when recited, "sounded forth the voice and represented the countenance of each apostle;" and when we remember that those churches are appealed to, and those only, to which the sacred letters were addressed, and that the inquirer is sent by Tertullian (in the second century, be it noted) to examine the books for himself;-I say, when we consider all this, and associate it in our minds with the critical revision of ancient manuscripts made by Eusebius and Jerome in the fourth and fifth centuries, and our Codex Beza, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Vaticanus, probably of the very same date, now existing-I ask whether it does not present the proof of the authenticity of the New Testament before the very eyes, and render it palpable almost to the senses of mankind?

VI. I add that NONE OF THESE EXTERNAL PROOFS OF AUTHENTICITY can be adduced for the apocryphal books of the New Testament; which exhibit, indeed, every internal mark of being unauthentic and spurious. It is no indiscriminate admission, therefore, for which we plead. We show that the marks of authenticity are actually wanting in all pretended sacred writings.

1. We have no proof that any of them existed in the first century. 2. They are not quoted by the apostolical Fathers. 3. Few or no manuscripts of them exist. 4. They were not read in the churches of Christians. 5. Were not admitted into their volumes. 6. Do not appear in their catalogues. 7. Were not noticed by their adversaries. 8. Were not alleged by different parties as of authority in their controversies. 9. Were not subjects amongst them of commentaries, versions, collations, expositions. 10. Were passed over in silence, or actually rejected during the three first centuries, and reprobated almost universally by Christian writers of succeeding ages. That is, they are not authentic.

8 Paley,

8

Besides this total want of external evidence of their genuineness, there is the strongest internal evidence in proof of their being spurious. 1. For they propose doctrines and practices contrary to those which are certainly known to be true. 2. They are filled with absurd and frivolous details. 3. They relate as miracles, stories both useless and improbable. 4. They mention things which are later than the time when the individual author lived whose name the book bears. 5. Their style is totally different from that of the genuine books of the New Testament. 6. They assert things in direct contradiction to authentic history, both sacred and profane. 7. They contain studied imitations of passages in the genuine scriptures. 8. They abound with gross falsehoods. That is, they are spurious; and illustrate by a perfect contrast the undoubted authenticity of the canonical books."

But this leads us to another argument.

VII. The STYLE AND MANNER of the books of the New Testament furnish an unanswerable proof of their being genuine.

I observed in the last Lecture, that there was nothing in the style or contents of the New Testament inconsistent with the age and characters of the professed authors; and that the inward traces of genuineness and truth shone brightly throughout the books of it.

We have just been pointing out the marks of spuriousness in the apocryphal books, from their gross defects in these very respects.

A nearer view of the contents of the Christian books will bring out a positive evidence of the most undeniable kind in favour of their authenticity.

For the style of the New Testament agrees with the times of the apostles of our Lord, and with no

9 T. H. Horne, i. 721.

other. It is Greek; not the pure Greek which the critic perhaps would most admire; but Greek inter mingled with Hebrew and Syriac idioms. It is a language which no one could write, but a person who had acquired a knowledge of the Greek after an education in a country where Chaldee and Syriac were the vernacular tongues. The destruction of Jerusalem, and the total subversion of the Jewish polity within forty years after our Lord's resurrection, made so entire a change in the language, associations, habits, familiar knowledge, terms of expression of the dispersed Jewish people, that an impostor at any time posterior to the death of the last of the apostles, would have written in a different style from that of the New Testament. A Greek or Roman Christian would have wanted the peculiar tincture of the Jewish literature prevalent before the fall of Jerusalem. A Jewish convert would have been wanting in the intermixed style and manner of the Hellenistic Jew. The idiomatic character lasted only for a brief period, and then perished Even in the second century, the language of the Christian writers in their works now extant, infallibly proves that the New Testament was not produced in that age. A relater of falsehoods could by no stretch of genius have raised up from nothing, and have preserved with undeviating uniformity, the peculiarities and familiar colloquial idioms of a lost language.

This argument is strengthened by considering the minute and circumstantial character of the narratives of the New Testament, and the perpetual allusions to passing events in the epistolary parts of it. All is in detail. You have the names of friends and enemies, the circumstances of time and place, the occasions which introduced, and the consequences that followed each action. You see every thing. You seem to move in the train of our Lord or his apostles. The narrative no sooner changes its scene, than a new set of names, occa

sions, incidents, personages, facts,---all the most natural imaginable---surround it.

Then there are numerous, and, so to speak, fearless allusions to complicated events, to different branches of families, which bearing a common appellation, confound at first sight the most tenacious recollection, and yet are found to be always correctly alluded to. The usages of the Jews, their divisions into sects, their popular opinions, are all described or referred to with the ease of things perfectly familiar. The different high-priests, the various Roman governors, the Herods, the geographical position of different places in Palestine, are minutely, and, as we should say, speaking of other books, unnecessarily brought in. The accuracy of all these can only be accounted for by one supposition---the truth of the story. Fictitious works never descend into such particulars.10 Manetho's account of the Egyptian dynasties is vague and general whilst Thucydides' and Cæsar's authentic histories of the wars of which they were eye-witnesses, abound in circumstances of time, person, place. The circumstantiality of the New Testament proclaims its authenticity; and when connected with the single fact, that the whole scene was swept away before the middle of the first century, makes that authenticity certain and palpable.

Further, notwithstanding all this copiousness of allusion, the sacred writers agree with each other. Eight authors, composing twenty-seven works, during an interval of sixty years, with no appearance of concert or symptom of artificial method; but on the contrary, with a thousand seeming disagreements, and

10 The French author to whom I referred in my last Lecture, gives an example of a work which professed to be the production of the age of Louis XIV.-merely one hundred years since the spuriousness of which was detected by the want of circumstantiality, of minuteness of reference and naturalness of remark in the narrative.-Pensees Judic. ut supra.

many actual obscurities in point of arrangement and order---writing also on every kind of topic connected with the religion they promulgated, and addressing different churches on different points of doctrine and practice---I say, the substantial harmony of these writings stamps upon them an authenticity which nothing can impeach. A thousand undesigned coincidences have been pointed out between the Gospels, the Acts, and Epistles," too slight in themselves to have been concerted, and yet when brought out, flashing conviction upon every mind. During the space of eighteen centuries, not one contradiction has been established against our sacred books; and for this plain reason---they are the genuine production of the inspired writers.

The confirmation of the chief facts recorded in the New Testament by Heathen and Jewish authors, is a further evidence of authenticity. Every thing that -admits of being proved by the writings of contemporary historians---by Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, &c. as we shall see more fully in the next discourse---is so proved. The substratum of the gospel history is found in the writings of the most bitter adversaries.

Again, the openness and simplicity of the whole manner and cast of the New Testament writings, confirm the argument of authenticity. A fraudulent composition may always be detected, in one part or other, by artificial attempts to hide some things, and display others, according as a human and debased prudence dictates. Commendations are dealt out--irritation and prejudice appear---apologies are made--effect is studied---the passions of men and the opinions of the times are consulted---curiosity is gratified at one time, national pride at another. Now the divine scriptures stand free from all this. Their simplicity

11 By Dr. Paley in his Hora Paulinæ, and lately by Mr. Blunt in his Veracity of the Gospels.