Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

tarius." This work was so highly esteemed by Sir John Harrington, that he abridged it for the use of Henry Prince of Wales; and Queen Elizabeth, the great patroness of learned men, promoted him to the see of Llandaff, in 1601.

In 1616 he published in Latin, "Rerum Anglicarum Henrio VIII. Edwardo VI. & Maria reguantibus Annales;" which work was translated and published by his son Morgan Godwin, under the title of "Annales of England: coutaining the Reigns of Henry the VIIIth, Edward the VIth, and Queen Mary. Written in Latin, by the Right Honourable and Right Reverend Father in God, Francis, Lord Bishop of Hereford. Thus englished, corrected, and enlarged, with the author's consent, by Morgan Godwyn."

These Annals are much praised by Nicholson, as being written with a succinct and laudable brevity, and are referred to, by succeeding historians, as a work of high authority. Kennet has inserted the reign of Mary in his History of England. Godwin proved his accurate knowledge of Greek and Roman coins, by a small tract on the Computation of the Value of the Roman Sesterce and Attic Talent. In consequence of his literary reputation, he acquired the patronage of James the First, and in 1617 he was translated to the see of Hereford. He lived to see three editions of his Lives of the Bishops and Annals; and died in 1633, aged 72. He is much admired for the elegance of his latinity; which was so pure that Nicholson says he was a perfect master of the Latin tongue; and observes, that the style of his Commentarius de Præsulibus Angliæ, is very neat and clear; and he seems to have taken more pains in polishing it, than in gathering together all the materials of his history. His principal merit consists in his impartiality, which was so great that he was unjustly censured for unveiling the faults of the Roman Catholic bishops with a view of exalting those who flourished since the Reformation; an unjust accusation, which is derived from his fixed resolution to speak truth, and not to make his work a panegyric rather than a history.

His Annals are also written with the greatest adherence to truth; and he himself very justly observes, "How do they injure truth, who from lies and falsehood desire help to support her? But we have no need of them; and if we had, it would not do us much service

to

to rely on such weak advantages, since one pious lie detected proves more hurtful than a thousand others, although so artfully contrived as to escape discovery, can prove profitable. For an example of this, we need seek no farther than the Papists, whose feigned miracles, impostures, and legends, have made even what is true suspected. Wherefore I am well content that truth, which in spite of all opposition will at length be every where victorious, should prevail with me. I have done to my power. Politely, eloquently, politically, I could not write. Truly, and fide atticâ, I could. If I have done amiss, in any point, it is not out of malice, but

error."

MISCELLANIES.

REMARKS ON THE PREFACE TO ST. LUKE's GOSPEL.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN'S

SIR,

MAGAZINE.

Should you think the following remarks on the preface to St. Luke's Gospel deserve the attention of your readers, you will oblige me by giving them a place in your Magazine.

J. R.

ΕΠΕΙΔΗΠΕΡ πολλοί. At the time when St. Luke wrote

his Gospel, two of the other three Gospels now extant had not been written, and it is much to be doubted whether that by St. Matthew had then made its appearance.

Who

The inconsistency of Professor Michaelis's mode of reasoning concerning the time when St. Matthew and St. Luke published their Gospels, deserves to be particularly noticed.-To render it probable that the early date assigned to St. Matthew's Gospel is right, he uses this argument, p. 3, vol. iii. part i. "In this year (41) Herod Agrippa became king of Judæa and Samaria. It may be asked, therefore, whether St. Matthew, if he had written after the year 41, would have said chap. ii. 1. "When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king," without distinguishing by some epithet the first and great king Herod, from the later Herod? If so, St. Matthew's Gospel must have been

written

Who then were the many here alluded to? Of their productions we now know very little, if any thing at all; they seem to have been considered by the church as useles, almost as soon as they were published; from whence some have concluded that they must have been quite worthless compositions. Others, on the contrary, are disposed to entertain a much more favourable opinion of them. Let us try to discover what sort of compositions they may have been.

written either in the beginning of the year 41, or before that year, as Pearce has already observed in his commentary on the Evangelists. That this argument may be adduced with equal propriety in proof of the early composition of St. Luke's Gospel, he will not, however, allow. At p. 245 of the same vol. he says, “ Bishop Pearce has used another argument in favour of the early composition of St. Luke's Gospel, which he has deduced from chap. i. 8. where St. Luke, speaking of Herod the Great, calls him simply Herod the king of Judea, without the addition of an epithet to distinguish him from the Herod who is mentioned xii. Acts 1. and who was likewise king of Judea. Hence Pearce concludes that St. Luke wrote his Gospel before the second Herod king of Judea had begun to reign. But this inference, says the Professor, is not valid; for St. Luke, in speaking of the second Herod, xii. Acts 1. calls him simply Herod the king, as he had named his grandfather, the first Herod; and therefore if Pearce's argument proved any thing, it would prove too much. Besides, it was not the practice of the antient historians to distinguish princes of the same name by the addition of the first, the second, and so on, as is customary in modern ages: they left the reader to judge from the context; and in the case in question St. Luke could have no reason whatsoever for making an exception, since none of his readers could suppose that the Herod, under whose reign Christ was born, was any other thau Herod the Great."

* At the time when St. Luke undertook to write a history of the transactions of Christ, various but uncertain Gospels were already in circulation. These Gospels, probably owing to the circumstance that the accounts which they contained were uncertain, have either totally perished, or are preserved only in a few scattered, and even interpolated fragments. It is certain that they were never received by the Christian Church as credible and authentic documents, that they were never deemed worthy to be read in the public service, nor admitted into the catalogue of the writings of the New Testament. Whether internal or external evidence contributed chiefly to their rejection, whether their accounts had the appearance of fable, rather than of history, and not seldom contradict each other, rendered them suspected, or whether an opposition on the part of the Apostles, and other eye witnesses, prevented them from being generally received, is at present difficult to be determined, because we have no Christian historian of the first century. Michaelis's Introduction, &c. Vol. III. part i. page 3.

"'Tis certain," says Whitby," that Luke is so far from blaming them for those performances, that he places himself in the rank of them, and saith that they made their narratives of these matters even as the Apostles had delivered them.”

"He seems," says Doddridge, " to allow these histories, whatever they

were,

The same arguments which are adduced to prove that St. Luke's Gospel was written before any of the other three now extant, prove also that the Gospel by St. Matthew (which was confessedly the first written of the three) was, in all probability, written after the Epistle to the Ephesians, the former having, according to the arguments above alluded to, been written between the years 61 and 64, and the latter in the spring of the year 61. Of course it is not very likely that any thing said in that Epistle could have related either to St. Matthew, St. Mark, or St. John, as Evangelists who had then published their works. And yet it appears by what St. Paul has said in the 4th chap. of that Ep. ii. 5. that there was in the church at the time when he wrote that Epistle, a certain class of spiritual assistants named Evangelists, distinct from Apostles and Prophets on the one hand, and from Pastors and Teachers on the other. These Evangelists, he then assures the Ephesians, had been appointed to their office by the same authority which had constituted the other four classes of ministers enumerated with them. When their appointment took place (if it did not take place at the ascension) we have no means of ascertaining. As St. Paul, in the passage above adverted to, speaks of the appointment of all the orders of ministers there enumerated, collectively, and has not said any thing to lead us to suppose that they were appointed at different times, but, on the contrary, has introduced the mention of their appointment subsequently to the mention of the ascension and the spiritual gifts then conferred on the church, we seem to have reason to conclude, that he meant to intimate that every one of those several orders of ministerial persons received their commission at the same time.-What the nature of their office was, we may infer partly from the meaning of the word from which the appellation by which they were distinguished was derived; partly from their being spoken of as distinct from prophets; and partly from the time when they appear to have been appointed; for had they not, in all probability, been appointed at the ascension, but after some written Gospel had been published, it might have

were, to have been honestly written, according to information received from the most capable judges, &c."

†This appellation, as used by Paul, often means those who explained scripture, preached, or spoke publicly in the church. See iv. Acts 32.

been

*

been considered by some as a doubtful point whether they had written Gospels themselves, or had only preached the Gospels before written by others. That the church in general, and that of Ephesus in particular, had then derived some benefit from their labours, as well as from those of the other classes enumerated with them, seems to be implied in what follows.-Indeed as we seem to have reason to think that they are here said to have been appointed by our Lord, together with the four other classes of ministers enumerated with them at the first introduction of Christianity, to co-operate with those other classes in perfecting the saints, &c.; and as we are assured by Luke that many had written Gospels before he undertook to write his, we may well suppose that they had not been more remiss in the discharge of their duty than any of the other classes enumerated with them, from the time of their appointment. This passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians then, it seems, may be considered as a sort of testimony, that other Evangelists besides those whose works have descended to our times, had been industrious in the work of their vocation at the time when that Epistle was written. But, by way of invalidating the purport of the exposition here made of this passage in the Ep. to the Ephesians, it may be asked, if the conclusion drawn from it in favour of the early appointment and industry of other Evangelists, besides those whose. works have been preserved by the church, is to be admitted as being of some validity, why may it not be inferred from Paul's entire omission of them, in the no less particular enumeration of ecclesiastical offices, in the first Ep. to the Corinthians, chap. xii. 28. that they had not then given any public proofs of their labours However attentive they may have been to the work of their vocation from the beginning, it surely cannot be thought less reasonable to conclude from that passage, that they had not given any proofs of their labours before that Epistle was written; which, it may be observed too, as it was written from Ephesus, may be thought to render it questionable whether there. were any Evangelists in that city when it was written.

*There is no necessity that the many " who had taken in hand to make a narrative of what was believed or done by Christians," should have done this at all by writing, rather than by word of mouth, and much rather that they should ali be writers of gospels rather than of the Acts of the Apostles. WHITBY.

Vol. X. Churchm. Mag. for April 1806.

Kk

Is

« PoprzedniaDalej »