Luke's gospel, a history given by a writer immediately connected with the transaction, with the witnesses of it, with the persons engaged in it, and composed from materials which that person, thus situated, deemed to be safe sources of intelligence: in other words, whatever supposition be made concerning any or all the other gospels, if St. Luke's gospel be genuine, we have in it a credible evidence of the point which we maintain. The gospel according to St. John appears to be, and is on all hands allowed to be, an independent testimony, strictly and properly so called. Notwithstanding, therefore, any connection, or supposed connection, between some of the gospels, I again repeat, what I before said, that, if any one of the four be genuine, we have in that one, strong reason from the character and situation of the writer to believe, that we possess the accounts which the original emissaries of the religion delivered.

II. In treating of the written evidences of Christianity, next to their separate, we are to consider their aggregate authority. Now there is in the evangelic history a cumulation of testimony which belongs hardly to any other, but which our habitual mode of reading the Scriptures sometimes causes us to overlook. When a passage, in any wise relating to the history of Christ, is read to us out of the epistle of Clemens Romanus, the epistles of Ignatius, of Polycarp, or from any other writing of that age, we are immediately sensible of the confirmation which it affords to the scripture account. Here is a new witness. Now if we had been accustomed to read the gospel of Matthew alone, and had known that of Luke only as the generality of Christians know the writings of the apostolical fathers, that is, had known that such a writing was extant and acknowledged; when we came for the first time to look into what it contained, and found many of the facts which Matthew recorded, recorded also there, many other facts of a similar nature added, and throughout the whole work the same general series of transactions stated, and the same general character of the person who was the subject of the history preserved, I apprehend that we should feel our

minds strongly impressed by this discovery of fresh evidence. We should feel a renewal of the same sentiment, in first reading the gospel of St. John. That of St. Mark perhaps would strike us as an abridgment of the history with which we were already acquainted; but we should naturally reflect, that, if that history was abridged by such a person as Mark, or by any person of so early an age, it afforded one of the highest possible attestations of the value of the work. This successive disclosure of proof would leave us assured, that there must have been at least some reality in a story which, not one, but many, had taken in hand to commit to writing. The very existence of four separate histories would satisfy us that the subject had a foundation; and when, amidst the variety which the different information of the different writers had supplied to their accounts, or which their different choice and judgment in selecting their materials had produced, we observed many facts to stand the same in all; of these facts, at least, we should conclude that they were fixed in their credit and publicity. If, after this, we should come to the knowledge of a distinct history, and that also of the same age with the rest, taking up the subject where the others had left it, and carrying on a narrative of the effects produced in the world by the extraordinary causes of which we had already been informed, and which effects subsist at this day, we should think the reality of the original story in no little degree established by this supplement. If subsequent inquiries should bring to our knowledge, one after another, letters written by some of the principal agents in the business, upon the business, and during the time of their activity and concern in it, assuming all along, and recognizing the original story, agitating the questions that arose out of it, pressing the obligations which resulted from it, giving advice and directions to those who acted upon it, I concive that we should find, in every one of these, a still further support to the conclusion we had formed. At present, the weight of this successive confirmation is, in a great measure, unperceived by us. The evidence does not ap

pear to us what it is; for, being from our infancy accustomed to regard the New Testament as one book, we see in it only one testimony. The whole occurs to us as a single evidence: and its different parts, not as distinct attestations, but as different portions only of the same. Yet in this conception of the subject, we are certainly mistaken; for the very discrepancies among the several documents, which form our volume, prove, if all other proof were wanting, that in their original composition they were separate, and most of them independent productions.

*

If we dispose our ideas in a different order, the matter stands thus :-While the transaction was recent, and the original witnesses were at hand to relate it; and while the apostles were busied in preaching and travelling, in collecting disciples, in forming and regulating societies of converts, in supporting themselves against opposition; while they exercised their ministry under the harassings of frequent persecution, and in a state of almost continual alarm, it is not probable that, in this engaged, anxious, and unsettled condition of life, they would think immediately of writing histories for the information of the public or of posterity. But it is very probable, that emergencies might draw from some of them occasional letters upon the subject of their mission, to converts or to societies of converts, with which they were connected; or that they might address written discourses and exhortations to the disciples of the institution at large, which would be received and read with a respect proportioned to the character of the writer. Accounts in the mean time would get abroad of the extraordinary things that had been passing, written with different degrees of information and correctness. The extension of the Christian society, which could no longer be instructed by a personal intercourse with the apostles, and the possible circulation of imperfect or erroneous narratives, would

*This thought occurred to Eusebius: "Nor were the apostles of Christ greatly concerned about the writing of books, being engaged in a more excellent ministry, which is above all human power." Eccles. Hist. 1. iii. c. 24.-The same consideration accounts also for the paucity of Christian writings in the first century of its era.

soon teach some among them the expediency of sending forth authentic memoirs of the life and doctrine of their master. When accounts appeared, authorized by the name, and credit, and situation of the writers, recommended or recognized by the apostles and first preachers of the religion, or found to coincide with what the apostles and first preachers of the religion had taught, other accounts would fall into disuse and neglect ; while these, maintaining their reputation (as, if genuine and well founded, they would do) under the test of time, inquiry, and contradiction, might be expected to make their way into the hands of Christians of all countries of the world.

This seems the natural progress of the business; and with this the records in our possession, and the evidence concerning them, correspond. We have remaining, in the first place, many letters of the kind above described, which have been preserved with a care and fidelity answering to the respect with which we may suppose that such letters would be received. But as these letters were not written to prove the truth of the Christian religion, in the sense in which we regard that question; nor to convey information of facts, of which those to whom the letters were written had been previously informed; we are not to look in them for any thing more than incidental allusions to the Christian history. We are able, however, to gather from these documents various particular attestations which have been already enumerated; and this is a species of written evidence, as far as it goes, in the highest degree satisfactory, and in point of time perhaps the first. But for our more circumstantial information we have, in the next place, five direct histories, bearing the names of persons acquainted, by their situation, with the truth of what they relate, and three of them purporting, in the very body of the narrative, to be written by such persons; of which books we know that some were in the hands of those who were contemporaries of the apostles, and that, in the age immediately posterior to that, they were in the hands, we may say, of every one, and received by Christians with so much re

spect and deference, as to be constantly quoted and referred to by them without any doubt of the truth of their accounts. They were treated, as such histories, proceeding from such authorities, might expect to be treated. In the preface to one of our histories we have intimations left us of the existence of some ancient accounts which are now lost. There is nothing in this circumstance that can surprise us. It was to be expected, from the magnitude and novelty of the occasion, that such accounts would swarm. When better accounts came forth, these died away. Our present histories superseded others. They soon acquired a character and established a reputation which does not appear to have belonged to an other: that, at least, can be proved concerning them, which cannot be proved concerning any other.

But to return to the point which led to these reflections:By considering our records in either of the two views in which we have represented them, we shall perceive that we possess a collection of proofs, and not a naked or solitary testimony; and that the written evidence is of such a kind, and comes to us in such a state, as the natural order and progress of things, in the infancy of the institution, might be expected to produce.

Thirdly The genuineness of the historical books of the New Testament is undoubtedly a point of importance, because the strength of their evidence is augmented by our knowledge of the situation of their authors, their relation to the subject, and the part which they sustained in the transaction; and the testimonies which we are able to produce, compose a firm ground of persuasion that the gospels were written by the persons whose names they bear. Nevertheless, I must be allowed to state, that, to the argument which I am endeavoring to maintain, this point is not essential; I mean, so essential as that the fate of the argument depends upon it. The question before us is, whether the gospels exhibit the story which the apostles and first emissaries of religion published, and for which they acted and suffered in the manner, in which, for some miraculous