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although written for a purpose remotely connected with the Christian history, we have the resurrection of Christ, and the subsequent mission of the Apostles recorded in these satisfactory terms: "The Apostles have preached to us from our Lord Jesus Christ from God:-For, having received their command, and being thoroughly assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, they went abroad, publishing that the kingdom of God was at hand." We find noticed also, the humility, yet the power of Christ, His descent from Abraham, His crucifixion. We have Peter and Paul represented as faithful and righteous pillars of the Church; the numerous sufferings of Peter; the bonds, stripes, and stoning of Paul, and more particularly his extensive and unwearied travels.7

In an epistle of Polycarp, a disciple of St. John, though only a brief hortatory letter, we have the humility, patience, sufferings, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, together with the apostolic character of St. Paul, distinctly recognized. Of this same father, we are also assured by Irenæus, that he (Irenæus) had heard him relate, "what he hath received from

Ep. Clem. Rom., c. xlii.

Ep. Clem. Rom., c. xvi. xxxii. xxi.
Pol. Ep. ad Phil., c. v. viii. ii. iii.

eye-witnesses concerning the Lord, both concerning His miracles and His doctrine."9

In the remaining works of Ignatius, the contemporary of Polycarp, larger than those of Polycarp (yet, like those of Polycarp, treating of subjects in nowise leading to any recital of the Christian history), the occasional allusions are proportionably more numerous. The descent of Christ from David, His mother Mary, His miraculous conception, the star at His birth, His baptism by John, the reason assigned for it, His appeal to the prophets, the ointment poured on His head, His sufferings under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, His resurrection, the Lord's day called and kept in commemoration of it, and the Eucharist, in both its parts, -are unequivocally referred to. Upon the resurrection, this writer is even circumstantial. He mentions the Apostles' eating and drinking with Christ after He had risen, their feeling and their handling Him; from which last circumstance Ignatius raises this just reflection: "They believed, being convinced both by His flesh and spirit; for this cause, they despised death, and were found to be above it."1

Quadratus, of the same age with Ignatius,

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has left us the following noble testimony :"The works of our Saviour were always conspicuous, for they were real; both those that were healed, and those that were raised from the dead; who were seen not only when they were healed or raised, but for a long time afterwards; not only whilst He dwelt on this earth, but also after His departure, and for a good while after it, insomuch that some of them have reached to our times."2

Justin Martyr came little more than thirty years after Quadratus. From Justin's works, which are still extant, might be collected a tolerably complete account of Christ's life, in all points agreeing with that which is delivered in our Scriptures; taken indeed, in a great measure, from those Scriptures, but still proving, that this account, and no other, was the account known and extant in that age. The miracles in particular, which form the part of Christ's history most material to be traced, stand fully and distinctly recognized in the following passage: "He healed those who had been blind, and deaf, and lame, from their birth; causing by His word, one to leap, another to hear, and a third to see; and, by raising the dead, and

Ap. Euseb. H. E., lib. iv. c. 3.

making them to live, He induced, by His works, the men of that age to know Him.”3

It is unnecessary to carry these citations lower, because the history, after this time, occurs in ancient Christian writings as familiarly as it is wont to do in modern sermons; occurs always the same in substance, and always that which our Evangelists represent.

This is not only true of those writings of Christians, which are genuine, and of acknowledged authority; but it is, in a great measure, true of all their ancient writings which remain; although some of these may have been erroneously ascribed to authors to whom they did not belong, or may contain false accounts, or may appear to be undeserving of credit, or never indeed to have obtained any. Whatever fables they have mixed with the narrative, they preserve the material parts, the leading facts, as we have them; and, so far as they do this, although they be evidence of nothing else, they are evidence that these points were fired, were received and acknowledged by all Christians in the ages in which the books were written. At least, it may be asserted, that, in the places where we were most likely to meet with such things, if such things had existed, no relics appear of any story sub

3 Just. Dial. cum Tryph., p. 288, ed. Thirl.

stantially different from the present, as the cause, or as the pretence of the institution.

Now that the original story, the story delivered by the first preachers of the institution, should have died away so entirely as to have left no record or memorial of its existence, although so many records and memorials of the time and transaction remain; and that another story should have stepped into its place, and gained exclusive possession of the belief of all who professed themselves disciples of the institution, is beyond any example of the corruption of even oral tradition, and still less consistent with the experience of written history: and this improbability, which is very great, is rendered still greater by the reflection, that no such change as the oblivion of one story, and the substitution of another, took place in any future period of the Christian era. Christianity hath travelled through dark and turbulent ages; nevertheless it came out of the cloud and the storm, such, in substance, as it entered in. Many additions were made to the primitive history, and these entitled to different degrees of credit; many doctrinal errors also were from time to time grafted into the public creed; but still the original story remained, and remained the same. In all its principal parts it has been fixed from the beginning.

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