FOURTH CLASS OF PROOFS — AN ASSEMBLAGE OF FACTS RELATIVE TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, ATTESTING A DIVINE INTERVENTION IN ITS PRESERVATION BY THE JEWISH NATION,

SECTION FIRST.

THE CONSTANT AND WONDERFUL FIDELITY OF THE JEWS, IN REFERENCE TO THE CANON, FROM MOSES TO JESUS CHRIST.

454. First Fact. — It is very remarkable that, from Moses to Malachi, during the course of a thousand years, none of the prophets raised up by God to shew the house of Israel their transgressions ever uttered a single word which could lead to the belief or even the suspicion of the least alteration being made in the Scriptures on the part of the Jews. Every species of crime was committed among them; they were reproached for everything by their prophets excepting for this. This fact, so striking and extraordinary, will appear manifestly providential to any one who will carefully study the history of the Hebrew nation under this aspect. From age to age you will find them a stiff-necked people, uncircumcised of heart and ear, ungrateful, unbelieving, impious idolatrous, rebellious against the Scriptures; but never, never will you see them laying sacrilegious hands on their sacred books; they never questioned their authority; they never mutilated their contents; a hidden, omnipotent hand always preserved them from such conduct. And how can we explain this contrast? Why, on the one hand, were there so many hateful aberrations, and, on the other, such a rigid reserve, such unfaltering fidelity through so many ages? How came it to pass that God, who had allowed them to take their own course for all other crimes, always checked them from committing this? “To them were intrusted (ἐπιστεύθησαν) the oracles of God!”

455. The Second Fact. — This fidelity was attested by Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who so often reproached the Jews for their unbelief in regard to Moses, their blind adherence to the commandments of men and to traditions, by which they made the commandments of God of none effect, (Matt. xv. 6,) their outrages against the prophets, and their murderous madness — Jesus Christ never reproached them for having-forgotten, mutilated, or falsified their Scriptures, “They did not believe Moses,” He told them, (John v. 45-47;) but they trusted in Moses, and for this reason, Moses, “in whom they trusted,” while at the same time they remained disobedient to his words, ‘would be their accuser at the last day.

456. The Third Fact. — The apostles never accused them of unfaithfulness as to the deposit of the oracles of God with which they had been intrusted.

457. The Fourth Fact. — The sovereign Guardian of this imperishable record has been pleased, for the confirmation of our assurance on this point, to furnish us with two irrefragable witnesses — Josephus and Philo — both contemporaries of the apostles, both men of letters, both Pharisees, both descendants of Aaron, both in high repute among their people, and both versed in Hebrew learning, representing at once the mind of the Jews in the East, and of the Jews in the West,¹

In a controversial treatise against Apion, a grammarian of Alexandria who lived in the midst of the Jews, Josephus enumerates the books that were regarded as divine by all his people. “They maintain them even to death,” he says; “none of them dare to add or to take away anything.” And he is careful to add that, among these books, there are some more recent, composed since Artaxerxes, (that is to say, after the death of Ezra,) and which are not held to be worthy of the same faith, because (he adds) the exact succession of the prophets who preceded had not been continued since that epoch.

As to Philo, we see him deputed by fifty thousand Jews of Alexandria, to offer prayers and sacrifices at Jerusalem, in the temple of their fathers. He also visited Rome on an embassy to the Emperor Caligula, to defend his countrymen against the accusations of Apion and others; and we hear him declare, that “the Jews would rather die ten thousand times (μυριάκις αὐτοὺς ἀπο θανεῖν) than permit a single word to be altered in their scriptures, (μὴ ῥῆμα αὐτοὺς μόνον τῶν γεγραμμένων κινῆσαι).”

SECTION SECOND.

THE FIDELITY NOT LESS ASTONISHING OF THE JEWS TO THEIR CANON SINCE JESUS CHRIST TO THE PRESENT TIME.

458. The Fifth Fact. — From the beginning of the Christian era, for nineteen centuries, never have this people — in spite of their idolatrous veneration of the Talmud, in spite of their continued state of revolt against God, in spite of their long and distant exiles among pagans, or Mohammedans, or Papists, who have everywhere persecuted them so often, even to death; — never, we say, have this people been convicted of having altered the collection of their scriptures by any retrenchment or any addition. Such is the noble testimony borne to them 1760 years ago by the historian Josephus, in the time of Domitian; and such is the testimony borne to them so many centuries after by all historians and scholars. God has still stretched over them the same powerful hand as in the days of Hadrian or Pompey the Great, of Antiochus Epiphanes or of Nebuchadnezzar. And to accomplish this work of twenty-four centuries, Divine Providence has never ceased to employ, without noise, but effectively, all sorts of means, — the forms of their worship, the labours of their doctors, the rivalship of their sects, the multitude of their synagogues, the precepts even of their Talmud, and their superstitious observances. We shall speak of these elsewhere. But whatever may be thought of all these means, let us admire with what certainty “the oracles of God have been committed to them.”

459, The Sixth Fact. — It is of universal notoriety, that at the present day, after thirty-four centuries, the Jews, all over the globe, receive only one and the same canon. The astonishing identity of the copies of the Hebrew Scriptures all over the world, presents itself as one of the most astonishing phenomena that the history of literature and humanity can offer. This fact has been set before the world in the clearest light, in the middle of the eighteenth century, by the researches of Houbigant, in the four folio volumes of his Biblia Hebraica; also by the immense labours of John Henry Michaelis;² later still, (1776, 1780,) by the great critical edition of the Hebrew Scriptures by Kennicott, exhibiting a collation of 694 manuscripts, which took him twenty-nine years;³ the labours of Professor Rossi on 731 manuscripts not examined by Kennicott;⁴ and, likewise, at the beginning of the present century, the collation, by Yeates, of the famous roll of the Jews of Malabar,⁵ with our printed editions of Van der Hooght; and, more recently still, the twelve manuscripts obtained in the centre of China⁶ by the Anglican bishop of Hong-Kong, and presented to the Asiatic Society by Sir John Bowring.

When we consider, as we have said elsewhere, that the Bible has constantly been recopied for thirty centuries — that it has passed through all the catastrophes and all the wanderings of the people of Israel — that, transported for seventy years to Babylon, often prohibited, often committed to the flames, since the days of the Philistines to those of the Seleucidae, it has passed, from that time through eighteen centuries of persecution, — certainly, to explain this mysterious preservation, we must have recourse to the declaration of St Paul, — to them were intrusted the oracles of God.”

SECTION THIRD.

THE TEXT COMPARED WITH THE VERSIONS.

460. The Seventh Fact — This divine intervention in the preservation for ages of the canon becomes more striking when we contrast the inviolability of the Hebrew original, during the course of 8000 years, with the rapid deterioration of the versions made from it at different times; because God, though He has pledged Himself to guard the one, has made no promise respecting the others,

461. We notice, first, the deterioration of the Greek version of the LXX.; and then that of the two Latin versions, the Vetus Itala, and the Vulgate of St Jerome; — great deterioration as to the text, which is often no longer intelligible; and deterioration still more enormous as to the canon, which soon found itself surcharged with nineteen apocryphal books.⁷

462. Though the version of the LXX. had acquired great credit throughout the East, first amoung the Jews, and then among Christians, this important monument, corrupted at the end of two centuries by the Jews alone, was soon corrupted much more by Christian copyists, some allowing themselves to join the Apocrypha to it, and others transcribing it with increasing carelessness, It is a known fact, that this alteration of the Greek version, which was already considerable in the time of Origen, was made greater by the very labours of this distinguished man. He had devoted twenty-eight years of his life to recover the genuine Greek text; but his marginal notes, in the issue, increased the evil, by finding their way into the version itself, through the unskilfulness of copyists.

463. As to the Latin versions, we know also the history of their enormous alterations. The ancient Italic version (Vetus Itala) made, it would appear, in Africa, about the end of the first or the beginning of the second century, but made from the Greek of the Seventy, and not from the original Hebrew, was so completely altered in the time of Jerome, that this father, having laboured for some time at correcting it by the Hexapla of Origen, undertook, towards the close of the fourth century, the great task of retranslating the Old Testament according to the original. This new version, adopted in the West from the seventh century,⁸ under the name of the Vulgate, was itself soon altered, in proportion as copies of it were multiplied, and likewise by a mixture of readings borrowed from the Vetus Itala.⁹ In vain, to correct the evil, Cassiodorus, in the sixth century,¹⁰ published the two versions in parallel columns. This remedy only aggravated it, as had been the case with the Greek, through Origen’s Hexapla. In vain Alcuin, in the eighth century, exerted himself, by the order of Charlemagne, to procure more correct copies. In vain Archbishop Lanfranc, in the eleventh century, Cardinal Nicholas and others, in the twelfth and thirteenth, laboured for the same purpose, the text was fallen into such confusion that the manuscripts of the Middle Ages differed essentially from the first printed editions¹¹ In vain Robert Stephens, in the sixteenth century, published his six critical editions; the doctors of the Sorbonne censured them. In vain the professors of Louvain endeavoured to improve it by their editions of 1547, 1573, and 1586. In vain Pope Sextus V. wished to improve it, by pronouncing as authentic his edition, in 1590, of the text adopted previously by the Council of Trent; this edition, in spite of all the decrees of the Pope, and the previous ratification of the Council, was found to be so shamefully incorrect, that Clement VIII., in 1592, suppressed it entirely, to substitute his own.¹² And now we know with what success Kortholt¹³ has refuted the pretensions of Bellarmine respecting this latter vulgate; and especially with what overwhelming evidence the learned Thomas James has demonstrated its errors, additions, omissions and contradictions.¹⁴

SECTION FOURTH.

THE SERIOUS DIVISIONS OF THE JEWS.

464, The Eighth Fact. — This preservation of the Old Testament, so manifestly Divine — this marvellous and universal agreement of the Jewish people on the canon, as the text of the oracles of God — is rendered still more striking by their serious divisions on every other subject. Observe the hostility of their ancient sects; observe their Pharisees, and the folly of their traditions, which, opposed as they were to the divine declarations, never ventured to exalt themselves against one of these sacred books. Observe the impiety of their Sadducees, who even denied the existence of spirits, and who, though altogether ignorant, and contradicting the Scriptures, (Mark xii, 24; Matt. xxii. 29,) yet never rejected, and never altered them. Observe, again, the boldness of their modern neologists, their unbelief, their adoption of the most, repulsive systems of contemporaneous rationalism, and their materialism on the subject even of the destinies of Israel. Observe, especially, the idolatrous fondness of almost all their synagogues and doctors for the Talmud, the teachings of which they exalt even at this day to the level of, and even above, the Scriptures. God has left them to themselves for all their aberrations and all their errors. What do I say? Did He not permit them, at first, “to kill the Prince of Life,’ and then, for 1800 years, to reject Him whom all their Scriptures announce? Yes; but He never permitted them to change the canon or the text of these very Scriptures, because “the sacred deposit had been intrusted to them.”

SECTION FIFTH.

THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS AND HIS APOSTLES IN RELATION TO THE APOCRYPHA.

465. The Ninth Fact. — We have cited above the cardinal and authoritative fact — the example of Jesus Christ. Our canon of the Old Testament, such as we have received it from the Jews, as we have said, must have been guaranteed and guarded by God, since Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega of all the divine revelations — Jesus Christ, the “God of the holy prophets,” (Rev. xxii. 6,) — received it in its entireness, reading it in the synagogue, quoting it in all His teachings, and, even on the cross, expounding it in all its parts, (Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, ) — after His resurrection — in His miraculous appearances, &c.

466. But Jesus Christ, while recognising the canon of the Old Testament as a perfect and sacred collection, never cited any of the Apocryphal books¹⁵ as the Word of God; neither did His apostles. And yet these books are equal in extent to at least a sixth part of the Holy Scriptures; while we count as many as 300 passages of the Old Testament quoted in the New.

SECTION SIXTH.

DIVINE INJUNCTIONS.

467, The Tenth Fact. — The continual intervention of God for the preservation of His Word is often rendered manifest by the divine injunctions. When Moses had written the book of the law, without anything being deficient, it was needful, in order to impress all hearts with the deepest reverence for it, to deliver it to the priests and to all the elders of Israel, ordering the Levites, who bare the ark, to take the Holy Book and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant, in the Holy of Holies, where the divine Presence was manifested, and into which the high priest entered only once a year.¹⁶ The order, moreover, had been given, that if any one was recognised as a false prophet, or enticed his neighbour to idolatry, death without mercy was to be inflicted, even on a brother, a son, a daughter, a beloved wife, or a most intimate friend. The hands of his nearest relations were to be the first to execute the punishment, and then the hands of all the people.¹⁷ And the order was added, that every seven years this Holy Word was to be recited publicly to all Israel, assembled before Jehovah,¹⁸ and that, at every new reign, the king, as soon as he had mounted the throne, was to copy it with his own hand from the sacred autograph which the priests kept in the sanctuary.¹⁹

Later still, all the inspired books were deposited in the most Holy Place.²⁰

SECTION SEVENTH.

THE DIVINE DISPENSATIONS.

468. The Eleventh Fact — The same intervention is equally manifested by protective dispensations. A long series of them may be seen in the history of this people. The Holy Word was very often in danger of being lost and disappearing;²¹ but the power of the Most High never ceased to take means for its preservation.

From Samuel to the days of Ezra, God raised up, especially in the darkest times, what Josephus has termed the uninterrupted succession of the prophets,²² (τὴν τῶν Προφητῶν ἀκριβῆ διαδοχήν.) Keeping watch like sentinels in the house of God, and faithful to the death, these prophets preserved the deposit of the ancient Scriptures, enriched it with new books, and bore their testimony to it, without ever complaining (as we have said) that it had suffered the least alteration. You see them, even during the captivity of seventy years, continuing their admirable ministry; — Jeremiah, in the midst of the poor Jews who were left in Palestine; Ezekiel, among the exiles scattered throughout Assyria; Daniel, among the captives in Babylon; Ezekiel citing at a distance with admiration Daniel his contemporary;²³ Daniel in like manner studying at a distance Jeremiah,²⁴ — until at last, Ezra, “the scribe of the law of the God of heaven,” (Ezra vii. 21,) assisted by the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, finally arranged the sacred collection of the Scriptures, and completed the twenty-two books of the sacred oracles,;

From that time the ancient code was complete, and the prophetic voice was long silent, to train men’s minds to the expectation of the king Messiah, till at last, “in the sixteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, . . . the word of God came afresh to John, the son of Zecharias, in the wilderness;” and this forerunner of the Most High announced, by the baptism of repentance, “the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world,” and who would baptize in the Holy Ghost and in fire.²⁵

469. It is the general opinion of the Jews, that no book written — after Malachi was inspired. Josephus²⁶ affirms it, the Book of Maccabees repeats it,²⁷ and, for this reason, the Jews have named Malachi, “the seal of the prophets,” (חוֺתַם הַנְּבִיאִים,) “because the succession of these men of God was then broken,” Hottinger observes,²⁸ — “Et quia scriptio θεόπνευστος in prophetarum libris defect.” “After Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,” says Jerome,²⁹ “I have seen no other prophet till John the Baptist, — Nullos alios prophetas usque ad Joannem Baptistam videram.”

And Augustin, in his City of God, (finished two years before his death,) tells us, in like manner, that “since Malachi, Haggai, Ezra, and Zechariah, the Jews had no more prophets till the advent of the Saviour. . . . These prophets were the last to whom they attributed a canonical authority — Post Malachiam, Haggœum, et Zechariam, et Esdram, non habuerunt prophetas usque ad salvatores adventum. . . . Hos Judœi in auctoritatem canonicam receptos novissimos habent,” (xvii., the last chapter.)

SECTION EIGHTH.

THE CALAMITIES OF THE JEWS,

470. The Twelfth Fact — Another class of facts, which strikingly demonstrate the same truth, is the use the Divine Omnipotence has always made of even the calamities of the. Jews for the preservation and dispensation of their Scriptures.

Everything has conduced, in the Lord’s hands, to this important end — the destruction of their temple, their migrations, their long oppression, the loss of their language, the dispersion of their race.

(1.) The destruction of their temple. This event gave birth to the powerful institution of their numerous synagogues, In each of these buildings was placed a sacred chest, containing the roll of the Scriptures, that at first the law might be read three times in the week, and then, from the time of Antiochus, the prophets every Sabbath-day.³⁰ The rabbins said “that a synagogue ought to be built wherever ten Jews could be found to meet together.” Jerusalem alone, in the days of Jesus Christ, contained 480.³¹

(2.) Their migrations. Their synagogues and their Scriptures accompanied them to all parts of the ancient world, — to Italy, to Spain, to Africa, to Asia, to Persia, to Babylonia, and even to China. “Moses of old time hath in every city,” St James affirmed, “them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day,” (Acts xv. 25.)

(3.) The loss of their language. This event originated, first, an influential class of scribes, and then a vast and important collection of Targums. The scribes devoted especially to the study and interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures were numerous, even in the time of Ezra. We see them then stationed round him at the feast of tabernacles, translating into Chaldee for the people the Scriptures which the prophet read in Hebrew, (Neh. vii. 3-8.) And as to the Targums, (Chaldee paraphrases,) they are of great value still, in the present day, to attest the inviolable purity of the ancient Hebrew text, and to assist in its interpretation — the Targum of Onkelos on the books of Moses; the Targum of Jonathan on the greater and minor prophets; the Targum of Joseph the blind on the Hagiographa; and the Targum of Jerusalem on the Pentateuch.³²

(4.) Their long oppression under Alexander’s successors. This oppression originated, 280 years before Christ, the celebrated Greek version of the Septuagint, which, made by Jews for the use of Jews, contributed so powerfully to spread and to preserve among all nations the knowledge of the Old Testament.

(5.) I have named, lastly, the dispersion of their race. Even this calamity made them feel the need of providing for ever for - the perfect preservation of the letter of their Scriptures, and the correct pronunciation of every Hebrew word, by the astonishing performance of the Masora, (מָסוֺרֶת,) — that is to say, a collection of traditions relative to the minutest details of the sacred text; the fixation of the accents and vowel-points; the enumeration of the verses, words, and letters — 5245 verses in the Pentateuch, for instance, and 23,206 in the whole Bible; the indication of irregularities found in the position, and form, or size of certain letters; the marginal corrections of the Keri and the Chetib, &c., &c. It is, therefore, a very proper title the Jews themselves have given to the Masora — “The Fence of the Law,” since it preserves the Old Testament from all invasion and alteration, not only in its sacred canon, but in its words, letters, and smallest accents,

SECTION NINTH.

THE MIRACLE OF THEIR RACE.

471. The Thirteenth Fact. — The miraculous preservation of the Jewish people is not only an image, but a pledge, of the miraculous preservation of their Scriptures.

“The existence of this people, through 1700 years of exile and depression,” says Basnage, “is the greatest prodigy that can be imagined. The event is unexampled.” See them always wandering and dispersed; always unbelieving, yet guarding the Scriptures; always hated, spoiled, persecuted, massacred, and yet indestructible, and, as it were, infusible, amidst all the other nations on the face of the globe. They alone, over all the earth, offer the unheard-of spectacle of one and the same family, without foreign intermixture, for 3000 years, in the midst of a confused mingling of all the human races. They alone have seen all the empires of their most powerful persecutors perish, one after another, whilst they, without power, without a safe asylum, without country, are still in existence, according to the prophecies of their sacred books, “without a king, without a prince, without a temple, without sacrifice, without an image, without an altar,” and, consequently, without the possibility of a worship conformed to their own ritual, (Hosea iii. 4.)

At the strange. and incomparable spectacle of this bush of Horeb, kept always burning before the eyes of all nations for 3000 years, but always unconsumed, we say, that if this unexampled prodigy attests that an invisible almighty arm has been constantly extended over this people, we are also authorised to affirm, that the astonishing preservation of the Holy Scriptures, carried to all places by this same people attests a Divine agency of the same order. The Jew carries them for thirty centuries, without losing a single word of them, and without a single copy, (even in our day,) among the most ancient synagogue in Judea or Persia, being found to differ from the copies read in Morocco, or in the synagogues of America. Certainly, this preservation of a collection that was begun three centuries before the Trojan war, that took nine centuries to complete, and that has been continually recopied from that time, in all regions of the earth, during 3000 years, — this signal, incomparable fact, adapted to impress equally the simplest and the loftiest minds — this fact, so evidently miraculous, declares to us, with irresistible force, that God watches over the nation; over the one, to maintain it unaltered; as over the other, to preserve it imperishable to the end of time.

SECTION TENTH.

HUMAN BOOKS INTRUDED INTO THE JEWISH CANON BY ONE OF THE CHRISTIAN SECTS.

472, The Fourteenth Fact. — The history of apocryphal books attests, not less powerfully, the same truth, and renders more conspicuous, by what has taken place among Christians, the astonishing fidelity of the Jews in the preservation of their Scriptures.

How much more credible would it appear that, through ignorance, or carelessness, to which exile, misfortune, and dispersion had reduced them, the Israelites would be more tempted than the Christians to introduce into their sacred collection those apocryphal writings which treat of their own history, and tend, almost all of them, to flatter their national pride.

To appreciate the full force of this fourteenth fact, it must be viewed, at the same time, in its relation to Christians and to Jews, though, in some respects, we may anticipate what we have to say in a subsequent chapter, when we treat of the New Testament.

If, on the one hand, the Jews, to whom were intrusted the oracles of God, could crucify the Lord of Glory, and for 1800 years reject the New Testament, which was never intrusted to them, yet this people were not disposed, or, at least, they never were able, and never will be, to introduce any apocryphal book into the Old Testament, because the deposit was intrusted to them; and God, under this form, became the guarantee.

And, on the other hand, if we have seen among Christians in the sixteenth century a numerous and powerful sect assume the power to introduce as the Word of God eleven human books into the canon of the Old Testament, it is only because the deposit had not been intrusted to them. It was intrusted to the Jews, not to us; we receive it from their hands.

473. The twofold fact and the twofold contrast we have just pointed out claim the most attentive consideration. While the Church of Rome has put forth such pretensions with respect to the Old Testament, neither this sect, powerful as it is, nor any of the other Christian sects, has been able to add a single apocryphal book to the New Testament; God has not permitted it, and will not permit it. He will not permit it, because all Christian churches, good or bad, faithful or unfaithful, have been intrusted with this sacred deposit, and because all must preserve it inviolate, as the Jews have preserved the Old, God having constituted Himself the guarantee of their fidelity.

Let, then, the disciples of Jesus Christ contemplate with reverence these two depositaries of our sacred books, and see with what power this twofold testimony of their contrast and their resemblance presents itself before their eyes. Behold them equally indocile, equally refractory as to the deposit that was not intrusted to them; but behold both the one and the other alike continuing always docile and always faithful as to the deposit with which they are concerned; the one, for 2300 years since the completion of the Old Testament; the other, for 1400 years since the entire canon of the New Testament has been definitely received by all the churches of Christendom.

474. Let it then be clearly understood, that neither ignorance nor error, nor the profane rashness of this or that church throughout Christendom on the subject of the Old Testament, will be capable of at all affecting the inviolability of a canon which was never intrusted to them.

If I have deposited my last will under strictly legal forms, with a notary duly chosen, will my heirs after my decease have the least doubt in the world of the integrity or validity of this document, because one of them might contrive to introduce, after many years, some remarkable additions into the authentic copy he has received of it, and because he presumes to take no account of the original text, or of the attestation, or of the depositary, or of the laws? They will not feel the slightest concern. What does it signify to them? This folly and culpable fancy cannot in the least affect the paternal testament.

Thus, then, the outrage committed by the Council of Trent in 1546, so far from weakening the marvellous fact of the inviolability of the Old Testament, serves only to render it more conspicuous. For, as we have said, even the unfaithfulness of the Christians and that of the Jews with respect to that of the two deposits with which they were not intrusted, makes their unshaken fidelity in respect of the other more impressive, and powerfully demonstrates to us the intervention of God in this double testimony.

SECTION ELEVENTH.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE EASTERN CHURCH.

475. A Fifteenth Fact. which illustrates still more the admirable fidelity of Israel in reference to the canon, and powerfully confirms the interpretation which the Christian Church in every age has given, like ourselves, to Paul’s doctrine on the part providentially assigned to this people for the preservation of the Old Testament, is the constant testimony of the whole Eastern Church.

We speak here not only of its loud protest against the new dogma of the Church of Rome on the subject of the apocryphal books, but especially of the sacred reason which it alleges, with ourselves, to condemn it. You have ignored, she says, the scriptural doctrine relative to the canon; you have forgotten that “the oracles of God have been intrusted to the Jews.”

We must here adduce the evidence on behalf of this testimony, because the doctors of the Church of Rome, being aware how forcibly it tells against them, have often endeavoured to mislead us on this important fact. 5

The Orthodox Catholic Oriental Church, as she likes to call herself — this Church, more ancient than that of Rome — “has never received the apocryphal books into the canon of the inspired books,” notwithstanding the estimation in which she otherwise holds many of these books, as worthy of being read, and notwithstanding the temptation presented to her more than to other churches from the use she has always made of the Greek version of the LXX.

In evidence of this important fact, it will be sufficient to cite here (1.) “The Orthodox Doctrine,”³³ by Plato, (Archbishop of Moscow,) published at Athens in 1836; and (2.) “The Great Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church,” approved by the holy supreme synod, and “published at Moscow in 1839 by order of his ‘imperial majesty for the use of schools and all orthodox Christians.” This latter work, sent to all the patriarchs, Blackmore says, (preface, pp. 6, 9,) is held throughout the East to be of higher authority even than the Eighteen Articles of the Synod of Bethlehem, or than the Orthodox Confession. It was drawn up by Philaret, the last metropolitan of Moscow, the immediate successor of Plato.

476. In his Orthodox Doctrine, the illustrious archbishop, after giving the names of the twenty-two books of the Old Testament just as they have been transmitted to us by the Jewish canon, (from Genesis to Malachi,) adds, “And as to all those that are not included in this number, they contain many passages morally deserving of praise, but they have never been received by the Church as canonical. (”Οσα δὲ εἶναι ἔξω ἀπὸ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ τον, ὠγκαλὰ. περιέχουσι πολλὰ ἠθικὰ ἀξιέπαινα δὲν³⁴ ἐδέχθησαν ὅμως ποτὲ ὡς κανονικά ὑπὸ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας.)”³⁵

477. As to the Great Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church, the following are its lessons on the canon: —

“Quest. How many books are there in the Old Testament?

“Ans. St Cyril of Jerusalem, St Athanasius the Great, and St John of Damascus reckoned twenty-two, in conformity with the Jews, who number them thus in the original Hebrew.

“Quest. Why must we conform to the recension of the Jews?

“Ans. Because, as the apostle Paul has said, to them were the oracles of God intrusted, and the sacred books of the old covenant have been received from the Hebrew Church of that covenant by the Christian Church of the new, (Rom. iii. 2.)

“Quest. How do St Cyril and St Athanasius enumerate the books of the Old Testament?

“Ans. As follows: — (1.) Genesis; (2.) Exodus, (8.) Leviticus; (4.) Numbers; (5.) Deuteronomy; (6.) Joshua; (7.) Judges, with Ruth; (8.) Ist and 2d Kings; (9.) 3d and 4th Kings; (10.) Paralepomena; (11.) Ezra and Nehemiah; (12.) Esther; (13.) Job; (14.) Psalms; (15.) Proverbs; (16.) Ecclesiastes; (17.) Song of Songs; (18.) Isaiah; (19.) Jeremiah; (20.) Ezekiel; (21.) Daniel; (22.) The Twelve Minor Prophets.

“Quest. Why do they not reckon the Book of Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, and some others?

“Ans. Because they are not in the Hebrew.

“Quest. How must they be considered?

“Ans, Athanasius the Great said that the ancient fathers caused them to be read to the proselytes who were preparing to enter the Church.”

478. We may further consult, on this point, the Comparative View of the Nineteen Doctrines that Separate the Eastern and Western Churches, composed in 1815 by the last metropolitan of Moscow, and transmitted to Dr Pinkerton³⁶ in 1832, with permission to publish it. The following is the tenth article: —

“The Holy Scriptures, which serve as the rule of our faith, are contained in the thirty-nine canonical books of the Old Testament,³⁷ and in the twenty-seven of the New. But the third and fourth of Ezra, Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, the first, second, and third of Maccabees, as well as various additions made to certain books of the Old Testament; — all these writings, though esteemed by the Church for their antiquity and the sound doctrine they contain, are regarded by her as apocryphal; that is, as books of which the divine origin is hidden from our faith, or is an object of doubt, because neither the Church of the Old Testament nor the Christian Church has ever acknowledged them as canonical.”

479. The Sixteenth Fact — We shall presently shew that this was in like manner the constant testimony of the whole Western Church till the Council of Trent, and that an appeal was always . made to the doctrine of Paul, and to’ the divine commission given to the Jewish people, as had been done by Jerome, Tertullian, and Pope Gregory.

SECTION TWELFTH.

THIS RESISTANCE OF THE EASTERN CHURCH IS RENDERED MORE STRIKING BY THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE USE OF THE SEPTUAGINT.

480. The Seventeenth Fact. — When we consider that the Greek version of the LXX. was either by itself, or by the Latin version made from it, of universal use in the ancient Church to the days of Jerome; while all the copies of it were more or less surcharged with apocryphal books by the Christians of Egypt, and that they had unwisely adopted the custom of binding them with the Scriptures, though never attributing to them the same authority, — we ought to be filled with admiration at that providence which watches over the oracles of God, that, in spite of all these temptations, the Jewish synagogues never admitted them, however flattering these human books might be to their national pride. And we shall presently see, that even the Christian churches, both in the East and West, were a long time kept from adopting these false scriptures as canonical.

SECTION THIRTEENTH.

INFERENCE TO BE DRAWN FROM THESE SEVENTEEN FACTS,

481. We are able, then, to infer once more, from this fourth class of proofs, the divine inviolability of the sacred canon of the Old Testament.

For we have been establishing, by an assemblage of facts, almost all marvellous, powerful, and extending through ages, that if the people of the Jews, sovereignly appointed, in spite of their calamities and their vices, to be the constant depositary of the oracles of God, and to transmit them for ever to the world in their integrity — if this miraculous people, to the present time, and for thirty-three centuries, have been perfectly faithful to the Divine mandate, and that, during the very time of its longest dispersions, and ‘most criminal rebellions, from the days of Pharaoh and Semiramis, to those of Napoleon III. and Victoria — this incomparable phenomenon, which has never ceased to emit its splendour before all nations, and across all the ages of their history, — this phenomenon, not more than any of the seventeen great facts which accompany it, not being explicable from mere natural causes, will always clearly demonstrate to us the secret and constant interven of the Divine power.

Thus, then, in relation to the Old Testament, we are obliged, at the end of this fourth chapter, to infer seventeen times, from all these facts, and their marvellous combination, what, in our preceding chapters, we had already inferred four times, — from the character of God, — from His works in the Church, — from the infallible testimony of Jesus Christ, and His apostles, — and from the positive statement in the Epistle to the Romans; namely, the certainty of that doctrine which the apostle Paul announced, and which we have named, “the doctrine of the canon.”

This doctrine, which is its own guarantee, is that which has constituted the Jewish people the incorruptible record-keeper (as Augustin calls them)³⁸ of their sacred oracles — which has never ceased to watch over this deposit from age to age, and now maintains it ever intact and complete; so that this preservation is not less miraculous than that of the race itself of the Jews, distinct from all nations for 3780 years, infusible, and indestructible, in every region under heaven.

In a word, we infer that this inviolability of the canon of Scripture must be regarded, as well as the Divine inspiration of their text, as one of the doctrines of our faith.

482. Go, then, with confidence, bearing in your hands Moses and the prophets, ye ministers of our churches, ye pastors of our cultivated cities, and ye humble evangelists of our villages, and ye, also, who traverse our Alps, like Felix Neff, from one châlet to another, and ye holy missionaries of Africa or Asia, address with confidence your most learned equally with your least educated hearers; go with this Book of God, without fearing lest they should ask the history of its canon, and without being disquieted about what it is not in your power to tell them, since it does not exist. You know as much respecting it as Daniel the prophet, or as Paul the apostle of the Gentiles. You know even more than they, since you possess eighteen or twenty-three centuries more of experience, during which God has incessantly preserved, by means of the Jews, His oracles pure from all adulteration. Go, then, boldly, as the prophet went to the synagogues of Babylon, — as the apostle went to those of Lycaonia; for you have the same things to tell them to establish the integrity of the sacred volume — and all that they could say, you can say. Go, then, ye ministers of the gospel — go, full of confidence, preach Jesus Christ everywhere, by the books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets. Go, preach His pre-existence, His Divinity, His cross, His expiatory sacrifice, His resurrection, His grace, His presence with His people, His return, and His glory. The whole Gospel is found in them. Let these mighty Scriptures be ever in your hands. By them the man of God is rendered “wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus,”³⁹ If the New Testament sheds immense light upon the Old, the Old Testament, in its turn, illuminates the New to its most secret depths, “He is not a man of full age,” says St Paul, “but a babe, in the first principles of the oracles of God, and still to be nourished with milk, who is not well versed in Moses and the prophets.”

I pass now to the New Testament.

483. Yet, before coming to it, it appears necessary for us to set apart thirty-six propositions to the question of the apocryphal books, because they will be needed, we think, as an indispensable lemma for the last part of our argument. We have made a separate chapter of them on account of the extent and importance of the subject. It is true, it may be objected, that this topic, to which we recur, does not necessarily belong to the object before us; since we are here discussing the Old Testament, which was intrusted to the Jews, and not to Christians. What has it to do with the question, it may be said, if, 2000 years after the last prophet had ceased to write,⁴⁰ one religious sect was to be found in the West that attempted to add eleven books to their Scriptures?

We answer that, in fact, this has nothing to do with it directly. But this matter occupies so great a place in the controversy of the churches, that we believe the digression is more calculated to clear the ground than to encumber it. Yet, on further reflection, it seems best to place this chapter in an Appendix at the end of the volume, and only to make a reference to it here.

1) After the destruction of Jerusalem, Josephus fixed his residence at Rome.

2) Biblia Hebraica, Halae, 1720, Praefat. He was assisted by twelve members of a collegium orientale theologicum, founded in 1702 by Herman Francke,

3) Dissertatio Generalis, in 600 pages. Brunswick, 1783.

4) See Rosenmiiller, Handbuch, ii., 45.

5) Consisting of thirty-seven skins died red, obtained, 1808, by Dr Claudius Buchanan, and now deposited in the university of Cambridge.

6) In Koe-fung-foo, the capital of the province of Hoonan.

7) (1.) The Prayer of Manasseh; (2. and 3.) The Book of Esdras; (4.) The Conclusion of Job; (5.) A Hundred and Fifty-first Psalm; (6. and 7.) Tobit and Judith; (8.) Additions to Esther; (9.) The Wisdom of Philo; (10.) Ecclesiasticus ; (11.) Baruch; (12.) The Epistle of Jeremiah; (13.) Song of the Three Hebrews; (14.) Susanna; (15.) Bel and the Dragon; (16. and 17.) The Two First Books of the Maccabees; (18. and 19.) The Two Latter Books.

8) Isidor. Hisp., (636;) De Officio Ecclesiae, p.12. “Hieronymus . . . . cujus editione omnes ecclesiae usquequaque utuntur.”

9) See Tischendorf, Novum Testamentum, 1849, prolegomena, p. 83; and 1858, p. 64. P

10) “Jam sexto saeculo,” says Tischendorf, “Cassiodori senis cura in eo posita, erat, ut conlatis priscis codicibus textus Hieronymi restitueretur.”

11) Moreover, these were made from manuscripts badly chosen, and much more recent than the Codex Amiatinus, now preserved in the library of St Laurence at Florence, dated 541, and reproduced in his Latin version by the care of Tischen- dorf, (Testam. Triglott., proleg. lxxxi. Leipsic, 1854.) See also Carpzov., Critica Sacra, part ii., cap. Vi.

12) See Rich. Simon, Hist. Crit. des Versions der N. T., chap. xii.

13) De Variis Script. Editionib., cap. viii. — xiv., (1686.)

14) In his Bellum Papale sive Concordia Discors., Sexti Quinti et Clementis Octavi Circa Hieronymianam Editionem, &. Lond., 1678, (1st ed., 1600.)

15) The passages of the New Testament which certain authors have alleged were cited from the Apocrypha were not taken from it; they are in the canonical books. See this question treated by Horne, (Introd., Appendix, p. 464, London, 1846,) and especially in Cosin, who carefully discusses the objected passages, (History of the Canon, ch. iii, art. 34-41.) See also our Appendix on the Apocrypha.

16) Deut. xxxi. 9, 24-26.

17) Deut. xiii. 5, xviii. 20; Jer. xiv. 15; Zech. xiii. 3.

18) Deut. xxxi. 10; Jos. viii. 35.

19) Deut. xvii. 18; Josh. i 8; 2 Kings xi. 12; 2 Chron. xxiii. 11.

20) Josephus, Antiq., iii, 3, § 1; De Bello Jud., vii., 5; 1 Sam. x. 25.

21) Amos viii. 11; 2 Chron. xv. 8, xvii. 9, xxix. 7, xxxi. 4, 21, xxxiv. 15, &c.

22) Contra Apion, i, 8; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii, 10.

23) Bzek. xxviii. 8, xiv. 14, 20.

24) Dan. ix. 6, 11.

25) Luke i. 16, 17, 76, iii, 4, 16.

26) Contra Apion, i, § 8

27) Maccab. ix. 27, xiv. 41.

28) Thesaurus Philologicus, p. 483, Tiguri, 1639,

29) In Isa. xlix. 21,

30) Lightfoot, (on Matt. iv. 23.)

31) Prideaux, Connexion, &c., vi.; Buxtorf, Lexicon Rabbinicum, col. 292.

32) See, on the Targums, Carpzov., Critica Sacra Vet. Testamenti, part. ii., cap. i.

33) Ὀρθόδοξος Διδασκαλία, (in modern Greek,) at Athens, 1886, p. 59.

34) Need we say that δέν, derived from οὐδέν, is the negative in modern Greek.

35) It is added in Greek — See Gregory the theologian, in his verses (στὶχοις) on the books of the Old and New Testament; and Metrophanes, in the confession of the Eastern Church, (μεφ. ζ.)

36) Pinkerton’s Russia, London, 1833, p. 39.

37) This is the manner in which our own Bibles reckon the twenty-two books of the Jews,

38) Capsarii nostri, (on Ps. xl.;) Librarii nostri, (on Ps. lvi.;) Scriniaria nostra, (Contra Faust., xii, 13.)

39) 2 Tim. iii. 15.

40) From Malachi, 420 years before Christ, to the Council of Trent, in 1546.