In publishing this work, I am actuated by the threefold consideration — of the real importance of the subject, of its being accessible to every class of readers, and of the very luminous aspect it presents when closely studied. It is only obscure at a distance; and if to some persons it seems beset with difficulty and uncertainty, it is only owing to their imperfect knowledge, or bad method of studying it. I was not aware that it was so intelligible till I had examined it with great attention.

For this reason I thought it my duty, in consequence of the very numerous and severe attacks made on the certainty of the canon, to treat it at large for the use of our theological students; and since that I have felt it desirable to introduce it to the knowledge of our churches.

With this view I have endeavoured to write a book that will be sufficiently intelligible to every serious reader; and it has been my desire, that all unlettered Christians who may have been disturbed by these attacks of modern infidelity, may feel themselves, on reading it, confirmed in their faith.

It is impossible to treat such a subject usefully, — at least from an historical point of view, — without adducing numerous testimonies from the fathers, with quotations from their writings, both Greek and Latin. But I have made it a rule always to translate those passages, and never to appeal to any of the ancient doctors, either of the West or East, without giving some brief notice of his character, his principal writings, and his place in history.

I publish these volumes as a complement of that which I brought out, almost twenty years ago, on the inspiration of the Scriptures. That work would have been incomplete unless accompanied by a treatise on the canon; for its readers, even those who were most thoroughly convinced, might always object, after having heard me prove by all Scripture that all Scripture was divinely inspired, that it still remained to be proved whether Daniel, or Esther, or Canticles, or any other book of the Old Testament, belonged to this inspired Scripture — whether the Epistle of Jude, or that of James, or the Second Epistle of Peter, or the Second and Third of John, or any other book commonly included in the New Testament, legitimately formed a part of it — or whether there was sufficient certainty that all the apocryphal books ought to be absolutely excluded.

As long as these questions are not clearly solved, our privilege of possessing an inspired Bible remains illusory, or is at least compromised; we have a feeling of insecurity in its use; we cannot clearly discern all its pages; a depressing cloud of uncertainty floats over our heads between heaven and earth; and though carrying in our hands a volume denominated the Scriptures, we proceed with tottering steps.

But, blessed be God! my Christian brethren, this is not your position; the God of the holy prophets has prepared better things for His believing people.

Your proofs are abundant, and, as we are about to shew, you have also divine guarantees. If your confidence in those Scriptures, which constitute the rule and joy of your faith, rests, on one side, on the most solid human reasons, on the other, it is invited to support itself by the strongest divine reasons. On the one hand, there are facts, documents, monuments, historical testimonies — testimonies clear, numerous, certain, and. sufficient — such as no human composition under heaven ever possessed. On the other hand, you have something still more simple and absolute; your confidence has for its foundation the firmest principles of faith — an infallible guarantee, — the constant judgment of saints and prophets, the invariable procedure of God in all His revelations during fourteen centuries, and the example of Jesus Christ Himself — in a word, the wisdom of God — the harmony, the constancy, and the faithfulness of His ways.

I propose, then, to demonstrate, by arguments purely historical, ‘in the First Part, to all unbelievers, the authenticity of all the scriptures of the New Testament, as might be done, if the question concerned only purely a human work.

Besides this, I propose, with the Lord’s assistance, to establish in the Second Part, and to believers only, the canonicity of all the scriptures of both Testaments, as may be done most satisfactorily for every man who is already convinced that inspired books exist, and that God, having revealed Himself from heaven by the prophets at sundry times, and in divers manners, for 1400 years, has in these last days spoken to us, in the person of His Son, by His apostles and evangelists.

These two classes of proof have each their distinct place and function; and while I think ‘that we are under great obligations to all those defenders of the canon who have treated the subject with a view to unbelievers, for the historic proofs they have collected in such abundance, I am still deeply convinced that, in confining themselves to this office, they have ignored their privileges, and proceeded in part on a wrong track, losing sight of the example of the Redeemer, forgetting the lessons taught by past ages, and thus neglecting the most important and. interesting part of their vocation.

To give a clearer idea of the character and design of this work, I would beg leave to state the reason that induced me to publish it.

I had first of all written, in 1851 and 1852, for the use of our evangelical School of Theology, the second part of this work, and it was not till a later period, in 1853 and 1854, that I conceived the design of adding what is now the first.

When we founded in Geneva, twenty-nine years ago, a School of Theology, for the purpose of elevating the long-depressed banner of the Saviour’s divinity, and the great doctrines connected with it, in the Church of our fathers, I charged myself with the doctrinal instruction. But, in performing my task, I felt no need for many years of discussing to any extent either the canonicity or divine inspiration of the Scriptures.

We attended to what was most urgent, and those truths had not then been publicly called in question by any person in our immediate vicinity. As to myself, in my early years, and during my Studies, though very anxious to settle my faith on a satisfactory basis, I never experienced any wavering on these two points. Since Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God, “created all things in heaven and earth, and by him all things subsist,” (Col. i. 16,) I said to myself, how could I doubt that He has taken care of His own revelations, whether in giving them at first, or in their subsequent preservation and transmission? Our only business was to study them for the purpose of regulating each one’s faith, and conscience, and life. Besides, we invited to our school none but young men who had already owned the authority of the Scriptures, and who were esteemed truly pious, as having experienced in their souls something of “the good word of God and the powers of the world to come.”

We directed our attention in the first place, as I have said, to what was most urgent; we were eager to reach those vital truths, on the reception of which the stability of a church depends, and without which it falls.

Mere logical arrangement would have led us to give every question its exact place in a course of theology; but it was evident that the greatest attention should be given to those doctrines which had been long disregarded, and too often assailed, which convince men of sin, lead to the feet of Jesus, and keep them there, — I mean, the divinity of the Son of man and His everlasting priesthood, the fall of humanity and its entire ruin, the election of believers from all eternity, their redemption by the expiation of the cross, their regeneration by the Spirit of God, their complete justification by faith alone, and, lastly, their resurrection from the dust to a life of glory and immortality.

But if these evangelical doctrines belong to all times alike, and their exposition is always in season, if the Church of God cannot dispense with them even for a day, the case is different with refutations and apologies. These latter are not necessary, nor even beneficial, excepting at a time when the want of them is felt. Till that moment arrives, they may do our minds more harm than good, like remedies for bodily disorders administered before the malady exists. They suggest doubts that would never have been suspected; they raise unknown difficulties and objections of foreign origin, which, but for them, would never have entered our thoughts, For a hunting party to beat about a district for wild boars would be of no use unless it was ravaged by them; it would be injurious if there were none in the country; and it would be foolish and criminal if, for the sake of the sport, the animals were imported from a foreion land. Who can estimate, for example, all the mischief that has been often done in our churches by the young translators of those German works which have exhibited systems of scepticism, negation, and heresy, to which previously we had been total strangers, and which we have often seen propagated here long after they had ceased to be spoken of in the country of their birth.

It has been justly remarked of apologetics, that it must be remodelled every thirty years, because its wants’ change from one generation to another; the apologetics of to-day is no longer that which our fathers required, nor is it that which will meet the wants of our children.

In reference to the canonicity and divine inspiration of the Scriptures, I have arrived at the conclusion that it is highly important to discuss these subjects henceforward with greater fulness. The number of our opponents, the perfectly novel tactics of their infidelity, and the spirit of their attacks on the written Word, make this a duty on our part, almost a necessity. In former times this need was not felt among us, as may be easily inferred from the very small space allotted to these questions by our best theological writers — Calvin, Francis Turretine, Pictet, and Stapfer, in their largest and most accredited treatises. But in the present day a great change has come over us, and we are condemned to see a totally novel warfare, no longer carried on from without against the Scriptures, but from within, and by men who profess to be, like ourselves, representatives of Christianity. °

This kind of warfare is very pernicious; our fathers were not acquainted with it, or, at least, it never assailed them, excepting by short skirmishes, or by isolated attacks on one or other of our sacred books. In the present day the enemy is drawn up in battle-array against the whole of the Scriptures. Since the first third of the nineteenth century, we have seen almost all the opponents of the living truth vie with each other in efforts, not only, as heretofore, against this or the other vital doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures, but against the depository of them all. For a time they leave undisturbed the distinctive teachings of the written Word as beneath their notice, in order to attack the volume in which God has given them to us. It is no longer the contents that are put upon their trial; of these our opponents think they can easily get rid, if they succeed in accomplishing the task of discrediting and demolishing the Scriptures. Their aim is directed against the depository, the entire volume, of revelation. Nothing is neglected which may render it suspected, uncertain, contradictory, mean, and tainted with error; — in a word, contemptible as a whole and in all its parts. They will deny its authority, its inspiration, its integrity; they will deny the canonicity of each book; — in short, they will deny its authenticity, its veracity, its good sense, and even its morality!

But the most novel feature of this warfare, the most ill-omened, the most threatening in its immediate effect on our churches, and one which never appeared but in the second and third centuries, is that this crusade against the Scriptures is carried on in the name of a certain kind of Christianity.

During thirty-three centuries, was a man of God ever seen decrying the Scriptures of God, a pious Israelite decrying the Old Testament, or a Christian decrying the books of the men (the apostles and prophets) who wrote the New Testament? No; this was never seen!

“The righteous man,” in all ages, has always distinguished himself from the rest of mankind by his reverence for the Sacred Volume; and a true Christian, from the moment of his new birth, has always thirsted for it, as an infant for its mother’s milk, to sustain and strengthen him. It is an apostolic injunction, “As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby,” (1 Pet. ii. 2.)

“The righteous man,” David said twenty-nine centuries ago, “takes his delight in this holy law, and he meditates in it day and night,” (Ps. i. 2.) By this sign he is recognised in the present day; by this sign he has been recognised in all ages of the world. “O how I love Thy law! it is my meditation all the day;” “it is sweeter than honey to my mouth.” “I love Thy commandments above gold;” “the entrance of Thy word giveth light; it maketh wise the simple.” “God has magnified his word above all his name.”¹

But in the present day, by whom is this warfare against the Scriptures carried on? ‘Behold, heaven and earth, and be astonished!”

In former ages, and for 1600 years, such attacks proceeded only from the most inveterate enemies of the Christian name. The present times remind us of the disastrous days of those ancient Gnostics who caused such grief to the faithful ministers of the second century. In our day these attacks come from persons whom men of the world might suppose to belong to our own ranks, — persons who call themselves members of a Protestant church, and are in many instances ministers of the Word. They profess to speak in the name of science, and to attack our Scriptures only to defend the interests of a Christ whom they have made, and of divine truth shaped in accordance with their own conceptions.;

And yet, what do we know in religion unless by means of the Bible, and what do they themselves know? Let one of our opponents point out a truth, — yes! only a single truth relating to God the Father, or to His only Son, to the eternal Spirit, to the resurrection of the dead, to the future world, to the last judgment, to heaven or hell or immortality, — yes! I say a single truth which their philosophy has gained, or which has been discovered in their school independently of the oracles of God. But men of this stamp pervert all the principles of religion, as Calvin remarks, “by quitting the Scriptures to go in chase of their own fancies.”²

“God hath made foolish the wisdom of this world,” says St Paul; “for after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe,” (1 Cor. i. 19-21.)

It is this book of “the preaching” which alone has changed the face of the world. It alone causes a soul to pass from death into life. It alone, in these latter days, has brought more than one tribe of cannibals out of darkness into light. Let them shew us any other volume — from the times of Confucius, Plato, or Aristotle, to those of Mohammed, (apart from his sword,) Voltaire, Bayle, Rousseau, Hegel, or Cousin — which has ever, in any country, reclaimed, by its science, its morals, or its philosophy, a village, only a single village, from idolatry to the service of God.

Is it not written, “Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? (Ποῦ σοφός; ποῦ γραμματεύς;)” Where are they, and what have they done? This is the interrogation of the apostle.³

The warfare carried on in our days against the Scriptures is as strange as it is pernicious, and the friends of God ought to be roused to exert themselves to the utmost to counteract its pernicious effects.

Pernicious! Alas! it has already been too much so for those who have engaged in it. None can be arrested on this dangerous path, unless by the extraordinary grace of God; for the Holy Word, when thus despised, cannot transmit a ray of light to their souls; on the contrary, the contempt they entertain for it gives birth to fresh contempt, and the night preferred to the light becomes more intensely dark.

“O Timothy,” says St Paul, “keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing, have erred concerning the faith,” (1 Tim. vi. 20, 21.) “These profane and vain babblings,” says he again, “will increase unto more ungodliness,” (2 Tim. ii 16.) Here is the danger, the awful danger of this warfare for those who engage in it! “Their word will eat, as doth a canker.” “They wax worse and worse,” Paul adds, “(προκόψουσιυ ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον,)” “misleading and misled,’ — misleading souls out of the path of immortality, after having been first misled themselves; for such is the twofold woe that attends the fatal declivity of their course, “misleading and misled, (πλανῶντες καὶ πλανώμενοι!)”

But if it is a just cause for sorrow to see misled men avow themselves unhesitatingly the detractors of that Bible on which alone the whole Church is founded, and by which alone Christianity subsists, there is in this warfare something still more distressing — namely, the mischief it effects among our people in general, and which may be effected in our churches, even among our most pious communities.

As to our people in general, numberless facts speak too loudly. We are reminded by them of Paul’s words respecting the Israelites in the wilderness, who “could not enter into God’s rest because of their unbelief,” And whence this unbelief? Because, as he says, “the word preached to them did not profit.” And why did it not profit? Because “it was not mixed with faith in them that heard it.” But how, I ask — how can the word preached to our Protestant populations be mixed with faith in minds to whom it will appear suspicious and contemptible, in consequence of the disparaging terms applied to the oracles of God, and the flat contradictions given to their contents? What! (it will be said to them,) do you believe that this collection of scriptures which is offered you is indeed from God? Do you not know that the books of which it consists are of an uncertain number? — that some are apocryphal, some are doubtful, some are absolute forgeries? And again, of those which may be authentic, do you imagine that every part is inspired? Contradictions are palpable in them, errors abound, and the prejudices of the age may be detected page after page! . . . .

How, I ask, can the word-be “mixed with faith” among the persons who are, unhappily, exposed to these suggestions of the tempter, and filled by him with prejudices and feelings of contempt against the Scriptures? No! these “profane and vain babblings,” as the apostle says, “overthrow the faith” of many; or, rather, they prevent its birth; they render it impossible!

Will it be said that the Scripture cannot be destitute of power? Is it not powerful, by its divine energy, “to cast down in the human heart every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God?” Is it not “a hammer breaking the rock in pieces?” Is it not “a two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder the joints and marrow?” Yes; it is all this; but only for those who hear it, and who expect to gain something from it. And how can it be all this for those who despise it, and do not believe that it comes from God? Without reverence, there can be no attention; and without attention, no means of being touched; and without all this, there can be no faith, no communion possible with God, no efficacy in the blood of the cross, no salvation, no life.

And yet, as I have said, this is not all. The mischief will not be confined to those men of the world whom we have desired to conduct. to Jesus Christ, but whose prejudices keep them at a distance from Him. It will be felt in our churches, and among the most pious of our members.

It may be thought, perhaps, that these attacks will entail little danger on believers, who, nourished by the Scriptures, know by experience what they are, and what they can do. But we must not hope that it will be always so. Even for such persons, this warfare is not without its perils. Oftentimes it will lower the standard of piety and faith, by lowering in their minds the majesty of the Scriptures; for it can never be without some deteriorating effect for even those who are most confirmed in the faith to hear repeated depreciating suggestions against one and another of our sacred books, if these suggestions are not combated as often as they are brought forward. However ill-founded they may be, if repeated without being put down, they exert an enervating influence on the mind, even when, without accepting them, and yet, without having learnt how to refute them, the unfortunate habit has been acquired of letting them pass without decided opposition. Hence persons are led to believe that, while rejecting them themselves, other Christians may admit them without damaging their Christianity. These charges and obscurities respecting the canon of the Scriptures often circulated in the neighbourhood of our churches without being noticed by our sentinels, at last settle over them in the atmosphere like a pestilential miasma, which even the healthiest frames cannot pass through and inhale without some injury. Perhaps, at last, tired of resistance, and with defective information, they will come to regard these injurious reports as the distant and mysterious echoes of an unknown and superior science, which it would be rash to think of combating, or of attempting to refute.

And hence what baneful consequences! The weakening of faith; diminished taste for the study of the Scriptures; less thirst for their use; less humble submission to regulate the life. by them; less labour to fathom them, and to explore their depths; less jealousy for purity of doctrine; for, as Calvin has said, “We cannot have firm faith in a doctrine till we are persuaded, without any mixture of doubt, that God is its author.”

It was in the beginning of the year 1850 that a sudden opposition against the authority and authenticity of the Scriptures first broke out at Geneva, in our own theological school, among half a score of Belgian, French, and Canadian students.

The cause of it was for us as painful as it was unexpected, and the subsequent disturbance occasioned by it in the churches was also very serious. But the school had passed through such storms more than once; it had combated them by the divine Word; and experience not less than faith had taught us to confide during the tempest in the faithfulness of the Most High, who made it serve in the final issue for the confirmation of the truth. When the calm was restored, we were able to acknowledge with gratitude that the Lord had permitted these days of trouble only to purify an institution consecrated to His service, to lead us to study more closely the foundations of our faith, and to confirm on some essential points the students and the professors, the pastors and their flocks.

The declarations of these young men were of such a nature that we should have felt it our duty on any other occasion to have dismissed them immediately from our institution. We had admitted them only to prepare them for preaching the Word of life, and if henceforth they rejected that Word — its inspiration, its authenticity, its authority — what was there in common between them and ourselves?

But we took a different view. We believed that we owed them some reparation, because the evil done to themselves had taken place when under our care, and we conceived that, under these circumstances, we ought not to send any of them away till we had taken pains by fresh efforts to bring them back, if possible, to own the authority of the Scriptures.

We took our part in this important task, and from this moment, I mean, from the beginning of the year 1850, I made it my study to point out to them the true path of faith in relation to the canon, in a series of propositions.

These propositions established the doctrine of the canon by God’s method of proceeding during all the ages of the Old Testament, by the example of Jesus Christ, and by the Divine declarations; then they confirmed the meaning of these declarations by a twofold collection of numerous, indisputable facts, extending through many ages. This performance was, moreover, accompanied by a history of the canon, and more particularly of the controverted books. The second part of this work contains the series of these first propositions, expanded in some parts, and in others compressed.

After finishing my first course, and on the point of resuming the series of my propositions for the use of a fresh class of young theologians, particularly those that demonstrate the dogma of the canon a posteriori, I was struck with the evidence of the facts which constitute this proof — historical facts, exceptional, astonishing, and inexplicable, apart from a Divine intervention; — facts, moreover, very rarely appealed to or known. I believed their publication would be useful.

I have since learned, from the language of our opponents, that, before presenting to the world our arguments of faith, it would be indispensable, in order to render the reader attentive and docile, to make a succinct statement of the facts and testimonies relating to the history of the canon, to place before him the objections of opponents, in order to consider them more closely, and to place him in a position for consulting by himself the most important remains of patristic literature. I also conceived that it would be desirable to make it evident that, judging of the canon only by the ordinary rules which in the republic of letters decide the authenticity of a book, the unanimity of the Churches throughout the world has given to our Sacred Volume, as far as regards its twenty-two homologoumena, a certainty unparalleled in the field of ancient literature.

To gain the reader's attention to our reasons of faith, I have thought it necessary that, in hearing them, it should never enter his thoughts that we proposed them, because we dared not to look in the face the facts of history and the objections of science. On the contrary, we have gathered from these facts new reasons for belief, — reasons clear, manifold, and invincible.

This work would probably have appeared much sooner, had not the hand of God laid me on a bed of suffering for two years in succession by two very serious accidents, which rendered me for a long time almost incapable of continuous application.

I commend to the blessing of God, through Jesus Christ, a task out of the usual course of my studies, but undertaken for the sole object of serving Him.

     May 5, 1862.

1) Pg, cxix. 97, 103, 127, 1380, cxxxviii. 2.

2) Institution Chrétiènne, tom. i., p. 34. Paris, 1859.

3) 1 Cor. i. 19, 20.