[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been relocated to the end of thetext. Footnote anchors have been labeled with the original page andfootnote numbers. ]

THE LOST GOSPEL AND ITS CONTENTS;

OR, THE AUTHOR OF "SUPERNATURAL RELIGION" REFUTED BY HIMSELF. 

BY THE REV. M. F. SADLER, M. A. , RECTOR OF HONITON. 

LONDON:GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1876. 

PREFACE. 

This book is entitled "The Lost Gospel" because the book to which it isan answer is an attempt to discredit the Supernatural element ofChristianity by undermining the authority of our present Gospels infavour of an earlier form of the narrative which has perished. 

It seemed to me that, if the author of "Supernatural Religion" provedhis point, and demonstrated that the Fathers of the Second Centuryquoted Gospels earlier than those which we now possess, then theevidence for the Supernatural itself, considered as apart from theparticular books in which the records of it are contained, would bestrengthened; if, that is, it could be shown that this earlier form ofthe narrative contained the same Supernatural Story. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion, " whilst he has utterly failed toshow that the Fathers in question have used earlier Gospels, has, to mymind, proved to demonstration that, if they have quoted earliernarratives, those accounts contain, not only substantially, but indetail, the same Gospel which we now possess, and in a form rather moresuggestive of the Supernatural. So that, if he has been successful, theauthor has only succeeded in proving that the Gospel narrative itself, in a written form, is at least fifty or sixty years older than the bookswhich he attempts to discredit. 

With respect to Justin Martyr, to the bearing of whose writings on thissubject I have devoted the greater part of my book, I can only say that, in my examination of his works, my bias was with the author of"Supernatural Religion. " I had hitherto believed that this Father, beinga native of Palestine, and living so near to the time of the Apostles, was acquainted with views of certain great truths which he had derivedfrom traditions of the oral teaching of the Apostles, and the possessionof which made him in some measure an independent witness for the viewsin question; but I confess that, on a closer examination of hiswritings, I was somewhat disappointed, for I found that he had noknowledge of our Lord and of His teaching worth speaking of, exceptwhat he might be fairly assumed to have derived from our presentNew Testament. 

I have to acknowledge my obligations to Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, forallowing me to make somewhat copious extracts from the writings ofJustin in their ante-Nicene Library. This has saved a Parish Priest likemyself much time and trouble. I believe that in all cases of importancein which I have altered the translation, or felt that there was a doubt, I have given the original from Otto's edition (Jena, 1842). 

CONTENTS. 

 PAGESECTION I. --Introductory 1SECTION II. --The Way Cleared 5SECTION III. --The Principal Witness--His Religious Views 9SECTION IV. --The Principal Witness--The Sources of his Knowledge respecting the Birth of Christ 19SECTION V. --The Principal Witness--His Testimony respecting the Baptism of Christ 29SECTION VI. --The Principal Witness--His Testimony respecting the Death of Christ 33SECTION VII. --The Principal Witness--His Testimony respecting the Moral Teaching of our Lord 40SECTION VIII. --The Principal Witness--His Testimony to St. John 45SECTION IX. --The Principal Witness--His Further Testimony to St. John 53SECTION X. --The Principal Witness--His Testimony summed up 60SECTION XI. --The Principal Witness on our Lord's Godhead 65SECTION XII. --The Principal Witness on the Doctrine of the Logos 73SECTION XIII. --The Principal Witness on our Lord as King, Priest, and Angel 80SECTION XIV. --The Principal Witness on the Doctrine of the Trinity 85SECTION XV. --Justin and St. John on the Incarnation 88SECTION XVI. --Justin and St. John on the Subordination of the Son 93SECTION XVII. --Justin and Philo 98SECTION XVIII. --Discrepancies between St. John and the Synoptics 104SECTION XIX. --External Proofs of the Authenticity of our Four Gospels 118Note on Section XIX. --Testimonies of Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian to the use of the Four Gospels in their day 136SECTION XX. --The Evidence for Miracles 149SECTION XXI. --Objections to Miracles 162SECTION XXII. --Jewish Credulity 167SECTION XXIII. --Demoniacal Possession 173SECTION XXIV. --Competent Witnesses 179SECTION XXV. --Date of Testimony 185

THE LOST GOSPEL. 

SECTION I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

In the following pages I have examined the conclusions at which theauthor of a book entitled "Supernatural Religion" has assumed to havearrived. 

The method and contents of the work in question may be thus described. 

The work is entitled "Supernatural Religion, an Inquiry into the Realityof Divine Revelation. " Its contents occupy two volumes of about 500pages each, so that we have in it an elaborate attack upon Christianityof very considerable length. The first 200 pages of the first volume arefilled with arguments to prove that a Revelation, such as the one weprofess to believe in, supernatural in its origin and nature andattested by miracles, is simply incredible, and so, on no account, nomatter how evidenced, to be received. 

But, inasmuch as the author has to face the fact, that the ChristianReligion professes to be attested by miracles performed at a very lateperiod in the history of the world, and said to have been witnessed byvery large numbers of persons, and related very fully in certain bookscalled the Canonical Gospels, which the whole body of Christians have, from a very early period indeed, received as written by eye-witnesses, or by the companions of eye-witnesses, the remaining 800 pages areoccupied with attempts at disparaging the testimony of these writings. In order to this, the Christian Fathers and heretical writers of acertain period are examined, to ascertain whether they quoted the fourEvangelists. The period from which the writer chooses his witnesses tothe use of the four Evangelists, is most unwarrantably and arbitrarilyrestricted to the first ninety years of the second century (100-185 orso). We shall have ample means for showing that this limitation was fora purpose. 

The array of witnesses examined runs thus: Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Papias ofHierapolis, the Clementines, the Epistle to Diognetus, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Tatian, Dionysius of Corinth, Melito of Sardis, Claudius Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Epistle of Vienne and Lyons, Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, Celsus and the Canon of Muratori. 

The examination of references, or supposed references, in these books tothe first three Gospels fills above 500 pages, and the remainder (about220) is occupied with an examination of the claims of the fourth Gospelto be considered as canonical. 

The writer conducts this examination with an avowed dogmatical bias; andthis, as the reader will soon see, influences the manner of hisexamination throughout the whole book. For instance, he never fails togive to the anti-Christian side the benefit of every doubt, or evensuspicion. This leads him to make the most of the smallest discrepancybetween the words of any supposed quotation in any early writer from oneof our Canonical Gospels, and the words as contained in our presentGospels. If the writer quotes the Evangelist freely, with somedifferences, however slight, in the words, he is assumed to quote from alost Apocryphal Gospel. If the writer gives the words as we find them inour Gospels, he attempts to show that the father or heretic need nothave even seen our present Gospels; for, inasmuch as our present Gospelshave many things in common which are derived from an earlier source, thequoter may have derived the words he quotes from the earlier source. Ifthe quoter actually mentions the name of the Evangelist whose Gospel herefers to (say St. Mark), it is roundly asserted that his St. Mark isnot the same as ours. [Endnote 3:1]

The reader may ask, "How is it possible, against such a mode ofargument, to prove the genuineness or authenticity of any book, sacredor profane?" And, of course, it is not. Such a way of conducting acontroversy seems absurd, but on the author's premises it is anecessity. He asserts the dogma that the Governor of the world cannotinterfere by way of miracle. He has to meet the fact that the foremostreligion of the world appeals to miracles, especially the miracle of theResurrection of the Founder. For the truth of this miraculousResurrection there is at least a thousand times more evidence than thereis for any historical fact which is recorded to have occurred 1, 800years ago. Of course, if the supernatural in Christianity is impossible, and so incredible, all the witnesses to it must be discredited; andtheir number, their age, and their unanimity upon the principal pointsare such that the mere attempt must tax the powers of human labour andingenuity to the uttermost. 

How, then, is such a book to be met? It would take a work of twice thesize to rebut all the assertions of the author, for, naturally, ananswer to any assertion must take up more space than the assertion. Fortunately, in this case, we are not driven to any such course; for, asI shall show over and over again, the author has furnished us with themost ample means for his own refutation. No book that I have over reador heard of contains so much which can be met by implication from thepages of the author himself, nor can I imagine any book of suchpretensions pervaded with so entire a misconception of the conditions ofthe problem on which he is writing. 

These assertions I shall now, God helping, proceed to make good. 

SECTION II. 

THE WAY CLEARED. 

The writers, whose testimonies to the existence or use of our presentGospels are examined by the author, are twenty-three in number. Five ofthese, namely, Hegesippus, Papias, Melito, Claudius Apollinaris, andDionysius of Corinth are only known to us through fragments preserved asquotations in Eusebius and others. Six others--Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Ptolemaeus, Heracleon, and Celsus--are heretical or infidelwriters whom we only know through notices or scraps of their works inthe writings of the Christian Fathers who refuted them. The Epistle ofthe Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons is only in part preserved in the pagesof Eusebius. The Canon of Muratori is a mutilated fragment of uncertaindate. Athenagoras and Tatian are only known through Apologies writtenfor the Heathen, the last of all Christian books in which to look fordefinite references to canonical writings. The Epistle to Diognetus is asmall tract of uncertain date and authorship. The Clementine Homilies isan apocryphal work of very little value in the present discussion. 

These are all the writings placed by the author as subsequent to JustinMartyr. The writers previous to Justin, of whom the author of"Supernatural Religion" makes use, are Clement of Rome (to whom we shallafterwards refer), the Epistle of Barnabas, the Pastor of Hermas, theEpistles of Ignatius, and that of Polycarp. 

As I desire to take the author on his own ground whenever it is possibleto do so, I shall, for argument's sake, take the author's account of theage and authority of these documents. I shall consequently assume withhim that

 "None of the epistles [of Ignatius] have any value as evidence for an earlier period than the end of the second or beginning of the third century [from about 190 to 210 or so], if indeed they possess any value at all. " [6:1] (Vol. I. P. 274. )

With respect to the short Epistle of Polycarp, I shall be patient of hisassumption that

 "Instead of proving the existence of the epistles of Ignatius, with which it is intimately associated, it is itself discredited in proportion as they are shown to be inauthentic. " (Vol. I. P. 274)

and so he

 "assigns it to the latter half of the second century, in so far as any genuine part of it is concerned. " (P. 275)

Similarly, I shall assume that the Pastor of Hermas "may have beenwritten about the middle of the second century" (p. 256), and, withrespect to the Epistle of Barnabas, I shall take the latest datementioned by the author of "Supernatural Religion, " where he writesrespecting the epistle--

 "There is little or no certainty how far into the second century its composition may not reasonably be advanced. Critics are divided upon the point, a few are disposed to date the epistle about the end of the first century; others at the beginning of the second century; while a still greater number assign it to the reign of Adrian (A. D. 117-130); and others, not without reason, consider that it exhibits marks of a still later period. " (Vol. I. P. 235. )

The way, then, is so far cleared that I can confine my remarks to theinvestigation of the supposed citations from the Canonical Gospels, tobe found in the works of Justin Martyr. Before beginning this, it may bewell to direct the reader's attention to the real point at issue; andthis I shall have to do continually throughout my examination. The workis entitled "Supernatural Religion, " and is an attack upon what theauthor calls "Ecclesiastical Christianity, " because such Christianitysets forth the Founder of our Religion as conceived and born in asupernatural way; as doing throughout His life supernatural acts; asdying for a supernatural purpose; and as raised from the dead by amiracle, which was the sign and seal of the truth of all Hissupernatural claims. The attack in the book in question takes the formof a continuous effort to show that all our four Gospels areunauthentic, by showing, or attempting to show, that they were neverquoted before the latter part of the second century: but the real pointof attack is the supernatural in the records of Christ's Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection. 

SECTION III. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. --HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 

The examination of the quotations in Justin Martyr of the SynopticGospels occupies nearly one hundred and fifty pages; and deservedly so, for the acknowledged writings of this Father are, if we except theClementine forgeries and the wild vision of Hermas, more in length thanthose of all the other twenty-three witnesses put together. They arealso valuable because no doubts can be thrown upon their date, andbecause they take up, or advert to, so many subjects of interest toChristians in all ages. 

The universally acknowledged writings of Justin Martyr are three:--TwoApologies addressed to the Heathen, and a Dialogue with Trypho a Jew. 

The first Apology is addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and waswritten before the year 150 A. D. The second Apology is by some supposedto be the first in point of publication, and is addressed to the Romanpeople. 

The contents of the two Apologies are remarkable in this respect, thatJustin scruples not to bring before the heathen the very arcana ofChristianity. No apologist shows so little "reserve" in stating to theheathen the mysteries of the faith. At the very outset he enunciates thedoctrine of the Incarnate Logos:--

 "For not only among the Greeks did Logos (or Reason) prevail to condemn these things by Socrates, but also among the barbarians were they condemned by the Logos himself, who took shape and became man, and was called Jesus Christ. " [10:1] (Apol. I. 5. )

In the next chapter he sets forth the doctrine and worship of theTrinity:--

 "But both Him [the Father] and the Son, Who came forth from Him and taught these things to us and the host of heaven, the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him, and the Prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and truth. " [10:2]

Again:--

 "Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who was also born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the time of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the True God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the third. " (Apol. I. Ch. X. 3. )

Again, a little further on, he claims for Christians a higher belief inthe supernatural than the heathen had, for, whereas the heathen went nofurther than believing that souls after death are in a state ofsensation, Christians believed in the resurrection of the body:--

 "Such favour as you grant to these, grant also unto us, who not less but more firmly than they believe in God; since we expect to receive again our own bodies, though they be dead and cast into the earth, for we maintain that with God nothing is impossible. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xviii. )

In the next chapter (xix. ) he proceeds to prove the Resurrectionpossible. This he does from the analogy of human generation, and heconcludes thus:--

 "So also judge ye that it is not impossible that the bodies of men after they have been dissolved, and like seeds resolved into earth, should in God's appointed time rise again and put on incorruption. "

In another place in the same Apology he asserts the personality ofSatan:--

 "For among us the prince of the wicked spirits is called the serpent, and Satan, and the devil, as you can learn by looking into our writings, and that he would be sent into the fire with his host, and the men who followed him, and would be punished for an endless duration, Christ foretold. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xxviii. )

In the same short chapter he asserts in very weighty words his belief inthe ever-watchful providence of God:--

 "And if any one disbelieves that God cares for these things (the welfare of the human race), he will thereby either insinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things are reckoned good or evil, and this is the greatest profanity and wickedness. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xxviii. )

Shortly after this he tells the heathen Emperor that the mission andwork of Jesus Christ had been predicted:--

 "There were amongst the Jews certain men who were prophets of God, through whom the Prophetic Spirit published beforehand things that were to come to pass, ere ever they happened. And their prophecies, as they were spoken and when they were uttered, the kings who happened to be reigning among the Jews at the several times carefully preserved in their possession, when they had been arranged in books by the prophets themselves in their own Hebrew language.... In these books, then, of the prophets, we found Jesus Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate, and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unrecognized, and crucified, and dying and rising again, and ascending into heaven, and being, and being called, the Son of God. We find it also predicted that certain persons should be sent by Him into every nation to publish these things, and that rather among the Gentiles (than among the Jews) men should believe on Him. And He was predicted before He appeared, first 5, 000 years before, and again 3, 000, then 2, 000, then 1, 000, and yet again 800; for in the succession of generations prophets after prophets arose. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xxxi. )

Then he proceeds to show how certain particular prophecies which hecites were fulfilled in the Jews having a lawgiver till the time ofChrist, and not after; in Christ's entry into Jerusalem; in His Birth ofa Virgin; in the place of His Birth; in His having His hands and feetpierced with the nails. (Ch. Xxxiii. , xxxiv. , xxxv. )

Again, immediately afterwards, he endeavours to classify certainprophecies as peculiarly those of God the Father, certain others aspeculiarly those of God the Son, and others as the special utterance ofthe Spirit. (Ch. Xxxvi. -xl. )

Then he proceeds to specify certain particular prophecies as fulfilledin our Lord's Advent (ch. Xl. ); certain others in His Crucifixion(xli. ); in His Session in heaven (xlv. ); in the desolation of Judaea(xlvii. ); in the miracles and Death of Christ (xlviii. ); in Hisrejection by the Jews (xlix. ); in His Humiliation (l. ) He concludes withasserting the extreme importance of prophecy, as without it we shouldnot be warranted in believing such things of any one of the humanrace:--

 "For with what reason should we believe of a crucified Man that He is the first-born of the unbegotten God, and Himself will pass judgment on the whole human race, unless we have found testimonies concerning Him published before He came, and was born as man, and unless we saw that things had happened accordingly, --the devastation of the land of the Jews, and men of every race persuaded by His teaching through the Apostles, and rejecting their old habits, in which, being deceived, they had had their conversation. " (Ch. Liii. )

After this he speaks (ch. Lxi. ) of Christian Baptism, as being in somesense a conveyance of Regeneration, and of the Eucharist (ch. Lxvi. ), asbeing a mysterious communication of the Flesh and Blood of Christ, andat the conclusion he describes the worship of Christians, and tells theEmperor that in their assemblies the memoirs of the Apostles (by whichname he designates the accounts of the Birth, Life, and Death ofChrist), or the writings of the Prophets were read, as long as timepermits, putting the former on a par with the latter, as equallynecessary for the instruction of Christians. 

Besides this, we find that Justin holds all these views of Scripturetruths which are now called Evangelical. He speaks of men now being

 "Purified no longer by the blood of goats and sheep, or by the ashes of an heifer, or by the offerings of fine flour, but by faith through the Blood of Christ, and through His Death, Who died for this very reason. " (Dial. )

And again:

 "So that it becomes you to eradicate this hope (_i. E. _ of salvation by Jewish ordinances) from your souls, and hasten to know in what way forgiveness of sins, and a hope of inheriting the promised good things, shall be yours. But there is no other way than this to become acquainted with this Christ, to be washed in the fountain spoken of by Isaiah for the remission of sins, and for the rest to lead sinless lives. " (Dial. Xliv. )

So that from this Apology alone, though addressed to the heathen, welearn that Justin cordially accepted every supernatural element inChristianity. He thoroughly believed in the Trinity, the Incarnation ofthe Logos, the miraculous Conception, Birth, Life, Miracles, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. He firmly believed in thepredictive element in prophecy, in the atoning virtue of the Death ofChrist, in the mysterious inward grace or inward part in each Sacrament, in the heart-cleansing power of the Spirit of God, in the particularprovidence of God, in the resurrection of the body, in eternal rewardand eternal punishment. 

Whatever, then, was the source of his knowledge, that knowledge made himintensely dogmatic in his creed, and a firm believer in the supernaturalnature of everything in his religion. 

The Second Apology is of the same nature as the first. A single shortextract or two from it will show how firmly the author held thesupernatural:--

 "Our doctrines, then, appear to be greater than all human teaching; because Christ, who appeared for our sakes, became the whole rational being, both body, and reason, and soul.... These things our Christ did through His own power. For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine; but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is the Word Who is in every man, and Who foretold the things that were to come to pass both through the prophets and in His own Person when He was made of like passions, and taught these things); not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artizans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, and death; since He is a Power of the ineffable Father, and not the mere instrument of human reason. " (Apol. II. Ch. X. )

The dialogue with Trypho is the record of a lengthy discussion with aJew for the purpose of converting him to the Christian faith. Theassertion of the supernatural is here, if possible, more unreserved thanin the First Apology. In order to convert Trypho, Justin cites everyprophecy of the Old Testament that can, with the smallest show ofreason, be referred to Christ. 

Having, first of all, vindicated the Christians from the charge ofsetting aside the Jewish law or covenant, by an argument evidentlyderived from the Epistle to the Hebrews, [15:1] and vindicated forChristians the title of the true spiritual Israel, [15:2] he proceeds tothe prophetical Scriptures, and transcribes the whole of the prophecy ofIsaiah from the fifty-second chapter to the fifty-fourth, and applies itto Christ and His Kingdom. (Dial. Ch. Xiii. ) Shortly after, he appliesto the second Advent of Christ the prophecy of Daniel respecting the Sonof Man, brought before the Ancient of Days. (Ch. Xxxi. ) Then he noticesand refutes certain destructive interpretations of prophecies which havebeen derived from the unbelieving Jews by our modern rationalists, asthat Psalm cx. Is spoken of Hezekiah, and Psalm lxxii. Of Solomon. 

Then he proceeds to prove that Christ is both God and Lord of Hosts; andhe first cites Psalm xxiv. , and then Psalms xlvi. , xcviii. , and xlv. (Ch. Xxxvi. , xxxvii. , xxxviii. )

Then, after returning to the Mosaic law, and proving that certain pointsin its ritual wore fulfilled in the Christian system (as the oblation offine flour in the Eucharist--ch. Xli. ), he concludes this part of hisargument with the assertion that the Mosaic law had an end in Christ:--

 "In short, sirs, " said I, "by enumerating all the other appointments of Moses, I can demonstrate that they were types, and symbols, and declarations of those things which would happen to Christ, of those who, it was foreknown, were to believe in Him, and of those things which would also be done by Christ Himself. " (Ch. Xlii. )

Then he again proves that this Christ was to be, and was, born of avirgin; and takes occasion to show that the virgin mentioned in Isaiahvii. Was not a young married woman, as rationalists in Germany and amongourselves have learnt from the unbelieving Jews. (Ch. Xliii. )

To go over more of Justin's argument would be beside my purpose, whichis at present simply to show how very firmly his faith embraced thesupernatural. 

I shall mention one more application of prophecy. When Trypho asks thatJustin should resume the discourse, and show that the Spirit of prophecyadmits another God besides the Maker of all things, [17:1] Justinaccepts his challenge, and commences with the appearance of the threeangels to Abraham, and devotes much space and labour to a siftingdiscussion of the meaning of this place. The conclusion is thusexpressed:--

 "And now have you not perceived, my friends, that one of the three, Who is both God and Lord, and ministers to Him Who is [remains] in the heavens, is Lord of the two angels? For when [the angels] proceeded to Sodom He remained behind, and communed with Abraham in the words recorded by Moses; and when He departed after the conversation Abraham went back to his place. And when He came [to Sodom] the two angels no longer converse with Lot, but Himself, as the Scripture makes evident; and He is the Lord Who received commission from the Lord Who [remains] in the heavens, i. E. The Maker of all things, to inflict upon Sodom and Gomorrah the [judgments] which the Scripture describes in these terms: 'The Lord rained upon Sodom sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. '" (Ch. Lvi. )

It is clear from all this that Justin Martyr looked upon prophecy as asupernatural gift, bestowed upon men in order to prepare them to receivethat Christ whom God would send. Instead of regarding it as the naturalsurmising of far-seeing men who, from their experience of the past, andfrom their knowledge of human nature, could in some sort guess whatcourse events are likely to take, he regarded it as a Divine influenceemanating from Him Who knows the future as perfectly as He knows thepast, and for His own purposes revealing events, and in many cases whatwe should call _trifling_ events, which would be wholly out of the powerof man to guess or even to imagine. 

I am not, of course, concerned to show that Justin was right in hisviews of prophecy; all I am concerned to show is, that Justin regardedprophecy as the highest of supernatural gifts. 

Such, then, was the view of Justin respecting Christ and the Religion Heestablished. Christ, the highest of supernatural beings, His Adventforetold by men with supernatural gifts to make known the future, comingto us in the highest of supernatural ways, and establishing asupernatural kingdom for bringing about such supernatural ends as thereconciliation of all men to God by His Sacrifice, the Resurrection ofthe body, and the subjugation of the wills of all men to the Will ofGod. 

SECTION IV. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. --THE SOURCES OF HIS KNOWLEDGE RESPECTING THE BIRTHOF CHRIST. 

The question now arises, and I beg the reader to remember that it is thequestion on which the author of "Supernatural Religion" stakesall, --From what source did Justin derive this supernatural view ofChristianity?

With respect to the Incarnation, Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection ofChrist, he evidently derives it from certain documents which herepeatedly cites, as "The Memoirs of the Apostles" ([Greek:Apomnêmoneumata tôn Apostolôn]). These are the documents which hementions as being read, along with the Prophets, at the meetings ofChristians. 

On one occasion, when he is seemingly referring to the [bloody] sweat ofour Lord, which is mentioned only in St. Luke, who is not an Apostle, hedesignates these writings as the "Memoirs which were drawn up by theApostles _and those who followed them_. " [19:1] Again, on anotheroccasion, he seems to indicate specially the Gospel of St. Mark as beingthe "Memoirs of Peter. " It is a well-known fact that all ecclesiasticaltradition, almost with one voice, has handed down that St. Mark wrotehis Gospel under the superintendence, if not at the dictation, of St. Peter; and when Justin has occasion to mention that our Lord gave thename of Boanerges to the sons of Zebedee, an incident mentioned only bySt. Mark, he seems at least to indicate the Gospel of St. Mark as beingspecially connected with St. Peter as his Memoirs when he writes:[20:1]--

 "And when it is said that he changed the name of one of the Apostles to Peter; and when it is written in his Memoirs that this so happened, as well as that He changed the names of two other brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means 'sons of thunder;' this was an announcement, " &c. (Ch. Cvi. )

With the exception of these two apparent cases, Justin neverdistinguishes one Memoir from another. He never mentions the author orauthors of the Memoirs by name, and for this reason--that the threeundoubted treatises of his which have come down to us are all writtenfor those outside the pale of the Christian Church. It would have beenworse than useless, in writing for such persons, to distinguish betweenEvangelist and Evangelist. So far as "those without" were concerned, theEvangelists gave the same view of Christ and His work; and to havequoted first one and then another by name would have been mischievous, as indicating differences when the testimony of all that could be calledmemoirs was, in point of fact, one and the same. 

According to the author of "Supernatural Religion" Justin ten timesdesignates the source of his quotations as the "Memoirs of theApostles, " and five times as simply the "Memoirs. "

Now the issue which the writer of "Supernatural Religion" raises isthis: "Were these Memoirs our present four Gospels, or were they someolder Gospel or Gospels?" to which we may add another: "Did Justin quoteany other lost Gospel besides our four?"

 * * * * *

I shall now give some instances of the use which Justin makes of thewritings which he calls "Memoirs, " and this will enable the reader ingreat measure to judge for himself. 

First of all, then, I give one or two extracts from Justin's account ofour Lord's Nativity. Let the reader remember that, with respect to thefirst of these, the account is not introduced in order to give Trypho anaccount of our Lord's Birth, but to assure him that a certain prophecy, as it is worded in the Septuagint translation of Isaiah--viz. , "He shalltake the powers of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria, " was fulfilled inChrist. And indeed almost every incident which Justin takes notice of herelates as a fulfilment of some prophecy or other. Trifling orcomparatively trifling incidents in our Lord's Life are noticed at greatlength, because they are supposed to be the fulfilment of some prophecy;and what we should consider more important events are passed over insilence, because they do not seem to fulfil any prediction. 

The first extract from Justin, then, shall be the following:--

 "Now this King Herod, at the time when the Magi came to him from Arabia, and said they knew from a star which appeared in the heavens that a King had been born in your country, and that they had come to worship Him, learned from the Elders of your people, that it was thus written regarding Bethlehem in the Prophet: 'And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art by no means least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall go forth the leader, who shall feed my people. ' Accordingly, the Magi from Arabia came to Bethlehem, and worshipped the child, and presented him with gifts, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh; but returned not to Herod, being warned in a revelation after worshipping the child in Bethlehem. And Joseph, the spouse of Mary, who wished at first to put away his betrothed Mary, supposing her to be pregnant by intercourse with a man, _i. E. _ from fornication, was commanded in a vision not to put away his wife; and the angel who appeared to him told him that what is in her womb is of the Holy Ghost. Then he was afraid and did not put her away, but on the occasion of the first census which was taken in Judea under Cyrenius, he went up from Nazareth, where he lived, to Bethlehem, to which he belonged, to be enrolled; for his family was of the tribe of Judah, which then inhabited that region. Then, along with Mary, he is ordered to proceed into Egypt, and remain there with the Child, until another revelation warn them to return to Judea. But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since Joseph could not find a lodging in that village, he took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia, found Him. 'I have repeated to you, ' I continued, 'what Isaiah foretold about the sign which foreshadowed the cave; but, for the sake of those which have come with us to-day, I shall again remind you of the passage. ' Then I repeated the passage from Isaiah which I have already written, adding that, by means of those words, those who presided over the mysteries of Mithras were stirred up by the devil to say that in a place, called among them a cave, they were initiated by him. 'So Herod, when the Magi from Arabia did not return to him, as he had asked them to do, but had departed by another way to their own country, according to the commands laid upon them; and when Joseph, with Mary and the Child, had now gone into Egypt, as it was revealed to them to do; as he did not know the Child whom the Magi had gone to worship, ordered simply the whole of the children then in Bethlehem to be massacred. And Jeremiah prophesied that this would happen, speaking by the Holy Ghost thus: 'A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and much wailing, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they are not. '" (Dial. Ch. Lxxviii. )

Now any unprejudiced reader, on examining this account, would instantlysay that Justin had derived every word of it from the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, but that, instead of quoting the exact words ofeither Evangelist, he would say that he (Justin) "reproduced" them. Hereproduced the narrative of the Nativity as it is found in each of thesetwo Gospels. He first reproduces the narrative in St. Matthew insomewhat more colloquial phrase than the Evangelist used, interspersingwith it remarks of his own; and in order to account for the Birth ofChrist in Bethlehem he brings in from St. Luke the matter of the census, (not with historical accuracy but) sufficiently to show that he wasacquainted with the beginning of Luke ii. ; and in order to account forthe fact that Christ was not born in the inn, but in a more sordid place(whether stable or cave matters not, for if it was a cave it was a caveused as a stable, for there was a "manger" in it), he reproduces Lukeii. 6-7. 

Justin then, in a single consecutive narrative, expressed much in hisown words, gives the whole account, so far as it was a fulfilment ofprophecy, made up from two narratives which have come down to us in theGospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in these only. It would havebeen absurd for him to have done otherwise, as he might have done if hehad anticipated the carpings of nineteenth century critics, and assumedthat Trypho, an unconverted Jew, had a New Testament in his hand withwhich he was so familiar that he could be referred to first onenarrative and then the other, in order to test the correctness ofJustin's quotations. 

Against all this the author of "Supernatural Religion" brings forward anumber of trifling disagreements as proofs that Justin need not havequoted one of the Evangelists--probably did not--indeed, may not haveever seen our synoptics, or heard of their existence. But the readerwill observe that he has given the same history as we find in the twosynoptics which have given an account of the Nativity, and he apparentlyknew of no other account of the matter. 

We are reminded that there were numerous apocryphal Gospels then in usein the Church, and that Justin might have derived his matter from these;but, if so, how is it that he discards all the lying legends with whichthose Gospels team, and, with the solitary exception of the mention ofthe cave, confines himself to the circumstances of the synopticnarrative. 

The next place respecting the Nativity shall be one from ch. C. :--

 "But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her; wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God: and she replied, 'Be it unto me according to Thy word. '"

Here both the words of the angel and the answer of the virgin are almostidentical with the words in St. Luke's Gospel; Justin, however, puttinghis account into the oblique narrative. 

We will put the two side by side that the reader may compare them. 

 [GREEK TABLE]

Pistin de kai charan labousa |Maria hê parthenos euangelizomenou |autê Gabriêl angelou, hoti pneuma | Pneuma hagion epeleusetai epikyriou ep' autên epeleusetai, | se, kai dynamis hypsistoukai dunamis hypsistou episkiasei | episkiasei soi, dio kai to gennômenonautên, dio kai to gennômenon | hagion klêthêsetai Hyios Theou. Ex autês hagion estin Hyios Theou, | * * * * *apekrinato, Genoito moi kata to | Genoito moi kaia to rhêma sou. Rhêma sou. |

Now of these words, _as existing in St. Luke_, the author of"Supernatural Religion" takes no notice. Was he, then, acquainted withthe fact that Justin's words _in this place_ so closely correspond withSt. Luke's? We cannot say. We only know that he calls his readers'particular attention to a supposed citation of the previous words of theangel Gabriel, cited in another place:--

 "Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Ghost, and shalt bear a Son, and He shall be called the Son of the Highest, and thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xxxiii. )

The ordinary unprejudiced reader would say that Justin here reproducesSt. Matthew and St. Luke, weaving into St. Luke's narrative the words ofthe angel to St. Joseph; but our author will not allow this for amoment. He insists that Justin knew nothing, or need have known nothing, of St. Luke. He shows that the words of the angel, "He shall save hispeople, " &c. , which seem to be introduced from St. Matthew, "are notaccidentally inserted in this place, for we find that they are joined inthe same manner to the address of the angel to Mary in theProtevangelium of St. James. "

But how about those words which succeed them in answer to the questionof the Virgin, "How shall these things be?" I mean those quoted in the"Dialogue" beginning "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, " &c. If everone author quotes another, Justin in this place quotes St. Luke. Theycannot be taken from the Protevangelium, because the corresponding wordsin the Protevangelium are very different from those in St. Luke; and theonly real difference between Justin's quotation and St. Luke is that St. Luke reads, "shall be called the Son of God;" whereas Justin has "is theSon of God. " Now in this Justin differs from the Protevangelium, whichreads, "Shall be called the Son of the Highest;" so the probability isstill more increased that in the quotation from the "Dialogue" he didnot quote the Protevangelium, and did quote St. Luke. However, we willmake the author a present of these words, because we want to assume fora moment the truth of his conclusion, which he thus expresses:--

 "Justin's divergencies from the Protevangelium prevent our supposing that, in its present form, it could have been the actual source of his quotations; but the wide differences which exist between the extant MSS. Of the Protevangelium show that even the most ancient does not present it in its original form. It is much more probable that Justin had before him a still older work, to which both the Protevangelium and the third Gospel were indebted. " ("Supernatural Religion, " vol. I. P. 306. )

Assuming, then, the correctness of this, Justin had a still older Gospelthan that of St. Luke; and we shall hereafter show that St. Luke'sGospel was used in all parts of the world in Justin's day, and longbefore it. Now Justin himself lived only 100 years after theResurrection; and this is no very great age for the copy of a book, still less for the book itself, of which any one may convince himself bya glance around his library. We may depend upon it that Justin wouldhave used the oldest sources of information. A book so old in Justin'sdays may have been published at the outset of Christianity. The authorhimself surmises that it may have been the work of one of St. Luke's[Greek: polloi]. Anyhow it is an older and therefore, according to thewriter's own line of argument all through his book, a more reliablewitness to the things of Christ, and its witness is to the supernaturalin His Birth. Are we, then, able to form any conjecture as to the nameof this most ancient Gospel? Yes. The author of "Supernatural Religion"identifies it with the lost Gospel to the Hebrews, in the words:--

 "Much more probably, however, Justin quotes from the more ancient source from which the Protevangelium and perhaps St. Luke drew their narrative. There can be little doubt that the Gospel according to the Hebrews contained an account of the birth in Bethelehem, and as it is, at least, certain that Justin quotes other particulars from it, there is fair reason to believe that he likewise found this fact [28:1] in that work. " (Vol. Ii. P. 313. )

If, then, this be the Gospel from which Justin derived his account ofthe Nativity, it seems to have contained all the facts for which we havenow to look into St. Matthew and St. Luke. It combined the testimoniesof both Evangelists to the supernatural Birth of Jesus. 

SECTION V. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. --HIS TESTIMONY RESPECTING THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST. 

The next extract from Justin which I shall give is one describing ourLord's Baptism. This account, like almost every other given in thedialogue with Trypho, is mentioned by him, not so much for its own sake, but because it gave him opportunity to show the fulfilment, or supposedfulfilment, of a prophecy--in this case the prophecy of Isaiah that the"Spirit of the Lord should rest upon Him. "

 "Even at His birth He was in possession of His power; and as He grew up like all other men, by using the fitting means, He assigned its own [requirements] to each development, and was sustained by all kinds of nourishment, and waited for thirty years, more or less, until John appeared before Him as the herald of His approach, and preceded Him in the way of baptism, as I have already shown. And then, when Jesus had gone to the river Jordan, where John was baptizing, and when He had stepped into the water, a fire was kindled in the Jordan; and when He came out of the water, the Holy Ghost lighted on Him like a dove [as] the Apostles of this very Christ of ours wrote.... For when John remained (literally sat) [29:1] by the Jordan, and preached the baptism of repentance, wearing only a leathern girdle and a vesture made of camel's hair, eating nothing but locusts and wild honey, men supposed him to be Christ; but he cried to them--'I am not the Christ, but the voice of one crying; for He that is stronger than I shall come, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.... ' The Holy Ghost, and for man's sake, as I formerly stated, lighted on Him in the form of a dove, and there came at the same instant from the heavens a voice, which was uttered also by David when he spoke, personating Christ, what the Father would say to Him, 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee;' [the Father] saying that His generation would take place for men, at the time when they would become acquainted with Him. 'Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee. '" (Ch. Lxxxviii. )

The author of "Supernatural Religion" lays very great stress upon thispassage, as indicating throughout sources of information different fromour Gospels. He makes the most of the fact that John is said to have"sat" by the Jordan, not apparently remembering that sitting was thenormal posture for preaching and teaching (Matthew v. 1; Luke iv. 20). He, of course, dwells much upon the circumstance that a fire was kindledin the Jordan at the time of our Lord's baptism, which additionalinstance of the supernatural Justin may have derived either fromtradition or from the Gospel to the Hebrews. Above all, he dwells uponthe fact--and a remarkable fact it is--that Justin supposes that thewords of the Father wore not "Thou art my beloved Son, in Thee I am wellpleased, " but "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. "

Now I do not for a moment desire to lessen the importance of thedifficulty involved in a man, living in the age of Justin, giving thewords, of the Father so differently to what they appear in our Gospels. But what is the import of the discrepancy? It is simply a theologicaldifficulty, the same in all respects with that which is involved in theapplication of these very words to the Resurrection of Christ by St. Paul, in Acts xiii. 33. It is in no sense a difficulty having thesmallest bearing on the supernatural; for it is equally as supernaturalfor the Father to have said, with a voice audible to mortal ears, "Thisday have I begotten Thee, " as it is for Him to have said, "In Thee I amwell pleased. "

What, then, is the inference which the author of "Supernatural Religion"draws from these discrepancies? This, --that Justin derived hisinformation from the lost Gospel to the Hebrews. 

 "In the scanty fragments of the 'Gospel according to the Hebrews, ' which have been preserved, we find both the incident of the fire kindled in Jordan, and the words of the heavenly voice, as quoted by Justin:--'And as He went out of the water, the heavens opened, and He saw the Holy Spirit of God in the form of a dove descend and enter into Him. And a voice was heard from heaven, saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased;' and again, 'This day have I begotten Thee. ' And immediately a great light shone in that place. ' Epiphanius extracts this passage from the version in use among the Ebionites, but it is well known that there were many other varying forms of the same Gospel; and Hilgenfeld, with all probability, conjectures that the version known to Epiphanius was no longer in the same purity as that used by Justin, but represents the transition stage to the Canonical Gospels, adopting the words of the voice which they give without yet discarding the older form. " ("Supernatural Religion, " vol. I. P. 320. )

Here, then, are the remains of an older Gospel used by Justin, takenfrom copies which rationalists assert to have been, when used by him, ina state of greater purity than a subsequent recension, which subsequentrecension was anterior to our present Gospels, and being older waspurer, because nearer to the fountain-head of knowledge: but this olderand purer form is characterized by a more pronounced supernaturalelement--to wit, the 'fire' in Jordan and the 'light'--so that, theolder and purer the tradition, the more supernatural is its teaching. 

SECTION VI. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. --HIS TESTIMONY RESPECTING THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 

We have now to consider the various notices in Justin respecting ourLord's Crucifixion, and the events immediately preceding and followingit. Justin notices our Lord's entry into Jerusalem:--

 "And the prophecy, 'binding His foal to the vine and washing His robe in the blood of the grape, ' was a significant symbol of the things which were to happen to Christ, and of what He was to do. For the foal of an ass stood bound to a vine at the entrance of a village, and He ordered His acquaintances to bring it to Him then; and when it was brought He mounted and sat upon it, and entered Jerusalem. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xxxii. )

Justin in a subsequent place (Dial. Ch. Liii. ) notices the fact onlymentioned in St. Matthew, that Jesus commanded the disciples to bringboth an ass and its foal:--

 "And truly our Lord Jesus Christ, when He intended to go into Jerusalem, requested His disciples to bring Him a certain ass, along with its foal, which was bound in an entrance of a village called Bethphage; and, having seated Himself on it, He entered into Jerusalem. "

Justin thus describes the institution of the Eucharist:--

 "For the Apostles, in the Memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and, when He had given thanks, said, 'This do ye in remembrance of me, this is My body;' and that after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, 'This is My blood;' and gave it to them alone. " (Apol. I. Ch. Lxvi. )

He thus adverts to the dispersion of the Apostles:--

 "Moreover, the prophet Zechariah foretold that this same Christ would be smitten and His disciples scattered: which also took place. For after His Crucifixion the disciples that accompanied Him were dispersed. " (Dial. Ch. Liii. )

He mentions our Lord's agony as the completion of a prophecy in Psalmxxii. :--

 "For on the day on which He was to be crucified, having taken three of His disciples to the hill called Olivet, situated opposite to the temple at Jerusalem, He prayed in these words: 'Father, if it be possible, lot this cup pass from Me. ' And again He prayed, 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt. '" (Dial. Xcix. )

His sweating great drops of blood (mentioned only in St. Luke), also infulfilment of Psalm xxii. --

 "For in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His Apostles, and those who followed them [it is recorded] that His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying, and saying, 'If it be possible, let this cup pass. '" [34:1] (Ch. Ciii. )

His being sent to Herod (mentioned only in St. Luke):--

 "And when Herod succeeded Archelaus, having received the authority which had been allotted to him, Pilate sent to him by way of compliment Jesus bound; and God, foreknowing that this would happen, had thus spoken, 'And they brought Him to the Assyrian a present to the king. '" (Ch. Ciii. )

His silence before Pilate, also quoted by Justin, in fulfilment of Psalmxxii. :--

 "And the statement, 'My strength is become dry like a potsherd, and my tongue has cleaved to my throat, ' was also a prophecy of what would be done by Him according to the Father's will. For the power of His strong word, by which He always confuted the Pharisees and Scribes, and, in short, all your nation's teachers that questioned Him, had a cessation like a plentiful and strong spring, the waters of which have been turned off, when He kept silence, and chose to return no answer to any one in the presence of Pilate; as has been declared in the Memoirs of His Apostles. " (Dial. Ch. Cii. )

His crucifixion:

 "And again, in other words, David in the twenty-first Psalm thus refers to the suffering and to the cross in a parable of mystery: 'They pierced my hands and my feet; they counted all my bones; they considered and gazed upon me; they parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. ' For when they crucified Him, driving in the nails, they pierced His hands and feet; and those who crucified Him parted His garments among themselves, each casting lots for what he chose to have, and receiving according to the decision of the lot. " (Ch. Xcvii. )

The mocking of Him by His enemies:--

 "And the following: 'All they that see Me laughed Me to scorn; they spake with the lips; they shook the head: He trusted in the Lord, let Him deliver Him since He desires Him;' this likewise He foretold should happen to Him. For they that saw Him crucified shook their heads each one of them, and distorted their lips, and, twisting their noses to each other, they spake in mockery the words which are recorded in the Memoirs of His Apostles, 'He said He was the Son of God: let Him come down; let God save Him. '" (Ch. Ci. )

His saying, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (reported onlyin SS. Matthew and Mark):--

 "For, when crucified, He spake, 'O God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?'" (Ch. Xcix. )

His saying, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit, " reported onlyin St. Luke:--

 "For, when Christ was giving up His spirit on the cross, He said, 'Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit, ' as I have learned also from the Memoirs. " (Ch. Cv. )

His Resurrection and appearance to His Apostles gathered together (foundonly in SS. Luke and John), and His reminding the same Apostles thatbefore His Death He had foretold it (found only in St. Luke):--

 "And that He stood in the midst of His brethren, the Apostles (who repented of their flight from Him when He was crucified, after He rose from the dead, and after they were persuaded by Him that before His Passion He had mentioned to them that He must suffer these things, and that they were announced beforehand by the prophets). " [37:1] (Ch. Cvi. )

The Jews spreading the report that His disciples had stolen away HisBody by night (recorded only by St. Matthew):--

 "Yet you not only have not repented, after you learned that He rose from the dead, but, as I said before, you have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified, but His disciples stole Him by night from the tomb, where He was laid when unfastened from the cross. " (Ch. Cviii. )

The Apostles seeing the Ascension, and afterwards receiving power fromHim in person, and going to every race of men:--

 "And when they had seen Him ascending into heaven, and had believed, and had received power sent thence by Him upon them, and went to every race of men, they taught these things, and were called Apostles. " (Apol. I. Ch. L. )

From all this the reader will see at a glance that Justin's view of theCrucifixion and the events attending it was exactly the same as ours. Hewill notice that all the events related in Justin are the same as thoserecorded in the Evangelists Matthew and Luke; and that the circumstancesrelated by Justin, and not to be found in the Synoptics, are of the mosttrifling character, as, for instance, that the blaspheming bystanders atthe cross "screwed up their noses. " I think this is the only additionalcircumstance to which the writer of "Supernatural Religion" drawsattention. He will notice that Justin records some events only to befound in St. Matthew and some only in St. Luke. He will notice also howfrequently Justin reproduces the narrative rather than quotes it. 

The ordinary reader would account for all this by supposing that Justinhad our Synoptics (at least the first and third) before him, andreproduced incidents first from one and then from the other as theysuited his purpose, and his purpose was not to give an account of theCrucifixion, but to elucidate the prophecies respecting the Crucifixion. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion, " however, goes through thosecitations, or supposed citations, seriatim, and attempts to show thateach one must have been taken from some lost Gospel, most probably theGospel of the Hebrews. 

Be it so. Here, then, was a Gospel which contained all the separateincidents recorded in SS. Matthew and Luke, and, of course, combinedthem in one narrative. How is it that so inestimably valuable aChristian document was irretrievably lost, and its place supplied bythree others, each far its inferior, each picking and choosing separateparts from the original; and that, about 120 years after the originalpromulgation of the Gospel, these three forged narratives superseded aGospel which would have been, in the matter of our Lord's Birth, Death, and Resurrection, a complete and perfect harmony? I leave the author of"Supernatural Religion" to explain so unlikely a fact. One explanationis, however, on our author's own showing, inadmissible, which is, thatour present Synoptics were adopted because they pandered more than thesuperseded one to the growing taste for the supernatural, for theearlier Gospel or Gospels contained supernatural incidents which arewanting in our present Synoptics. 

SECTION VII. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. --HIS TESTIMONY RESPECTING THE MORAL TEACHING OFOUR LORD. 

One more class of apparent quotations from our Synoptic Gospels must nowbe considered, viz. , the citations in Justin of the moral teaching orprecepts of Christ. Those are mostly to be found in one place, in onepart of the First Apology (chapters xv. -xviii. ), and they are introducedfor the express purpose of convincing the Emperor of the high standardof Christ's moral teaching. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" gives very considerable extractsfrom these chapters, which I shall give in his own translation:--

 "He (Jesus) spoke thus of chastity: 'Whosoever may have gazed on a woman, to lust after her, hath committed adultery already in the heart before God. ' And, 'If thy right eye offend thee cut it out, for it is profitable for thee to enter into the kingdom of heaven with one eye (rather) than having two to be thrust into the everlasting fire. ' And, 'Whosoever marrieth a woman, divorced from another man, committeth adultery. '"

 * * * * *

 "And regarding our affection for all He thus taught: 'If ye love them which love you what new thing do ye? for even the fornicators do this; but I say unto you, pray for your enemies, and love them which hate you, and bless them which curse you, and offer prayer for them which despitefully use you. ' And that we should communicate to the needy, and do nothing for praise, He said thus: 'Give ye to every one that asketh, and from him that desireth to borrow turn not ye away, for, if ye lend to them from whom ye hope to receive, what new thing do ye? for even the publicans do this. But ye, lay not up for yourselves upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and robbers break through, but lay up for yourselves in the heavens, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world but destroy his soul? or what shall he give in exchange for it? Lay up, therefore, in the heavens, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. ' And, 'Be ye kind and merciful as your Father also is kind and merciful, and maketh His sun to rise on sinners, and just and evil. But be not careful what ye shall eat and what ye shall put on. Are ye not better than the birds and the beasts? and God feedeth them. Therefore be not careful what ye shall eat or what ye shall put on, for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things; but seek ye the kingdom of the heavens, and all these things shall be added unto you, for where the treasure is there is also the mind of the man. And 'Do not these things to be seen of men, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. ' And regarding our being patient under injuries, and ready to help all, and free from anger, this is what He said: 'Unto him striking thy cheek offer the other also; and him who carrieth off thy cloak, or thy coat, do not thou prevent. But whosoever shall be angry is in danger of the fire. But every one who compelleth thee to go a mile, follow twain. And let your good works shine before men, so that, perceiving, they may adore your Father, which is in heaven. ' ... And regarding our not swearing at all, but ever speaking the truth, He thus taught: 'Ye may not swear at all, but let your yea be yea, and your nay nay, for what is more than these is of the evil one. '"

 * * * * *

 "'For not those who merely make profession, but those who do the work, ' as He said, 'shall be saved. ' For He spake thus: 'Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall (enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven). For whosoever heareth me, and doeth what I say, heareth Him that sent me. But many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not eaten and drunk in Thy name, and done wonders? And then will I say unto them, 'Depart from me, workers of iniquity. ' There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when indeed the righteous shall shine as the sun, but the wicked are sent into everlasting fire. For many shall arrive in My name, outwardly, indeed, clothed in sheep-skins, but inwardly being ravening wolves. Ye shall know them from their works, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. "

 * * * * *

 "As Christ declared, saying, 'To whom God has given more, of him shall more also be demanded again. '"

The ordinary reader, remembering that Justin was writing for theheathen, would suppose, after reading the above, that Justin reproducedfrom SS. Matthew and Luke the moral precepts of Christ, or rather thosewhich suited his purpose, and his purpose was to show to the heathenEmperor that Christianity would make the best members of a community. 

To this end he reproduces the precepts respecting chastity, respectinglove to all, and communicating to the needy--being kind andmerciful--not caring much for material things--being patient andtruthful--and above all, being sincere. 

He did not reproduce the precepts respecting prayer, simply becauseimmoral men among the heathen worshipped their gods as devoutly as moralmen did. He did not reproduce the Lord's prayer, because he would notconsider that it belonged to the heathen, or the promises that God wouldhear prayer, simply because these would belong to Christians only. 

Again, he evidently altered and curtailed what the heathen would notunderstand, as for instance, in quoting our Lord's saying respecting"anger, " he quoted it very shortly, because to have quoted at length thegradations of punishment for being "angry without a cause, " for "callinga brother Raca" and "fool, " would have been almost unintelligible tothose unacquainted with Jewish customs. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" repudiates the idea that Justin, in any of these quotations, makes use of our present Gospels. Heexamines these [so-called] quotations seriatim at considerable length, for the purpose of showing that Justin's variations from our presentGospels imply another source of information. He considers (and in this Icannot agree with him, though I shall, for argument's sake, yield thepoint) that--

 "The hypothesis that these quotations are from the canonical gospels requires the acceptance of the fact that Justin, with singular care, collected from distant and scattered portions of these gospels a series of passages in close sequence to each other, forming a whole unknown to them, but complete in itself. " ("Supernatural Religion, " vol. I. P. 359)

I say I cannot agree with this, because I think that the extracts I havegiven have all the signs of a piece of patchwork by no means well puttogether, but I will assume that he is right in his view. 

Here, then, we have, according to his hypothesis, another sermon ofChrist's, which, owing to the "close sequence" of its various passages, and its completeness as a whole, must take its place alongside of theSermon on the Mount. Where does it come from?--

 "The simple and natural conclusion, supported by many strong reasons, is that Justin derived his quotations from a Gospel which was different from ours, though naturally by subject and design it must have been related to them. " (Vol. I. P. 384. )

And in page 378 our author traces one of the passages of this"consecutive" discourse through an epistle ascribed to Clement of Rometo the "Gospel according to the Egyptians, " which was in all probabilitya version of the "Gospel according to the Hebrews. "

Here, then, is a Gospel, the Gospel to the Hebrews, which not onlycontained, as the author has shown, a harmony of the histories in SS. Matthew and Luke, so far, at least, as the Birth and Death of Christ areconcerned, but also such a full and consecutive report of the moralteaching of Christ, that it may not unfitly be described as "a series ofpassages in close sequence to each other, " collected "with singularcare" "from distant and scattered portions of these Gospels. " How, weask, could such a Gospel have perished utterly? A Gospel, which, besidescontaining records of the historical and supernatural much fuller thanany one of the surviving Gospels, contained also a sort of Sermon on theMount, amalgamating in one whole the moral teaching of our Lord, oughtsurely (if it ever was in existence) to have won its place in the canon. 

SECTION VIII. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. --HIS TESTIMONY TO ST. JOHN. 

We have now to consider the citations (or supposed citations) of Justinfrom the fourth Gospel. These, as I have mentioned, are treated by theauthor of "Supernatural Religion" separately at the conclusion of hiswork. 

Whatever internal coincidences there are between the contents ofSt. John and those of the Synoptics, the external differences areexceedingly striking, and it is not at all to my present purpose to keepthis fact out of sight. The plan of St. John's Gospel is different, thestyle is different, the subjects of the discourses, the scene of action, the incidents, and (with one exception) the miracles, all are different. 

Now this will greatly facilitate the investigation of the question as towhether any author had St. John before him when he wrote. There may besome uncertainty with respect to the quotations from the Synoptics, asto whether an early writer quotes one or other, or derives what he citesfrom some earlier source, as for instance from one of St. Luke's [Greek:polloi]. 

But it cannot be so with St. John. A quotation of, or reference to, anywords of any discourse of our Lord, or an account of any transaction asreported by St. John, can be discerned in an instant. At least it can beat once seen that it cannot have been derived from the Synoptics, orfrom any supposed apocryphal or traditional sources from which theSynoptics derived their information. 

The special object of this Gospel is the identification of thepre-existent nature of our Lord with the eternal Word, and followingupon this, His relation to His Father on the one side, and to mankind onthe other. 

He is the only begotten of the Father, God being His own proper Father[Greek: idios], and so He is equal to the Father in nature (John v. 18), and yet, as being a Son, He is subordinate, so that He representsHimself throughout as sent by the Father to do His will and speak Hiswords. 

With reference to mankind He is, before His Incarnation, the "Light thatlighteth every man. " After and through His Incarnation He is to man allin all. He is even in death the object of their Faith. He is theMediator through whose very person God sends the Spirit. He is the Life, the Light, the Living Water, the Spiritual Food. 

Justin Martyr repeatedly reproduces in various forms of expression thetruth that Christ is the eternal "Word made flesh" and revealed as the"Only-begotten Son of God, " thus:--

 "The first power after God the Father and Lord of all is the Word, Who is also the Son, and of Him we will, in what follows, relate how He took flesh and became man. " (Apol. I. Ch. XXXII. )

Again:--

 "I have already proved that He was the only-begotten of the Father of all things, being begotten in a peculiar manner [Greek: idiôs], Word and Power by Him, and having afterwards become man through the Virgin. " (Dial. Ch. Cv. )

Now, we have in these two passages four or five characteristicexpressions of St. John relating to our Lord, not to be found in anyother Scripture writer. I say "in any other, " for I believe that notonly the Epistles of St. John, but also the Apocalypse, notwithstandingcertain differences in style, are to be ascribed to St. John. 

We have the term "Word" united with "the Son, " and with "Only begotten, "and said to be "properly (propriè; [Greek: idiôs]) begotten;" areminiscence of John v. 18, the only place in the New Testament wherethe adjective [Greek: idios] or its adverb [Greek: idiôs] is applied tothe relations of the Father and the Son, and we have this Word becomingflesh and man. 

Now Justin, in one of the places, writes to convince an heathen emperor;and, in the other, an unbelieving Jew; and so in each case he reproducesthe sense of John i. 1 and 14, and not the exact words. It would havebeen an absurdity for him to have quoted St. John exactly, for, in sucha case, he must have retained the words "we beheld his glory, the gloryas, " which would have simply detracted from the force of the passage, being unintelligible without some explanation. 

Again, we have in the Dialogue (ch. Lxi. ) the words "The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things. " Now herethere seems to be a reproduction of the old and very probably originalreading of John i. 18, [48:1] "The only begotten God who is in the bosomof the Father. " Certainly this reading of John i. 18 is the only placewhere the idea of being begotten is associated with the term "God. "

We next have to notice that Justin repeatedly uses the words "God" and"Lord" in collocation as applied to Jesus Christ; not "the Lord God, "the usual Old Testament collocation, but God and Lord, thus:

 "For Christ is King and Priest and God and Lord, " &c. (Dial. Ch. Xxxiv. )

Again:--

 "There is, and there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things. " (Dial. Lvi. )

Now the only Gospel in which these words are to be found together andapplied to Christ is that according to St. John, where he records theconfession of St. Thomas, "My Lord and my God" (John xx. 28). 

Again: St. John alone of the Evangelists speaks of our Lord as He thatcometh from above [Greek: ho anôthen erchomenos], as coming from heaven, as "leaving the world and going to the Father" (John iii. 31; xvi. 28), and Justin reproduces this in the words:--

 "It is declared [by David in Prophecy, ] that He would come forth from the highest heavens, and again return to the same places, in order that you may recognize Him as God coming forth from above and man living among men. " (Dial. Ch. Lxiv. )

Again: though St. John asserts by implication the equality in point ofnature of the Father and the Son (John v. 18), yet he also veryrepeatedly records words of Christ which assert His subordination to theFather. Nowhere in the Synoptics do we read such words as "I can of mineown self do nothing. " "I seek not mine own will, but the will of theFather which hath sent me" (John v. 30): "My meat is to do the will ofHim that sent me, and to finish His work" (iv. 34; also John vi. 38): "Ihave not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He gave me acommandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. " (xii. 49)

Now Justin Martyr reproduces these intimations of the subordination ofthe Son:--

 "Who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the Maker of all things, above Whom there is no other God, wishes to announce to them. " (Dial. Ch. Lvi. )

Again:--

 "I affirm that He has never at any time done anything which He Who made the world, above Whom there is no other God, has not wished Him both to do and to engage Himself with. " (Dial. Lvi. )

Again:--

 "Boasts not in accomplishing anything through His own will or might. " (Ch. Ci. )

Let the reader clearly understand that I do not lay any stresswhatsoever on these passages taken by themselves or together; but takenin connection with the intimation of the Word and Sonship asserted inSt. John, and reproduced by Justin, they are very significant indeed. 

St. John asserts that Jesus is the Word and the Only Begotten--that Heis "Lord" and "God, " and equal with the Father as being His Son (v. 18);but, lest men conceive of the Word as an independent God, he asserts thesubordination of the Son as consisting, not in inferiority of nature, but in submission of will. 

Justin reproduces in the same terms the teaching of St. John respectingthe Logos--that the Logos was the Only Begotten, God-begotten, Lord andGod. And then, lest his adversaries should assume from this that Christwas an independent God, he guards it by the assertion of the samedoctrine of subordination of will; neither the doctrine nor thesafeguard being expressly stated in the Synoptics, but contained in themby that wondrous implication by which one part of Divine truth reallypresupposes and involves all truth. 

We have now to consider St. John's teaching respecting the relation ofthe Logos to man. One aspect of this doctrine is peculiar to St. John, and is as mysterious and striking a truth as we have in the whole rangeof Christian dogma. 

It is contained in certain words in the exordium of the Fourth Gospel:"That [Word] was the true light which lighteth every man that comethinto the world. "

This passage embodies a truth which is unique in Scripture: that in theWord was Life, that the Life was the Light of men, and that that Lightwas (even before the Incarnation) the true Light which lighteth everyman. 

This, I say, is a truth which is not, that I am aware of, to be found, except by very remote implication, in the rest of Scripture. And yet itis continually reproduced by Justin in a way which shows that he haddrunk it in, as it were, and he used it continually as the principle onwhich to explain the vestiges of truth which existed among the heathen. 

Thus:--

 "We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of Whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably (or with the Logos, [Greek: hoi meta logou biôsantes]) are Christians, even though they have been thought Atheists; as among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xlvi. )

Again:--

 "No one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, but in Christ, Who was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is the Word Who is in every man), " &c. (Apol. II. Ch. X. )

Again, in a noble passage:--

 "For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic Divine Word, [51:1] seeing what was related to it. But they who contradict themselves in the more important points appear not to have possessed the heavenly wisdom, and the knowledge which cannot be spoken against. Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians. " (Apol. II. Xiii. )

There cannot, then, be the smallest doubt but that Justin's mind waspermeated by a doctrine of the Logos exactly such as he would havederived from the diligent study of the fourth Gospel. But may he nothave derived all this from Philo? No; because, if so, he would havereferred Trypho, a Jew, to Philo, his brother Jew, which he never does. The speciality of St. John's teaching is not that he, like Plato orPhilo, elaborates a Logos doctrine, but that once for all, with theauthority of God, he identifies the Logos with the Divine Nature of ourLord. No other Evangelist or sacred writer does this, and he does. 

SECTION IX. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. --HIS FURTHER TESTIMONY TO ST. JOHN. 

We now come to Justin's account of Christian Baptism, which runs thus:--

 "I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ, lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the Universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, 'Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. ' Now, that it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter into their mothers' wombs, is manifest to all. " (Apol. I. Ch. Lxi. )

Now, taking into consideration the fact that St. John is the only writerwho sets forth our Lord as connecting a birth with water [except a manbe born of water and of the Spirit]; that when our Lord does this it is(according to St. John, and St. John only) following upon the assertionthat he must be born again, and that St. John alone puts into the mouthof the objector the impossibility of a natural birth taking place twice, which Justin notices; taking these things into account, it does seem tome the most monstrous hardihood to deny that Justin was reproducing St. John's account. 

To urge trifling differences is absurd, for Justin, if he desired tomake himself understood, could not have quoted the passage verbatim, oranything like it. For, if he had, he must have prefaced it with someaccount of the interview with Nicodemus, and he would have to havereferred to another Gospel to show that our Lord alluded to baptism;for, though our Lord mentions water, He does not here categoricallymention baptism. So, consequently, Justin would have to have said, "Ifyou refer to one of our Memoirs you will find certain words which laydown the necessity of being born again, and seem to connect this birthin some way with water, and if you look into another Memoir you will seehow this can be, for you will find a direction to baptize with water inthe name of the Godhead, and if you put these two passages together youwill be able to understand something of the nature of our dedication, and of the way in which it is to be performed, and of the blessing whichwe have reason to expect in it if we repent of our sins. "

Well, instead of such an absurd and indirect way of proceeding, whichpresupposes that Antoninus Pius was well acquainted with the Diatessaron, he simply reproduces the substance of the doctrine of St. John, andinterweaves with it the words of institution as found in St. Matthew. I shall afterwards advert to the hypothesis that this account wastaken from an apocryphal Gospel. 

Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who, in apparent allusion to thedevout and spiritual reception of the Inward Part of the Lord's Supper, speaks of it as eating the Flesh of Christ, and drinking His Blood; theSynoptics and St. Paul in I Cor. X. 11, always speaking of it as His_Body_ and Blood. Now Justin, in describing the Sacrament of the Lord'sSupper, uses the language peculiar to St. John as well as that of theSynoptics:--

 "So likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus Who was made flesh. For the Apostles, in the Memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, 'This do ye in remembrance of me. This is my body, '" &c. (Apol. I. Ch. Lxvi. )

This, of course, would be a small matter itself, but, taken inconnection with the adoption of St. John's language in regard of theother sacrament a very short time before, it is exceedingly significant. 

Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who records our Lord's referenceto the brazen serpent as typical of Himself lifted up upon the Cross. Justin cites the same incident as typical of Christ's Death, and, moreover, cites our Lord's language as it is recorded in St. John, respecting His being lifted up that men might believe in Him and besaved:--

 "For by this, as I previously remarked, He proclaimed the mystery, by which He declared that He would break the power of the serpent which occasioned the transgression of Adam, and [would bring] to them that believe on Him by this sign, i. E. , Him Who was to be crucified, salvation from the fangs of the serpent, which are wicked deeds, idolatries, and other unrighteous acts. Unless the matter be so understood, give me a reason why Moses set up the brazen serpent for a sign, and bade those that were bitten gaze at it, and the wounded were healed. " (Dial. Ch. Xciv. )

Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who records that the Baptist"confessed, and denied not, but confessed, 'I am not the Christ. '"Justin cites these very-words as said by the Baptist:--

 "For when John remained (or sat) by the Jordan ... Men supposed him to be Christ, but he cried to them, 'I am not the Christ, but the voice of one crying, '" &c. (Dial. Ch. Lxxxviii. )

Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who puts into the mouth of ourBlessed Lord, when He was accused of breaking the Sabbath, the retortthat the Jews on the Sabbath Day circumcise a man ... That the law ofMoses should not be broken. (John vii. 22) And Justin also reproducesthis in his Dialogue:--

 "For, tell me, did God wish the priests to sin when they offer the sacrifices on the Sabbaths? or those to sin who are circumcised, or do circumcise, on the Sabbaths; since He commands that on the eighth day--even though it happen to be a Sabbath--those who are born shall be always circumcised?" (Dial. Ch. Xxvii. )

Again, St. John represents our Lord, when similarly harassed by theJews, as appealing to the upholding of all things by God on the Sabbathas well as on any other day, in the words, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. " (John v. 17. ) And Justin very shortly after uses the sameargument:--

 "Think it not strange that we drink hot water on the Sabbath, since God directs the government of the universe on this day, equally as on all others; and the priests on other days, so on this, are ordered to offer sacrifices. " (Dial. Ch. Xxix. )

It is very singular that Justin, whilst knowing nothing of St. John, should, on a subject like this, use two arguments peculiar to St. John, and not to be found in disputes on the very same subject in theSynoptics. 

Again, St. John alone records that Jesus healed a man "blind from hisbirth, " and notices that the Jews themselves were impressed with thegreatness of the miracle. (John ix. 16, 32) Justin remarks, "In that wesay that He made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind. "(Apol. I. Ch. Xxii. )

Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who makes our Lord to say, "Now Itell you before it come, that when it is come to pass ye may believe. "(John xiii. 19; xiv. 29; xvi. 4) And Justin adopts and amplifies thisvery sentiment with reference to the use of prophecy:--

 "For things which were incredible, and seemed impossible with men, these God predicted by the Spirit of prophecy as about to come to pass, in order that, when they came to pass, there might be no unbelief, but faith, because of their prediction. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xxxiii. )

Again, St. John alone of the Evangelists records that our Lord used withthe unbelieving Jews the argument that they believed not Moses, for, hadthey believed Moses, they would have believed Him, for Moses wrote ofHim. (John, v. 46, 47) And Justin reproduces in substance the sameargument:--

 "For though ye have the means of understanding that this man is Christ from the signs given by Moses, yet you will not. " (Dial. Xciii. )

Again, St. John is the only sacred writer who speaks of our Lord "givingthe living water, " and causing that water to flow from men's hearts, andJustin (somewhat inaccurately) reproduces the figure:--

 "And our hearts are thus circumcised from evil, so that we are happy to die for the name of the Good Rock, which causes living water to burst forth for the hearts of those who by him have loved the Father of all, and which gives those who are willing to drink of the water of life. " (Dial. Ch. Cxiv. )

Again, St. John alone records that Christ spake of Himself as the Light, and Justin speaks of Him as "the only blameless and righteous Light sentby God. " (Dial. Ch. Xvii. )

Again, St. John alone speaks of our Lord as representing Himself to bethe true vine, and His people as the branches. Justin uses the samefigure with respect to the people or Church of God:--

 "Just as if one should eat away the fruit-bearing parts of it vine, it grows up again, and yields other branches flourishing and fruitful; even so the same thing happens to us. For the vine planted by God and Christ the Saviour is His People. " (Dial. Ch. Cx. )

Again, St. John alone represents our Saviour as saying, "I have power tolay [my life] down, and I have power to take it again. This commandmenthave I received of my Father. " (John x. 18) And Justin says of Christthat, in fulfilment of a certain prophecy, --

 "He is to do something worthy of praise and wonderment, being about to rise again from the dead on the third day after the Crucifixion, and this He has obtained from the Father. " (Dial. Ch. C. )

Some of these last instances which I have given are reminiscences ratherthan reproductions; but like all other reminiscences they imply thingsremembered, sometimes not perfectly correctly, and so not applied asapplied in the original; but they are all real reminiscences of wordsand things to be found only in our fourth Gospel. 

SECTION X. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. --HIS TESTIMONY SUMMED UP. 

From all this it is clear that Justin had not only seen and reverencedSt. John's Gospel, but that his mind was permeated with its peculiarteaching. 

I hesitate not to say that, if a man rejects the evidence above adduced, he rejects it because on other grounds he is determined, cost what itmay, to discredit the Fourth Gospel. 

Let us briefly recapitulate. 

Justin reproduced the doctrine of the Logos, using the words of St. John. He asserted the Divine and human natures of the Son of God in thewords of St. John, or in exactly similar words. He reproduced thatpeculiar teaching of our Lord, to be found only in St. John, whereby weare enabled to hold the true and essential Godhead of Christ without fora moment holding that He is an independent God. He reproduced thedoctrine of the Logos being, even before His Incarnation, in _every_ manas the "true light" to enlighten him. 

He reproduces the doctrine of the Sacraments in terms to be found onlyin the Fourth Gospel. He reproduces, or alludes to, arguments and typesand prophecies and historical events, only to be found in St. John'sGospel. 

It seems certain, then, that if Justin was acquainted with any one ofour four Gospels, that Gospel was the one according to St. John. 

What answer, the reader will ask, does the author of "SupernaturalReligion" give to all this? Why, he simply ignores the greater part ofthese references (we trust through ignorance of their existence), andtakes notice of some three or four, in which, to use the vulgarexpression, he picks holes, by drawing attention to discrepancies oflanguage or application, and dogmatically pronounces that Justin couldnot have known the fourth Gospel. 

Well, then, the reader will ask, from whom did Justin derive theknowledge of doctrines and facts so closely resembling those containedin St. John?

Again, we have reference to supposed older sources of information whichhave perished. With respect to the Logos doctrine, the author of"Supernatural Religion" asserts:--

 "His [Justin's] doctrine of the Logos is precisely that of Philo, and of writings long antecedent to the fourth Gospel, and there can be no doubt, we think, that it was derived from them. " ("Supernatural Religion, " vol. Ii. P. 297. )

It may be well here to remark that, strictly speaking, there is no Logos_doctrine_ in St. John's Gospel, --by doctrine meaning "scientificallyexpressed doctrine, " drawn out, and expounded at length, as in Philo. The Gospel commences with the assertion that the Logos, Whoever He be, is God, and is the pre-existent Divine nature of Jesus; he does thisonce and once only, and never recurs to it afterwards. 

The next passage referred to is the assertion of the Baptist, "I am notthe Christ, " and the conclusion of the author is that "There is everyreason to believe that he derived it from a particular Gospel, in allprobability the Gospel according to the Hebrews, different from ours. "(Vol. Ii. P. 302. )

The last place noticed is Justin's reproduction of John iii. 3-5, inconnection with the institution of baptism. After discussing this atsome length, for the purpose of magnifying the differences andminimizing the resemblances, his conclusion is:--

 "As both the Clementines and Justin made use of the Gospel according to Hebrews, the most competent critics have, with reason, adopted the conclusion that the passage we are discussing was derived from that Gospel; at any rate it cannot for a moment he maintained as a quotation from our fourth Gospel, and it is of no value as evidence for its existence. " ("Supernatural Religion, " vol. Ii. P. 313. )

We have now tolerably full means of judging what a wonderful Gospel thisGospel to the Hebrews must have been, and what a loss the Church hassustained by its extinction. 

Here was a Gospel which contained a harmony of the history, moralteaching, and doctrine of all the four. As we have seen, it contained anaccount of the miraculous Birth and Infancy, embodying in one narrativethe facts contained in the first and third Gospels. It contained anarrative of the events preceding and attending our Lord's Death, farfuller and more complete than that of any single Gospel in the Canon. Itcontained a record of the teaching of Christ, similar to our presentSermon on the Mount, embodying the teaching scattered up and down in allparts of SS. Matthew and Luke, and in addition to all this it embodiedthe very peculiar tradition, both in respect of doctrine and of history, of the fourth Gospel. 

How could it possibly have happened that a record of the highest value, on account both of its fulness and extreme antiquity, should haveperished, and have been superseded by four later and utterly unauthenticproductions, one its junior by at least 120 years, and each one of thesederiving from it only a part of its teaching; the first three, for noconceivable reason, rejecting all that peculiar doctrine now calledJohannean, and the fourth confining itself to reproducing this so-calledJohannean element and this alone? It is only necessary to state this toshow the utter absurdity of the author's hypothesis. 

But the marvel is that a person assuming such airs of penetration andresearch [63:1] should not have perceived that, if he has proved hispoint, he has simply strengthened the evidence for the supernatural, forhe has proved the existence of a fifth Gospel, far older and fuller thanany we now possess, witnessing to the supernatural Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. 

The author strives to undermine the evidence for the authenticity of ourpresent Gospels for an avowedly dogmatic purpose. He believes in thedogma of the impossibility of the supernatural; he must, for thispurpose, discredit the witness of the four, and he would fain do this byconjuring up the ghost of a defunct Gospel, a Gospel which turns out tobe far more emphatic in its testimony to the supernatural and thedogmatic than any of the four existing ones, and so the author of thispretentious book seems to have answered himself. His own witnesses provethat from the first there has been but one account of Jesus of Nazareth. 

SECTION XI. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON OUR LORD'S GODHEAD. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" has directed his attacks moreparticularly against the authenticity of the Gospel according toSt. John. His desire to discredit this Gospel seems at times to ariseout of a deep personal dislike to the character of the disciple whomJesus loved. (Vol. Ii. Pp. 403-407, 427, 428, &c. )

On the author's principles, it is difficult to understand the reason forsuch an attack on this particular Gospel. He is not an Arian or Socinian(as the terms are commonly understood), who might desire to disparagethe testimony of this Gospel to the Pre-existence and Godhead of ourLord. His attack is on the Supernatural generally, as witnessed to byany one of the four Gospels; and it is allowed on all hands that thethree Synoptics were written long before the Johannean; and, besidesthis, he has proved to his own satisfaction, and to the satisfaction ofthe Reviewers who so loudly applauded his work, that there existed aGospel long anterior to the Synoptics, which is more explicit in itsdeclarations of the Supernatural than all of them put together. 

However, as he has made a lengthened and vigorous attempt to discreditthis Gospel especially, it may be well to show his extraordinarymisconceptions respecting the mere contents of the Fourth Gospel, andthe opinions of the Fathers (notably Justin Martyr) who seem to quotefrom it, or to derive their doctrine from it. 

The first question--and by far the most important one which we shallhave to meet--is this: Is the doctrine respecting the Person of Jesusmore fully developed in the pages of Justin Martyr, or in the FourthGospel? We mean by the doctrine respecting the Person of Jesus, that Heis, with reference to His pre-existent state, the Logos andOnly-begotten Son of God; and that, as being such, He is to beworshipped and honoured as Lord and God; and that, in order to be ourMediator, and the Sacrifice for our sin, He took upon Him our nature. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" endeavours to trace the doctrineof the Logos, as contained in Justin, to older sources than our presentFourth Gospel, particularly to Philo and the Gospel according to theHebrews. The latter is much too impalpable to enable us to verify hisstatements by it; but we shall have to show his misconceptionsrespecting the connection of Justin's doctrine with the former. What wehave now to consider is the following statement:--

 "It is certain, however, that, both Justin and Philo, unlike the prelude to the Fourth Gospel (i. 1), place the Logos in a secondary position to God the Father, another point indicating a less advanced stage of the doctrine. "

From this we must, of course, infer that the author of "SupernaturalReligion" considers that Justin does not state the essential Godhead ofthe Second Person as distinctly and categorically as it is stated in theFourth Gospel. And as it is assumed by Rationalists that there was inthe early Church a constantly increasing development of the doctrine ofthe true Godhead of our Lord, gradually superseding some earlierdoctrine of an Arian, or Humanitarian, or Sadducean type; therefore, themore fully developed doctrine of the Godhead of our Lord in any bookproves that book to be of later origin than another book in which it isnot so fully developed. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" cannot deny that Justin ascribesthe names "Lord" and "God" and Pre-existence before all worlds to Jesusas the Logos, but he fastens upon certain statements or inferencesrespecting the subordination of the Son to the Father, and His actingfor His Father, or under Him, in the works of Creation and Redemption, which Justin, as an orthodox believer who would abhor Tritheism, wasbound to make, and most ignorantly asserts that such statements arecontrary to the spirit of the Fourth Gospel. 

I shall now set before the reader the statements of both St. John andJustin respecting the Divine Nature of our Lord, so that he may judgefor himself which is the germ and which the development. 

The Fourth Gospel once, and once only, sets forth the Godhead andPre-existence of the Logos, and this is in the exordium or prelude:--

 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. "

The Fourth Gospel once, and once only, identifies this Word with thepre-existent nature of Jesus, in the concluding words of the sameexordium:--

 "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we behold His Glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. "

Except in these two places (and, of course, I need not say that they areall-important as containing by implication the whole truth of Godrespecting Christ), there is no mention whatsoever of the "Word" in thisGospel. 

The Fourth Gospel gives to Jesus the name of God only in two places, _i. E. _ in the narrative of the second appearance of our Lord to Hisapostles assembled together after His Resurrection, where Thomas isrelated to have said to Him the words, "My Lord and my God;" and in thewords "The Word was God" taken in connection with "the Word was madeflesh. " The indirect, but certain, proofs by implication that Jesusfully shared with His Father the Divine Nature are numerous, as, forinstance, that He wields all the power of Godhead, in that "whatsoeverthings [the Father] doeth these doeth the Son likewise"--that He isequal in point of nature with the Father, because God is His own properFather ([Greek: idios])--that He raises from the dead whom Hewills--that He and the Father are One--that when Esaias saw the glory ofGod in the temple he saw Christ's glory; and, because of all this, He isthe object of faith, even of the faith which saves. 

But, as my purpose is not to show that either Justin or St. John holdthe Godhead of our Lord, but rather to compare the statements of the onewith the other; and, inasmuch as to cite the passages in which JustinMartyr assumes that our Blessed Lord possesses all Divine attributeswould far exceed the limits which I have proposed to myself, I shall notfurther cite the passages in St. John, which only _imply_ our Lord'sGodhead, but proceed to cite the _direct_ statements of Justin (orrather some of them) on this head. 

Whereas, then, St. John categorically asserts the Godhead of our Lord inone, or, at the most, two places, Justin directly asserts it nearlyforty times. The following are noticeable:--

 "And Trypho said, You endeavour to prove an incredible and well-nigh impossible thing; [namely] that God endured to be born and become man. [69:1] If I undertook, said I, [Justin] to prove this by doctrines or arguments of men, you should not bear with me. But if I quote frequently Scriptures, and so many of them, referring to this point, and ask you to comprehend them, you are hard-hearted in the recognition of the mind and will of God. " (Dial. Ch. Lxviii. )

Again:--

 "This very Man Who was crucified is proved to have been set forth expressly as God and Man, and as being crucified and as dying. " [69:2] (Dial. Ch. Lxxi. )

Again, Justin accuses the Jews of having mutilated the PropheticalScriptures, by having cut out of them the following prophecy respectingour Lord's descent into hell:--

 "The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own Salvation. " (Dial. Ch. Lxxii. )

Again:--

 "For Christ is King, and Priest, and God, and Lord, and Angel, and Man, and Captain, and Stone, and a Son born, and first made subject to suffering, then returning to heaven, and again coming with glory. " (Dial. Xxxiv. )

Again:--

 "Now you will permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God, and Lord of Hosts, and Jacob in parable, by the Holy Spirit. " (Dial. Ch. Xxxvi. )

Again, Justin makes Trypho to say:--

 "When you [Justin] say that this Christ existed as God before the ages, then that He submitted to be born, and become man, yet that He is not man of man, this [assertion] appears to me to be not merely paradoxical, but also foolish. And I replied to this, I know that the statement does appear to be paradoxical, especially to those of your race, who are ever unwilling to understand or to perform the [requirements] of God. " (Dial. Ch. Xlviii. )

Again, Justin makes Trypho demand:--

 "Answer me then, first, how you can show that there is another God besides the Maker of all things; [70:1] and then you will show [further], that He submitted to be born of the Virgin. 

"I replied, Give me permission first of all to quote certain passagesfrom the Prophecy of Isaiah which refer to the office of forerunnerdischarged by John the Baptist. " (Dial. I. )

Lastly:--

 "Now, assuredly, Trypho, I shall show that, in the vision of Moses, this same One alone, Who is called an Angel, and Who is God, appeared to and communed with Moses.... Even so here, the Scriptures, in announcing that the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses, and in afterwards declaring Him to be Lord and God, speaks of the same One, Whom it declares by the many testimonies already quoted to be minister to God, Who is above the world, above Whom there is no other. " (Dial. Ch. Lx. )

In order not to weary the reader, I give the remainder in a note. [71:1]

The reader will observe that the assertions of Justin, which I havegiven, are the strongest that could be made by any one who holds theGodhead of Christ, and yet holds that that Godhead is not an independentDivine Existence, but derived from the Father Who begat Him, and, bybegetting, fully communicated to His Son or Offspring His own Godhead. 

From these extracts the reader will be able to judge for himself whetherthe doctrine of St. John is the expansion or development of that ofJustin, or the doctrine of Justin the development of that of St. John. 

He will also be able to judge of the absurdity of supposing that afterthe time of Justin the cause of Orthodoxy demanded the forgery of aGospel, in order to set forth more fully the Divine Glory of theRedeemer. 

SECTION XII. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 

We have now to compare Justin's doctrine of the Logos with that of theFourth Gospel. 

The doctrine or dogma of the Logos is declared in the Fourth Gospel in ashort paragraph of fourteen verses, a part of which is occupied with themission of the Baptist. 

The doctrine, as I have said before, is rather oracular enunciation thandoctrine; _i. E. _ it is not doctrine elaborately drawn out and explainedand guarded, but simply laid down as by the authority of Almighty God. 

It is contained in four or five direct statements:--

 "In the beginning was the Logos. "

In the beginning--that is, before all created things--when there was nofinite existence by which time could be measured; in that fathomlessabyss of duration when there was God only:--

 "The Logos was with God. "

Though numerically distinct from Him, [73:1] He was so "by" or "with"Him as to be His fellow:--

 "The Logos was God. "

That is, though numerically distinct, He partook of the same DivineNature:

 "All Things were made by Him. "

Because, partaking fully of the nature, He partook fully of the power ofGod, and so of His creating power. 

 "That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. "

 "The Logos was made flesh. "

He was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. 

The first enunciation, then, of St. John is that--

 "IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD. "

In Justin we read:--

 "His Son, Who alone is properly called Son, the Word, Who also was with Him, and was begotten before the works. " (Apol. Ii. Ch. Vi. )

Again:--

 "When you [Justin] say that this Christ existed as God before the ages. " (Dial. Ch. Xlviii. )

Again:--

 "God begat before all creatures a Beginning, [74:1] [who was] a certain rational Power from Himself, Who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos. " (Dial. Ch. Lxi. )

Now it is to be here remarked, that though the Logos is continuallydeclared to be "begotten of, " "derived from, " "an offspring of" theFather, yet in no case is He declared to be "created" or "made, "anticipating the declaration which we confess in our Creed, "The Son isof the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. "

St. John proceeds:--

 "THE WORD WAS WITH GOD. "

In Justin we read:--

 "This Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the Father, was with the Father before all the creatures, and the Father communed with Him. " (Dial. Ch. Lxii. )

Again, a little before, in the same chapter:--

 "From which we can indisputably learn that God conversed with some One who was numerically distinct from Himself. "

Again:--

 "The Word, Who also was with Him. " (Apol. Ii. Ch. Vi. )

Again, Trypho says:--

 "You maintain Him to be pre-existent God. " (Ch. Lxxxvii. )

Again:--

 "I asserted that this Power was begotten from the Father, by His Power and Will, but not by abscission, as if the essence of the Father were divided; as all other things partitioned and divided are not the same after as before they were divided; and for the sake of example I took the case of fires kindled from a fire, which we see to be distinct from it, " &c. (Dial. Cxxviii. )

 "THE WORD WAS GOD. "

Justin writes:--

 "The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things" (Dial. Ch. Lxi. ) (See previous page. )

Again:--

 "They who affirm that the Son is the Father are proved neither to have become acquainted with the Father, nor to know that the Father of the Universe has a Son; Who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. " (Apol. I. Ch. Lxiii. )

Again:--

 "It must be admitted absolutely that some other One is called Lord by the Holy Spirit besides Him Who is considered Maker of all things. " (Dial. Ch. Lvi. )

But it is useless to multiply quotations, seeing that all those in pages69-71 are the echoes of this declaration of the Fourth Evangelist. 

St. John writes:--

 "ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY HIM. "

And Justin writes:--

 "Knowing that God conceived and made the world by the Word. " (Apol. I. Ch. Lxiv. )

Again:--

 "When at first He created and arranged all things by Him. " (Apol. II. Ch. Vi. )

Again St. John writes:--

 "THAT (_i. E. _ THE WORD) WAS THE TRUE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH EVERY MAN THAT COMETH INTO THE WORLD. "

I have given above (p. 51) sufficient illustrations from Justin of thistruth. I again draw attention to:--

 "He is the Word of Whom every race of men were partakers. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xlvi. )

Again:--

 "He was and is the Word Who is in every man. " (Apol. II. Ch. X. ) "For whatever either lawgivers or philosophers uttered well, they elaborated by finding and contemplating some part of the Word. But since they did not know the whole of the Word which is Christ, they often contradicted themselves. " [77:1] (Apol. II. Ch. X. )

Again:--

 "These men who believe in Him, in whom [Greek: en hois] abideth the seed of God, the Word. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xxxii. )

Again:--

 "I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the others, Stoics, and poets, and historians. For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic Word. " [77:2] (Apol. II. Ch. Xiii. )

Lastly, St. John writes:--

 "THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH. "

And Justin writes:--

 "The Logos Himself, Who took shape and became man and was called Jesus Christ. " (Apol. II. Ch. V. )

Again:--

 "The Word, Who is also the Son; and of Him we will in what follows relate how He took flesh, and became Man. " (Apol. II. Ch. Xxxii. )

 "Jesus Christ is the only proper Son Who has been begotten by God, being His Word, and First-begotten, and Power, and becoming man according to His Will He taught us these things, " &c. (Apol. I. Ch. Xxiii. )

Again:--

 "In order that you may recognize Him as God coming forth from above, and Man living among men. " (Dial. Lxiv. )

Again:--

 "He was the Only-begotten of the Father of all things, being begotten in a peculiar manner Word and Power by Him, and having afterwards become Man through the Virgin. " (Dial. Ch. Cv. )

After considering the above extracts, the reader will be able to judgeof the truth of some assertions of the author of "SupernaturalReligion, " as, for instance:--

 "We are, in fact, constantly directed by the remarks of Justin to other sources of the Logos doctrine, and never to the Fourth Gospel, with which his tone and terminology in no way agree. " (Vol. Ii. P. 293)

Again:--

 "We must see that Justin's terminology, as well as his views of the Word become Man, is thoroughly different from that Gospel. " (Vol. Ii. P. 296)

Also:--

 "It must be apparent to every one who seriously examines the subject, that Justin's terminology is thoroughly different from, and in spirit opposed to, that of the Fourth Gospel, and in fact that the peculiarities of the Gospel are not found in Justin's writings at all. " (!!) (P. 297. ) [78:1]

On the contrary, we assert that every Divine Truth respecting the Logos, which appears in the germ in St. John, is expanded in Justin. St. John'sshort and pithy sentences are the text, and Justin's remarks are theexposition of that text, and of nothing less or more. 

So far from Justin's doctrine being contrary to the spirit of St. John's, Justin, whilst deviating somewhat from the strict letter, seizes andreproduces the very spirit. I will give in the next section two or threeremarkable instances of this; which instances, strange to say, theauthor of "Supernatural Religion" quotes for the purpose of showing theabsolute divergence and opposition between the two writers. 

SECTION XIII. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON OUR LORD AS KING, PRIEST, AND ANGEL. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" quotes the passage in Dial. Xxxiv. :--

 "For Christ is King, and Priest, and God, and Lord, and Angel, and Man, and Captain, and Stone, and a Son born, " &c. 

And he remarks, with what I cannot but characterize as astonishingeffrontery, or (to use his own language with respect to Tischendorf) "anassurance which can scarcely be characterized otherwise than anunpardonable calculation upon the ignorance of his readers. " (Vol. Ii. P. 56. )

 "Now these representations, which are constantly repeated throughout Justin's writings, are quite opposed to the spirit of the Fourth Gospel. " (Vol. Ii. P. 288. )

He first of all takes the title "King, " and arbitrarily and unwarrantablyrestricts Justin's derivation of it to the seventy-second Psalm, apparently being ignorant of the fact that St. John, in his veryfirst chapter, records that Christ was addressed by Nathanael as "Kingof Israel"--that the Fourth Gospel alone describes how the crowd on Hisentry into Jerusalem cried, "Osanna, Blessed be the King of Israel, Whocometh in the name of the Lord" (xii. 13)--that this Gospel more fullythan any other records how Pilate questioned our Lord respecting HisKingship, and recognized Him as King, "Behold your King;" and that thosewho mocked our Lord are recorded by St. John to have mocked Him as the"King of Israel. "

So that this term King, so far from being contrary to the spirit of theFourth Gospel, is not even contrary to its letter. 

But this, gross though it seems, is to my mind as nothing to two otherassertions founded on this passage of Justin:--

 "If we take the second epithet, the Logos as Priest, which is quite foreign to the Fourth Gospel, we find it repeated by Justin. "

Now, it is quite true that the title "priest" is not given to our Lordin St. John, just as it is not given to Him in any one of the threeSynoptics, or indeed in any book of the New Testament, except theEpistle to the Hebrews: yet, notwithstanding this, of all the books ofthe New Testament, this Gospel is the one which sets forth the realityof Christ's Priesthood. For what is the distinguishing function of thePriesthood? Is it not Mediation and Intercession, and the Fourth Gospelmore than all sets forth Christ as Mediator and Intercessor? As Mediatorwhen He says so absolutely: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me;""As my Father sent me so send I you; whosesoever sins ye remit, they areremitted unto them. "

Again, the idea of Priesthood is actually inherent in the figure of thegood Shepherd "Who giveth His Life for the sheep;" for how does He giveHis life?--not in the way of physical defence against enemies, as anearthly "good shepherd" might do, but in the way of atoning Sacrifice, as the author of "Supernatural Religion" truly asserts, where he writes(vol. Ii. P. 352):--

 "The representation of Jesus as the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world is the very basis of the Fourth Gospel. "

Again, in the same page:--

 "He died for the sin of the world, and is the object of faith, by which alone forgiveness and justification before God can be secured. "

Again, with reference to His Intercession, we have not only the truthset forth in such expressions as "I will pray the Father, " but we havethe actual exercise of the great act of priestly Intercession, asrecorded in the seventeenth chapter of the Fourth Gospel. If we look towords only (which the author of "Supernatural Religion" too often does), then, of course, we allow that the epithet "priest" is quite foreign notonly to the Fourth Gospel, but to every other book of the New Testament, except the Epistle to the Hebrews; but if we look to the things impliedin the idea of Priesthood, such as Mediation and Intercession, in factIntervention between God and Man, then we find that the whole NewTestament is pervaded with the idea, and it culminates in the FourthGospel. 

The next assertion of the author of "Supernatural Religion" on the samepassage betrays still more ignorance of the contents of St. John'sGospel, and a far greater eagerness to fasten on a seeming omission ofthe letter, and to ignore a pervadence of the spirit. He asserts:--

 "It is scarcely necessary to point out that this representation of the Logos as Angel, is not only foreign to, but opposed to, the spirit of the Fourth Gospel. " (Vol. Ii. P. 293)

Now just as in the former case we had to ask, "What is thecharacteristic of the priest?" so in order to answer this we have onlyto ask, "What is the characteristic of the angel?"

An angel is simply "one sent. " Such is the meaning of the word both inthe Old and New Testament. The Hebrew word [Hebrew: mlakh] is appliedindifferently to a messenger sent by man (see Job i. 14; 1 Sam. Xi. 3; 2Sam. Xi. 19-20), and to God's messengers the Holy Angels, that is, theHoly Messengers, the Holy ones sent. And similarly, in the NewTestament, the word [Greek: angelos] is applied to human messengers inLuke vii. 24, [Greek: apelthontôn de tôn angelôn Iôannou], also in Lukeix. 52, and James ii. 25. That the characteristic of the angel is to be"sent" is implied in such common phrases as, "The Lord _sent_ HisAngel, " "I will _send_ mine angel, " "Are they not all ministeringspirits _sent_ forth to minister?" &c. 

Now one of the characteristic expressions of the Fourth Gospel--we mightalmost have said _the_ characteristic expression--respecting Jesus, isthat He is "sent. " To use the noun instead of the verb, He is God'sspecial messenger, His [Greek: angelos], sent by Him to declare and todo His will: but this does not imply that He has, or has assumed, thenature of an angel; just as the application of the same word [Greek:angelos] to mere human messengers in no way implies that they have anyother nature than human nature. Just as men sent their fellow-men astheir [Greek: angeloi], so God sends One Who, according to Justin, fullypartakes of His Nature, to be His [Greek: angelos]. 

This sending of our Lord on the part of His Father is one of the chiefcharacteristics of the Fourth Gospel, and the reader, if he cannotexamine this Gospel for himself, comparing it with the others, has onlyto turn to any concordance, Greek or English, to satisfy himselfrespecting this matter. 

Jesus Christ is said to be "sent of God, " _i. E. _ to be His [Greek:angelos], only once in St. Matthew's Gospel (Matthew x. 40: "He thatreceiveth me receiveth Him that sent me"), only once in St. Mark (ix. 37), only twice in St. Luke (ix. 48; xx. 13), but in the Fourth GospelHe is said to be sent of God about forty times. [84:1] In one discoursealone, that in John vi. , Jesus asserts no less than six times that He issent of God, or that God sent Him; so that the dictum, "Thisrepresentation of the Logos as angel is not only foreign to, but opposedto, the spirit of the Fourth Gospel, " is absolutely contrary to thetruth. 

SECTION XIV. 

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" asserts:--

 "The Fourth Gospel proclaims the doctrine of an hypostatic Trinity in a more advanced form than any other writing of the New Testament. " [85:1]

This is hardly true if we consider what is meant by the proclamation ofthe doctrine of a Trinity. 

Such a doctrine can be set forth by inference, or it can be distinctlyand broadly stated, as it is, for instance, in the First Article of theChurch of England, or in the Creed of St. Athanasius. 

The doctrine of the Trinity is set forth by implication in every placein Scripture where the attributes or works of God are ascribed to twoother Persons besides The Father. But it is still more directly setforth in those places where the Three Persons are mentioned togetheras acting conjointly in some Divine Work, or receiving conjointlysome divine honour. In this sense the most explicit declarations ofthe doctrine of the Trinity are the Baptismal formula at the end ofSt. Matthew's Gospel, and the "grace, " as it is called, at the end ofSt. Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians. 

St. John, by asserting in different places the Godhead of the Word, andthe Divine Works of the Holy Ghost, implicitly proves the doctrine ofthe Trinity, but, as far as I can remember, he but twice mentions theThree adorable Persons together: Once in the words, "I will pray theFather and He shall give you another Comforter. " And again, "But theParaclete, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father shall send in Myname, He shall teach you all things. "

Now, in respect of the explicit declaration of the doctrine of theTrinity, the statements of Justin are the necessary [86:1] developmentsnot only of St. John's statements, but of those of the rest of the NewTestament writers. 

I have given two passages in page 10. 

One of these is in the First Apology, and reads thus:--

 "Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the Second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the Third, we will prove. " (Apol. I. Ch. Xiii. )

Again, he endeavours to show that Plato held the doctrine of a Trinity. He is proving that Plato had read the books of Moses:--

 "And, as to his speaking of a third, he did this because he read, as we said above, that which was spoken by Moses, 'that the Spirit of God moved over the waters. ' For he gives the second place to the Logos which is with God, who he (Plato) said, was placed crosswise in the universe; and the third place to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon the water, saying, 'and the third around the third. '" (Apol. I. Ch. Lx. )

Now unquestionably, so far as expression of doctrine is concerned, thesepassages from Justin are the developments of the Johannean statements. The statements in St. John contain, in germ, the whole of what Justindevelops; but it is absurd to assert that, after Justin had written theabove, it was necessary, in order to bolster up a later, andconsequently, in the eyes of Rationalists, a mere human development, toforge a now Gospel, containing nothing like so explicit a declaration ofthe Trinity as we find in writings which are supposed to precede it, andweighting its doctrinal statements with a large amount of historicalmatter very difficult, in many cases, to reconcile perfectly with thehistory in the older Synoptics. 

SECTION XV. 

JUSTIN AND ST. JOHN ON THE INCARNATION. 

Two further matters, bearing upon the relations of the doctrine ofJustin to that of St. John, must now be considered. The Author of"Supernatural Religion" asserts that the doctrine of Justin respectingthe Incarnation of the Word is essentially different from that of St. John:--

 "It must be borne in mind that the terminology of John i. 14, 'And the Word became flesh ([Greek: sarx egeneto]) is different from that of Justin, who uses the word [Greek: sarkopoiêtheis]. " (Vol. Ii. P. 276. )

Again, with reference to the word [Greek: monogenês], he writes:--

 "The phrase in Justin is quite different from that in the Fourth Gospel, i. 14, 'And the Word became flesh' ([Greek: sarx egeneto]) and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father' ([Greek: hôs monogenous para patros], &c. ) In Justin he is 'the Only-begotten of the Father of all' ([Greek: monogenês tô Patri tôn holôn)], 'and He became man' ([Greek: anthrôpos genomenos]) 'through the Virgin, ' and Justin never once employs the peculiar terminology of the Fourth Gospel, [Greek: sarx egeneto], in any part of his writings. " (Vol. Ii. P. 280. )

Again:--

 "He [Justin] is, in fact, thoroughly acquainted with the history of the Logos doctrine and its earlier enunciation under the symbol of Wisdom, and his knowledge of it is clearly independent of, and antecedent to, the statements of the Fourth Gospel. " (Vol. Ii. P. 284)

This passage is important. I think we cannot be wrong in deducing fromit that the Author of "Supernatural Religion" considers that the Gospelof St. John was published subsequently to the time of Justin Martyr, that is, some time after A. D. 160 or 165. 

Again:--

 "The peculiarity of his terminology in all these passages [all which I have given above in pages 73-78], so markedly different, and even opposed to that of the Fourth Gospel, will naturally strike the reader. " (Vol. Ii. P. 286. )

Again, and lastly:--

 "We must see that Justin's terminology, as well as his views of the Word become man, is thoroughly different from that Gospel. We have remarked that, although the passages are innumerable in which Justin speaks of the Word having become man through the Virgin, he never once throughout his writings makes use of the peculiar expression of the Fourth Gospel: 'The word became flesh' ([Greek: ho logos sarx egeneto]). On the few occasions on which he speaks of the Word having been _made_ flesh, he uses the term, [Greek: sarkopoiêtheis. ] In one instance he has [Greek: sarka echein], and speaking of the Eucharist, Justin once explains that it is in memory of Christ being made _body_, [Greek: sômatopoiêsasthai]. Justin's most common phrase, however, and he repeats it in numberless instances, is that the Logos submitted to be born, and become man [Greek: gennêthênai anthrôpon genomenon hypemeinen] by a Virgin, or he uses variously the expressions: [Greek: anthrôpos gegone, anthrôpos genomenos, genesthai anthrôpon. ]" (Vol. Ii. P. 296. )

Here, then, we have the differences specified by which the Author of"Supernatural Religion" thinks that he is justified in describing theterminology and views of Justin respecting the Incarnation as "markedlydifferent and even opposed to, " and as "thoroughly different from, "those of the Fourth Gospel. 

So that, because Justin, instead of embodying the sentence, [Greek: hologos sarx egeneto], substitutes for it the participle, [Greek:sarkopoiêtheis], or the phrase, [Greek: sarka echein], or theinfinitive, [Greek: sômatopoiêsasthai], or the expression, [Greek:anthrôpos gegone] he holds views thoroughly different from those ofSt. John respecting the most momentous of Christian truths. 

This is a fair specimen of the utterly reckless assertions in which thisauthor indulges respecting the foundation truth of Christianity. 

If such terms, implying such divergences, can be applied to thesestatements of Justin's _belief_ in the Incarnation, what words of humanlanguage could be got to express his flat denial of the truth held incommon by him and by St. John, if he had been an unbeliever? If Justin, with most other persons, considers that being "in the flesh" is thecharacteristic difference between men and spirits such as the angels, and expresses himself accordingly by saying that the Word "became man, "what sense is there in saying that he "is opposed to the spirit of theFourth Gospel, " in which we have the Word not only as the "Son of Man, "but possessing all the sinless weaknesses of human nature, so that He isweary, and weeps, and groans, and is troubled in spirit?

And now we will make, if the reader will allow, a supposition analogousto some which the author of "Supernatural Religion" has made in pages360 and following of his first volume. We will suppose that all theecclesiastical literature, inspired and uninspired, previous to theCouncil of Nice, had been blotted out utterly, and the Four Gospelsalone preserved. And we will suppose some critic taking upon himself toargue that the Gospel of St. John was written after the Nicene Creed. Onthe principles and mode of argument of the author of "SupernaturalReligion, " he would actually be able to prove his absurdity, for hewould be able to allege that the doctrine and terminology of the Fathersof the first General Council was "opposed to" that of the Fourth Gospel;and so they could not possibly have acknowledged its authority if theyhad even "seen" it. For he (the critic) would allege that the words ofSt. John respecting the Incarnation are not adopted by the Creed whichthe Nicene Fathers put forth; instead of inserting into the Creed thewords [Greek: ho logos sarx egeneto], which, the critic would urge, they_must have done_ if they would successfully oppose foes who appealed tothe letter of Scripture, they used other terms, as the participles[Greek: sarkôthenta] and [Greek: enanthrôpêsanta]. [91:1] Again, thesupposed critic would urge, they applied to our Lord the phrase [Greek:gennêthenta pro pantôn tôn aiônôn], a phrase "so markedly different andindeed opposed to that of the Fourth Gospel, " as the author of"Supernatural Religion" urges with respect to [Greek: gennêma pro pantôntôn poiêmaton], and [Greek: apo tou Patros tôn holôn gennêtheis. ] Again, the critic would urge that instead of calling the Son "God" absolutely, as in the sentence "the Word was God, " they confess Him only as [Greek:Theos ek Theou], and this because He is [Greek: gennêtheis], and so hewould say, with the author of "Supernatural Religion, " "This is atotally different view from that of the Fourth Gospel, which in soemphatic a manner enunciates the doctrine, 'In the beginning was theWord, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word;'" and so oursupposed critic will exclaim, "See what abundant proof that theseFathers had 'never even seen' the Fourth Gospel;" and according to allrules of Rationalistic criticism they had not, or, at least, theythought nothing of its authenticity; whilst all the time this sameGospel was open before them, and they devoutly reverenced every word asthe word of the Holy Ghost, and would have summarily anathematized anyone who had expressed the smallest doubt respecting its plenaryInspiration. 

SECTION XVI. 

JUSTIN AND ST. JOHN ON THE SUBORDINATION OF THE SON. 

The second matter connected with the relations of the doctrine of JustinMartyr to that of St. John, is the subordination of the Son to theFather. 

I have already noticed this truth (page 49), but, owing to itsimportance it may be well to devote to it a few further remarks. Theauthor of "Supernatural Religion" does not seem to realize that inperfect Sonship two things are inherent, viz. , absolute sameness (andtherefore equality) of nature with the Father, and perfect subordinationin the submission of His will to that of the Father. 

He consequently asserts:--

 "It is certain, however, that both Justin and Philo, unlike the prelude to the Fourth Gospel, place the Logos in a secondary position to God the Father, another point indicating a less advanced stage of the doctrine. Both Justin and Philo apply the term [Greek: theos] to the Logos without the article. Justin distinctly says, that Christians worship Jesus Christ as the Son of the True God, holding Him in the Second Place [Greek: en deutera chôra echontes], and this secondary position is systematically defined through Justin's writings in a very decided way, as it is in the works of Philo, by the contrast of the begotten Logos with the unbegotten God. Justin speaks of the Word as the 'first born of the unbegotten God' ([Greek: prôtotokos tô agennêtô Theô]), and the distinctive appellation of the 'unbegotten God, ' applied to the Father, is most common in all his writings. " (Vol. Ii. P. 291)

Now, when Justin speaks of holding Christ "in the Second Place, " he doesno more nor less than any Trinitarian Christian of the present day, whensuch an one speaks of the Son as the _Second_ Person of the Trinity, andas the only begotten Son and the Word of the Father. 

When we speak of Him as being the Second Person, we necessarily rank Himin the second place in point of numerical order. When we speak of Him asbeing the Son, we naturally place Him as, in the order of conception, second to, or after, Him that begat Him; [94:1] and, when we speak ofHim as the Word, we also place Him in order of conception as after HimWho utters or gives forth the Word. 

Justin says no more than this in any expression which he uses. 

When he speaks of the Father as the unbegotten God, and the Son as theBegotten God, he does no more than the most uncompromising believer inthe doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity in the present day does, when, in the words of the Creed of St. Athanasius, that believer confessesthat

 "The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. 

 "The Son is of the Father alone, neither made, nor created, but begotten. "

But we have not now so much to do with the orthodoxy of Justin as withthe question as to whether his doctrine is anterior to St. John's, asbeing less decided in its assertions of our Lord's equality. 

Now there are no words in Justin on the side of our Lord's subordinationat all equal to the words of Christ as given in St. John, "My Father isgreater than I. "

The Gospel of St. John is pervaded by two great truths which underlieevery part, and are the necessary complements of one another; these are, the perfect equality or identity of the nature of the Son with that ofthe Father, because He is the true begotten Son of His Father; and theperfect submission of the Will of the Son to that of the Father becauseHe is His Father. 

The former appears in such assertions as "The Word was with God, " "TheWord was God, " "My Lord and My God, " "I and the Father are one, " "Hethat hath seen Me hath seen the Father, " "The glory which I had withThee before the world was, " "All things that the Father hath are mine, "&c. 

The latter is inherent in the idea of perfect Sonship, and is assertedin such statements as

 God "gave His only begotten Son" (iii. 16). 

 "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hands" (iii. 35). 

 "The Son can do nothing of Himself" (v. 19). 

 "The Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth" (v. 20). 

 The Father hath "given to the Son to have life in Himself" (v. 26). 

 The Father "hath given Him authority to execute judgment also" (v. 27). 

 "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father" (v. 30). 

 "The works which the Father hath given me to finish" (v. 36). 

 "I am come in my Father's name" (v. 43). 

 "Him [the Son of Man] hath God the Father sealed" (vi. 27). 

 "I live by the Father" (v. 57). 

 "My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me" (vii. 16). 

 "He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same is true" (vii. 18). 

 "I am from Him, and He hath sent me" (vii. 29). 

 "I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things" (viii. 28). 

 "Neither came I of myself, but He sent me" (viii. 42). 

 "I have power to take it [my life] again; this commandment have I received of my Father" (x. 18). 

 "My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all" (x. 29). 

 "I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love" (xv. 10). 

I have read Justin carefully for the purpose of marking every expressionin his writings bearing upon the relations of the Son to the Father, andI find none so strongly expressing subordination as these, and thedeclarations of this kind in the works of Justin are nothing like sonumerous as they are in the short Gospel of St. John. 

The reader who knows anything about the history of Christian doctrinewill see at a glance how impossible it would have been for a Gospelascribing these expressions to Jesus to have been received by theChristian Church long before Justin's time, except that Gospel had beenfully authenticated as the work of the last surviving Apostle. 

SECTION XVII. 

JUSTIN AND PHILO. 

The writer of "Supernatural Religion" asserts that Justin derived hisLogos doctrine from Philo, and also that his doctrine was identical withthat of Philo and opposed to that of St. John. 

But respecting this assertion two questions may be asked. 

From whom did Philo derive _his_ doctrine of the Logos? and

From whom did Justin derive his identification of the Logos with Jesus?

The Christian, all whose conceptions of salvation rest ultimately uponthe truth that "The Word was God, " believes (if, that is, he has anyknowledge of the history of human thought), that God prepared men forthe reception of so momentous a truth long before that truth was fullyrevealed. He believes that God prepared the Gentiles for the receptionof this truth by familiarizing them with some idea of the Logos throughthe speculations of Plato; and he also believes that God prepared Hischosen people for receiving the same truth by such means as thepersonification of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs, and in the Apocryphalmoral books, and, above all, by the identification of the activepresence and power of God with the Meymera or Word, as set forth in theChaldee paraphrases. 

Both these lines of thought seem to have coalesced and to have reachedtheir full development (so far as they could, at least, apart fromChristianity) in Alexandrian Judaism, which is principally known to usin the pages of Philo; but how much of Philo's own speculation iscontained in the extracts from his writings given by the author of"Supernatural Religion" it is impossible to say, as we know very littleof the Alexandrian Jewish literature except from him. He seems, however, to write as if what he enunciated was commonly known and accepted bythose for whom he wrote. 

There are two reasons which make me think that Justin, if he derived anypart of his Logos doctrines from Alexandrian sources (which I muchdoubt), derived them from writings or traditions to which Philo, equallywith himself, was indebted. 

One is that, in his Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew, he never mentionsPhilo, whose name would have been a tower of strength to him indisputing with a Jew, and convincing him that there might be anotherPerson Who might be rightly called God besides the Father. 

Surely if Justin had known that Philo had spoken of God

 "Appointing His true Logos, his first begotten Son, to have the care of this sacred flock as the substitute of the great King" (quoted in p. 274);

and that--

 "The most ancient Word is the image of God" (p. 274);

and that

 "The Word is the image of God by which the whole world was created" (p. 275);

surely, I say, he would have used the name of one who had been in hisday such a champion of the Jewish people, and had suffered such insultsfrom Caligula on their account. [100:1]

Nothing seems more appropriate for the conversion of Trypho than many ofthe extracts from Philo given by the author of "Supernatural Religion. "Herein, too, in this matter of Philo and Justin, the author of"Supernatural Religion" betrays his surprising inconsistency and refuteshimself. He desires it to be inferred that Justin need not haveseen--probably had not seen, even one of our present Gospels, because hedoes not name the authors, though there is abundant reason why the namesof four authors of the Memoirs should not be paraded before unbelieversas suggesting differences in the testimony; whereas it would have beenthe greatest assistance to him in his argument with Trypho to have namedPhilo; and he does not. We would not infer from this, as the author of"Supernatural Religion" does most absurdly in parallel cases, thatJustin "knew nothing" of Philo; had not even seen his books, and neednot have heard of him; but we must gather from it that Justin did notassociate the name of Philo with the Logos doctrine in its most advancedstage of development. Many other facts tend to show that Justin madelittle or no use of Philo. In the extracts given by the author of"Supernatural Religion" from Philo, all culled out to serve his purpose, the reader will notice many words and phrases "foreign" to Justin; forinstance, [Greek: deuteros Theos, organon de Logon Theou, di' hou sympasho kosmos edêmiourgeito]. More particularly the reader will notice thatsuch adjectives as [Greek: orthos, hieros (hierôtatos)] and [Greek:presbys (presbytatos)] are applied to the Word in the short extractsfrom Philo given by the author of "Supernatural Religion, " which arenever applied to the Second Person of the Trinity in Justin. In fact, though there are some slight resemblances, the terminology of Philo is, to use the words of "Supernatural Religion, " "totally different from"and "opposed to" that of Justin, and the more closely it is examined, the more clearly it will be seen that Justin cannot have derived hisLogos doctrine from Philo. 

The other question is, "from whom did Justin derive his identificationof the Logos with Jesus?"

Not from Philo, certainly. We have shown above how St. John lays downwith authority the identity of the Logos with the pre-existent DivineNature of Jesus, not in long, elaborate, carefully reasonedphilosophical dissertation, but in four short, clear, decisiveenunciations. "In the beginning was the Word"--"The Word was withGod"--"The Word was God"--"The Word was made flesh. "

We have seen how these were the manifest germs of Justin's teaching. Now, if at the time when Justin wrote the Fourth Gospel, as we shallshortly prove, must have been in use in the Church in every part of theworld, why should Justin be supposed to derive from Philo a truth whichhe, being a Jew, would repudiate? Justin himself most certainly was notthe first to identify the Logos with Jesus. The identification wasasserted long before in the Apocalypse, which the author of"Supernatural Religion" shows to have been written about A. D. 70, or so. In fact, he ascertains its date to "a few weeks. " Supposing, then, thatthe Apocalypse was anterior to St. John, on whose lines, so to speak, does Justin develope the Logos doctrine? Most assuredly not on Philo'slines (for his whole terminology essentially differs from that of theAlexandrian), but on the lines of the fourth Gospel, and on no other. 

Let the reader turn to some extracts which the author of "SupernaturalReligion" gives out of Philo. In p. 265, he gives some very strikingpassages indeed, in which Philo speaks of the Logos as the Bread fromheaven:--

 "He is 'the substitute ([Greek: hyparchos]) of God, ' 'the heavenly incorruptible food of the soul, ' 'the bread from heaven. ' In one place he says, 'and they who inquire what nourishes the soul ... Learnt at last that it is the Word of God, and the Divine Reason' ... This is the heavenly nourishment to which the Holy Scripture refers ... Saying, 'Lo I rain upon you bread ([Greek: artos]) from heaven' (Exod. Xvi. 4). 'This is the bread ([Greek: artos]) which the Lord has given them to eat. '" (Exod. Xvi. 15)

And again:--

 "For the one indeed raises his eyes to the sky, perceiving the Manna, the Divine Word, the heavenly incorruptible food of the longing soul. " Elsewhere ... "but it is taught by the initiating priest and prophet Moses, who declares, 'This is the bread ([Greek: artos]), the nourishment which God has given to the soul. ' His own Reason and His own Word which He has offered; for this bread ([Greek: artos]) which He has given us to eat is Reason. " (Vol. Ii. P. 265. )

Now the Fourth Gospel also makes Jesus speak of Himself as the "Bread ofLife, " and "given by the Father;" but what is the bread defined by JesusHimself to be? Not a mere intellectual apprehension, _i. E. _ Reason, asPhilo asserts; but the very opposite, no other than "His Flesh;" theproduct of His Incarnation. "The bread that I will give is My Flesh, "and He adds to it His Blood. "Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Manand drink His Blood, ye have no life in you. "

Now this also Justin reproduces, not after the conception of Philo, which is but a natural conception, but after the conception of Jesus inthe Fourth Gospel, which is an infinitely mysterious and supernaturalone. 

 "In like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our Salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His Word, and from which our blood and flesh are by transmutation nourished is the Flesh and Blood of that Jesus Who was made flesh. " (Apol. I. Ch. Lxvi. )

I trust the reader will acquit me, in making this quotation, of anydesire to enunciate any Eucharistic theory of the presence of Christ'sFlesh in the Eucharist. All I have to do with is the simple fact thatboth Philo and St. John speak of the Word as the Bread of Life; butPhilo explains that bread to be "reason, " and St. John makes our Lord toset it forth as His Flesh, and Justin takes no notice of the idea ofPhilo, and reproduces the idea of the fourth Gospel. 

And yet we are to be told that Justin "knew nothing" of the FourthGospel, and that his Logos doctrine was "identical" with that of Philo. 

SECTION XVIII. 

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN ST. JOHN AND THE SYNOPTICS. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" devotes a large portion of hissecond volume to setting forth the discrepancies, real or alleged, between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel. 

In many of these remarks he seems to me to betray extraordinaryignorance of the mere contents of the Fourth Gospel. I shall notice twoor three remarkable misconceptions; but, before doing this, I desire tocall the reader's attention to the only inference respecting theauthorship of this Gospel which can be drawn from these discrepancies. 

St. John's Gospel is undoubtedly the last Gospel published; in fact, thelast work of the sacred canon. The more patent, then, the differencesbetween St. John and the Synoptics, the more difficult it is to believethat a Gospel, containing subject-matter so different from the worksalready accepted as giving a true account of Christ, should have beenaccepted by the whole Church at so comparatively recent a date, unlessthat Church had every reason for believing that it was the work of thelast surviving Apostle. 

Take, for instance, the [apparent] differences between St. John and theSynoptics respecting the scene of our Lord's ministry, the character ofHis discourses, the miracles ascribed to Him, and the day of HisCrucifixion, or rather of His partaking of the Paschal feast. The mostignorant and unobservant would notice these differences; and the morelabour required to reconcile the statements or representations of thelast Gospel with the three preceding ones, the more certain it is thatnone would have ventured to put forth a document containing suchdifferences except an Apostle who, being the last surviving one, mightbe said to inherit the prestige and authority of the whole college. 

It would far exceed the limits which I have prescribed to myself toexamine the Fourth Gospel with the view of reconciling the discrepanciesbetween it and the Synoptics, and also of bringing out the numberlessundesigned coincidences between the earlier and the later account, ofwhich the writer of "Supernatural Religion, " led away by his usualdogmatic prejudices, has taken not the smallest notice. 

The reader will find this very ably treated in Mr. Sanday's "Authorshipof the Fourth Gospel" (Macmillan). 

My object at present is of a far humbler nature, simply to show theutter untrustworthiness of some of the most confidently assertedstatements of the writer of "Supernatural Religion. "

I shall take two:

1. The difference between Christ's mode of teaching and the structureof His discourses, as represented by St. John and the Synopticsrespectively. 

2. The intellectual impossibility that St. John should have written theFourth Gospel. 

1. Respecting the difference of Christ's mode of teaching as recorded inSt. John and in the Synoptics, he remarks:--

 "It is impossible that Jesus can have had two such diametrically opposed systems of teaching; one purely moral, the other wholly dogmatic; one expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses; one clothed in the great language of humanity, the other concealed in obscure, philosophic terminology; and that these should have been kept so distinct as they are in the Synoptics, on the one hand, and the Fourth Gospel on the other. The tradition of Justin Martyr applies solely to the system of the Synoptics, 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him: for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of God. '" [106:1] (Vol. Ii. P. 468)

To take the first of those assertions. So far from its being"impossible" that Jesus "can have had two such diametrically oppositemodes of teaching, " it is not only possible, but we have undeniableproof of the fact in that remarkable saying of Christ recorded by bothSt. Matthew and St. Luke: "All things are delivered unto Me of MyFather, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth anyman the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will revealHim. " (Matth. Xi. 27). The author of "Supernatural Religion" has studiedthe letter of this passage very carefully, for he devotes no less thanten pages to a minute examination of the supposed quotations of it inJustin and other Fathers (vol. I. Pp. 402-412); but he does not drawattention to the fact that it is conceived in the spirit and expressedin the terms of the Fourth Gospel, and totally unlike the general styleof the discourses in the Synoptics. [107:1] The Fourth Gospel shows usthat such words as these, almost unique in the Synoptics, are not theonly words uttered in a style so different from the usual teaching ofour Lord--that at times, when He was on the theme of His relations toHis Father, He adopted other diction more suited to the nature of thedeeper truths He was enunciating. 

Then take the second assertion:--

 "One [system] expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses. "

Again:--

 "The description which Justin gives of the manner of teaching of Jesus excludes the idea that he knew the Fourth Gospel. 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him, for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of God. ' (Apol. I. 14) No one could for a moment assert that this description applies to the long and artificial discourses of the Fourth Gospel, whilst, on the other hand, it eminently describes the style of teaching with which we are acquainted in the Synoptics, with which the Gospel according to the Hebrews, in all its forms, was so closely allied. " (Vol. Ii. P. 315)

Now I assert, and the reader can with very little trouble verify thetruth of the assertion, that the mode of our Lord's teaching, as setforth in St. John, is more terse, axiomatic, and sententious--more inaccordance with these words of Justin, "brief and concise were thesentences uttered by Him, " than it appears in the Synoptics. 

To advert for a moment to the mere length of the discourses. The Sermonon the Mount is considerably longer than the longest discourse in St. John's Gospel (viz. , that occupying chapters xiv. , xv. , xvi. ). This isthe only unbroken discourse of any length in this Gospel. The others, viz. , those with Nicodemus, with the woman at Sychem, with the Jews inthe Temple, and the one in the Synagogue at Capernaum, are much shorterthan many in the Synoptics, and none of them are continuous discourses, but rather conversations. And, with respect to the composition, those inSt. John are mainly made up of short, terse, axiomatic deliverances justsuch as Justin describes. 

Take, for instance, the sentences in the sixth chapter:--

 "I am the bread of life. "

 "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. "

 "I am that bread of life. "

 "This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man should eat thereof and not die. "

 "My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. "

 "It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. "

And those in the tenth:--

 "I am the door of the sheep. "

 "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. "

 "I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. "

Then, if we compare parables, the passage in the Fourth Gospel mostresembling a parable, viz. , the similitude of the Vine and the branches, is made up of detached sentences more "terse" and "concise" than thoseof most parables in the Synoptics. 

The discourses in St. John are upon subjects very distasteful to theauthor of "Supernatural Religion, " and he loses no opportunity ofexpressing his dislike to them; but it is a gross misrepresentation tosay that the instruction, whatever it be, is conveyed in other thansentences as simple, terse, and concise as those of the Synoptics, though the subject-matter is different. 

We will now proceed to the last assertion:--

 "One [system of teaching] clothed in the great language of humanity, the other concealed in obscure philosophic terminology. "

What can this writer mean by the "philosophic terminology" of our Lord'ssayings as reported in the Fourth Gospel? If the use of the term "Logos"be "philosophic terminology, " it is confined to four sentences; andthese not the words of Jesus Himself, but of the Evangelist. I do notremember throughout the rest of the Gospel a single sentence which canbe properly called "philosophical. "

The author must confound "philosophical" with "mysterious. " Each andevery discourse in the fourth Gospel is upon, or leads to, some deepmystery; but that mystery is in no case set forth in philosophical, butin what the author of "Supernatural Religion" calls the "great languageof humanity. " Take the most mysterious by far of all the enunciations inSt. John's Gospel, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drinkHis Blood, ye have no life in you. " What are the words of which thissentence is composed? "Eat, " "flesh, " "blood, " "Son of man, " "life. " Arenot these the commonest words of daily life? but, then, their use andassociation here is the very thing which constitutes the mystery. 

Again, take the salient words of each discourse--"Except a man be bornagain"--"be born of water and of the Spirit. " "Whosoever drinketh of thewater that I shall give him shall never thirst. " "As the Father hathlife in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself. ""All that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth. ""The bread that I will give is My flesh. " "If ye believe not that I amHe, ye shall die in your sins. " "As the Father knoweth Me, even so knowI the Father. " "I am the Resurrection and the Life. " "Whatsoever yeshall ask in My name, that will I do. " "If I go not away, the Comforterwill not come unto you but: if I depart, I will send Him unto you. "

It is the deepest of all mysteries that one in flesh and blood can saysuch things of Himself; but it is a perversion of language to speak ofthese sayings as "philosophical terminology. " They are in a differentsphere from all more _human_ philosophy, and, indeed, are opposed toevery form of it. Philosophy herself requires a new birth before she canso much as see them. 

I must recur, however, to the author's first remark, in which hecharacterizes the discourses of the Synoptics as "purely moral, " andthose of St. John as "wholly dogmatic. " This is by no means true. Thediscourses in the Synoptics are on moral subjects, but they continuallymake dogmatic assertions or implications as pronounced as those in theFourth Gospel. In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, the preacherauthoritatively adds to and modifies the teaching of the very Decalogueitself. "Ye have heard that it was said TO them of old time" (for so[Greek: errhethê tois archaiois] must properly be translated); "but Isay unto you. " Again, Jesus assumes in the same discourse to be theObject of worship and the Judge of quick and dead, and that Hisrecognition is salvation itself, when He says, "Not every one that saithunto Me Lord, Lord, shall enter, " &c. "Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, " &c. , "then will I profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me all ye that work iniquity. "

Take the following expressions out of a number of similar ones in St. Matthew:--

 "I will make you (ignorant fishermen) fishers of men" (implying, I will give you power over souls such as no philosopher or leader of men has had before you). (iv. 21. )

 "Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you for My sake. " (v. 11. )

 "If they have called the master of the house (_i. E. _ Jesus) Beelzebub, how much wore shall they call them of His household. " (x. 25. )

 "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of me" (so that the holiest of human ties are to give way to His personal demands on the human heart). (x. 37. )

 "He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it. " (x. 39)

 "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father. " (xi. 27. )

 "In this place is One greater than the temple. " (xii. 6. )

 "The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath Day. " (xii. 8. )

 "In His (Christ's) Name shall the Gentiles trust. " (xii. 21. )

 "In the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, " _i. E. _ the angels. (xiii. 30. )

 "The Son of man shall send forth his angels. " (xiii. 41. )

 "I will give unto Thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. " (xvi. 19. )

 "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name there am I in the midst of them. " (xviii. 21. )

 "He, [God], sent His servants--He sent other servants--Last of all He sent unto them His Son, saying, they will reverence My Son. " (xxi. 37. )

These places assert, by implication, the highest dogma respecting thePerson of Christ. Who is He Who has such power in heaven and earth thatHe commands the angels in heaven, and gives the keys of the kingdom ofGod to His servant on earth? What Son is this Whom none but the Fatherknoweth, and Who alone knoweth the Father, and Who reveals the Father towhomsoever He will? What Son is this compared with Whom such saints asMoses, David, Elijah, Isaiah, and Daniel are "servants?" Those dogmaticassertions of the first Gospel suggest the question; and the FourthGospel gives the full and perfect answer--that He is the Word with God, that He is God, and the Only-begotten of the Father. The Epistles assumethe answer where one speaks of "Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be tenaciously grasped to be equal with God, "and another speaks of God's own Son, and another compares Moses theservant with Christ the Son; but the fullest revelation is reserved tothe last Gospel. And herein the order of God's dealings is observed, Whogives the lesser revelation to prepare for the fuller and more perfect. The design of the Gospel is to restore men to the image of God byrevealing to them God Himself. But, before this can be done, they mustbe taught what goodness is, their very moral sense must be renewed. Hence the moral discourses of the Synoptics. Till this foundation islaid, first in the world, and then in the soul, the Gospel has nothingto lay hold of and to work upon; so it was laid first in the Sermon onthe Mount, which, far beyond all other teaching, stops every mouth andbrings in all the world guilty before God; and then the way is preparedfor fuller revelations, such as that of the Atonement by the Death ofChrist as set forth in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul, and therevelation culminates in the knowledge of the Father and the Son in theFourth Gospel. 

With respect to the assertion of the author of "Supernatural Religion, "that the discourses in this Gospel are, as compared with those in theSynoptics, _wholly_ dogmatic, as opposed to moral, the reader may judgeof the truth of this by the following sayings of the Fourth Gospel:--

 "Every one that doeth evil hateth the light. "

 "He that doeth truth cometh to the light. "

 "God is a Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. "

 "They that have done good [shall come forth] to the Resurrection of Life. "

 "How can ye believe who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh of God only?"

 "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. "

 "The truth shall make you free, " coupled with

 "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. "

 "If I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet. "

 "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you. "

 "He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me. "

These sayings, the reader will perceive, embody the deepest and highestmoral teaching conceivable. 

One more point remains to be considered--the impossibility that St. John, taking into account his education and intellect, should have beenthe author of the Fourth Gospel. This is stated in the followingpassage:--

 "The philosophical statements with which the Gospel commences, it will be admitted, are anything but characteristic of the son of thunder, the ignorant and unlearned fisherman of Galilee, who, to a comparatively late period of life, continued preaching in his native country to his brethren of the circumcision.... In the Alexandrian philosophy, everything was prepared for the final application of the doctrine, and nothing is more clear than the fact that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was well acquainted with the teaching of the Alexandrian school, from which he derived his philosophy, and its elaborate and systematic application to Jesus alone indicates a late development of Christian doctrine, which, we maintain, could not have been attained by the Judaistic son of Zebedee. " (Vol. Ii. P. 415)

Again, in the preceding page:--

 "Now, although there is no certain information as to the time when, if ever, the Apostle removed into Asia Minor, it is pretty certain that he did not leave Palestine before A. D. 60. ... If we consider the Apocalypse to be his work, we find positive evidence of such markedly different thought and language actually existing when the Apostle must have been at least sixty or seventy years of age, that it is quite impossible to conceive that he could have subsequently acquired the language and mental characteristics of the Fourth Gospel. "

This, though written principally with reference to the diction, appliesstill more to the philosophy of the author of the Fourth Gospel. And, indeed, from his using the words "mental characteristics, " we have nodoubt that he desires such an application. 

Now, what are the facts? We must assume that St. John, though "unlearnedand ignorant, " compared with the leaders of the Jewish commonwealth, atthe commencement of his thirty years' sojourn in the Jewish capital, wasa man of average intellect. Here, then, we have a member of a sect moreaggressive than any before known in the promulgation of its opinions, taking the lead in the teaching and defence of these opinions in a cityto which the Jews of all nationalities resorted periodically to keep thegreat feasts. If the holding of any position would sharpen a man'snatural intellect and give him a power over words, and a mental grasp ofideas to which in youth he had been a stranger, that position would bethe leading one he held in the Church of such a city as Jerusalem. 

In the course of the thirty years which, according to the author of"Supernatural Religion, " he lived there, he must have constantly hadintercourse with Alexandrian Jews and Christians. It is as probable asnot that during this period he had had converse with Philo himself, forthe distance between Jerusalem and Alexandria was comparativelytrifling. At Pentecost there were present Jews and proselytes from Egyptand the parts of Libya about Cyrene. There was also a Synagogue of theAlexandrians. Now I assert that a few hours' conversation with anyAlexandrian Jew, or with any Christian convert from Alexandrian Judaism, would have, _humanly speaking_, enabled the Apostle, even if he knew nota word of the doctrine before, to write the four sentences in which arecontained the whole Logos expression of the Fourth Gospel. 

St. John must have been familiar with the teaching of traditionalinterpretation respecting the Meymera as contained in the Chaldeeparaphrases; indeed, the more "unlearned" and "ignorant" he was, themore he must have relied upon the Chaldee paraphrases for the knowledgeof the Old Testament, the Hebrew having been for centuries a deadlanguage. We have a Chaldee paraphrase of great antiquity on so earlyand familiar a chapter as the third of Genesis, explaining the voice ofthe Lord God by the voice of the Meymera, or Word of the Lord God(Genesis iii. ). 

The natural rendering of this word into Greek would be Logos. I repeat, then, that, humanly speaking, if he had never entertained the ideabefore, a very short conversation with an Alexandrian Jew would havefurnished him with all the "philosophy" required to make the fourstatements in which he simply identifies the Logos with the DivineNature of his Lord. 

Of course, I do not for a moment believe that the Apostle was enabled towrite the exordium of his Gospel by any such inspiration. There is not amore direct utterance of the Holy Spirit in all Scripture than thatwhich we have in the prelude to the Fourth Gospel. 

But in the eyes of a Christian the grace of the Holy Spirit is shown inthe power and explicitness, and above all in the simplicity of theassertions which identify the human conception, if such it can becalled, of Platonism, or Judaism, with the highest divine truth. 

I believe that if the Apostle wrote those sentences at the time handeddown by the Church's tradition, that is, when Cerinthian and otherheresies respecting our Lord's nature were beginning to be felt, thepower of the Holy Spirit was put forth to restrict him to these fewsimple utterances, and to restrain his human intellect from overloadingthem with philosophical or controversial applications of them, whichwould have marred their simplicity and diminished their power. [117:1]

SECTION XIX. 

EXTERNAL PROOFS OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF OUR FOUR GOSPELS. 

We have now shown that Justin Martyr, the principal witness broughtforward by the author of "Supernatural Religion" to discredit the FourEvangelists, either made use of the very books which we now possess, orbooks which contain exactly the same information respecting our Lord'smiraculous Birth, Death, Resurrection, and moral teaching. We have seen, also, that Justin gives us, along with the teaching of the Synoptics, that peculiar teaching respecting the pre-existent Divine nature ofJesus which, as far as can be ascertained, was to be found only in theFourth Gospel, and which is consequently called Johannean; and that, besides this, he refers to the history, and adopts the language, andurges the arguments which are to be found only in St. John. 

We have also shown that there are no internal considerations whatsoeverfor supposing that Justin did not make use of the Fourth Gospel. Instead, for instance, of the doctrine of St. John being a developmentof that held by Justin Martyr, the facts of the case all point to thecontrary. 

We must now see whether there is external evidence which makes it notonly probable, but as certain as any fact in literary history can be, that Justin must have known and made use of our present Evangelists;that if he was a teacher in such an acknowledged centre ofecclesiastical information or tradition as Rome, and _appears_ to quoteour Gospels (with no matter what minor variations and inaccuracies), hedid actually quote the same and no other; and if his inaccuracies, anddiscrepancies, and omissions of what we suppose he ought to havementioned, were doubled or trebled, it would still be as certain as anyfact of such a nature can be, that he quoted the Four Evangelists, because they must have been read and commented on in his day and in hischurch as the Memoirs of the Apostles, which took their place by theside of the prophets of the Old Testament in the public instruction ofthe Church. In order to this I shall have to examine the externalevidence for the Canon of the New Testament--so far, that is, as theFour Gospels are concerned. 

In doing this I shall not take the usual method of tracing the evidencefor the various books in question downwards from the Apostolic time--thereader will find this treated exhaustively in "Dr. Westcott on theCanon"--but I shall trace it upwards, beginning at a time at which therecannot be the smallest doubt that the New Testament was exactly the sameas that which we now possess. 

For this purpose I shall take the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius asthe starting-point. The reader is, of course, aware that he is theearliest ecclesiastical writer whose history has come down to us, thehistorians who wrote before his time being principally known to usthrough fragments preserved in his book. He was born of Christianparents about the year A. D. 270, and died about 340. He probably wrotehis history about or before the year 325. 

The reader, though he may not have read his history, will be aware, fromthe quotations from it in "Supernatural Religion, " that Eusebiuscarefully investigated the history of the Canon of Scripture, and alsothe succession of ecclesiastical writers. His history is, in fact, to agreat extent, a sketch of early Church literature. In dealing with thehistory of the Canon, he particularly notices whether a large number ofwriters have quoted certain books of Scripture, of whose acceptance bythe whole Church doubts were entertained. This is important, as it showsthat not only himself, but the Church, during the three ages whosehistory he has recorded, did not receive books of Scripture except uponwhat they deemed to be sufficient evidence, and that evidence was thereception of each book from Apostolic times by the whole Church. I willnow give the testimony of Eusebius to the authenticity of the FourGospels. 

First of all he describes the origin of the Gospel of St. Mark in thefollowing words:--

 "So greatly, however, did the splendour of piety enlighten the minds of Peter's hearers, that it was not sufficient to hear but once, nor to receive the unwritten doctrine of the Gospel of God, but they persevered, in every variety of entreaties, to solicit Mark as the companion of Peter, and whose Gospel we have, that he should leave them a monument of the doctrine thus orally communicated, in writing. Nor did they cease with their solicitations until they had prevailed with the man, and thus become the means of that history which is called the Gospel according to Mark. They say also, that the Apostle (Peter), having ascertained what was done by the revelation of the Spirit, was delighted with the zealous ardour expressed by these men, and that the history obtained his authority for the purpose of being read in the Churches. This account is given by Clement in the Sixth Book of his Institutions, whose testimony also is corroborated by that of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis. " (Bk. Ii. Chap. Xv. Crusé's translation. )

This is narrated as having taken place in the reign of Claudius, _i. E. _, between A. D. 41 and A. D. 54. 

The next Gospel whose origin he describes is that of St. Luke, in thefollowing words:--

 "But Luke, who was born at Antioch, and by profession a physician, being for the most part connected with Paul, and familiarly acquainted with the rest of the Apostles, has left us two inspired books, the institutes of that spiritual healing art which he obtained from them. One of these is his Gospel, in which he testifies that he has recorded, 'as those who were from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the word, ' delivered to him, whom also, he says, he has in all things followed. The other is his Acts of the Apostles, which he composed, not from what he had heard from others, but from what he had seen himself. It is also said that Paul usually referred to his Gospel, whenever in his Epistles he spoke of some particular Gospel of his own, saying, 'according to my Gospel. '" (Bk. Iii. Ch. Iv. Crusé's translation. )

Further on, he describes the publication of the First and FourthGospels, thus:--

 "Of all the disciples, Matthew and John are the only ones that have left us recorded comments, and even they, tradition says, undertook it from necessity. Matthew also, having first proclaimed the Gospel in Hebrew, when on the point of going also to other nations, committed it to writing in his native tongue, and thus supplied the want of his presence to them by his writings. But after Mark and Luke had already published their Gospels they say that John, who, during all this time, was proclaiming the Gospel without writing, at length proceeded to write it on the following occasion. The three Gospels previously written had been distributed among all, and also handed to him; they say that he admitted them, giving his testimony to their truth; but that there was only wanting in the narrative the account of the things done by Christ among the first of His deeds, and at the commencement of the Gospel. And this was the truth. For it is evident that the other three Evangelists only wrote the deeds of our Lord for one year after the imprisonment of John the Baptist, and intimated this in the very beginning of their history. For after the fasting of forty days, and the consequent temptation, Matthew indeed specifies the time of his history in these words, 'But, hearing that John was delivered up, he returned from Judea into Galilee. ' Mark in like manner writes: 'But, after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee. ' And Luke, before he commenced the deeds of Jesus, in much the same way designates the time, saying, 'Herod thus added this wickedness above all he had committed, and that he shut up John in prison. ' For these reasons the Apostle John, it is said, being entreated to undertake it, wrote the account of the time not recorded by the former Evangelists, and the deeds done by our Saviour, which they have passed by (for these were the events that occurred before the imprisonment of John), and this very fact is intimated by him when he says, 'This beginning of miracles Jesus made, ' and then proceeds to make mention of the Baptist, in the midst of our Lord's deeds, as John was at that time 'baptizing at Aenon, near to Salim. ' He plainly also shows this in the words, 'John was not yet cast into prison. ' The Apostle, therefore, in his Gospel, gives the deeds of Jesus before the Baptist was cast into prison, but the other three Evangelists mention the circumstances after that event, " &c. (Bk. Iii. C. Xxiv. )

The last extract which I shall give is from the next chapter, when hementions "The sacred Scriptures which are acknowledged as genuine, andthose that are not:"--

 "This appears also to be the proper place to give a summary statement of the books of the New Testament already mentioned. And here among the first must be placed _the Holy Quaternion of the Gospels_; these are followed by the Book of the Acts of the Apostles; after this must be mentioned the Epistles of Paul, which are followed by the acknowledged First Epistle of John, also the First of Peter to be admitted in like manner. After these are to be placed, if proper, the Revelation of John, concerning which we shall offer the different opinions in due time. These, then, are acknowledged as genuine. Among the disputed books, although they are well known and approved by many, is reputed that called the Epistle of James and [that] of Jude. Also the Second Epistle of Peter, and those called the Second and Third of John, whether they are of the Evangelist, or of some other of the same name. Among the spurious must be numbered both the books called the Acts of Paul, and that called Pastor, and the Revelation of Peter. Besides these, the books called the Epistle of Barnabas, and what are called the Institutions of the Apostles. Moreover, as I said before, if it should appear right, the Revelation of John, which some, as before said, reject, but others rank among the genuine. But there are also some who number among these the Gospel according to the Hebrews, with which those of the Hebrews that have received Christ are particularly delighted. " (Bk. Iii. Ch. Xxv. )

Such are the statements of the oldest ecclesiastical historian whosework has come down to us. 

With respect to the Gospels, he knows but four as canonical, and hasnever heard of any other as accepted by the Church. He mentionsApocryphal and disputed books. Amongst the latter he mentions the Gospelto the Hebrews as acceptable to a local church; but he is whollyignorant of any doubt having ever been cast upon the authority of thefour in any branch of the Catholic Church. 

Now let the reader remember, that however Eusebius, like all otherwriters, _might_ be liable to be mistaken through carelessness, orprejudice, or any other cause of inaccuracy; yet that each of thesestatements respecting the authorship of the various Gospels is, on allprinciples of common sense, worth all the conjectural criticisms of theGerman and other writers, so copiously cited in "Supernatural Religion, "put together. 

For, in the first place, Eusebius flourished about 1500 years nearer tothe original source of the truth than these critics, and had come toman's estate within 200 years of the publication of the Fourth Gospel. 

Now, at a time when tradition was far more relied upon, and so much moreperfectly preserved and transmitted than in such an age of printed booksand public journals as the present, this alone would make an enormousdifference between a direct statement of Eusebius and the conjecture ofa modern theorist. But far more than this, Eusebius had access to, andwas well acquainted with, a vast mass of ecclesiastical literature whichhas altogether perished; and the greater part of which is only known tohave existed through notices or extracts to be found in his work. Forinstance, in a few pages he gives accounts of writings which haveperished of Papias (iii. C. 39), Quadratus and Aristides (iv. Ch. 3), Hegesippus (iv. Ch. 8 and 22), Tatian (iv. Ch. 16), Dionysius of Corinth(iv. Ch. 23), Pinytus (iv. Ch. 23), Philip and Modestus (ch. 25), Melito(ch. 26), Apollinaris (ch. 27), Bardesanes (ch. 30). 

These are all writers who flourished in the first three quarters of thesecond century, and I have only mentioned those whose writings, from thewording of his notices, Eusebius appears to have seen himself. 

It is clear, I repeat, that the evidence of such an one on theauthorship of the Gospels is worth all the conjectures and theories ofmodern critics of all classes put together. 

We shall pass over very briefly the first sixty years of the thirdcentury, _i. E. _ between A. D. 200 and the time of Eusebius. During theseyears flourished Cyprian, martyred A. D. 257; Hippolytus, martyred aboutA. D. 240; and Origen, died A. D. 254. 

Respecting the latter, it appears from Eusebius that he publishedcommentaries on the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John. Of the latterEusebius says the first five books wore composed at Alexandria, but ofthe whole work on St. John only twenty-two books have come down to us. (Bk. Vi. Ch. 24. ) Now Origen was born a few years (at the most twenty)after the death of Justin; and we have seen how the author of"Supernatural Religion" evidently considers the works of Justin to beanterior to the Fourth Gospel. Is it credible, or oven conceivable, thata man of Origen's intellect, learning, and research should write twentyor thirty books of commentaries on a false Gospel which was forgedshortly before his own time?

He expressly states that the Church knew of but four Gospels:--

 "As I have understood from tradition respecting the four Gospels, which are the only undisputed ones in the whole Church of God throughout the world. The first is written according to Matthew, the same that was once a publican, but afterwards an Apostle of Jesus Christ, who, having published it for the Jewish converts, wrote it in Hebrew. The second is according to Mark, who composed it as Peter explained to him, whom he [Peter] also acknowledged as his son in his general epistle, saying, 'The elect Church in Babylon salutes you, as also Mark, my son. ' And the third according to Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, which was written for the converts from the Gentiles; and, last of all, the Gospel according to John. " Extract from Origen's first book of his commentaries on St. Matthew, quoted by Eusebius (vi. 25)

As regards Cyprian, the following quotation will suffice:--

 "The Church, setting forth the likeness of Paradise, includes within her walls fruit-bearing trees, whereof that which does not bring forth good fruit is cut off and is cast into the fire. These trees she waters with four rivers, that is, with the four Gospels, wherewith, by a celestial inundation, she bestows the grace of saying baptism. " Cyprian, Letter lxxii. To Jubaianus. 

As regards Hippolytus I have counted above fifty references to St. Matthew and forty to St. John, in his work on the "Refutation ofHeresies, " and "Fragments. " I append in a note a passage taken from hiscomment on the Second Psalm, preserved to us by Theodoret. The readerwill be able to judge from it from what sources he derived his knowledgeof Christ. I give it rather for its devotional spirit than its evidencefor the four. [126:1]

We now come to the conclusion of the second century. Between the years180 and 200 or 210 A. D. , there flourished three writers of whom wepossess somewhat voluminous remains. Irenaeus, who was born about 140 atthe latest, who was in youth the disciple of Polycarp, who was himselfthe disciple of St. John. Irenaeus wrote his work against heresies aboutthe year 180, a little after he had succeeded Pothinus as Bishop ofLyons, and was martyred at the beginning of the next century (202). 

Clement of Alexandria, the date of whose birth or death is uncertain, flourished long before the end of the second century, for he became headof the catechetical school of Alexandria about the year 190. 

Tertullian was born about 150, was converted to Christianity about 185, was admitted to the priesthood in 192, and adopted the opinions ofMontanus about the end of the century. 

I shall first of all give the testimony of these three writers to theuniversal reception of the Four Gospels by the Church, and consider towhat time previous to their own day their testimony upon such a subjectmust, of necessity, reach. 

First of all, Irenaeus, in a well-known passage, asserts that--

 "It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. "

He then refers to the four zones of the earth, and the four principalwinds, and remarks that, in accordance with this, "He Who was manifest to men has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit. "

Then he refers to the four living creatures of the vision in theRevelation, and proceeds, --

 "And, therefore, the Gospels are in accord with these things, among which Christ is seated. For that according to John relates His original effectual and glorious generation from the Father, thus declaring, 'In the beginning was the word, ' &c.... But that according to Luke, taking up His priestly character, commences with Zacharias the priest offering sacrifice to God. For now was made ready the fatted calf, about to be immolated for the finding again of the younger son. Matthew again relates His generation as a man, saying, 'The Book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham;' and also, 'The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. ' This, then, is the Gospel of His humanity, for which reason it is, too, that the character of an humble and meek man is kept up through the whole Gospel. Mark, on the other hand, commences with a reference to the prophetical spirit coming down from on high to men, saying, 'The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Esaias the prophet, ' pointing to the winged aspect of the Gospel: and on this account he made a compendious and cursory narrative, for such is the prophetical character. " (Iren. , Bk. Iii. Ch. Xi. )

Clement of Alexandria, speaking of a saying ascribed to our Lord, writes:--

 "In the first place, then, in the four Gospels handed down amongst us, we have not this saying; but in that which is according to the Egyptians. " (Miscellanies, iii. Ch. Xiii. )

Tertullian writes thus:--

 "Of the Apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first instil faith into us; whilst, of Apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it afterwards. These all start with the same principles of the faith, so far as relates to the one only God the Creator, and His Christ, how that He was born of the Virgin, and came to fulfil the law and the prophets. Never mind if there does occur some variation in the order of their narratives, provided that there be agreement in the essential matter of the faith in which there is disagreement with Marcion. " (Tertullian against Marcion, iv. C. Ii. )

Such are the explicit declarations of these three writers respecting thenumber and authorship of the Four. I shall give at the conclusion ofthis section some of the references to be found in these writers to thefirst two or three chapters in each Gospel. 

It is but very little to say that they quote the Four as frequently, andwith as firm a belief in their being the Scriptures of God, as anymodern divine. They quote them far more copiously, and reproduce thehistory contained in them far more fully than any modern divine whom Ihave ever read, who is not writing specifically on the Life of our Lord, or on some part of His teaching contained in the Gospels. 

But I have now to consider the question, "To what time, previous totheir own day, or rather to the time at which they wrote, does theirtestimony to such a matter as the general reception of the Four Gospelsof necessity reach back?"

Clement wrote in Alexandria, Tertullian in Rome or Africa, Irenaeus inGaul. They all flourished about A. D. 190. They all speak of the Gospels, not only as well known and received, but as being the only Gospelsacknowledged and received by the Church. One of them uses very"uncritical" arguments to prove that the Gospels could only be four innumber; but the very absurdity of his analogies is a witness to theuniversal tradition of his day. To what date before their time must thistradition reach, so that it must be relied upon as exhibiting the truestate of things?

Now this tradition is not respecting a matter of opinion, but a matterof fact--the fact being no other than the reading of the Gospels orMemoirs of our Lord in the public service of the Church. The "Memoirs ofour Lord, " with other books, formed the Lectionary of the Church. Sothat every Christian, who attended the public assemblies for worship, must know whether he heard the Gospels read there or not. 

Now any two men who lived successively to the age of sixty-five would beable to transmit irrefragable testimony, which would cover a hundredyears, to the use of the Gospels in the lectionary of the Church. 

During the last five years we have had a change in our Lectionary, whichchange only affects the rearrangement of the portions read each day outof the same Gospels, and every boy and girl of fifteen years old at thetime would recognize the alteration when it took place. If it hadoccurred fifty years ago, any man or woman of sixty-five would perfectlyremember the change. If it had occurred within the last hundred years, any person of sixty-five could bear testimony to the fact that, when hefirst began to be instructed in the nature of the Church Services he wastold by his elders that up to a time which they could perfectlyrecollect certain selections from Scripture had been read in Church, butthat at such a period during their lifetime a change had been broughtabout after certain public debates, and that it received such or suchopposition and was not at once universally adopted, which change was thereading in public of the present selection. It is clear then, that ifall public documents were destroyed, yet any two men, who could scarcelybe called old men, would be able to transmit with perfect certainty therecord of any change in the public reading of Scripture during the lastone hundred years. 

But, supposing that instead of a change in the mere selections from theGospels, the very Gospels themselves had been changed, could such athing have occurred unnoticed, and the memory of it be so absolutelyforgotten that neither history nor tradition preserved the smallest hintof it at the end of a short century?

Now this, and far more than this, is what the author of "SupernaturalReligion" asks his readers to believe throughout his whole work. 

We have seen how, before the end of this century, no other authoritativememoirs of Christ were known by the Church, and these were known andrecognized as so essential a part of the Christian system, that theirvery number as four, and only four, was supposed to be prefigured fromthe very beginning of the world. 

Now Justin lived till the year 165 in this century. He was martyred whenIrenaeus must have been twenty-five years old. Both Clement andTertullian must have been born before his martyrdom, perhaps severalyears, and yet the author of "Supernatural Religion" would have usbelieve that the books of Christians which were accounted most sacred inthe year 190, and used in that year as frequently, and with as firm abelief in their authenticity as they are by any Christians now, wereunused by Justin Martyr, and that one of the four was absolutely unknownto him--in all probability forged after his time. 

We are persistently told all this, too, in spite of the fact that hereproduces the account of the Birth, Teaching, Death, and Resurrectionof Christ exactly as they are contained in the Four, without a singleadditional circumstance worth speaking of, making only such alterationsas would be natural in the reproduction of such an account for those whowere without the pale of the Church. 

But even this is not the climax of the absurdity which we are told that, if we are reasonable persons, we must accept. It appears that the"Memoirs" which, we are told, Justin heard read every Sunday in theplace of assembly in Rome or Ephesus which he frequented, was aPalestinian Gospel, which combined, in one narrative, the accounts ofthe Birth, Life, Death, and moral Teaching of Jesus, together with thepeculiar doctrine and history now only to be found in the Fourth Gospel. Consequently this Gospel was not only far more valuable than any one ofour present Evangelists, but, we might almost say, more worthy ofpreservation than all put together, for it combined the teaching of thefour, and no doubt reconciled their seeming discrepancies, thusobviating one of the greatest difficulties connected with theirauthority and inspiration; a difficulty which, we learn from history, was felt from the first. And yet, within less than twenty years, thisGospel had been supplanted by four others so effectually that it was allbut forgotten at the end of the century, and is referred to by the firstecclesiastical historian as one of many apocrypha valued only by a localChurch, and has now perished so utterly that not one fragment of it canbe proved to be authentic. 

But enough of this absurdity. 

Taking with us the patent fact, that before the end of the secondcentury, and during the first half of the third, the Four Gospels wereaccepted by the Church generally, and quoted by every Christian writeras fully as they are at this moment, can there be the shadow of a doubtthat when Justin wrote the account of our Lord's Birth, which I havegiven in page 22, he had before him the first and third Evangelists, andcombined these two accounts in one narrative? Whether he does thisconsciously and of set purpose I leave to the author of "SupernaturalReligion, " but combine the two accounts he certainly does. 

Again, when, in the accounts of the events preceding our Lord's Death, Justin notices that Jesus commanded the disciples to bring forth an assand its foal (page 33), can any reasonable man doubt but that he owedthis to St. Matthew, in whose Gospel alone it appears?

Or when, in the extract I have given in page 20, he notices that ourLord called the sons of Zebedee Boanerges, can there be any reasonabledoubt that he derived this from St. Mark, the only Evangelist whorecords it, whose Gospel (in accordance with universal tradition), hethere designates as the "Memoirs of Peter?"

Or again, when, in the extract I have given in page 34, he records thatour Lord in His Agony sweat great drops [of blood], can there be a doubtbut that he made use of St. Luke, especially since he mentions two orthree other matters connected with our Lord's Death, only to be found inSt. Luke? Or, again, why should we assume the extreme improbability of adefunct Gospel to account for all the references to, and reminiscencesof, St. John's Gospel, which I have given in Sections VIII. And IX. Ofthis work?

So far for Justin Martyr. 

We will now turn to references in three or four other writers. 

In the Epistle of Vienne and Lyons we find the following:--

 "And thus was fulfilled the saying of our Lord: 'The time shall come in which every one that killeth you shall think that he offereth a service to God. '"

This seems like a reference to John xvi. 2. The words, with some veryslight variation, are to be found there and not to be found elsewhere. The letter of the Churches was written about A. D. 178 "at the earliest, "we are told by the author of "Supernatural Religion. " Well, we will makehim a present of a few years, and suppose that it was written ten ortwelve years later, _i. E. _ about A. D. 190. Now we find that Irenaeus hadwritten his great work, "Against Heresies, " before this date. Surely, then, the notion of the writer of "Supernatural Religion, " that we areto suppose that this was taken from some lost Apocryphal Gospel whenIrenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, had actually used a written Gospel whichcontains it, refutes itself. 

We turn to Athenagoras. 

We find in his work, "Plea (or Embassy) for the Christians" (ch. X. ), the following:--

 "But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father in idea and in operation, for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one [I and My Father are one], and the Son being in the Father, and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit, " &c. (John xiv. 10. )

Again (ch. Xii. ):--

 "Men who reckon the present life of very small worth indeed, and who are conducted to the future life by this one thing alone, that they know God and His Logos. " [This is life eternal, that they may know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. ]

Can the writer of "Supernatural Religion" be serious when he writes, "Henowhere identifies the Logos with Jesus?" Does the writer of"Supernatural Religion" seriously think that a Christian writer, livingin 177, and presenting to the emperor a plea for Christians, would haveany difficulty about identifying Jesus with that Son of God Whom heexpressly states to be the Logos of God?

The following also are seeming quotations from the Synoptics inAthenagoras. 

 "What, then, are those precepts in which we are instructed? 'I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse, pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in the heavens, who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. '

 "'For if ye love them which love you, and lend to them which lend to you, what reward shall ye have?'

 "'For whosoever, He says, looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart. '

 "'For whosoever, says He, putteth away his wife and marrieth another, committeth adultery. '"

When we consider that in the time of Athenagoras, or very soon after, there were three authors living who spoke of the Gospels in the way wehave shown, and quoted them in the way we shall now show, why assignthese quotations to defunct Gospels of whose contents we are perfectlyignorant, when we have them substantially in Gospels which occupied thesame place in the Church then as now?

NOTE ON SECTION XIX. 

I have asserted that the three authors, Tertullian, Clement ofAlexandria, and Irenaeus, all flourishing before the close of the secondcentury, quote the four Gospels, if anything, more frequently than mostmodern Christian authors do. I append, in proof of this, some of thereferences in these authors to the first two or three chapters of ourpresent Gospels. 

IRENAEUS. 

Matthew, i. 

 "And Matthew, too, recognizing one and the same Jesus Christ, exhibiting his generation as a man from the Virgin ... Says, 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham. ' Then, that he might free our mind from suspicion regarding Joseph, he says, 'But the birth of Christ was on this wise: when His mother was espoused, '" &c. (iii. Xvi. )

Then he proceeds to quote and remark upon the whole of the remainder ofthe chapter. 

 "Matthew again relates His generation as a man. " For remainder, see page 128. 

 "For Joseph is shown to be the son of Joachim and Jeconiah, as also Matthew sets forth in his pedigree. " (iii. 21, 9. )

 "Born Emmanuel of the Virgin. To this effect they testify that before Joseph had come together with Mary, while she therefore remained in virginity, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. " (iii. 21, 4. )

 "Then again Matthew, when speaking of the angel, says, 'The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in sleep. ' (iii. 9, 2. )

 "The angel said to him in sleep, 'Fear not to take to thee Mary, thy wife'" (and proceeding with several other verses of the same chapter). (iv. 23, l. )

Matthew, ii. 

 "But Matthew says that the Magi, coming from the East, exclaimed, 'For we have seen His star in the East, and are come to worship Him. '" (iii. 9, 2. )

 "And that having been led by the star unto the house of Jacob to Emmanuel, they showed, by those gifts which they offered, who it was that was worshipped; myrrh, because it was He who should die and be buried for the human race; gold, because He was a king, " &c. , &c. (iii. 9, 2)

 "He, since He was Himself an infant, so arranging it that human infants should be martyrs, slain, according to the Scriptures, for the sake of Christ. " (iii. 16, 4. )

Matthew, iii. 

 "For Matthew the apostle ... Declares that John, when preparing the way for Christ, said to them who were boasting of their relationship according to the flesh, &c. , 'O generation of vipers, who hath shown you to flee from ... Raise up children unto Abraham. ' (iii. 9, 1. )

 "As John the Baptist says, 'For God is able from these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. '" (iv. 7, 2. )

There are no less than six quotations or references to the ninth andtenth verses of this chapter, viz. , iv. 24, 2; v. 34, 1; iv. 8, 3; iv. 36, 4; v. 17, 4. 

 "Now who this Lord is that brings such a day about, John the Baptist points out when he says of Christ, 'He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, having His fan in His hand, '" &c. (iv. 4, 3. )

 "Having a fan in His hands, and cleansing His floor, and gathering the wheat, '" &c. (iv. 33, 1. )

 "Who gathers the wheat into His barn, but will burn up the chaff with fire unquenchable. " (iv. 33, ll. )

 "Then, speaking of His baptism, Matthew says, 'The heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God, '" &c. (iii. 9, 3. )

Mark, i. 

 "Wherefore Mark also says, 'The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets. '" (iii. 16, 3. )

 "Yea, even the demons exclaimed, on beholding the Son, 'We know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God. '" (iv. 6, 6. )

Mark iv. 28. 

 "His Word, through whom the wood fructifies, and the fountains gush forth, and the earth gives 'first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. '" (iv. 18, 4. )

Luke, i. 

 "Thus also does Luke, without respect of persons, deliver to us what he had learned from them, as he has himself testified, saying, 'Even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word. '" (iii. 14, 2. )

Another reference to same in preface to Book iv. 

 "Luke, also, the follower and disciple of the Apostles, referring to Zacharias and Elizabeth, from whom, according to promise, John was born, says, 'And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless, '", &c. (iii. 10, 1. )

 "And again, speaking of Zacharias, 'And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office, '" &c. (_Ibid. _)

 "And then, speaking of John, he (the angel) says: 'For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, '" &c. (_Ibid. _)

 "In the spirit and power of Elias. " (iii. 10, 6. )

 "Truly it was by Him of whom Gabriel was the angel who also announced the glad tidings of His birth ... In the spirit and power of Elias. " (iii. 11, 4. )

 "But at that time the angel Gabriel was sent from God, who did also say to the Virgin, 'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God. '" (iii. 10, 2. )

 "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, " &c. (iii. 10, 2. )

 "And Mary, exulting because of this, cried out; prophesying on behalf of the Church, 'My soul doth magnify the Lord. '" (iii. 10, 2. )

 "And that the angel Gabriel said unto her, 'The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, '" &c. (iii. 21, 4. )

 "In accordance with this design Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word. '" (iii. 22, 4. )

 "As Elizabeth testified when fitted with the Holy Ghost, saying to Mary, 'Blessed art thou among women, '" &c. (iii. 21, 5. )

 "Wherefore the prophets ... Announced His Advent ... In freeing us from the hands of all that hate us, that is, from every spirit of wickedness, and causing us to serve Him in holiness and righteousness all our days. '" (iv. 20, 4. )

Luke, ii. 

 "Wherefore Simeon also, one of his descendants, carried fully out the rejoicing of the patriarch, and said, 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant, '" &c. (iv. 7, l. )

 "And the angel in like manner announced tidings of great joy to the shepherds who were keeping watch by night. " (iv. 7, 1. )

 "Wherefore he adds, 'The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all which they had seen and heard. '" (iii. 10, 4. )

 "And still further does Luke say in reference to the Lord, 'When the days of purification were accomplished they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him before the Lord. '" (iii. 10, 5. )

 "They say also that Simeon, 'Who took Christ into his arms and gave thanks to God, '" &c. (i. 8, 4. )

 "They assert also that by Anna, who is spoken of in the Gospel as a prophetess, and who after living seven years with her husband, passed all the rest of her life in widowhood till she saw the Saviour. " (i. 8, 4. )

 "The production, again, of the Duodecad of the aeons is indicated by the fact that the Lord was twelve years of age when He disputed with the teachers of the law, " &c. (i. 3, 2. )

 "Some passages, also, which occur in the Gospels receive from them a colouring of the same kind, as the answer which He gave His mother when He was twelve years old, 'Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?'" (i. 20, 2. )

Luke, iii. 

 "For because He knew that we should make a good use of our substance which we should possess by receiving it from another, He says, 'He that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none, and he that hath meat let him do likewise. '" (iv. 30, 3. )

 "For when He came to be baptized He had not yet completed His thirtieth year, but was beginning to be about thirty years of age; for thus Luke, who has mentioned His years, has expressed it. " (ii. 22, 5. )

John, i. 

 "[John] thus commenced his teaching in the Gospel, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, '" &c. (iii. 11, 1. )

 "He (St. John) expresses himself thus: 'In the beginning was the Word, '" &c. (i. 8, 5. )

 "Thus saith the Scripture, 'By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, ' &c. And again, 'All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made that was made. '" (i. 22, 1. )

 "For he styles Him 'A light which shineth in darkness, and which was not comprehended by it. '" (i. 8, 5. )

 "And that we may not have to ask 'Of what God was the Word made flesh?' He does Himself previously teach us, saying, 'There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came as a witness that he might bear witness of that Light. He was not that Light, but that he might testify of the Light. '" (iii. 11, 4. )

 "While the Gospel affirms plainly that by the Word, which was in the beginning with God, all things were made, which Word, he says, was made flesh and dwelt among us. " (iii. 11, 2. )

To John i. 14, "The Word was made flesh, " the references are absolutelyinnumerable. Those I have given already will suffice. 

 "For this is the knowledge of salvation which was wanting to them, that of the Son of God, which John made known, saying, 'Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a Man Who was made before me, because He was prior to me. '" (iii. 10, 2. )

 "By whom also Nathaniel, being taught, recognized Him; he to whom also the Lord bare witness that he was an Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile. The Israelite recognized his King, therefore did he cry out to Him, 'Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God. Thou art the King of Israel. '" (iii. 11, 6. )

John, ii. 

 "But that wine was better which the Word made from water, on the moment, and simply for the use of those who had been called to the marriage. " (iii. 11, 5. )

 "As also the Lord speaks in reference to Himself, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. ' He spake this, however, it is said, of the temple of His body. " (v. 6, 2. )

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 

Matthew, i. 

 "And in the gospel according to Matthew the genealogy which begins with Abraham is continued down to Mary, the mother of the Lord. 'For, ' it is said, 'from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David to the carrying away into Babylon, " &c. (Miscellanies, i. 21. )

Matthew, iii. 

 "For the fan is in the Lord's hand, by which the chaff due to the fire is separated from the wheat. " (Instructor, i. 9. )

Matthew, iv. 

 "Therefore He Himself, urging them on to salvation, cries, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. '" (Exhortation to Heathen, ch. Ix. )

Matthew, v. 

 "And because He brought all things to bear on the discipline of the soul, He said, 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. '" (Miscellanies, iv. 6. )

Mark, i. 

 "For he also 'ate locusts and wild honey. '" [In St. Matthew the corresponding expression being 'His food was locusts and wild honey. '] (Instructor, ii. 11. )

Luke, iii. 

 "And to prove that this is true it is written in the Gospel by Luke as follows: 'And in the fifteenth year, in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zacharias. ' And again, Jesus was coming to His baptism, being about thirty years old, ' and so on. " (Miscellanies, i. 21. )

There are at least twenty more references to the accounts of thepreaching of St. John in the third of St. Matthew, first of St. Mark, and third of St. Luke, in Clement's writings, which I have not givensimply because it is difficult to assign the quotation to a particularEvangelist, as the account is substantially the same in the three. 

Luke xii. 16-20. 

 "Of this man's field (the rich fool) the Lord, in the Gospel, says that it was fertile, and afterwards, when he wished to lay by his fruits and was about to build greater barns, " &c. (Miscellanies, iii. 6. )

Luke xiii. 32. 

 "Thus also in reference to Herod, 'Go tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, '" &c. (Miscellanies, iv. 6. )

Luke xiv. 12, 13. 

 "He says accordingly, somewhere, 'When thou art called to a wedding recline not on the highest couch. ' ... And elsewhere, 'When thou makest a dinner or a supper, ' and again, 'But, when thou makest an entertainment, call the poor. '" (Instructor, ii. 1. )

Luke, xv. Parable of Prodigal Son. 

 "For it were not seemly that we, after the fashion of the rich man's son in the Gospel, should, as prodigals, abuse the Father's gifts. " (Instructor, ii. Ch. I. )

John, i. 

 "You have then God's promise; you have His love: become partakers of His grace. And do not suppose the song of salvation to be new, as a vessel or a house is new; for ... In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. " (Exhortation to Heathen, ch. I. )

 "For He has said, 'In the beginning the Word was in God, and the Word was God. " (Instructor, viii. )

 "Wherefore it (the law) was only temporary; but eternal grace and truth were by Jesus Christ. Mark the expressions of Scripture; of the law only is it is said 'was given;' but truth, being the grace of the Father, is the eternal work of the Word, and it is not said to _be given_, but _to be_ by Jesus, _without whom nothing was_. " (Instructor, i. 7. )

 "The divine Instructor is trustworthy, adorned as He is with three of the fairest ornaments ... With authority of utterance, for He is God and Creator; for all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made: and with benevolence, for He alone gave Himself a sacrifice for us, 'For the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep. '" (John x. 11. ) (Instructor, i. 11. )

 "For the darkness, it is said, comprehendeth it not. " (Instructor, ii. 10. )

 "Having through righteousness attained to adoption, and therefore 'have received power to become the sons of God. '" (Miscellanies, iv. 6. )

 "For of the prophets it is said, 'We have all received of His fulness, ' that is, of Christ's. " (Miscellanies, i. 17. )

 "And John the apostle says, 'No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten God, ' [oldest reading, ] 'who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. " (Miscellanies, v. 12. ) John, iii. 

 "He that believeth not is, according to the utterance of the Saviour, condemned already. " (Miscellanies, iv. 16. )

 "Enslaved as you are to evil custom, and clinging to it voluntarily till your last breath, you are hurried to destruction; because light has come into the world, and men have loved the darkness rather than the light. " (Exhortation to Heathen, 10. )

 "'I must decrease, ' said the prophet John. " (Miscellanies, vi. II. )

TERTULLIAN. 

Matthew, i. 

 "There is, first of all, Matthew, that most faithful chronicler of the Gospel, because the companion of the Lord; for no other reason in the world than to show us clearly the fleshy original of Christ, he thus begins, 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David the son of Abraham. '" (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. Xxii. )

 "It is, however, a fortunate circumstance that Matthew also, when tracing down the Lord's descent from Abraham to Mary, says, 'Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, _of whom_ was born Jesus. " (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. Xx. )

 "You [the heretic] say that He was born _through_ a virgin, not _of_ a virgin, and _in_ a womb, not _of_ a womb; because the angel in the dream said to Joseph, 'That which is born in her is of the Holy Ghost. '" (_Ibid. _ ch. Xx. )

Matthew, ii. 

 "For they therefore offered to the then infant Lord that frankincense, and myrrh, and gold, to be, as it were, the close of worldly sacrifice and glory, which Christ was about to do away. " (On Idolatry, ch. Ix. )

Mark i. 4. 

 "For, in that John used to preach 'baptism _for_ the remission of sins, ' the declaration was made with reference to a future remission. " (On Baptism, x. )

Mark i. 24. 

 "This accordingly the devils also acknowledge Him to be: 'We know Thee Who Thou art, the Son of God. '" (Against Praxeas, ch. Xxvi. )

Let the reader particularly remark this phrase. Tertullian quotes thelast clauses differently from the reading in our present copies, "TheHoly One of God. " If such a quotation had occurred in Justin, the authorof "Supernatural Religion" would have cited the phrase as a quotationfrom a lost Gospel, and asserted that the author had not even seenSt. Mark. 

Luke, i. 

 "Elias was nothing else than John, who came 'in the power and spirit of Elias. '" (On Monogamy, ch. Viii. )

 "I recognize, too, the angel Gabriel as having been sent to a virgin; but when he is blessing her, it is 'among women. '" (On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. Vi. )

 "Will not the angel's announcement be subverted, that the Virgin should 'conceive in her womb and bring forth a son?' ... Therefore even Elizabeth must be silent, although she is carrying in her womb the prophetic babe, which was already conscious of his Lord, and is, moreover, filled with the Holy Ghost. For without reason does she say, 'And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?' If it was not as her son, but only as a stranger, that Mary carried Jesus in her womb, how is it she says, 'Blessed is the fruit of thy womb?'" (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. Xxi. )

 "Away, says he [he is now putting words into the mouth of the heretic], with that eternal plaguy taxing of Caesar, and the scanty inn, and the squalid swaddling clothes, and the hard stable. We do not care a jot for that multitude of the heavenly host which praised their Lord at night. Let the shepherds take better care of their flock ... Spare also the babe from circumcision, that He may escape the pains thereof; nor let Him be brought into the temple, lest He burden His parents with the expense of the offering; nor let Him be handed to Simeon, lest the old man be saddened at the point of death. " (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. Ii. )

 "This He Himself, in those other gospels also, testifies Himself to have been from His very boyhood, saying, 'Wist ye not, says He, that I must be about my Father's business?'" (Against Praxeas, xxvi. )

John, i. 

 "In conclusion, I will apply the Gospel as a supplementary testimony to the Old Testament ... It is therein plainly revealed by Whom He made all things. 'In the beginning was the Word, '--that is, the same beginning, of course, in which God made the heaven and the earth--'and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, '" &c. (Against Hermogenes, ch. Xx. )

I give only one reference to the first few verses, as the number inTertullian's writings is enormous. 

 "It is written, 'To them that believed on Him, gave He power to be called Sons of God. '" (On Prayer, ch. Ii. )

 "But by saying 'made, ' he [St. Paul] not only confirmed the statement 'the Word was made flesh, ' but he also asserted the reality, " &c. (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. Xx. )

John, ii. 

 "[He Jesus] inaugurates in _water_ the first rudimentary displays of His power, when invited to the nuptials. " (On Baptism, ch. Ix. )

The twenty-first chapter of the "Discourse against Praxeas" is filledwith citations from St. John. I will give a small part. 

 "He declared what was in the bosom of the Father alone; the Father did not divulge the secrets of His own bosom. For this is preceded by another statement: 'No man hath seen God at any time. ' Then again, when He is designated by John as 'the Lamb of God. ' ... This [divine relationship] Nathanael at once recognized in Him, even as Peter did on another occasion: 'Thou art the Son of God. ' And He affirmed Himself that they were quite right in their convictions, for He answered Nathanael, 'Because I said I saw thee under the fig-tree, dost thou believe?' ... When He entered the temple He called it 'His Father's house, ' [speaking] as the Son. In His address to Nicodemus He says, 'So God loved the world, ' &c.... Moreover, when John the Baptist was asked what he happened [to know] of Jesus, he said, 'The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His Hands. He that believeth, ' &c. Whom, indeed, did He reveal to the woman of Samaria? Was it not 'the Messias which is called Christ?' ... He says, therefore, 'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work, '" &c. &c. (Against Praxeas, ch. Xxi. )

SECTION XX. 

THE EVIDENCE FOR MIRACLES. 

It does not come within the scope of this work to examine at any lengththe general subject of miracles. The assertion that miracles, such asthose recorded in Scripture, are absolutely impossible, and so havenever taken place, must be met by the counter assertion that they arepossible, and have taken place. They are possible to the Supreme Being, and have taken place by His will or sufferance at certain perfectlyhistorical periods; especially during the first century after the birthof Christ. When to this it is replied that miracles are violations ofnatural law or order, and that it is contrary to our highest idea of theSupreme Being to suppose that He should alter the existing order ofthings, we can only reply that it is in accordance with our highest ideaof Him that He should do so; and we say that in making these assertionswe are not unreasonable, but speak in accordance with natural science, philosophy, and history. 

And, in order to prove this, we have only to draw attention to theinaccuracy which underlies the use of the term "law" by the author of"Supernatural Religion, " and those who think as he does. The author of"Supernatural Religion" strives to bring odium on the miracles of theGospel by calling them "violations of law, " and by asserting that it isa false conception of the Supreme Being to suppose that He should havemade an Universe with such elements of disorder within it that it shouldrequire such things as the violation, or even suspension, of laws torestore it to order, and that our highest and truest idea of God is thatof One Who never can even so much as make Himself known except throughthe action of the immutable laws by which this visible state of thingsis governed. 

Now what is a law? The laws with which in this discussion we are givento understand we have to do, are strictly speaking limitations--thelimitations of forces or powers which, in conception at least, mustthemselves be prior to the limitations. 

Take the most universal of all so-called "laws, " the law of gravitation. The law of gravitation is the limitation imposed upon that mysteriousforce which appears to reside in all matter, that it should attract allother matter. This power of attraction is called gravitation; butinstead of acting at random, as it were, it acts according to certainwell-known rules which only are properly the "laws" of gravitation. 

Now the very existence of our world depends upon the force of attractionbeing counteracted. If, from a certain moment, gravitation were tobecome the only force in the solar system, the earth would fall upon thesurface of the sun, and be annihilated; but the earth continues inexistence because of the action of another force--the projectileforce--which so far counteracts the force of the sun's attraction, thatthe earth revolves around the sun instead of falling upon its surface. In this case the _law_ of gravitation is not violated, or evensuspended, but the force of gravitation is counteracted or modified byanother force. 

Again, the blood circulates through our bodies by means of another poweror force counteracting the force of gravitation, and this is the vitalpower or force. 

But why do we lift up our feet from the ground to go about some dailyduty? Here comes another force--the force of will, which directs theaction of some of the vital forces, but not that of others. 

But, again, two courses of action are open to us, and we deliberatelychoose the one because we think that it is our duty, though it mayentail danger or pain, or even death. Here is a still deeper force orpower, the force of conscience--the moral power which is clearly thehighest power within us, for it governs the very will, and sits injudgment upon the whole man, and acquits or condemns him according toits rule of right and wrong. 

Here, then, are several gradations of power or force--any one of them asreal as the others; each one making itself felt by counteracting andmodifying the action of the one below it. 

Now the question arises, is there any power or force clearly above thehighest controlling power within us, _i. E. _ above our conscience? We saythat there is. There are some who on this point can reverently take upthe words of our Great Master, "We speak that we do know. " We believe, as firmly as we believe in our own existence, that this ourconscience--the highest power within us--has been itself acted upon by aHigher Power still, a moral and spiritual Power, which has enlightenedit, purified it, strengthened it, in fact renewed it. 

Now, this purifying or enlightening of our moral powers has oneremarkable effect. It makes those who have been acted upon by it to lookup out of this present state of things for a more direct revelation ofthe character and designs of the Supreme Being. Minds who haveexperienced this action of a Superior Power upon them cannot possiblylook upon the Supreme Being as revealing Himself merely by the laws ofgravitation, or electricity, or natural selection. We look for, wedesire a further and fuller Revelation of God, even though theRevelation may condemn us. We cannot rest without it. It is intolerableto those who have a sense of justice, for instance, to think that, whilst led by their sense of what is good and right, men executeimperfect justice, there is, after all, no Supreme Moral Governor Whowill render to each individual in another life that just retributionwhich is assuredly not accorded to all in this life. [152:1]

Now this, I say, makes us desire a revelation of the Supreme MoralGovernor which is assuredly not to be found in the laws which controlmere physical forces. As Dr. Newman has somewhere said, men believe whatthey wish to believe, and assuredly we desire to believe that there is asupreme Moral Governor, and that He has not left us wholly in the darkrespecting such things as the laws and sanctions of His moralgovernment. But has He really revealed these? We look back through theages, and our eyes are arrested by the figure of One Who, according tothe author of "Supernatural Religion, " taught a "sublime religion. " Histeaching "carried morality to the sublimest point attained, or evenattainable, by humanity. The influence of His Spiritual Religion hasbeen rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and elevation ofHis own character. He presented the rare spectacle of a life, so far aswe can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent with His own loftyprinciples, so that the 'imitation of Christ' has become almost thefinal word in the preaching of His Religion, and must continue to be oneof the most powerful elements of its permanence. " (Vol. Ii. P. 487. )

It is quite clear from this testimony of an enemy to the Christianreligion, as it appears in the Scriptures, that if the Supreme MoralGovernor had desired to give to man a revelation of the principles andsanctions of His moral government, He could not have chosen a morefitting instrument. Such a character seems to have been made for thepurpose. If He has not revealed God, no one has. 

Now, who is this Man Whose figure stands thus prominent above Hisfellows?

We believe Him to be our Redeemer; but before He redeemed, He laid downthe necessity of Redemption by making known to men the true nature ofsin and righteousness, and the most just and inevitable Judgment of God. He revealed to us that there is One above us Who is to the whole race, and to every individual of the race, what our consciences are toourselves--a Judge pronouncing a perfect judgment, because He perfectlyknows the character of each man, perfectly observes and remembers hisconduct, and, moreover, will mete out to each one a just and perfectretribution. 

But still, how are we to know that He has authority to reveal to us sucha thing as that God will judge the race and each member of it by a justjudgment? Natural laws reveal to us no such judgment. Nature teaches usthat if we transgress certain natural laws we shall be punished. But itteaches no certain judgement either in this life or in any future lifewhich will overtake the transgression of moral laws. A man may defraud, oppress, and seduce, and yet live a prosperous life, and die a quiet, painless death. 

How, then, are we to know that Jesus of Nazareth had authority to revealthat God will set all this right in a future state, and that He Himselfwill be the direct Agent in bringing the rectification about? How are weto know that what He says is true respecting a matter of such deepconcern to ourselves, and yet so utterly unknown to mere physicalnature, and so out of the reach of its powers? What proof have we of HisRevelation, or that it is a Revelation? The answer is, that as what Herevealed is above mere physical nature, so He attested it by theexhibition of power above physical nature--the exhibition of the directpower of God. He used miracles for this purpose; more particularly Hestaked the truth of His whole message on the miracle of His ownResurrection. [155:1] The Resurrection was to be the assurance of theperfection of both His Redemption and His Judgment. 

Now, against all this it is persistently alleged that even if He had thepower He could not have performed miracles, because miracles areviolations of law, and the Lawgiver cannot violate even mere physicallaws; but this specious fallacy is refuted by the simple assertion thatHe introduced a new power or force to counteract or modify others, whichcounteraction or modification of forces is no more than what is takingplace in every part of the world at every moment. 

Before proceeding further we will illustrate the foregoing by testingsome assertions of the author of "Supernatural Religion. "

"Man, " he asserts, "is as much under the influence of gravitation as astone is" (vol. I. P. 40). Well, a marble statue is a stone. Can amarble statue, after it is thrown down, rise up again of itself, andstand upon its feet?

Again--

 "The law of gravitation suffers no alteration, whether it cause the fall of an apple or shape the orbit of a planet" (p. 40). 

Of course the "law" suffers no alteration, but the force of gravitationsuffers considerable modification if you catch the apple in your hand, or if the planet has an impulse given to it which compels it to careerround the sun instead of falling upon his surface. Again (page 40):--

 "The harmonious action of physical laws, and their adaptability to an infinite variety of forms, constitutes the perfection of that code which produces the order of nature. The mere superiority of man over lower forms of organic and inorganic matter does not lift him above physical laws, and the analogy of every grade in nature forbids the presumption that higher forms may exist which are exempt from their control. "

The number of fallacies in this short passage is remarkable. In thefirst place laws never act, _i. E. _ of themselves. They have to beadministered. Forces or powers act under the restraint of laws. I thinkI am right in saying that all physical _laws_, as distinguished fromforces, are limitations of force. No man can conceive of a law acting byitself. There is no such thing, for instance, as a "Reign of Law. " Apower acts or, if you please, reigns, according to a law, but laws ofthemselves can do nothing. 

Again, the author says, "The mere superiority of man over lower forms oforganic and inorganic matter does not lift him above physical laws. "

Yes, it does, partially at least, for it enables him, in his sphere, tocontrol the very forces whose action is limited by laws. The superiorityof man is shown in his control of the powers of nature, and making themobey his will. All such inventions as the steam engine or the electrictelegraph lift man above certain physical laws, by enabling him tocontrol the forces with which those laws have to do. 

Again, he writes: "The analogy of every grade in nature forbids thepresumption that higher forms may exist which are exempt from theircontrol. " On the contrary, we assert that the analogy of every grade innature encourages the presumption that higher forms may exist which cancontrol these forces of nature far more directly and perfectly than wecan. 

To proceed. In page 41 we read:--

 "If in animated beings we have the solitary instance of an efficient cause acting among the forces of nature, and possessing the power of initiation, this efficient cause produces no disturbance of physical law. "

I cite this place, in order to draw attention to what I suppose musthave struck the careful reader, which is the application of the term"solitary instance" to the action of animated beings amongst the forcesof nature. If there had been but one animated being in existence, suchan epithet might not have been out of place; but when one considers thatthe world teems with such beings, and that by their every movement theymodify or counteract, in their own case at least, the mightiest of allnature's forces, and that no inconsiderable portion of the earth'ssurface owes its conformation to their action, we are astonished atfinding all this characterized as the solitary instance of an efficientcause. But by a sentence at the bottom of this page we are enlightenedas to the real reason for so strange a view of the place of vital powersin the universe. In the eyes of those who persist in, as far aspossible, ignoring all laws except physical laws, even to the extent ofendeavouring to prove that moral forces themselves are but meredeveloped forms of physical ones, all manifestations of powers otherthan those of electricity, gravitation, magnetism, and so forth areanomalous, and we have the very word "anomaly" applied to them. "Theonly anomaly, " he writes, "is our ignorance of the nature of vitalforce. [158:1] But do we know much more of the physical?"

Men who thus concentrate their attention upon mere physical laws orphenomena, get to believe in no others. They are impatient of any thingsin the universe except what they can number, or measure, or weigh. Theyare in danger of regarding the Supreme Being Himself as an "anomaly. "They certainly seem to do so, when they take every pains to show thatthe universe can get on perfectly well without His superintendingpresence and control. 

Whatever odium, then, may be attached to the violation of a natural_law_, cannot be attached to the action of a superior _force_, makingitself felt amongst lower grades of natural forces. 

If it be rejoined that this superior force must act according to law, weanswer, certainly, but according to what law? Not, of course, accordingto the law of the force which it counteracts, but according to the lawunder which itself acts. 

The question of miracles, then, is a matter of evidence; but we all knowwhat a power human beings have of accepting or rejecting evidenceaccording as they look for it or are prejudiced against it. 

If men concentrate their thought upon the lower forces of the universe, and explain the functions of life, and even such powers as affection, will, reason, and conscience, as if they were modifications of merephysical powers, and ignore a higher Will, and an all-controlling Mind, and a personal superintending Providence, what wonder if they areindisposed to receive any such direct manifestation of God as theResurrection of Jesus, for the Resurrection of Jesus is the pledge of arighteous Judgment and Retribution which, however it takes place, willbe the most astounding "anomaly" amidst the mere physical phenomena ofthe universe, whilst it will be the necessary completion of its moralorder. 

The proof of miracles is then, as I said, a matter of evidence. WhenHume asserts that "a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, " wemeet him with the counter-assertion that it is rather the newmanifestation in this order of things of the oldest of powers, thatwhich originally introduced life into a lifeless world. 

When he says that "a firm and unalterable experience has establishedthese laws, " we say that science teaches us that there must have beenepochs in the history of the world when new forces made their appearanceon the scene, for it teaches us that the world was once incandescent, and so incapable of supporting any conceivable form of animal life, butthat at a certain geological period life made its appearance. 

Now, we believe that it is just as wonderful, and contrary to theexperience of a lifeless world, that life should appear on that world, as that it is contrary to the experience of the present state of things, that a dead body should be raised. 

When he asserts that a miraculous event is contrary to uniformexperience, we can only reply that it is not contrary to the experienceof the Evangelists, of St. Peter and St. Paul, and of the other Apostlesand companions of the Lord; that it was not contrary to the experienceof the multitudes who were miraculously fed, and of the multitudes whowere miraculously healed. When it is replied to this, that we haveinsufficient evidence of the fact that these persons witnessed miracles, we rejoin that there is far greater evidence, both in quality andamount, for these miracles, especially for the crowning one, than thereis for any fact of profane history; but, if there was twice the evidencethat there is, its reception must depend upon the state of mind of therecipient himself. 

If a man, whilst professing to believe in "a God under whose beneficentgovernment we know that all that is consistent with wise and omnipotentlaw is prospered and brought to perfection, " yet has got himself tobelieve that such a God cannot introduce into any part of the universe anew power or force, as for instance that He is bound not to introducevital force into a lifeless world, or mental power into a reasonlessworld, or moral power into a world of free agents, but must leave theseforces to work themselves out of non-existence;--if it man, I say, hasgot himself to believe in such a Being, he will not, of course, believein any testimony to miracles as accrediting a Revelation from Him, andso he will do his best to get rid of them after the fashion in which wehave seen the author of "Supernatural Religion" attempt to get rid ofthe testimony of Justin Martyr to the use of the Four Gospels in hisday. 

SECTION XXI. 

OBJECTIONS TO MIRACLES. 

I will now briefly dispose of two or three of the collateral objectionsagainst miracles. 

1. The author of "Supernatural Religion" makes much of the fact that theScripture writers recognize that there may be, and have been, Satanic aswell as Divine Miracles, and he argues that this destroys all theevidential value of a miracle. He writes:--

 "Even taking the representation of miracles, therefore, which Divines themselves give, they are utterly incompetent to perform their contemplated functions. If they are super-human, they are not super-Satanic, and there is no sense in which they can be considered miraculously evidential of anything. " (Vol. I. P. 25)

Now, this difficulty is the merest theoretical one, --a difficulty, asthe saying is, on paper; and never can be a practical one to any sincerebeliever in the holiness of God and the reality of goodness. Take themiracle of miracles, the seal of all that is supernatural in ourreligion, the Resurrection of Christ. If there be a conflict now goingon between God and Satan, can there be a doubt as to the side to whichthis miracle is to be assigned? It is given to prove the reality of aRedemption which all those who accept it know to be a Redemption fromthe power of Satan. It is given to confirm the sanctions of morality bythe assurance of a judgment to come. If Satan had performed it, he wouldhave been simply casting out himself. If this miracle of theResurrection be granted, all else goes along with it, and the childrenof God are fortified against the influence, real or counterfeit, of anydiabolical miracle whatsoever. 

The miracles of the New Testament are not performed, as far as I canremember, in any single instance, to prove the truth of any one view ofdoctrinal Christianity as against another, but to evidence the realityof the Mission of the Divine Founder as the Son of God, and "the Son ofGod was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. "

2. With respect to what are called ecclesiastical miracles, _i. E. _miracles performed after the Apostolic age, the author of "SupernaturalReligion" recounts the notices of a considerable number, assumes thatthey are all false, and uses this assumed falsehood as a means ofbringing odium on the accounts of the miracles of Christ. 

More particularly he draws attention to certain miracles recorded in theworks of St. Augustine, of one at least of which he (Augustine) declareshe was an eye-witness. 

Now, the difficulty raised upon these and similar accounts appears to meto be as purely theoretical as the one respecting Satanic miracles. Ifthere be truth in the New Testament, it is evident that the Founder ofChristianity not only worked miracles Himself, but gave power to Hisfollowers to do the same. When was this power of performing miracleswithdrawn from the Church? Our Lord, when He gave the power, gave nointimation that it would ever be withdrawn, rather the contrary. However, even in Apostolic times, the performance of them seems to havebecome less frequent as the Church became a recognized power in theworld. For instance, in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul the exercise ofmiraculous gifts seems to have been a recognized part of the Church'ssystem, and in the later ones (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) they arescarcely noticed. [164:1] If we are to place any credence whatsoever inecclesiastical history, the performance of miracles seems never to haveceased, though in later times very rare in comparison with what theymust have been in the first age. 

Now, if the miracles recorded by Augustine, or any of them, were trueand real, the only inference is that the action of miraculous powercontinued in the Church to a far later date than some modern writersallow. If, on the contrary, they are false, then they take their placeamong hosts of other counterfeits of what is good and true. They no morego to prove the non-existence of the real miracles which theycaricature, than any other counterfeit proves the non-existence of thething of which it is the counterfeit. Nay, rather, the very fact thatthey are counterfeits proves the existence of that of which they arecounterfeits. The Ecclesiastical miracles are clearly not independentmiracles; true or false, they depend upon the miraculous powers of theearly Church. If any of them are true, then these powers continued inthe Church to a late date; if they are false accounts (whether wilfullyor through mistake, makes no difference), their falsehood is onetestimony out of many to the miraculous origin of the dispensation. 

Those recorded by Augustine are in no sense evidential. Nothing came ofthem except the relief, real or supposed, granted to the sufferers. Nomessage from God was supposed to be accredited by them. No attempt wasmade to spread the knowledge of them; indeed, so far from this, in onecase at least, Augustine is "indignant at the apathy of the friends ofone who had been miraculously cured of a cancer, that they allowed sogreat a miracle to be so little known. " (Vol. Ii. P. 171. ) In everyconceivable respect they stand in the greatest contrast to theResurrection of Christ. 

Each case of an Ecclesiastical miracle must be examined (if one cares todo so) apart, on its own merits. I can firmly believe in the reality ofsome, whilst the greater part are doubtful, and many are wickedimpostures. These last, of course, give occasion to the enemy todisparage the whole system of which they are assumed to be a part, butthey tell against Christianity only in the same sense in which alltolerated falsehood or evil in the Church obscures its witness to thoseeternal truths of which it is "the pillar and the ground. "

Now, all this is equally applicable to Superstition generally inrelation to the supernatural. As the counterfeit miracles of the laterages witness that there must have been true ones to account for the veryexistence of the counterfeit, so the universal existence of Superstitionwitnesses to the reality of those supernatural interpositions of whichit is the distorted image. If Hume's doctrine be true, that a miracle, _i. E. _ a supernatural interposition, is contrary to universalexperience and so incredible--if from the first beginning of thingsthere has been one continuous sequence of natural cause and effect, unbroken by the interposition of any superior power, how is it thatmankind have ever formed a conception of a supernatural power? And yetthe conception, in the shape of superstition at least, is absolutelyuniversal. Tribes who have no idea of the existence of God, use charmsand incantations to propitiate unseen powers. 

Now, the distortion witnesses to the reality of that of which it is thedistortion; the caricature to the existence of the feature caricatured. And so the universality of the existence of Superstition witnesses tothe reality of these supernatural revelations and interpositions towhich alone such a thing can be referred as its origin. 

SECTION XXII. 

JEWISH CREDULITY. 

Another argument which the author of "Supernatural Religion" uses todiscredit miracles, is the superstition of the Jews, especially in ourLord's time, and their readiness to believe any miraculous story. Heseems to suppose that this superstition reached its extreme point in theage in which Christ lived, which he calls "the age of miracles. " He alsoassumes that it was an age of strong religious feeling and excitement. He says:--

 "During the whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the religion, it must be borne in mind that they took place in an age, and among a people, which superstition had made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily superseded by some new demand on the ever ready belief. " (Vol. I. P. 98. )

He proceeds to devote above twenty pages to instances of thesuperstition and credulity of the Jews about the time of Christ. Thecontents of these pages would be amusing if they did not reveal suchdeep mental degradation in a race which Christians regard as sacred, because of God's dealings with their fathers. 

Most readers, however, of these pages on the Demonology and Angelologyof the Jews will, I think, be affected by them in a totally differentway, and will draw a very different inference, from what the writerintends. The thoughtful reader will ask, "How could the Evangelicalnarratives be the outcome of such a hotbed of superstition as the authordescribes that time to have been?" It is quite impossible, it isincredible that the same natural cause, _i. E. _ the prevalence ofsuperstition, should have produced about the same time the Book of Enochand the Gospel according to St. Matthew. And this is the more remarkablefrom the fact that the Gospels are in no sense more Sadducean than theBook of Enoch. The being and agency of good and evil spirits is as fullyrecognized in the inspired writings as in the Apocryphal, but with whata difference! I append in a note a part of the author's reproduction ofthe Book of Enoch, that the reader may see how necessary it is, on allprinciples of common sense, to look for some very different explanationof the origin of the Evangelical narratives than that given by theauthor of "Supernatural Religion. " [168:1]

In the Evangelical narratives I need hardly say the angels are simplymessengers, as their name imports, and absolutely nothing more. When onedescribes himself it is in the words, "I am Gabriel that stand in thepresence of God, and am sent to speak unto thee and to show thee theseglad tidings. "

On the credulity of the Jews in our Lord's time, I repeat the author'sremarks:--

 "During the whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the religion, it must be borne in mind that they took place in an age, and among a people, which superstition had made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily superseded by some new demand on the ever-ready belief. " (Vol. I. P. 98. )

Now, if the records of our Lord's life in the Gospels are not a tissueof falsehoods from beginning to end, this account of things isabsolutely untrue. The miracles of Jesus awakened the greatestastonishment, betokening a time as unfamiliar with the actualperformance of such things as our own. 

For instance, after the first casting out of a devil recorded in St. Mark, it is said. --

 "They were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority commandeth He even the unclean spirits, and they do obey Him. " (Mark i. 29. )

In the next chapter, after the account of the healing of the sick of thepalsy, it is said:--

 "They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion. " (ii. 12. )

Again (St. Luke v. 26), after the casting out of a devil: "They were allamazed. " Again, Luke ix. 43 (also after the casting out of a devil), "They were all amazed at the mighty power of God. " [170:1]

From the account in St. John, the miracle of the opening of the eyes ofthe man born blind seems to have excited unbounded astonishment:--

 "Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. " "Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?" (John ix. 32, x. 21. )

But more than this. If there be any truth whatsoever in the Gospelnarrative, the disciples themselves, instead of exhibiting anythingapproaching to the credulity with which the author of "SupernaturalReligion" taxes the contemporaries of Christ, exhibited rather a spiritof unbelief. If they had transmitted to us "cunningly devised fables, "they never would have recorded such instances of their own slowness ofbelief as is evinced by their conduct respecting the feeding of the fourthousand following upon the feeding of the five thousand, when they askthe same question in the face of the same difficulty respecting thesupply of food. 

Above all, their slowness of belief in the Resurrection of Christ aftertheir Master's direct assertion that He would rise again, is directlyopposed to the idea suggested by the author of "Supernatural Religion, "that they were ready to believe anything which seemed to favour Hispretensions. 

Now, it may be alleged that these instances of the slowness of belief onthe part of our Lord's immediate followers, and the conduct of themultitudes who expressed such wonder at His miracles, are contrary toone another, but, they are not; for the astonishment of the multitudesdid not arise from credulity in the least, but was the expression ofthat state of mind which must exist (no matter how carefully it isconcealed), when some unlooked-for occurrence, totally inexplicable onany natural principles, presents itself. I cite it to show how utterlyunfamiliar that age was with even the pretence of the exhibition ofmiraculous powers. If there be any substratum of truth whatsoever in theaccounts of the slowness of belief on the part of the Apostles, it is aproof that our Lord's most familiar friends were anything but thesuperstitious persons which certain writers assume them to have been. 

SECTION XXIII. 

DEMONIACAL POSSESSION. 

The question of Demoniacal Possession now demands a passing notice. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" ascribes all such phenomena toimposture or delusion; and, inasmuch as these supposed miracles ofcasting out of evil spirits are associated with other miracles of Christin the same narrative, he uses the odium with which this class ofmiracles is in this day regarded, for the purpose of discrediting themiracles of healing and the Resurrection of Jesus. 

I cannot help expressing my surprise at the difficulty which somewriters, who desire fully and faithfully to uphold the supernatural, seem to have respecting Demoniacal Possession. The difficulty seems tome to be not in the action of evil spirits in this or in that way, butin their existence. And yet the whole analogy of nature, and the stateof man in this world, would lead us to believe, not only in theobjective existence of a world of spirits, but in the separation oftheir characters into good and evil. 

Those who deny the fact of an actually existing spiritual world ofangels, if they are Atheists, must believe that man is the highestrational existence in the universe; but this is absurd, for theintellect of man in plainly very circumscribed, and he is slowlydiscovering laws which account for the phenomena which he sees, whichlaws were operative for ages before he discovered them, and implyinfinitely more intellect in their invention, so to speak, andimposition and nice adjustment with one another, than he shows in theirmere discovery. A student, for instance, has a problem put before him, say upon the adjustments of the forces of the heavenly bodies. Thesolution, if it evinces intelligence in him, must evince more and olderintelligence in the man who sets him the problem; but if the conditionsof the problem truly represent the acts of certain forces and theircompensations, can we possibly deny that there is an intellectinfinitely above ours who calculated beforehand their compensations andadjustments. All the laws of the universe must be assumed to be, even ifthey are not believed to be, the work of a personal intellect absolutelyinfinite, whose operations cannot be confined to this world, for itgives laws to all bodies, no matter how distant. The same reasoning, then, which shows that there is an intelligent will, because it cansolve a problem, necessitates an infinitely higher Intelligence whichcan order the motions of distant worlds by laws of which our highestcalculative processes are perhaps very clumsy representations. 

Those who, like the author of "Supernatural Religion, " are good enoughto admit (with limitations) the existence of a Supreme Being, and yetdeny the existence of a spiritual world above ours, seem to me to actstill more absurdly. For the whole analogy of the world of nature wouldlead as to infer that, as there is a descending scale of animated beingsbelow man reaching down to the lowest forms of life, so there is anascending scale above him, between him and God. The deniers of theexistence of such beings as angels undertake to assert that there are nobeings between ourselves and the Supreme Being, because nature (meaningby nature certain lower brute forces, such as gravitation andelectricity), "knows nothing" of them. 

The Scriptures, on the contrary, would lead us to believe that just asin the natural world there are gradations of beings between ourselvesand the lowest forms of life, so in the spiritual world (and we belongto both worlds) there are gradations of beings between ourselves and GodWho created all things. 

The Scriptures would lead us to believe that these beings areintelligent free agents, and, as such, have had their time ofprobation--that some fell under their trial, and are now the enemies ofGod as wicked men are, and that others stood in the time of trial andcontinue the willing servants of God. 

The Scriptures reveal that good angels act as good men do; theyendeavour, as far as lies in their power, to confirm others in goodnessand in the service of God; and that evil angels act as evil men act, they endeavour to seduce others and to involve them in their owncondemnation. 

The Scriptures say nothing to satisfy our curiosity about these beings, as Apocryphal books do. They simply describe the one as sent on errandsof mercy, and the other as delighting in tempting men and inflictingpain. The mystery of the fall of some of these angels, and theirconsequent opposition to God, is no difficulty in itself. It is simplythe oldest form of that which is to those who believe in the reality ofthe holiness and goodness of God the great problem of the universe--theorigin and continuance of evil. It is simply the counterpart amongst aworld of free agents above us of what takes place according to the[so-called] natural order of things amongst ourselves. 

That evil angels can tempt the souls of men, and in some cases injuretheir bodies, is not a whit more difficult than that evil men can do thesame under the government of a God who exerts so universal a providenceas is described in the Bible, and allowed to some extent by the authorof "Supernatural Religion. "

I confess that I cannot understand the difficulty which some Christianwriters evidently feel respecting the existence of such a thing asDemoniacal _possession_, whilst they seem to feel, or at least they_express_ no difficulty, respecting Demoniacal _temptation_. Demoniacalpossession is the infliction of a physical evil for which the man is notaccountable, but demoniacal temptation is an attempt to deprive a man ofthat for the keeping of which he is accountable, viz. His own innocence. Demoniacal possession is a temporal evil. The yielding to demoniacaltemptation may cast a man for ever out of the favour of God. And yetdemoniacal temptation is perfectly analogous to human temptation. Ahuman seducer has it in his power, if his suggestions are received, tocorrupt innocence, render life miserable, undermine faith in God and inChrist, and destroy the hopes of eternity--and a diabolical seducer cando no more. 

Again, the Scriptures seem to teach us that these wicked spirits are theauthors of certain temporal evils, and I do not see that there isanything unreasonable in the fact, if it be granted, that there arespirits who exist independent of bodily frames--that these spirits arefree agents, and have different characters, and act according to theircharacters, and also that, according to the laws (_i. E. _ within thelimitations) of their nature, they have power to act upon those belowthem in the scale of being, just as we can act upon creatures below usaccording to the limitations, _i. E. _ the laws, of our nature. We are inour way able to inflict evil or to ward off evil from our fellowcreatures, under the limitations, or laws which a higher Power has setover us; and the Scriptures teach us that there are other beings in thegreat spiritual kingdom of God who are able to do us good or mischiefunder the conditions which the same Supreme Power has imposed on theiraction. So that the one thing which the Scriptures reveal to us is, thatthere is a far vaster spiritual kingdom of God than the human race. 

With respect to demoniacal possession, our difficulties arise from twothings--from our utter ignorance of the nature and real causes of mentaldiseases, and from our ignorance of the way in which purely spiritualbeings can act upon beings such as ourselves, who ordinarily receiveimpressions only through our bodily organs. We know not, for instance, how God Himself acts upon our spirits, and yet, if He cannot, He hasless power over us than we have over one another. 

Respecting the fact of God permitting such a thing as possession, thereis no more real difficulty than is involved in His permitting such athing as madness. The symptoms of possession seem generally to haveresembled mania, and ascribing certain sorts of mania to evil spirits isonly assigning one cause rather than another to a disease of whosenature we are profoundly ignorant. [178:1]

Again, if we take into consideration the fact that in not a few casesmadness is produced by moral causes, by yielding to certain temptations, as, for instance, to drunkenness, there will be still less difficulty inbelieving that madness, arising from the action of an evil being, may bethe punishment of yielding to the seductions of that evil being. 

The miraculous cure of demoniacal possession presents, I need hardlysay, less physical difficulty than any other cure performed by our Lord. Assuming the presence of an evil spiritual existence in the possessedperson coming face to face with the most exalted spiritual Power andGoodness, the natural result is that the one quails before the other. 

But, in truth, all the difficulties respecting possession arise not somuch from our ignorance, as from our dogmatism. We assert the dogma, orat least we quietly assume the dogma, that there are no spiritual orintellectual beings between ourselves and God; or, if we shrink from anassertion which so nearly implies our own omniscience, we lay down thatthese superior beings, of whose laws we know nothing, can only act uponus in ways precisely similar to those on which we act upon one another. 

SECTION XXIV. 

COMPETENT WITNESSES. 

Another objection which the author of "Supernatural Religion" urgesagainst the credibility of our Lord's miracles, is that they were notperformed before what he considers competent witnesses. 

 "Their occurrence [he writes] is limited to ages which were totally ignorant of physical laws. " (Vol. I. P. 201. )

Again, he speaks of the age as one

 "in which not only the grossest superstition and credulity prevailed, but in which there was such total ignorance of natural laws that men were incapable of judging of that reality [_i. E. _ of miracles]. " (P. 204. )

Again:--

 "The discussion of miracles, then, is not one regarding miracles actually performed within our own knowledge, but merely regarding miracles said to have been performed eighteen hundred years ago, the reality of which was not verified at the time by any scientific examination. " (P. 208. )

From this we gather that the author of "Supernatural Religion" considersthat the miracles of Christ should have been tested by scientific men;but we ask, By what scientific men? It is clear that if the testing wasto have been satisfactory to those who think like the author of"Supernatural Religion, " they must have been scientific men whoapproached the whole matter in a spirit of scepticism. Our Blessed Lord(I speak it with all reverence), if He cared to satisfy such men, shouldhave delayed His coming to the present time, or should have called upout of the future, or created for this purpose, men who had doubtsrespecting the personality of God, who held Him to be fitly described asthe Unknown and the Unknowable; who, to say the least, were in a stateof suspense as to whether, if there be a Supreme Being, He can revealHimself or make His will known. In fact, He must have called up, orcreated for the purpose, some individuals of a school of physicistswhich had no existence till 1, 800 years after His time. For, if He hadcalled into existence such witnesses as Sir Isaac Newton, or SirHumphrey Davy, or Cuvier, or Faraday, they would have fallen down andworshipped. 

But, in truth, such witnesses, whether believing or sceptical, wouldhave found no place for their science, for the miracles of Christ wereof such a kind that the most scientific doubter could have no moreaccounted for them than the most ignorant. The miracle of which, next toour Lord's own Resurrection, we have the fullest evidence, is that ofthe feeding of the 5, 000; for it is recorded by each one of the fourEvangelists. Now, if this miracle had been performed in the presence ofthe members of all the scientific societies now in existence, theirknowledge of natural laws could have contributed nothing to itsdetection or explanation. They could have merely laid it down to trickor deception, just as any of the unscientific persons present could havedone, and perhaps did. The miracle was performed in the open. Our Lordmust have been on some elevated ground where His voice could havereached some considerable part of the multitude, and on which every actof His could be observed. More than a thousand loaves would have beennecessary, requiring the assistance of, say a hundred men, to collectthem and bring them from a distance. This, too, is not one of thosemiracles which can be explained by the convenient hypothesis of a"substratum of truth. " It is either a direct exhibition of the creativepower of God, or a fiction as unworthy of a moment's seriousconsideration as a story in the "Arabian Nights. "

It is folly to imagine that such an act required scientific men toverify it. If the matter was either a reality, or presented thatappearance of reality which the narrative implies, then the scientificperson would have been stupefied, or in trembling and astonishment hewould have fallen on his face like another opponent of the truth; or, may be, his very reason would have been shattered at the discovery thathere before him was that very supernatural and divine Working in Whoseexistence he had been doing his best to persuade his fellow creatures todisbelieve. 

The Scripture narratives, if they are not altogether devoid of truth, lead us to believe that our Lord performed His miracles in the face ofthree sects or parties of enemies, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians;each one rejecting His claims on grounds of its own. They were alsoperformed in a populous city, of which all the rulers and the mass ofthe inhabitants were hostile to His pretensions. Such a place couldnever have been chosen as the scene of a miraculous event, known bythose who promulgated it to have had no foundation in truth, and withalassumed to have been known throughout the city at the time, and to havebeen productive of a series of results, miraculous and ordinary, whichwere asserted to have commenced at the moment of its occurrence. 

The writer of "Supernatural Religion" would disparage the accounts ofour Lord's supernatural works and Resurrection, because such accountsare to be found only in the writings of "enthusiastic followers, " not inthose of indifferent persons; but the nature of the case almost excludesall other testimony: for the miracles of our Lord were wrought for anevidential purpose, --to convince the Jews especially that He was theChrist, the hope of their fathers, and, as such, was not only to bebelieved in, but to be obeyed and followed. The only sign of real truebelief was that the man who professed to believe joined that societywhich was instituted for the purpose of propagating and keeping alivethe truth of His Messiahship. If any one who professed to believestopped short of joining this society, his testimony to miracles wouldhave been valueless, for the miracles were wrought to convince him ofthe truth of a matter in which, if he believed, he was bound to professhis belief, and, if he did not, he laid himself open to the charge ofnot really believing the testimony. 

Now, of course, the reader is aware that we have a signal proof of thevalidity of this argument in the well-known passage in Josephus whichrelates to our Lord. Josephus was the historian, and the only historian, of the period in which our Lord flourished. The eighteenth book of his"Antiquities of the Jews" covers the whole period of our Lord's life. Ifour Lord had merely attracted attention as a teacher of righteousness, which it is allowed on all hands that He did, it was likely that Hewould have been mentioned in this book along, with others whose teachingproduced far less results. Mention appears to be made of Him in thefollowing words:--

 "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for He was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to Him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned Him to the cross, those that loved Him at the first did not forsake Him; for He appeared to them alive again the third day; as the Divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning Him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from Him, are not extinct at this day. "

Now, on external grounds there seems little doubt of the genuineness ofthis passage. It is in all copies of the historian's work, and is quotedin full by Eusebius, though not alluded to by fathers previous to hisday. [183:1] If it is an interpolation, it must have been by the hand ofa Christian; and yet it is absolutely inconceivable that any Christianshould have noticed the Christian Church in such words as "the tribe ofChristians, so named from Him, are not extinct at this day. " It wouldhave been absurd beyond measure to have described the Christians, soearly as Justin's time even, as "not extinct, " when they were fillingthe world with their doctrine, and their increase was a source of greatperplexity and trouble to the Roman Government. It is just what a Jew ofJosephus' time would have written who really believed that Jesus wroughtmiracles, but expected that nothing permanent would result from them. 

And yet there can be no doubt but that the passage is open to thisinsurmountable objection, that if Josephus had written it he would haveprofessed himself a Christian, or a man of incredible inconsistency. Setting aside the difficulty connected with the acknowledgment of Jesusas the Christ, inasmuch as this name was frequently given to Him bythose who did not believe in Him, yet how could Josephus state that HisResurrection was predicted by the prophets of his nation, and continuein appearance an unbeliever?

But, whether genuine or not, this passage is decisive as to theimpossibility of what is styled an independent testimony to our Lord:"He that is not with Me is against Me. " The facts of our Lord's chiefmiracles and Resurrection were such, that the nearer men lived to thetime the more impossible it would have been for them to have suspendedtheir judgment. 

So that, instead of having the witness of men who, by their prudentsuspension of judgment, betrayed their lurking unbelief, we have thetestimony of men who, by their surrender of themselves, soul and body, evinced their undoubting faith in a matter in which there could bereally no middle opinion. 

SECTION XXV. 

DATE OF TESTIMONY. 

One point remains--the time to which the testimony to our Lord'smiracles reaches back. Can it be reasonably said to reach to withinfifty years of His Death, or to within twenty, or even nearer?

The author of "Supernatural Religion" asserts that it was notcontemporaneous or anything like it. In fact, one might infer from hisbook that the miracles of Christ were not heard of till say a century, or three quarters of a century, after His time, for he says, "they werenever heard of out of Palestine until long after the events are said tohave occurred. " [185:1] (P. 192. )

In such a case, "long after" is very indefinite. It may be a century, orthree quarters of a century, or perhaps half a century. It cannot beless, for every generation contains a considerable number of personswhose memories reach back for forty or fifty years. In a place of 3, 000inhabitants, in which I am now writing, there are above fifty personswho can perfectly remember all that took place in 1830. There are somewhose memories reach to twenty years earlier. Now let the reader try andimagine, if he can, the possibility of ascribing a number of remarkableacts--we will not say miraculous ones--to some one who died in 1830, andassuming also that these events were the basis of a society which hadcommenced with his death, and was now making way, and that the chiefdesign of the society was to make known or keep up the memory of theseevents, and that there had been a literature written between the presenttime and the time of the said man's death, every line of which had beenwritten on the assumption that the events in question were true, and yetthese events had never really taken place. We must also suppose that theperson upon whom these acts are attempted to be fastened was regardedwith intense dislike by the great majority of his contemporaries, whodid all they could to ruin him when alive, and blacken his memory afterhe had died, and who looked with especial dislike on the idea that hewas supposed to have done the acts in question. Let the reader, I say, try and imagine all this, and he will see that, in the case of our Lord, the author's "long after" must be sixty or seventy years at the least;more likely a hundred. 

Let us now summon another witness to the supernatural, whose testimonywe promised to consider, and this shall be Clement of Rome--the earliestauthor to whom it has suited the purpose of the author of "SupernaturalReligion" to refer. 

If we are to rely upon the almost universal consent of ancient authorsrather than the mere conjectures of modern critics, he is the personalluded to by St. Paul in the words, "With Clement also, and with othermy fellow labourers, whose names are written in the book of life. "(Phil. Iv. 3. )

Of this man Eusebius writes:--

 "In the twelfth year of the same reign (Domitian's), after Anecletus had been bishop of Rome twelve years, he was succeeded by Clement, whom the Apostle, in his Epistle to the Philippians, shows had been his fellow-labourer in these words: 'With Clement also and the rest of my fellow-labourers, whose names are in the book of life. ' Of this Clement there is one Epistle extant, acknowledged as genuine, of considerable length and of great merit, which he wrote in the name of the Church at Rome, to that of Corinth, at the time when there was a dissension in the latter. This we know to have been publicly read for common benefit, in most of the Churches both in former times and in our own. " (Eccles. Hist. B. III. Xv. Xvi. )

Origen confirms this. Clement of Alexandria reproduces several pagesfrom his Epistle, calling him "The Apostle Clement, " [187:1] andIrenaeus speaks of him as the companion of the Apostles:--

 "This man, as he had seen the blessed Apostles and been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the Apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. " (Bk. III. Ch. Iii. 3)

Irenaeus, it is to be remembered, died at the end of the second century, and his birth is placed within the first quarter of it, so that, in allprobability, he had known numbers of Christians who had conversed withClement. 

According to the author of "Supernatural Religion, " the great mass ofcritics assign the Epistle of Clement to between the years A. D. 95-100. 

In dealing with this Epistle I shall, for argument's sake, assume thatClement quoted from an earlier Gospel than any one of our present ones, and that the one he quoted might be the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and I shall ask the same question that I asked respecting JustinMartyr--What views of Christ's Person and work and doctrine did hederive from this Gospel of his?

The Epistle of Clement is one in which we should scarcely expect to findmuch reference to the Supernatural, for it is written throughout for theone practical purpose of healing the divisions in the Church of Corinth. These the writer ascribes to envy, and cites a number of Scriptureexamples of the evil effects of this disposition and the good effects ofthe contrary one. He adheres to this purpose throughout, and every wordhe writes bears more or less directly on his subject. Yet in thisdocument, from which, by its design, the subject of the supernaturalseems excluded, we have all the leading features of supernaturalChristianity. We have the Father sending the Son (ch. Xlii. ); we havethe Son coming of the seed of Jacob according to the Flesh (ch. Xxxii. );we have the words, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, the sceptre of the Majesty ofGod, did not come in the pomp of pride and arrogance, although He mighthave done so, but in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit had declaredregarding Him" (ch. Xvi. ); and at the end of the same we have:--

 "If the Lord thus humbled Himself, what shall we do who have through Him come under the yoke of His grace?"

Clement describes Him in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews asOne--

 "Who, being the brightness of His [God's] Majesty, is by so much greater than the angels as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. " (Ch. Xxxvi. )

We have Clement speaking continually of the Death of Jesus as takingplace for the highest of supernatural purposes, --the reconciliation ofall men to God. "Let us look, " he writes, "steadfastly to the Blood ofChrist, and see how precious that Blood is to God, which, having beenshed for our salvation, has set the grace of repentance before the wholeworld. " (Ch. Vii. ) Again, "And thus they made it manifest thatRedemption should flow through the Blood of the Lord to all them thatbelieve and hope in God. " (Ch. Xii. ) Again, "On account of the love Hebore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His Blood for us by the will of God, His Flesh for our flesh, and His Soul for our souls. " (Ch. Xlix. ) Hissufferings are apparently said by Clement to be the sufferings of God. (Ch. Ii. ) But, above all, the statement of the truth of our Lord'sResurrection, and of ours through His, is as explicit as possible:--

 "Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord continually proves to us that there shall be a future resurrection, of which He has rendered the Lord Jesus the first fruits by raising Him from the dead. " (Ch. Xxiv. )

 "[The Apostles] having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the Word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was at hand. " (Ch. Xlii. )

When we look to Clement's theology, we find it to have been what wouldnow be called, in the truest and best sense of the word, "Evangelical, "thus:--

 "We too, being called by His Will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which from the beginning Almighty God has justified all men. " (Ch. Xxxii. )

Again:--

 "All these the Great Creator and Lord of all has appointed to exist in peace and harmony; while He does good to all, but most abundantly to us who have fled for refuge to His compassion through Jesus Christ our Lord. "

And he ends his Epistle with the following prayer:--

 "May God, who seeth all things, and Who is the Ruler of all Spirits and the Lord of all Flesh--Who chose our Lord Jesus, and us through Him to be a peculiar people--grant to every soul that calleth upon His glorious and holy Name, faith, fear, peace, patience, long suffering, self-control, purity and sobriety, to the well pleasing of His Name through our High Priest and Protector Jesus Christ. " (Ch. Lviii. )

But with all this his Christianity seems to have been Ecclesiastical, inthe technical sense of the word. He seems to have had a much clearer andfirmer hold than Justin had of the truth that Christ instituted, notmerely a philosophy or system of teaching, but a mystical body orvisible Church, having its gradations of officers corresponding to theofficers of the Jewish Ecclesiastical system, and its orderlyarrangements of worship. (Ch. Xl-xlii. )

Now this is the Christianity of a man who lived at least sixty orseventy years nearer to the fountain head of Christian truth than didJustin Martyr, whose witness to dogmatical or supernatural Christianitywe have shown at some length. 

It is also gathered out of a comparatively short book, not one sixth ofthe length of the writings of Justin, and composed solely for anundogmatic purpose. 

His views of Christ and His work are precisely the same as those ofJustin. By all rule of rationalistic analogy they ought to have beenless "ecclesiastical, " but in some respects they are more so. 

Clement certainly seems to bring out more fully our Lord's Resurrection(taking into consideration, that is, the scope of his one remaining bookand its brevity), and the Resurrection of Christ is the crowning miraclewhich stamps the whole dispensation as supernatural. 

So far, then, as the Supernatural is concerned, it makes no differencewhatsoever whether Clement used the Gospel according to St. Matthew orthe Gospel according to the Hebrews. His Gospel, whatever it was, notonly filled his heart with an intense and absorbing love of Christ, anda desire that all men should imitate Him, but it filled his mind withthat view of the religion of Christ which we call supernatural andevangelical, but which the author of "Supernatural Religion" callsecclesiastical. 

The question now arises, not so much from whom, but when, did he receivethis view of Christ and His system. I do not mean, of course, the moreminute features, but the substance. To what period must hisreminiscences as a Christian extend? What time must his experiencescover? Irenaeus, in the place I have quoted, speaks of him as thecompanion of Apostles, Clement of Alexandria as an Apostle, Eusebius andOrigen as the fellow-labourer of St. Paul. Now, I will not at presentinsist upon the more than likelihood that such was the fact. I will, forargument's sake, assume that he was some other Clement; but, whoever hewas, one thing respecting him is certain--that the knowledge ofChristianity was not poured into him at the moment when he wrote hisEpistle, nor did he receive it ten--twenty--thirty years before. St. Peter and St. Paul were martyred in A. D. 68; the rest of the ApostolicCollege were dispersed long before. This Epistle shows little or notrace of the peculiar Johannean teaching or tradition of the Apostle whosurvived all the others; so, unless he had received his Christianteaching some years before the Martyrdom of the two Apostles Peter andPaul, that is, some time before A. D. 68, probably many years, I do notsee that there can have been the smallest ground even for the traditionof the very next generation after his own that he knew the Apostles. Such a tradition could not possibly have been connected with the name ofa man who became a Christian late in the century. 

Now, supposing that he was sixty-five years old when he wrote hisEpistle, he was born about the time of our Lord's Death: he wasconsequently a contemporary of the generation that had witnessed theDeath and Resurrection of Christ and the founding of the Church. If hehad ever been in Jerusalem before its destruction, he must have fallenin with multitudes of surviving Christians of the 5, 000 who wereconverted on and just after the day of Pentecost. 

His Christian reminiscences, then, must have extended far into the ageof the contemporaries of Christ. A man who was twenty-five years old atthe time of the Resurrection of Christ would scarcely be reckoned an oldman at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Clement consequentlymight have spent twenty of the best years of his life in the company ofpersons who were old enough to have seen the Lord in the Flesh. [193:1]

So that his knowledge of the Death and Resurrection of Christ, and thefounding of the Church, even if he had never seen St. Paul or any otherApostle, must have been derived from a generation of men, all the oldermembers of which wore Christians of the Pentecostal period. 

Now when we come to compare the Epistle of Clement with the onlyremaining Christian literature of the earliest period, _i. E. _ theearlier Epistles of St. Paul, we find both the account of Christ and theTheology built upon that account, to be the same in the one and in theother. 

The supernatural fact respecting Christ to which the earliest Epistlesof St. Paul most prominently refer, was His Resurrection as the pledgeof ours, and this is the fact respecting Christ which is put mostprominently forward by Clement, and for the same purpose. The FirstEpistle to the Corinthians is referred to by Clement in the words:--

 "Take up the Epistle of the Blessed Apostle Paul. What did he write to you at the time when the Gospel first began to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit ([Greek: pneumatikôs]) he wrote to you concerning himself and Cephas and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed among you. " (Ch. Xlvii. )

The other reproductions of the language of St. Paul's Epistles arenumerous, and I give them in a note. [194:1] The reader will see at aglance that the Theology or Christology of Clement was that of theearliest writings of the Church of which we have any remains, and tothese he himself frequently and unmistakably refers. 

The earlier Epistles of St. Paul, as those to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, are acknowledged on all hands, evenby advanced German Rationalists, to be the genuine works of the ApostlePaul; indeed one might as well deny that such a man ever existed asquestion their authenticity. The First Epistle to the Corinthians, whichis the longest and most dogmatic of the earlier ones, cannot have beenwritten after the year 58. In a considerable number of chronologicaltables to which I have referred, the earliest date is the year 52, andthe latest 58. 

To the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, which is undoubtedly theearliest of all, the earliest date assigned is 47, and the latest 53. 

Now it is ever to be remembered that in each of these--the First to theThessalonians and the First to the Corinthians--we have enunciations ofthe great crowning supernatural event of Scripture--the Resurrection ofChrist and our Resurrection as depending upon it, which are unsurpassedin the rest of Scripture. 

So that in the first Christian writing which has come down to us, wehave the great fact of Supernatural Religion, which carries with it allthe rest. 

The fullest enunciation of the evidences of the Resurrection is in awriting whose date cannot be later than 58, and runs thus:--

 "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. And that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that [196:1] He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present [twenty-five years after the event] but some are fallen asleep. After that He was seen of James, then of all the Apostles, and last of all He was seen of me also. " (1 Cor. Xv. 1. )

If the reader compares this with the accounts in any one of the Four, he will find that it gives the fullest list of our Lord's appearanceswhich has come down to us, and this, be it remembered, forming part ofthe most categorical declaration of what the Gospel is, to be found inthe New Testament. [196:1]

A man, then, writes in A. D. 57 or earlier, that another, Who had died inA. D. 32 had been seen by a number of persons, and among these, by 500persons at once, of whom the greater part were alive when he wrote, andimplying that the story had been believed ever since, and received byhim (the writer) from those who had seen this Jesus, and that the factwas so essential to the religion that it was itself called "the Gospel, "a name continually given to the whole system of Christianity, andmoreover that he himself, when in company with others, had seen thisJesus at noon-day, and, the history asserts, had been blinded by thesight. Now let the reader recall to his mind any public man who diedtwenty-five years ago, that is, in 1850, and imagine this man appearing, not as a disembodied spirit, but in his resuscitated body to first oneof his friends, then to eleven or twelve, then to another, then to fivehundred persons at one time, and a flourishing and aggressiveinstitution founded upon this his appearance, and numbers of personsgiving up their property, and breaking with all their friends, andadopting a new religion, and a new course of life of great self-denial, and even encountering bitter persecution and death, simply because theybelieved this man to be alive from the dead, and moreover someprofessing to do miracles, and to confer the power of doing miracles inthe name and by the power of this risen man. 

Let the reader, I say, try to imagine all this, and then he will be ableto judge of the credulity with which the author credits his readers whenhe writes:--

 "All history shows how rapidly pious memory exaggerates and idealizes the traditions of the past, and simple actions might readily be transformed into miracles as the narrative circulated, in a period so prone to superstition, and so characterized by love of the marvellous. " (Vol. Ii. P. 209. )

"All history, " the author says; but why does he not give us a fewinstances out of "all history, " that we might compare them with thisGospel account, and see if there was anything like it?

Such a story, if false, is not a myth. A myth is the slow growth offalsehood through long ages, and this story of the Resurrection waswritten circumstantially within twenty years of its promulgation, by onewho had been an unbeliever, and who had conferred with those who musthave been the original promoters of the falsehood, if it be one. 

To call such a story a myth, is simply to shirk the odium of calling itby its right name, or more probably to avoid having to meet theastounding historical difficulty of supposing that men endured what theApostles endured for what they must have known to have been a falsehood, and the still more astounding difficulty that One Whom the author of"Supernatural Religion" allows to have been a Teacher Who "carriedmorality to the sublimest point attained or even attainable byhumanity, " and Whose "life, as far as we can estimate it, was uniformlynoble and consistent with his lofty principles, " should have impressed acharacter of such deep-rooted fraud and falsehood on His most intimatefriends. 

The author of "Supernatural Religion" has, however, added another to themany proofs of the truth of the Gospel. In his elaborate book of 1, 000pages of attack on the authenticity of the Evangelists he has shown, with a clearness which, I think, has never been before realized, thegreat fact that from the first there has been but one account of JesusChrist. In the writings of heathens, of Jews, of heretics, [199:1] inlost gospels, in contemporary accounts, in the earliest traditions ofthe Church, there appears but one account, the account called by itsfirst proclaimers the Gospel; and the only explanation of the existenceof this Gospel is its truth. 

THE END. 

[FOOTNOTES]

[3:1] Papias, for instance, actually mentions St. Mark by name aswriting a gospel under the influence of St. Peter. The author of"Supernatural Religion" devotes ten pages to an attempt to prove thatthis St. Mark's Gospel could not be ours. (Vol. I. Pp. 448-459. )

[6:1] I need hardly say that I myself hold the genuineness of the Greekrecension. The reader who desires to see the false reasonings andgroundless assumptions of the author of "Supernatural Religion"respecting the Ignatian epistles thoroughly exposed should readProfessor Lightfoot's article in the "Contemporary Review" of February, 1875. In pages 341-345 of this article there is an examination of thenature and trustworthiness of the learning displayed in the footnotes ofthis pretentious book, which is particularly valuable. I am glad to seethat the professor has modified, in this article, the expression of hisformer opinion that the excerpta called the Curetonian recension is tobe regarded as the only genuine one. "Elsewhere, " the professor writes(referring to an essay in his commentary on the Philippians), "I hadacquiesced in the earlier opinion of Lipsius, who ascribed them (_i. E. _, the Greek or Vossian recension) to an interpolator writing about A. D. 140. Now, however, I am obliged to confess that I have grave andincreasing doubts whether, after all, they are not the genuineutterances of Ignatius himself. "

[10:1] [Greek: Ou gar monon en Hellêsi dia Sôkratous hypo logou êlenchthêtauta, alla kai en Barbarois hyp' autou tou Logou morphôthentos kaianthrôpou genomenou kai Iêsou Christou klêthentous. ]

[10:2] Such is a perfectly allowable translation of [Greek: kai ton par'autou hyion elthonta kai didaxanta hêmas tauta, kai ton tôn allônhepomenôn kai exomoioumenôn agathôn angelôn straton, pneuma te toprophêtikon sebometha kai proskynoumen. ] As there is nothing approachingto angel worship in Justin, such a rendering seems absolutely necessary. 

[15:1] "For the law promulgated in Horeb is now old, and belongs to youalone; but this is for all universally. Now law placed against law hasabrogated that which is before it, and a covenant which comes after inlike manner has put an end to the previous one; and an eternal and finallaw--namely, Christ--has been given to us. " (Heb. Viii. 6-13; Dial. Ch. Xi. )

[15:2] "For the true spiritual Israel and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham (who in uncircumcision was approved of and blessed byGod on account of his faith, and called the father of many nations) arewe who have been led to God through this crucified Christ, as shall bedemonstrated while we proceed. " (Phil. Iii. 3, compared with Romans, iv. 12-18; Dial. Ch. Xi. )

[17:1] This, of course, was a Jewish adversary's view of the Christiandoctrine of the Godhead of Christ, which Justin elsewhere modifies byshowing the subordination of the Son to the Father in all things. 

[19:1] [Greek: En gar tois apomnêmoneumasi, ha phêmi hypo tôn apostolônautou kai tôn ekeinois parakolouthêsantôn syntetachthai, hoti hidrôshôsei thromboi katecheito autou euchomenou. ] (Dial. Ch. Ciii. )

[20:1] [Greek: Kai to eipein metônomakenai auton Petron hena tônapostolôn, kai gegraphthai en tois apomnêmoneumasin autou gegenêmenonkai touto, k. T. L. ]

On this question the author of "Supernatural Religion" remarks, "According to the usual language of Justin, and upon strictly criticalgrounds, the [Greek: autou] in this passage must be ascribed to Peter;and Justin therefore seems to ascribe the Memoirs to that Apostle, andto speak consequently of a Gospel of Peter. " (Vol. I. P. 417. )

[28:1] That of our Lord being born in a cave. 

[29:1] [Greek: Iôannou gar kathezomenou. ]

[34:1] Justin has [Greek: hidrôs hôsei thromboi]; St. Luke, [Greek: hohidrôs autou hôsei thromboi haimatos]. The author of "SupernaturalReligion" lays great stress upon the omission of [Greek: haimatos], asindicating that Justin did not know anything about St. Luke; but we haveto remember, first, that St. Luke alone mentions _any_ sweat of our Lordin His agony; secondly, that the account in Justin is said to be takenfrom "Memoirs drawn up by Apostles and _those who followed them_, " _St. Luke being only one of those who followed_; thirdly, Justin and St. Lukeboth use a very scarce word, [Greek: thromboi]; fourthly, Justin and St. Luke both qualify this word by [Greek: hôsei]. If we add to this thefact that [Greek: thromboi] seems naturally associated with blood inseveral authors, the probability seems almost to reach certainty, thatJustin had St. Luke's account in his mind. The single omission is farmore easy to be accounted for than the four coincidences. 

[37:1] And He said unto them, "These are the words which I spake untoyou while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled whichwere written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalmsconcerning me. " (Luke xxiii. 44. )

[48:1] It is the reading of Codices B and C of the Codex Sinaiticus ofthe Syriac, and of a number of Fathers and Versions. 

[51:1] [Greek: Hekastos gar tis apo merous tou spermatikou theiou logouto syngenes horôn kalôs ephthenxato. ]

[63:1] For instance, in vol. Ii. P. 42, &c. , he speaks of oneof Tischendorf's assertions as "a conclusion the audacity ofwhich can scarcely be exceeded. "--Then, "This is, however, almostsurpassed by the treatment of Canon Westcott. "--Then, "The unwarrantedinference of Tischendorf. "--"There is no ground for Tischendorf'sassumption. "--"Tischendorf, the self-constituted modern Defensor Fidei, asserts with an assurance which can scarcely be characterized otherwisethan as an unpardonable calculation upon the ignorance of hisreaders. "--"Canon Westcott says, with an assurance which, consideringthe nature of the evidence, is singular. "--"Even Dr. Westcott states, "&c. --For Tertullian his contempt seems unbounded: indeed we way say thesame of all the Fathers. Numberless times does he speak of their"uncritical spirit. " The only person for whom he seems to have a respectis the heretic Marcion. Even rationalists, such as Credner and Ewald, are handled severely when they differ from him. The above are culledfrom a few pages. 

[69:1] [Greek: Hoti Theos hypemeine gennêthênai kai anthrôposgenesthai. ]

[69:2] [Greek: Ex hôn diarrhêdên outous autos ho staurotheis hoti Theoskai anthrôpos, kai stauroumenos kai apothnêskôn kekêrygmenosapodeiknytai. ]

[70:1] The reader must remember that Justin puts this expression, whichseems to imply a duality of Godhead, into the mouth of an adversary. Inother places, as I shall show, he very distinctly guards against such anotion, by asserting the true and proper Sonship of the Word and hisperfect subordination to His Father. There is a passage preciselysimilar in ch. Lv. 

[71:1] "I continued: Moreover, I consider it necessary to repeat to youthe words which narrate how He is both Angel and God and Lord, and Whoappeared as a Man to Abraham. " (Dial. Ch. Lviii. )

"Permit me, further, to show you from the Book of Exodus, how this sameOne, Who is both Angel, and God, and Lord, and Man. " (Dial. Ch. Lix. )

"God begat before all creatures, a Beginning, a certain rational Powerfrom Himself, Who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of theLord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lordand Logos. " (Dial. Ch. Lxi. )

"The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God, begotten of the Father ofall things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and the Glory of theBegetter, will bear evidence to me, " &c. (Dial. Lxi. )

"Therefore these words testify explicitly that He is witnessed to by HimWho established these things [_i. E. _ the Father] as deserving to beworshipped, as God and as Christ. " (Dial. Lxiii. )

The reader will find other declarations, most of which are equallyexplicit, in Dial. Ch. Lvi. (at the end), ch. Lvii. (at the end), lxii. (middle), lxviii. (at middle and end), lxxiv. (middle), lxxv. , lxxvi. (made Him known, being Christ, as God strong and to be worshipped), lxxxv. (twice called the Lord of Hosts), lxxxvii. (where Christ isdeclared to be pre-existent God), cxiii. (he [Joshua] was neitherChrist, Who is God, nor the Son of God), cxv. (our Priest, Who is God, and Christ, the Son of God, the Father of all), cxxiv. (Now I haveproved at length that Christ is called God), cxxv. (He ministered to thewill of the Father, yet nevertheless is God), cxxvi. (thrice in thischapter), cxxvii. , cxxviii. , cxxix. 

[73:1] I adopt this phrase because, it is used by Justin. His words are[Greek: arithmô onta heteron]. (Dial. Ch. Lxii. )

[74:1] [Greek: Hoti archên pro pantôn tôn ktismatôn ho Theos gegennêkedynamin tina ex heautou logikên, k. T. L. ]

[77:1] Dr. Pusey translates this passage thus:--"For all that thephilosophers and legislators at any time declared or discovered aright, they accomplished according to their portion of discovery andcontemplation of the Word; but as they did not know all the propertiesof the Word which is Christ, " &c. 

[77:2] Translated by Dr. Pusey, "Seminal Divine Word. "

[78:1] A few pages further on I shall show that the mode of reasoningadopted by the author of "Supernatural Religion, " in drawing inferencesfrom the ways in which Justin expresses the idea of St. John's [Greek:ho logos sarx egeneto] would, if we adopted it, lead us to some verystartling conclusions. 

[84:1] The following are some instances:--"God sent not His Son into theworld to condemn the world. " "He Whom God sent. "--John iii. 17, 23. "Mymeat is to do the will of Him that sent me. " "Jesus Christ, Whom Thouhast sent. " "As my Father sent me, so send I you, " &c. 

[85:1] This passage does not occur among the remarks upon JustinMartyr's quotations, but among those on the Clementine Homilies. However, it seems to be used to prove that the Gospel of St. John waspublished after the writing of the Clementines, which the author seemsto think were themselves posterior to Justin. 

[86:1] I say the "necessary" developments, because Holy Scripture isgiven to the Church to be expounded and applied, and in order to thisits doctrine must be collected out of many scattered statements, andstated and guarded, and this is its being developed. The Persons, theattributes, and the works of the three Persons of the Godhead are sodescribed in Holy Scripture as Divine, and They are so conjoined in theworks of Creation, Providence, and Grace, that we cannot but contemplateThem as associated together, and cannot but draw an impassable gulfbetween Their existence and that of all creatures, and we cannot butadoringly contemplate Their relations one to another, and hence thenecessary development of the Christian dogma as contained in the Creeds. 

[91:1] [Greek: Ton di' hêmas tou anthrôpous kai dia tên hêmeteransôtêrian katelthonta ek tôn ouranôn, kai sarkôthenta ek PneumatosHagiou kai Marias tês parthenou, kai enanthrôpêsanta, k. T. L. ]

[94:1] Though of course not as regards _time_, for all Catholics holdthe Eternal Generation, that there never was a time in which the Fatherwas not a Father; nor as regards power or extension, for whatever theFather does that the Son does also, and wherever the Father is there isthe Son also. 

[100:1] Eusebius, B. Ii. Ch. V. 

[106:1] Apol. I. 14. 

[107:1] The spirit of this verse, and its form of expression, are quitethose of the Gospel of St. John; and it serves to form a link of unionbetween the three Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth, and to point to thevast and weighty mass of discourses of the Lord which are not relatedexcept by St. John. Alford in loco. 

[117:1] If the reader desires to see Logos doctrine expressed inphilosophic terminology, he can find it in some of the extracts fromPhilo given in the notes of "Supernatural Religion" vol. Ii. Pp. 272-298. Can there be a greater contrast than that between St. John'sterse, concise, simple, enunciations and the following: [Greek: Kai oumonon phôs, alla kai pantos heterou phôtos archetypon mallon dearchetypou presbyteron kai anôteron, Logon echon paradeigmatos to mengar paradeigma ho plêrestatos ên autou Logos, k. T. L. ]--De Somniis, i. 15, Mang. I. 634. There is no particularly advanced philosophicterminology here, and yet there is a profound difference between boththe thought and wording of this sentence of Philo and St. John's fourenunciations of the Logos. Again, [Greek: Dêlon de hoti kai hêarchetypos sphragis, hon phamen einai kosmon noêton, autos an eiê toarchetypon paradeigma, idea tôn ideôn, ho Theou Logos. ]--De MundiOpificio Mang. Vol. I. P. 8. "It is manifest also that the archetypalseal, which we call that world which is perceptible only to theintellect, must itself be the archetypal model, the idea of ideas, theword of God. " (Yonge's Translation. )

[126:1] "When He came into the world He was manifested as God and man. And it is easy to perceive the man in Him when He hungers and showsexhaustion, and is weary and athirst, and withdraws in fear, and is inprayer and in grief, and sleeps on a boat's pillow, and entreats theremoval of the cup of suffering, and sweats in an agony, and isstrengthened by an angel, and betrayed by a Judas, and mocked byCaiaphas, and set at naught by Herod, and scourged by Pilate, andderided by the soldiers, and nailed to the tree by the Jews, and with acry commits His spirit to His Father, and drops His head and gives upthe ghost, and has His side pierced by a spear, and is wrapped in linenand laid in a tomb, and is raised by the Father from the dead. And theDivine in Him, on the other hand, is equally manifest when He isworshipped by angels, and seen by shepherds, and waited for by Simeon, and testified of by Anna, and inquired after by wise men, and pointedout by a star, and at a marriage makes wine of water, and chides the seawhen tossed by the violence of winds, and walks upon the deep, and makesone see who was blind from birth, and raises Lazarus when dead for fourdays, and works many wonders, and forgives sins, and grants power to Hisdisciples. "

[152:1] History affords multitudes of instances, but an example may beselected from one of the most critical periods of modern history. Let itbe granted that Louis the Sixteenth of France and his Queen had all thedefects attributed to them by the most hostile of serious historians;let all the excuses possible be made for his predecessor, Louis theFifteenth, and also for Madame de Pompadour, can it be pretended thatthere are grounds for affirming that the vices of the two former so farexceeded those of the latter, that their respective fates were plainlyand evidently just? That whilst the two former died in their beds, aftera life of the most extreme luxury, the others merited to stand forththrough coming time, as examples of the most appalling and calamitoustragedy. (Mivart's "Genesis of Species, " ch. Ix. )

[155:1] What sign showest Thou us? Destroy this temple, and in threedays I will raise it up: but He spake of the temple of His Body. (Johnii. 19-21) An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, andthere shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the Prophet Jonas, for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, soshall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of theearth. (Matt. Xii. 39, 40) God commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because He hath appointed a day on which He will judge the world inrighteousness by that man whom He hath chosen, whereof He hath givenassurance unto all men in that He raised Him from the dead. (Acts xvii. 30. )

[158:1] This sentence seems extremely carelessly worded. The authorcannot possibly mean that our ignorance is the anomaly, for throughouthis whole work he assumes that ignorance is the rule in all matters, moral, physical, historical. The Fathers of the second century knewnothing of the Evangelists. St. John knows nothing of the writings ofhis brother Evangelists. They are all assumed to be ignorant of whatthey have not actually recorded. We know nothing of vital force, orphysical force, or of a revelation. In fact, God Himself is theUnknowable. 

[164:1] Perhaps 1 Tim. I. 20, iv. 14; 2 Tim i. 6, may refer to suchgifts; but the contrast between such slight intimations and the fullrecognition in 1 Cor. Xii. And xiv. Is very great. 

[168:1] "The author [of the book of Enoch] not only relates the fall ofthe angels through love for the daughters of men, but gives the names oftwenty-one of them, and their leaders, of whom Jequn was he who seducedthe Holy Angels, and Ashbeel it was who gave them evil counsel andcorrupted them. A third, Gadreel, was he who seduced Eve. He also taughtto the children of men the use and manufacture of all murderous weapons, of coats of mail, shields, swords, and of all the implements of war. Another evil angel, named Penemue, taught them many mysteries of wisdom. He instructed men in the art of writing, with paper and ink, by means ofwhich, the author remarks, many fall into sin, even to the present day. Kaodejâ, another evil angel, taught the human race all the wickedpractices of spirits and demons, and also magic and exorcism. Theoffspring of the fallen angels and of the daughters of men, were giantswhose height was 3, 000 ells, of these are the demons working evil uponearth. Azayel taught men various arts, the making of bracelets andornaments, the use of cosmetics, the way to beautify the eyebrows, precious stones and all dye-stuffs and metals, &c. The stars arerepresented as animated beings. Enoch sees seven stars bound together inspace like great mountains, and flaming with fire, and he enquires ofthe angel who leads him on account of what sin they are so bound. Urielinforms him that they are stars which have transgressed the commands ofthe Most High, and they are thus bound until ten thousand worlds, thenumber of the days of their transgression, shall be accomplished. " Sofar for the "Angelology. " As to the demons, "Their number is infinite... They are about as close as the earth thrown up out of a newly madegrave. It is stated that each man has 10, 000 demons at his right hand, and 1, 000 on his left. The crush in the synagogue on the Sabbath arisesfrom them, also the dresses of the Rabbins become so old and tornthrough their rubbing; in like manner also they cause the tottering ofthe feet. He who wishes to discover these spirits must take sifted ashesand strew them about his bed, and in the morning he will perceive theirfootprints upon them like a cock's tread. If any one wish to see them, he must take the after-birth of a black cat, which has been littered bya first-born black cat, and whose mother was also a first-birth, burnand reduce it to powder, and put some of it on his eyes, and he will seethem. " (Vol. I. Pp. 104 and 111). And this is the stuff which the authorwould have us believe was the real origin of the supernatural in thelife of Jesus!

[170:1] See also Mark v. 42 (healing of Jairus' daughter), "They wereastonished with a great astonishment. " Mark vii. 37 (healing of deaf manwith impediment in his speech), "They were beyond measure astonished. "Luke v. 9, "He was astonished at the draught of fishes;" viii. 56, "Herparents were astonished. "

[178:1] There cannot be the slightest doubt but that certain cases ofmadness or mania present all the appearances of possession as it isdescribed in Scripture. Another personality, generally intensely evil, has possession of the mind, speaks instead of the afflicted person, throws the patient into convulsions, --in fact, exhibits all the symptomsof the ancient demoniacs. I have now before me the record of five or sixsuch cases attested by German physicians. 

[183:1] The reader will find the references to it discussed in adissertation at the end of Whiston's "Josephus. " Lardner utterly deniesits authenticity. Daubuz, however, has, I think, clearly proved itsstyle and phraseology to be those of Josephus. 

[185:1] Singular that he should say "out of Palestine, " for if they werefalse they would be first heard of at a distance from the scene of theirsupposed occurrence. Jerusalem, so full of bitter enemies of Christ, wasthe last place in which His Resurrection was likely to be promulgated. 

[187:1] Miscellanies, IV. Ch. Xvii. 

[193:1] Let the reader remember that, if this be an assumption, thecontrary assumption is infinitely the more unlikely. Our assumption isfounded on the direct assertion of two writers of the second century, one of whom asserts that Clement was a close companion of Apostles, another that he was an Apostle: meaning, of course, such an one asBarnabas. A writer of the early part of the next century, Origen, asserts that he was the person mentioned in St. Paul's Epistle, and theprincipal Ecclesiastical Historian who lived within two hundred years ofhis time corroborates this. 

[194:1] "Ye ... Were more willing to give than to receive" (ch. Ii. ). Areminiscence of St. Paul's quotation of Christ's words to be found inActs xx. 35. 

"Ready to every good work" (ch. Ii). Titus iii. 1. "Every kind of honourand happiness was bestowed upon you (ch. Iii). Reminiscence of ICorinth. Iv. 8. 

"Let us be imitators of them who in goat skins and sheep skins wentabout proclaiming the coming of Christ" (ch. Xvii). Heb. Xi. 37. 

"To us who have fled for refuge to his compassions" (ch. Xx. ). Reminiscence of Heb. Vii. 

"Let us esteem those who have the rule over us. " I Thess. V. 12, 13;Heb. Xiii. 17. 

"Not by preferring one to another. " 1 Tim. V. 21. 

"A future Resurrection, of which He has rendered the Lord Jesus thefirst fruits by raising Him from the dead" (ch. Xxiv. ). 1 Cor. Xv. 20;Col. I. 18. 

"Nothing is impossible with God except to lie" (ch. Xxvii. ). Tit. I. 2;Heb. Vi. 18. 

"From whom [Jacob] was descended our Lord Jesus Christ according to theflesh" (ch. Xxxii. ). Rom. Ix. 5. 

"For [Scripture] saith, 'eye hath not seen, '" &c. (ch. Xxxiv. ). Cor. Ii. 9. 

"Not only they that do them, but also those that take pleasure in themthat do them" (ch. Xxxv. ). Rom. I. 32. Ch. Xxxvi. Contains distinctreference to Heb. I. I gave an extract above. 

"Let us take our body for an example. The head is nothing without thefeet ... Yea, the very smallest members of our body are necessary anduseful" (ch. Xxxvii. ), 1 Corinth. Xii. 12, &c. 

"Let every one be subject to his neighbour according to the special giftbestowed upon him" ([Greek: kathôs kai etethê en tô charismati autou])(ch. Xxxviii. ). Rom. Xii. 1-4; Ephes. Iv. 8-12. 

"The blessed Moses, also, 'a faithful servant in all his house'" (ch. Xliii. ). Heb. Iii. 5. 

"Have we not all one God and one Christ? Is there not one Spirit ofgrace poured upon us? Have we not one calling in Christ?" (ch. Xlvi. ). Ephes. Iv. 4-6. 

"And have reached such a height of madness as to forget that we aremembers one of another" (ch. Xlvi. ). Rom. Xii. 5. 

"Love beareth all things ... Is long suffering in all things" (ch. Xlix. ). 1 Cor. Xiii. 4. 

[196:1] One is in amazement when one reads, in the work of a man whoprofesses to have such a love of truth, the words, "The fact is, that wehave absolutely no contemporaneous history at all as to what the firstpromulgators of Christianity actually asserted" (vol. I. P. 193). Thiswriter, as far as I remember, gives us no reason to believe that hedoubts the authenticity of St. Paul's earlier Epistles. Again, what is"contemporary history?" Surely, if a man was now to write the history ofthe Crimean war in 1854-5, it would be a contemporary history. 

[199:1] Celsus, for instance, who had been some time dead when Origenrefuted him, knew no other account than the one which he calumniated;Josephus the Jew knew no other, Trypho suggests no counter story. Thewild exaggerations of the heretics refuted by Irenaeus all presupposedthe one narrative, and can have had no other basis.