they endured-and all that man may competently record of Christianity-in order that that higher testimony surpassing human, which had before been given by inspiration of God, may be brought to bear upon the gospel of his Son.

Paley, in the ninth chapter of his Evidences, enters at large upon the proof of the authenticity of the Historical Scriptures, by adducing quotations from them by ancient Christian writers; by showing the peculiar respect with which they were quoted; that the Scriptures were in very early times collected into a distinct volume; that they were distinguished by appropriate names and titles of respect; that they were publicly read and expounded in the religious assemblies of the early Christians; that commentaries, &c., were anciently written upon the Scriptures; that they were received by ancient Christians of different sects and persuasions; and that formal catalogues of authentic Scriptures were published, in all which our present Gospels were included, &c.

Without enlarging on each or any of these grounds of a conclusive argument in demonstration of the genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures, it may here suffice to take such a cursory view of the subject as may serve to show the connexion of the various parts of the Christian evidence, and that nothing is wanting which sober reason could require to elucidate the truth that the identity and genuineness of the Christian Scriptures may be traced by a connected chain of indisputable evidence from the apostolic age to the present day.

However great and varied may be the differences, in respect to religious belief, that unhappily prevail among the professing disciples of Jesus; whatever may be the latitude which they allow or practise in their expositions of the New Testament; nay, whether some may suffer their reason, as they say, or rather their imagination, as the result may testify, to sit in judgment on the written word; or whether others assign to a man, or to a collected body of men, the office of infallible interpretation; there yet is one thing in which their enemies cannot charge them with disunion, viz., that the Scriptures now in our hands were then possessed by the primitive Christians, and are avowedly the rule of faith to every sect and in every age of the church. The authenticity of Scripture is alike indisputable among them; and, where diversity of sentiment otherwise prevails, there is here but one opinion. To waver in mind in this one respect would be to waver in the Christian faith. Christianity is virtually renounced when any other gospel is preached or believed than that of the New Testament; and, whenever it is disbelieved, faith it disavowed. The whole Christian church-though unhappily presenting to view the form of

the scattered fragments of a mutilated and divided body, rather than joined member to member and united to one head has here but a single and undivided testimony; nor throughout the whole of Christendom, where unbelievers do not raise up their voice against the truth as it is in Jesus, is there one murmur of dissent.

This happy harmony, unbroken amid minor discords, may serve to illustrate what is meant by the testimony of the church, as borne in every age to the authenticity of the Scriptures. Men may discuss their various creeds, and mark the shades of their opinions in many high matters touched on in Scripture, which may surpass the powers of human reason adequately to define, or, perhaps, fully to conceive. And thus schisms have arisen from the earliest ages in the church, by looking to a part rather than the whole counsel of God; as if, instead of seeking to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ, believers in his name, like the Roman soldiers who crucified him, had parted his garments among them. But there is still a vesture without a seam which has not been torn. The integrity of the Scriptures has been maintained by all Christians; all profess to revere them as the sacred oracles, and make to them their common appeal. Neither Christian, nor Mohammedan, nor skeptic, denies that the Koran was written by Mohammed, and is the book which believers in him have ever specially regarded as holy. And it is no great demand which in the first place may be urged, to hear the testimony of the universal Christian church in every age, that the New Testament contains the doctrine of Jesus, and has ever been the record of the faith of his disciples. The whole Christian church being agreed as to the authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures; and there being no other history, in the present or any former age, of the origin and rise of Christianity, save that which they contain, a slight glance at some of the most important and essential points of the testimony, borne from the earliest ages, to the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures, may, perhaps, go far to satisfy the most scrupulous inquirer that this portion of the evidence is as strong and complete as any other.

After the ages appropriately termed dark, during which the Scriptures were secluded from common view, the Reformation arose with the republication of the Gospels. Scholastic jargon, miscalled science, yielded to rational investigation; and, in religious inquiry, legendary lore yielded to the study of the Bible and of the writings of the Fathers, as the earliest of the Christian writers were termed. Manuscripts of the New Testament and of the Old were drawn from cloistered recesses, in which the most ancient of them had been preserved with scrupulous, if not also superstitious care, and

in which copies of them had been multiplied age after age with devoted carefulness and zeal; the letter of the scriptures having been preserved and perpetuated when their spirit had been lost. Even the perversion of Christian truth was overruled for the promotion of the Christian testimony. The faithful transcription of the Scriptures was deemed a work of merit. Though their publication had been prohibited, and the translations were sometimes denounced by papal authority, yet even the alleged prerogative of infallibility could only claim the right of interpreting the written word. The strongholds of the popish church, abbeys, cathedrals, monasteries, &c., became in fact, however undesignedly, the storehouses of the Christian scriptures; and those who hid them from the world, or read them only in an unknown tongue, were made the instruments of preserving their integrity, and redoubling their number for the scrutiny and the use of future ages. And the Vatican itself was and is filled with the testimonials of the genuineness of these scriptures, which no cloisters now can any longer confine. Hundreds of manuscripts, which have been critically and carefully examined and compared, so completely set at rest all question of the genuineness of the Christian scriptures as such, that the worst manuscripts contain every essential truth which forms a portion of the Christian scheme, or of the history of the gospel and the doctrine of Christ and his apostles; and would perfectly suffice for comparing the events recorded and the doctrines unfolded with the testimony of the prophets concerning the Messiah. Every copy from every quarter showed that the long dormant Scriptures were ever one and the same; and after having been preserved in secret during the ages of darkness and violence, and beyond the reach of barbaric influence to desecrate or to destroy them, the Scriptures were drawn from their depositories and committed to the press. And though that engine of wondrous power has been often vainly used against them, it has not only spread them throughout the world, and seems to be destined to multiply their number still, till the Bible throughout the earth shall be plentiful like leaves in the forest; but as affecting their authenticity and the security of their unaltered transmission to all future ages, it has also, wherever Christian education prevails, put it in the power of every child to showshould such be the case by accident or design in any instance -wherever a letter is misplaced or altered.

Before the period of the Gothic invasion of the Roman empire, and the deep and lasting obscuration that settled down upon all its provinces, there was a time of light such as the world had never previously witnessed. It was not in any secluded portion of the globe, or at a time when communication was fettered and science unknown; but in one of the

richest provinces of Rome, the garden, as it was termed, of the empire, and in the boasted Augustan age, that Christianity had its origin. It rapidly spread over Greece and Italy, the reputed regions of human learning, where the arts and elegances of life were greatly cultivated and observed, and where, in succession, eloquence had its seat. And, not confined to these countries, Christianity, which professed to be the religion, not of Greece or Rome, but of the human race; which set no exclusive mark upon man, whether barbarian, Scythian, bond, or free, and knew no distinction between savage and civilized, and which drew the dark picture of human depravity from the imperial city, was promulgated, and prevailed in the remote regions as well as in the capital. And hence the proofs, not only of the progress of the Gospel, but of the uniformity of the faith and genuineness of the Scriptures, may be drawn from every quarter. The Scriptures, which, as they bear, were commanded to be read in all the churches wherever Christians existed, were open to the view; and, as the fact itself gives proof, underwent the keen scrutiny of watchful and subtle enemies, so well skilled in detecting any deception or delusion, that they ingeniously cavilled at what they could not confute. And, from the nature of the case, it may be said that the possession of the Scriptures was essential to the existence and permanence of the Christian faith in every place where it had first been inculcated by the disciples of Jesus. Everywhere spoken against and persecuted, their bond of union, and the badge of their character, was their common faith. And having spread, as they did, throughout every region, and gathered converts in every city, and also, as Bithynia illustrates, throughout the scattered villages and over the face of the country, the Scriptures were universally, and in every region, their common creed; and hence the uniformity and identity, and the peculiarity of their character. The Scriptures were believed in and revered as the writings of evangelists, containing the only accredited histories of the life and doctrine of Jesus Christ, and of apostles who had immediately received their commission from the author of their faith. The writings of the disciples and apostles of Christ were thus universally propagated and believed in, as Scriptures given by inspiration of God. Whether they in truth were such or not, is not the point to be here investigated. But an unimpeachable testimony bears out the truth, as of any common fact, that they were universally received as such from the very earliest ages of the church. That such was indeed the case-not presumptively merely, and according to the acknowledgment of their enemies, but actually, as attested by direct and positive evidence, such as places the matter clearly before us, and

might set the question at rest-it is the easiest of all tasks to demonstrate.

No truth, surely, can be more plain, indisputable, and selfevident, than that any book which is quoted in another was written before it. On this simple and decisive test of the antiquity of the New Testament Scriptures, they may be traced up, with all facility, to the very time at which they were professedly written. And the evidence of their genuineness as the Christian Scriptures, received as such from the beginning, is alike abundant and incontestible.

Some of the subtlest of the heathens, in primitive times, quoted portions from Scripture, which were selected by their ingenuity as the best suited to their purpose, in order to refute them; and started such objections against the doctrines of Jesus as in any age may naturally arise in those hearts over which the pride of life or the pleasures of the world bear sway. But the apparent specks were few on which these birds of night, in love with darkness, could alight, compared to that fair daylight region of truth, as they accounted it, which believers in Jesus possessed as their own domain, over which they could freely range or expatiate the whole of the Scripture, from which they freely quoted without limit or restriction. They revered and loved the credentials of their faith. In explanation of the character given them by their enemies, it may be said that they held forth the word before them. And their writings prove, what heathens admitted, that they held the Scriptures as their own.

From the period of two centuries after the death of the last of the apostles, or the close of the third century of the Christian era, the works of Christian writers, then numerous, 66 are as full of texts of Scripture or of references to Scripture as the discourses of modern divines." And quotations from any other book, in any language, are not once to be compared in extent with those of the Scriptures alone. It was previously remarked, that, had the worst manuscript of the New Testament, or that which should be found to be the most full of errors or defects, come down alone to our times, the means would still have been preserved of learning from it all the doctrines of the Gospel and everything essential to the Christian faith. Such is the perfect security with which the New Testament passed immaculate through the dark ages. And it may also be said, with equal truth, as has often been stated and never can be refuted, that even were the Scriptures lost, or were not a single copy of them to be found on earth, the loss might still be supplied, not from any words of man, but from quotations of the Scriptures themselves in the writings of the Fathers: so amply were they drawn from, and so frequently were they resorted to as the sources of Divine truth. In either case, it would seem that the prov