CEP 9 1898 1875, March 22. PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER, GREEN-ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY. PREFACE. I BEGAN the work of which I now publish the first volume, in the year 1819; and was then so much in error respecting the inquiries to which it would lead me, that I recollect believing that it might be completed in six months. I have since deceived myself and some of my friends with the expectation of its speedy conclusion. The causes of delay have been partly circumstances merely personal, partly by being occupied by other objects theological and literary, but principally the fact, that the inquiry on which we are about to enter, when thoroughly pursued, presents itself in unexpected relations to many important subjects, all of which it is necessary to examine in order to its satisfactory discussion. As regards some of the principal of these subjects, the truth did not seem to me to have been established; and, as regards every subject that may be embraced in such a work as the present, he who would execute it in a proper manner should examine for himself, trusting as little as possible to second-hand information, and neither adopting old opinions because they have been acquiesced in, nor new opinions because they have been confidently asserted. The various bearings of the inquiry have given occasion to the large body of notes contained in this volume. Some of them, as will be perceived, present a detail of the facts on which assertions in the text are founded, and resemble the authorities annexed to an historical work. Others are properly dissertations on subjects intimately connected with the main question, though they possess at the same time an independent interest. In these dissertations, as well as in the text of the work, I have endeavoured so to explain myself as to be readily understood by all intelligent readers, whether familiar with theological studies or not. I have published this volume separately, because it completes one division of the work intended, containing the statement of the testimony of the great body of early Christians to the Genuineness of the Gospels. It likewise comprises as large a number of subjects as it may be well to present at once to the attention of my readers; and, such being the case, I was desirous of saving this portion of my labors from the accidents to which a manuscript is exposed. vii It is my purpose next to show the strong confirmation of the more direct historical evidence afforded by the manner in which the Gospels were regarded by the early Gnostic heretics; a field which, though not untrodden, has been unexplored; and then to proceed to the collateral evidence for the genuineness of the Gospels, to be derived from their character and contents. may be observed that this volume is, in its nature, an But it independent work, and might have been so published, had no others been intended to follow. Cambridge, 19 February, 1837. |