St. Mark afterwards appears to have preached the Gospel in Egypt; and to have died at Alexandria, probably by a natural death.

Saint Luke, the frequent companion of St. Paul*, professes to have composed his Gospel from the information of eye-witnesses of the facts which he describes. He is allowed to be the person styled by St. Paul," the brother, whose praise is in the Gospel throughout all the churches."+ He records many particulars unnoticed by his predecessors: and by his large explanations of Jewish usages shews that he wrote at a period when a great accession of Gentiles had augmented the Christian church. It seems probable that he published his Gospel in Greece. The place, time, and manner of his death are not ascertained.

The Gospel of St. John, the peculiarly favoured apostle of Christ, is universally admitted to have been composed subsequently to the other three. It was written in Asia; and with an especial design to refute certain heretical opinions concerning the nature of Christ, with which the senseless and irreligious philosophy of the Gnostics had by that time infested the Christian world. In another respect also it is particularly interesting: as by reciting at length some most imprsesive discourses of our Saviour when in private with his twelve disciples, it seems to render us more familiarly acquainted with his holiness, with his love for his followers and for mankind, and with all the other virtues of his heart. St. John, who, according to the testimony of antiquity, had perused, as indeed

* See Col. iv. 14. Philemon, 24., and various passages in the Acts of the Apostles, which prove St. Luke to have been with St. Paul in his travels through many different countries. † 2 Cor. viii. 18.

Bishop Percy (in his Key to the New Testament, p. 81.) seems to demonstrate that it was written in A. D. 69.

we might conclude without any specific evidence, the three preceding Gospels, confirms them by his tacit assent; and confines himself chiefly to circumstances which they had not mentioned, or which, if mentioned by them, furnished him with an opportunity of subjoining an important addition. Like his predecessors, he explains Jewish rites and occurrences for the information of his Gentile readers. St. John resided during the latter part of his life at Ephesus; having the episcopal superintendence of that city, and of other cities in the neighbouring part of Asia Minor ; and died there in a very advanced age.

The Acts of the Apostles were confessedly written by St. Luke and probably soon after the expiration of that residence of St. Paul at Rome during two years, with an account of which the history, comprehending a period of about thirty years after the ascension of Christ, terminates. After reciting the early augmentation of the Christian church at Jerusalem, in consequence of the promised descent of the Holy Ghost on the apostles, and the establishment of the right of the Gentiles to all the privileges of the Gospel covenant demonstrated by the mission of St. Peter to Cornelius and its attendant circumstances; St. Luke restricts his narration almost exclusively to the labours of St. Paul, whose violence against the Christians during the persecution which began with the death of Stephen, together with the miraculous conversion of the enemy into the preacher of Christianity, he had previously recorded. After mentioning the preaching of St. Paul for a year at Antioch in Syria, St. Luke describes three distinct and very extensive journeys of the great apostle of the Gentiles. The first, begun from Antioch, in obedience to the express direction of the Holy Ghost, about A. D. 45, and occupying the

sus.

space of two years, included the Isle of Cyprus, Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Lycaonia. The second, after an interval in which Paul had been sent with Barnabas to Jerusalem, to consult the other apostles respecting the asserted obligation of the Gentile converts to receive the Mosaic law, was undertaken from Antioch also about A.D. 50; and comprehended Cilicia, Lycaonia, Phrygia, Galatia, Mysia, Macedonia, Athens, Corinth, in which city he resided eighteen months, and EpheHe reached Antioch after an absence of three years. After a short stay there, he commenced his third journey, the last before his imprisonment at Rome; revisiting Phrygia, Galatia, Ephesus, in which city he continued during two years, Troas *, Macedonia, Corinth, and in returning by the way of Macedonia, Troas, Assos, Mitylene, Miletus, whence he sailed to Tyre, and proceeded to Jerusalem, and arrived there at the feast of Pentecost, A.D. 58. St. Luke was his faithful associate in many parts of these laborious and dangerous expeditions by sea and land. +

To the genuineness, the authenticity, and the inspiration of these historical books, the Christian writers, who lived at and near the period of their publication, bear decisive testimony. Barnabas, one of the companions of St. Paul, if admitted to be the author of an epistle yet remaining under his name, and cited as his, A.D. 194, by Clement of Alexandria, quotes the Gospel of St. Matthew, and quotes it as sacred Scripture.§ Clement of Rome, another of the companions

*

2 Cor. ii. 12, 13.

Acts, xvi. 11. ; xx. 5, &c. &c.

See Acts, xi. to xv. inclusively.

The testimonies of the Fathers to the several books of the New Testament are recited at length by Dr. Lardner; and from his work a judicious compendium of the principal attestations is given in Dr. Paley's View of the Evidences of Christianity.

of the same apostle*, quotes it with the highest respect; and also the Gospel of St. Luke. Hermas, incontestably a writer of the earliest Christian antiquity, and by many supposed to be the Hermas mentioned by St. Paul, manifestly alludes to the two Gospels already named, and also to that of St. John; and probably to the Acts of the Apostles. Ignatius, who became bishop of Antioch about thirty-seven years after the ascension of Christ, repeatedly alludes to the Gospels of Matthew and John. Polycarp, who had conversed with many persons who had seen our Saviour, had himself been instructed by the apostles, and was by them appointed bishop of Smyrna, alludes to the Gospel of St. Matthew, and perhaps to that of St. Luke, and certainly to the Acts, in a letter yet extant: a letter which, though very short, contains nearly forty clear allusions to the books of the New Testament, particularly to the writings of St. Paul. Papias, who was a hearer of St. John, and the companion of Polycarp, speaking of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, mentions them in a manner which shews that their genuineness was a fact which had long been recognised. Let it be observed that all the witnesses already quoted had lived and conversed with some of the apostles; and that by one or more of them attestation is thus given to each of the five historical books of the New Testament. Justin Martyr, about twenty years after Papias, quotes all the four Gospels and the Acts; and refers to them as books of Holy Scripture. Of the writings of Hegesippus, who lived about thirty years afterwards, some fragments are preserved; and in them he quotes the Gospel of St. Matthew, and apparently refers to the other Gospels and the Acts. An epistle, of the same period, and still extant, ad

* Philip. iv. 3.

dressed to the churches of Asia and Phrygia by the Gallican churches at Vienne and Lyons, whose bishop, Pothinus, then ninety years old, had lived in the days of St. John, refers distinctly to the Gospels of Luke and John, and to the Acts. Irenæus, the successor of Pothinus, and the disciple of Polycarp, who had been instructed by St. John, affirms in the most positive and distinct manner the genuineness and the Divine authority of the four Gospels, and of the Acts. If it were necessary to continue the line of testimony lower, Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, and the contemporary of Irenæus; Clement of Alexandria, who flourished sixteen years afterwards (A.D. 190); Tertullian of Carthage, who followed Clement (A.D. 200), Origen of Alexandria (A. D. 230), and Eusebius of Cæsarea (A.D. 315), with numerous intermediate writers of inferior note, might be produced as corroborating in their different countries these fundamental truths. *

The order of the proposed examination of the books of the New Testament now leads us to the Epistles. Of these Epistles, the greater number was addressed to particular churches or to particular persons. Those which are not of that description, are denominated Catholic, or universal. Of the former epistles, fourteen were written by St. Paul. He was peculiarly the apostle of the Gentiles. He began in no long period after his conversion to extend his labours into regions far distant from Judæa; which country, until the destruction of Jerusalem, was the principal scene of the ministry of the apostles. And though it was regularly his practice, whithersoever he came, to ad

*It ought to be recollected that all the testimonies which have been produced in this paragraph from the days of the apostles to Eusebius, are independent each of the others; as well as that the persons who thus concur in one consistent account lived in widely separated regions.