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most complete assurance of their genuineness, to act with the sincerity and zeal, and make the sacrifices, which we have been stating.

IV. A very important proof of the authenticity of our sacred books is derived from, THE ADMISSIONS OF HEATHEN AND JEWISH ADVERSARIES, and the conduct of the numerous SECTS AND PARTIES in the church from the earliest age. To this we have more than once referred; but a specimen of the sort of proof thus obtained, belongs to this place.

The heathen philosopher Celsus, (about the year A. D. 175,) advances all kinds of objections against Christianity with much acuteness, resentment, and scorn. But he never calls in question the genuineness of the New Testament. He argues from the facts and doctrines they contain, as the authentic writings of their respective authors. Nothing can prove more clearly, not only that such books did. really exist in the second century, but that they were universally received by Christians, and that nothing could be alleged against them in that respect.

Porphyry was in the third century what Celsus had been in the second-an embittered, powerful heathen opponent. Yet he admits our books. His testimony is the more pertinent and conclusive, because he showed that he

would have denied their authenticity, if it had been possible; for he did actually venture to deny (without sufficient reason, indeed, but still he did deny) the genuineness of the Prophet Daniel, and asserted that it was written after the times of Antiochus Epiphanes.

Julian, in the fourth century, comes in with a testimony, unwilling indeed as a heathen emperor, but the more decisive, because he had once professed the Christian faith. What course does he take? Does he call into question the truth of our writings? Does he charge the Christians with imposing false books upon mankind? No. He allows the facts of Christianity, and argues upon our gospels as the admitted works of the apostles and disciples of our Lord.

The testimony of heretics is of almost equal importance. We have seen in our own day what eagerness of contention has been excited by one single disputed text in the fifth chapter of the First Epistle of St. John. For fifty years the church has been filled with the noise of the vehement controversy. We are sure, therefore, that in the bitterness of the Arian heresy, for example, in the fourth century, if any thing solid could have been alleged against the genuineness of our sacred books, it would have been brought forward with avidity. Some passages and some books were, in fact,

denied by Marcion and a few wild enthusiasts of earlier days; but after the settlement of the canon, men of all sects and heresies admitted our writings. An Arian, in a conference with St. Austin, says: "If you allege any thing from the divine scriptures, which are common to all, I must hear; but what is not in the scriptures deserves no regard." And at the Council of Nice, (A. D. 325,) where 318 bishops, besides innumerable presbyters, deacons, and others, were assembled, on the occasion of the Arian heresy, "The emperor," says Theodoret, recommended to the bishops to decide all things by the scriptures. It is a pity, he said, that now when their enemies were subdued, they should differ and be divided among themselves; especially when they had the doctrine of the Holy Ghost in writing.""

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From such witnesses to the authenticity of the New Testament who can turn away? If this evidence is not deemed satisfactory, it must arise from a want, I do not say of faith, but of common candour of mind. I am aware, indeed, that it is not possible to put those who are not familiar with ecclesiastical history, in

6 Lardner thinks that, as this last circumstance is not mentioned by Eusebius, but rests only on the authority of Theodoret, it had perhaps better not be pressed. Still he raises no objection, except the negative one of wanting the confirmation of Eusebius.

possession of the sort of plenary conviction which flashes upon the mind of the literary and well-informed student, who is acquainted with the names I cite, who knows all the chief events and dates of past times, and has been accustomed to historical researches-but then any hearer of good sense and honesty can understand enough of the statement to see the mass of solid and undisputed facts adduced in favour of the Christian scriptures. And his want of habits of historical enquiry holds much more against his receiving the mere cavils of unbelievers, than it does against his practically submitting to this part of the evidences of his faith. I want only a right temper of mind in the hearer, and I leave to his conscientious judgment the determination of the cause. But I proceed to an argument palpable almost to our senses.

V. For the NUMBER AND ANTIQUITY OF OUR MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT is an argument for the authenticity of its sacred

contents.

The greater part of the apocryphal books are either entirely lost, or are preserved by a single manuscript. Our most authentic and most admired classics, as Herodotus, are known only from ten or fifteen manuscripts; many are come down to us, after lying hid for ages, in

one manuscript only. Now the manuscripts of our sacred books abound in every ancient library in every part of Christendom. They amount in the whole to several thousands. About five hundred have been actually examined and compared or collated, with extraordinary care. Many of them run up to the eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries; the Codex Bezæ, found in the monastery of Irenæus, at Lyon in France, and presented by the reformer whose name it bears, to the University of Cambridge, is supposed by Dr. Kipling, the editor of the fac-simile of it, to be of the second century. The Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus are supposed to be of the fourth. Now these manuscripts push back our proof to the age next but one or two, to that when the last of the apostles died, and join on with the manuscripts compared by Jerome and Eusebius, (A.D. 315–420,) and thus bring us up, as it were, to the very times of the promulgation of the gospel. The prodigious number of these manuscripts, the distant countries whence they were collected, and the identity of their contents with the quotations in the Fathers of different ages, place the New Testament incomparably above all other ancient works in point of evidence of authenticity. Let any one compare the gospels

VOL. I.

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