrow the keenness of this two-edged sword. “Verily,” he has said, like Jacob at Bethel, “Jehovah is here!” How venerable is this book! “This is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!” Henceforward he has felt the powerful impression that such a book cannot have been given by God for His-elect without being likewise preserved by God for them, and that if it was to be preserved from error when it was written, it must also be preserved from error when transmitted. Such is the thought of their faith; while rationalism, a stranger to the power of the Scriptures, will always regard the history of their destinies as uncertain. We may therefore comprehend how, during its reign, the Church, passing through years of languor and disease, will suffer disquietude respecting the authenticity, authority, and integrity of her too long neglected Scriptures, and will necessarily see in her religious literature the triple question reappear of apologetics, inspiration, and the canon. But, on the contrary, the Bible, as long as it is received by churches in a state of vigorous life, is itself the best of apologetics, the most eloquent witness of its own inspiration, and the surest guarantee of its own canon.

449, Another consideration will make us still better comprehend the force and importance of this conclusion of faith for the Chris- . tian readers of the New Testament. It is this — that the results of science, even for the New Testament, though very sufficient to defend the canon against its adversaries, are very inferior to what they would have been had God destined them to establish it; for in that case they must have presented no uncertainty — no link wanting on any point; while it is not so at all. The historical and literary monuments which form all the treasure of this science are, after all, imperfect. They suffice, without doubt, to give us many guarantees for the authenticity of our twenty-seven sacred books, which no literature possesses for the ancient books that are the objects of its study; but these guarantees, so powerful for the homologoumena, do not reach, for the five antilegomena, the measure which faith can demand; for an intimate and profound certainty is required, which science alone, however respectable it may be in its proper sphere, cannot furnish. Many links, moreover, are wanting in the chain of facts to which it appeals, perhaps even some of the first on which all the rest should depend. It produces, no doubt, very important testimonies from the primitive fathers; but those fathers and their genuine writings are very few. It shews us the apostles watching for thirty years, some for sixty years, over the innumerable churches founded by them, and transmitting to them these sacred books; but they do not say to what hands they intrusted them, nor what pledges they took that their transmission should be faithfully effected from one church to another. It shews us Peter, at the close of his life, recommending as the scriptures of God “all the epistles of Paul;” but this testimony teaches us nothing directly respecting the writings of Jude, of John, of James, and of Peter himself. It tells us of the original manuscripts which many churches in the time of Tertullian, in the year 207,⁴² still preserved of the epistles of Paul to Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Ephesus; but it does not apprise us of analogous facts respecting the other writings of the New Testament. It knows nothing precisely of the way in which the churches adopted the sacred books according as they made their appearance. It attests superabundantly, we allow, that twenty of these books were from the first always accepted everywhere without the least contradiction, and this fact is certainly one of incomparable lustre; but it knows nothing of the mental process by which all hesitation gradually ceased about the seven other books throughout all Christendom. It shews us all the churches in the world constantly agreed for 1500 years in . presenting us with one and the same canon of twenty-seven books; but it cannot acquaint us with all that was said before these fifteen centuries among those that hesitated. It tells us, indeed, that John was the Ezra of the New Testament, that is to say, that he collected the different books, and sanctioned their canonisation; but this saying in reference to the apostle, as well as that about Ezra, is only a tradition, which cannot satisfy our faith. Lastly, from these hasty glimpses, which we could multiply, we infer again that if there is no history for the canon of the Old Testament, there exists only an incomplete history for some of the books of the New Testament, and that, consequently, while congratulating ourselves on these important and numerous facts collected by science for the refutation of our opponents, our Christian confidence requires to be settled on a still more solid basis, and on deeper principles of faith, whether as to the Old Testament or even the New.

We pass on, then, to a third class of proofs — clear declaration of Holy Scripture attesting that the divine conservation of the Old Testament has been confided to the Jewish people, in order that they might be for ever its faithful depositaries.

1) To correspond with the twenty-two letters of their alphabet, (see Prop. 59,) they thus reduce by seventeen our ordinary enumeration of their sacred books, by their mode of classifying them.

2) Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, John Damascenus, Jerome, Gregory of Nazian- zus, Epiphanius, &c. “Quomodo viginti duo elementa sunt per quae scribimus Hebraice omne quod loquimur,” says Jerome, in his Prologus Galeatus, (tom. i., p. 318, Bened., Paris, 1693,) “ita viginti duo volumina supputantur.”

3) Contra Apion., ii., 9.

4) Ibed. i. 2.

5) Namely — (1.) Joshua; (2.) Judges, with Ruth; (3.) Samuel; (4.) Kings; (5.) Chronicles; (6.) Ezra and Nehemiah; (7.) Esther; (8.) Job; (9.) Isaiah; (10.) Jeremiah and his Lamentations; (11.) Ezekiel; (12.) Daniel; (13.) The Twelve Minor Prophets.

6) Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs.

7) 1 Pet. i 11.

8) John x. 5, 8.

9) Luke iv. 17, 21.

10) John v. 389.

11) Luke xxiv, 27, 44.

12) Exod. iii. 6; Matt. xxii. 32.

13) Matt. xix. 4; Gen. i. 27.

14) Matt. xx. 43; John x. 27, 36.

15) John vii. 15.

16) Luke xxiv. 27.

17) Matt. xix.4; Mark x. 6,

18) Matt. xxii. 32, 37, v. 21, 27, 38, xv. 4; Mark vii. 10, xii. 26.

19) Matt. v. 22, 43, xxii. 39; Mark xii. 31; John xiii. 34.

20) Matt. v. 33; John iii. 14; Matt. xii. 5.

21) Mark xii. 29; Luke x. 7, 27; John viii. 5, 7.

22) Matt. xii. 3; Mark ii. 25; Luke vi. 24; John xii. 34,

23) Matt. xii. 42; Luke xi. 31, iv. 25, 26, 27, ix. 54,

24) Matt. xii. 40; Luke xi. 32.

25) Matt. xxiv. 15; Mark xiii. 14; Luke xxi. 20, 22.

26) Matt. xiii. 14, xv. 7, 8, 30, xi. 5, xxi. 13; John xii. 40; Mark iv. 12, vii. 6, xi. 17; Luke viii. 10, iv. 12, xix. 46.

27) Matt. ix. 18, xii. 7; Luke xix. 46.

28) Matt. xxi. 13; Mark xi. 17; Luke xix. 46.

29) Matt. iv. 6, xv. 34, xxi. 16, xxii. 44; John xv. 25, 35, x. 84, xix. 24, 28, xiii. 18; Luke xxii, 21, xxiii. 46, iv. 10, x. 17, xix. 38; Mark iv. 12, vii. 6, xv. 17.

30) John x. 34, xii. 34; Rom, iii. 14.

31) Luke xvi.17; Matt.v.18; Luke xxi,

32) Matt. ii. 6.

33) Acts xvii. 11.

34) Contra Apion., lib. i, cap. ii.

35) Particularly on account of 1 Chron. xxix. 29, and Acts. iii, 24,

36) 2 Chron. ix. 29, xii. 15, xiii. 22.

37) Praefat. ad Malach.

38) See Theopneustia, ch. ii, sect. 3.

39) Acts vii. 56, ix. 5, 10,17, 34, 48, xviii. 9,10, xxii, 18, 21, xxiii. 11, xxvi. 15,16; 2 Cor. xii. 8, 9; Rev. i. 13.

40) Matt. xxviii. 18-20.

41) To this fact the passages relate contained in Acts xix. 2 and John vii. 39. See on this subject Calvin’s judicious reflections in his commentary.

42) Tertull. De Praescript. Haereticor., xxxvi. See Propp. 160, 247.