with no less strength. Again, although the gospels, both of Matthew and John, could be supposed to be spurious, yet if the gospel of St. Luke was truly the composition of that person, or of any person, be his name what it might, who was actually in the situation in which the author of that gospeł professes himself to have been; or if the gospel which bears the name of Mark really proceeded from him, we still, even upon the lowest supposition, possess the accounts of one writer at least, who was not only contemporary with the apostles, but associated with them in their ministry; which authority seems sufficient, when the question is simply what it was which these apostles advanced.

I think it material to have this well noticed. The new Testament contains a great number of distinct writings, the genuineness of any one of which is almost sufficient to prove the truth of the religion: it contains, however, four distinct histories, the genuineness of any one of which is perfectly sufficient. If, therefore, we must be considered as encountering the risk of error in assigning the authors of our books, we are entitled to the advantage of so many separate probabilities. And although it should appear that some of the evangelists had seen and used each other's works, this discovery, whilst it subtracts indeed from their characters as testimonies strictly independent, diminishes, 1 conceive, little, either their separate authority, by which I mean the authority of any one that is genuine, or their mutual confirmation. For let the most disadvantageous supposition possible be made concerning them; let it be allowed, what I should have no great difficulty in admitting, that Mark compiled his history almost entirely from those of Matthew and Luke; and let it also, for a moment, be supposed, that these histories were not, in fact, written by Matthew and Luke; yet if it be true that Mark, a contemporary of the apostles, living in habits of society with' the apostles, a fellow-traveller and fellow-labourer with some of them; if, I say, it be true that this person made the compilation, it follows, that the writings from which he made it existed in the times of the apostles, and not only so, but that they were then in such esteem and credit that a companion of the apostles formed a history out of them. Let the gospel of Mark be called an epitome of that of Matthew; if a person in the situation in which Mark is described to have been, actually made the epitome, it affords the strongest possible attestation to the character of the original. n. parallelisms in sentences, in words, and

in the order of words, have been traced out between the gospel of Matthew and that of Luke; which concurrence cannot easily be explained otherwise than supposing either that Luke had consulted Matthew's history, or, what appears to me no wise incredible, that minutes of some of Christ's discourses, as well as brief memoirs of some passages of his life, had been committed to writing at the time, and that such written accounts had by both authors been occasionally admitted into their histories. Either supposi tion is perfecly consistent with the acknowledged formation of St. Luke's narrative, who professes not to write as an eye-witness, but to have investigated the original of every account which he delivers; in other words, to have collected them from such documents and testimonies as he, who had the best opportunities of making inquiries, judged to be authentic. Therefore, allowing that this writer also, in some instances, borrowed from the gospel which we call Matthew's, and once more allowing, for the sake of stating the argument, that that gospel was not the production of the author to whom we ascribe it, yet still we have, in St. 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 connexion, 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 im

mediately 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 abridgement of the history with which we are 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 sub sequent enquiries 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 reing 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 conceive 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 appear 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 con

ception of the subject, we are certainly mistaken; for the very discrepancies amongst the several documents which form our volume prove, if all other proof was wanting, that in their original composition they were separate, and most of them independent productions.

If we dispose of our ideas in a different order, the matter stands thus:-Whilst the transaction was recent, and the original witnesses were at hand to relate it; and whilst the apostles were busied in preaching and travelling, in collecting disciples, in forming and regulating societies of con verts, in supporting themselves against opposition; whilst they exercised their ministry under the harrassings 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 f 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 soon teach some amongst them the expediency of sending forth authentic memoirs of the life and doctrine of their Master,

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

When accounts appeared, authorized by the name, 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; whilst 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 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 contempories 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 respect 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