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those who wrote them; summaries of their oral instructions; sermons adapted to the most important emergencies of the churches, and delivered permanently by pen and ink, instead of of, on any one occasion, by actual bodily presence and voice. But what would all this have availed, if the slightest suspicion of inaccuracy could have been justly imputed to these communications? What disputes would have been adjusted? What errors corrected? What agitations calmed? What authoritative determinations concluded? What measures of peace and truth restored? What standard erected for future ages?

The churches, also, then abounded with persons endued themselves with miraculous gifts; themselves speaking with tongues, themselves illuminated with the word of wisdom and knowledge, themselves capable of prophesying and interpreting tongues, and discerning spirits. To have addressed, therefore, to converts thus gifted, human and fallible epistles, would have been to send an uninspired writing to an illuminated and inspired body of Christians.

Would the Corinthians, for instance, divided amongst themselves, vain of the spiritual gifts with which they abounded, and distracted by false teachers, have listened for one moment to the exhortations and reproofs of the Apostle, if

they had not known that Christ was speaking in him, and that miraculous punishments would visit the disobedient? In fact, the very unction from the Holy One by which the first Christians knew all things, and needed not, comparatively speaking, that any should teach them, but were enabled to try the spirits whether they were of God; would most assuredly have detected a defective canon of faith, and induced them to refuse obedience to a rule inferior in any respects, to that which their own recollection of the apostolical discourses, and their own comparison of the Old Testament with the gospels, might in some points have supplied.

The inspiration, then, of the instructions, oral and written, of the Apostles, was full and complete, in consequence of the abundant gifts of the Holy Ghost; and absolutely excluded all intermixture of human frailty with their divine communications.

III. But I appeal to what THE APOSTLES THEMSELVES CLAIM UPON THIS SUBJECT. I appeal to THEIR OWN assertions of the divine inspiration of their writings.

Bear in mind the acknowledged facts of the

The apostles received a revelation from heaven to communicate to mankind; they place

VOL. I.

I I

their books on the same footing, and claim for them the same authority as the divinelyinspired writings of the Old Testament. They are endowed with an exuberant supply of miraculous gifts according to the promise of their Lord. They are accompanied in their progress in promulgating the gospel, with incessant demonstrations of the Holy Ghost. They are not merely authentic and credible witnesses; they are persons divinely authorized, divinely gifted, divinely inspired. All this we now take for admitted, because it has been fully and distinctly proved. If, therefore, they use such language as manifestly asserts a direct and plenary inspiration in all their epistles; if they claim the implicit obedience of mankind to their instructions as to the direct word of God, we cannot doubt that they were assisted and conducted by the full superintendence and suggestions of the Holy Ghost.

We begin, then, with the first letter addressed by the College of Apostles to the Brethren of the Gentiles. This brief address on a temporary subject, will give us a pledge of what aid they received in their writings designed for every age. In the course, then, of this short letter, they use, without any mark of its being an unexpected circumstance, these words, for

Then

it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us. the apostolical epistles are inspired by the Holy Ghost.

Open, in the next place, the first of the epistles to the churches generally, to the Romans for instance; what is the authority which it assumes? How does it begin and close? Paul a servant of Jesus Christ called to be an Apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name; grace be to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle, you see, is separated unto the gospel; he receives, not only the apostleship, but grace for that apostleship; all nations are required to receive with implicit faith his instructions; every word he writes is as from Christ himself. And how doth he conclude his epistle? The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Amen. Now unto him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began; but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the everlasting God made known to all nations for the obedience of the faith. To God only wise be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen. Now what I ask is, whether

any errors whatever can for a moment be supposed to exist in an epistle, written, let me remind you, by one filled with the extraordinary illumination of the Holy Ghost, sustained with the word of knowledge and of wisdom, endowed with the power of working miracles; and who thus appeals to the only wise God to confirm the doctrines which he had received by revelation, and had promulgated, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for the conversion of the world? I ask whether this language does not fully sustain and render certain the fact of that plenary inspiration which our preceding arguments established?

We open the next epistle, that to the Corinthians; what is the language of that sacred composition? What its authority? Whence its source? The apostle begins-My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. He then goes on to declare, that his doctrine was the wisdom of God in a mystery-that God had revealed it to him by his Spirit-that it was what none of the princes of this world knew; but what he had received from the Spirit, with which he had been inspired, that he might know the things that were freely given to him of God. Can any

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