that age, their respective claims to authority must have come in competition. But, if any one of them were genuine, the authority of this had been acknowledged since the times of the apostles. Now we cannot suppose that Christians, accustomed to use a gospel, which they believed, or rather, which, from the nature of the case, they knew, to be genuine, would receive a spurious history of Christ as of equal authority. All their prejudices would have been in favor of the book to which they were accustomed. This, then, being genuine, and the other spurious, the evidence for the former being decisive, and the pretended evidence in favor of the latter, false, there could be little probability, that the new work would be classed with that already received, as a sacred book of the highest value. No probable motive, nor mistake, can be imagined which might have led to so extraordinary a result. This is taking the most obvious view of the subject. But when we further consider the discrepances between the Gospels, and reflect that the new history must have appeared, in some respects, inconsistent with, and contradictory to, that genuine Gospel, the authority of which was already established, we perceive how incredible it is, that the former would have been placed on a level

with the latter. Without doubt, it would have been rejected. Common policy alone, if it were necessary to recur to such a consideration, would have prevented Christians from giving the same authority to a spurious as to a genuine book, if any discrepances existed between them; as these discrepances would expose the whole history to the cavils and objections of unbelievers. It appears, therefore, that if any one of the Gospels be genuine, this circumstance alone goes far to prove that all are genuine. If the evidence for either of the Gospels had been much weaker than that for the other three, its discrepances from them, if there had been no other cause, would have decided its rejection. The fact that we have four Gospels, which, with all their essential agreement, differ so much from each other, is a very important means of proving the genuineness of all and of any one of them. That these discrepances

should serve to confirm our faith in all that is essential or important in the narrative contained in the Gospels, has been often observed. They show that the writers had each independent means of information. Such discrepances naturally, and almost necessarily, exist among all original histories of the same events.

We will now pass to another consideration, showing that the Gospels must have been transmitted as genuine from the apostolic age. They are, evidently, the work either of Jewish authors, or of men long conversant among Jews, who were intimately acquainted with every thing relating to that people, who had adopted their belief, their modes of conception, and forms of expression, and who thus had themselves become virtually Jews. But the Gospels descend to us through the Gentile branch of Christians. Now, as has been observed in the first part of this work,* the Jewish and Gentile Christians, from the first admission of the latter into the church, had a strong tendency to separate, and form distinct societies. Hardly held together by the authority of the apostles, they seem to have started asunder, as soon as the power of the apostles was removed. Very soon, the Gentile Christians far outnumbered the Jewish; and the two parties seem to have regarded each other with somewhat the same feelings which

See pp. 82, 83.

had belonged to Jews and Gentiles before the introduction of Christianity. About the close of the second century, we find the Jewish Christians, in general, with, perhaps, some individual exceptions, regarded as heretics, under the name of Ebionites. There is, therefore, a great improbability, that, at any period after the apostolic age, Gentile Christians would have received from Jewish Christians, four spurious histories of Christ, purporting to have been written by apostles, and companions of apostles; and would have deferred with such credulity to their testimony, as to ascribe to these works the character of sacred books. The improbability of this supposition is increased by the fact, that the four Greek Gospels, the works in question, were not in common use among Jewish Christians. They appear to have, at first, made use of the Hebrew original of St. Matthew's Gospel; this afterward becoming much corrupted in their hands. But there is still another circumstance to be considered. The Gospels are evidently the work not merely of Jewish authors, but of unlearned Jewish authors, men unskilled in the use of language generally, and of the Greek language in particular. These writings can make no pretension to any merely literary merit. Their Hebraistic style and

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idioms, with the peculiar senses given to words, must have obscured their meaning, and made them appear barbarous, to those whose native language was the Greek. Origen informs us, that "the style of the scriptures was regarded by the Greeks as poor and contemptible."* Literary men," says Lactantius, "when they give their attention to the religion of God, unless they receive their fundamental instruction from some able teacher, do not become believers. For being accustomed to pleasing and polished discourses and poems, they despise as sordid, the simple and common language of the divine writings." If, therefore, the Gospels had not been genuine, their style and idiom alone would have formed no small obstacle to their reception. Let us now put these circumstances together, and adverting merely to the view of the subject just taken, consider what particulars are necessarily embraced in the supposition, that the Gospels being spurious, obtained general authority after the apostolic age. According to this

supposition, while the Jewish and Gentile Christians were regarding each other with but little favor, four spurious works, the production of

* Comment. in Joan. Tom. IV. § 2. Opp. IV. 93.

+ Institut. VI. § 21.