網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

thenticity of most of our books. He says, in substance, that in order to understand the will of God, he fled to the gospels which he believed no less than if Christ in the flesh had been speaking to him; and to the writings of the apostles, whom he esteemed as the presbytery of the whole Christian church.' His words are, "Fleeing to the gospels as the flesh of Jesus, and to the apostles as to the presbytery of the church."

If I refer to Polycarp, it is only to quote the words at the close of the account of his martyrdom, (A.D. 168,) to show the care with which the copyists proceeded. "These things Caius hath transcribed from the copy of Irenæus, the disciple of Polycarp, who also lived with Irenæus. And I, Socrates of Corinth, have transcribed from the copy of Caius; grace be with you all. And I, Pionius, have transcribed from the forementioned, having made search for it and received the knowledge of it by a vision of Polycarp, when now almost obsolete."

If I proceed to the second century, what choice shall I make from the almost innumerable citations of Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, and others, who lived in the very next age to the apostle John?

Shall I tell you that Justin Martyr calls the gospels, "The Memoirs," "Memoirs of the Apostles," "Christ's Memoirs?" and testifies,

that on the day called Sunday, an assembly takes place of all the inhabitants of the towns or villages, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are publicly read as long as the time permits, and when the reader has ended, the president by a discourse exhorts and persuades them to imitate those excellent things." This is not merely a dry testimony to authenticity, but a testimony clothed with facts, religious solemnities and public reading and exposition, and which places beyond all question the public and undisputed authority of the sacred books.

I cannot stop to quote Irenæus, though he gives a critical account of the manner in which the four gospels were written, with the care almost of a modern divine.

[ocr errors]

I pass by Clemens also and others, in order to show from Tertullian the precision with which the divine books were traced up to the apostles. Although Marcion rejects the Revelation of St. John, yet the order of Bishops reckoned up from the beginning, shows John to be the author. Thus the genuineness of the rest is acknowledged. I say, therefore, that in the churches, not only Apostolical, but in all

united with them in the communion of the sacrament, that gospel of St. Luke which we especially defend, is supported ever since its publication." This, you will observe, was written about the year 200, not in the year 1800, as from the clearness of the reasoning might have been thought. Could we have stronger proof, if we had been contemporaries

But I must hasten through the third and fourth centuries, though witnesses call to me on all hands; in order to appeal to St. Jerome, (342-420,) esteemed the most learned of the Fathers, who resided long in Palestine, and who gives us three formal catalogues of the books of the New Testament, each of them exactly as we have them now, except that in the first he expresses a doubt about the Epistle to the Hebrews. Jerome collated many ancient Greek copies of the New Testament. He informs Damasus, Bishop of Rome, that "as copies were dispersed over the world, he sat as an arbiter, and distinguished the copies which agreed with the truth of the Greek, from others." It is not a little curious that Father Simon, about 100 years since, gives us the following words, transcribed from the end of an excellent Latin manuscript, nearly 900 years old: "The library of Jerome, presbyter of Bethlehem, according to the Greek, collated by the most

correct copies." We have here, therefore, a critical edition of the New Testament, published 1400 years since, formed on the collation of ancient manuscripts, (ancient, that is, in the 4th century,) and containing the same books as our present canon. Can evidence be more

decisive?

I ought to pass on to other topics; but first let me give you a specimen of testimonies which include some mark of the love which the primitive Christians bore to the holy books: for I am most anxious to leave a sacred impression of the value of Christianity on the minds of the young. Pamphilus the Martyr (A. D. 294) "was remarkable above all men for a most sincere zeal for the divine books; he not only lent copies of the scriptures to be read, but most cheerfully made a gift of them to men and women who were eager to read them."

66

Valens, a deacon, who suffered with Pamphilus, was so well skilled in the divine scriptures, that there was no discernible difference between his reading of them and his reciting them by heart, though it were whole pages together."

"It was one of the affecting scenes of the persecution in 303, to see the sacred and divine books burned in market places. The martyrs were interrogated if they had any divine books,

or parchments. They replied, We have; but we do not give them up; it is better for us to be burned with fire, than to give up the divine scriptures."

Once more the Emperor Constantine "from the time of his conversion (A. D. 312) resolved to give himself up to the reading of the scriptures. He had a kind of church in his palace, where, taking the sacred books in his own hands, he attentively read and meditated upon the divine oracles before the whole assembly of his courtiers." On one occasion he wrote thus to Eusebius: "The city that bears our name (Constantinople) through the goodness of Providence increases daily, and there will be occasion for erecting in it more churches. Wherefore we hope you will approve of our design, and take care to procure fifty copies of the divine scriptures, which you know to be necessary in churches, of fine parchment, legible, and easily portable, that they may be the fitter for use, transcribed by such as are skilful in the art of fair writing.” The orders were obeyed, and the copies sent in magnificently bound. Need I say that such love to the authentic writings of the apostles carries with it something more than cold assent to their authority? The martyrs at the close of the third century, the Christian Emperor at the beginning of the fourth, must have had the

« 上一頁繼續 »