it is better for us to be burned with fire, than to give up the divine scriptures."

Once more, the Emperor Constantine" from the time of his conversion (A. D. 312) resolved to give himself up to the reading of the scriptures. He had a kind of church in his palace, where, taking the sacred books in his own hands, he attentively read and meditated upon the divine oracles before the whole assembly of his courtiers." On one occasion he wrote thus to Eusebius: "The city that bears our name (Constantinople) through the goodness of Providence increases daily, and there will be occasion for erecting in it more churches. Wherefore we hope you will approve of our design, and take care to procure fifty copies of the divine scriptures, which you know to be necessary in churches; of fine parchment, legible, and easily portable, that they may be the fitter for use; transcribed by such as are skilful in the art of fair writing." The orders were obeyed, and the copies sent in magnificently bound. Need I say that such love to the authentic writings of the apostles carries with it something more than cold assent to their authority? The martyrs at the close of the third century, the Christian Emperor at the beginning of the fourth, must have had the most complete assurance of their genuineness, to act with the sincerity and zeal, and make the sacrifices, which we have been stating.

IV. A very important proof of the authenticity of our sacred books is derived from THE ADMISSIONS OF HEATHEN AND JEWISH ADVERSARIES, and the conduct of the numerous SECTS AND PARTIES in the church from the earliest age. To this we have more than once referred; but a specimen of the sort of proof thus obtained, belongs to this place.

The heathen philosopher Celsus, (about the year A. D. 175,) advances all kinds of objections against

Christianity with much acuteness, resentment, and scorn. But he never calls in question the genuineness of the New Testament. He argues from the facts and doctrines they contain, as the authentic writings of their respective authors. Nothing can prove more clearly, not only that such books did really exist in the second century, but that they were universally received by Christians, and that nothing could be alleged against them in that respect.

Porphyry was in the third century what Celsus had been in the second—an embittered, powerful heathen opponent. Yet he admits our books. His testimony is the more pertinent and conclusive, because he showed that he would have denied their authenticity, if it had been possible; for he did actually venture to deny (without reason, indeed, but still he did deny) the genuineness of the Prophet Daniel, and asserted that it was written after the times of Antiochus Epiphanes.

Julian, in the fourth century, comes in with a testimony, unwilling indeed as a heathen emperor, but the more decisive, because he had once professed the Christian faith. What course does he take? Does he call into question the truth of our writings? Does he charge the Christians with imposing false books upon mankind? No. He allows the facts of Christianity, and argues upon our gospels as the admitted works of the apostles and disciples of our Lord.

ance.

The testimony of heretics is of almost equal importWe have seen in our own day what eagerness of contention has been excited by the one single disputed text on the heavenly witnesses, in the fifth chapter of the First Epistle of St. John. For half a century has the church been filled with the vehement controversy. It is quite certain, therefore, that in the bitterness of the Arian heresy, in the fourth century, if any thing solid could have been alleged against the

genuineness of our sacred books, it would have been brought forward with avidity. Some passages and some books were, in fact, denied by Marcion and a few wild enthusiasts of earlier days; but after the settlement of the canon, men of all sects and heresies admitted our writings. An Arian, in a conference with St. Austin, says: "If you allege any thing from the divine Scriptures, which are common to all, I must hear; but what is not in the scriptures deserves no regard." And at the Council of Nice, (A.D. 325,) where three hundred and eighteen bishops, besides innumerable presbyters, deacons, and others, were assembled, on the occasion of the Arian heresy, "The emperor," says Theodoret, "recommended to the bishops to decide all things by the scriptures. It is a pity, he said, that now when their enemies were subdued, they should differ and be divided among themselves; especially when they had the doctrine of the Holy Ghost in writing."

From such witnesses to the authenticity of the New Testament who can turn away? If this evidence is not deemed satisfactory, it must arise from a want, I do not say of faith, but of common candour of mind. I am aware, indeed, that we cannot put those who are not familiar with ecclesiastical history, in possession of the sort of plenary conviction which fills the mind of the literary and well-informed student, who is acquainted with the names I cite, who knows all the chief events and dates of past times, and has been accustomed to historical researches-but then any hearer of good sense and honesty can understand enough of the statement to see the mass of SOLID AND UN

6

Lardner thinks that, as this last circumstance is not mentioned by Eusebius, but rests only on the authority of Theodoret, it had perhaps better not be pressed. Still he raises no objection, except the negative one of wanting the confirmation of Eusebius.

DISPUTED FACTS adduced in favour of the Christian scriptures. And his want of habits of historical inquiry holds much more against his receiving the mere cavils of unbelievers, than it does against his practically submitting to this part of the evidences of his faith. I want only a right temper of mind in the hearer, and I leave to his conscientious judgment the determination of the cause. But I proceed to an argument palpable almost to our senses.

V. For the NUMBER AND ANTIQUITY OF OUR MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT is an argument for the authenticity of its sacred contents.

The greater part of the apocryphal books are either entirely lost, or are preserved by a single manuscript. Our most authentic and most admired classics, as Herodotus, are known only from ten or fifteen manuscripts; many are come down to us, after lying hid for ages, in one manuscript only. Now the manuscripts of our sacred books abound in every ancient library in every part of Christendom. They amount in the whole to many thousands. About five hundred have been actually examined and compared or collated, with extraordinary care. Many of them run up to the eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries; the Codex Bezæ, found in the monastery of Irenæus, at Lyon in France, and presented by the reformer whose name it bears, to the University of Cambridge, is supposed by Dr. Kipling, the editor of the fac simile of it, to be of the second century. The Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus are supposed to be of the fourth. Now these manuscripts push back our proof to the age next but one or two, to that when the last of the apostles died, and join on with the date of the manuscripts compared by Jerome and Eusebius, (A.D. 315---420,) and thus bring us up, as it were, to the very times of the promulgation of the gospel. Let any one compare the gospels and epistles as

extant in our ancient manuscripts, with the passages cited in Jerome, Eusebius, Tertullian, Irenæus, who had the very originals before them, or the immediate transcripts from those originals, and he will find almost the whole of our present canon."

The prodigious number of these manuscripts, the distant countries whence they were collected, and this identity of their contents with the quotations in the Fathers of different ages, place the New Testament incomparably above all other ancient works in point of evidence of authenticity.

And this leads me to produce a noble passage from Tertullian, who was born about fifty or sixty years after the death of St. John. In the thirty-sixth chapter of his work against Heresies, he says:

Come now, thou who wilt exercise thy curiosity more profitably in the business of thy salvation, run through the apostolical churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside, in which their authentic letters (some render it, "original"---literæ authentica) are recited, sounding forth the voice and representing the countenance of each. Is Achaia near you, you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Thessalonica. If you are near to Italy, you have Rome, from whence also our assertion will be readily confirmed."

What a striking appeal is this to the actual original Greek of the New Testament books, perhaps to the very autographs of the divine writers--or if the word authenticæ means only, well-attested---yet to the undoubted transcripts of the sacred epistles! When we connect this with the fine expression, that "the very chairs of the apostles still presided," as it were, "in their respective churches," and that their epistles,

7 This further proves that the sacred books have come down to us uncorrupted. The various readings in different manuscripts do not affect a single doctrine or precept of the Christian revelation.