mission, he gives the whole weight of his Apostolic authority to the ancient Scriptures, which he denominates "holy writings," in which God, he affirms, had recorded his promises by his Prophets. When the same Apostle declares, that "whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning; that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope," he gives his attestation to the whole of the sacred writings, and proves that they exist entire; for he could not have said this if any of them had been lost,* or had any additions been made to them.

From the important connection that subsists between the Old Testament and the New, the early Christian writers carefully examined the Jewish Scriptures, and have given distinct catalogues of these books, precisely the same as we now receive, and as they are still retained by the Jews. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, travelled in the second century into Palestine, on purpose to investigate the subject. His catalogue, which is preserved by Eusebius, contains the canonical books of the Old Testament, and no more. He names the several books, comprehending under the Book of Ezra those of Nehefound there is really ancient, although men may have for a long time lost sight of it. Such are the great truths contained in this compendious verse.

*It is true, that the sacred writers refer to other books that do not now exist, as of Iddo the seer, but they do not refer to them as canonical books, but as civil records of the kingdom, such as the reference to the civil records of Persia in the Book of Esther. Were it even to be admitted that some epistles written by the Apostles have not come down to us, the fact would not imply that the Scriptures have lost an epistle, or a single word. There might have been hundreds of such inspired letters from the apostles, without implying that ever they made a part of that collection that was designed by God to be a perfect and sufficient standard to all ages. This is said, not from a conviction that there ever existed any inspired letters of the Apostles except those which we possess, but they may have existed in any number without affecting the integrity of the Canon, which some have weakly supposed would follow from the fact, if admitted.

"Some," says Theodoret, "imagine Paul to have wrote an epistle to the Laodiceans, and accordingly produce a certain forged epistle so entitled; but the holy Apostle does not say, Tùy węòs Aaodixsías, the epistle to the Laodiceans, but, rv sx Aaodixsías, the epistle from the Laodiceans."

miah and Esther, to which they were commonly annexed, these three being by many accounted but one book. In the Jewish list, the Book of Nehemiah, only, was joined to Esther, as the Book of Lamentations was also annexed to Jeremiah; but the Book of Esther was never wanting in the Canon of the Jews. The learned Origen, in the third century, gives a catalogue of the Jewish Scriptures, and says, "that the canonical books of Scripture contained in the Old Testament are twenty and two in number, which the Hebrews have left unto us, according to the number of letters which they have in their alpha. bet." Athanasius also, in the fourth century, specifies the twenty-two books, and, naming them one after another, in the same order in which they now stand, says, that "they are received by the whole church." Hilary of Poictiers, and many writers in the same century, affirm that these books alone were received as canonical. This fact is confirmed by the Council of Laodicea, which met in the year 363, and gave a list of the twenty-two books, the same as have been received both by Jews and Christians.

Nothing can be more satisfactory and conclusive than all the parts of the foregoing evidence of the authenticity and integrity of the Canon of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Jews, to whom they were first committed, never varied respecting them; while they have been fully recognised by the Lord and his Apostles, and consequently their authenticity is established by express revelation. And that we now possess them as thus delivered and authenticated, we have the concurrent testimony of the whole succession of the most distinguished early Christian writers, as well as of the Jews to this day, who, in every age, and in all countries, the most remote from one another, have constantly been in use of reading them in their synagogues.

The Scriptures of the Old Testament that have been thus so faithfully preserved, and so fully attested, contain the most satisfactory and convincing internal evidences of their truth. The character of God which they

C

exhibit, nowhere delineated in the writings of any of the wisest of this world, unenlightened by revelation, is such as carries with it its own confirmation. The character they give of man is verified in the history of every nation, and of each individual. The majesty, purity, and suitableness to the condition of man of the doctrines they contain-the soundness and unrivalled excellence of the moral precepts they inculcate, and the glory of the succeeding dispensation which, towards their close, they point out with increasing clearness; and all this confirmed and verified in the minutest particulars by the New Testament Scriptures,-form a body of internal evidence to which nothing but the deep corruption of the human heart, and the enmity of the carnal mind against God, could render any one insensible.

In course of time, and in the progress of that corruption in the churches which soon began to work, the sacred canon was defiled by the addition and even intermixture of other books, which, through the unfaithfulness of Christians, were admitted first as of secondary, and at length by many as of equal authority and consideration with those of which it was composed.

These books were called Apocryphal, and are supposed to have been so denominated from the Greek word aTоngUTTW, to hide to conceal, which is expressive of the uncertainty and concealed nature of their origin. Who their authors were is not known. They were written subsequently to the cessation of the prophetic spirit in the time of Malachi, who closed his testimony by reminding the people of Israel of the authority of the Law of Moses, and intimating that after himself, no prophet was to arise until the harbinger of the Messiah should appear. They were not written in the Hebrew language, in which all the books of the Old Testament were originally composed, with the exception of a few passages in Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezra, and Esther, which were written in Chaldee. Both Philo and Josephus, who flourished in the first century of the Christian era, are

altogether silent concerning these spurious books, which were not contained in the Septuagint version, as set forth by the translators under Ptolemy;* and they form no part of those sacred writings committed by God to the Jews, universally acknowledged and preserved by them entire. Above all, they have not received, like these holy writings, the attestation of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, placing upon them the broad seal of heaven, by whom they have never once been quoted. A real and essential difference was constantly maintained by the early Christians between them and the canonical books; and it was not till the fourth century, when the churches had become exceedingly corrupt both in faith and practice, that they came to be permitted to appear with the canon.

The Apocryphal books, though not admitted by the first Christian writers, or churches, to have any authority in matters of faith, yet claim for themselves that authority, and even arrogate an equality with the Sacred Scriptures, to which they were at length advanced by the Church of Rome. They present themselves to the world as a part of the Word of God, sometimes communicated immediately by himself, sometimes conveyed through the medium of angels, who are represented as standing before him. The claim to inspiration is not more explicitly asserted by the writers of the Scriptures, than by some of the authors of the Apocryphal books. No higher demand for attention to their messages can be made by holy Prophets and Apostles, than when they

* "Of the Greek Septuagint Bible, (as it was first set forth in the time of Ptolemæus Philadelphus,) St Augustin acknowledged no more books than what were then translated out of the Hebrew copies sent from Jerusalem, where neither Tobit nor Judith, nor any of that class, were to be found; for (whatever Genebrard saith of his own head to the contrary), those additional writings were brought in afterwards, and used only by the Hellenist Jews abroad at Babylon and Alexandria, from whom they were, in time following, commended to be read by the Christians, but never made equal with the other Sacred Scriptures, as they are now set forth in the Roman Septuagint by the authority of Sixtus Quintus, which is an edition of that Bible many ways depraved."-Cosin, p. 98.

affirm, “Thus saith the Lord." Yet this is the language in which men are addressed by these authors. They "have daubed them over with untempered mortar, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, SAYING, THUS SAITH THE LORD GOD, when the Lord hath not spoken.” Ezek. xxii. 28.

In the second book of Esdras, the writer having commenced by declaring his lineage, affirms, "The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Go thy way and show my people," &c. "Speak thou therefore unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord.”—“Thus saith the Almighty Lord." This expression occurs four times in the first chapter. The second chapter opens with "Thus saith the Lord," which in the course of that chapter is repeated nine times, and an angel is represented as speaking to the writer. "Then the angel said unto me, Go thy way, and tell my people what manner of things, and how great wonders of the Lord thy God thou hast seen." The rest of the book proceeds in the same strain, the author pretending to recite Divine communications, made to himself as had been made to Moses.

In the book of Baruch, ii. 21, it is written, "Thus saith the Lord."

In the book of Tobit a long interview with an angel is related, who affirms that he is one of the holy angels who go in and out before the glory of the Holy One. "Now, therefore," says this angel, "give God thanks, for I go up to him that sent me, but write all things which are done in a book." Tobit xii. 15, 20. God himself is often introduced by the Apocryphal writers, as communicating his will to them, and long speeches are ascribed to the Almighty.* Thus the writers of the Apocrypha come as the bearers of messages from God, and as such they deliver them to mankind. They profess to communicate a portion of spiritual light, not borrowed from the Holy Scriptures, but immediately

* The absurd, unintelligible speeches, replete with trifling nonsense, ascribed to God in different places, prove the Apocrypha to be not only a human, but a most impious composition.