't : ^ i * * 9 Af I* /- . ' f ' ' ‘Pit - ■ ■ •.■■,:t i ' • * . 1 f A '*1 >■ 3040 vv\.K' '.•»»‘'M1 CHICAGO. 11 .UH 0 IS oftHJAL StiiiaWT glvii THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. \ j 1 i THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE COLLECTION AND RECEPTION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. BY BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, D.D. NEW EDITION. HonlJon:: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1877 [All Rights reserved.] Our Teacher said: Bhow todkselves tried Monet-Chakgers. NbWtMtilANu DEPOSITORY LIBRAR BOSTON COaFP*^ CAMBRIDGEi PRINTED BY & J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. TO THE EEV. CHAELES BEODEICK SCOTT, HEAD-MASTEE OF WESTMINSTEK, THIS ESSAY IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCKIBED, IN MEMORY OF COLLEGE DAYS. I‘5I0 NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION. This Edition is a simple reprint of the First Edition with the exception of a few verbal correc¬ tions and a more accurate account of the MS. of the Syriac Bible in the Cambridge University Library. For the latter I am indebted to Mi¬ ll. L. Bensly, M.A. of Cains College, who has kindly collated the description in the Catalogue, which I followed before, with the manuscript itself, and furnished me with many important and interesting corrections. B. F. W. Harrow, January 26 , iS66, PREFACE. The jjresent book is an attempt to answer a request which has been made to me from time to time, to place in a simple form, for the use of general readers, the substance of my History of the Canon of the New Testament. It seemed to me that I could not do this by a mere abstract; and at the same time I felt that a History of the whole Bible, and not of the New Testament only, would be required, if those unfamiliar with the subject were to be enabled to learn in what manner and with what consent the collection of Holy Scriptures was first made and then enlarged and finally closed by the Church. The history of the Old Testament in the Christian Churches is intimately connected with the history of the New Testament. The two histories may be separated, but each illustrates the other in a re¬ markable degree, and when combined they show with the greatest clearness the principles by which the Church was guided in the ratification of the books of the Bible, and the power which she claimed to exercise in the work. 7111 PREFACE. The task wliich I have undertaken is essentially historical. I wish to insist on this with marked distinctness, lest I should seem to have forgotten at any time that the Bible is more than a collection of Scriptures. The Bible may be treated histori¬ cally or theologically. Neither treatment is com¬ plete in itself; but the treatments are separable; and, here, as elsewhere, the historical foundation rightly precedes and underlies the theological in¬ terpretation. The Bible has suffered, and is in danger of suffering more, from the inversion of this order. The truest and most faithffil historical criticism alone can bring out into full light that doctrine of a Divine Providence separating (as it were) and preserving special books for the perpetual instruction of the Church, which is the true corre¬ lative and complement of every sound and reverent theory of Inspiration. Within the limits thus marked oiit I have endeavoured to make this little book complete in itself. Every technical term is, I believe, explained when it first occurs; and the addition of slight historical characteristics of men or ages will enable the reader to appreciate fairly the relative import¬ ance of the evidence which they contribute. It would have been foreign to my object to have given the original texts which are quoted. The refer¬ ences will enable the scholar to verify them; and I have spared no pains to represent accurately in translation both their spirit and their words. But I PREFACE. IX while the essay is intended to be simj^le and popular in its method, I have for this very reason aimed at the strictest accuracy. Indeed it is obvious that accuracy is nowhere so much needed as where (for the most part) it will not be tested. It has, there¬ fore, been my desire to set down nothing which is not certainly justified by satisfactory evidence. In every case I have studied I’ather to understate than to overstate the positive conclusions which are to be drawn from the testimonies adduced; and wher¬ ever a conjecture has been introduced, for the pur¬ pose of connecting or explaining the statements of different fathers, this fact is expressly noticed. In numerous instances I have been enabled to correct what has been previously written upon the subject, by the investigation of fuller evidence or better texts. From the nature of the case the corrections are generally made silently, but it may be always assumed that where anything is stated otherwise than is generally done, the variation is deliberately adopted and on grounds which appear to me to be conclusive. It may seem to be somewhat presumptuous to offer these explanations of the character and pur¬ pose of a very unpretending little book; but they seem to be due to the subject of which it treats. No one who has patiently laboured on the history of the Bible can fail to be deeply grieved by the hasty and peremptory tone with which it is com¬ monly discussed. Aud it is hard to say whether b X PREFACE, Holy Scripture is more injured by those who assail or by those who defend it. If the Bible were only a collection of ancient writings its readers would have a right to claim that those who deal with it should be conversant with the laws of literary criticism, and the methods of historical inquiry. And if it is, as we devoutly believe, the very source and measure of our religious :^ith, it seems impossible to insist too earnestly on the supreme importance of patience, candour and truthfulness in investigating every problem which it involves. The first steps towards the solution of a difficulty are the recognition of its existence and the deter¬ mination of its extent. And, unless all past ex¬ perience is worthless, the difficulties of the Bible are the most fruitful guides to its divine depths. It was said long since that ‘God was pleased to leave difficulties upon the surface of Scrip¬ ture, that men might be forced to look below the surface.’ Indeed the moral of the History of the Bible is full of the noblest lessons for all times, and not least for our own. If I am not wholly wrong in inter¬ preting the sure facts which I have recorded, they teach us that the formation of the collection of Holy Scriptures was—to use a term which ought never to be supposed even to veil the action of a Present God—according to natural laws: that slowly and with an ever-deepening conviction the Churches received, after trial, and in some cases PREFACE. XI after doubt and contradiction, the books which we now receive: that the religious consciousness which was quickened by the words of prophets and apo¬ stles in turn ratified their writings. They teach us that the judgment which was in this manner the expression of the fulness of Christian life, was not confined in early times by rigid or uniform laws, but realized in ecclesiastical usage; that the Bible was not something distinct from, and independent of, the Christian body, but the vital law of its action: that the Church offered a living commentary on the Book, and the Book an unchanging test of the Church. They teach us that the extreme limits of the collection were not marked out sharply, but that rather the outline was at times dim and wa¬ vering, yet not so as to be incapable of satisfactory adjustment. They teach us that a corrupted Bible is a sign of a corrupted Church, a Bible mutilated or imperfect, a sign of a Church not yet raised to the complete perception of Truth. It is possible that we might have wished much of this or all this otherwise : we might have thought that a Bible of which every part should bear a visible and unquestioned authentication of its divine origin, separated by a solemn act from the first from the sum and fate of all other literature, would have best answered our conceptions of what the written records of revelation should be. But it is not thus that God works among us. In the Church and in the Bible alike He works through men. As we h2 XU PREFACE. follow the progress of their formation, each step seems to be truly human; and when we contem¬ plate the whole, we joyfully recognize that every part is also divine. It would be ungrateful not to acknowledge the help which I have found in Hody’s great work De Bihliorum Textibiis OriginalihuSy especially with regard to mediaeval writers. This contains in a very condensed form the most honest and accurate History of the Canon with which I am acquainted up to the time (1705) at which it was written. The Scholastical History of Bishop Cosin is essentially polemical and not historical, and must be read with the greatest caution. The best work on the Bo- manist side (as far as I can judge) is an Essay published anonymously (by J. Keil, I believe) in answer to E. Wernsdorff’s treatise on the Mac¬ cabees {Auctoritas utriusque lihri Maccah. adserta .Viennse, 1749). No book of Credner’s can be without value; and I have been indebted to his posthumous Geschichte d. Neutest. Kanon (Ber¬ lin, 1860) for some suggestive remarks on the in¬ fluence of Eusebius upon the Constantinopolitan Bible; but the work in its present form is certainly not such as Credner himself would have published, and the carelessness and inaccuracy of his editor have done grievous wrong to the memory of a most truthful and acute scholar. It is with a feeling of no unworthy fear that I now commend my Essay to the Christian reader. PREFACE, Xlll The subject is one on which it is impossible to write without misgiving. If I have said anything which can be rightly construed as derogatory from the divine majesty of Holy Scripture, I am the first to wish it unsaid. If I have said anything inaccurately (and with all care it can scarcely be otherwise), I sincerely trust that I may be correct¬ ed. If I have said anything which may lead one student of the Bible to just and faithful views of its Divine authority, I thank God humbly for this fruit of painful and anxious work. In His hand are both we and our vjords, B. F. W. Harrow, Chnstmas Eve, 1863. / CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGE The Bible characterized by its connexion with a long history. i—6 A record of various revelations. Gradually extended. Successively acknowledged. i—4 Successive names. 4—6 Difficulties arising from this fact . 6— 11 Traits from contrasted forms of life. * Apparent conflict of successive dispensations. 6, 7 Fragmentariness of records . 9 Periods of transition. 10 Corresponding advantages. ii—16 Unity not uniformity. n A complete training. 12—14 A witness in itself . 14 Object: not to discuss veracity: authority: inspira¬ tion of the sacred Books; but in what manner, when, and with what consent or variety of opinion they were accepted as a written Buie of doctrine 16 Limits: the Apostolic age. The age of the Beformation . 17 XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. ( The Bible of the Apostolic Age. PAGE Tlie Dispersion of the Jews in relation to the spread of the Bible. 19—23 The Septuagint generally intelligible . 23 i. The evidence oi Jewish writers as to the contents of the Old Testament . 24—38 r. Josephus (Palestine) . 25—30 2. Philo (Alexandria). 30—35 3. The Talmud (Babylon) . 35—38 ii. The evidence from the Apostolic writers as to the contents of the Old Testament . 38—49 Collective titles for the Bible. 39 —41 Express quotations in 1. The Synoptic Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles 41 2. The Pauline Epistles . 42 3. The Writings of St John . ib. No special quotation from the Apocrypha . 44 Silent quotations. 45 Express quotations of uncertain origin . 46—49 Summary. 49 CHAPTER II. The Growth of the New Testament. The Apostolic work. 52—5 7 The oral teaching of the Apostles historical . 57 An oral Gospel formed. 57, 58 }, ,, committed to writing. 59 The origin of the Epistles. 60 CONTENTS. XVll PAGE Antagonism of Jew and Gentile . 6i—65 The writings of St John . 65 CHAPTER III. The Apostolic Fathers. The close of the Apostolic age . 67 Judaizing, Mystical, Pauline schools. 69—72 The range of the A-posiolic Fathers . 73 i. Their relation to the Apostolic teaching. I. Clement of Rome. 74—76 1. Ignatius . 76—79 3. Polycarp. 79, 80 4. Barnabas . 80, 81 ii. Their relation to the Gospels . 81—83 iii. Their quotations From the Old Testament and Apocrypha 84 From the New Testament. 85 They do not recognize a New Testament, but prepare the way for it . 86— 89 CHAPTER IV. The Age of the ApologUts. Characteristics of the age . • 90—94 Papias. 95—97 Justin Martyr. 97—105 XVlll CONTENTS. PAGE Memoirs of the Apostles . ' _ loo—105 The Clementine Homilies . 105, 106 Extent of references to the books of the New Tes¬ tament up to this time . 106 The Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament admitted to be a complete Bible . 106, 7 Hegesippus. 107 H ERMAS . 108 Assaults on the Old Testament. ro8, T09 The Bible of Maecion . 109—11 Note. Meaning of the word Canon. The Muratorian Canon . 112 —116. CHAPTER V. TAe First Christian Bible, Progress of Christianity in the Second Century..., 117 Retrospect of the history of the New Testament.. 118—120 1. Asia Minor. IREN.EUS . 12 J—123 Melito. 124 2. Alexandria. Use of Apocrypha . 125 Clement of Alexandria . 125, 127 3. North Africa, Tertulltan ... 127, 128 . The Old Latin Version of the Bible... 128—131 4. Syria, Theophtlus. Serapion. 131 The Old Syrian Nersion {Peshito) . 132, 133 CONTENTS. xix PAGE Testimony to the disputed books of the New Tes¬ tament {Antilegoinenoi) . 133, 134 Oeigen. 134—137 Asiatic and Syrian writers. 138 Heretical and heathen writers. 139, 140 CHAPTEE VI. The Bible Proscribed and Restored. The characteristics of third century. 141—143 Persecution of Diocletian . 143—145 i. The Canon of the Donatists . 145, 146 ii. The Canon of Eusebius. 146—158 Canon of the New Testament . 148—153 Canon of the Old Testament. 153 Constantine’s Bible. 155—158 iii. The Canon of Athanasius . 158—162 CHAPTEE VII. The Age of Jerome and Augustine. The growth of the Eoman Church. 163, 164 I. The Bibles of the East . 165—176 i. Asia Minor and Palestine . 166—171 Gregoky op Nazianzus. Amphilo- CHIUS . 166, 167 Cyril of Jerusalem. 168 Council of Laodicea . 169— 171 ii. Alexandria . 171 —173 Didymus. Euthalius. Cyril. 171 Epiphanius . 172, 173 XX CONTENTS. PAGE iii. Syria. Cheysostom . i74> ^75 A'postolical Constitutions . i 75 > ? 7 ^ Note. The Apostolical Canons. 2. The Bibles of the West. 177—190 PhILASTEIUS . 177 Buffings. —•••• 17^ — HiLAEIUS of POITIEES . i8o Jeeome. 180—T183 Canon of the Old Testament. 181—183 Canon of the New Testament. 183, 184 Augustine. 184—190 Council of Carthage . 188, 189 CHAPTEB VIII. The Bible of the Middle Ages in the West. The character and work of the Western Churches 191, 192 § I. The Church of North Africa. Peimasius. Junilius. 193, 194 § 2. The Church of Italy. Papal Decretals . 194—196 Codex Amiatinus . 196 Cassiodoeus . 197 Later writers. 198 Council of Florence . 199 §3. The Church of Spain . 199—201 Connexion with North Africa. 201 § 4. The Transalpine Churches. Chaelemagne. Alcuin. 202, 203 Hugo de S. Caeo, &c . 203 Petee of Clugnt, &c . 204, 205 Nicol^ius de Lyea. 206 CONTENTS. xxi PAGE § 5. The Churches of Britain. The ancient [Irish.] Church. Notker of St Gall. 207 The Saxon Church. Alfric.. 208 Epistle to the Laodicenes . 209 John of Salisbury, &c. 210 The Wyclifite Bible . 211—213 Popular usage. R. Grosseteste. 214, 215 CHAPTER IX. The Bible of the Middle Ages in the East. Deca}^ of the Eastern Churches. 216 §1. The Ch'eeTc Church . 217—229 The Quini-Sextine Council . 217, 218 Leontius of Byzantium. 219, 220 CosMAS Indicopleustes. 220, 221 Johannes Damascenes. 222 The Canonists . 223, 224 The Sixty Boohs . 224 The >S'^^c^ow^e^r2/ of Nicephoeus . 225, 226 Confusion of the lists. 226, 227 Later history of the Canon. 227, 229 §2. The Nestorian Churches . 229, 234 The School of Nisibis . 230 Ebed Jesu . 231—234 Note. Syrian MS. of the Bible. § 3. The (Monophysite) Coptic Church . 234, 235 § 4. The {Monophysite) Abyssinian Church... 236—239 §5. The {Monophysite) Armenian Chv/rch ... 239, 240 XXll CONTENTS. PAGE § 6. The {MoTiophysite) Jacobite Church . 240 T\xq KarTcaphensian NeT&ion . 241 The Hexaplaric Version . ib. Later Syrian writers. ■24-2 The Bible in the East never definitely fixed.. 242—244 CHAPTER X. The Bible in the Sixteenth Century. The general religious character of the age. 245—248 §1. The Romish Church . 249—259 Earlier Scholars: Ximenes. 249 Erasmus. 249—253 Caietan . 253 Catharinus. 255 The Council of Trent . ih. Sixtus Senensis . 258 § 2. The Saxon School of Reformers . 259—269 Luther on the Apocrypha of Old Tes¬ tament. 260—262 ,, „ of New Tes¬ tament .. 262—265 Karlstadt. 266—269 § 3. The Swiss School of Reformers . 269—278 ZwiNGLI. 269 (Ecolampadius. 270 Calvin. 270—273 Beza. 273 Public Confessions . 275—278 § 4. The Arminian School. Grotius. 279, 280 § 5. The English Church. Translations of the Bible. Ttndale. Coveedale. Matthew. Cranmer. Bishops'. Authorized . 281—287 CONTENTS. xxiii PAGE Articles . 288 Conclusion . 293 APPENDIX A. On the History of the Canon of the Old Testa¬ ment before the Christian era . 297—301 APPENDIX B. On the Contents of the most ancient MSS. of the Christian Bible . 302—311 § I. Codex Alexandnnm . 303 § 2. Codex Vaticanus . 305 § 3. Codex Sinaiticus . 307 § 4. The list of Sacred Books in the Codex Claromontanus . 308 Index . 313 INTEODUCTIOK. There are diversities of operations, hut it is the same God which worTceth all in all .—i Cor. xii. 6. I T is one of the chief characteristics of the Christianity Christian religion, that it is based upon a his- tory. Its great doctrines are the simple inter- “ected %vith a pretation or necessary results of facts. The Gos- pel, according to the instinctive judgment of ages, is emphatically a narrative of passages from the Life of Christ, This history, again, is not itself isolated, but bound up with a previous history which reaches to the primitive covenant of God and man. If the Coming of Messiah was in one sense sudden and unexpected, in another it was duly heralded and announced by other voices than that of the Baptist as near at hand. If His Doctrine was strange, yet it was strange only to those who had acquiesced in the superficial mean¬ ing of the Divine promises. To those who looked deeper the Life of our Blessed Lord was the consummation of long periods of struggle and repose, of Divine instruction and Divine silence, which can still be traced in clear outlines up to the first separation of a chosen people; and so, on the other hand. His teaching contained the ful¬ filment of all that had entered into the soul of 1 2 THE BIBLE INTRO¬ DUCTION. The Bible es¬ sentially his¬ torical. General his¬ torical cha¬ racteristics of the Bible. lawgiver, or psalmist, or prophet. Whatsoever was written aforetime served for the foundation of the Christian Revelation; and its own les¬ sons were recorded not in one way only, but in many, that it might embrace all ages and all minds. It was preceded by a preparation most full and varied: it was portrayed in a record which reflects the most opposite sides of its doc¬ trine. Thus it is that the whole Bible is rightly claimed as the pledge and type of the compre¬ hensiveness and unity of the Christian Faith, a Book manifold by the variety of times and cir¬ cumstances in which its several parts had their rise, one by the inspiring presence of the same spiritual Life. For as Christianity is historical, so too almost every part of the Bible is historical. Not only is a large portion of both Testaments professedly a narrative of events, but even the special charac¬ teristics of psalms, prophecies and epistles reflect most distinctly the external circumstances in which they were composed. Other sacred books are, for the most part, purely ritual or specula¬ tive, avowedly the product of a brief period, or wholly separated from the region of fact; but the Bible is, in its origin, a slow growth of time, intimately connected with a long development of national life, bearing on its surface the impress of successive revelations, extended from time to time by the addition of new elements, accepted in its present form not by one act once for all, but gradually, and, as far as can be traced by the help of existing records, according to natural laws of criticism, exerted within definite limits. The slow process by which the contents of the sacred volume ivere determined will bo brought IN THE CHURCH. 3 out as we proceed: the differences by which the several books themselves are marked are legibly inscribed upon them. There is no need of any detailed investigation to show that the constituent parts of the Bible, when looked at separately, have a distinct and peculiar meaning, and that long periods must (in the natural order of things) have intervened between particular books, and that others, more nearly contempo¬ raneous in origin, are scarcely less broadly dis¬ tinguished by the personal characteristics of their authors. Such lines of demarcation appear to exist between the Law and the Prophets, between the books of Kings and Chronicles, between the earlier and later Prophets, or, to take examples of a different kind, between the epistles of St James, St Paul and St John, and between the first three Gospels and the fourth. Ko one, indeed, would be inclined to question seriously the existence of these diversities of teaching, or even to deny that he finds special parts of the Bible best adapted to liis own wants or to the wants of some particular phase of society; yet practically all err more or less, in regarding everything as spoken directly and in its original form to themselves. If the grosser faults which were defended in ruder times by the letter of Holy Scripture are now repressed by the moral influences of life, yet we are too apt to forget that in every age God spoke to men such as they then were and by men; and that conse¬ quently all true interpretation of the record must turn upon the relation of the act to the persons engaged in it, of the word to the speaker and the hearer, of the judgment to the spirit of which it witnessed. The unity of the Bible is not uni¬ formity, and its variety is not discrepance; but 1—2 INTRO¬ DUCTION. 4 THE BIBLE TNTRO- rather, to borrow an image from Scripture, the DUCTION. jg a “ living creature,” made up of living creatures. The parts have a distinct life as well as the sum; the members are individually complete as well as the entire body. Each progressive phase in the development of the revelation has been preserved as well as the matured form; and thus at different points we can trace the rise and operation of different elements, which, though they contribute largely to the final result, might have been wholly unobserved if that result alone had remained. The Names of The very names of the Bible bear a striking T witness to the instinctive sense which men have had from time to time of its manffoldness and its unity. Its proper Hebrew title is simply the enu¬ meration of its triple division, ‘The Law, the Prophets, and the [Holy] Writings;’ and this title is recognized in the New Testament both in its full form, ‘The Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms’ (Luke xxiv. 44), and briefly ‘ The Law and the Prophets’ (Matt. xi. 13; Acts xiii. 15). More generally, however, the Old Testament is quoted simply as ‘The Writings,’ ‘The Scriptures’ (Matt, xxi. 42; Mark xiv. 49; Luke xxiv. 32; John v. 39; Acts xviii. 24; Rom, xv. 4; &c.), while the cor¬ responding singular term,—‘the Scripture’—is always used for a speeial passage and not as at present both for the part and for the whole (Luke iv. 21; John xx. 9; James ii. 8; &c.). At the be¬ ginning of the Christian era the Jews had in fact no singular name for their saered books; nor was this strange, since at that time they could not have felt their entire completeness. Yet it is worthy of notice that the term ‘ The Law ’ was extended popularly to both the other divisions of the Bible, IN THE CHURCH, 5 to the Psalms (John x. 34; xii. 34; xv. 25), and intro- to the prophets (1 Cor. xiv. 21), for this was neces- d^ct iox. sarily regarded as including in itself the whole growth of Judaism. The establishment of Christianity gave at once Christian a distinct unity to the former dispensation, and times, thus St Paul could speak of the Jewish Scriptures by the name which they have always retained since, as the ‘Old Testament’ or ‘Covenant’ (2 Cor. iii. 14), adaj^ting and extending the earlier phrase for the Law ‘the Book of the Covenant’ (2 Kings xxiii. 2). At the close of the second century the terms ‘Old’ and ‘Kew Testament’ were already in common use, though a vain endeavour was made by scholars, both then and afterwards, to substitute for Testament the word Instrument (or Record). In such cases the popular habit prevails; and it is a matter of rejoicing that that title has been retained which represents the sacred books in connexion with their ultimate Giver rather than that which only regards them as official or authoritative documents. The first simple collective title of the whole First coiiec- Bible appears to be that which is found in rome, in the ivth century, ‘ The Divine Library ’ {Bibliotheca Divina), which afterwards passed into common use among Latin writers, and thence into our own Anglo-Saxon language. About the same time Greek writers came to use the term ‘ The Books ’ {Biblia, pi.) for the Bible. In pro¬ cess of time this name, with many others of Greek origin, passed into the vocabulary of the Western Church; and in the xiiith century, by a happy solecism, the neuter plural came to be regarded as a feminine singular, and ‘ The Books ’ became ' by common consent ‘ The Book ’ {Biblia, sing.) in G THE BIBLE INTRO¬ DUCTION. Special value of several names. 1 . Difficulties wliich spring from the com¬ position of the Bible. 1. Traits from contrasted forms of life. which form the word has passed into the lan¬ guages of modern Europe. ‘ The Scriptures,’ ‘ The Books,’ ‘ The Library,’ ‘ The Book,’ each phrase is pregnant with mean¬ ing, and it were to be wished that no one had passed out of use, or been deprived of the fresh vigour of its original sense. Of all, perhaps, the Library, the term which seems to have been irrevocably lost, is the most expressive and in¬ cludes the idea of ‘ the Book ’ and ‘ the Books ’ with the most felicitous simplicity. But the word which is denied to popular use still lives for the student, and as long as we regard the Bible as the divine Library, the treasury of divine records, of things old and new—the works of many authors, the products of many ages—we shall be protected from numerous dangers which are supposed to arise from a candid study of its history and con¬ tents, and prepared to feel to the full the infinite grandeur of the one message of love fashioned in a thousand shapes. For while the Bible is one it is manifold; and it is well if the apprehension of an inward rather than an outward unity leaves the mind free to observe the distinctness of the parts of which it is made up. The records which it contains ex¬ tend over a period of twelve himdred years, on any theory, and probably over a much longer lieriod. Whatever authoritative revision the books of the Old Testament may have undergone, the original substance at least remains unchanged, and presents pictures drawn from the most widely contrasted forms of life. If we compare with these the scenes reflected in the apostolic writ¬ ings, the full width of the range of the Bible will be clearly felt. How great, for example, is the IN THE CHURCH. 7 chasm between the freshness of patriarchal life and intro- that Roman prison from which St Paul wrote for i>uction. the confirmation of the churches: between the discipline in the wilderness and the growth of the Christian Church: between Leviticus and the Pastoral Eiustles; or even between the periods of the judges, the kingdom and the hierarchy. The intervals are undoubtedly filled up more or less by periods of preparation and transition, but yet there are crises of change; and the grandeur of the scale on which the history is drawn encou¬ rages the student to note them. It would be strange if it were not so. The rise and fall of the empires of the ancient world are but as episodes in the vast human drama which is contained in the Bible. The Bible contains the history of man, and not of a nation only. And in the course of this living portraiture of human nature men in every position bear and receive the Divine mes¬ sage, each according to the circumstances of his character, his country, his age, furnished with various gifts, actors at once and speakers on the Divine stage, yet so acting and so speaking that tlieir personal characteristics form an essential element of the part committed to them. One of the chief diflBculties which arise from consequent this manifold complexity of the Bible lies in the practical interpretation of its contents, and though tion. this question is not now immediately before us, it cannot be passed by wholly without notice; for it belongs to the very constitution of the Book. It is obvious that the records of the Di¬ vine teaching, addressed to societies thus widely separated, by men who, while messengers of God and prophets, were no less fellowmen of those whom they addressed, must vary much as to the 8 THE BIBLE INTRO- DUCTIOJf. 2. Apparent conflict of successive dis¬ pensations. form under which they present the truth. Their permanent lessons cannot be gained by one uni¬ form and dead law of literal interpretation. There will be need, even as a first step towards entering into these several lessons, of a distinct concep¬ tion of the meaning of the words when they were uttered, of the character of the act when it was wrought. No part of the Bible, it is true, will ever be antiquated, because all that is old there yet retains the spirit with which it was at first quickened, but still much in it belongs to modes of thought and life with which we are wholly un¬ familiar. Our habitual use of language belonging to the past under new conditions, increases the difficulty of understanding its real import. A vigorous and constant effort is needed in order that we may remember that the associations which we attach to the words of Holy Scripture are no part of their original meaning. The difficulty which has been thus briefly noticed is placed in its clearest light when we regard the different series of revelations (so to speak) which the Bible contains. These various phases of the progressive revelation answer in a great degree to the periods of social progress already marked out, but they present them under bolder and more comprehensive forms. If, for instance, we compare the revelations which God was pleased to make during the patriarchal period with those which accompanied the giving of the Law, we feel at once that they were not only addressed to men in different positions, but are also themselves different in scope and cha¬ racter. The difference is yet greater if we com¬ pare the letter of the Law with the writings of the prophets, and the prophets with the Apostles. IN TEE CHURCH. 9 Instinctively we make some adaptation and ac- intro- commodation of the contrasted parts. We clear paction. away difficulties by putting out of sight parts of the data from which they arise. But no solution of the many problems which arise from a com¬ parison of Judaism and Christianity, and of va¬ rious sides of Judaism and Christianity in their mutual relations to one another will ever be satis¬ factory, or even tend to place tlie harmony of Scripture in its true aspect, which is not based upon that principle of proportion which has been already indicated. The teaching of Scripture, as addressed to men, must be relative. To discover the relation of a dispensation or a message to those for whom it was primarily designed, is the first condition of ascertaining what is its bearing upon us and upon the general scheme of Divine Providence. There is yet another feature inherent in the 3. The Bibis very formation of the Bible, which cannot be omitted in any estimate of its characteristics. It is fragmentary. With the partial exception of the Pentateuch, it does not anywhere present the semblance of completeness. Where we can trace the history of the component writings with the greatest precision, it does not appear that they were designed to form part of a written code of doctrine or discipline. Humanly speaking, they arose out of passing circumstances and were de¬ signed to meet occasional wants. That annals and prophecies and letters, thus (apparently) casual in their origin, should combine into a whole marvellously complete and symmetrical in its spiritual teaching is, indeed, a clear intimation of the presence of a controlling power both in their composition and in their preservation. But the THE BIBLE 10 i INTRO¬ DUCTION. 4. The books mainly be¬ long to criti¬ cal epochs. grand outline which they mark out is not every¬ where complete. The several books necessarily present many gaps in their record which we can¬ not now fill up. The Divine stream sinks for a time, though it shortly reappears with undimin- ished strength. As soon as the whole history is examined critically, it is evident that much must remain obscure and perplexing. Yet the same criticism which brings difficulties to light fixes a practical limit to them. It is enough if we can see where our ignorance is a fair answer to objec¬ tions, without interpolating imaginary combina¬ tions of events into the narrative of the Bible and perilling its truth on our own ingenuity. This fragmentariness of the Scriptures, when viewed in their outward and purely historic as¬ pect, is made yet more marked by the general characteristics of the epochs in which they were composed. In the main they belong to periods of conflict and transition. They are the records of the Divine teaching by which the religious progress of the people of God was advanced from one stage of development to another. They are not (with rare exceptions) the products of times of silent growth and thought, but prophetic voices which prepared a nation for new phases of life. The Exodus, the first conquest of Canaan, the establishment of the Kingdom, the Fall of the divided kingdoms, the Captivity and the Return, leave a distinct impress on the groups of books which severally belong to them; and it is not without a strange significance that the Divine record closes when Israel was first brought into contact with Greece. At present comparatively little progress has been made in the study of the Old Testament in the light of its special history. IN THE CHURCH. 11 A nariow and nnwortliy view of tlie spiritual authority of its constituent parts still commonly leaves out of accomit the peculiar characteristics of each era'and form of thought, as it refused to recognize for a long time the diversities of cha¬ racter and feeling in the sacred writers. In the New Testament more fruitful labour has been spent in this most difficult field of study, since tlie diversities of apostolic teaching, however pregnant with instructive difficulties, are con¬ fined within a narrow compass. But whether the fact yet be fully or partially acknowledged, it seems most certain that the Bible represents a progress by antagonism, a conflict and a recon¬ ciliation of partial views of one truth, a whole which is complete because it includes each sepa¬ rate element in a distinct and proportionate form. For while we admit most fully the momen¬ tous difficulties which are involved in the true appreciation and interpretation of Holy Scripture, yet it is evident that these difficulties are amply compensated by corresponding advantages. If the popular aspect of the Bible,—as one book, written in one dialect, fashioned in one mould, impressed with one moral and intellectual type, intelligible by one rule, no less than inspired by one Spirit—puts out of sight many perplexing (luestions, it neglects equally many of the most precious lessons which the Scriptures reveal to all ages. It is only by acknowledging the variety and distinctness of the parts of which the Bible is composed that we can gain any adequate sense of its real unity, of its inherent completeness, of its internal witness to its proper Divine authority. The noblest external characteristic of the INTRO¬ DUCTION. ii. Corre¬ sponding ad¬ vantages. 1. Unity of the Bible, not uniformity. TEE BIBLE 12 INTRO¬ DUCTION. 2. The com¬ pleteness of the moral training which it con¬ tains. Largeness of sympathy. Bible is its unity as distinguished from mere uniformity. Uniformity is the natural conse¬ quence of a limited design : unity is the outward expression of one great principle embodied in - many ways. The one comes from without, the other from within: the one is the sign of con¬ straint, the other of freedom : the one answers, in its highest shape, to organization, the other to growth. Take away the frank recognition of the human element in the Bible, widening with the increase of experience, which is of the very es¬ sence of the entire Divine word, and the neces¬ sary conditions on which its unity rests are at once removed. Deny the antithetic teaching of the Law and the Prophets, of St Paul and St James, and there remains nothing to lead to that fuller truth in which apparent contradictions are resolved. One Evangelist, or the first three Evangelists without St John, would have offered comparatively few difficulties, but any one can feel that the combination is the ground of a fuller harmony than could have been constructed from any uniform narratives. But the diversity of the Scriptures makes itself chiefly conspicuous in the completeness of the moral training which they convey. It is, as we have seen, one of their distinguishing marks that they belong to separate periods, to contrasted phases of life, to various forms of culture, to dis¬ tinct habits of thought, and the peculiarities which they reflect are ever repeating themselves in history. No temptation is more subtle or more potent than that which bids us judge every¬ thing by one standard. Practically we are inclined to measure others by ourselves, other ages by our own, other forms of civilization by that under IN THE CHURCB. 13 ' which we live, as the true and final measure of all. intro- Against this error, which is suflBcient almost to cloud tho whole world, the Bible contains the surest safeguard. In that we see side by side how God finds a dwelling-place among nations and families in every stage of social advancement, and recognizes faithful worshippers even where they are hidden from the eyes of prophets. The absorbing cares of daily life, the imperious claims of those immediately around us, tend to narrow our sympathies, but the Bible shows to us, in an abiding record, every condition and every power of man blessed by the Divine Spirit. It lifts us out of the circle of daily influences and introduces us to prophets and kings and deep thinkers and preachers of righteousness, each working in their own spheres variously and yet by one power and for one end. It may be objected that devout students of the Bible have often proved to be the sternest fanatics. But the answer is easy. They were fanatics because they were students not of the whole Bible but of some one fragment of it to which all else was sacrificed. The teach¬ ing of one part only, if taken without any r-egard to its relative position in connexion with other times and other books, may lead to narrowness of thought, but the whole recognizes and ennobles every excellence of man. Nor is it only that the various character of the Eroadth of different parts of the Bible, if fairly regarded, widens our sympathy; it enlarges our conceptions alike of the destiny of the human race and of the W'orking of Providence. There are times when men are inclined to regard religion merely as an individual matter, as a kind of righteous egoism, and then it is that we may dwell with especial 14 TEE BIBLE INTRO¬ DUCTION. Patioiice. 8. The Bible its rtwn wit¬ ness. trust on those sublimer views of our social and national connexions which are opened in the broad outlines of the history of Israel and sanc¬ tioned afresh in the imagery used in the New Testament to portray the nature of the Church. All history as unfolded there is but a preparation for the establishment of Hhe kingdom of God.’ The single citizen is never disregarded, as was likely to be the case in some of the noblest sys¬ tems of the ancient world, but he is never con¬ templated without reference to a divine common¬ wealth. And, again, when each part of the Bible is examined in relation to the rest, we cannot but be struck by what may be called the patience of God, the slow fulfilment of His counsels. The fabric of His Church, like the earth on which we live, advances almost imperceptibly from age to age, on what we might be tempted to call the ruins of the past. The laws of its progress, marvellous and inexplicable when contemplated in their special working, are yet seen on a wider view to be most natural, if by nature we mean (and a Christian can hardly mean anything else) man’s apprehension of the expression of the one, harmonious, will of God. In this sense each separate book of Holy Scripture reveals some one portion of the growing work, and the perception of progress is gained by the comparison of successive records. Painfully, slowly, with many drawbacks and terrible chastisements, the people of Israel were trained to fulfil their task ; and their chequered history at once warns and encourages those who compare the tardy spread and scanty influence of the Gospel with the largeness of its claims and promises. It seems to follow from what has been said, that the Bible contains in itself the fullest witness IN THE CHURCH. 15 to its Divine aiitliority. If it appears that a large collection of fragmentary records, written, with few exceptions, without any designed connexion, at most distant times and under the most varied INTRO¬ DUCTION. circumstances, yet combine to form a definite whole, broadly separated from other books; if it further appear that these different parts when interpreted historically reveal a gradual progress of social spiritual life uniform at least in its gene¬ ral direction; if without any intentional purpose they offer not only remarkable coincidences in minute details of facts, for that is a mere question of accurate narration, but also subtle harmonies of complementary doctrine; if in proportion as they are felt to be separate they are felt also to be instinct with a common spirit; then it will be readily acknowledged that however they came into being first, however they were united after¬ wards into the sacred volume, they are yet legibly stamped with the Divine seal as ‘inspired by God’ in a sense in which no other writings are. Thus the old analogy of Nature and the Bible Bible and is again forced upon us. The harmonious relation of facts, the subordination of details to great ends, the convergence of the separate phenomena towards one centre, tlie general laws of order and progress which rule the whole are equally characteristic of both. In both too there are residuary diflSculties, some of which may perhaps be removed by wider knowledge, while others are probably inherent in the necessarily finite view which we must take both of the scope and method of the Divine plans. The difiiculties of the physical and moral Final difficui- worlds—all that is involved in the ideas of pain and sin—we bear almost unconsciously; and yet there are no difficulties in the written record of 16 THE BIBLE INTRO¬ DUCTION. Origen, Fhiloc. 2. Object of the Essay. God’s Word deeper or more perplexing than these. ay the difficulties of Scripture spring, as we have seen, from the very conditions which determine its human and abiding value ; and to quote • once again the pregnant words of the first great critic of Holy Scripture, ‘ he who has once received the Scriptures as derived from the Creator of the world, must expect to find in them also all the difficulties which meet those who investigate the system of Creation.’ But that this may hold true in the highest sense, it is necessary that both ^J^ature and the Bible should be investigated in the same manner. Each part must be interrogated faithfully and patiently. We must approach both as learners. There was a time when physical speculators in¬ dulged in the not very innocent occupation of forming imaginary worlds which should be free from the imperfections which they found in ours. Truer science has swept away their presump¬ tuous dreams, and we may hope for the time when the student of Holy Scripture will look for what it contains, and not measure its contents by preconceived notions of the manner and form in which its lessons must have been given. It has been the object of the preceding re¬ marks to point out the necessity of the full recog¬ nition of the distinctness of the various parts of which the Bible is composed, both for the right understanding of their special lessons for us and for a comprehensive view of the progress of the Divine preparation for the Gospel. It is now possible to turn to the special subject of our in¬ quiry, the history of the recognition of these de¬ tached records as a complete written rule of Christian doctrine. In tracing this history it is no part of our object to discuss the origin, the IN THE CHURCH. 17 voracity, or the inspiration of the sacred books, inteo- but simply in what manner, when, and with what consent or variety of opinion they were accepted as containing an authoritative rule of faith. The problem is purely historical ; yet in such a case history is the truest guide to right opinion. The limits of the inquiry are naturally fixed at the Apostolic age and the Reformation. The history of the Old Testament before the Apostolic age is most meagre and unsatisfactory and the era of the Reformation exhibited the last great array of authoritative judgments on the contents of the Bible, which have been variously elaborated and enforced in the last three centuries. The period thus marked out falls into several Division of natural divisions. The first includes the Apo- stolic age (a.d. 30—80), in which we trace first the recognition and limits of an Old Testament as determined both directly by Jewish writers and incidentally by the Apostles and our Lord Him¬ self (Chap. I.) ; and next the general circum¬ stances which attended the composition of the New Testament Scriptures (Chap. ii.). The se¬ cond division (a.d. 80—120) is characterized by the organization of the Catholic Church, in which the distinguishing elements of the different books of the New Testament were embodied in the one Faith (Chap. in.). The third is the age of the Apologists (a.d. 120—170), in which Christianity appears in conflict with heathen and Jewish an¬ tagonists, and the writings of the New Testament begin to be used habitually in the same manner as those of the Old Testament (Chap. iv.). The fourth (a.d. 170—303) presents to us the first definite New Testament, varying slightly in its ^ See Appendix A. 2 18 INTRO¬ DUCTION. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. contents, but in the main universally recognized throughout Christendom (Chap.v.). Then follows the eventful era in which the Bible (New Tes¬ tament) was first proscribed and tlien restored (a.d. 303—397), (Chap. vi.). From this time the contents of the New Testament were practically fixed, but a division arose in the Western Church on the extent of the Old Testament, part includ¬ ing and part excluding the Apocrypha (Chap. vii.). The real history of the Canon, as far as it has any original value, closes here, but it will be in¬ teresting to follow the course of ancient opinion in the Western (Chap, viii.) and Eastern Churches (Chap. IX.) till modern times, noticing in some detail the conflicting opinions which were main¬ tained in the age of the Reformation (Chap, x), to which all recent theories may be referrecb CHAPTER I. THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. What advantage then hath the Jew? ...Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them rcere committed the oracles of God. —Rom. iii. i, 2. r' the commencement of the Christian era tlie chap. i. Jewish nation was already widely scattered ^ d 30-80” throughout the old world. The fears or the policy pigper of the successive conquerors of the East had set- sion of the tied colonies of Jews in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Syria; and the influence of commerce increased the Christian and consolidated the power of these communities. Thus the ‘ Dispersion,’ as it was called, gathered strength and consistency during upwards of five centuries and under the most varied circum¬ stances. Many of the lessons of the captivity were permanently embodied in wude-spread societies, and Judaism was placed in close and lengthened contact with the teaching of Persia, Egypt, and Greece. It necessarily followed that from the - time of the Exile this Dispersion became a most important element in shaping the character and fulfilling the destiny of the whole nation; and more than any one outward cause, prepared the way both materially and intellectually for the propagation of a universal faith. It would be impossible here to enter with any The origin detail into the history of the Dispersion. There 0 /pfg?'' is much that is obscure in the accounts of the persion. 2—2 20 CHAP. I. A.j). 30-80. t B.c. 28^ The general ellecte of tlie THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. earliest colonies; but the contemporary writings of Philo and Josephus bear clear witness to the extent and character of the foreign Jewish settle¬ ments in the first age ; and the books of the N ew Testament contain no less distinct proof of the influence which they exercised upon the spread of Christianity. At this time the Dispersion was divided into three great sections, the Babylonian, the Syrian, and the Egyptian. The Roman colony, which dated from the time of Pompey (a. p. 63), seems to have been confined within narrower limits and to have held closely to Palestinian tradi¬ tions. The Babylonian ‘Dispersion’ was the oldest and claimed precedence before the others. It extended through Media, Persia and Parthia ; and in later times Babylon became one of the most distinguished centres of Jewish learning. The Jewish colonies in Egypt owed their origin mainly to the wisdom of Alexander the Great and the earlier Ptolemies. Prom Alexandria the Jews advanced along the north coast of Africa, and a considerable Jewish population was settled at Cyrene and Berenice (Tripoli). The Syrian Dis¬ persion was yet wider in its extent. Seleucus E^icator removed large bodies of Jews to his western provinces, and they spread rapidly through Armenia, Asia Minor, and Greece. But however widely removed from the ‘Holy City,’ however much despised by the stricter adherents of the Law, the Jews of the Dispersion still main¬ tained a loyal connection with the one Temple of their nation. All paid the customary tribute, and testified, though in various degrees, their depend¬ ence on the religious authorities at Jerusalem. Apart from the religious effect of this Disper¬ sion upon the Jews themselves—the necessary THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 21 relaxation of ceremonial observances, the steady chap. i. spiritualization of worship, when prayer and ex- ^ ^ hortation were substituted for sacrifice, the recog- nition of a sacred bond of union between societies a preparation most widely separated by place and circumstances, for cimstian the gradual substitution, in short, of the idea of a faith for that of a kingdom —its external effect was of the greatest moment. Everywhere the Jews formed a nucleus of pure monotheists. Their pagan neighbours became acquainted prac¬ tically with the worship of one God; and the ‘ devout Greek ’ obtained a recognized connexion with Israel, without accepting the complete bur¬ den of the Law. The Apostles everywhere availed themselves of the opening thus created in the cities which they visited. Even when the Jews rejected the message which was first addressed to them, the imperfect proselytes who had ga-' thered around them were eager to receive a Gospel of which Jhey could feel the full value. Without some such preparation, the spread of Christianity in the first age would be liistorically inconceivable. The mode in which the prepara¬ tion was efiected offers one of the most remarkable examples of Divine Providence which we are allowed to contemplate. But dismissing all detailed discussion of the Tiie conse- effects of the Dispersion upon the progress and o/the development of Christianity, whether by further- ance or by antagonism, we must yet notice one special point with which we are directly concerned. As far as can be ascertained the Jews, however nidely scattered, carried their sacred books every¬ where with them. ^ Moses' St James says, ‘ of old Acta xv. 21 . time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogue every sabbath day' 22 CHAP. I. A.D. 3l>—SO. Acts xiii. 15. A cts .xtti. 11; x.wiii. 23. James i. 1. Acts xxvi. 7. 1 Pet. i. 1. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. No testimony could express more strongly the extent of Judaism, or the universal use of the ancient Scriptures in the Apostolic age; for, as wo learn from other passages, the special mention of Moses does not exclude the public recitation of the Psalms and the Prophets. Not to speak now of the intimate acquaintance with almost every part of the Old Testament which is assumed by our Lord to exist in all his hearers, and after¬ wards by the Apostles within the limits of JudjBa, we find a like acquaintance apparent everywhere wherever we can catch a glimpse of the religious life of the Jews. The Ethiopian chamberlain no less than the Jews of Beroeaand Rome ^searched the ScriptiiresI At Antioch, at Thessalonica, at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Rome, St Paul took for granted that his Jewish hearers were familiar with Scripture, and ready to abide by the conclu¬ sions which could be drawn from it. Philo, as will be seen, shows that the same was the case in Egypt. From Babylonia alone all contemporary evidence fails us ; but the testimony of a later age proves that there is no reason to suspect that there was any variation here from the general feeling of the Jews. We find then at the beginning of the Apostolic age ‘ the twelve tribes scattered abroad ’ through¬ out the civilized world—and it is instructive to notice that the Dispersion itself obliterated the ancient division of the nation and restored its spi¬ ritual unity :—we find them everywhere in posses¬ sion of sacred books, described generally as ‘ the Law and the Prophets we find that these books, or parts of them, were habitually read, and that their contents were recognized as authoritative. The Jews had then at that time a ‘ Bible ’ of some THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 23 kind, sanctioned by ancient usage, and it re- chap. i. mains to inquire whether there is sufficient evi- ^ j, sq-siT dence to determine its contents. For this pur¬ pose it will be most convenient to examine first the evidence of Jewish v\Titers (i), and then the evidence which can be drawn from the New Tes¬ tament (ii). But before doing this it may be well to notice ° •' tament gene- a difficulty which may occur to some who have rally luteiii- not realized the condition of the Roman world at Q^ekVraL- the Christian era. What provision, it may be lation (the asked, was made by the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures for their circulation through so many distant provinces ? The answer is most simple. The Greek Version—the Septuagint—which was made gradually at Alexandria, at various dates, from about the middle of the third century b. c. sufficed (to speak generally) for all. It is, indeed, possible that parts of the Old Testament were already translated into Syriac and Latin, but the evidence for this opinion is very slight; and there is little reason to doubt that Greek was under¬ stood in the cities of the far East, and it was certainly well known throughout the chief towns of Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, Italy, and Gaul. During the early period of the Empire a single rule embraced the known world, and a single language opened the way to all hearts. But that language was the proper language neither of the Conqueror nor of the Teacher. Jerusalem gave the Divine message wrought out in a world-long history, during which she had gathered in struggles and sufierings all the wisdom of the East: Greece gave the language which had gained from the labours of poets, philosophers, and orators, a power and plasticity never since equalled: Rome gave the 24 CHAP. 1. A.D. 30—80. J. The evi¬ dence of Jewish wri¬ ters as to the contents of the Old Tes¬ tament. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCIL facilities of imperial organization and the dig- ■ nified protection of sovereign law, unknown before that marvellous epoch, which in every aspect was indeed ‘ the fulness of time.’ i. These great facts, the broad unity of the Roman Empire and the Dispersion of the Jews, coextensive with its limits, and yet bound toge¬ ther round one centre, form the foundation of all understanding of the Apostolic age. At a later time the destruction of Jerusalem put an end to the external connexion of the Jewish societies, and the Christian Churches made no attempt, till long afterwards, to embody the Catholic Faith in one outward organization. But during the lifetime of St Paul every condition was realized for pro¬ claiming the Gospel to the whole world, and reap¬ ing the full fruits of the earlier preparation for its message. There was variety in the form and relations of Judaism combined with substantial unity. This unity, it will appear, was preserved by the use of the same Scriptures as well as by the observance (more or less complete) of the ritual which was based upon them. It is with the first point alone that we are now concerned. And when we inquire what contemporary Jew- ish- evidence there is as to the contents of the Sacred Volume in the first century, two writers at once offer themselves, Josephus in Palestine, and Philo at Alexandria, representing the two chief sections of the Jewish Church; for though the Alexandrine Dispersion was inferior to that of Babylon in antiquity and to that of Syria in extent, it was superior to both in intellectual vigour. The testimony of Babylon we must draw' from a later source; that of Syria from the casual notices in the Apostolic wu*itings. THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 25 1. Flatius Josephus (that is, Joseph, born chap. i. A.D. 37, died after a.d. 97), in whose Romanized ^ 30 - 8 ^ name we do not at first recognize the name of the Patriarch, was eminently fitted by birth, character 1 . Josephus. and education to be the historian of his nation. He was of priestly descent and connected on his mother’s side with the noble family of the Mac¬ cabees. At an early age he studied with diligence tlie tenets of the various Jewish sects, and at a later time gained an extensive acquaintance with Greek literature, especially such as bore on the history of the East. It is unnecessary to follow the course of his life during the war of independ¬ ence. After a distinguished but unavailing re¬ sistance he surrendered himself to Vespasian, a.d. 67. whose future elevation he is said to have foretold, though he did not immediately gain his confi¬ dence. At length, on the accession of Vespasian to the imperial throne, Josephus was released a.d. 69. from confinement; and during the reign of the Flavian emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domi- tian (whose family name he assumed), he was treated with great distinction. His works—The History of the Jewish War, The Antiquities of the Jews, his Autobiography, and the Books against Apion, on the Antiquity of the Jews— w^ere composed at Rome, and the first, at least, was admitted into the Palatine Library. His Treatise on the Antiquity of the Jews (or against Apion, as it is commonly called) was com¬ posed some time after a.d. 93, and was intended to maintain the belief in the early origin and re¬ cords of the Jewish nation against the objections drawn from the silence of the Greeks. With this object Josephus points out the late introduction of writing to the western nations, and the absence of 26 CHAP. I. A.D. 30-ij0. His special testimony. c. Ap. i. 7. 9 THE BIBLE IN TUE CHURCH. early authentic registers of jiublic events among them. In skill of composition, the East, he says, yields to Greece, but not in the accurate history of antiquity, and still loss in the special history of different nations. In illustration of this state¬ ment he quotes first the primitive annals of the Egyptians, Babylonians and Phoenicians; and then goes on at once to speak of the Jewish records in greater detail, as the fact of their antiquity w’as not equally familiar to his readers. The whole passage, though long, is of the highest interest; dismissing all inquiry into the records of Egypt, Babylon and Greece, as it is universally admitted that they date from the earliest time, “ I shall endeavour,” he says, “to show briefly that our forefathers exhibited the same care as the nations already mentioned in the record of events, for I do not stop to maintain that it was even greater, as they enjoined this duty on the high priests and prophets, and [further, I shall show] how this cus¬ tom has been preserved up to our time with great exactness, and, to venture on a bold assertion, how it will still be preserved. For not only did we commit this charge in the first instance to the best men and those who were devoted to the service of God, but we also took care to preserve the priestly race constantly pure and unmixed... ...(even) in Egypt and Babylon, and in any other place in the whole world, where any of the priestly race are scattered.Our accuracy in this respect is most conclusively proved by the fact that the descent of our priests is preserved in our records by name from father to son two thousand years back.Naturally, therefore, or rather necessa¬ rily [this accuracy is found in our Archives] inas¬ much as the making the record did not rest upon THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 27 the simple will of any, and there is no discrepancy chap. i. in the facts recorded; but the prophets only ^ j, 3 q_ 8 q [ composed our annals] who narrate the most re¬ mote and ancieiit events through the inspiration of God, and compiled exactly the history of the occurrences of their omi time. For we have not tens of thousands of books discordant and con¬ flicting, but only twenty-two., containing the re¬ cord of all time, which have been justly believed to be Divine. And of these jim are the books of Moses, which embrace the laws and the tra¬ dition of the creation of man reaching up to his (Moses’) death. This period is little short of three thousand years. Next, the prophets who suc¬ ceeded, compiled the history of the period from Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes the successor of Xerxes, king of Persia, in thirteen books, [relat¬ ing severally] what was done in their times. The remaining/o^^r books embrace hymns to God, and practical directions for men. From the time of Artaxerxes to our own time each event has been recorded; but the records have not been deemed worthy of the same credit as those of earlier date, because the exact succession of the prophets was not continued. But what faith we have placed in our own writings is seen by our conduct; for though so long a time has now passed, no one has dared either to add anything to them, or to take anything from them, or to alter anything. But all Jews are instinctively led from the moment of their birth to regard them as decrees of God, and to abide by them, and, if need be, gladly to die for them. So ere now many of our captive coun¬ trymen have been often seen to endure tortures and all kinds of deaths in theatres, that they might utter no word against the laws and the 28 CHAP. I. A.D. 30—80. Conclusions from his statements. His arrange¬ ment of the Books of the Old Testa¬ ment. THE BIBLE IN THE CIIURCE. records which are united with these. And what Greek would endure such a test in like case? Nay, rather, no Greek will endure even an ordi¬ nary loss to save the whole literature of his nation from destruction.” When every allowance is made for the rhe¬ torical character of the passage, and the evident desire of Josephus to adapt his statements to the feelings of heathen readers, several important conclusions may be certainly deduced from it. (1) The Sacred Writings were distinctly limited in number; and this number (it appears) was admitted by universal consent. (2) The reign of Artaxerxes {c. 450 b. c.) was regarded as the extreme limit of the Divine history (^^ e. according to Josephus, the Book of Esther). (3) The books were esteemed Divine, and this without any distinction between the three classes into which they were divided (Law, Pro¬ phets, Psalms, or, to use the technical term, Ha- giographa, Le. Holy Writings). At present we are concerned only with the first of these conclusions, the number of the Sa¬ cred Books. This number itself, the number of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, indicates an artificial arrangement, and in later times was adapted to various mystical speculations. But Josephus divides the books in an unusual manner, and as he gives no special enumeration of them, some doubt has arisen as to the way in which he reckoned up his thirteen books of the prophets, and four books of the Hagiographa. The usual enumeration gives eight books of the Prophets {Joshua, Judges and Ruth, 1, 2 Samuel, 1, 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Lamenta- TUE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. tions, and 12 minor Prophets)^ and reckons the remaining nine as Hagiographa. Sometimes Ruth and Lamentations are reckoned separately, and added to the Hagiographa, in which case the total number of books is twenty-four instead of twenty- two. Josephus follows a different arrangement; and if we observe the peculiar definitions which he gives of the two classes, it will appear that he necessarily includes all the historical books among the writings of the prophets, so that the books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther, as well as Daniel and Job, are included in the second class ; while Psalms, Canticles, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes alone satisfy the description which he gives of the third class. Thus the list of the books of the Old Testa¬ ment given by Josephus exactly coincides with our own; and there is nothing in his language to countenance the suspicion that he is expressing the opinion of one sect or country. The popular belief that the Sadducees, like the Samaritans, received only the Pentateuch, rests on no ade¬ quate evidence. It is possible that they (like the Alexandrine Jews) drew a less sharp line of divi¬ sion between the books of the Old Testament and other books; but if they had rejected all the sacred writings except the books of Moses, Jose¬ phus could hardly have omitted such an import¬ ant trait in the description which he elsewhere gives of the opinions of the sect, as he expressly notices their rejection of tradition. The casual quotations in Josephus give the same result. With the exception of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Canticles, which furnished no materials for his history, and Job, which, even if historical, lay without his scope, he quotes all the 29 CHAP. I. A.D. 30—80. His testi¬ mony not the expression of private opi¬ nion ; and supported by casual quota¬ tions. 30 CHAP. I. A.D. 30—80. 2. Philo. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. remaining books included in his list, either as divinely inspired or as authoritative sources of truth. On the other hand, while he uses the first hook of Maccabees as the basis of his liistory of the period of which it treats, he definitely ex¬ cludes it from the list of sacred books by the chronological limit within which he confines them. With the remaining books of the Apocrypha he shows no acquaintance; though Judith and 2 Maccabees must have been noticed by him, if he had known them and held them to bo trust¬ worthy. 2 . Our next witness Philo is somewhat ear¬ lier in date than Josephus, but his evidence is less precise. He was born at Alexandria, proba¬ bly about the year b. c. 20 , and, like Josephus, was of priestly descent. The one important fact in his life, of which we have certain information, was an embassy to Rome, which he undertook A. D. 40, with four others of his countrymen, in the hope of obtaining from the emperor Cains (Caligula) some mitigation of the decree by which he had enjoined even on the Jews the adoration of his image. The embassy failed in its object, but the death of the emperor in the following . year averted the w’orst dangers wdiich it was in¬ tended to remove. At the time of this mission, Philo was already advanced in years, and he ap¬ pears to have devoted all his earlier life to study. It would, indeed, be difficult to imagine any Jew, still faithful to the Law, who could have entered with a larger sympathy into the speculations of Greek philosophy before the spread of Christian¬ ity. Christianity has necessarily changed our ap¬ preciation of Judaism, but Philo was emphati¬ cally a Jew before Judaism was widely declared THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 31 to culminate in a universal religion. Many, witli- chap. i. out doubt, had preceded him in the endeavour to ^.u. so-so. reconcile the precepts of the Law with the teach¬ ing of philosophy, but he eombined into a system what was before fragmentary, and at the outset announced his great thesis, that “the true servant of the Law is necessarily the true citizen of the world.” It would carry us too far from our immediate general purpose to indicate tlie method by which Philo oid extracted the spiritual lessons which he supposed to be hidden under the veil of patriarchal history. All the Law appeared to him to be full of pro¬ found allegories and subtle harmonies ; and he recognized with equal readiness the truths which had been laid open by Greek (and Eastern) philo¬ sophers, so that it was a common saying, “ Either Philo teaches Plato (Platonizes), or Plato teaches Philo.” The reverence which he shewed for the letter of the Law, as the sure groundwork of its spiritual significance, is remarkable on many grounds. The ecclesiastical constitution of the Alexandrine Jews was comparatively lax. The Old Testament existed among them only in a Greek translation, and that made at different times, by different persons, without any unity of plan or execution, and apparently without any final and authoritative revision or sanction. At the same time other books which, though of high religious interest, were not acknowledged as of Divine authority in Palestine, were translated into Greek, (for instance 1 Maccabees, Ecclesiasticus, &c.), and circulated together with the translations of the Hebrew Scriptures. Some books of similar character were also written at Alexandria it¬ self, and by their intrinsic worth challenged wide 32 dllAP. I. A D. 80- 80. His special testimony to the con¬ tents of the Old Testa¬ ment. Fr. p. 628. Euseb. Pr. Ev. viii. 6. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. respect (as Wisdom). All these circumstances must have tended to obscure the notion of a definite Bible, or at least to have modified its contents, either by confining it to the Law, or by including within its range (as we shall see was actually the case at a later time) all the writings which were sanctioned in any way by public or ecclesiasti¬ cal use. In spite of these disturbing influences by which he was surrounded, Philo appears to have held the same opinion as Josephus on the number of the sacred books. The Pentateuch, indeed, as was natural, occupied the first place in his regard. The later books, according to his principles of in¬ terpretation, were but partial elucidations of its teaching, and their writers “companions of Moses” or “ members of his sacred band.” Of the Law he says, that “ after a lapse of more than two thou¬ sand years [the Jews] had not changed a single word of what had been written by [Moses], but would sooner endure to die a thousand times than consent do violate his laws and customsand all his works are based upon a verbal criticism of the Septuagint text, which he accepts as the faith¬ ful reflex of the Divine original. But while the Law is thus prominent in his writings, some books from each of the other divisions of the Old Testa¬ ment are quoted, though far less frequently than the Pentateuch, as Divine or authoritative. Thus of the ‘former prophets,’ Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 1 Kings are quoted as ‘the sacred word,’ ‘the Divine oracle,’ or mystically interpreted; of the ‘later prophets,’ Isaiah and Jeremiah of ‘the greater,’ Hosea and Zechariah of ‘the less,’ are said in various places to have spoken by Divine inspiration; of the ‘ historical Hagiographa,’ THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 33 A.D. SO-SO iChrmides and (probably) Ezra are quoted; of chap. i. tlie ‘ poetical Hagiograplia,’ Psalms, Proverbs and Job. On the other hand, though it is impossible that Philo should have been unacquainted with some (at least) of the Apocryphal writings {^%Ecclesiasti- cus), yet he never makes a quotation from themb It further appears from a remarkable passage His division in Philo’s description of the life of the Therapcu- tai—the true forefathers of the Christian monks— that the threefold division of the Palestinian Bible was not unknown in Egypt. ‘^In each house oiBeVit.Coni. these ascetics there is,” he says, “ a temple which § is called...a monastery (a solitary cell), in which they perform the rites of a holy life, introducing therein nothing...which is needed for the necessi¬ ties of the body, but laws, and oracles delivered by prophets, and hymns and the other [books] by which knowledge and piety are mutually increased and perfected.” The last words are somewhat ambiguous, still from the connexion in which they stand it seems reasonable to suppose that already some addition was made to the contents of the three divisions of the sacred books which were recognized in Palestine; but at present these new writings formed a distinct class and were not in¬ corporated in the several parts of the Bible with wliich they were specially connected. Briefly it may be said that we can trace in Philo the conflict between the traditional view of Summary of the Jews on the Old Testament, and the looser opinions which, as has been already remarked, were almost forced upon him by the circumstances 1 The passage in De Praem. § 19, which is com¬ monly said to have been taken from some unknown apocrvphal book, is an obvious adaptation of Ex. xxiii. 26 (LXX.). 3 34 CHAP. A.D. SO- THE BIBLE IN TEE CHURCH. I- of his position^ as well as by the general character ^ of his speculations. Like other Jews, he held the Pentateuch to be the spring of all later teaching, the complete record of the Divine law. But he held this view with peculiar distinctness: nor could it be otherwise. The Pentateuch was raised into preeminence at Alexandria not only by its intrinsic character, but practically scarcely less by the fact that for some time it was the only book accessible to a Greek-speaking population. The books of Moses formed then the first Bible. Bound them the other books which were received in Palestine were gradually collected, but in such a way that the sense, of their unity as parts of one whole was obscured or even destroyed; and at the same time other writings came into popular use, and probably were joined in the same volume with the older books. Yet Philo, in the midst of this confusion, retained a hold upon the definite belief of the Palestinian Jews. Though he drew his chief illustrations from the Pentateuch, wdiich formed the subject of his work, yet he also ex¬ plained a few passages from the later historical books in a mystical sense, showing that he did not regard them as difiering in kind from the books of Moses. His system led him to regard every one who shares in the Divine reason as being in some sense a prophet, yet even for him “ the pro¬ phets” were a definite body, through whom “ the Father of the Universe gave oracles.” But .it is easy to see even in Philo, a tendency to break down the boundaries of the Old Testament, by an undue exaltation of the Pentateuch in comparison with the other books. This tendency, which was restrained in his case by a familiarity with the opinions of his countrymen in Palestine, was ne- THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE, 35 cessarily far more powerful among less educated chap. i. Alexandrines; and it is most likely that the Greek a.d. so-so. Bible popularly received among them was already enlarged beyond the limits of the original Hebrew Bible. Yet this enlargement, whether it was already commenced or took place at a later time, was a result of habit and not of judgment. It was not determined by any conflict or agreement, but by the circumstances under which the books themselves were first introduced and afterwards studied. 3. It is necessary to come to a much lower date ta obtain- the judgment of the Babylonian Jews. This first appears in a written form about the close of the 6th century in the Talmud, the great summary of the unwritten law, which had been preserved in very many cases by exact tra¬ dition from the time of the Return from Captivity, or even from a yet earlier age. The account given of the formation of the Old Testament appears to be in substance of the most venerable antiquity, and probably contains the most ancient opinion of the Jews upon the subject which has been pre¬ served. In estimating its historical value it is well to bear in mind the tenacity with which Ori¬ entals retain a definite traditional record, and yet more, the special repugnance of the Eastern Jews to committing their' opinions to writing, till the successive persecutions and dOstruction of their schools made this the only method of saving them from complete^oblivion. The passage in question is contained in the Babylonian Gemara^, in the ^ The Talmud consists of two parts: the text, Mishnah (a repetition, i. e. a second law), which was committed to writing in the third century, and a com¬ mentary, Gemara, There are two Gemaras, that of 3—2 36 CHAP. L A.D. 80-80. The context of the passage. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. section which treats of the division of property. It is difficult to account for its occurrence in such a connexion, but the whole arrangement of the Gemara is most strange and inartificial. It runs as follows: ‘ But who wrote [the books of the Bible] ? Moses wrote his own book, the section about Balaam and Job. Joshua wrote his own book and [the last] eight verses of the Pentateuch. Samuel wrote his own book, the books of Judges and Ruth. David wrote the book of Psalms [of which some were composed] by the ten venerable elders, Adam the first man, Melchizedek, Abra¬ ham, Moses, Haman, Jeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. Jeremiah wrote his own book, the books of Kings and Lamentations. Hezehiah and his friends [wrote the books in¬ cluded in] the memorial book Jamshak, i.e. Isaiah, Proverbs {Meshalim), Canticles {Shir hashirim), and Ecclesiastes {Koheleth). The men of the Great Synagogue, [the books included in] the memorial word Kandag, i.e. Ezekiel, the twelve (minor prophets), Daniel, and Esther. Ezra wrote his own book and continued the genealogies of the books of Chronicles down to his own times....But who completed them (the books of Chronicles) ? Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah.’ This remarkable passage stands in close con¬ nexion with two others which bear upon the same subject. One of these treats of the binding toge¬ ther of the sacred books, the other of their order. From the former it appears that a question had been raised whether the Law should be alone, the Prophets alone, and the Hagiographa alone, but it was decided that he who bound all toge- Jerusalem and that of Babylon: the former is some¬ what earlier in date, but the latter is the more full. THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. ther did rightly. The second passage gives a list of books according to the tliree divisions, Law^ Prophets^ Ilagiographa, reckoning Ruth and Lamentations as separate books among the Ha- giographa. But these traditions are far inferior both in interest and (as it appears) in antiquity to that which has been quoted. For it is impor¬ tant to notice that this contains no trace of the triple division of the books, which is found in the context, and on the contrary places together books from the Hagiographa and the Prophets. It is also another most striking feature in the tra¬ dition that while several of the books are said to have been ^ written^ that is, reduced to their pre¬ sent form by others than their proper authors, yet it does not appear that anything was sup¬ posed to be detracted from their Divine author¬ ity by this revision. The functions of the men of ‘ the great assem¬ bly^,’ as described in this earliest notice of their labours, are confined within very reasonable and trustworthy limits. In later times this tradition— for it is impossible not to believe that it is sub¬ stantially prie-Christian—was fabulously embel¬ lished. Thus in the Second Book of Esdras, which cannot be much later than the close of the first century, Ezra is represented as writing again by immediate inspiration the sum of the divine reve¬ lation, and delivering to the people twenty-four books in place of those which had been lost®. The same story is repeated by many early Christian Fathers, for example, by Irenaeus, Clement of 1 See Appendix A. 2 The true reading in 2 Esdr. xiv. 44 is ninety and four.’’’ When the seventy" books reserved for “ the wise among the people” (v. 46) are removed, this number gives the contents of the original collection. 4 ) fj o7 CIIAI’. I. A.D. 30—SO. Its import ance. Later tradi¬ tions. 2 Esdr. xiv, 20-40. 3S CHAP. I. A.i>. 30—80. Summary. ii. The evi¬ dence of the Apostolic writers as to the contents of the Old Testament. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. Alexandria, and Tertullian. As a singular pen¬ dant to the popular story of the origin of the Sep- tuagint the legend is not without historical inte¬ rest ; but at present it is chiefly remarkable as a striking testimony to the recognized number of the public sacred books of the Old Testament; and an indication of the manner in which the later apocryphal writings were connected in theory with the original collection. Thus far we have seen the substantial unity of the opinion of the Jewish churches in Palestine, Egypt and Babylonia upon the contents of the Old Testament. All agree in confirming the authority of those twenty-two or twenty-four books only which we receive; but this agreement is com¬ bined with characteristic difierencesh In Pales¬ tine the books appear in a definite and symmetri¬ cal arrangement completely marked off from all the other literature of the people. In Alexandria the line of separation is practically on the point of being obliterated or even broken. In Babylonia the tradition of the origin of the books is con¬ nected with the enumeration of them. We next pass to the examination of the evidence which can be gathered from the apostolic writings, which, though casual and disconnected, is of the highest interest and importance. ii. One of the most important characteristics of the apostolic writings in their historical aspect, in which alone we now regard them, is their variety. ^ The uniformity of the contents of the Hebrew Bible at later times will be seen in the catalogues of Melito, Origen and Jerome, which are based on Jew¬ ish authorities. The limitation of the Samaritan Bible to the Pen¬ tateuch was the necessary consequence of historical and political conditions {A'pp. A). THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 39 Even on the most cursory view it is obvious that chap. i. they fall into distinct groups which represent typi- ~ ^ cal forms of thought and feeling. These groups, as will be seen afterwards, are distinguished by Apostolical broad lines of difference. Thus their independ- ence multiplies the force of their testimony; and so far as they combine in presenting the same general result as to the contents of the Old Testa¬ ment, the result depends not on one witness but on the concurrent evidence of several. Speaking roughly we may divide the books of the New Tes¬ tament into three such groups. The first group includes the first three (synoptic) Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St James., St Peter, and St Jade: the second group, the Epistles of St Paul with the Epistle to the He¬ brews: the third group, the writings of St John. Before proceeding further we may notice the Collective indications which these different groups contain scripture, of the existence of a definite collection of sacred writings generally kno^vn and recognized. The plainest of these lies in the name by which the books of the Old Testament are most commonly called ^the Scriptures^ Hhe Writings^ This title, which is as definite in its apostolic use as with us, is found in each group (Matt. xxii. 29 ; Acts xvii. 11 ; 1 Cor. xv. 3 ; John v. 39), and the records to which it is applied are assumed to contain the sum of the divine revelation (Matt. xxvi. 54 ; 1 Cor. xv. 3,4), and to be the source of autho¬ ritative argument (Luke xxiv. 27; Acts xviii. 28\ This general title is further explained by the fuller phrase the Law and the Prophets (or Moses and the Prophets, Luke xvi. 29, 31), which is also used in each group to describe the whole of the Old Testament (Matt. vii. 12 ; Rom.iii. 21; Johni. 46); 40 CHAP I. A.D. 30—80. Importance of tills usage. Tlie Hebrew collection of sacred books preserved by the study of the original tc.vt. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. the title of the Lato itself is extended by a re¬ markable usage, which has been already noticed, to the Psalms (John x. 34; xv. 25), and Pro¬ phets (1 Cor. xiv. 21), and the Old Testament gene¬ rally (John xii. 34). In one passage the triple division of the books is clearly recognized, where it is said that ‘ all things must be fulfilled which were WTitten in the Law of Moses and in \the] Prophets and va Psalms....' (Luke xxiv. 44); though the certain omission of the article in the last clause and its suspiciousness in the second, point to the conclusion that the reference is rather to different parts of the sacred writings and not to the Bible as a whole under its com¬ plex title. The existence of these collective titles, the universal assumption of their intelligibility, the absence of all trace of doubt as to their applica¬ tion in the districts over which the evidence ex¬ tends, the unhesitating appeal to the writings described by them, the absolute equality of the different parts which are recognized in the whole collection, have an important bearing both posi¬ tively and negatively upon the special testimonies to separate bocks. They extend the testimony from one book to a group of books, and they ex¬ clude the inference that a possible use of other books places them on the same footing with those which belonged to the recognized collection. The definiteness of this collection of sacred books was secured in Palestine by a special guarantee. Whatever may have been the general currency of Greek in social intercourse, however widely or even universally the Septuagint may have been used in public and private religious exercises, yet it is certain that an influential school TUE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 41 of public teachers still maintained the study of chap. i. the Hebrew text. Thus there was no danger in--- Palestine, as in Egypt, that the original limits of ’ ’ tlie Old Testament should be obscured. Popular usage, even if it went astmy, was corrected by the presence of the original records ; and there is not the slightest evidence to show that the Hebrew Bible ever included any more books than are now contained in it. The range of the express quotations from the i. Express Old Testament in the first group of the Apostolic m writings extends (in each division) to the Law, the Prophets and the Hagiographa, without any difference in the mode of citation. In the synop- tic Gospels the quotation is made sometimes by tiiree go- the Lord Himself, sometimes by the Evangelist, sometimes by the Jews, in a way which shows be¬ yond all doubt the equality of authority which was attributed to all the sacred books, the unanimity, with which this authority was admitted, and the extent of the collection of Scriptures within nar¬ row limits. Thus our Lord quotes passages from Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 1 Sa¬ muel, Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, Hosea, Jonah and Malachi, with the most distinct recognition of their binding moral force ; and it is worthy of notice that St Mark, who introduces no quota¬ tion in his own person except in the preface to his Gospel (xv. 28 is an interpolation), yet agi'ees with the other Evangelists in preserving those which occur in the Lord’s discourses. The list of books quoted in the first three Gospels is in¬ creased by St Matthew and St Luke, by the addi¬ tion of Leviticus, Jeremiah, Micah, and ZechOr- riah. The quotations in the Acts spread over The Acts. the same field, including passages from Genesis, 42 CHAP. I. A.D. 30—80. The Catholic Epistles. 2. Express quotations in the Epistles of St Pa ul. The Epistle to the He- l/reics. 3. Express quotations in St John. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, Joel, Amos, and Habakhuk. In the Catholic Epistles (with the exception of the Epistles of St John) quotations occur from Genesis, Isaiah and Pro- rerbs. The wide extent of these references when compared with the brief compass of the books in which they occur is a remarkable proof of the familiar acquaintance of the Jews with the Old Testament; and the fact that in each subordinate group of books passages are found from all the three classes into which the writings of the Old Testament were subdivided, seems to show that no practical difference existed in the use of them. In the Epistles of St Paul, or rather in that great group of his epistles which is composed of 1, 2 Corinthians, Galatians and Romans, the range of quotations is a little more extensive, including Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deutero^ noQny, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Habakkuk, and Malachi; but in his remaining epistles there are only three or at most four express quotations. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the quotations are proportign- ately still more numerous, and it is a character¬ istic difference that they are in every case intro¬ duced by a word which implies the living voice of the speaker —he saith^ he spake^ he beareth witness ^—and not merely the testimony of the record—‘ it hath been written.^ The quotations in this Epistle are made from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Haggai. In the Gospel of St John passages are quoted from Exodus, Psalms, Isaiah, and Zechariah. In his epistles and the Apocalypse no express quotations occur, though the latter is in a great TEE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 43 measure constructed out of the language of the chap. i. Old Testament. ~ a d so—so For it must be remembered that the express ' quotations in the Apostolic writings include only tions only a a very small portion of the passages borrowed Sica^Temf- from the Old Testament. It is scarcely possible niscencca. to read many consecutive verses in any part of the New Testament without meeting with words or phrases which are obviously reminiscences of the Septuagint; and the ease and naturalness with which these are introduced prove more dis¬ tinctly than anything else could do, how com¬ pletely this great Greek version was inwrought into the minds of the devout Jews of the Apos¬ tolic age. But setting aside silent quotations and coincidences, every book in the Hebrew Bible is distinctly quoted in the New Testament with the exception of Joshua., Judges, Chronicles, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ohadiah, Zephaniah, and Nahum ; and, with the limitations already noticed, there is no percep¬ tible difference between the different groups of the Apostolic books as to the range or character of the quotations which they contain. The general evenness of the biblical quota- General sum- tions throughout the New Testament may be con- veniently exhibited by a brief summary of the direct quotations in the several groups of books. Some differences may arise in the enumeration of them, but the number of distinct references, not reckoning repetitions in the same group, is ap¬ proximately as follows; 4i CHAP. 1. TIM BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A.p. 30-80. No special quotation from the Apoc'“ypha, Acts xvii. 23, 29. Tit. i. 12. • 1. Synoptic Gospels. Law. 15 Prophets. 21 Hagiographa. 6 Acts. 7 9 7 Catholic Epistles. 4 1 2 u. The Epistles of Paul ... St 25 28 13 Epistle to the brews. He- 11 4 11 iii. The writings of John (Gospel) St 2 6 6 Of special books Isaiah and the Psalms fur¬ nish by far tlie largest number of references, as might naturally be expeeted from their extent and character; and the absence of quotations from the books which have been mentioned is to be explained by the peculiar and limited nature of their contents. On the other hand there is not one direct quo¬ tation in the whole of the New Testament from any of the books included in the Apocrypha, though the book of Wisdom has very numerous points of contact ■with Christian doctrine. This fact is universally admitted, and is of the gi’eatest interest, for even if it appear that some of the Apostolic writers were acquainted with one or other of the books of the Apocrypha, yet their kno w- ledge and use of the books prove nothing as to their reception among the Canonical Scriptures, unless the same claim be conceded to Aratus or Epimenides. So hir as the clear evidence extends, the books of the Hebrew Bible are quoted as writings sui generis, and as forming part of a definite and known collection, the limits of which are fixed by independent witnesses in such a way as to harmonize exactly with the casual quota¬ tions of the Apostolic -writers. But it is never¬ theless evident that it would be impossible to determine the contents of the Old Testament THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 45 by the express quotations in the New, without chap. i. the complementary evidence of direct testimony. so-so” Quotations and general references are necessarily valid only as far as they actually extend. They have in themselves no negative force. And it is only when taken in combination "with explicit catalogues of the sacred books that they show in the clearest manner how the formal belief was actually ratified in practice. This corroborative power belongs properly and Extent of in its full weight only to express quotations; SnThis'torSll if, however, account be taken of coincidences coincidences, of thought or expression, the extent of the evi¬ dence is very greatly enlarged. In this case the whole number of quotations in the New Testa¬ ment from the Old cannot be less than seven hundred, and is probably still greater. Yet most of these references are taken from the same books as furnish the direct quotations, though it appears certain that passages of Joshua. 1 Chronicles. Joim iv. 6. and probably also of Esther, were present to the james ii. 25 " minds of the apostolic writers. On the same Apocrypha. grounds it seems likely that St Paul and (perhaps) St James were acquainted with the book of 12 . Wisdom; and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews alludes to the facts related in 2 Ifac- Hebr. xi. 37 . cabees, though he may not have derived his know¬ ledge of them from that book. The alleged refer¬ ences to Ecclesiasticus are extremely doubtful; and there are certainly none to Judith, Tobit, cr any other of the Apocrypha k 1 It may be well to add that this statement is made after a careful examination of the passages alleged in the late thorough discussion of the question in Ger¬ many. The most striking parallels which have been adduced are: Wisd. v. 18 —21 || Eph. vi. 13—17. 46 THE BIBLE IN TEE CHURCH, CHAP. I. A.D. 30—80. Express quotations of doubtful origin. li uke xi. 40-51. But there are four or five apparently distinct references to “passages of Scripture” in the New Testament of which the original sources cannot be certainly traced, and it has been frequently sup¬ posed that these must have been derived from lost Apociyphal books The passages occur in Luke xi. 49, 51; James iv. 5; 1 Cor. ii. 9; Eph. V. 14; John vii. 38. Each of these requires a short notice. The passage in St Luke is introduced by the phrase ‘ Therefore, also said the Wisdom of Gody and the substance of the words wdiich follow is assigned to the Lord Himself in Matt, xxiii. 34. Thus both the mode of reference, which is 'with¬ out a parallel, and the character of the quotation are unfavourable to the belief that it was directly borrowed from any writing. The general tenor of the passage is contained in 2 Chron. xxiv. 19 ; and it is not improbable that those words had been remoulded at an early time, and preserved, like other traditional sayings, till they were Wisd. XV. 7 II Bom. ix. 2i. Wisd. ii. I2 || James v. 6. Wisd. vii. 27 II Hebr. i. 3. Ecclus. v. ii II James i. 19. Ecclus. vii. 10 II James i. 6. Tobit iv. 16 || Matt. vii. 12. Wisd. ii. 16—18 II Matt, xxvii. 43—54. Any one who will examine the character of the coincidences in these passages, and their relation to the language of the Old Testament, will readily feel how slender the evidence is on which the apostles are affirmed to have been acquainted wdth the writings in question. The last parallel is, in many respects, the most re¬ markable, and one which appears to be most certainly casual. 1 As the words A'pocTyflm, Apocryphal are .ambi¬ guous, it may be well to notice that I have limited the terms Apocrypha or hoohs of the Apocrypha to the ec¬ clesiastical books added to our Bibles. Apocryphal hoohs or writings, on the other hand, are those which are admitted to be unauthentic. This distinction will be always observed in the following pages. THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIQ AGE. 47 finally ratified by the Lordh The passage in St chap. i. James is much more difficult. Or do ye think gQ__gQ that the Scripture saith in rain., Doth the Spirit james iy. 5. t/iat dwelleth in us (or rather which He caused to dwell in us) lust to envy? As the words stand it seems most natural to believe that the words Doth the Spirit . enmj? are a quotation, and according to the true reading, a quotation from a Christian writing. The only alternative is to suppose that the verse consists of two dis¬ tinct questions, and that the first has reference only to the general scope of the teaching of Scrip¬ ture. But such a use of ^saitJC is apparently without a parallel; and, on the other hand, there is not the slightest trace of words like the assumed quotation in any other place. The supposition that the reference is to a Christian writing gains some- confirmation from Eph. v. 14, Eph. v. 14 , Wherefore he (or one) saith, Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. For here it seems almost certain that the words quoted are part of a Christian hymn, an opinion supported by Seve- rian early in the fifth century, though some Fa¬ thers referred the quotation to an apocryphal book of Elias Another quotation of St Paul, 1 Cor. ii. 9, As it is written. Eye hath not seen, 1 cor. ii. p, ^ The reference in Matt, ii. 23 which was spoken by the prophets is not wholly dissimilar ; for in this it appears that the general scope of several prophetic passages was summed in a phrase which does not occur in any one of them. Compare John i. 46 with Is. liii, 3, Ps. xxii. 6. ^ The phrase in i Tim. v. 18, The labourer is wor¬ thy of his hire, is apparently only a popular proverb, and not a reference to Luke x. 7. Compare John iv. 37, 2 Pet. ii. 22 (the second proverb). 48 CHAP. I. A.D. 30—80. J chn vii. 38. Quotation of St Jude f om Enoch. TEE BIBLE IN TUE CHURCH, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the ~ heart of man, the things which God hath pre¬ pared for them that love Him, was also referred at a very early time (at the beginning of the third century by Origen, or perhaps at the middle of the second by Hegesippus) to an Apocalypse of Elias. From the direct testimony of several com¬ petent witnesses there can be no doubt but that the passage did occur in an apocryphal writing in this form; but it seems equally certain that the groundwork of the passage is Is. Ixiv. 4, and in this (as in some other places) St Paul seems to have availed himself of a traditional rendering, which may have been widely current. There is, at least, no evidence to show that the Apocalypse of Elias was earlier than his Epistle The words in St John vii. 38, He that lelieveth on Me, as the Scripture hath said (or said), out cf his helhj shall flow rivers of living water, appear to be (like Luke xi. 49—51) a free adaptation of Old Testament imagery (Is. xliv. 3; Zech. xiii. 1), but with this difference, that the adaptation was one suggested by the immediate circumstances of the discourse, and moulded by our Lord to suit the figure which He had used immediately before {drink, out of his 'belly). There yet remains the remarkable quotation of St Jude from Enoch (Jude 14, 15): Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these saying. Behold the Lord cometh.,:.,.against ^ Traces of Jewish tradition are found 2 Tim. iii. 8 (Jannes and Jambres); Jude g (Michael and Satan) ; Hebr. ix. i g (the book), &c.; and the phrases in Matt, vii. 2 {vjith what measure...); Matt. vii. 5 {cast the mote...); Matt. xii. 25 {every kingdom divided...), &c., appear to have been proverbial. THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 49 Him. The words thus quoted exist substantially chap. i. in the Apocryphal book of Enoch, which is still “ :;7 preserved in an Aithiopic translation. From the form in which the quotation occurs, it is impos¬ sible to determine whether St Jude derived it from tradition or from this so-called Apocalypse. Yet as the book of Enoch was widely circulated at a very early time, it seems almost certain that the quotation was made directly from it; and it is needless to inquire from what ulterior source the words wore originally taken. It is enough that St Jude simply adopts the language of his time in speaking of words with which his readers were probably familiar. They may have been handed douui orally from primitive times—many will be inclined to think that it must have been so from St Jude’s use of them—but of this there is not the slightest external evidence. From what has been said it will be evident how little ground there is for believing that our Lord or the Apostles sanctioned the authoritative use of the Apocrypha or Apocryphal books. The books with which they offer certain coincidences were never admitted into the Hebrew Bible, nor, as far as is knoA\T.i, ever made a claim to admission to the Christian Bible till late times when, witli the partial exception of Enoch., they were univer¬ sally rejected. Yet, on the other hand, the pas¬ sages last quoted from St Jude., St James, and Ephesians tend to show that the formulse of the citation of Scripture were not always used with exclusive strictness; and the wide freedom of citation which was admitted is seen in the other references. The general conclusions which follow from the Gcnor-ii review of all the earliest evidence as to the con- d 50 CHAP. I. A.D. 30—80. Tlie early history of the Old Testa¬ ment to be traced in that of tlie N ew. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. tents of the Jewish Bible may be briefly stated. (1) The books 'which are definitely enumerated as part of the collection of Holy Scripture are ex¬ actly the same as those books of the Old Testa¬ ment which are now received; and there is no trace of any explicit difference of opinion on the subject, or of any attempt to extend the collec¬ tion by the addition of later WTitings. (2) The casual testimony of the New Testament harmo¬ nizes completely with' the direct evidence ob¬ tained from other sources, both as to the exist¬ ence of a recognized body of ‘ Scriptures,’ and as to the books contained in it. (3) In Palestine all the books included in the collection—‘ The Law and the Prophets’—are placed on the same foot¬ ing as authoritative sources of divine truth, -with¬ out any distinction of character; and no con¬ clusion can be drawn from the use of the books in the New Testament as to the peculiar pre¬ eminence of any part of them. But, on the other hand, (4) In Egypt, and probably wherever the influence of Palestine was not predominant, the Law was placed in such a position of supremo and complete authority, that the distinction be¬ tween the remaining books of Scripture and the ordinary religious literature of the people was in danger of being disregarded. Such was the Bible at the time when it was destined to receive its final complement. In the next Chapter we shall trace the circumstances under which a New Testament gradually and without conscious purpose grew up by the Will of Providence under the shadow of the Old. The mode of this growth, which can be followed with tolerable exactness, will explain better than any¬ thing else the corresponding process in the for- THE BIBLE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. nmtion of the Jewish Bible. Indeed, in the absence of adequate original evidence, it is only in this way that we can understand how the Old Testament was formed historically; nor is it an essential difference' between the two cases, that the productive energy of the divine teachers was extended in the one case over many centuries w'hile it was limited in the other to a single gene¬ ration h ^ A sketch of the history of the formation of the Hebrew Bible, as distinct from the history of the origin of the separate books, is given in A'pj^endix A. 51 CHAP. I. A.D. 30—80. 4-2 CIIxVPTER II. THE GROWTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Not unto themselves, hut unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you hy them that have preached the Gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent doion from heaven. — i Pet i. 12 . CHAP. II. A.D. 30—80. The critical study of the Apostolic age a source of hope. I F it is always difficult to realize the beginning of any great movement, to picture the exter¬ nal appearance which it must have presented to those among whom it arose, to appreciate with¬ out reference to later experience the judgments which must have been passed upon it, to follow out the partial or conflicting developments ’which it must have received, before it gained its final shape, this difficulty becomes almost overwhelm¬ ing in studying the rise of Christianity. Not only are the conditions of the problem in this case complicated beyond all example, but the subject is necessarily veiled under a halo of religious awe. It seems to be irreverent to attempt to analyse the first forms of that life which animates all Christendom, to separate what has been united by the instinct of centuries, to contemplate as his¬ tory wrought out upon earth, in the midst of mis¬ understanding and conflict and error, that which is now seen most readily in its heavenly power; THE GROWTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 53 yet Christianity not only admits a purely critical chap. ii. inquiry into the outward circumstances under ' which it arose and spread, but even invites it. It was the consolation of St Paul that Christ’s strength is made perfect in weakness. And if on 2 Cor. xU. 9. a closer scrutiny traces of human infirmity can be discovered in that earliest age of the Church, in which the presence of a Divine power is most certainly visible, the result will be not a lessening of the majesty of the past, but a bringing of hope and confidence to the study of other periods, where the darkness of present misconceptions still hides the working of Providence. The temper which isolates the first age does injustice to its abiding power, and takes away a large measure of that instructiveness which we may believe it was designed to preserve for all time. The more free and more truly reverent study of its records finds that they have a vital connexion with our life. The apostles though of the Holy Ghost and of power^ could yet proclaim that they were men of like passions with their Gentile hearers; Acts xiv. is. and conversely as we picture to ourselves their working, we may believe that in spite of divisions and disappointments, the promise of Christ has not yet failed, according to which He is icith Matt, xxviu. Ilis Church always^ even to the end of the icorld. In order to appreciate the Apostolic age in The work of its essential character, it is necessary to dismiss not not only the ideas which are drawn from a col- to write. lected New Testament, but those also, in a great measure, which spring from the several groups of writings of which it is composed. The first work of the Apostles, and that out of which all their other functions grew, was to deliver in living 54 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. CHAP. II. words a personal testimony to the cardinal facts AD 80 80 Gospel—^the Ministry, the Death, and the Eesurrection of our Lord. It was only in the course of time, and under the influence of ex¬ ternal circumstances, that they committed their testimony, or any part of it, to writing-. Their peculiar duty was to preach. That they did in fact perform a mission for all ages in perpetuat¬ ing the tidings which they delivered, was due not to any conscious design which they formed nor to any definite command which they had received, but to that mysterious power which is for men the outward expression of the action of God, Who uses the results of our free agency for the fulfil¬ ment of His designs. Their training Everything in the national and spiritual posi- New Testa- Goii of the Apostlcs was unfavourable to the forma- ment a moral tion of a Written record of Christian history or miiacie. doctrine. The training of the Palestinian Jews was exclusively oral. The Old Testament was an inexhaustible field for study, which admitted no rival and seemed to require no supplement. Even those teachers who, like Gamaliel, were acquaint¬ ed with Greek literature, remained faithful to the ancient tradition, which forbade them to commit anything to writing. And this discipline under which St Paul was schooled, must have been less incompatible with literary effort than the rude life of Galilee. As soon as the Apostles are seen in their historical relations, the supernatural energy with which they were inspired is revealed beyond all cavil. That the New Testament should have been written by Jews—and St Luke is the only Gentile, if, indeed, he was a Gentile, among the apostolic writers—is a moral miracle of over¬ whelming dignity, if only account be taken of the THE GEOV^^TU OF THE lsE^Y TESTAMENT. 55 traditions and prejudices among which they, like chap. ii. all their countrymen, were born and reared. ~ ^ ~ —— The general disinclination of Jews for literary The Apostles work must have been greatly increased in the looked for- case of the‘Apostles by the spiritual position which they occujiicd. For them the Idngdom of future. God was already at hand in the fulness of its ' completed triumph. The close of the old dispen¬ sation appeared to coincide with the final consum¬ mation of the new. The slow development of countless ages was brought together in their per¬ spective in the one awful scene of the revelation of the Lord. The time seemed to be imminent when they which were alive and remained shotdd iThess.iv.17. he caught up to meet Him. The future to which they looked forward was one in which there would be no need for written monuments of the first coming of Christ, for it was to be enlightened by Rev. xxi. 23. the abiding glory of the Saviour. But while the Apostles, like the prophets in Their insight former times, failed to see the lull meaning of ^ai, one sign their own work, the same circumstances which hid of their inspi- from them the history of following generations enabled them to pierce through all that is seen and temporal to the spiritual and eternal. ‘ Men wrote history, as it had never been written, whose present seemed to have no natural sequel; and unfolded doctrine with far-seeing wisdom, while they looked eagerly for that divine presence in which all partial knowledge should be done away.*' They erred not in their spiritual apprehension of things, but as to the temporal dress in which they arrayed them. The ‘ Lord came ’ and His ‘ king- dom’ w^as established, yet not so as to dispense with the long labour of men in realizing its bless¬ ings. Thus it is that the writings of the Apostles THE BIBLE IN HIE CIIURCn, 53 CHAP. II. A.D. 30—80. The teaching of the Apos¬ tles oral not written,. Acts i 21, 22, Gal. i. 12, IG. Acts vi. 4. 1 Cor. i. 17. Acts iv. 20. 1 John i. 1. F.oni. X. 14. The need of a written record feit later. and Evangelists are instinct with inexhaustible lessons. If we look at them on their historical side it is this peculiarity of their origin which is the condition of their divine authority. They reach forward to the end of the dispensation in wdiich we are living. Like Christianity itself they belong to no one ago. Their authors wrote in the immediate contemplation of that glorious triumph of Christ in wdiich it culminates. ‘Heaven lay about them,’ and as that light faded from the world, a Christian literature succeeded to a New Testament. The records which have been preserved of the working of the Apostles fully confirm the view which has been given of their office. They first witnessed by oral teaching to the facts of the Life of Christ, and then proclaimed the truths which flowed from them. The qualification for the Apostolate was to have known Christ person¬ ally; and St Paul himself claimed this direct and personal knowledge. The common work of the twelve was x>rayer and the ministry of the word; and St Paul writes that Christ sent him ...to joreach the Gospel. The message with which they were charged was to be enforced by the living voice: they coidd not hut speak the things ichich they had seen and heard. The Gospel was what the witnesses of Christ had seen...and looked upon and...handled of the icord of life. The question which expressed best the spirit in Avhich they vrent forth was how shall men hear without a preacher ? As yet it was impossible that they could feel that the brightness of the image of Christ could fade away from the minds of men, or the memory of His words be effaced. The repeated experience of many ages has even yet hardly suf- THE GROWTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Oi feed to show that a permanent record of Ilis chap. ii. words and deeds, open to all, must coexist with ^ j, 30-8O ~ the living body of the Church, if that is to con¬ tinue in pure and healthy vigour. In the first glow of Christian love it might seem that such a power needed nothing from without to sus¬ tain and temper it. That which is still a life can rarely be apprehended as a history or a doc¬ trine. ' But while the work of the Apostles lay Their omi chiefly in preaching, this was substantially histo- rical. Ihe narrative of the Acts contains several historical, examples of the way in which the Gospel mes¬ sage was delivered. Two may be taken to repre¬ sent the general character of aU. St Peter before Acts .v. 37-hs. Cornelius, and St Paul in the synagogue at An- tioch, base their teaching on the facts of the Sa¬ viour’s life. Both briefly sketch the outlines of Ilis ministry from the Baptism of John to the Resurrection; and the discourse of St Peter, which was the immediate preparation for Bap¬ tism, is, as it were, a brief commentary on the events which are included in the Apostles’ Creed, Evervwhere one fact—the Resurrection—was the %> starting-point of the Apostolic teaching. By all alike and in every place this was set forth as the sjiring of all faith. In Palestine, in Asia Minor, in Greece, in Italy, before popular assemblies, in the council and in the synagogue, the same wit¬ ness was delivered. The Gospel claimed to be an announcement of facts, and in the first generation it triumphed in virtue of its claim. One of the first effects of this oral historical The forma¬ tcaching of the Apostles must have been the separation of a cycle of facts which formed the centre of their message. Out of the infinite mul- 58 CHAP. II. A.D. 30—80. Jolm xxi. 25. Mark vi. 31, Traces of a historic tra¬ dition in the Epistles. 1 cor, .\i. 23 ; XV. 3 . TEE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. titude of those things which Jesus did and suf¬ fered, a few only could be preserved for the in¬ struction of the Church: how few, perhaps we can hardly realize, without reckoning up what a small number of days contribute all the incidents of the Gospels, and how little remains even in the record of those to bear witness to the labours which left no leisure so much as to eat. Thus the selection of representative facts from the history of the Lord was one of the first steps towards the establishment and instruction of a Christian soci¬ ety. Apart from all considerations of immediate Divine guidance, it is obvious that the experience which the Apostles gained in their preaching would define the general character of the facts suited to the fulfilment of their work, and the limits within which they ought to be confined. Thus gradually an oral Gospel would be con¬ structed, varying slightly in its contents from time to time, but fashioned according to the same general model. By constant repetition, especially in the instruction for Baptism, the form of each constituent narrative would gain a certain consistency; and at the same time the prominence given to particular acts and discourses of the Lord, would tend to destroy the recollection of those other incidents in His Life, which were not allow¬ ed by Divine Providence to be included in the Evangelic cycle. There are several traces in the Epistles of the existence of this Evangelic tradition, which con¬ stitutes the first stage in the composition of our Gospels. Thus St Paul speaks of ^delivering' to others what he had himself ’’received' as to the details of the Last Supper, the Passion and the Besurrection. St Luke, again, speaks of the ac- TUE GROWTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. count of the Lord’s Life which they delivered which from the heginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. And in close connexion with these distinct traces of a historical tradition, must be taken those other passages which speak more generally of the deposit committed to the Evangelist, or of the revealed mystery of godli¬ ness., which is described in words that seem to reflect the outlines of a primitive Creed. While the Gospel thus gradually assumed a definite shape in the oral teaching of the Apostles, many, as it seems from St Luke’s words, endea¬ voured to commit it to writing; and some, per¬ haps, formed collections of the words of the Lord, others of His acts, others of the events of the Passion. In doing this they gave a new form to that which was the common inheritance of Chris¬ tians (Luke i. 2 ... as they delivered them unto us)\ but there is nothing to show that they attempted either to enlarge or to modify the contents of the oral Gospel. They designed to do what was after¬ wards done under Apostolic sanction. As long as the twelve were still at Jerusalem, they were in themselves abiding witnesses to the facts which they announced; and, if we may believe the ac¬ cordant traditions of the early Church, it was not till they were scattered and their work of preach¬ ing well nigh finished, that the first authoritative record of the Gospel was composed. Thus St Mark is said to have written down the substance of St Peter’s public preaching. “St Luke,” in like manner, “committed to a book the Gospel which Paul used to proclaim and, though this rests upon a later authority, St Matthew, when he was about to go to a fresh field of labour, left his Gospel to supply the place of his oral teaching in 69 CHAP. II. A.D. 30—80. Luke i. 2. 1 Tim. vi. 20. 2 Tim. i. 12, ll: iv. 5. 1 Tim. iii. 16. The oral Gospel com¬ mitted to writing. CO CHAP. II. A.i>. 30-80. John XX. 30, 31. Comp. Luke i. 1-4. The origin of Epistles. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. Palestine. The Gospel of St John belongs to a yet later period, and is wholly separated from the cycle of oral narratives. It is essentially a per¬ sonal witness of the one beloved disciple, and not a reflection of the common public witness of the twelve. And, unlike the others, this Gospel was composed in its present form vith a definite pur¬ pose, and without any direct reference to what was already known: these (signs) are written that ye anight believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name. The extension of the work of the Apostles gave rise to another form of composition, which probably contributed the first written elements of the Christian Scriptures. The founders of scat¬ tered Churches had need to counsel or reprove or instruct those whom they had admitted to the faith. Such was the origin of most of the Epistles of St Paul. Others again felt drawn by peculiar tics towards large societies of men on whom they wished to enforce special aspects of truth, as St Paul in writing to the Romans, St John in the Apocalypse, and the author of the Epistle to the Ilebreivs; and with a more general scope St James, St Peter and St Jude. As the Churches grew, some directions Avere needed for their ma¬ nagement, and thus the Pastoral Epistles Avere Avritten. At a still later time St John, looking back over a Avhole generation of believers, could address to his ‘children’ the earliest type of a Christian pastoral (1 John). And besides all these, there must have been need of much indivi¬ dual communication betAveen Christians, of Avhich specimens yet remain in 2, 3 John, and the Epis¬ tle to Philemon. THE GROV^TIl OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Gl All this took place in the natural way of his- chap. ir. tory. The Apostles when they speak claim to ^ d so-so” speak with Divine authority, but they nowhere no combined profess to give in writing a system of Christian design in the doctrine. Gospels and Epistles, with the excep- of the^dfffer- tion, perhaps, of the writings of St John, were ent books, called out by special circumstances. There is no trace of any designed connexion between the separate books, except in the case of the Gospel of St Luke and the Acts, still less of any outward unity or completeness in the entire collection. On the contrary, it is not unlikely that some epistles of St Paul have been lost; and though in point of fact the books which remain do combine to form a perfect whole, yet this completeness is due, not to any conscious co-operation of their authors, but to the Will of Him by whose power they wrote and wrought. Indeed it appears from what has been already The old Tes- said that the Old Testament was the Bible of the fe™to bf a' Apostolie Church. In embracing Christianity, complete the Jewish convert found the key to the myste- rious words of the Prophets. What was obscure before was now flooded with a new light. It was seen that all the prophets from Samuel and Acts ill. 21 , 24 . those that follow after, as many as have spoken, foretold the fortunes of Christ and His Church. The old Scriptures were felt to be able to make 2 Tim. iii. 15 . men wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. There was no sense of incom¬ pleteness in their reeord, no desire for any per¬ manent supplement to their contents, no purpose of composing any new Law to interpret the old. For the Gentiles, on the other hand, the simple TheGentiio facts of the Apostolic message were sufficient, ofa The tidings of the Resurrection was for them a G2 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A.u. 30-80. CHAP. ii. complete Gospel. Yet silently and in distant places the IS’evv Testament Avas written, so that when the want of it was first felt, the Jcav might read there in unfading characters the fulfilment of the earlier dispensation, and the Gentile be led to trace back through the ancient Scriptures hoAv by the discipline of ages that Church was prepared, into the fulness of Avhich he was admitted. Antagonism This fundamental contrast of feeling between GentiTeliuhe Gcntilc, whicli excrcised a considerable Apostolic age. influence on the collection of the Christian Scrip¬ tures, was manifested in a yet more striking dif¬ ference of teaching. Difference soon degenerated into antagonism, and the Apostolic Avritings re¬ veal the speedy development of the great forms of heresy, AA^hich in various shapes have ever con¬ tinued to disturb the Church. Even Avithin the Church the fulness of truth was only slowly real¬ ized ; and the earliest heresy Avas simply the per¬ verse and obstinate retention of that Avhich had once been the common belief, after that a wider- vieAV had been sanctioned by Divine authority. Thus in its primitive form the Apostolic Church was simply a congregation of Jews, who added to the observance of the LaAV a belief in Jesus as Actsiii. 21 . the Messiah, with the immediate hope of a restU tution of all things. In this stage there Avas no idea of the abrogation of the LaAV before the Se¬ cond Coming of Christ. The Hellenist Stephen Acts Vi. 13,14. first proclaimed the change of the customs which Moses delivered, and the storm which followed on his teaching sufficiently shoAvs the novelty of its form. AfterAA’ards, Avheii a mightier Stephen was already prepared in the person of ‘Saul the persecutor,’ the full privileges of the Church were Acts X. xi. extended to ‘devout’ Gentiles, of whom Cornelius THE GROWTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 63 was the type, yet not without misgivings and op¬ position from those that were of the circumcision. The same opposition was repeated with greater violence, when, through the preaching of St Paul, God had opened the door of faith unto the Gen¬ tiles. Cornelius rendered at least a partial hom¬ age to the Law, and a Divine sign testified to his acceptance, but the work of St Paul was based on the broad principle of the openness of the Gospel to all alike. Again the law of progress was affirm¬ ed, and freedom was assured to the heathen con¬ verts. Ye-t another step remained. The Jews hitherto had held to their Law by common con^ sent. Jerusalem was still the seat of the twelve : the Temple was their habitual place of worship; the national Festivals were still hallowed by their observance. St Paul conformed in practice to the customs of his countrymen, but after a little experience in his Divine work, he declared that the keeping of the Ceremonial Law was a matter of indifference even to Jewish converts. This was the last struggle, and the Epistle to the Galatians bears witness to the fierceness with which it was contested. Perhaps it may be said that the issue would have been doubtful but for the fall of Jeru¬ salem and the abolition of the Temple service, which ratified by an awful judgment the perfect liberty of the Christian Church. Till this consummation, however, two great par¬ ties of Christians were necessarily opposed to one another within the Church, those who observed the Law and those who neglected it. The opposition of the leaders was in reality an alliance based upon the recognition of complementary work; but among their followers the observance of the Law dege¬ nerated into Judaism, and the rejection of it into CHAP. II. A.D. 30-80. Acts xiv. 27. Acts XV. This antago¬ nism reflected in the New Testament, both in the Epistles, and Gal. ii. 7« C 4 CHAP. II. A.D. 30—SO. tlie Gospels. THE BIBLE IN THE CHU ECU. a denial of its Divine institution and significance. The Judaizers were inclined to dwell exclusively on the teaching of the Lord as the Fulfiller of the Old Testament, the disciples of St Paul to rest absolutely in the apprehension of the facts of the Lord’s life. Thus each party had to witness to a true principle against the exaggeration of its correlative, and the New Testament contains me¬ morials of their contrasted teaching. On the one hand, the Epistle of St James, who was recognized as a martyr even by many among the Jews, speaks with the voice of the ancient Prophets, denounc¬ ing common vices and enforcing active virtues. The work of Christ almost disappears from it, and every part of it is quickened with the spirit of the Law. In the Epistles of St Paul, on the other hand, all action is regarded as springing out of the freedom of Faith; and in Epistle to the Hebrews the same principle is extended to the interpretation of the Law and History of Israel. Between the two come the Epistles of St Peter, combining something of the character of both, as the great Apostle himself was chosen to found the Jewish and Gentile Churches. Corresponding dif¬ ferences can be traced in the first three Gospels, which are all moulded on a common outline. St Matthew, with his prophetic references, and sym¬ metrical discourses, and shadowings of regal dig¬ nity, has ever been felt to draw, as it were, a Judaic picture of Christ’s life. St Luke again, the companion of St Paul, by parables, and scat¬ tered traits of patient love and mercy, has given that image of our Lord which seems to harmonize most exactly with the teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles. And it cannot be merely fanciful to connect the vivid portraiture with which St Mark THE GRO^VTII OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 65 presents the acts of Christ with the spirit of St chap. it. Peter. Such differences occur naturally in sepa- rate records of any great events, for they lie deep in the mental characteristics of men; but that which makes their presence in the Gospels full of instruction is, that each form finds its represen¬ tation in a particular treatment of common ma¬ terials, and that the Gospels are connected in this way with distinctive types of Apostolic doctrine and critical phases of Apostolic history. The destruction of Jerusalem, which decided Thewrtiin.'js for ever the earliest controversy in the Church, brought another question to a head. If the Gospel had vindicated its essential freedom from Judaism, what points of connexion could it show with the wider aspirations of humanity? The ansAver to this inquiry came from one of the first Apostles, who in this sense had fulfilled the spiritual mean¬ ing of His Lord’s words, and ‘ tarried till He came.’ 22 . St John, without the appearance of any conscious purpose, beyond that most general one which he describes, shows how the spiritual teaching of St John xx. si. Paul had its foundation in the words of the Lord ; how from the first a preparation had been made for the gradual establishment of a universal Church; liOAV, finally, throughout all time the Word, Who John i. 3 - 11 . at last was made jlesli, had been present in the world which He had created as the light of men. The writings of St John complete the cycle of the Apostolic Scriptures, and contain the fullest nTw Testa- revelation which has been given of those highest forms of Truth in which the differences of the authority, early Church are resolved. Yet it is evident that the understanding of St John depends in a great measure upon the recognition of previous differ¬ ences. And at the same time each part of the 5 GG THE BIBLE IN THE CUURCU. CHAP. II. New Testament gains immeasurably in solemn A.D. 30-80. when it is regarded in its true light as the monument of an epoch in the growth of the Church. In this aspect the wide range over which the Apostolic writings extend as to their authors, their subjects, their dates, gives a historic gran¬ deur to their sum, of which ail sense is lost when the circumstances of their origin are disregarded. He only who watches how each writing was called forth by some passing need, how it was welcomed and preserved by some section of the Church, how it was related to other manifestations of the one infinite Truth,—who marks the sovereign authority which is everywhere assigned to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and the assumed completeness of their teaching which underlies the use which is made of them,—who recognizes the complete absence of design in the relations of the several books, the utter unconsciousness of a common purpose in their writers, the directness with which they seem to be addressed to present wants, can truly feel the marvel of their unity, which is the outward pledge of their divine power, or fully understand how the New Testament is the historical symbol of the Catholic Church. How it became so will form the subject of the next Chapter. CHAPTER III. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS, ... All the hody hy joints and hands having nounshment ministered, and Tcnit together, increaseth with the increase of God. —Col, ii. 19. AT the close of the apostolic age the external jjj prospects of the Christian Church were per- —^^ haps as much overcast by danger and discourage- ment as at any later time. The writings of St ^p^J^oniie Paul are full of anxious forebodings for the future. Even in one of his earliest epistles the falling Age. away was put forward as one of the necessary 2 Thess. ii. 3. conditions of the manifestation of Christ to which he was eagerly looking forward. At a subsequent time he noticed the fulfilment of his sad prophecy at Miletus, when he told Timothy that all they which are in Asia were turned atcay from mm. The same dark traits appear in the picture which St John draws of the seven churches in the Apocalypse. Of these some had left their first love, and were in danger of speedy and fatal judg¬ ment. So-called Apostles were active among them which were indeed liars; and others there were Apoc. u. 2 . of the synagogue of Satan which said they were Apoc. iii. 9 . Jews, and were not; and others which held the Apoc. u. 15 . doctrine of the Nicolaitanes. Thus the words of 5—2 GS CHAP. TTT. A.D. 80—120. Speculation then quick¬ ened into marvellous fertility. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. the Lord received their accomplishment, in which lie spake of the false prophets who should arise before His coming to judgment on Jerusalem, and of the power which they should exercise upon those who had followed Him. Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable in tlic history of Christianity than the rapidity Mith which it passed through the most varied develop¬ ments, In a single generation the germs of the new life w^ere embodied in every variety of form ; and from the same vivifying source men quickened for themselves shapes of partial truth or prevailing error. The intellectual advance wdiich was made in the apprehension of the w^ork of Christianity— to regard the subject in no other light—during the course of the apostolic preaching was as mar¬ vellous as it is commonly unnoticed. If the dis¬ course of St Peter on the day of Pentecost be compared with the first epistle of St John, it is hard perhaps to realize that the whole interval between them is filled up by the ministry of a single life. And no other fact has been so fruit¬ ful in specious error as the disregard of this ex¬ treme fertility of thought among those to whom the message of the Gospel was first given. It has seemed to many that a longer period than one generation is needed for the growth of the various opinions which are noticed in the New Testament: and the suspicion would have been just if the world had not been then waiting for that w^hich kindled all the hopes, pure or wild, W'hich it cherished. The tidings of the Advent fell upon the ears of men already prepared to in¬ terpret it according to their aspirations ; and in tlie record wdiich has been preserved of its recep¬ tion an outline is drawn for all time of the varied THE APOSTOLIC FATEETx.S. 69 ■working of the Gospel upon the human mind, chap. hi. wiiich was given, according to the prophecy of ^ d 8 O -120 Simeon, that the thoughts of many hearts may Luke ii. 35 . he revealed. It would be impossible to follow out in any The great detail the divisions which thus arose, yet some opinion, brief sketch of them is necessary, both to show how the exaggerations of heresy witness to the manifold teaching of tlie Catholic Church, and also to place in a yet clearer light the fulness of the New Testament, as preserving the essential truths which lie at the base of each typical de¬ velopment of Christianity. Several great lines of difference in the first apprehension of the Gospel have been already noticed. These ended in the formation of distinct parties. The oldest, and for The extreme some time the most powerful section in the apos- tolic Church, was that of Jeics zealous for Acts xxi.'’ 20 . Law.) who still retained their earliest form of Christian belief, though the divine leading guided them to larger views, and thus fell gradually more and more into the position of adversaries to the true faith. Their distinguishing characteristic was Legalism, and as they began by regarding the Lord as a Teacher, so they naturally lost in the course of time those higher views of His Person and Work which were unfolded by St Paul and St John. Under the name of Cerinthians and Ehionites they continued to exist as separate so¬ cieties long after the close of the apostolic age; but their real power ceased with the destruction of the Temple, and they remained isolated and purposeless, like fragments of an earlier system left standing in a new world. Others, starting at first from the same point, clung with a lasting devotion to the ancient Law, mzarmcs. 70 CHAP. III. A.D. 80-120. The mystical school: Gnostics. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. though they did not insist on its observance : such was the Church at Jerusalem, which retained for several generations the succession of Bishops of the circumcision. These occupied an important position in a period of transition. They remained as living witnesses to the divine and permanent significance of the Old Testament, and still con¬ tinued to fulfil their mission when the fall of Je¬ rusalem had finally put an end to the literal ob¬ servance of the Mosaic ritual. Their work was only transitory, but it was of the greatest moment for the complete development of the Church. For while St Paul himself had maintained in essence the principle which they embodied, the example of Marcion, two generations afterwards, shows that those who professed to follow his teaching felt themselves at liberty to cast aside all allegiance to the past. Against this error the JSTazarenes, as these Jewish believers were called, protested. And even when the Catholic Church had definitely accepted the truth to which they bore witness, some of them retained their ancient customs, and combined a faith generally orthodox with the par¬ tial observance of the Jewish ritual. The characteristic of Judaism in Palestine was in one shape or other Legalism, a complete devotion to the letter of the Old Testament, to the form and order of Divine revelation: in Egypt and in parts of Asia Minor it was Mysticism, an attempt to penetrate, as it were, to the very soul of things, and to realize by thought the final truths of which all outward institutions are the veils and symbols. Both tendencies correspond with na¬ tural instincts of man, and claim satisfaction from Christianity. The first, as we have seen, which was by many exaggerated into a heresy, contri- THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 71 buted an important element to the constitution chap. iir. of the Church, and preserved through all the crises \ ^ 80—120 of change a faith unbroken in the coherence of the old and new dispensati6ns. The second came into play somewhat later, but exercised even a more lasting influence upon the fortunes of the Church. The search after knowledge (Gnosis) occupied for nearly two centuries many of the subtlest minds among those who professed to follow Christianity. Heathenism, which probably first excited this form of speculation'among the Jews, continued to mould its later phases. At one time it was connected with physical question¬ ings, at another with strange sorceries, at another with intellectual dreams of creation, but it always centred in the effort to determine the relation of nature to man and to God, to pierce below phe¬ nomena to the mysteries of heing and Ijecoming. The Gnostic passed by insensible gradations into the heathen, just as the Judaizer passed into the Jew. Meanwhile the Church welcomed such ele¬ ments of a true Gnosticism as w^ere given in the doctrine of the Creative, Illuminative Word, as shadow’ed out by St John, and in the typical inter¬ pretations of the Law sanctioned by St Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews. So much lay within the scope of the Church. What was more than tliis w^as no necessary part of her teaching. At first sight it may seem strange that the The extreme logical development of Christian truth which was drawn out by St Paul w^as not made the founda- Mardonites. tion of any sect in the Apostolic age. Some in¬ deed called themselves by his name during his life-time, but the first great body who professed to follow his peculiar teaching (the Alarcionites) was not founded till seventy years after his death; THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. ni.} i ^ The truths contained in the partial teaching of sects com¬ bined in Catholic Christianity. The Apostolic Fathers. CHAP. III. and then his characteristic doctrines, as they re- A D 80-120 pi'Gscnted them, vfcre greatly modified by the ad¬ mixture of foreign tenets. Yet, perhaps, it will appear that in the first age St Paul was more likely to act on individuals than on large congre¬ gations. In such a period of society the mass of men had need of a system more external or more contemplative ; and thus it happened that till the full awakening of new races in the xvth and xvith centuries his power was nearly dormant in the Church at large. But though at one time the principle of order and legal observance, at another the principle of mysticism, at another the principle of logical ex¬ position, has been most powerful in the Christian Church, yet from the first all were embraced within it, all are ratified by the New Testament. Some time elapsed before the separate societies, or the separate books, were formally united ; but the catholicity which was realized in combined action, and the complete Bible which was gradu¬ ally built up by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are implicitly recognized in the earliest Christian records of the sub-apostolic age. These scanty remains, which consist only of a few epistles, a vision, and some scattered fragments, occupy a most important position in the history of Chris¬ tianity. Like the Apocrypha of the Old Testa¬ ment they form a connecting link between the literature of inspiration and the literature (so to speak) of art or reason. They belong to an age which was conservative and not creative. Their authors write rather with authority than with argument. They composed not essays or apolo¬ gies, but letters. They were impelled to wTite not by any literary impulse, but by the deep sense THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 73 of their fellowship with believers as members of chap. hi. the one great family of Christ. They were not yet far enough from the first age to appreciate consciously its full majesty, and yet their instinct, if nothing else, taught them to repose absolutely in its lessons. Thus they bear a twofold witness to the Bible, to its contents and to its use. And specially they show that the representative forms of doctrine which are recognized in the New Tes¬ tament—or, in other wmrds, the characteristics of the different groups of books of which it is made up—’were simultaneously present in the Church from the first; and that, even if the Apostolic books w^ere not absolutely gathered into a collec¬ tion, parallel to the Old Testament, in the gene¬ ration which followed the death of their authors, they were still thus early looked upon as invested with a special authority. They prove that the teaching of every part of the Bible was active in shaping the opinions of Christians, and that the principles on wdiich the New Testament was formed were already acknowledged and in operation. Three figures stand out with marked pre-emi- The range of nence in the sub-apostolic age, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycaep of Smyrna. Barnabas and Hermas (wlio really belongs to a later period) are little more than names known by the writings to which they are attached. The work of Papias falls within the verge of the next generation. It may be a mere coincidence, yet it is worthy of notice, that these three represent three provinces of the Church, and stand in connexion with the received centres of the Apostolic labours of St Peter, St Paul and St John. The exact historic position of Ignatius and Polycarp can be determined with greater certainty, but Clement 74 CHAP. III. A.D. 80-120. 1. Climent of Rome. His alleged writings. His Epistle to the Corinthians. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. has been invested by tradition with a shadowy dignity which is without parallel in the annals of the Ante-Nicene Church. It seems tolerably cer¬ tain that he was a disciple of St Peter and that he presided over the Roman Church, yet in what order of succession must remain doubtful. At a very early time he was taken as a chief character in a Christian romance, and thus his real personal history was lost in the part which he was made to play as the representative of the spirit of order and organization among his contemporaries. But though his character has been painted by imagi¬ nation, yet it is evident that the traits which the picture presents were not arbitrarily chosen. There can be little doubt that he occupied a position corresponding to that of St Peter in the first age. He was the acknowledged mediator between the Judaizing and Gentile believers and the first legislator of the Christian society. The writings which bear the name of Clement are numerous and extensive, including the earliest law-books of the Church (the Apostolical Canons and Constitutions)., and the earliest romance (the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions)^ which under the form of a personal history contains strange depths of thought and wisdom; and if often wild and unsound, yet reveals the existence of a power of speculation in the primitive Church not inferior to that of any later time. Two Greek epistles attributed to him are included in the list of the books of the Bible in the Alexandrian MS. The latter of these is a fragment and obviously spurious. The former is undoubtedly genuine. This Epistle to the Corinthians, written in the name of the Church of Rome, both by its style, its doctrine and its theory of Church govern- THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 7d ment, confirms the view Avhich has been given of citap. hi. the relation of Clement to the Apostles. It was gc— ho' probably written at the close of the first century {c. A.D. 95 ), and it shows in each respect a definite advance, a fusion of elements formerly contrasted, which harmonizes completely with the idea of a considerable interval of silent growth between it and the Apostolic writings. Two or three ex- Connexion amples must suffice. In speaking of justification, Clement uses the same examples as were used by jaails. St James and St Paul, and combines the com¬ plementary truths which they drew from tliem. ‘ Through faith and hospitality a son was given to c. x. Abraham in old age, and by obedience he offered him a sacrifice to God.’ ‘ Through faith and hos- c. xn. pitality Rahab was saved.’ ‘ We are not justified,’ c. xxxn. he says, ‘by ourselves...nor by works which we have wrought in holiness of heart,’ but by our faith, by which Almighty God justified all from the beginning of the world;’ and then he adds shortly afterwards, in the spirit of St James, ‘ Let c. xxxm. us then work from our whole heart the work of righteousness.’ Again, it is impossible not to feel the mind of St John in such passages as these. ‘ The blood of ^ Christ gained for the whole world the offer of the grace of repentance.’ ‘ Through Him we look steadfastly on the heights of heaven: tlirough Him we view as in a glass His spotless and most excellent visage: through Plim the eyes of our heart are opened: through Him our dull and darkened understanding—like a flower in a sun¬ less cavern (such is the image)—is quickened with new vigour on turning to Plis marvellous light.’ Once more: the language of the Epistle to the 76 CHAP. III. A.D. 80-120. The Epistle to the Hebrews. Ileb. i. 3, i. 2. Ignatius. His Epistles. THE BIBLE IN THE CIIVRCIL Ilebre'ws is so constantly repeated by Clement that an old tradition ascribed to him the author¬ ship of it. In immediate connexion -with the pas¬ sage last quoted he proceeds: ‘ Through Him our Lord wished us to taste of immortal knowledge, Who heing the, hrightness of His majesty is so much greater than angels.^ as He hath obtained by inheritance a more excellent name^ Thus in the narrow compass of a single letter we find the clearest traces of the certain presence of each of the typical forms of Apostolic doctrine which are contained in the New Testament. There is no effort, no design: Clement simply shows that the Church in which he lived welcomed the teaching, not of one Apostle only, nor of one group of books, but of all; he shows that if the Catholic Church was not yet universal in range, it was from the first universal in its grasp of truth. The Epistles of Ignatius carry us forward to a still later epoch in the history of the Church. They were written on his way to martyrdom, A.i). 107 (or, according to some, a.d. 116), and contain the parting charge of one who felt that he was called away from his flock at a momen¬ tous crisis, when the government of bishops was not yet firmly established in the place of that of Apostles, and heresies within and persecutions without endangered the unity of the weakened Church. The energy of his language is to be explained by the peculiarity of his position ; and it is hard to say how a Christian bishop could have written otherwise who ‘ believed that epis¬ copacy was the bond of unity, and unity the safety of the Church.’ The Epistles, as is well known, exist in three distinct forms, a longer Greek recension, a shorter THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. Greek recension, and a still shorter Syriac recen¬ sion. The first is undoubtedly interpolated ; and it seems scarcely less clear that the last is epi¬ tomized. The shorter Greek reeension forms a complete and harmonious whole, bound closely together by unity of thought and language; and the light which has been thrown lately on the history of early heresies goes far to explain some difficulties which had been urged as fatal to its authenticity. But in fact if the letters arc re¬ duced within the narrowest limits which can bo justified by historical criticism, the character of Ignatius stands out with vivid individuality. And the traits which it presents are in part at least not those which would have been feigned by a WTiter of a later age. Zeal against schism might be simulated at any time (though perhaps hardly with the speciality which it has in the Ignatian letters), but not so the denunciation of Judaism and of the errors of the Docetse, who supposed that the Lord as manifested to men w^as a mere phantom. ‘ When Christ came to Peter and those wuth him,’ so Ignatius writes to the Church at Smvrna, ‘ He said to them : “ Take hold, handle Mo and see, that I am not an in¬ corporeal spirit.” And straightway they touched Him and believed, being convinced by His Flesh and by His Spirit...If these things were done in appearance by our Lord, I too am bound in ap¬ pearance. Yea, why have I delivered myself to death, to fire, to the sword, to wild beasts ? But he that is near the sword is near God.’...In such words there seems to be a reality and vividness which attests their authenticity. The characteristic feature of the letters of Ignatius is the prominence which is there given V i CHAP. III. A.D. 80—120. Thuir charac¬ teristics. The idea of the Church. 78 CHAP. III. A.D. 80-120. ad Smi/r. VIII. adMagn. iii. ad Magti. vi. Eph. V. 23 n. Connexion with S. John. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. to a definite ecclesiastical order. In them first ‘the Catholic Church’ is distinctly drawn, ac¬ cording to the image of St Paul, as the body of Christ. In this body the bishop is the visible representative of Christ, the spiritual Head. He is the centre of unity in eacli congregation as the Father Himself is “Bishop of all.” Or briefly, as the idea is expressed in the most startling passage, the Bishop presides in the congregation ‘ as representative of God, and the presbyters as representatives of the Apostolic Council.’ But while Ignatius defines and systematizes very much that is left open in the New Testament, yet the polity which he constructs is based upon a logical development of the cardinal passage of St Paul. And it is in this that the historical importance of his writings chiefly lies. They pre¬ sent the last stage of an order which is seen to be gradually evolved in the Pastoral Epistles and the Epistle of Clement. The principles were given by the Apostles. The combination and practical adaptation of them to the wants of the Christian society was left to their successors. And when the process of construction can be traced in various stages following one another harmoniously, as far as they can be seen in the scanty records of the early Church, up to the fundamental teaching of apostolic writings, it follows as a certain conclusion that these writings contain what was accepted by Christians as the rule of action from the first. Though the Pauline type of thought is most predominant in the letters of Ignatius, owing to the character of the subjects with which he deals, there are abundant traces in them of the influence of St John. ‘Faith,’ he says, ‘is the beginning, THE apostolic FATHERS. 79 and love the end of life.’ ‘ Faith is our guide up- chap. hi. ward, but love is the road that leads to God.’ 80-120 ‘Jesus Christ the Son of God is the Eternal Word by whom God manifested Himself to men,’ ‘ the ad Epfi. ix. Door by w hich we come to the Father.’ The true Magn. meat of the Christian is ‘the bread of God, the adPA/tod.ix. bread of heaven, the bread of life, which is the odRom.yn. flesh of Jesus Christ,’ and his drink is ‘Christ’s blood, which is love incorruptible.’ Such phrases as these, and they do not stand alone, could not have been used unless it had been assumed that those for whom they were written were familiar with the teaching of the fourth Gospel h The short Epistle of Polycarp contains far 3- poltcarf. more clear references to the writings of the New Testament than any other work of the age. It w'as written shortly after the martyrdom of Igna- tins, and in part reflects the image of the same dangers against which Ignatius contended. In one passage Polycarp seems even to have caught the language of his predecessor, where he says that Christians ‘are to be subject to the priests and deacons, as to God and Christ.’ The phrase is important, as show’ing the urgency of the feel¬ ing by which it must have been dictated; and it is further characteristic of the position which Poly¬ carp occupied that he is called in the contempo¬ rary account of his martyrdom {c. a.d. 167) ‘bishop of the Catholic Church at SmyrnaV The title ^ The account of the Martyrdom of Ignatius seems to be mainly authentic. It contains coincidences of language with Romans, Corinthians (i, 2 ), Galatians, and i Timothy. The parallelisms with the .4 cte (chapp. iii, iv) are yet more remarkable, as references to that book are comparatively rare in early times. ^ It is in the letter of Ignatius to this church that the term first occurs. 80 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. CHAP. III. had thus become a technical one in the course of A D 80-1 *>0 ^ century; and the description which is given Poiyc. Mart, of Polycarp praying ‘ for the churclies through- out the world/ shows in what way he practically realized some of the lessons which it conveys. This last trait conveys a true impression of the martyr. His soul seems centred in the practical work of faith. He speaks generally with the tone of St Peter, as enforcing the idea of the Christian Law, so that the similarity of his epistle to the II. E. IV. 14 . first Epistle of St Peter was noticed by Eusebius, But there is nothing exclusive in his teaching. His references to St Paul, and especially to the Pastoral Epistles, are clear and frequent. St John has left the slightest impress upon his writing, though one passage in his Letter is obviously bor- c, vu. rowed from St John's first Epistle. The fact is not w’ithout interest, for it was with this Apostle that he was directly connected. He heard St John, and was himself heard by Irenceus. His testimony connects two ages. His life and work extend over the whole period of the consolidation of the Church. In his extreme old age he taught Iren. IV. 3 , 4, ‘that whicli he had learned from the Apostles, and which continued to be the tradition of the Church.’ 4 . Barnabas. The letter of Barnabas, which is found toge¬ ther with The Shepherd at the close of the New Testament in the Sinaitic MS. of the Bible, is very different in character from the letters which have been hitherto noticed. It Avas probably written at the beginning of the second century; and is addressed generally to Christians (‘sons and daughters’), without any apparent historical occasion. In this latter respect, no less than in its whole scope, it occupies the same position THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. SI among tlie writings of the Apostolic Fathers as chap. hi. the Epistle to the Hebreics among the writings of “ ETTCT the New Testament. The resemblance between tlie two Epistles as to object, principles, and ma¬ terials, is most striking; and the contrast of me¬ thod and effect not less complete. In the Epistle to the Hebrews there is a reserve in dealing witli typical interpretation, a confinement to broad and fruitful illustrations of its use, an instinctive sense of the proportion of one part of the dispen¬ sation of God to another, a recognition of the growth, so to speak, of the Divine plan as mani¬ fested among men ; but in the Epistle of Barna¬ bas it is far otherwise. The author insists on the value of the lessons which he teaches for all; he descends to the minutest details with reckless confidence ; he misrepresents the very purpose of the Law as a discipline; ‘he makes Judaism a mere riddle of which Christianity is the answer.’ The other writings of the sub-Apostolic age illus¬ trate the history of the New Testament, by show¬ ing in what way the teaching of its constituent parts contains the germ and rule of the varied thought of the generation which followed their composition. The Epistle of Barnabas does more. It exhibits in a crucial example (to use Bacon’s expressive phrase) the unspeakable difference be¬ tween the ordinary products of early Christian labour and piety and those writings of the first age which the experience of a later time has welcomed as containing the written rule of Christendom. Thus far it has been shown that the Apostolic The relation teaching, as preserved in the Epistles of the N ew Jc Testament, was the basis of the teaching of the the Gospeis. next generation. Every characteristic form of doctrine which is found in them reappears in the 6 82 CHAP. III. A.D. 80-120. Jolinxxi 25. TEE BIBLE IN TEE CEURCE. scanty records of the following age, and that with¬ out the addition of any new principle. But nothing has been said yet of the relation of our Gospels to the waitings of the Apostolic Fathers. Tlie occurrence of a key-word, or marked phrase, from one of the Epistles, in a later writer, is suffix cieiit to shoAv that he was acquainted with the source in which it first occurs, or at least that the phrase must be referred to that definite origin. But it is not so in the case of the Gospels. Silent coincidences in facts and words with the Evan¬ gelic texts in themselves prove nothing as to the use of the Gospels by those in whose writings they occur. The Gospels were, as has been seen, based on an oral tradition, and that tradition still lived after it had been reduced to a permanent shape. Those who had heard the voice of Apostles neces¬ sarily cherished the memory of the spoken word more than the letter of the record. There is always something more direct and personal in the fruits of immediate intercourse than in the remote relationship of books. This sentiment was power¬ ful, as we shall see, even in the next generation, and with those who had seen the Apostles it must have been paramount. It can then create no surprise if the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers is to the substance and not to the authenticity of the Gospels. With the single exception of Bar¬ nabas, no one of them quotes any words contained in our Gospels as ‘written.’ But though their testimony is thus circumscribed, it establishes an important fact. Even in the first generation after the Apostles the contents of the Gospel were fixed within their present limits. Some mysterious working of Providence suppressed the countless multitude of things ichich Jesus did of which the THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 83 Apostles could have told. Two sayings of our chap. iir. Lord are preserved in the letters of Barnabas ^ d 80-120^ and Ignatius, which are not contained in the Gospels, and may possibly be independent and original; but otherwise the great outlines of His life and teaching which can be drawn from the Apostolic Fathers, exactly coincide with those preserved in the first three Gospels. The Incar¬ nation, the Baptism, the Passion, the Resurrec¬ tion, the Ascension—the historic substance of the ancient creeds—form the sure and broad ground of the hope of the early Christians. These facts were from the first the ‘glad tidings’ which were proclaimed without ceasing to the world. Yet ill this glorious circle a difference may be ob¬ served. Other events are noticed more rarelv, by one writer or another, but the Resurrection (as in the New Testament) is the common theme of all. In the direct citation of Scripture the usage Their cita- of the Apostolic Fathers agrees generally 'with that of the Apostles. They continued to look mous. upon the Old Testament as a full and lasting record of the revelation of God. In one remark¬ able particular they carried this belief yet further than it had been carried before. With them the individuality of the several writers falls into the background. They practically regarded the whole ^ Another saying is commonly attributed to our Lord on the authority of the Latin translation of the Letter of Barnabas: Let m resist all iniquity and hold it in hatred. The lately recovered Greek text in the Codex Sinaiticus shows that the words which precede it should be (by the change of three letters in the Latin) ‘as becomes sons of God,’ and not, as it stands at present, ‘ as says the Son of God.’ This example may serve to show with what facility a grave error may arise and be propagated. 6—2 CHAP. III. A.D. 80-120. The range of tlieir quota¬ tions from the Old Testa¬ ment. C. LT. C. XII. 1. C. cc. VI, XIX. C. XII, THE BIBLE IN THE CIIURCn. Book as one Divine utterance; and, with the ex¬ ception of Barnabas, no one of them ever makes a distinct reference by name to any book of the Old Testament. Clement sometimes uses the com¬ mon formula ‘ It is writtenand more frequently ‘God saith,’ or ‘One saith;’ sometimes he intro¬ duces the language of the LXX. into liis text without any mark of quotation. The two quo¬ tations from the Old Testament in Ignatius are introduced simply by ‘It is written.’ In the Greek text of Polycarp there is no mark of quo¬ tation at all; and little confidence can be placed in the Latin Version in which formulae of scriptu¬ ral reference are applied to passages from the Old and New Testaments. Barnabas^ on the other hand, makes several explicit references to passages from the Law, the Psalms and the Pro¬ phets, and it is in him first that a saying of the Lord is quoted as the words of Scripture^. The range of the quotations which they make from the Old Testament is nearly identical with that in the Xew Testament. The Psalms and Isaiah furnish to them also by far the largest number of passages. In addition to the books quoted by the Apostles, Clement makes use of the history of Esther; and Barnabas quotes a verse from Zephaniah. On the other hand, Clement us: s the narrative of Judith in exactly the same man¬ ner as that of Esther; and Barnabas, as might have been expected from an Alexandrine writer, appears to have been familiar with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, and he quotes the Second book of Esdras (4 Ezra) as the work of a prophet. The ^ The Greek text of the Codex Sinaiticus places the reading beyond doubt; c. 4, As it is written, Many are called, but feio are chosen. (Matt, xx. 16.) THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 85 references of Clement to Wisdom and of Poly- chap. hi. carp to Tdbit are very doubtful. a d 8 O -120 Of the New Testament by far the greater Their coind- number of the didactic books were certainly used fences with by them. There are clear traces in their writings Testament, of the Epistles of St Paul to the Romans, Corinth¬ ians (1, 2), Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and to Timothy (1, 2); of the Epistle to the Hebrews; of the Epistles of St James, 1 St Peter, and 1 St John. The allusions to the Epistles of St Paul to the Thessalonians, Colossians, to Titns and Philemon are very uncertain; and there are, I believe, no coincidences of language with the Epistles of St Jude, 2, 3 St John, and 2 St Peter; or with the Apocalypse. The only certain reference to the historical books is that to St Matthew, which has been already quoted from Barnabas. In addition to these passing adaptations of Definiterefer- apostolic language, there are three definite no- tices of Epistles of St Paul on the several occasions Episties. when it was natural to expect them. ‘ Take up c. xlvh. the Epistle of the blessed Paul, the Apostle,’ is the charge of Clement to the Corinthians ; ‘......in truth he spiritually charged you concerning him¬ self and Cephas and Apollos.’ ‘ Those who c. xn. are borne by martyrdom to God,’ Ignatius writes to the Ephesians, ‘pass through your city. YeEph. v. 32 . share the knowledge of mysteries with Paul, the sanctified, the martyred, worthy of all blessing... who in every part of his letter (or in every letter) makes mention of you in Christ Jesus.’ ‘Thee. m. blessed and glorious Paul,’ says Polycarp to the Philippians, ‘wrote letters to you5 into which if ^ Thus it appears that the letters of St Paul were a common possession of the churches. 86 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. CHAP. III. ye look diligently ye will be able to be built up to A D 80-i‘>0 fulness of the faith given to you.’] The Apostolic It caniiot, liowevcr, be denied that the idea of no definite a New Testament consisting of definite books and idea of a equal in authority to the Old, was foreign to the sub-Apostolic age^. Such an idea is necessarily the growth of time. Distance is a necessary condi¬ tion for the right estimate of objects of vast pro¬ portions. If it be true that a prophet is not received in his own country, it is equally true that he is not received in his own age. His full majesty is not seen till his whole work can be contemplated in the history of the times in which he lived. And if the person of the prophet can¬ not be duly appreciated by his contemporaries, still less can his writings. These at most are fragmentary and occasional, and only long expe¬ rience can prove their Divine worth. Yet farther, the New Testament is made up not of the writings of one prophet only, but of many, differing widely both in work and character. Thus the difficulties which beset the recognition of the practical com¬ pleteness of the fragmentary records of one pro¬ phet’s teaching are multiplied tenfold; and it would have been unnatural, opposed, that is, to all that we can learn of the dealings of God with man, that the New Testament should have been stamped from the first with that distinctive cha¬ racter of plenary authority with which it was in¬ vested in after times. immediate successors of the Apostles did b.v^se- not, then, we fully admit, perceive that the written para ting the 1 Polycarp speaks (c. vii.) of those who ^pervert the oracles of the Lord to their own desires but these, as the context shows, were spoken and heard, and not written. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. memoirs of tlie Lord, and the scattered writings of His first disciples, would form a sure and suf¬ ficient source or test of doctrine when the current tradition had grown indistinct or corrupt. Con¬ scious of a life in the whole Christian body, and realizing the present power of its Head, as later ages cannot do, they did not feel that the Apostles were providentially charged to express once for all in their icritings the substance of the Hew Covenant. Trained for the most part in mystic schools, they found a rich depth of meaning in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which is hidden from more critical eyes, and fancied that these alone contained the sum of all Christianity. The position which they held did not command that comprehensive view of the nature and fortunes of the Church by which the true relation of its origi¬ nal records to its subsequent development is sug¬ gested and confirmed. But still they certainly had an indistinct sense that their own work was essentially different from that of their predeces¬ sors. They declined to perpetuate their title, though they may have retained their office. Al¬ ready they began to separate the Apostles from the teachers of their own time, as possessed of an originative power. Without any exact perception of the completeness of the Christian Scriptures, they began to draw a line between them and their own WTitings. As if by some providential instinct, each one of those Fathers who stood nearest to the Apostolic writers plainly contrasted his writ¬ ings with theirs, and placed himself upon a lower level. The fact is most significant; for it shows in what way the formation of a Hew Testament was an intuitive act of the Christian Body, derived from no reasoning, but realized in the course of 87 CHAP. Ill, A.D. 80-120. Apostolic ■writings from their own. 8S CHAP. HI. A.D. 80 — 120 . cc. vir, XI.VH. ud Phil. HI. ad Koin. iv. cc. I, IV. TtiePiljle.md the Cluirc'a grew silently. TEE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. its natural growth, as one of the first results of its self-consciousness. Clernent, the earliest of the Fathers, lays aside the individual authority of the Apostle in writing to the Church of Corinth, and writes simply in the name of the Church of Rome. He even apo¬ logizes ill some measure for the tone of authority which he uses, and at the same time refers them to the Epistle of the blessed Paul, who wrote to them ‘spiritually,’ and certainly with the fullest assertion of absolute power. Polycarp, in like manner, who had listened to St John, freely confesses that ‘ neither he, nor any like him, is able to attain fully to the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul.’ Ignatius, who, if we receive the testimony of the writings attributed to him, was little inclined to disparage the f)Ower of his office, twice dis¬ claims the idea that he wished to ‘impose his commands like Peter and Paul. They were Apo¬ stles,’ he adds, ‘while I am a condemned man’— condemned to death, that is, and no less spiritu¬ ally guilty. Barnabas, again, twice reminds his readers that he speaks ‘ as one of them,’ not as a teacher with authority, but as a member of Christ’s Church. Thus silently and slowly, without any formal deliberations or open contests, the work of God went forward. The jirinciples which the Apostles set forth separately were combined and systema* tized. The societies which they founded were more fully organized according to the outlines which they had drawn. The writings which they left were preserved and studied, and exercised more and more a formative authority. The jiara- TEE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. blc of the mustard-seed was fulfilled. The Church rose and spread, not by any sudden miracle, but by the gradual assimilation of all around which could contribute to its growth, in virtue of the action of that Si)irit which is its Life. But though we have heard voices from An¬ tioch and Alexandria, from Smyrna and Rome^, one Church is as yet silent. The Christians of Jerusalem contribute nothing to the written por¬ traiture of the age. The peculiarities of their belief were borrowed from a system destined to pass away. They embodied no permanent form of Apostolic doctrine. The Jewish Church was an accommodation, if we may use the word, anel not a substantive form of Christianity. Its teach¬ ing was inherently defective and transitory. How far, nevertheless, it prevailed and influenced the early Church, will be seen in the next Chapter. ^ The Proverbs of Xystus (Sixtus), which have been recently found in a Syriac translation, exhibit the influence of St Janies and St John (Ewald, Gbtt. Gel. Anz. 1859, P* > but the history of these fragments is too doubtful to allovv of their being used as a production of the first Roman Bishop of the name (a. d. 119—127). 89 CHAP. III. A.D. 80-120. The Church at Jerusalem as yet silent. CHAPTER lY. CHAP. IV. a.d.120—170 Contrast of the state of Christianity in the sub- Apostolic age and the age of the Apolo¬ gists. THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS. . First the Hade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear .—St Mark iv. -28, That was not first which is spiritual, hut that which is natural; and aftenvard that which is spiritual. — I Cor. XV. 46. I T appears from the evidence which has been adduced, that before the end of the first quarter of the second century, the chief part of the apostolic letters which are included in the New Testament were familiarly known and ge¬ nerally used by Christians; that the great types of apostolic teaching which are represented in them were simultaneously active in shaping the popular views of doctrine; that the contents of the Evangelic tradition coincided very closely Avith the records preserved in our Gospels, though, from the nature of the case, the earliest Fathers refer more commonly to the words and sufferings and resurrection of Christ tiian to the acts of His ministry. But as yet there was no recognized New Testament, or rather the New Testament was still a collection of facts, and not a collection of hooks, of the spirit, and not of the letter. The substance of the apostolic doctrine ivas thus em- THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS. 91 bodied in a period of comparative quiet: the citap. iv. necessity of a written rule was enforced by times of sharp and protracted conflict within and with¬ out. Till some years after the close of the first century the Church grew up silently and almost secretly. To the mass of superficial observers the Christians had hitherto seemed merely a sect of the Jews, and had enjoyed with them a con¬ temptuous toleration, interrupted only by po¬ pular outbreaks, as at Rome in the time of Nero. Individuals had attracted attention and suffered for their faith in the provinces, but as yet such cases were extremely rare. The famous letter a d. 104. of Pliny to Trajan marks the beginning of a new sera. The Christians had at length grown so numerous that as a body they called for the spe¬ cial notice of the civil government; and the pecu¬ liarities of their belief became too well known to allow them to be confounded with Jews. Mean¬ while the false teaching, which had been frag¬ mentary and unformed in the apostolic age, was systematized and supported by the arguments of philosophy. Thus during the next stage of its history the Church had to maintain an open struggle against official persecution, organized heresies, and philosophic controversy. In little more than half a century the battle was won, though the times of suffering were not past; and the close of the ‘age of the Apologists’ leaves us in the presence of a vast Christian society, Ca¬ tholic in range and doctrine, formidable in num¬ bers, illustrious by the genius of its champions, armed against error by the possession of a Bible made up of the ‘ scriptures of the prophets, the evangelists, and the apostles.’ The Christian literature of the sub-Apostolic E.\tent of A 92 CHAP. IV. A.D. 120-170. Christian li¬ terature in the age of the Apologists. Its cliarac- teristics. THE BIBLE IN THE CIIUECIL age was all of the same form. A few letters bore witness to the mutual intercourse of Chris¬ tians and to the presence of a common faith among them. The writings of the next age ivero varied in accordance with the changed position of the Church. Letters, chronicles, essays, apo¬ logies, visions, tales, and even poems, attested the activity and exhibited the claims of the new faith. But of these by far the greater part have perished. The Letter to Diognetus, some of the writings of Justin, the Clementine Homilies, and part of the Shepherd of Hernias, alone remain in their original Greek. In addition to these there is a complete Latin translation of the Shepherd, a Syriac translation of the Apology of Melito, and a series of precious quotations from lost books, due mainly to the industry of Euse¬ bius. The Exposition of Papias, the treatises of Justin and Agrippa Castor against Heresies, the didactic and controversial works of Melito, the Chronicles of Hegesippus, have perished, and with them the most direct sources of information on the history of this period of the Church. But the works which have been preserved possess a distinctly representative character. The Apologies of Melito and Justin, and the Letter to Diognetus, offer three very different types of treatment of the same subject; and the Shepherd and the Clementines, which have many points of resemblance, illustrate in a striking manner the different developments of a legal view of Chris¬ tianity within and without the Church. Above all, the writings of Justin, which are by far the most extensive literary remains of the period, reflect the spirit of the age most clearly. No one could exhibit better than he does the cha- THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS. 98 racter of the Greek apologist. For him philoso- chap. iv. phy was truth, reason a spiritual power, Christi--^—y anity the fulness of both. The Apostolic Fathers portray the vigour of the Faith among believers; their successors point out how it satisfies the deepest wants of men. It remained for the Latin Apologists at a later period to establish its right to supplant as well as to fulfil what was partial and vague in earlier systems. The time was not ripe for this when Justin wrote. For as Christi¬ anity was shown to be the completion of Judaism before the Church was separated from the syna¬ gogue, so it was set forth as the Truth towards which the old philosophies converged, before it was declared to supersede them. This was one great work of the period, to The final proclaim Christianity as the Divine answer to the j^alsm” manifold questionings of heathendom. Another from cinis- was to separate Christianity finally from Jewish observances. Hitherto the Jewish Church of Syria had continued to exist in the north of Pa¬ lestine, the cradle of the Faith, retaining one of the oldest names of believers— Ebionim, ‘the poor’—stationary while all other churches moved onwards in obedience to the leading of God, clinging tenaciously to an imperfect creed, and a falsified hope, but yet still honoured in some de¬ gree as the mother Church of Christendom. After the founding of iElia upon the site of Jerusalem a.d. 130. and the establishment of a Gentile Church there, the ‘Ebionim’ sank into the rank of a sect. Some cherished still more fervently what they held to be the substance of their ancient observ¬ ances, others transferred the spirit of their party to Rome and embodied it in a new shape. The sect speedily became a heresy, and though it lin- u I OilAP. IV. A.D. 120-170. Importance of the Judaiz- ing writers as witnesses to the Go¬ spels. TBB BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. gered on till the beginning of the fourth cen¬ tury, its power was gone before the close of the second. So fell the Church which by outward descent claimed to be the Church of the Twelve, the Church of the Brethren of the Lord. No¬ where perhaps has a false conservatism issued in a more tragic end. Yet before it fell the Jewish Church did good service to the Christian cause. Papias, Justin and Hegesippus, sympathized more or less with one at least of its great principles—the superior prominence given to the prophetic office of the Lord over the Apostolic interpretation of His work, and it is to Judaizing sources that we must look for the first direct evidence for the authority of our written Gospels. As yet we have traced only the influence of the Apostolic doctrine and Epistles and of the oral Gospel. Papias and Justin, with the Clementine Homilies, will fill up the gap which remains. It is natural that they should do so. One essential difference between the Catholic and Judaizing parties in the Church was, as has been said, that the for¬ mer rested their faith on the intei'pretation of the Lord’s life and work by the Apostles, the latter on the Lord’s explicit teaching. For the one the Apostolic tradition was of the highest moment, for the other the Evangelic tradition. The difference is one confined to no single age or country. There are always some who will look rather to wLat Christ said than to what He was; and in this aspect the history of the Ehionim is not without the deepest interest for our own times k ^ Noth'ng perhaps strikes the student of Church history more than the spread of this essential Ebionism THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS. 95 The earliest account of the Gospels is given by chap. iv. Papias, who was bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia at the beginning of the second century. U© The‘E-xpo- w^as a friend of Polycarp and of others who had sition ’ of known the apostles. His congregation appears to have been in close connexion with the Churches of Judsea; and the Epistle of St Paul to the neighbouring Church of Colossfe shows the cha¬ racteristic dangers of the country—the home of the wildest heathen fanaticism—from which Pa¬ pias himself does not seem to have wholly es¬ caped. The work by wdiich his name is known was ‘ An Exposition of Oracles of the Lord, based upon the teaching of the elders.’ The exact translation of the title, which has been strangely misinterpreted, plainly shows that the object of Pay)ias was not to write a Life of Christ—^a Gos¬ pel—from current traditions, but rather to give an explanation of some of the Lord’s sayings, illustrated by such reports of what the Apostles had said as he could collect. With this object he might well say that ‘ The information which Ap. Euseb. he could draw from books was not so profitable as that which was preserved in a living tradition.’ For there is nothing to indicate that the ‘books’ of which he speaks were (as many have assumed) our Gospels, and not commentaries like his own, of which many were current at a very early time among heretical sects. The manner in which Pap’as speaks of two Histestimony of our Gospels confirms the view which has been given of his own object. ‘Matthew,’ he ssLid, thew and st Mark. . ... Euseb. l.c. in the present day. How often is it said that the Ser¬ mon on the Mount is the sum of Christianity. Judaism in ritual and Judaism in doctrine are opposite poles of the same error. 96 THE BIBLE IN THE CIIUBCTI. CHAP. IV. a.d. 120-170. How the Tes¬ timony ap¬ plies to our present Go¬ spels. ‘compiled the oracles^ in Hebrew; but each one interpreted them as he was able.’ ‘ This also,’ he writes, ‘the Elder [John] used to say: Mark having become Peter’s interpreter wrote accu¬ rately all that he [Peter] mentioned, though he did not [record] in order that which was either said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed Him; but subsequently, as I said, [attached himself to] Peter, who used to frame his teachings to meet the wants [of his hearers]; and not as making a connected narra¬ tive of the Lord’s discourses. So Mark committed no error, as he wrote down some particulars as he [Peter] related^ them; for he took heed to one thing—to omit nothing of what he heard, and to state nothing falsely in his record.’ But it has been argued that these notices of Papias cannot refer to the Gospels at present received as St Matthew’s and St Mark’s. The ‘ oracles’ whicli St Matthew is here said to have compiled were in the Aramaic dialect of Pales¬ tine, and the narrative of St Mark was not ‘ in order,’ while the arrangement of his Gospel at present is at least as orderly as that of the Gospels of St Matthew and St Luke. To these objections the answer is really simple. There can be no doubt that Papias speaks of the original collection of ‘ the oracles ’ of the Lord made by St Matthew, of which our Greek Gospel is the representative and not the exact reproduction; ^ It is important to observe the definite article in this case, which is omitted in the title of Papias’ trea¬ tise. 2 The original word is ambiguous. It may mean, ‘as he (Mark) called them to mind.’ So also the word above tr.anslated ‘ mentioned’may mean ‘remembered,’ in wliich sense Papias elsewhere uses it. THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS. 97 but at the same time he speaks of it in such chap. iv. a way as to show that in his time it already ^ ^ existed substantially in Greek. On the other hand, the account which he gives of the origin of St Mark’s Gospel is exactly that which, as we have already seen, holds true of the first pp. 57, ff. three Gospels. They were not intended to be chronological Lives of Christ, but were simply de¬ signed to preserve a summary of representative facts, given according to a moral and not a his¬ toric sequence in the oral teaching of the Apostles, to satisfy the requirements of those to whom they preached the Gospel (‘some particulars, not in order, to meet the wants of his hearers’). AVhile Papias was busy in collecting the J pstin mar- scattered traditions of the first age in this remote city, regretting, it may be, the growing freedom of Christian thought, and shaping wild dreams of a speedy millennium, Justin Martyr was now Euseb. h , e . actually engaged in proclaiming to Jew and Gen- tile alike the New Philosophy which he had found. Justin has left us a slight sketch of his life, and his writings are in complete harmony with his early history. He was of Greek descent, His early life, but his family had been settled for some time at Flavia Neapolis, which was founded by Vespasian on the site of the ancient Sichem. His country¬ men, he tells us, were still in his time [c. a.d. 100—120) addicted to the errors of Simon Ma¬ gus ; but he himself escaped this delusion, and sought for truth in the schools of Greek philo¬ sophy. He applied in succession to Stoics, Peri- Iiatetics and Pythagoreans, but without gaining that for which he longed. At last a better hope was beginning to dawn upon him in the teacliing of a Platonist, when a new master appeared. As 7 *98 CHAP. IV. A.D. 120-170. Dial. c. 7. His conver* Sion. His works. A.D. 140-150. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. he sought a place of calm retirement on the sea¬ shore, an aged man, meek and venerable, turned his thoughts in a fresh direction, from Plato to the prophets. ‘ Pray before all things,’ were the last words of this strange teacher, ‘that the gates of light be opened to you ; for [the truths for which you seek] are not comprehensible by the eye or mind of man, unless God and His Christ give him understanding.’ ‘ Immediately a fire was kindled in my soul,’ Justin adds, ‘and I was possessed with a love for the prophets and those men who are Christ’s friends; and as I discussed his arguments with myself I found Christianity to be the only philo¬ sophy that is sure and suited to man’s wants. Thus then and for this cause I am a philoso¬ pher.’ In the strength of his new faith he travelled far and wide to spread the truth which he had found; and the large list of his writings attests his intellectual zeal and activity. Of those which now bear his name two Apologies and the Dia¬ logue with Trypho are genuine beyond doubt; and present a lively picture of the relations of Christianity, not indeed to the Christian Church, but to Judaism and heathenism. This distinc¬ tion is of the greatest importance in dealing with the evidence which they furnish on the his¬ tory of the Christian Scriptures. From a disre¬ gard of the original destination of Justin’s essays the most false deductions have been drawn. It is obvious that the life of Christ and not the apostolic teaching would be the centre of his arguments both with Jew and Gentile. Prophecy and history were the open provinces in which he could freely work. He may have been, and pro- THE AQE OF THE APOLOGISTS. 99 bably was, constitutionally inclined to dwell on chap. iv. this external aspect of Christianity, as distin- ^ d 120-170 guished from its logical development; but under any circumstances his work necessarily led him to rest in it, at least in those writings which have come down to us. It was enough if he could bring men to listen to the fuller instruction of the Christian teacher. It was not his task to anticipate the discipline or duties of the catechist* To forget this limitation of his office was to forget the very business of an Apologist. Thus we may expect from him the outlines of the Gospel, but not an exposition of Christian doctrine. This expectation is largely fulfilled. It would His testimony be possible to re-write from Justin’s works a con- len\^aS' siderable part of the records of Christ’s Life as given by the first three Evangelists^. By putting together various passages from these we can col¬ lect almost all the details of the history of the Birth and Infancy of our Lord, of the mission of John, of the Baptism, of the Passion, Resurrec¬ tion and Ascension, which are given in the synop¬ tic Gospels. The references which they contain to the Miracles are naturally very few. On the contrary, with the exception of the Parables, quotations occur from most of the Lord’s Dis¬ courses. At times the narratives of St Matthew and St Luke are interwoven: here and there the addition of some minute trait, or the higher co¬ louring of the picture, marks the freedom with which the rhetorician uses his materials; but generally Justin’s references present the closest 1 The character of St John’s Gospel—the Gospel for Christians—evidently placed it out of the range of Justin’s arguments. In casual phrases he shows his acquaintance with it. 7-2 100 CHAP. IV. A.D. 120-170. style of the Gospels. The source of his quota¬ tions. Memoirs of the Apostles. Apol. I. 66. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. resemblance both in range and substance to the contents of our Gospels. Nor is the general resemblance of the quo¬ tations which he makes from Christ’s teaching to the style of the Evangelists less striking. However much he condenses, combines, trans¬ poses, the words which they have preserved, yet, with very few exceptions, he retains through all these changes the characteristics of the New Testament dialect without the admixture of any foreign element. We are not, indeed, wholly left to conjecture as to the source from which Justin derived his knowledge of the Gospel history. Hitherto all the references to the words of Christ (with one exception) have been anonymous. These were still for some time after the close of the first century utterances of a living voice unconnected with any wTitten record. But Justin, while he habitually represents Christ as speaking, and not the Evangelist as relating His discourse, distinctly refers to ‘Memoirs of the Apostles’ in which he found written ^ all things concerning Jesus Christ.’ The statement is significant. It shows that tradition had now no special store. Papias, in Justin’s judgment, might illustrate the mean¬ ing of the Evangelic narratives, but he could not add anything essential to their completeness. The purpose of Justin did not call for any exact description of these ‘ Memoirs,’ but he mentions incidentally several points of interest about them. In his first Apology he refers to them twice di¬ rectly. When explaining the celebration of the Eucharist he adds : ‘ The Apostles in the Memoirs made by them, which are called Gospels \ have ^ It is foreign to our purpose to enter into details THE AGE OF THE APOLOGISTS, 101 handed down that it was thus enjoined on them.’ chap. iv. ...And again, when describing the Christian ser- 120-170 vice, he notices that ‘ the Memoirs of the Apo- ^ sties or the writings of the Prophets are read as long as the time admits.’ In the Dialogue the references to the Memoirs The author- are more numerous, fifteen in all; for Trypho himself was acquainted with the written ‘ Gospel.’ Of these, two deserve special notice. In one Jus¬ tin describes the authorship of the Memoirs somewhat more exactly than by a general re¬ ference to the Apostles. ‘ In the Memoirs,’ he Dial 103. writes, ‘ which I say were composed by the Apo¬ stles and those who folloiced them, [it is written] that sweat, as drops [of blood], streamed down [from Jesus], as He was praying and saying “Let this cup, if it be possible, pass away from me.” ’ The description, it will be seen, precedes the quo¬ tation of a passage found only in St Luke, the follower of an Apostle, and not an Apostle him¬ self. In the other place he refers to ‘ the Me- Dial. loe. moirs of Peter’ for a fact which is contained only in the Gospel of St Mark, whose Gospel, as we have already seen, was believed to be the record of St Peter’s teaching^. A passage of Tertullian of criticism, yet it may serve as an illustration of the perverse ingenuity which has been brought to bear upon the question, to notice that one of the ablest and most trustworthy scholars who has discussed Justin’s quotations says, that, if he had had our four Gospels in his mind he must have said ‘ the four Gospels.’ What missionary now would speak so ? It may be noticed that the name Memoirs was evi¬ dently chosen by Justin himself (after the model of Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates) to suit a literary taste. ^ See p. 96. The original word for Memoirs is the substantive derived from the verb there used for ‘related.’ 102 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. CHAP. ly. seems to fix the sense of Justin’s words beyond AD 120 170 isputed an Epistle to the Laodiceans, [and] another to the Alexandrians, forged under the name of Paul, bearing on the heresy of Marcion; and several others, which cannot be received into the Catholic Church. For gall ought not to be mixed with honey. The Epistle of Jude, however, and two Epistles of John, who has been mentioned above, are held in the Catholic [Church].We receive also the Apocalypses of John and Peter only, which [latter] some of our body will not have read in the Church.’ After this mention is made of the Shepherd of Hernias, which is excluded from the collection of Scriptures, in which it appears to have been already placed by some, and of writings of Valen¬ tinus, Basilides and others, ‘ of whom,’ the writer says, ‘we receive nothing;’ and so the Fragment ends abruply in the middle of an unfinished sen¬ tence. Thus it will be observed, that no mention is Tiie omis- made of those Catholic Epistles which are attest- ed by the earliest and most complete evidence, 8—2 116 CHAP. IV. A.D. 120-170. TheFragment probably a cento of distinct pas¬ sages. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. 1 John^j and 1 Peter. The Epistle of St James., the Epistle to the Hebrews, and 2 Peter, are also omitted. "With these exceptions the cata¬ logue includes every book in our New Testament, and adds only one book to it, the Apocalypse of St Peter, which, it is said, was not universally admitted. Various conjectures have been made to ex¬ plain the omissions of the Fragment. The true explanation of them is probably to be found in the mutilation of the text, which seems to be made up of detached pieces. The first Epistle of St John is, in fact, quoted as the work of the Apostle in the notice of his Gospel; and a re¬ markable allusion to ‘ the book of Wisdom {Pro¬ verbs) written by the friends of Solomon’ was perhaps made originally in explanation of the reception of the Epistle of the Hebrews, which was written by a friend of St Paul, and not by the Apostle himself. But it is needless to enter into a discussion of these details. The broad out¬ lines of this earliest list of the Christian Scrip¬ tures are clear and full; and doubts, it will be seen, still existed in the next generation, as to the reception of some books, though the Churches of Christendom were then generally agreed as to the contents of their New Testament. ^ It may be noticed that there is reason to think that two Epistles of St John, and not three, were first popularly received. The two shorter Epistles may have been reckoned together as one. See p. 122. CHAPTER V. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN BIBLE. ... Built upon the foundation of the apostles and pro¬ phets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone .— Eph. ii. 20. I N the last quarter of the second century we emerge at length into the full light of Chris¬ tian history. From this time the Church stands in open strength, and challenges the power of the empire, lately guided by philosophers, and now hastening to its fall. From this time Christianity leaves its stamp on the schools of heathen thought, and in the contact receives much even where it gives most. It had won the heart of men: it now stood forth to conquer their intellect. From this time Christian writers made good their claim to stand in the first rank among the teachers of their time, for eloquence, for vigour, for grace, for freedom. From this time they speak to us with voices, full and manifold, in which he who wills may follow the simple strains of faith, min¬ gled and at times confounded, yet never wholly lost, amidst strange sounds of strife, of violence, of pride. From this time, as Truth was necessarily bound in ever stricter forms, the sense of a living communion with the Word was more and more withdrawn from the mass of believers, though, by CHAP. v. A.D. 170-303. The progress of Christian¬ ity at the end of the second century. 118 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. CHAP. V. the blessing of God, it has never yet wholly ceased A D 170-303 noblest heritage of great and humble souls. Retrospect of Before we enter upon this period of fuller tll6 6d.l*ll6I' A A ^ history of the knowledge, the earlier age still demands a brief review. As we look back over it, we can now gather in a few sentences the sum of what it teaches on the formation of the New Testament, and better appreciate the manner in which its testimony is given. In their origin the writings of the Apostles are seen to have been casual and fragmentary. Their authors claim for themselves distinctly the gift of the Holy Spirit, but they nowhere express any design of conveying to their readers a full outline of the Faith. Still less do they indicate any idea of supplementing the Old Testament by a new collection of Scriptures. With the exception of the Apocalypse, no Book professes to contain a direct and complete revela¬ tion destined for the use of all Christians. Nor again is there the slightest reason to suppose that the different writers consciously combined to portray various aspects of Christianity. Yet it is equally certain that the New Testament does form a whole. Its different elements are united internally by the closest and most subtle harmo¬ nies. No part can be taken away without sensible injury to its unity and richness. Thus in the following generation we find various sections in the Church who followed out one form or other of Apostolic teaching, as it is still preserved in the New Testament, or combined different forms more or less perfectly. But there is no ty|De of doctrine of which the New Testament does not offer a perfect explanation and present the Divine germ. Still, however, the memory of the THE FIRST CHRISTIAN BIBLE. 119 Apostolic age was too fresh, the anticipation of chap, v. the Coming of Christ too vivid, to allow of any ^ ^ definite collection of Christian Scriptures being made for the use of future times. An instinctive reverence invested the immediate disciples of the Lord with a natural dignity; and their writings moulded the thoughts of those who succeeded them. Experience soon deepened and defined the impression of this Divine instinct. Contro¬ versy brought out the decisive authority of the Apostolic texts. The corruption of the Evangelic tradition placed the simple grandeur of the four Gospels in clear preeminence. The words of the Apostles were placed more and more frequently by the side of the words of the prophets, as the teaching of Christ had always been placed by that of the Law. Partial collections of the Scrip¬ tures of ‘the New Testament’ were formed with¬ out the Church; and as the whole Christian Body realized the fulness of its common life, the teaching and the books which had been in some sense the symbol of a part only, were ratified by the whole. And all this came to pass without any sudden transition or powerful personal influ¬ ence. During the whole period no single cha¬ racter is marked out by the possession of creative genius. The age of great teachers followed after¬ wards. As a necessary consequence the evidence which can be adduced, though partial and frag¬ mentary, is always consistent. The movement to which it witnesses was steadily set in one direc¬ tion towards greater breadth and comprehensive¬ ness. Nor did it cease till the New Testament was approximately, if not absolutely, the same as we receive now. Such was the Divine process by which during The history 120 CHAP. V. A.D. 170—303. to be judged by reference t.-' tlie re- maiiis of Christian literature. The first great Fathers the inter¬ preters of an earlier age. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. fifty or sixty years after the death of the last: Apostle, or about ^ hundred and twenty years from the beginning of the Apostolic mission, the Christian Scriptures, were gathered and set apart and at last combined wuth those of the Old Tes¬ tament, which meanwhile after a long conflict had been vindicated for the universal Church from the interpretation of Jewish literalism. If the history is obscure in any part, if any details in it are yet uncertain, we may still quiet the im¬ patience of regret by reflecting how little likely it was that the remains of Christian literature, scanty in extent and limited in scope, should have furnished an outline consistent, intelligible, natu¬ ral, in every respect as this is. The New Testa¬ ment is itself the truest clue to the investigation of the first half of the second century, the ‘ dark age’ of Church history. For the rest it will be enough to seek in the fuller testimony of the next generation the expression of convictions, which, if they were not current everywhere at the close of the period through which we have passed, must at least have been formed within it. For the Fathers who lived at the end of the second century, however much they were raised above their predecessors in power and range of thought, were trained by that earlier generation which they surpassed. They made no claims to any fresh discoveries in Christian truth: on the contrary they affirmed as their chief glory that they retained unchanged the tradition of the Apostolic age. Their testimony is the clear ex¬ pression of an earlier faith and not the enuncia¬ tion of novel deductions. They are the inter¬ preters of the past, and not the mouthpieces of a revolution. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN BIBLE. 121 By one of those remarkable chances, which so chap. v. often strike the student of history, if we may 170-303 not rather call them by a higher name, the three These Fa- great writers who meet us first represent three great divisions of the Church. The traditions of divisions of Asia Minor, Egypt, and North Africa, find fit the Church, exponents in Irenseus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian. The testimony of the far East is WTitten in the venerable Syrian Version, the Peshito; and that of the Latin-speaking churches is confirmed by the Old Vulgate (Vetus Latina), which is of nearly equal antiquity. It is uncertain at what time Irest^us left Asia iREXiEus. Minor on his mission to Gaul. In his early youth he had been trained there under Polycarp, and had heard from him what St John, and others who had seen the Lord, had told of ‘ the mighty Euseb. //. e. works and teaching, in all things harmonious with the Scriptures.’ The recollection of these early lessons was more vivid, he tells us, in his old ago than that of events just past; and he appeals with solemn earnestness to them in attestation of the opinions which he held in his latest years. When a presbyter at Lyons {Lugdunum) he was commended by the confessors of the Church to Eleuthenis, bishop of Rome, as ‘zealous for the <•. a.d. 177, covenant of Christ ’; and when he afterwards be- b. //. e. came bishop of the city {c. a.d. 177 —202) he con¬ tinued to take a watchful regard of ‘ the sound Euseb. //. e. ordinances of the Church’ throughout Christen- dom. His predecessor in the episcopate, Po- thinus, was ninety years old when he died for Christ, so that through him Irenseus was bound yet by another link with the apostolic age. Of his numerous writings one has been preserved, though for the most part only in a very early 122 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. CHAP. V. Latin translation, his Refutation of Knowledge 7~' ~fulsely so called., a treatise against heresies, in X.D. 170—303. „ , , . , , , . . five books. In this he deals in passing with the inspiration and authority of Scripiire. Nothing can be clearer than his assertion of the equal dignity of the Old and New Testaments, of the permanent spiritual value of every part of them, of their supreme power as ‘the rule of truth.’ Histestimony The Very form of the Gospels seems to him full of the Gos- (iivine mysteries, foreshadowed both in the an¬ cient Law and in nature itself. For, as in the Jewish Church the visible form of God rested on the four-faced Cherubim, ‘ so Christ, when mani¬ fested to men, gave us His Gospel under a four¬ fold form, though held together by One Spirit,’ la. III. 11 . 3 . and on these Gospels He rests. And, again, ‘as there are four regions of the world in which we are, and four several winds—as the Church is scattered over the whole earth, and the Gospel is the pillar and support of the Church—we might expect,’ he argues, ‘that it should have four pillars [and four winds, as it were], breathing on all sides immortality, and kindling [the heavenly spark in] men.’ Elsewhere, he repeats the statement, already His testi- several Vodcs quoted from Papias, as to the origin of the Gospels of the New of St Matthew and St Mark, adding that Luke sus.’ Of the remaining books of the New Testa¬ ment, he quotes repeatedly as Scripture, the Acts., twelve Epistles of St Paul, (there is no reference to Philemon,) the Apocalypse and the first Epis- tie of JSt John, and 1 Peter. In one place he brings forward a passage from 2 John as n. 16. 8. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN BIBLE. 123 of the Jirst Epistle. But he makes no references chap, t. whatever to the Epistles of St James, St Jude, 3 John, 2 Peter. Eusebius says that in a work now lost he quoted the Epistle to the Hebrews; and a passage from it is found in a fragment attributed to him. On the whole, it is probable that he was acquainted with the book, but did not attribute it to St Paul. He also brings for¬ ward (as Eusebius noticed) a sentence from the v, 20 . 2 . Shepherd as ‘Scripture.’ The use which Irenseus makes of the books of nistesti- the Old Testament shows the growing influence oiTTe^to-^ of the LXX. in extending the limits of the collec- ment.anduse tion of Scriptures, as the Jewish element became less powerful in the Church. This disregard of the strict limits of the Hebrew Bible has been already noticed in Barnabas. At a later time it will be still more apparent wherever the autho¬ rity of the Greek translation was paramount, whe¬ ther directly, or in the old Latin Version, which was derived from it. Thus Irenseus quotes the apocryphal additions to Daniel, Baruch and Wisdom, side by side with the undoubted books of Scripture. And though in his account of the miraculous origin of the Septuagint, he assmnes that its contents were identical with those of the Hebrew Bible, it is obvious that in the absence of all power of criticism he, like other Fathers who were unacquainted with Hebrew, would receive all the writings which he found in the ordinary Greek collection as parts of the one ‘inspired’ translation. Some, indeed, moved by a more critical spirit. The East were anxious to gain from others accurate infer- mation on a subject which they could not examine of the ow for themselves; and the exigences of controversy Testameut. 124 CHAP. V. A.D. 170—303. Melito. C. A.D. 172. Quoted by Euseb. H, E. IV. 20. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. with the Jews must have shown the necessity for accuracy as to the common sources of argument. One most interesting memorial of such an inquiry exists; and this shows beyond doubt that the judgment of the'East, or in other words of Pales¬ tine, was that which was held to be decisive on the contents, of the Old Testament. Onesimus, a Christian of Asia Minor, had frequently expressed a desire ‘ to learn the exact truth with regard to the Old Books, how many they were in number, and their order.’ Melito, bishop of Sardis—‘ who directed the whole conduct of his life in the Holy Spirit’—after ‘ a visit to the East, and even to the very spot where [all which we believe] was pro¬ claimed and done, in which he obtained exact knowledge of the Books of the Old Covenant,’ sent a list of them to his friend. ‘ The names of them are,’ he says, ‘Five Books of Moses, Gene¬ sis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy; Jesus, the son of Naue, Judges, Ruth; four Books of Kings, two of Chronicles; a Book of Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon, which is also called Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Job; the Books of the Prophets Isaiah, Jere¬ miah, the Twelve in a single Book; Daniel, Eze¬ kiel, Esdras (Ezra).’ One important feature of this list has been strangely overlooked. It is evi¬ dent from the names, the number, and the order of the books, that it was not taken directly from the Hebrew, but from the LXX. revised by the Hebrew. In other words, it appears to be a ca¬ talogue of the books in the Palestinian LXX., the Greek Bible which was used by our Lord and the Apostles. Three books of our Old Testament are not. mentioned in it. Lamentations, Nehemiah and Esther. The two former were commonly THE FIRST CHRISTIAN BIBLE, 125 attached to Jeremiah and Ezra respectively. It chap. v. has been supposed that Esther also was included ^ ^ 170—303" in the latter book; but it is more likely that a real difference of opinion existed in Palestine from an early time as to the character of the narrative (of which there are many other traces), and that Melito did not find it admitted by the authorities which he consulted. The greatest license in the citation of ‘ Scrip- The use of ture’ prevailed at Alexandria. Several causes have been already noticed which tended to ob- Alexandria, literate the limits of the Old Testament even among the Alexandrine Jews. Among Christians the confusion of the original books of the Hebrew Bible with the later additions was more rapid and complete. Some of the books of the Apocrypha seemed to the Alexandrine Fathers to foreshadow Christian truths with prophetic power, and the fulness with which they recognized the working of the divine Word in men at all times, inclined them to have little regard for historic data as fixing the boundaries of a written revelation. For they used ‘apocryphal’ writings of the New Testament no less freely than those of the Old Testament. At times they speak with more critical exactness, but generally it is necessary to interpret their testimony with due regard to their national cha¬ racteristics. Clement (Titus Flavius Clemens) is in every ciEMENT of respect a true representative of his adopted Church. Of most varied training and extensive knowledge, he was full of wide and generous thoughts, large sympathies, and yet strangely de¬ ficient in critical sagacity and chastened judg¬ ment. He felt truth rather than found it; and he commends it to the heart more often than to 126 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. CHAP. V. A. I). 170—303. Euseb. H. E. VI. 13. C. A.D. 191-202. Strom. I. § 11. -Sor/i:(Stromateis or Stromata) of Hints for Know¬ ledge in accordance with true Philosophy., re¬ flects a fair image of his character. For about ten years he presided over the Greek Catechetical School of Alexandria, which was famous even in the middle of the second century. Like Irenseus, he succeeded a man (Pantsenus) who was removed by one generation only from the Apostles; and he affirms that his writings contain only ‘ the sha¬ dow and outline of what he had heard from men ...who preserved the true tradition of the blessed doctrine directly from Peter and James, from John and Paul’ (the connexion is worthy of no¬ tice), ‘ the holy Apostles, from father to son, even to our time...’. Like Irenseus, he dwells on Hhe harmony of the Law and the Prophets, of the Gospel and the Apostles, and that under-current of melody which flows on from teacher to teacher through all the changes of persons.’ ‘The rule of the Church,’ he says, by which Scripture is in¬ terpreted, ‘ consists in the perfect combination of all the notes and harmonies of the Law and the Prophets with the Testament delivered at the presence of the Lord.’ For in all the Scriptures, ‘ in the Law, in the Prophets, and in the blessed Gospel’— ‘ which are ratified by Almighty power’ —we ‘ have the Lord as the spring of our teach¬ ing, Who, by the various ministrations of His servants in sundry times and in divers man¬ ners, from beginning to end, guides the course of knowledge,’ ruling all their words ‘ by a wise eco¬ nomy to suit the age and culture of those who heard them.’ The writings of Clement contain no special catalogue of the sacred books. In addition to the THE FIRST CHRISTIAN BIBLE. books of tlie Hebrew Bible (including Esther) \\Q