But this leads us to another argument.

VII. The STYLE AND MANNER of the books of the New Testament furnish an unanswerable proof of their being genuine.

I observed in the last Lecture, that there was nothing in the style or contents of the New Testament inconsistent with the age and characters of the professed authors; and that the inward characters of genuineness and truth shone brightly throughout the books of it.

We have just been pointing out the marks of spuriousness in the apocryphal books, from their gross defects in these very respects.

A nearer view of the contents of the Christian books will bring out a positive evidence of the most undeniable kind in favor of their authenticity.

For the style of the New Testament agrees with the times of the apostles of our Lord, and with no other. It is Greek; not the pure Greek which the critic perhaps would desire; but Greek intermingled with Hebrew and Syriac idioms. It is a language which no one could write, but a person who had acquired a knowledge of the Greek after an education in a country where Chaldee and Syriac were the vernacular tongues. The destruction of Jerusalem, and the total subversion of the Jewish polity within forty years after our Lord's resurrection, made so entire a change in the language, associations, habits, familiar knowledge, terms of expression of the dispersed Jewish people, that an impostor at any time. posterior to the death of the last of the apostles, would have written in a different style from that of the New Testament. A Greek or Roman Christian would have wanted the peculiar tincture of the Jewish literature prevalent before the fall of Jerusalem. A Jewish convert would have been wanting in the intermixed style and manner of the Hellenistic Jew. The idiomatic character lasted only for a brief period, and then perished. Even in the second century, the language of the Christian writers in their works now extant, infallibly proves that the New Testament was not produced in that age. A relater of falsehoods could by no stretch of

genius have raised up from nothing, and have preserved with undeviating uniformity, the peculiarities and familiar colloquial idioms of a lost language.

This argument is strengthened by considering the minute and circumstantial character of the narratives of the New Testament, and the perpetual allusions to passing events in the epistolary parts of it. All is in detail. You have the names of friends and enemies, the circumstances of time and place, the occasions which introduced, and the consequences that followed each action. You see every thing. You seem to move in the train of our Lord or his apostles. The narrative never changes its scene, but a new set of names, occasions, incidents, personages, facts, all the most. natural imaginable, surround it.

Then there are numerous, and, so to speak, fearless allusions to complicated events, to different branches of families, which bearing a common appellation, confound at first sight the most tenacious recollection, and yet are found to be always correctly alluded to. The usages of the Jews, their divisions into sects, their popular opinions, are all described or referred to with the ease of things perfectly familiar. The different high-priests, the various Roman governors, the Herods, the geographical position of different places in Palestine, are minutely, and as it were unnecessarily brought in; and the accuracy of them can only be accounted for by one supposition-the truth of the story. Fictitious works never descend into such particulars. Manetho's account of the Egyptian dynasties is vague and general: whilst Thucydides' and Cæsar's authentic histories of the wars of which they were eye-witnesses, abound in circumstances of time, person, place. The circumstantiality of the New Tesment proclaims its authenticity; and when connected with the single fact, that the whole scene was swept away before the middle of the first century, makes that authenticity certain and palpable.

(j) The French author to whom I referred in my last Lecture, gives an example of a work professedly the production of the age of Louis XIV. the spuriousness of which was detected by the want of circumstantiality, minuteness of reference and natural remarks in the supposed narrative.-Pensées Judic. ut supra.

Further, notwithstanding all this copiousness of allusion, the sacred writers agree with each other. Eight authors, composing twenty-seven works, during an interval of sixty years, with no appearance of concert or symptom of artificial method; but on the contrary, with a thousand seeming disagreements, and many actual obscurities in point of arrangement and order-writing also on every kind of topic connected with the religion they promulgated, and addressing different churches on different points of doctrine and practice-I say, the substantial harmony of these writings stamps upon them an authenticity which nothing can impeach. A thousand undesigned coincidences have been pointed out between the Gospels, the Acts, and Epistles, too slight in themselves to have been concerted, and yet when brought out, flashing conviction upon every mind. During the space of eighteen centuries, not one contradiction has been established against our sacred books; and for this plain reason— they are the genuine production of the inspired writers.

The confirmation of the chief facts recorded in the New Testament by Heathen and Jewish authors, is a further evidence of authenticity. Every thing that admits of being proved by the writings of contemporary historians-Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius-as we shall see more fully in the next discourse is so proved. The substratum of the gospel history is found in the writings of the most bitter adversaries.

Again, the openness and simplicity of the whole manner and cast of the New Testament writings, confirm the argument of authenticity. A fraudulent composition may always be detected, in one part or other, by artificial attempts to hide some things, and display others, according as a human and debased prudence dictates. Commendations are dealt out-irritation and prejudice appear-apologies are made-effect is studied-the passions of men and the opinions of the times, are consulted-curiosity is gratified at one time, national pride at another. Now the divine scrip

(k) By Dr. Paley in his Hora Paulina, and lately by Mr. Blunt in his Veracity of the Gospels.

tures stand free from all this. Their simplicity and naturalness are inimitable. The New Testament has the frankness and straight-forwardness of an honest witness in a court of justice, who carries on his countenance and in all his expressions the credentials of truth. Our sacred writers let every thing speak for itself. They conceal nothing, they make no apologies, they consult no popular prepossessions, they hide no faults in their own conduct, they bestow no commendation, they utter no expressions of wonder, they flatter no one. They speak with the candor and openness of persons perfectly familiar with the truth of all they narrate, and who know they are addressing contemporaries as familiar with the facts as themselves. There is not a chapter read in our churches which does not strike every pious hearer as incapable of being an invention.

In short, it is not too much to say, that such is the style and manner of our divine books, as to evince their authenticity independently of that mass of direct historical testimony which is increasing in every age.

For this is a further argument.

VIII. The UNEXPECTED CONFIRMATIONS which have arisen in different ages, and from the most opposite quarters, to the authenticity of the New Testament.

About the close of the sixteenth century, the Bishop of Antioch sent over to Europe a Syriac version of the New Testament, in the language of the inhabitants of Palestine, where the Christian religion was first propagated. The work was utterly unknown in Europe previously. It was found upon examination to be a manuscript, probably of the second century. It agrees entirely with our canon so far as it extends; for it contains twenty-four books only, wanting the second and third of St. John and the Revelation. This striking and unlooked for incident in favor of the authenticity of the New Testament, received a further confirmation by a copy brought over from Syria by Dr. Claudius Buchanan in 1806, and presented to the University of Cambridge, in which the sections of each book, and sometimes the

words, are numbered. The manuscript is supposed to be of the seventh century, and contains all our books, except the Revelation. The addition of three books in this copy, and the marks of extreme care in the transcriber, give a considerable value to this discovery in itself, besides that derived from its falling in with the previous copy of the second century. Both concur in supporting our authentic books. Again, Sir Thomas Rowe in the year 1628, brought over a manuscript of part of the New Testament, as a present to King Charles the First, from Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople. It is called the Codex Alexandrinus, and is now in the British Museum. Dr. Woide, who published

a fac-simile in 1786, considers it of the date of about A. D. 370. It agrees with our books.

Once more. In 1817, M. Angelo Mai, whom we have already mentioned, discovered in the library of St. Ambrose, the Mæso-Gothic Version of the New Testament, made by Ulphilas, the Bishop of the Maso Goths, in the year 370. We had previously only some considerable portions of the four gospels, and fragments of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Two MS. copies of the thirteen Epistles are now found, and some parts of the Old Testament! which last are the more valuable, because not the smallest portion of the Old Testament was known to be in existence, and they contain fragments of the books of Kings, which refute the idle tale of Gibbon, repeated after Philostorgius the Arian," "that Ulphilas had prudently suppressed the four books of kings, as they might tend to irritate the fierce and sanguinary spirit of his countrymen." It is thus that the scoffs of the unbeliever are from time to time exposed by the contradiction of facts.

(1) The Title for instance, to St. John's Gospel is, "The holy Gospel preached by John the Apostle." The Subscript, “Here endeth the holy Gospel preached by the Apostle John; preached at Ephesus. Its words are 1938." At the close of the four Gospels is the General Subscript, "Here end, by the aid of divine grace, the books of the holy Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. All the words, according to their letters, are 9937." At the close of the Epistle to the Hebrews is a second Subscript, "Here endeth the writing of the fourteen Epistles of the blessed Paul, the holy Apostle and wise master-builder of the Church of Christ."

(m) See Dr. Yeates' interesting account of this MS.

(n) Gibbon, vi. 269. Lardner, in loc. Horne.