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Article  VI

 

Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.

      Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite necessary to salvation.

      In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the old and new Testament of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.

 

Of the Names and Number of the Canonical Books.

Genesis.  Exodus.  Leviticus.  Numbers.  Deuteronomy.  Joshua.  Judges.  Ruth.  The First Book of Samuel.  The Second Book of Samuel.  The First Book of Kings.  The Second Book of Kings.  The First Book of Chronicles.  The Second Book of Chronicles.  The First Book of Esdras.  The Second Book of Esdras.  The Book of Esther.  The Book of Job.  The Psalms.  The Proverbs.  Ecclesiastes, or Preacher.  Cantica, or Songs of Solomon.  Four Prophets the greater.  Twelve Prophets the less.

      And the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.

      Such are these following: –

The Third Book of Esdras.  The Fourth Book of Esdras.  The Book of Tobias.  The Book of Judith.  The rest of the Book of Esther.  The Book of Wisdom.  Jesus the Son of Sirach.  Baruch the Prophet.  The Song of the Three Children.  The Story of Susanna.  Of Bel and the Dragon.  The Prayer of Manasses.  The First Book of Maccabees.  The Second Book of Maccabees.

      All the books of the new Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive and account them Canonical.

 

De Divinis Scripturis, quod sufficient ad Salutem.

      Scriptura sacra continet omnia, quae ad salutem sunt necessaria, ita, ut quicquid in ea nec legitur, neque inde probari potest, non sit a quoquam exigendum, ut tanquam articulus Fidei credatur, aut ad salutis necessitatem requiri putetnr.

      Sacrae Scripturae; nomine, eos Canonicos libros veteris, et novi Testamenti intelligimus, de quorum authoritate in Ecclesia nunquarn dubitaturn est.

 

De .Nominibus et Numero librorum scarce Canonicae Scripturae Veteris Testamenti.

Genesis.  Exodus.  Leviticus.  Numeri.  Deuteron.  Josuae.  Judicum.  Ruth.  Prior Liber Samuelis.  Secundus Liber Samuelis.  Prior Liber Regum.  Secundus Liber Regum.  Prior Liber Paralipom.  Secundus Liber Paralipomen.  Primus Liber Esdrae.  Secundus Liber Esdrae.  Liber Hester.  Liber Job.  Psalmi.  Proverbia.  Ecclesiastes vel Concionator.  Cantica Salomonis. IV Prophetae majores.  XII Prophets: minores.

      Alios autem libros (ut ait Hieronymus) legit quidem Ecclesia, ad exempla vitae, et formandos mores: illos tamen ad dogmata confirmanda non adhibet, ut sunt.

      Tertius Liber Esdrae.  Quartus Liber Esdrae.  Liber Tobiae.  Liber Judith.  Reliquum Libri Hester.  Liber Sapientite.  Liber Jesu filii Sirach.  Baruch Propheta.  Canticum trium Puerorum.  Historia Susannae.  De Bel et Dracone.  Oratio Manasses.  Prior Lib. Machabeorum.  Secondus Liber Machabeorurn.

      Novi Testamenti omnes libros (ut vulgo recepti sunt) recipimus, et habemus pro Canonicis.

 

      This is the first Article of the Church which can be called controversial.  In some respects, it might have seemed natural to have put it as the first Article; as in the Helvetic Confession the first Article is De Scriptura Sancta, vero Dei Verbo.  But our reformers wisely put forth, in the beginning of their confession of faith, those doctrines on which the Church universal for fifteen centuries had agreed, and which are the foundations of the Christian faith.  Accordingly the first five Articles treat of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption of the world, the Sanctification of Christians, and the Judgment of all men.  Unity on these points was of old times considered to constitute Catholic Christianity; and by declaring her orthodoxy on these Catholic doctrines, the Church of England, in the very front of her confessions, declares herself orthodox and Catholic.

      This done in the first five Articles, she, in the next three, treats of the Rule of Faith, the Scriptures, and the Creeds deduced from them.

      The present Article, as it stood in the forty-two Articles of 1552, lacked all the concluding part concerning the Canon of Scripture and the Apocrypha, and treated only of the Sufficiency of Scripture for Salvation.  The latter part was added in 1562.  The original Article also contained a clause which was omitted in 1562.  After the words, “whatsoever is neither read therein, nor may be proved thereby,” the words were added, “although it be sometime received of the godly, and profitable for an order and comeliness, yet no man ought to be constrained to believe it as an article of faith,” &c.

      As the Article now stands, it treats of several distinct points, namely, Scripture and Tradition, the Canon of Scripture, the Apocrypha.  On all these points demonstration and history are intimately connected; history in this case being a material part of demonstration.  It will therefore be better not to separate them.  In the following sections then I propose to consider, –

      FIRST. The Sufficiency of Scripture for Salvation; SECONDLY. The Canon of Scripture; THIRDLY. The true value of Tradition, and the reading of the Apocrypha.

 

Section  I. – The Sufficiency of Scripture for Salvation

      That we may see the force of the words of the Article on this important subject, it will be necessary to consider what opinions were opposed by it.  Those opinions were the doctrines of the Church of Rome concerning Scripture and Tradition.  It will be well therefore to begin by setting the statements of the Church of Rome and those of the Church of England one against the other; and when we see wherein we differ, we may then proceed to show which is in the right.

      Now the decrees of the Council of Trent sufficiently express the doctrines of the Church of Rome.  In that Council certain Articles, professedly taken from the writings of the Lutheran divines on the subject of Scripture, were discussed in the third session.  And first, the fathers of the Council agreed to condemn the opinion “that all articles of the Christian faith, necessary to be believed, are contained in the Holy Scriptures, and that it is sacrilege to hold the oral Tradition of the Church to be of equal authority with the old and new Testaments.” {Sarpi, Hist. of the Council of Trent, translated by Brent.  London, 1676, p. 141.}  The formal decree of the Council was drawn up in the fourth session, in the year 1546, shortly after the death of Luther, and six years before the putting forth of the forty-two Articles of our own Church in 1552.  This decree declares that “the truth is contained in the written books, and in the unwritten traditions, which, having been received by the Apostles, either from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the dictates of the Holy Spirit, were handed down even to us”; and that the Council “receives and venerates with equal feeling of piety and reverence all the books of the old and new Testament, since one God was the Author of them both, and also the traditions, relating as well to faith as to morals, as having, either from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the dictation of the Holy Ghost, been preserved by continuous succession in the Catholic Church.”*

            {*Sacrosancta oecumenica et generalis Tridentina Synodus, in Spiritu Sancto legitime congregata, praesidentibus in ea eisdem tribus Apostolicae sedis legatis, hoc sibi perpetuo ante oculos proponens, ut sublatis erroribus, puritas ipsa Evangelii in Ecclesia conservetur: quod promissum ante per prophetas in Scripturis Dominus noster, Jesus Christus, Dei Filius, proprio ore primum promulgavit, deinde per suos Apostolos tanquam fontem omnis salutaris veritatis et morum disciplineae, omni creaturae praedicari jussit; perspiciens hanc veritatern et disciplinam contineri in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus, quae ab ipsius Christi ore et Apostolis acceptae, Spiritu Sancto dictante, quasi per manus traditae ad nos usque pervenerunt; Orthodoxorum patrum exempla secuta, omnes libros tam veteris quam novi Testamenti, cum utriusque unus Deus sit auctor, necnon traditiones ipsas, tum ad fidem, tum ad mores pertinentes, tamquam vel ore tenus a Christo vel a Spiritu Sancto dictatas, et continua successione in Ecclesia Catholica conservatas, pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia suscipit ac veneratur.” – Sess. IV. Can. I. Conc. XIV. 746.}

      Exactly corresponding with this decree of the Council are the statements of the great Roman Catholic divines.  For example, Bellarmine says, “The controversy between us and the heretics consists in two things.  The first is, that we assert that in Scripture is not expressly contained all necessary doctrine, whether concerning faith or morals, and therefore that, besides the written word of God, there is moreover needed the unwritten word, i. e. Divine and Apostolical Tradition.  But they teach, that all things necessary for faith and morals are contained in the Scriptures, and that therefore there is no need of the unwritten word.” *

            {*Bellarmin.  De Verbo Dei non Scripto, Lib. IV. cap. III. “Controversia igitur inter nos et hereticos in duobus consistit.  Primum est, quod nos asserimus, in Scripturis non contineri expresse totam doctrinam necessariam sive de fide sive de moribus ; et proinde praeter Verbum Dei scriptum, requiri etiam Verbum Dei non scriptum, id est, divinas et Apostolicas traditiones.  At ipsi docent, in Scripturis omnia contineri ad fide met mores necessaria, et proinde non esse opus ullo Verbo non scripto.”}

      Now these statements are not easily misunderstood.  The Church of Rome, both in her Council, and by the mouth of her most eminent divines, asserts that Scripture does not contain all that is necessary for faith and morals; but that there is need of a traditional doctrine, an unwritten word, which is handed down by unbroken tradition in the Church, and which she, the Church of Rome, esteems with the same feelings of piety and reverence with which she receives the Holy Scriptures.  It is not merely an Hermeneutical Tradition, i.e. certain doctrines handed down from early times, which are useful for clearing up and explaining obscurities in Holy Writ; nor is it an Ecclesiastical Tradition, i.e. Tradition concerning Church discipline, rites and ceremonies; but it is a traditional revelation concerning doctrine, in matters of faith and morals, which is not to be found in Scripture, and which is equally certain, equally Divine, and equally to be embraced and reverenced with Scripture itself.  Scripture and tradition are parallel, equal, and equally venerable sources of doctrine; and one without the other is not sufficient for salvation.

      Such being the statement of the Church of Rome, we may the better understand the statement of the Church of England.  Her statement is, as expressed in the Article of 1552, that, however traditions may be “sometimes received by the faithful as godly, and profitable for order and comeliness,” yet “Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation”; and no man ought “to be constrained to believe as an article of faith, or repute requisite to the necessity of salvation, whatever is neither read therein, nor may be proved thereby.”

      The degree of value which the Church of England has assigned to Tradition, which, she said, in the forty-two Articles, was “sometimes received by the faithful as godly, and profitable for order,” we shall see in the third section.  Here we have to show, that, as regards articles of faith, and as to necessity of salvation, nothing ought to be required of any man “which is not read in Scripture, nor may be proved thereby.”

      Scripture, according to the Church of England, rightly interpreted, contains all that is necessary to save the soul.  From it, by fair and logical inference, may be deduced everything which ought to be imposed as an article of faith.  It will be seen, hereafter, that she does not despise nor underrate the light of learning, nor the light of antiquity, but that, as the ground of appeal, she maintains the supremacy, and the sole supremacy, of the written word of God. {“Unto a Christian man there can be nothing either more necessary or profitable than the knowledge of Holy Scripture, forasmuch as in it is contained God’s true Word, setting forth His glory and also man’s duty, and there is no truth nor doctrine necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation, but that is, or may be, drawn out of that fountain and well of truth.” – Beginning of the Homily on Holy Scripture.}

      Now in proving the soundness of the Anglican, in opposition to the Romish position, we may proceed in the following order.

      We may “prove – I. That Scripture is in favour of it; – II. That Reason is in favour of it; – III. That the Primitive Fathers are in favour of it.

      I.  Scripture is in favour of the doctrine of the Anglican Church, namely, that the written word of God is sufficient for salvation, containing all necessary articles of faith, and rules of life.

      On most questions this argument is the most conclusive that can be brought; but on the Sufficiency of Scripture we are not so likely to find Scripture speaking plainly, as on many other points.  It does indeed bear witness to itself, and yet its witness is true.  But though both parties have appealed to it, yet neither party have been satisfied, that, on this particular point, its high authority will exhaust the subject.

      1.  To take, first of all, the arguments which have been alleged from Scripture, as against its own sufficiency: we read, that our Lord said to His disciples (John 16:12): “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”  Therefore it is inferred that there was need of further instruction, orally delivered to the Church, and handed down by tradition, beyond what our Lord revealed, whilst on earth.  But the true meaning of the passage is explained by the next verse, which promises that, “when the Spirit of truth was come, He should guide them into all truth.”  It was to the teaching of the Spirit, by whom the Apostles were afterwards inspired, that our Lord bade them look forward, for the filling up of what His own personal teaching had left deficient.  The substance of that teaching of the Spirit, we believe, is preserved to us in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles. and the Apocalypse ; not in unwritten tradition.

      Again, it is said, “There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, even the world could not contain the books that should be written” (John 21:25).  Therefore Jesus taught many things not set down in Scripture: we cannot believe that He taught anything superfluous: therefore there must be something necessary, besides what we read in Scripture.  Where are we to seek for this?  Of course, in unwritten tradition.

      To this we reply, that doubtless every word spoken by our blessed Lord was most valuable.  Many of those words indeed are not in Scripture; no! nor yet in tradition: for it never yet was pretended that oral tradition had preserved every word our Saviour uttered.  So that, if this argument proves anything, it proves too much; for it proves, not only the insufficiency of Scripture, but the insufficiency of Scripture and tradition together.  What we say is simply, that so much of Christ’s divine teaching, and of the teaching of the Spirit to the Apostles, is set down in Scripture, as is necessary for salvation, and for the proving of all necessary articles of faith.  It is no argument against this, to say that many things, which our Saviour said, are not in Scripture.

      The same answer may be given to the argument drawn from the fact, that, during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension, our Lord “spake of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).  We know, indeed, that His speeches then are not set down in Scripture.  But we equally know that they are not to be found in any other tradition.  And we do not know that there was anything spoken by Him then, which it is necessary to our salvation that we should know, over and above what we have recorded in Scripture.

      It is further urged, that St. Paul cuts short a controversy, not by reference to Scripture, but by appeal to the customs of the Church (1 Cor. 11:16): “If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Churches of God.”  It was a matter of ceremony, namely, that a woman’s head should be covered in the house of God; and assuredly the Church of England fully admits that “the Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies” (Art. XX), and that “whosoever, through his private judgment, breaks the traditions and ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the word of God, ought to be rebuked openly” (Art. XXXIV).  But this is no proof that doctrines of the faith rest on an authority not written.  It should be sufficient to satisfy any caviller concerning forms, that the Churches of God have, or have not, a custom or a form.  But it is not likely that the Apostle would for doctrine refer to the Church’s customs, when he himself was infallibly guided by the Spirit of God.

      But St. Paul, it is said, actually does refer to ordinances and traditions, and forms of words, and a depositum to be guarded; all which are evidently oral traditions of the Church.  “Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you,” 1 Cor. 11:2.  “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust,” 1 Tim. 6:20.  “Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.  That good thing, which was committed unto thee, (την καλην παρακαταθήκην) keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us,” 2 Tim. 1:13, 14.  “The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also,” 2 Tim. 2:2.  From all this it is urged that the Church and the bishops had ordinances entrusted to them, and doctrines committed to them, which they were to watch and guard, and hand down carefully to others.  But all this we readily admit.  Timothy was taught by St. Paul: and the doctrine which he had so learned was a sacred deposit which he had carefully to guard, and to teach to those committed to his care; especially to the clergy under him, and the bishops who were to succeed him.  Before the Scriptures of the new Testament had been written, or at least collected, this must have been a most important principle; for so only could the torch of truth be kept alight.  And even after the new Testament had been written, and was in the hands of all men, it was doubtless most important that bishops and Churches should be rightly and soundly instructed in the truth and right meaning of the Scriptures, and should guard themselves and their flocks against perverting the truth and falling into error.  But there is not therefore any reason to apprehend, that Timothy or the Church had learned any other doctrines besides those contained in the holy Scriptures, or that the sacred deposit committed to their charge was any other than the aggregate of Christian doctrine, which they had been taught catechetically, and which they were to keep from defilement and error by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.  We well know that the possession of the Scriptures, as a source of truth and as a final appeal, does not supersede the necessity of Christian education, and sound oral instruction in the faith: and to every person, nowadays, instructed by Creeds and Catechisms in the true doctrine of Christ, it might be said, “Keep that good thing which was committed unto you”; “Hold fast the form of sound words.”  Yet all this instruction and this sacred deposit may be deducible from Scripture, and virtually contained in it.

      But further, it is said that the Thessalonians are actually bidden to “stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught whether by word or our epistle,” 2 Thess. 2:15.  Therefore the Apostle bids them attend, not only to Scripture, but to tradition also.  But the word tradition means properly nothing more than something delivered, the doctrine of our faith delivered to us.  And there being two ways of delivering doctrines to us, either by writing or by word of mouth, it signifies either of them indifferently.  “‘παράδοσις, tradition, is the same with δόγμα, doctrine, and παραδιδόναι is the same with διδάσειν,’ say the grammarians; and the παραδοθεισα πίστις in St. Jude, ‘the faith once delivered,’ is the same which St. Paul explicates by saying, παραδόσεις ας εδιδάχθητε ‘the traditions,’ that is, ‘the doctrines ye were taught.’  And St. Irenaeus (Lib. III. ch. IV.) calls it a tradition apostolical, that ‘Christ took the cup,’ and said, ‘it was His Blood,’ and to believe in one God, and in Christ ‘who was born of a Virgin,’ was the old tradition; that is the thing which was delivered, and not at first written, ‘which was kept by the barbarians.’” {Jer. Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, Part II. Bk. I. Sect. 3.}  It may be added, that the very words of St. Paul, in the passage now alluded to, prove in themselves that tradition, according to him, was not necessarily oral tradition, or traditions floating in the Church; for he calls his own Epistles, or the doctrine contained in them, tradition, – “traditions, which you have been taught either by word or by our Epistle.”  What therefore the Apostle here enjoins on the Thessalonians is simply, that, as he had taught them by preaching, and as he had enjoined them by letter, so they should believe and live.  This instruction, thus received, was the tradition to which he alludes.  But it by no means follows, because, before Scripture was completed, the Apostles gave oral and epistolary instruction, to which their hearers were to attend, that therefore, after the Scriptures were completed and collected, there must be left floating about a stream of traditional truth, which is not to be found in those Scriptures, thus completed and collected.  Before the Scriptures of the new Testament were written, there must of course have been need of tradition, or instruction by word of mouth; and such instruction coming from inspired Apostles was, no doubt, of as much value as what they committed to writing.  But the question is, whether they delivered anything essential to our salvation, which they, or some of them, did not subsequently put down in writing, so that it should be carefully preserved, and be a constant witness in the Church.  Certainly neither this, nor any of the before-cited passages of Scripture, prove that they did. {The passages from Scripture which have been quoted in the text are all alleged by Bellarmine, De Verbo Dei non Scripto, Lib. IV.  On the proper meaning of the word Tradition, see Jer. Taylor as above, Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, ch. II; Bp. Patrick’s Discourse about Tradition, in the first volume of Gibson, Preservative against Popery, p. 190; Van Mildert, Bampton Lectures, Sermon III.}

      Once more, it is said that Christ promised to His Church, “The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it,” Matt. 16:18; “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” Matt. 18:20; “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven,” Matt. 18:18, &c.; and that these promises prove that a certain infallibility should reside in the Church, which both makes it a sure keeper of the truth, and renders all its traditions and decrees of sacred authority.  But we may reply, that, even if we concede that the whole Church, fully represented, might so claim the promise of Christ to be present with it, and to guide it, that it should not fall into errors in matters of faith; yet it follows not, that it would be authorized to preserve or to decree any truth which cannot be proved from Scripture.  Ancient councils settled many points of faith, and drew up creeds and confessions; but they professed them to be accordant with, and capable of proof from, Scripture.  And though the Church is a keeper and a witness of Holy Writ, and may expound Scripture for the instruction of her children, and in such expositions may look for the promise of Christ and the guidance of His Spirit; it by no means follows, that she has authority to add to “the faith once delivered to the saints,” or to set up any standard of doctrine besides that written word of God which is entrusted to her, and to which she is to look as the source of all heavenly wisdom and truth.

      2.  And here we may dismiss the arguments from Scripture, which have been brought to prove that Scripture does not contain all doctrine necessary for salvation and godliness.  We proceed to consider those passages which appear to prove the direct contrary, namely, that all things, of necessity to be believed, are contained in, or may be deduced from, the written word.

      The following are amongst the texts commonly alleged: –

      “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it,” Deut. 4:2.

      “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” Ps. 19:7.

      “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me.” John 5:89.

      “From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” 2 Tim. 3:15–17.

      These passages appear to prove the perfection and sufficiency of the Scriptures.  But it is argued against this inference, that, with regard to the first two passages, they speak of God’s commandments and God’s law, whether written or unwritten. {Bellarmine indeed argues that the passage from Deut. 4:2 applies only to the unwritten word: “the word which speak unto you.”  The word however is not “speak,” as he renders it, but מצַוֵּה “command” as our translators give it. – Bellarmin. De Verbo Dei non Scripto, Lib. IV.}  The third passage may be, and very likely ought to be, translated, not “search”, but “ye search the Scriptures”.  And all the passages relate to the old Testament, not to the new; for neither could the Jews search the new Testament Scriptures, nor could Timothy have learned the new Testament from his childhood; since none of the books of the new Testament were then written.  If, therefore, these passages prove the sufficiency of Scripture, they prove that the old Testament was sufficient without the new, and therefore prove too much.  The passages indeed prove that all which comes from God is perfect and very necessary for instruction, but do not fully prove that nothing but Scripture is necessary.

      Another argument is drawn from the following passages: –

      “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed amongst us ... it seemed good to me also ... to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed.” Luke 1:1–4.

      “These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His Name.” John 20:31.

      These texts do certainly seem to show that the object of writing the Gospels was expressly that men might not be left to the uncertainty of tradition.  Many had taken in hand to set forth an account of the Gospel history: St. Luke therefore was moved to commit it carefully to writing, that no vague accounts might mislead Theophilus, but that by the written word he might “know the certainty of those things wherein he had before been catechetically instructed.”  Very similar to this is the language of St. Peter: “I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance,” 2 Pet. 1:15.  It is true that these three passages only apply to the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, and the Epistles of St. Peter, and perhaps with them to the Gospel of St. Mark; but they nevertheless give the reasons for writing Scripture, and are, as far as they go, a strong presumption against the vagueness and uncertainty of oral, and in favour of the certainty of written, tradition.

      Again, ignorance and error in religion are traced to ignorance of Scripture: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God,” Matt. 22:29.  The peculiar privilege of the Jews is said to be, that “to them were committed the oracles of God,” Rom. 3:1, 2.  In matters of doubt, all appeals are made to Scripture.  The Beroeans are praised, because they “searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so,” Acts 17:11.  So under the old Testament it was “to the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them,” Isai. 8:20; where the law and the testimony must mean the Law of Moses, and the testimony of God given by the Prophets.

      Lastly, there is special reprobation of all traditions which add to Scripture or take from it.  The passage in the end of the Apocalypse (“If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book,” &c., Rev. 22:18, 19) may indeed apply only to that book itself, and to the uncorrupted preservation of its text.  But we cannot have read the Gospels, without seeing how much those who used Jewish traditions are censured and condemned: “Why do ye transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?”  “In vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Matt. 15:3, 9, comp. Mark 7:7–13.  It is true, the traditions spoken of were Jewish, not Christian traditions.  But the principle was much the same.  The Pharisees claimed such traditions as divine.  They professed, that they were the unwritten word of God, handed down from the time of Ezra, through the doctors of the Law, and the members of the Great Synagogue.  They did not deny the value of the written word, but added the unwritten traditions to it.  These they considered, not as corrupting, but as completing the truth.  Yet our Lord declared that they “made the word of God of none effect by their tradition” (Mark 7:13).  And thus we may fairly infer that our Lord condemns the general principle of making any addition to the written word, by doctrines professedly handed down from father to son.  We see, at least, no difference in principle between the oral traditions of the Jewish, and the oral traditions of the Christian Church.

      II.  We come next to show, that reason is in favour of the Anglican, in opposition to the Roman rule on this subject.

      1.  The English Church does not hold that unwritten truth is less true than written truth; and if we could be certain that any unwritten doctrine came from Christ and His Apostles, we should receive it with the same reverence that we pay to the written word.  But the reason why we rest our faith upon the written word is this: We know that it came from God; but we have no certain knowledge that any unwritten tradition did.  The former we know to be the midday light, the other may be but an ignis fatuus, and lead us into error.

      And let it once more be clearly understood, that the question is not, what value there may be in the testimony of the Early Church to certain doctrines of the faith; not, how far early traditions may be useful for the interpreting of Scripture; not, how far we may be right to adhere to the primitive example, in matters of discipline and ceremony, even those for which we have no Scriptural authority; but it is, whether besides, parallel with, and independent of the Scripture, there is in the Church a doctrina tradita, a doctrine handed down from Christ or His Apostles, of equal authority with Scripture, and demanding equal respect.

      As has just now been said, when we search for authority in favour of any doctrine, we can tell at once where to go, if Scripture be our rule.  But if we have to depend on something besides, where must we look?  The former rule is contained in a small compass, is easily accessible, and with proper assistance may be understood.  The latter is to be searched for through many folio volumes; is, at last, not certainly to be found; and is at least as difficult as Scripture itself to be understood and explained.  Or, if it be said, that it is not in the writings of the fathers, but in the stream of Church tradition, a deposit which was entrusted to the Church and has never been lost by her; we can only reply, that this is even less certain than traditions which may be searched out from ancient writings, and from them proved to have anciently existed.  Tradition by word of mouth is a thing proverbially uncertain.  In peculiar conditions of society, or for a short time, it may be sufficient for the preservation of truth.  But it is evidently unfitted for a body like the Catholic Church; which was to pervade all nations, extend throughout all ages, weather the storm of ignorance and barbarism at one time, and bear up against the scorching and withering glare of learned infidelity at another.

      The very fact that the Scriptures were written, and the history of their writing, seem to prove their sufficiency and perfection.  When first revelation was given to man, men’s lives were so long that there was little danger lest the light of truth should be lost.  Adam, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, were in fact all but contemporaries.  Seth the son of Adam lived to within fifteen years of the birth of Noah.  Tradition therefore may have sufficed for them; and yet we have reason to believe, that, even then, the faith was much corrupted.  Again, the sons of Noah must have been contemporary with Abraham, to whom another revelation was given; yet Abraham’s fathers had become idolaters.  And in the few generations from Abraham to Moses the faith again appears to have been corrupted, if not lost; although from the death of Joseph to the birth of Moses not seventy years had passed.  Thus, when the world and the Church were under the most favourable circumstances for preserving tradition of the truth unimpaired, it pleased God to leave the world, with occasional revelations indeed, but mostly with only traditional knowledge of the truth.  Yet, even so, such knowledge was soon corrupted, and easily lost.  After that, God gave a fuller revelation to Moses, and enjoined that it should be committed to writing; and the book of the Law was deposited in the most sacred place of the Sanctuary, and most carefully guarded and watched, as of inestimable value.  Thenceforward, when any great prophet was sent to Israel, though during his lifetime he orally taught the people, yet his words were ever committed to writing, that they might be preserved after his death.  Nor do we know anything now concerning the teaching of any of the prophets, save only what is handed down to us, not by oral, but by written, tradition, namely, the Scriptures of the old Testament.

      Most similar was the case with the Christian Church.  At first, whilst our Lord and His Apostles were on earth, their personal teaching, and that of those taught by them, might have sufficed.  Yet, even then, errors and perversions were creeping in; and if they had not committed the substance of their teaching to writing, the false traditions of the Judaizers, the Cerinthians, or the Gnostics, might have come down through the Church, instead of the true traditions of the disciples of Christ.  But we learn from ancient writers that what the Apostles preached by word of mouth they committed, or caused to be committed to writing lest the substance of their preaching should be lost.*  If tradition committed to the Church had been sufficient to preserve the truth, then the writing of the four Gospels, and of the other parts of the new Testament, would have been superfluous.  But from the known and well-proved insufficiency of the former, the Apostles, under the guidance of the Spirit, had recourse to the latter mode of insuring a source and a rule of faith.

            {*E. g. Μετα δε την τούτων (i. e. του Πέτρρυ και του Παύλου) έξοδον Μάρκος, ο μαθητης και ερμενευτης Πέτρου, και αυτος τα υπο Πέτρου κηρυσσόμενα εγγράφως ημιν παραδέδωκε. — Iren. Haer. III. 1.  So again: “Hanc fidem annuntians Joannes Domini discipulus, volens per Evangelii annuntiationem auferre eum qui inseminatus erat hominibus errorem, et multo prius ab his qui dicuntur Nicolaitae ... omnia igitur talia circumscribere volens discipulus Domini, et regulam veritatis constituere in ecclesia ... sic inchoavit in ea quae erat secundum Evangelium doctrina: In principio erat Verbum. ...” – Haeres. III. 11.  Τοσουτον επέλαμψεν ταις των ακροατων του Πετρου διανοίαις ευσεβείας φέγγος, ως μη τη εισάπαξ ικανως έχειν αρκεισθαι ακοη μεδε τη αγράφω του θείου κηρύγματος διδασκαλια·  παρακλήσεσι δε παντοίαις Μάρκον, ου το ευαγγέλιον φέρεται, ακόλουθον όντα Πέτρου λιπαρησαι, ως άν και δια γραφης υπόμνημα της δια λόγου παραδοθείσης αυτοις καταλείψοι διδασκαλίας·  μη πρότερόν τε ανειναι η κατεργάσασθαι τον άνδρα, και ταύτη αιτίους γενέσθαι της του λεγομένου κατα Μάρκον ευαγγελίου γραφης. – Euseb. H. E. II 15.  He gives this account on the authority of Papias and Clemens Alexand.}

      “The Apostles at first owned these writings; the Churches received them; they transmitted them to their posterity; they grounded their faith upon them; they proved their propositions by them; by them they confuted heretics; and they made them the measure of right and wrong: all that collective body of doctrine, of which all Christians collectively made public confessions, and on which all their hopes of salvation did rely, were all contained in them, and they agreed in no point of faith which is not plainly set down in Scripture.” {Jer. Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, Pt. II. Bk. I. Sect. 3.}

      Now Scripture having been thus evidently designed to correct the uncertainty and supply the deficiency of tradition, it is unreasonable to suppose that God would have suffered Scripture itself, the more certain guide, to be imperfect and to need the less certain guide, tradition, to supply its defects.  Yet, if Scripture itself does not contain the sum and substance of our religion and all necessary articles of faith, this would be the case.

      But as a matter of fact, Scripture has ever been adduced by divines of all schools and all communions as capable of proving all the great doctrines of the faith and all the important rules of duty.  We can either prove by it, or deduce from it, the great doctrines concerning the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Sanctification of the Spirit, Original Sin, Justification, the grace of the Sacraments, the privileges of the Church, the Communion of Saints, the Judgment of the great day, and other weighty and cardinal points of faith.  And though different schools have differed as to how Scripture should be interpreted on some of these points, yet all have agreed that the true doctrine concerning them may be gathered from Scripture if interpreted aright.  Whatever value, therefore, we may attribute to a Traditio Hermeneutica, to traditional interpretations of Scripture; we ought to be satisfied that all things “to be required of any man as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation,” are so contained in Scripture that they may be either “read therein, or may be proved thereby.”

      Several things, indeed, all men allow, are contained in Scripture, which are not absolutely necessary to salvation, although they may tend to edification; and if the lesser matters were inserted there, how can we suppose that the greater would be omitted?  Nay, although the Church of Rome often appeals to tradition, as a necessary part of Divine Revelation, yet it may well be questioned, whether even she pretends that any very important truth is to be derived from tradition alone.  And assuredly we may safely assert, that there is a total absence of all evidence to prove that there is even professedly any tradition extant to which we are indebted for the knowledge of any great doctrine of the faith, independently of the written word.

      2.  The principal arguments from reason in favour of the Romanist, and against the Anglican view of this subject, are as follow: –

      (1)  Tradition was the first rule.  From Adam to Moses all was traditional; and from the coming of Christ to the completion of the Canon of the new Testament, tradition must have been the principal guide of the Church.  Scripture, therefore, which came in afterwards, cannot supersede that which was before it, and which at first was sufficient without it.

      This argument has already been virtually answered by anticipation.  The duration of men’s lives before the time of Moses, and the presence and personal teaching of inspired Apostles before the writing of the new Testament, were great safeguards against error.  The fact that, as these safeguards were withdrawn, God’s Providence ordered that the Scriptures should be written and preserved, shows of itself that tradition, which might have been sufficient then, would not be sufficient now.  We do not say that Scripture supersedes tradition, but that it is itself the surest tradition, and the only one on which we can safely rely.  It is in fact the Patriarchal, Levitical, and Apostolical tradition, preserved in its safest and only certain form.

      (2)  It is said that Scripture was not written systematically, but casually, as circumstances occurred, in casual memoirs and occasional letters; and therefore cannot be looked on as a systematic collection of doctrine and morality.

      This, however, is no proof that the whole sum of necessary truth may not be extracted from it.  How holy men of old were moved to speak, or to write, seems of little consequence.  God’s wisdom saw fit that it should be in the way in which we have the Scriptures now.  It is certainly in a more interesting, it is probably in a more profitable way, than if a systematic arrangement had been adopted.  It is not probable that the Apostles’ teaching, nor even that of our Lord, was always systematic; and yet in that all men admit that all necessary truth was contained.  It cannot, therefore, be necessary to our position to show that the Scriptures are formally or systematically designed.

      (3)  The genuineness and canonicity of Scripture itself rest on tradition, and on tradition alone; and if tradition is necessary to prove this, it may equally prove other doctrines.

      It is true that historical testimony and the universal consent of all the early Christians are the chief grounds on which we rely for proof that the various books of the new Testament were the works of those whose names they bear.  This indeed is in a great measure the way in which we prove the genuineness of every ancient book.  We do not know that a book was written by Caesar or Tacitus, but by testimony and historical evidence.  In like manner, testimony and historical evidence are essential to prove that the works ascribed to St. Peter or St. Paul were really theirs.  In this latter case, indeed, we have the most convincing and satisfactory proofs; for we have the testimony of early Christians, of early heretics, of ancient heathens, of friends, and of enemies; and besides this, the testimony of the Church catholic in general councils.  These are things which we should never lightly value, under any circumstances; and when we have to deal with the question concerning the genuineness of certain books, such a kind of evidence is the most obvious, the most necessary, and the most satisfactory possible.  But it does not follow that we should give the same deference to the same testimony, even if such could he found, on points of doctrine.  For the opinions of Caesar or Tacitus, we prefer the words of their own books to any testimony external to those books.  And so for the doctrines of the Apostles, we look first and chiefly to what they have written.  Besides, we have concerning the Canon of Scripture an universality of consent which it would be utterly in vain to search for concerning any doctrine of the faith which is not also to be found in Scripture.  When the Roman Church can bring a like amount of consentient testimony to prove any doctrine on which Scripture is silent, we may then, and not till then, entertain the question of a doctrina tradita, parallel to, and of equal authority with, Scripture.

      (4)  It is farther said, that many necessary things are not set down in Scripture.

      Bellarmine mentions the following {De Verbo Dei non Scripto, Lib. IV.}: –

a. How women under the old Law might be delivered from Original Sin, circumcision being only for males; and how males under eight days old might be saved from it.

b. The Perpetual Virginity of the blessed Virgin Mary, which has always been believed by the Church, and yet is not in Scripture.

c. That Easter should be kept on a Sunday, which is necessary to be believed against the Quarto-decimans.

d. Infant Baptism, which is necessary to be believed; but neither Romanists nor Protestants can prove it from Scripture.

e. That there is a Purgatory, which Luther himself believed, and yet admitted that it could not be found in Scripture.

      If these are all the points that Scripture is silent upon; we need not be very solicitous about its deficiencies.  None of them surely can be essential to our salvation.  None, except the last two, materially concern our personal faith or practice.  The last we not only admit is not in Scripture, but we positively deny that it is true.  The last but one, Infant Baptism, we think may be fairly inferred from Scripture, when fully consulted on the subject; and we are very thankful to have the additional testimony of the primitive Church concerning it, which we never reject, as a help and guide to the truth and right understanding of the Scriptures, but only as a distinct and independent authority.  The question concerning Easter is one of ceremony, not of faith, and we gladly follow the primitive Church in matters of this nature; although we do not hold, that ceremonies must be one and the same everywhere.  The doctrine concerning the Perpetual Virginity is rather a pious opinion than a necessary article of faith.  Our own greatest divines have mostly adhered to the primitive opinion on this subject. {Andrewes’s Devotions: see Prayers for Monday.  Jer. Taylor, Life of Christ, § 2.  Pearson, On the Creed, Art. “Born of the Virgin Mary.”  Bp. Bull, Works, I. p. 96}  But we cannot think that any man’s salvation is the surer for believing, or the less sure for disbelieving it.

      The question concerning Original Sin, and how women under the Law were delivered from it, and still more, the question concerning infants under eight days old, is as much left in obscurity by tradition, as by Scripture.  It is one of those things concerning which we have no revelation.

      (5)  But it is said that some of the chief articles of faith, though deduced from Scripture, yet could not be proved from Scripture alone without the help of tradition and the testimony of the Church.  Among the rest are enumerated the equality of the Divine Persons in the Trinity, the Procession of the Spirit from both the Father and the Son, the Descent into Hell, Original Sin, the change of the Sabbath to the Lord’s Day.

      The proof of most of these doctrines from Scripture has already been given under the preceding Articles.  We maintain, that the equality of the Persons in the Godhead, and the other great doctrines concerning the Trinity, also the Descent into Hell, and Original Sin, are clearly deducible from Scripture alone.  We do not indeed reject the testimony of antiquity, but view it as a valuable guide to the true meaning of Holy Writ; but we maintain that these doctrines might be proved even without its aid.  As to the Procession of the Holy Ghost, if Scripture will not prove it, certainly tradition will not.  In considering the last Article, we saw that the tradition of the Western was different in some respects from that of the Eastern Church.  The Nicene Creed for some centuries lacked the Filioque.  And from the evidence in favour of the doctrine, which we deduced from Scripture, it should appear that Scripture speaks more plainly upon it than tradition or the Church.  The change of the Sabbath to the Lord’s Day is not an article of faith, but it is doubtless a matter of some moment.  It is true that without the aid of history we might find some difficulty in discovering whether the early Christians did give up observing the Jewish Sabbath and kept festival on the first day of the week.  But even so, we think Scripture alone would give us proof that the Lord’s Day was to be observed, and that the Jewish Sabbath was not to be observed.  Certainly, we read of the first day of the week, as the day on which Christians held their assemblies, administered the Lord’s Supper (Acts 20:7) and collected alms for the poor (1 Cor. 16:2).  So the Apostle St. John “was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (Rev. 1:10).  But “Sabbath-days” are enumerated as one of the “shadows of things to come,” which belonged to the old dispensation, and so were not binding on Christians (Col. 2:16, 17).  Hence, the new Testament gives us good reason to believe that the obligation to keep the seventh day of the week had passed away, and that the weekly festival of the Christian Church was not Saturday, but Sunday.  If it be not conceded that such Scriptural authority be sufficient to satisfy us, we may reply that the keeping of the Lord’s Day is not a question essential to our salvation like the great doctrines of our faith; and that, therefore, even if we require historical or traditional evidence concerning it in addition to Scripture, that will not be a case to interfere with this Article of our Church which speaks only of articles of faith and things necessary to salvation.

      (6)  Lastly, it is said, Scripture is in many things so obscure, that tradition is necessary to explain its meaning.

      To this we reply that there is, at times no doubt, some difficulty.  The Church of England does not reject the use of all proper aids for the explanation of Scripture.  She encourages recourse to human learning in order to elucidate the language of Holy Writ.  She does by no means reject any light which may be derived from primitive antiquity, and she is anxious to cherish a learned clergy for the instruction of her poorer and more ignorant members.  Her rule too concerning Scripture is not that every uneducated person ought to take the Scriptures in hand and search out for himself a system of theology.  She teaches her children by catechisms and other simple steps to knowledge of the truth.  All that she maintains is that, as a final court of appeal, Scripture is perfect and sufficient.  Her children may, by intelligent and humble study of the Scriptures, find in them full authority for all she teaches, and do not require a second, independent authority.

      The fathers acknowledge the Scripture to be sufficiently plain, if expounded by comparing Scripture with Scripture.  Irenaeus tells us to solve the more difficult parts of Scripture by having recourse to those which are easy.*  And Chrysostom says, “Look for no other teacher; thou hast the oracles of God; none teaches thee like these.” {Homil. IX. in Ep. Coloss.}

            {*Omnis autem quaestio non per aliud qued quaeritur habebit resolutionem, nec ambiguitas per aliam ambiguitatem solvetur apud eos qui sensum habent, aut aenigmata per aliud majus aenigma, sed ea quae sunt talia ex manifestis et consonantibus et claris accipiunt solutionetn.– Lib. II. 10.  See Beaven’s Account of Irenaeus, p. 138.}

      “There is no question, but there are many places in the Divine Scriptures, mysterious, intricate, and secret: but these are for the learned, not for the ignorant: for the curious and inquisitive, not for the busied and employed and simple: they are not repositories of salvation, but instances of labour, and occasions of humility, and arguments of forbearance and mutual toleration, and an endearment of reverence and adoration.  But all that by which God brings us to Himself is easy and plain.” {Jer. Taylor’s Dissuasive from Popery, Part II. Bk. I. § 2.}

      III.  We have lastly to prove that the testimony of the primitive fathers is in favour of the Anglican rule, and not of the Roman.

      1.  Irenaeus says: “We know that the Scriptures are perfect, as being spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit.” {Cedere haec talia debemus Deo qui et nos fecit, rectissime scientes quia Scripturae quidem perfectae sunt, quippe a Verbo Dei et Spiritu ejus dictae. – Lib. II. C. 47.}  Again: “We have received the disposition of our salvation by no others but those by whom the Gospel came to us; which they then preached, and afterwards by God’s will delivered to us in the Scriptures, to be the pillar and ground of our faith.” {Non enim per alios dispositionem salutis nostrae cognovimus, quam per eos per quos Evangelium pervenit ad nos: quod quidem tunc praeconiaverunt, postea vero per Dei voluntatem in Scripturis nobis tradiderunt, fundamentum et columnam fldei nostrae futurum. – Lib. C. 1.}

      Tertullian says: “I adore the perfection of Scripture, which declares to me the Creator and His Works ... Whether all things were made of preexistent matter, I have as yet nowhere read.  Let the school of Hermogenes show that it is written.  If it is not written, let them fear the woe which is destined for them who add to or take away.”*

            {*Adoro Scripturae plenitudinem qua mihi et Factorem manifestat et facta.  In Evangelio vero amplius et ministrum et arbitrum Rectoris invenio, Sermonem.  An autem de aliqua subjacenti materia facta sint omnia, nusquam adhuc legi.  Scriptum esse doceat Hermogenis officina.  Si non est scriptum, timeat voe illud adjicientibus aut detrahentibus destinatum. – Adv. Hermogenem, c. 22.  See also Apolog. c. 47.  De Prescript. c. 6, &c.}

      Origen says: “The two Testaments ...  in which every word that appertains to God may be sought out and discussed, and from them all knowledge of things may be understood.  If anything remain, which Holy Scripture doth not determine, no third Scripture ought to be had recourse to ... but that which remaineth we must commit to the fire, i.e., reserve it unto God.  For God would not have us know all things in this world.”*

            {*In hoc biduo puto duo Testamenta posse intelligi, in quibus liceat omne verbum quod ad Deum pertinet (hoc enim est sacrificium) requiri et discuti, atque ex ipsis onmem rerum scientiam capi.  Si quid autem superfuerit, quod non divina Scriptura decernat, nullam aliam tertiam Scripturam debere ad auctoritatem scientiae suscipi....  Sed igni tradamus quod superest, id est, Deo reservemus.  Neque enim in praesenti vita Deus scire nos omnia voluit. – Origen. Homil. V. in Levit.}

      Hippolytus writes: “There is one God, whom we do not otherwise acknowledge, brethren, but out of the Sacred Scriptures.  For as he who would profess the wisdom of this world cannot otherwise attain it, unless he read the doctrines of the philosophers, so whosoever will exercise piety towards God can learn it nowhere but from the Holy Scriptures.”*

            {*Εις Θεος, ον ουκ άλλοθεν επιγινώσκομεν, αδελφοι, η εκ των αγίων γραφων.  Ον γαρ τρόπον εάν τις βουληθη την σοφίαν του αιωνος τούτου ασκειν, ουκ άλλως δυνήσεται τούτου τυχειν εαν μη δόγμασι φιλοσόφων εντύχη, τον αυτον δη τρόπον όσοι Θεοσέβειαν ασκειν βουλόμεθα, ουκ άλλοθεν ασκήσομεν η εκ των λογίων του Θεου. – Hippolyt.  Contra Hoeresim Noeti, c. 9.}

      Athanasius: “The holy and divinely inspired Scriptures are of themselves sufficient to the enunciation of truth.” {Αυταρκεις μεν γαρ εισιν αι αγίαι και θεόπνευστοι γραφαι προσ την της αληθείας απαγγελίαν. — Athanas.  Contra Gentes, Tom. I. p. 1.}  Again: “These are the fountains of salvation, that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the oracles contained in them.  In these alone the doctrine of salvation is contained.  Let no man add to, or take from them.” {Ταυτα πηγαι του σωτηρίον, ώστε τον διψωντα εμφορεισθαι των εν τούτοις λογίων·  εν τούτοις μόνον το της ευσεβείας διδασκαλειον ευαγγελίζεται·  μηδεις τούτοις επιβαλλέτω, μη δε τούτων αφαιρείσθω. – Ex Festali Epistola XXXIX. Tom II. p. 39.  Edit. Colon.}

      Cyril of Jerusalem says, that, “Concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, even the most casual remark ought not to be delivered without the sacred Scriptures.” {Δει γαρ περι των θείων και αγίων της πίστεως μυστηρίων μηδε το τύχον άνευ των θείων παραδίδοσθαι γραφων. – Cyril. Hierosol.  Catech. IV. 12.}

      Basil: “Believe those things which are written, the things which are not written seek not.” {Τοις γεγραμμένοις πίστευε, τα μη γεγραμμένα μη ζητει. – Basil. Hom. XXIX. adv. Calumniantes S. Trin.}  “It is a manifest defection from the faith, and a proof of arrogance, either to reject anything of what is written, or to introduce anything that is not.” {Φανερα έκπτωσις πίστεως και υπερηφανιας κατηγορία η αθετειν τι των γεγραμμένων η επεισάγειν των μη γεγραμμένων.  Basil.  De Fide. c.1.}

      Ambrose: “How can we use those things, which we find not in the Scriptures!” {Quae in Scripturis sanctis non reperimus, ea quemadmodum usurpare possumus. – Ambros.  Offic. Lib. I. c. 23.}

      Jerome: “We deny not those things which are written, so we refuse those which are not written.  That God was born of a Virgin we believe, because we read; that Mary married after she gave birth to Him, we believe not, because we read not.” {Ut haec quae scripta sunt non negamus, ita ea quae non scripta sunt renuimus.  Natum Deum de Virgine credimus, quia legimus.  Mariam nupsisse post partum non credimus, quia non legimus. – Hieron.  Adv. Helvidium juxta finem, Tom. IV. part II. p. 141, edit. Benedict.}

      Augustine: “In those things which are plainly laid down in Scripture, all things are found which embrace faith and morals.” {In iis quae aperte in Scriptura posita sunt, inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi. – August.  De Doctrina Christ. Lib. II. c. 9, Tom. III. p. 24.  In like manner: – Proinde sive de Christo, sive de ejus Ecclesia, sive de quacumque alia re quae pertinet ad fidem vitamque vestram, non dicam nos, nequaquam comparandi ei qui dixit, Licet si nos: sed omnino quod secutus adjecit, Si angelus de coelo vobis annuntiaverit praeterquam quod in Scripturis legalibus et evangelicis accepistis anathema sit. – Aug.  Cont. Petilium, Lib. III. C. 6, Tom. IX. p. 301.}

      Vincentius Lirinensis begins with the admission, that, “The Canon of Scripture is perfect, and most abundantly sufficient for all things.” {Cum sit perfectus Scripturarum Canon, sibique ad omnia satis superque sufflciat. – Vincent. Lirin. Commonitor. C. 2.}

      Theodoret: “Bring not human reasonings and syllogisms; I rely on Scripture.” {Μή μοι λογισμους και συλλογισμους ανθρωπίνους προσενέγκης·  εγω γαρ μόνη πείθομαι τη θεία γραφη. – Theodoret.  Dial. I. Ατρεπτ.}

      John Damascene: “All things that are delivered to us by the Law, the Prophets, the Apostles, and the Evangelists, we receive, acknowledge, and reverence, seeking for nothing beyond these.” { Πάντα τα παραδιδόμενα ημιν διά τε νόμου, και προφητων και αποστόλων και ευαγγελίστων δεχόμεθα και γινώσκομεν και σέβομεν, ουδεν περαιτέρω τούτων επιζητουντες. – Damascen. Lib. 1. De Orthodox. Fide, C. 1.}

      It can scarcely be necessary to bring more or stronger proofs that the fathers with one voice affirm the perfection and sufficiency of the written word, for the end for which it was written, i.e., for a rule of faith, and for a rule of life. {Divines of the English Church have collected many other passages to the same purpose.  See Laud against Fisher, § 16; Usher’s Answer to a Jesuit, ch. 2; Jer. Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, Part II. Bk. I. ch. 2; Rule of Conscience, Book II. ch. II. Rule xiv.  From some of which works I have taken the above passages, (with one or two exceptions) merely verifying the quotations.}

      2.  (1) But an objection will be urged to these arguments from the fathers, that some of them, and those of no mean importance, clearly speak of a rule of faith which is distinct from the Scriptures; it is therefore evident that they do not appeal to Scripture alone as supreme, perfect, and sufficient.  Thus, without question, Irenaeus spoke of a καοων της αληθείας, “a rule of truth”, according to which he considered that the Scriptures ought to be interpreted. {Ούτω δε και ο τον κάνονα της αληθείας ακλινη εν εαυτω κατέχων, ον δια βαπτίσματος είληφε, τα μεν εκ των γραφων ονόματα και τας λέξεις και τας παραβολας επιγνώσεται. – Irenae. I. 9.}  In the same manner Tertullian appeals to a Regula Fidei, “a rule of faith”, by which he was guided in interpreting Scripture. {Haec Regula a Christo, ut probabitur, instituta, nullas habet quaestiones, nisi quas haereses inferunt, et quae haereticos faciunt. – Tertull.  De Praescrept. Haeret. c. 14.  Adversus Regulam nihil scire omnia scire. – Ibid.}  Here are two of the earliest fathers appealing to an authority which is certainly not Scripture; and therefore they must have held that something besides Scripture was necessary, and that all things needful for faith and practice were not contained in Scripture.

      If, however, we consult the contexts, we shall find that the rule spoken of in both these fathers is the baptismal Creed.  Irenaeus expressly says that the Canon of Truth, which each one was to keep, was that which was received by him at his baptism; {See the last note but one.} and in the next chapter recites a form or profession of faith, which is very nearly the same as the Apostles’ Creed, and which he speaks of as that “faith which the Church scattered throughout the world diligently keeps.” {Lib. I. 10.}

      In the very same manner Tertullian writes, “Now we have a rule of faith, which teaches us what we are to defend and maintain, and by that very rule we believe, that there is One God,” &c.; he goes on reciting the various articles of the Creed. {De Praescript Haeret. C. 13.}  Here then we see that the rules of faith of Irenaeus and Tertullian were not some independent tradition, teaching doctrines not to be found in Scripture, but the Creeds taught to the Christians and confessed by them at their baptism, which were in fact epitomes of important Scriptural doctrine founded on Scripture and fully according with it.  This is a widely different thing from the Doctrina tradita of the Church of Rome.  Reliance on the latter is opposed to the sufficiency of Scripture; but the rule of Irenreus and Tertullian was based upon Scripture, and in all respects accordant with it.

      Clement of Alexandria also, who is almost as early a witness as Tertullian, speaks, like Irenaeus, of a καοων της αληθείας, “a rule of truth”, which he also calls καοων εκκλησιαστικός.  But this rule, so far from being something apart from, and of parallel authority with, Scripture is, according to Clement, founded on a harmony of the old Testament with the new.  “The ecclesiastical rule,” says he, “ is the harmony of the Law and the Prophets with the Covenant delivered by the Lord during His presence on earth.” {Κανων δε εκκλησιαστικος η συνωδία και η συμφωνία νόμον τε και προφητων τη κατα την του Κυρίου παρουσίαν παραδιδομένη διαθήκη. – Strom. Lib. VI. C. 15, ed. Potter, p. 803.}

      A like sense we must attach to the language of the later fathers, when we find them speaking of a Regula Fidei.  They considered the fundamental doctrines of the faith, those, that is, contained in the Creeds, to be the great guide for Christians in interpreting Scriptures.  Whosoever erred from these erred from the truth; and, in explaining obscure passages, they held that it was very needful to keep in view the necessity of not deviating from the great lines of truth marked out in the baptismal Creeds.  This was not to add to Scripture, but to guard it against being wrested to destruction. {See Bp. Marsh, On the Interpretation of the Bible.  Lect. XI.; Bp. Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 290, &c.; Bp. Kaye’s Clement of Alexandria, p. 366; Beaven’s Irenaeus, ch. VIII.}

      (2)  But, it may be said, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others, not only appealed to tradition, but even preferred arguing from tradition to arguing from Scripture.

      Tertullian especially says: “No appeal must be made to the Scriptures, no contest must be founded on them, in which victory is uncertain ... The grand question is, to whom the Faith itself belongs; in whose hands were the Scriptures deposited ... to whom that doctrine was first committed, whereby we are made Christians?  For wherever this true doctrine and discipline shall appear to be, there the truth of the Scripture and of the interpretation of it will be, and of Christian tradition.” {De Praescript. Haeret. C. 19.}

      The meaning, however, of this appeal to tradition in preference to Scripture, both by Irenaeus and Tertullian, is this: both were reasoning against heretics.  Those heretics mutilated Scripture and perverted it.  When, therefore, the fathers found their appeal to Scripture of no effect, partly because the heretics were ready to deny that what they quoted was Scripture, and partly because they were ready to evade its force by false glosses and perverted interpretations; then the fathers saw that to reason from Scripture was not convincing to their opponents, and therefore they had recourse to the doctrine preserved by the Apostolical Churches, which, they maintained, were not likely to have lost or to have corrupted the truth first entrusted to them.  It was not, that they themselves doubted the sufficiency of Scripture, but that they found other weapons useful against the gainsayers, and therefore brought tradition, not to add to, but to confirm Scripture. {See Beaven’s Irenaeus, p. 136; Bp. Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 297, note.}

      The same may be said concerning the famous work of Vincentius Lirinensis.  He begins by admitting that “Scripture is perfect and abundantly of itself sufficient for all things.”  But because various heretics have misinterpreted it, Novatian expounding it one way, Photinus in another, Sabellius in another, and so on “therefore,” he says, “very necessary it is for the avoiding of such turnings and twinings of error, that the line of interpreting the Prophets and Apostles be directed according to the rule of Ecclesiastical and Catholic sense.” {Commonitor. c. 2.}  This is not to introduce a new rule independent of Scripture.  It is at most a Traditio Hermeneutica, a rule for the interpreting of Scripture.  It still leaves Scripture, as the fountain of truth; though it guards against using its streams for other than legitimate purposes.

      Finally, we have seen the concurrent testimony of the fathers to be in favour of the sufficiency of Scripture.  If, here and there, a single passage be apparently unfavourable to this testimony, we must hold it to be a private opinion of an individual father, and therefore not worthy of being esteemed in comparison with their general consent.  For it is a rule of Vincentius himself, that “Whatsoever any, although a learned man, a bishop, a martyr, or a confessor holds, otherwise than all, or against all, this must be put aside from the authority of the general judgment, and be reputed merely his own private opinion.” {Commonitor. C. 28.  On the true sense of the perfection of Scripture, see Hooker, E. P. I. xiii. xiv. II. viii. 5.}

 

Section  II – On the Canon of Scripture*

      {*The word κάνων signifies a line, or rule, – a standard, therefore, by which other things are to be judged of.  It is applied to the tongue of a balance, or that small part of the scales which by its perpendicular situation determines the even poise or weight, or by its inclination either way the uneven poise of the things that are weighed.  It is applied to the Scriptures, because they have ever been esteemed in the Church “the infallible rule of our faith and the perfect square of our actions in all things that are in any way needful for our eternal salvation.” – Cosin’s Scholastical Hist. of the Canon, ch. I.; Jones, On the Canon, ch. 1.}

      As Scripture is determined by our Church to be the final appeal and only infallible authority concerning matters of faith and practice, it becomes next a subject of the deepest importance to determine what is Scripture and what is not.  And, as this subject is so important, we naturally look for an authority of the highest kind to settle and determine it.  We value, indeed, the decisions of antiquity, we respect the judgment of the primitive Church.  But on the question, What is the Word of God? we would, if possible, have an authority as infallible as the word of God; and, if we can have such authority, we can be satisfied with nothing less.

      Now such an authority we believe that we possess; and that we possess it in this way: Christ Himself gave His own Divine sanction to the Jewish Canon of the old Testament; and He gave His own authority to His Apostles to write the new.  If this statement be once admitted, we have only to investigate historically what was the Jewish Canon, and what were the books written by the Apostles.  We need search no farther; we shall greatly confirm our faith by the witness of fathers and councils; but if Christ has spoken, we need no other, as we can have no higher warrant.

      I.  Now, first, we have to consider the question of the old Testament; and our inquiry is, Has our Lord Himself stamped with His authority certain books, and left others unauthorized?  The answer is, He has.  We must not, indeed, argue from the fact of His quoting a certain number of books and leaving a certain number unquoted; for there are six books which can be proved to be Canonical, which the writers of the new Testament never quote; namely, Judges, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Solomon’s Song.  The fact that these books are not quoted will not destroy their authority; for we have no reason to say that our Lord or His Apostles quoted systematically from all the Canonical books in order to establish their canonicity.  But the way in which our Lord has given His own sanction to a certain definite number of books, is this: in speaking to the Jews, both He and His Apostles constantly address them as having the Scriptures, – Scriptures of Divine authority, and able to make them wise unto salvation.  They never hint that the Jewish Canon is imperfect or excessive; and hence they plainly show that the Scriptures which the Jews possessed and acknowledged, were the truly Canonical Scriptures of the old Testament.  Our Lord bids them “Search the Scriptures” and adds, “they are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39).  St. Paul says, that the greatest privilege of the Jews was that “unto them were committed the Oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2); and tells Timothy, that “from a child he had known the Scriptures, which were able to make him wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:16).  Accordingly, our Lord constantly appeals to those Scriptures as well-known and universally received books among the Jews to whom He spoke, quoting them as, “It is written”, or asking concerning them, “How readest thou?”  Though the Jews are charged with many errors, with corrupting the truth by tradition, and adding to it the commandments of men; yet nowhere are they charged with corrupting Scripture, with having rejected some, or added other books to the Canon.  But it is ever plainly implied that the Canon which they then possessed, was the true Canon of the old Testament.  Thus, then, by quoting, referring to, or arguing from the old Testament, as it was then received by the Jews, our Lord stamps with His own supreme authority the Jewish Canon of the old Testament Scriptures.  We have only further to determine from history what the Jewish Canon at the time of our Saviour’s teaching was, and we have all that we can need.  If history will satisfy us of this, we have no more to ask.

      Now the only difficulty lies here.  There appear to be two different books claiming to be the Jewish Scriptures; namely, the Hebrew Bible, now in the hands both of Jews and Christians, and the Septuagint.  The latter contains all the books contained in the former, with the addition of the books commonly called the Apocrypha.

      Let us first observe, that the modern Jews universally acknowledge no other Canon but the Hebrew; which corresponds accurately with the Canon of the English Church.  Those who know the fidelity with which for centuries the Jews have guarded their text, will consider this alone to be a strong argument that the Hebrew Canon is the same as that cited by our Lord.  Every verse, every word, every letter, of Scripture is numbered by them.  Every large and every small letter, every letter irregularly written, above the line or below the line, is taken notice of and scrupulously preserved.

      But we can go back to more ancient times, and show that the Canon of the Jews has always been the same.  The Babylonian Talmud recounts the same books that we have now; namely, in the Law, the five books of Moses ; among the Prophets, Joshua and Judges, Samuel and Kings, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Isaiah and the twelve minor prophets; in the Chethubim, Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Lamentations, Daniel, Esther, Chronicles.  This was the Canon of the Jewish Church about A. D. 550. {Baba Bathra, fol. 14, col. 2.  The books of Moses are called תּוֹרָה  The Law; the prophetical books נִכִיאִים  The Prophets; the other books כִּתוּכִים  Chethubim, i.e. The Scriptures or Writings.}

      But one hundred and fifty years earlier than this, Jerome undertook the task of translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Latin.  Theretofore all the Latin translations had been from the Septuagint, and therefore contained all the Apocryphal books.  Jerome, the first of the Latin fathers who could read Hebrew, when undertaking this important labour, was naturally led to examine into the Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures.  He informs us that the Jews had two-and-twenty books in their Bible, corresponding with the two-and-twenty Hebrew letters.  This number they made by classing two books together as one; thus, the two books of Samuel were one, the two books of Kings, Ezra and Nehemiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations, Judges and Ruth, respectively, were considered as one each.  The books were divided into three classes, the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa.  The first contained the five books of Moses; the second contained Joshua, Judges and Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets; the third contained Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Job, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, Esther, Chronicles.  The Law, therefore, contained five books, the Prophets eight, the Hagiographa nine. {Hieron.  Prologus Galeatus, Op. Tom. I. p. 818.  Ed. Bened.}

      To go still farther back, Origen, who was born A. D. 184 and who died A. D. 255, and who, like Jerome, was learned in Hebrew and gave great attention to the Hebrew text, (as is well known from his famous work, the Hexapla,) enumerates the same books that Jerome does, except that he adds after all the rest, that there was the book Maccabees apart or distinct from the others. {Ap. Euseb.  H. E. VI. 25: Έξω δε τούτων εστι τα Μακκαβϊκα, άπερ επιγέγραπται Σαρβηθ Σαρβανιελ.  Bishop Cosin interprets this, as meaning that the Books of Maccabees were “out of the Canon”. – History of the Canon, ch. V.}

      Still earlier, Melito, bishop of Sardis, made a journey into the East, for the sake of inquiring what were the books held canonical there, and in a letter to Onesimus gives a catalogue of these books, precisely corresponding with the present Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, except that he classes Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, under the common name of Esdras. {Euseb.  H. E. IV. 26.  See Bp. Cosin as above, ch. IV.}  This father lived about the year 160.

      We next come to Josephus.  He flourished at the time of the siege of Jerusalem, and was therefore contemporary with the Apostles.  In the first place, we find in his writings the same threefold division which occurs in Jerome, and has ever since been common with the Jews; namely, the Law, the Prophets, and other books, which he characterizes as “Hymns and Instructions for Men’s Lives”.  A similar division exists in Philo. {De Vita Contemplative, Tom. II. p. 475; Marsh, On the Authority of the old Testament, Lect. XXXII.}  But Josephus, moreover, divides the Scriptures, as Jerome testifies that the Jews did in his time, into twenty-two books. {Contra Apion I. § 8; Euseb. H. E. III. 10.}  The only difference between the divisions of Josephus and Jerome is, that, whereas Jerome says there were eight in the Prophets and nine in the Hagiographa, Josephus assigns thirteen to the Prophets, and four to the Hagiographa.  We know, however, that the Jews have gradually been augmenting the number of the books in the Hagiographa and diminishing the number in the Prophets, so that there is no great wonder, if between the first and the fourth century there was such a change in their mode of reckoning, that in the first they reckoned thirteen, in the fourth but eight among prophetical books.

      Thus then, since we find that Josephus gives the same threefold division which we find afterwards given by Jerome, and also that he gives the same total number of books, namely, twenty-two, though somewhat differently distributed, we might at once naturally conclude that the Jewish Canon in the time of Josephus was the same with the Jewish Canon in the time of Jerome.  That is to say, we might conclude that it embraced the books now in the Hebrew Bibles and in the Canon of the English Church, and that it excluded the Apocryphal books, which the English Church excludes.  But, if we could doubt that this was the case, his own words might set us at rest, for he tells us that the books belonging to the second class (i.e. to the Prophets) were written previously to the reign (or to the death) of Artaxerxes Longimanus, and that, though books were written after that time, “they were not esteemed worthy of the same credit with those before them, because there was no longer the exact succession of the Prophets.”*  It was during the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus that the book of Esther was written, Artaxerxes being, according to Josephus, the Ahasuerus of that book. {Antiq. Lib. XI. cap. 6.}  This would therefore be the last book of his Canon.  All the Apocryphal books must have been written long after that reign, and therefore cannot be included in his twenty-two books, compared with which they were not thought worthy of equal credit.  It is plain, therefore, that the Canon of Josephus must be the same with that of Jerome.

            {*Απο δε Αρταξέρξου μέχρι του καθ ημας χρόνου, γέγραπται μεν έκαστα·  πίστεως δε ουχ ομοίας ηξίωται τοις προ αυτων, δια το μη γενέσθαι την των προφητων ακριβη διαδοχήν. – Contra Apionem, I. § 8; Euseb.  H. E. III. 10.}

      Now, in the short time which elapsed between our Saviour’s earthly ministry and Josephus, no alteration can have taken place in the Canon.  Josephus himself tells us, that a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures was preserved in the Temple. { Δηλουται δια των ανακειμένων εν τω δερω γραμμάτων. – Antiq. Lib. V. cap. 17.}  And therefore, until the destruction of the Temple, when Josephus was thirty-three years old, that Temple copy existed and was a protection against all change.  He would have had easy access to that Temple copy and hence is a fully competent witness to its contents.  Nay, even without the existence of that copy, which was an invaluable security, we learn from Philo, that in his time the Jews had the same intense veneration for the words of Scripture which we know them to have had afterwards; so that nothing could induce them “to alter one word, and that they would rather die ten thousand deaths than suffer any alteration in their laws and statutes.”*

            {*Philo-Judaeus  Ap. Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. Lib. VIII. § 6: Μη ρημα γ αυτους μόνον των υπ αυτου γεγραμμένων κινησαι, αλλα καν μυρίακις αυτους αποθανειν υπομειναι θαττον τοις εκείνου νόμοις και έθεσιν εναντία πεισθηναι. – See Cosin, On the Canon, ch. II.  So Josephus: Δηλον δ έστιν έργω πως ημεις τοις ιδίοις γράμμασι πεπιστεύκαμεν ·  τοσούτου γαρ αιωνος ηδη παρωχηκότος ούτε προσθειναί τις ουδεν, ούτε αφελειν αυτων, ούτε μεταθειναι τετόλμηκεν. – Contra Apionem, I. § 8; Euseb.  H. E. III. 10.}

      We now are arrived at the period when the books of the new Testament were written.  Philo and Josephus were in fact contemporaries of Christ and His Apostles.  We have already seen, that our Lord and the Apostles quote the Scriptures as well known and universally received, and never hint at their corruption.  Our Lord indeed divides them (as we see they were divided by Jerome and the Jews ever since) into three distinct classes, which our Lord calls the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, {“That all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms.” – Luke 24:44.} in which “the Psalms” is put for the whole Hagiographa, either because the Psalms stood first among the books of the Hagiographa, or because the Hagiographa may be said to consist chiefly of hymns and poems, which might well be called Psalms. {According to the division which existed in our Saviour’s time, which probably was the same as that in the time of Josephus, there would have been but four books in the Chethubim or Hagiographa, namely, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Solomon’s Song.}  We have to add to this, that in the new Testament every book of the Jewish Canon is distinctly quoted with the exception of six, and those perhaps the six least likely to have furnished passages for quotation; but not one quotation occurs from any one of those books which form a part of what is now called the Apocrypha.  {See this proved, – Cosin, Hist. of Canon, ch. III.}

      If we could carry the evidence no farther, we might rest satisfied here, that our Lord gave His sanction to the Hebrew, not to the Septuagint Canon.  But we can go one step farther, and it is this: one hundred and thirty years before our Lord’s birth, the Prologue of the Book of Ecclesiasticus was written, which classes the Hebrew Scriptures into the same three classes, “the Law, the Prophets, and the other books of the fathers”.  This is a ground for believing that the Jewish Scriptures were the same in number then that they were found to be afterwards.  Again, what is not a little important, Targums,* some of which are as old as or older than the Christian era, were made from all the books of the old Testament, but none are to be found of the Apocryphal books.  We have Targums of the Law, Targums of the Prophets, Targums of the Chethubim, but no Targums of the Apocrypha.

            {*The Targums were translations or paraphrases of the Scriptures, made from the original Hebrew into Chaldee, when Hebrew had become a dead language, which was the case soon after the return from captivity.  They were read in the synagogues, and formed the ordinary instruments for instruction of the Jews of Palestine in the Scriptures.}

      Our evidence is now pretty nearly complete; we may recapitulate it thus.

      We have the threefold division of the Scriptures mentioned – in the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus, by Philo, by our blessed Lord, by Josephus; and the same we find in the time of Jerome, and among all the Jews from that time to this.

      We know that the number of books contained in these three classes was, in the time of Josephus, twenty-two.  The same number we find recounted by Origen and Jerome, as belonging to the Jewish Canon, and Origen and Jerome give us their names, which are the names of the books in the present Jewish Canon.

      The Canon in the time of Josephus, who was born A. D. 87, must have been the same as that in the time of Christ: as its security was guaranteed by the existence of the Temple copy, to say nothing of the scrupulous fidelity of the Jews, who, as Philo tells us, would have died ten thousand times rather than alter one word.

      The Targums, which are paraphrases of the books in the present Hebrew Canon, confirm the same inference; and some of them are as old as the time of our Lord.

      Now we know exactly how the threefold division embraced the books of the Hebrew Canon.  We know how, in Origen’s time and in Jerome’s time, the twenty-two books (which was also the number in Josephus’s time) embraced the books of the Hebrew Canon.  We know, too, that Melito, less than one hundred years after Josephus, gave, as the books received in the East, a catalogue corresponding exactly with the same Hebrew Canon.  But no imaginable ingenuity can ever make the books of the Apocrypha fit into any of these divisions or agree with any of these lists.

      When we add to this, that our Lord and His Apostles, when they gave the sanction of Divine authority to the Jewish Scriptures, quote perpetually nearly all the books of the Hebrew Canon, and quote none besides, no link in the chain seems wanting to prove, that the Jewish Canon is that to which Christ appealed and which He has commended to us as the Word of God.

      The history of the Septuagint explains the only difficulty in the question.  It is briefly as follows: –

      In the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus this version was made at Alexandria.  It is impossible that it could have then contained the books of the Apocrypha inasmuch as these books were not written till after the date when the Septuagint version was made; none of them probably having been in existence till about two centuries before the Christian era.  At what exact time the Apocryphal books were written respectively, it is not easy to determine.  None of them could have been written in Hebrew which had then become a dead language; though soine may have been composed in Chaldee or Syriac, languages which in the new Testament and in other writings are frequently called Hebrew.*  However, when these Apocryphal books were written, if in Greek, the originals, if in Chaldee, the Greek translations, were in all probability inserted into the Septuagint, along with the still more sacred books of Scripture, by the Alexandrian Jews who, in their state of dispersion, were naturally zealous about all that concerned their religion and the history of their race.  The places which they assigned to the various books, were dependent either on the subject or on the supposed author.  Thus the Song of the three Children, the Story of Susanna, and the History of Bel and the Dragon, seemed connected with, and were therefore added to, the book of Daniel.  The Greek Esdras seemed naturally to be connected with the Greek translation of the book of Ezra.  The Book of Wisdom, being called the Wisdom of Solomon, was added to the Song of Solomon; and the book of Ecclesiasticus, called the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, was placed after the Wisdom of Solomon.

            {*The Book of Ecclesiasticus appears from ch 1:27 to have been written by “Jesus the Son of Sirach of Jerusalem”; and in the Prologue of his grandson the words of the book are said to have been Εβραιστι λεγόμενα, written in Hebrew.  However, Hebrew was then a dead language, and the Jews spoke Syro-Chaldee, which was what St. Paul spoke when he addressed his countrymen “in the Hebrew dialect,” εν Εβραιδι διαλέκτω, Acts 22:1.  It is also said that the first book of Maccabees was written in Hebrew; but as some of the events recorded in it happened within one hundred and fifty years from the birth of Christ, it must have been the same Chaldee.  Tobit also and Judith are said by Jerome, in his Prefaces to these books, to have been written Chaldoeo sermone, though it has been thought the Chaldee was only a translation.}

      No doubt, the Alexandrian Jews ascribed great importance to the books which they thus inserted in the Septuagint version; but Philo, who was an Alexandrian Jew, and who was a contemporary of our Lord’s, never quotes them for the purpose of establishing any doctrine; and it is certain that none of them ever got into the Hebrew Canon; nor were they ever received by the Jews of Palestine, amongst whom our blessed Saviour taught, and to whose Canon, therefore, He gave the sanction of His Divine authority.

      Now the fathers of the Christian Church for the first three centuries were, with the exception of Origen, profoundly ignorant of Hebrew.  It was natural, therefore, that they should have adopted the Greek version as their old Testament; and, accordingly, it formed the original of their Latin version.  Hence the books of the old Testament current in the Church were, in Greek the Septuagint, in Latin a translation from the Greek Septuagint; both therefore containing the Apocryphal books.  It was not till the time of Jerome, that a translation was made from the Hebrew; and hence in the eyes of many the whole collection of books contained in the Septuagint and the old Latin translation was naturally viewed with the respect due to Scripture.  Many indeed of the fathers, as we shall soon see, knew the difference between the books of the Hebrew Canon and those of the Apocrypha, and knew that the former were Divine, the latter of inferior authority.  But still many quoted almost indiscriminately from both; and especially St. Augustine is appealed to, as having given a Catalogue of the old Testament Scriptures, which contained the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the two books of Maccabees. {Augustin.  De Doctrina Christiana, Lib. II. c. 8; Opera, Tom. III. pt. I. p. 23.}  In the Latin Church the name of Augustine stood deservedly high.  Though Jerome’s labours showed the fallacy of Augustine’s opinion, though the Greek fathers never received the Apocryphal books so carelessly as the Latin fathers had done, and though even Augustine himself was aware of the difference between them and the books of the Hebrew Canon; yet the Apocryphal books still kept their place in the Latin Vulgate, and were ultimately adopted by the Council of Trent, as part of the Canon of Scripture.  Yet as we can thus easily trace the origin of the mistake, and thereby see that it was a mistake, we need not be led away with it.

      This, necessarily very brief, sketch of the grounds on which we believe the present Hebrew Canon to be that to which our Lord gave His sanction, may be sufficient to show on what we rest our belief concerning the sacred books of the old Testament. From such historical evidence we know, that the Scriptures which the Lord Jesus appealed to, authorized, and confirmed, were the books contained in our Hebrew Bibles. {Passages of the new Testament, where such authority is given to the old, are such as Matt. 5:18.  Luke 16:29, 24:27, 44.  John 5:39.  Rom. 3:1, 2; 9:4.  2 Tim. 3:15, 16.}  We ask no more, and we can receive no more.  On such a matter the appeal to such an authority must be final.  Fathers and Councils, nay, “the holy Church throughout all the world,” would be as nothing if their voice could be against their Lord’s.

      We are not, however, in this or in any other question, insensible to the value of the opinions of the fathers, still less of the consent of the early Church. And though we can plainly see -v‘ hat, in this case, may have led some of the fathers into error, we rejoice in being able to show, that, in the main, their testimony is decisive for what we have already, on other grounds, shown to be the truth.

      Now in the second century, A. D. 147, Justin Martyr, himself a native of Palestine, in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, though he reproves him for many other things, never reproaches him for rejecting any of the Canonical Scriptures. {Cosin, On the Canon, ch. IV.}  Melito, A. D. 160, we have already seen, went to Palestine to be satisfied concerning the Canon of the old Testament, and reports that it contained, according to the Christians of that country, the books of our Hebrew Bible. {Euseb.  H. E. IV. 26.}  Origen, A. D. 220, the most learned of the early fathers, the famous compiler of the Hexapla, himself a native of and resident at Alexandria, where the Septuagint version was made and received, gives us the same account as Melito. {Euseb.  H. E. VI. 25.}

      Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, A. D. 340, gives it perfect catalogue of the books of Scripture, enumerating the books of the old Testament just as the English Church receives them now, and mentioning as not canonical {Έτερα βίβλια τούτων έξωθεν·  ου κανονιζόμενα μεν, τετυπωμένα δε παρα των πατέρων} the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther (i. e. the Apocryphal book of Esther), Judith, and Tobit. {Festal. Epist. XXXIX.  Op. Tom. II. p. 961, edit. Bened.  Tom. II. p. 38.  Colon. 1686.  The only thing to be observed in the catalogue of Athanasius is that he joins Baruch and the Epistle with Jeremiah; into which mistake many of the fathers fell, from the connection which was made between those books in the LXX and Latin; though some think that nothing more is meant than what is inserted in the book of Jeremiah concerning Baruch, and the Epistle contained in the twenty-ninth chapter of the prophecy of Jeremiah, – not the apocryphal books of these names.  See Cosin, ch. VI.}

      Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, in France, A. D. 350, numbers the books of the old Testament as twenty-two, and gives the names of the very books of the Hebrew Bible used in the English Church, saying that some persons had added to this number Tobit and Judith, to make up twenty-four, the number of the Greek letters, instead of twenty-two, the number of the Hebrew. {Hilar.  Proleq. in Librum Psalmorum, § 15, edit. Benedict. p. 9.  His Catalogue is Five books of Moses, 5.  Joshua, 1.  Judges and Ruth, 1.  Samuel, 1.  Kings, 1.  Chronicles, 1.  Ezra (including Nehemiah), 1.  Psalms, 1.  Proverbs, 1.  Ecclesiastes, 1.  Song of Songs, 1.  Minor Prophets, 1.  Isaiah, 1.  Jeremiah (with Lamentations and Epistle), 1.  Daniel, 1.  Ezekiel, 1.  Job, 1.  Esther, 1.  In all, 22.}

      Cyril of Jerusalem, A. D. 360, in his Catechetical Lectures, exhorts the catechumens to abstain from the Apocryphal, and to read only the Canonical books of Scripture, giving as the reason, “Why shouldest thou, who knowest not those which are acknowledged by all, take needless trouble about those which are questioned?”  He makes the number of the books twenty-two, and gives the same list as Athanasius, i.e. the same as the English Canon, with the addition of Baruch and the Epistle to the book of Jeremiah. {Cyril.  Hieros.  Catech. IV. § 35.}

      The Council of Laodicea, held about A. D. 364, in its fifty-ninth Canon gives exactly the same list as Athanasius and Cyril.  The Canons of this Council were approved by name in the Council of Constantinople in Trullo. {Concil. Laodicen. Can. LIX.  Concil. Quinisext. Can. II.}

      Epiphanius, Bishop of Constance, in Cyprus, A, D. 375, three times numbers the books of the old Testament as we do, and mentions the books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus , as “doubtful writings,” and not counted as among the sacred books “because they were never laid up in the Ark of the covenant.” {Adv. Haeres. V. LXXVI.  De Mensuris et Ponderibus, Tom. II. pp. 162, 180.}

      Gregory Nazianzen, A. D. 376, gives a catalogue, which is the same as the Canon of the English Church, except that he does not mention Esther, which he probably includes in Ezra. {Greg. Nazianz.  Carm. XXXIII.}

      Rufinus, presbyter of Aquileia, A. D. 398, numbers the books of the old Testament as the English Church does at present. {Expositio in Symbolum Apostolorum, § 86, ad calcem Oper. Cyprian.}

      Jerome, the contemporary and friend of Rufinus, gives us, as we have seen, the same catalogue as the Church of England now receives, and enumerates Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, and the Maccabees, as Apocryphal books. {In Prologo Galeato, Tom. I. p. 322.  Ed. Bened.}

      We have now arrived at the close of the fourth century, and have found that the whole chain of evidence up to that period is in favour, and most decidedly in favour, of the Canon of the English Church.  It will be no argument against such testimony, that many of the fathers quote the Apocryphal books, or even quote them as of authority.  We have already seen what circumstances led the early Christians, and especially those of the Latin Church, into a somewhat excessive respect for the Apocryphal writings contained in the Septuagint and the ancient Latin Versions.

      At the end of the fourth century, and contemporary with Jerome, lived Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.  In his book De Doctrina Christiana, {Lib. II. C. 8, edit. Benedict.  Tom. III. p. 23.} he enumerates the books of the “whole Canon of Scripture.”  He reckons in this Canon the books of Tobit, Judith, two books of Maccabees, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus.  The authority of Augustine is very great.  Yet is it not for a moment to be weighed against the testimony of the four preceding centuries, even if his testimony was undoubted and uniform.  Yet this is by no means the case.  In the very passage above referred to, he speaks of a diversity of opinion concerning the sacred books, and advises that those should be preferred which were received by all the Churches; that, of those not always received, those which the greater number and more important Churches received should be preferred before those which were sanctioned by fewer and less authoritative Churches.*  But moreover, passages from his other writings tell strongly against the canonicity of the books commonly called the Apocrypha.  Thus he speaks of the Jews being without prophets from the captivity, and after the death of Malachi, Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra, until Christ. {De Civitat. Dei, Lib. XVII..cap. 24. Tom. VII. p. 487.  Toto illo tempore ex quo redierunt de Babylonia, post Malachiam, Aggaeum, et Zachariam, qui tunc prophetaverunt, et Esdram, non habuerunt prophetas usque ad Salvatoris adventum, &c.}  He tells us, that “the Jews did not receive the book of Maccabees as they did the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, to which the Lord gives testimony, as to His own witnesses.” {Contra Gaud.  Lib. I. C. 31, § 38.  Tom. IX. p. 655.}  He tells us, that the book of Judith was never in the Canon of the Jews. {De Civitate Dei.  Lib. XVIII. C. 26.  Tom. VII. p. 508.  In libro Judith: quem sane in Canone Scripturarum Judaei non recepisse dicuntur.}  He distinguishes between the books which are certainly Solomon’s, and the books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, to which custom has given the sanction of his name, but which learned men agreed were not his. {De Citvit. Dei, Lib. XVII. C. 20.  Tom. VII. p. 483.  Propter eloquii nonnullam similitudinem, ut Salomonis dicantur, obtinuit consuetudo: non autem esse ipsius, non dubitant doctiores.}  And many other proofs have been brought from his works, to show that he was at least doubtful concerning the authority of these books, notwithstanding his catalogue, which included them. {The whole question is fully sifted by Bp. Cosin, Scholastical History of the Canon, ch. VII.}

            {*In canonicis autem Scripturis, Ecclesiarum Catholicarum quam plurium auctoritatem sequatur; inter quas sane illae sint quae Apostolicas sedes habere et epistolas accipere meruerunt.  Tenebit igitur hunc modum in Scripturis canonicis, ut eas, quae ab omnibus accipiuntur Ecclesiis Catholicis, praeponat eis quas quaedam non accipiunt: in eis vero quae non accipiuntur ab omnibus, praeponat eas quas plures gravioresque accipiunt, eis quas pauciores minorisque auctoritatis Ecclesiae tenent. – Lib. II. C. 8, edit. Benedict.  Tom. III. p. 23.}

      We now come to the Council of Carthage at which it is said that Augustine was present.  The date of this Council is disputed.  It is usually considered as the third Council of Carthage, held A. D. 397.  It enumerates the books of Scripture as we have them now, together with Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, and the two books of Maccabees. {Conc. Carthag. III.  Can. XLVII.}  If Augustine was present, it is probable that we ought to interpret the decree of the Council with the same restrictions with which we plainly ought to interpret the words of St. Augustine, who, if he be not altogether inconsistent with himself, must assign a lower degree of authority to the doubtful books than to those which all received.  But if it be not so, we must still remember that the Council of Carthage was a provincial, not a general Synod; that it was liable to err; and that in matter of history, if not in matter of doctrine, it actually did err; for by numbering five books of Solomon, it assigned to his authorship Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, which could not have been written for centuries after his death.  We cannot therefore bow to the authority of the Council of Carthage, even if that of St. Augustine be joined to it, against the testimony of all preceding ages, and, above all, against what has been shown to be the witness of our Lord Himself.

      The Council of Trent, however, in its fourth session, stamped with its authority all the books which had been enumerated by the Council of Carthage, with the addition of the book of Baruch; and added an anathema against every one who should not receive the whole Canon so put forth, and all the traditions of the Church besides.*  Thus did the Churches of the Roman communion set themselves against the Churches of God in the times of old, and against all the rest of Christendom in this present time.  They, by implication, condemned those ancient fathers, who, as we have seen, almost with one voice preferred the Jewish Scriptures to the Apocryphal writings of the Septuagint.  They anathematized, not only the Anglican, and all other reformed Churches, but as well the ancient Churches of the East, who with us reject the Apocrypha, and adhere to the Scriptures which were sanctioned by the Lord. {See Suicer, s. v. γραφη.  See also Dr. Wordsworth’s Lectures on the Canon, Appendix B.  No. IV., where documents are given showing the agreement of the Eastern with the Anglican Church on the Canon of Scripture.}  We might speak more strongly of the danger of “cursing whom God hath not cursed”; but we may rest satisfied with the assurance that “the curse causeless shall not come.”**

            {*Concil. Trid. Sess. IV. Decret. I.  Sacrorum vero librorum indicem huic decreto adscribendum censuit, ne cui dubitatio suboriri possit, quinam sint, qui ab ipso Synodo suscipiuntur.  Sunt vero infra scripti: Test. V. Quinque Mosis, Jos., Judic., Ruth, 4 Reg., 2 Paralip., Esdrae 1 et 2 (qui dicitur Nehem.), Tobias, Judith, Esther, Job, Psalterium David, CL Psal., Parab., Ecclesiastes, Cantlc. Canticorum, Sapientia, Ecclesiasticus, Esaias, Hieremias cum Baruch, Ezech., Daniel., 12 Proph. Minores, Duo Machabaeorum 1 et 2.  Test. N. Quattuor Evangelia, &c. &c.  Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in Ecclesia Catholica legi convenerunt et in veteri vulgata Latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit, et traditiones praedictas sciens et prudens contempserit, anathema sit.}

            {**On the Canon of the old Testament, see Suicer’s Thesaurus, s. v. γραφη; Bp Cosin’s Scholastic History of the Canon: Bp. Marsh, Lectures, Part VI.  On the Authority of the old Testament; Bp. Marsh’s Comparative View, chap. V. Dr. Wordsworth, in his Hulsean Lectures on the Canon of Scripture, has thrown into the Appendix the most important passages on the subject from the Jewish and early Christian writers, in a form more convenient than they may be seen in Bp. Cosin’s most valuable work, as in the latter they are scattered through the notes, whilst in Dr. Wordsworth’s book they are given in a compact form at the end.}

      II.  The Canon of the new Testament rests on the same authority as the Canon of the old.

      As regards the number of books which are to be admitted as Canonical in the New Testament, there is no difference between the Anglican and any other branch of the Church of Christ.  Yet on the mode of settling the Canon there is some difference.  The Roman Church holds that we receive the Scriptures, both of the old and new Testament, simply on the authority of the Church.  It is said that the Canon was not fixed till the end of the fourth century; and it is inferred that the Church then, by its plenary authority, determined which books were Scripture and which were not.  Thus virtually the Church has been made to hold a position superior to the Scriptures as not only “a witness and keeper”, but also a judge “of Holy Writ.”  And though in the first instance such authority is conceded to the Church of the fourth century, yet by implication and consequence the same authority is claimed for the Church of this day; that is, not for the Church Universal, but for that portion of it which has claimed as its exclusive title the name of Catholic, i.e. the Church of Rome.

      On the other hand, some Protestants have been satisfied to rest the authority of the books of the new Testament on internal evidence, especially on the witness which the Spirit bears with our own spirits that they are the Word of God.  The framers of the Belgic Confession, for instance, distinctly assert that they receive the Scriptures “not so much because the Church receives and sanctions them as Canonical, as because the Spirit witnesses with our consciences that they proceeded from God; and especially because they, of themselves, attest their own authority and sanctity.” {Idque non tam quod Ecclesia illos pro canonicis recipiat et comprobet: quam quod Spiritus Sanctus nostris conscientiis testetur illos a Deo emanasse: et eo maxime quod ipsi etiam per se sacram hanc suam authoritatem et sanctitatem testentur atque comprobent. – Confess. Belgica, Art. V.; Sylloge Confessionum, p. 328; Jones, On the Canon, Part I. ch. VI.}

      Now the Church of England rejects altogether neither the authority of the Church, nor the internal testimony of the Scriptures.  Yet she is not satisfied to rest her faith solely on the authoritative decree of any council in the fourth or fifth, still less in any later century; neither can she consent to forego all external testimony, and trust to an internal witness alone, knowing that, as Satan can transform himself into an angel of light, so it is possible that what seems the guidance of God’s Spirit may, if not proved, be really the suggestion of evil spirits.  Hence we think that there is need of the external word, and of the Church, to teach; lest what seems a light within be but darkness counterfeiting light: and we know that the fertile source of almost every fanatical error recorded in history has been a reliance on inward illumination, to the neglect of outward testimony.*

            {*There is a passage much to the purpose, quoted by Jones (On the Canon, Part I. ch. VI.) from the Preface to Baxter’s Saints’ Rest.  “For my part, I confess, I could never boast of any such testimony or light of the Spirit nor reason neither, which, without human testimony, would have made me believe that the book of Canticles is canonical and written by Solomon, and the book of Wisdom apocryphal, and written by Philo, &c.  Nor could I have known all or any historical books, such as Joshua, Judges. Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, &c., to be written by divine inspiration, but by tradition, &c.”}

      The principle, then, which we assert is this, that Christ gave authority to His Apostles to teach and to write, that He promised them infallible guidance, and that therefore all Apostolical writings are divinely inspired.  We have only to inquire what writings were Apostolical; and for this purpose we have recourse to testimony or, if the word be preferred, to tradition.  The testimony or tradition of the primitive Church is the ground on which the fathers themselves received the books of the new Testament as Apostolical; and, on the same ground, we receive them.  We gladly add to this every weight which can be derived from internal evidence, or from the authority of early councils; for we know, that no argument should be neglected, which may fairly confirm our faith.  But the first ground on which we receive the new Testament is, that it can be proved to have come from the pens or the dictation of the Apostles of Christ, and that to those Apostles Christ promised infallibility in matters of faith.

      1.  The promise of inspiration and infallibility appears in such passages as the following: –

      “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My Name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”  John 14:25, 26.

      “When He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth, and He will show you things to come.”  John 16:13.

      “It is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.”  Mark 13:11.

      And what Christ promised, His Apostles claimed.  They speak of having the deep things of God revealed to them by His Spirit, 1 Cor. 2:10.  They declare their own Gospel to be the truth, and anathematize all who preach any other Gospel, Gal. 1:8.  They speak of “the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men,” as being now revealed to the “Apostles and prophets by the Spirit,” Ephes. 3:4, 5; and treat the Gospel as a faith “once delivered to the saints,” Jude 3.

      If therefore we believe the new Testament at all, we believe that Jesus Christ gave a promise of inspiration to the Apostles; and that the Apostles claimed the promise, professed to have received the inspiration, and accordingly assumed to be the only infallible depositaries of the doctrines of the Gospel.

      2.  We have therefore, in the next place, simply to determine the genuineness of the writings which profess to be Apostolical, and our labour will be finished.  If we know that any book was written by an Apostle, we know that, as regards doctrine and faith, it is inspired and infallible, and therefore we receive it into the Canon of Scripture.  The primitive Church acted on this principle, and we act upon the same.

      More or less, all ancient writings must be subjected to a test like this.  If we wish to know whether certain books were written by Cicero, or Caesar, or Tacitus, we examine the evidence and decide according to it.  The simple fact that they have ever been received as theirs is a strong presumption that they proceeded from them.  But still we mostly require farther proof.

      Now, it is infinitely more important to be assured that a book was written by St. John or St. Paul, than to know that one was written by Cesar or Cicero.  And accordingly God in His Providence has afforded us far more abundant evidence concerning the genuineness of the different books of the new Testament than can be found concerning any other writings of antiquity.  That evidence is principally dependent on testimony, but is not resolvable into mere authority.  It is the witness of the Church, not merely its sanction, to which we appeal.

      Now the position of the Church in its earliest ages was such that its witness on this subject is singularly unexceptionable.  During the very lifetimes of the Apostles, it had spread through the civilized world.  Europe, Asia, Africa, had all heard the voice of the Apostles, and all had flourishing Churches long before the death of the last of that sacred body.  The books which the Apostles had written were therefore not merely to be found in one or two obscure corners of the world, but they were treasured up and read and reverenced in Rome and Alexandria, in Antioch and Ephesus, in Corinth and Thessalonica, very probably in Spain and Gaul and Arabia, perhaps even in the remote region of Britain itself.  There were therefore witnesses in every corner of the globe.  Even where the arms of Rome had not carried conquest, the feet of Apostles had carried good tidings of peace.  In many of these Churches, the writers of the sacred books were well known and constant visitors; so that Epistles as from them, or Gospels with their names, could not have been palmed off upon their converts, who could continually have rectified errors of this kind by direct appeal to the living sources of Divine instruction.  The writers of the new Testament themselves took care that what they wrote should be widely circulated, and extensively known when first they wrote it.  St. Paul bids the Colossians send his epistle to them to be read as well in the Church of Laodicea (Col. 4:16).  He charges the Thessalonians that they should suffer his epistle to be “read to all the holy brethren” (1 Thess. 5:27).  We are informed concerning the Gospels that they were written, the first by an Apostle, for the use of the Church of Judea; {Euseb.  H. E. III. 24; Iren. III. 1.} the second, by St. Mark, under the dictation of St. Peter, {Iren. III. 1; III. 11.} for the use of those Christians amongst whom St. Peter had been preaching, and who wished to have the substance of it preserved in writing; {Euseb. I. 15; VI. 14, on the authority of Clemens Alexandrinus.} that St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, wrote his Gospel at St. Paul’s dictation; {Iren. III 1.} and that St. John wrote his in his last days at Ephesus, having first seen and approved the other Gospels, writing his own as supplementary to them. {Euseb. III. 24; Hieron.  De Viris Illustribus, s. v. Joannes.}

      These and similar considerations show that the writings of the new Testament must have had a great degree of publicity, and therefore great protection against forgery and fraud, from their earliest publication.  Every separate Church and every separate city to which they spread was a guard against corruption, and a check upon its neighbours.  But at the same time, wide as the empire of Christ had spread, it was not then, as now, a collection of disunited communities, but one living, intercommunicating whole.  The early records with one voice proclaim that all Christendom was as one man.  There was a circulation of lifeblood through the whole.  A Christian could not go from Rome to Alexandria, or from Alexandria to Ephesus, but he bore a talisman with him which made him welcomed as a brother.  And the degree of intercourse which took place in the very earliest times between far distant Churches, is apparent by the letter of Clement of Rome to the Church of Corinth, by the solicitude of Ignatius for the different cities to which he wrote on the eve of his martyrdom, by the journey of Polycarp from Smyrna to Rome to discuss the Paschal controversy, by the appointment of Irenaeus, a native of Asia, to the chief bishopric in Gaul, and by numerous similar facts.

      We have therefore the following securities that the Churches from the first would preserve the writings of the Apostles safe and in their integrity.

      (1)  The presence of the Apostles with them, and frequent intercourse among them, whilst the sacred books were in writing.

      (2)  The publicity given to these books from the first.

      (3)  The wide diffusion of the Church throughout the world, so that copies would be multiplied everywhere, and one part of the Church would be a check against forgeries in another.

      (4)  The intimate communion of every part of Christendom with the rest, so that every facility was afforded to every portion of the Church, of knowing what were the Apostles’ writings, and of guarding against mistake.

      (5)  To these we may add, that there were divisions in many Churches even from the Apostles’ days, (see 1 Cor. 3:3, 4; Gal. 2:4, &c.) which necessarily created independent witnesses, even in individual Churches, each party being a check on the other.

      (6)  And lastly, that in God’s Providence the Apostle St. John lived at the great city of Ephesus for thirty years after the works of the other Apostles had been written; and was thus living in the midst of the civilized world as a final and authoritative court of appeal if there could be any doubt as to which were Apostolical, and which Apocryphal writings.

      Can we doubt then that the primitive Church was a body so remarkably constituted that its testimony united on this particular subject the singularly opposite merits of unanimity and yet of mutual independence; that it enjoyed the most extraordinary powers for knowing the truth, with no interest in corrupting it, and without the power to corrupt it even if it had the will?

      We conclude, therefore, that the Scriptures which the primitive Church held as Apostolical must have been so.  And we may add, that, owing to the wide diffusion of the Church throughout the world, it would have been impossible for a forger in aftertimes to pass off his forgery on the Church; for if it was received in one place, it would speedily be rejected in another, and convicted of falsehood on the sure ground of novelty.  The primitive Church, therefore, was singularly fitted by Providence to be a witness and keeper of Holy Writ; even a witness and a keeper of it against future as well as present corruptions.

      It is impossible to give more than a very brief sketch of the evidence which we derive from the early Church thus qualified to bear testimony.  We may classify it in the following order: –

            (1)  Manuscripts of the original.

            (2)  Versions in numerous languages.

            (3)  Catalogues.

            (4)  Quotations and references, and commentaries.

      (1)  We have manuscripts of the new Testament Scriptures in very great numbers, preserved to us in different quarters of the globe.  The testimony which these MSS. bear all tends to the same point; namely, the general integrity of the text of the new Testament, as we have it now.  These MSS. indeed are so far different from each other as to be independent witnesses; for, though they agree in preserving the same general text, they differ in verbal minutiae, and have various readings, like MSS. of all ancient authors; and it is found that these MSS. can be classed into different families; so that each family bears a line of testimony distinct from the others.  Thus Griesbach distinguished the Greek MSS. into three distinct texts: the Alexandrine, which he found to correspond with the reading of the famous Codex Alexandrinus and with the quotations of Origen, the great Alexandrian critic; the Byzantine, including those MSS. which in their peculiarities agree with the MSS. which have been brought to us direct from Constantinople; the Western, to which belong the MSS. which have been chiefly found in Europe, and which in their peculiarities resemble the Latin version.  Other critics (as Matthäi, Scholz, &c.) have made different arrangements and classifications; but all agree in the observation that we have distinct streams of MSS. coming down to us from the most remote antiquity, and preserving in the main the same text of the new Testament, though differing in minute particulars, sufficient to constitute them in some degree independent witnesses, and existing in the different quarters of the globe.  It is true, the most ancient of these MSS. is probably not older than the fourth century; but it is well known to all scholars, how very ancient a MS. of the fourth century is considered, and how very few MSS. in the world have anything approaching to such antiquity; and it must be borne in mind, that a MS. of the fourth century represents a text of much earlier date, from which it must have been copied; and when we have many independent MSS., and some of them of nearly the same great antiquity, we know that they respectively and independently bear witness to the existence of an older text or texts, to which they owe their original.

      Now here is one evidence of the genuineness of our new Testament writings.  They are preserved to us in innumerable MSS. in all parts of the world; MSS. whose authority is of the highest possible character.  The books which are thus preserved are not the Apocryphal, but the generally received Canonical books of the new Testament.

      (2)  We have a great number of ancient versions of the new Testament Scriptures, in the various languages which were vernacular in the early ages of the Church.  Thus we have versions in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Sahidic, Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and other languages.  The Versions which are supposed to have the greatest claim to antiquity, are the Latin and the Syriac.  That there was a very ancient Latin version, there can be no manner of doubt; for the rapid diffusion of the Gospel in Europe and Africa made it a matter of great consequence that the new Testament Scriptures should speedily be translated into the Latin tongue.  The ancient Italic may, therefore, very probably have been made in the days of the Apostles.  The only difficulty of importance is the many alterations which the Latin Versions subsequently underwent, which make it hard to ascertain what MS. fairly represents the most ancient text.  Yet all the Latin Versions of any authority, at present in existence, give their testimony, in the main, to the integrity of the text of the new Testament as we have it now.  The Peschito Syriac is by most scholars considered to be the oldest of all the versions; and it has the advantage of being a Version from the Greek into the vernacular tongue of our Lord and His Apostles.  It is by many thought to be a work of the first century, and may have been seen by the Apostle St. John.  The Syrians themselves held the tradition that it was made by St. Mark.  The testimony which it bears concerning the Canon of the new Testament is most satisfactory, so far as it goes.  It contains, in literal translation, the four Gospels, the Acts, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of St. James, the first Epistle of St. Peter, and the first of St. John, – that is to say, all our present Canon, except the Apocalypse, the Epistle of St. Jude, the second of St. Peter, and the second and third of St. John.  There are many reasons why so ancient a Version should not have contained these last-named books.  If it were made so early as has been supposed, some of the excluded books may not have been written.  At all events, it is highly probable that they were not all at once collected into one volume, and some shorter and later pieces are especially likely to have been at first omitted. {On the importance of the Syriac version, see Jones, On the Canon, Pt. I. ch. XIV–XIX.}

      (3)  We have among very early fathers, regular catalogues of the books of the new Testament, as received and read in the Church.

      Origen, the most learned of the Greek fathers, who was born A. D. 185, i.e. less than ninety years from the death of St. John, gives a catalogue exactly corresponding with our present Canon.*

            {*Comment. in Matt. ap. Euseb. H. E. VI. 25.  In this catalogue he omits St. James and St. Jude.  But in his thirteenth Homily on Genesis he speaks of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude, as the authors of the books of the new Testament.  In his seventh Homily on the book of Joshua, if we may trust the Latin translation of Rufinus, in which alone it exists, he enumerates all the books which we now have.  See Jones, On the Canon, Pt. I. ch. VIII.; Bp. Marsh’s Lectures, Pt. V. On Authority of the New Testament, Lech XXIV; Lardner, II. ch. XXXVIII.}

      Eusebius, another most learned and accurate inquirer, born at Caesarea, in Palestine, A. D. 270, gives a catalogue exactly corresponding with our own, except that he speaks of the Epistles of St. James, St. Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, as generally received, yet doubted of by some; and says of the Apocalypse, that, though some doubted, yet others received it; and he himself received it, and considered it as canonical. {H. E. III. 25.}

      Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, A. D. 326, and who therefore must have been born in the third century, gives a catalogue exactly corresponding with ours. {Ex Festali Epist. XXXIX.  Tom. II. p. 961; Edit. Benedict. Tom. II. p. 38, Colon. 1686.}

      Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, A. D. 349, gives the same list, with the exception of the Apocalypse! {Cateches. IV. § 36.  He makes mention of certain forged Gospels, ψευδεπίγραφα, and ascribes to the Manicheans a Gospel according to St. Thomas.}

      The Council of Laodicea, A. D. 364, gives the same list as St. Cyril. {Concil. Laodicen. Can. IX.}

      Epiphanius, A. D. 370, gives the same list as ours. {Haeres. 76, C. 5.}

      Gregory Nazianzen, A. D. 375, who was born about the time of the Council of Nice, gives the same list as ours, omitting the Apocalypse. {Gregor. Nazianz. Carm. XXXIII.}

      Jerome, who was born A. D. 329, was educated at Rome, and was ordained presbyter at Antioch, A. D. 378, gives the same list as ours ; except that he observes that most persons in the Latin Church did not consider the Epistle to the Hebrews as St. Paul’s, though he himself held that it was so. {Epist. I. ad PaulinumOpp. Tom. IV. p. 574; Ed. Bened.  On the Epistle to the Hebrews, see De Viris Illustribus, s. v. Paulus.}

      Rufinus, presbyter of Aquileia, contemporary and friend of Jerome, gives the same catalogue as we now possess. {Exposit. in Symb. Apostol. § 86, ad calc. Oper. Cyprian.}

      Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, A. D. 394, (born A. D. 355,) gives the same catalogue as ours. {De Doctrina Christiana, Lib. II. C. 8.  Tom. III. p. 23.}

      The Council of Carthage (A. D. 397?) gives the same catalogue. {Concil. Carthag. III. Can. XLVII.}

      (4)  But besides these formal catalogues, we have from the very first ages a series of quotations, references, and allusions to our sacred books, and in some cases regular harmonies and commentaries upon them.

      This is a wide subject.  It occupies the first five volumes in the octavo edition of Lardner’s most valuable work on The Credibility of the Gospel History.  An account of it here must necessarily be brief.

      The writings of the Apostolical fathers are few in number, and there are many reasons why they should not quote so frequently and fully from the books of the new Testament as those who succeeded them.  Yet there are, nevertheless, a considerable number of references and quotations from the books which we possess as the new Testament Scriptures, even in them.

      Clement, who probably died before St. John, especially ascribes the first Epistle to the Corinthians to St. Paul.  Words of our blessed Lord, found in the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, are recommended with a high degree of respect, but without the names of the Evangelists; and there is reason to think that he alludes to the Acts, the Epistle to the Romans, the two Epistles to the Corinthians, and divers other of the Epistles of the new Testament. {Lardner, II. ch. II.}

      Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom very soon after the death of St. John, in writing to the Ephesians, ascribes the Epistle to that Church to St. Paul, and cites several passages from it.  He alludes to St. Matthew’s, St. Luke’s, and probably to St. John’s Gospel; also, probably, to the Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, 1 Peter, 1 and 3 John.  He. appears also to have expressions denoting collections of the Gospels and Epistles of the Apostles. {Ibid. II. ch. V.}

      Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, a disciple of St. John, quotes Philippians, and speaks of St. Paul as having written to that Church.  He quotes also expressions from St. Matthew and St. Luke, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians; and there are manifest references to Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, 1 Peter, 1 John, and probably to the Hebrews. {Lardner. II. ch. VI.}

      If Barnabas and Hermas are to be reckoned Apostolical, although there are manifest references to the new Testament in their works, yet the nature of their writings makes it most improbable that they should have quoted much from it, and accounts for their comparative silence. {Ibid. II. ch. I. IV.}

      Papias, who was well acquainted with Polycarp and, as some think, even with St. John, and was an anxious inquirer about all that had come from the Apostles and followers of Christ, bears testimony to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, quotes the first Epistle of St. Peter and the first of St. John, appears to have a reference to the book of Acts, and there is every reason to suppose he received the Apocalypse.  There are no works of his remaining, except a fragment preserved by Eusebius. {Euseb. H. E. Lib. III. cap. 39; Lardner, II. ch. IX.}

      Justin Martyr, the first of the fathers of whom we have any considerable remains, was converted to Christianity about A. D. 133, flourished chiefly about A. D. 140, i.e. 40 years after the death of St; John, and died a martyr about A. D. 164 or 167.  He has many quotations from the four Gospels, which he refers to under the name of the Memoirs of the Apostles.*  He has, moreover, referred to the Acts, many of the Epistles, and expressly assigns the Book of Revelation to St. John.  In his first Apology, he tells us that the memoirs of the Apostles and the writings of the Prophets were read in the assemblies for public worship, and discourses made upon them by the presiding presbyter. {Apol. I. p. 98; Lardner, II. ch. X.}

            {*Απομνημονεύματα των Αποστόλων, which he explains by α καλειται ευαγγέλια. – Apol. I. p. 98, n.  Bishop Marsh in his dissertation On the Origin of the Four Gospels, ch. XV, supposes that Justin does not allude to our present Gospels, but to a certain original document, which the Bishop supposes to have existed, which was early composed by the Apostles, and from which the Evangelists compiled their several Gospels.  The words α καλειται ευαγγέλια he considers an interpolation.  He argues, that Memoirs of the Apostles more probably mean a single work than a collection of works, and that Justin’s quotations are not exact from our present Gospels.  His arguments are considered by Bishop Kaye, Writings of Justin Martyr, ch. VIII.  The last-named prelate seems to have clearly proved that there is no reason for doubting that our present Gospels are those cited by Justin, though, at times, he rather quotes the purport than the very words of a passage.}

      Tatian, the disciple of Justin Martyr, composed a harmony of the Gospels, called Diatessaron. {Lardner, II. ch. XIII.}

      The circular Epistle of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, concerning the sufferings of their martyrs in the reign of Marcus Antoninus, uses language from the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, Acts, Romans, Philippians, 1 Peter, 1 John, and the Revelation. {Ibid. ch. XVI }

      Irenaeus, who was a hearer of Polycarp, the disciple of St John, {Hieronym.  De V. I. s. v. Irenaeus.} and became Bishop of Lyons, A. D. 177, assures us that there were four Gospels, and no more, {Adv. Haeres. III. 11.} all of which he has largely quoted, with the names of their writers, and has given an account of their composition. {Ibid. III. 1.}  He refers the Acts to St. Luke.  He quotes all St. Paul’s Epistles, except Philemon and the Hebrews, also 1 Peter, 1 and 2 John, and the Apocalypse, which he expressly assigns to St. John the Apostle,* and probably the Epistle of St. James.  “His quotations from the Gospels are so numerous that they occupy more than twelve folio columns in the index of Scripture passages annexed to the Benedictine edition.” {}

            {*Adv. Haeres. IV. 20; V. 26.  The time of seeing the Apocalypse is mentioned v. 30; namely, towards the end of the reign of Domitian, if the word εωράθη is used of the seeing of the Apocalypse, not, as some think, of the duration of St. John’s own life.}

      Theophilus of Antioch (circ. A. D. 170) quotes St. Matthew, St. Luke, several of St. Paul’s Epistles, and we are assured by Eusebius that in his work against Hermogenes he quoted the Apocalypse. {Bp. Marsh’s Lectures, Pt. V.  Lent. XXIV; Lardner, II. ch. XVII.}

      Clement of Alexandria, who lived at the end of the second century, about 100 years after the completion of the Canon of Scripture, quotes all the four Gospels, and especially tells us the origin of St. Mark’s. {Lardner. II. ch. XX.}  He ascribes the Acts to St. Luke; quotes all St. Paul’s Epistles, except the short Epistle to Philemon, and ascribes the Epistle to the Hebrews to St. Paul, though he thinks it was written in Hebrew by St. Paul, and translated into Greek by St. Luke. {Euseb.  H. E. VI. 14.}  He quotes three of the Catholic Epistles, namely, 1 John, 1 Peter, Jude; for it is doubtful whether he refers expressly to St. James, or the second Epistle of St. Peter, and the second and third of St. John.  The Apocalypse he expressly ascribes to St. John. {Lardner, II. ch. XXII; Bp. Kaye’s Clement of Alex. ch. VIII.}

      Tertullian, presbyter of Carthage, of the same date with Clement, quotes all the books of the new Testament, except perhaps St. James’s Epistle, the second of St. Peter, and the third of St. John. The Epistle to the Hebrews he assigns to Barnabas. {De Pudicitia, C. 20.}  Dr. Lardner has observed, that “There are perhaps more and larger quotations of the new Testament in this one Christian author than of all the works of Cicero, though of so uncommon excellence for thought and style, in the writers of all characters for several ages. {Lardner, II. ch. XXVIII.  See also Bp. Kaye’s Tertullian, ch. V. p. 307.}

      We are now arrived at Origen, who, as we have seen, gives a complete catalogue of the new Testament, as we have it now. {Lardner, ch. XXXVIII.}

      Dionysius of Alexandria, A. D. 247, quotes the Gospels, Acts, St. Paul’s Epistles, especially ascribing the Hebrews to St. Paul, the three Epistles of St. John.  On the Apocalypse he has a long dissertation, from which it appears that it was very generally received by Christians as written by St. John, though he himself inclines to attribute it to another John, whom he considered a holy and divinely inspired man. {Ibid. IlI. ch. XLIII.}

      Cyprian, A. D. 250, quotes all the new Testament except the Epistles to Philemon and the Hebrews, the third of St. John, the second of St. Peter, and St. James.  The Apocalypse he often quotes as St. John’s. {Ibid. III. ch. XLIV.}

      Methodius, Bishop of Olympus in Lycia, circ. A. D. 260, constantly quotes or refers to the Gospels and Acts, most of St. Paul’s Epistles, especially the Hebrews, also 1 Peter, 1 John, and the Apocalypse. {Ibid. III. ch. LVII.}

      Eusebius has already been adduced as a witness, having given a catalogue of the new Testament Scriptures, as we have them now.

      It is unnecessary to continue the list farther.  We have already seen that from this time we may find in the works of the fathers full catalogues of the books of the new Testament; and the number of quotations from them in their writings grows fuller and more abundant.

      We must add, that heretics quoted and admitted the same Scriptures, with the exception of those outrageous heretics such as the Gnostics and the Manichees, who were rather heathen philosophers with a tinge of Christianity than Christians with a defilement of philosophy.  Thus the Montanists, the Donatists, {Ibid. ch. LXVII.} Arius, {Ibid. ch. LXIX.} Photinus, {Ibid. ch. LXXXIX.} Lucifer, {Ibid. ch. XCI.} and other schismatics and heretics of the first four centuries, received the same sacred books with the Catholic Christians.

      Not only heretics, moreover, but heathens and persecutors knew the sacred books and sought to destroy them.  Thus in the persecution of Diocletian there was an edict A. D. 303, that the Christian Churches should be destroyed, and their Scriptures burned.  Accordingly, great search was made for the books of the new Testament, and those Christians who, to save themselves, gave up their books to the persecutors, acquired the opprobrious name of Traditores. {Lardner, ch. LXVI.}

      When Constantine the Great embraced Christianity, finding that the persecution under Diocletian had diminished the number of copies of the new Testament, he authorized Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea to get fifty copies of the new Testament written out for him, desiring that they should be skillfully and carefully written on fine parchment. {Euseb. Lib. IV. C. 36; Lardner, ch. LXX.}

      We have seen, then, that numerous MSS., the most ancient Versions, the catalogues given us by the fathers, quotations and references from the time of the earliest Apostolical father, gradually increasing in number, yet numerous from the beginning, the consent of heretics, the enmity of persecutors, – all witness to the existence, from the earliest times, of the new Testament Scriptures; and all this testimony is uniform in favour of the very books which we now possess.

      It may be added, that, although it is quite clear that there were certain early writers, such as Clement, Barnabas, and Hermas, highly esteemed and whose writings were read in some Churches; and though there were some Apocryphal books professing to be the works of the Apostles and Evangelists: yet there is good reason to assert that these books are not quoted by the fathers as authority, and were not received by the Church as Canonical Scripture.  {See Jones, On the Canon, Part II. ch. I.  Observ. III; Lardner, ch. X.  XIV.  XVII.  XXII.  XXXVIII.  LVII.  &c.}

      To the external evidence, the internal proofs of genuineness might be added, if time and space would allow.  Books which are forgeries generally show, when carefully scrutinized, plain proofs that they are not his whose name they bear.  The language, the ideas, the statements of facts, some little circumstance of date or place, some circumstance connected with the character, knowledge, or condition of the author, are found inconsistent and incapable of being explained.  Or if this be not the case, there is a markedly studied effort to avoid all this, and to make the forgery appear a genuine work.  But the different books of the new Testament, though written by eight different hands, under vastly different conditions, have yet defied the efforts of critics to disprove their genuineness.  They only come out the brighter from every fiery trial.  Their style and language is just what we should expect from the writers to whom they are ascribed.  They abound in minute particulars, most naturally and simply introduced, which correspond accurately with the state of things existing at the time and in the place in which the authors wrote.  Coincidences have been pointed out, which the cleverest forger could never have designed, and which only patient searching could have detected; whereas, if such coincidences had been designed, they would have been put prominently forward to meet the view. {See Paley’s Horae Paulinae, passim; Marsh’s Lect. Pt. V. Lect. XXVI.}  In this, and in similar manners, we may confirm by internal examination the results deduced from external testimony.

      But before we conclude this sketch we must observe that, in the accounts of the catalogues and quotations given by the different early fathers, we could not but remark that some books were less universally quoted and classed in the catalogues than others.  We learn as early as Origen and more clearly afterwards from Eusebius that though the Church generally received the Canon of the new Testament as we receive it now, yet some few books were by some persons considered as doubtful.

      Eusebius makes three distinct classes of books, {H. E. III. 3, 25.} namely: –

            ομολογούμενοι, those universally received;

            αντιλεγόμενοι, those generally received, but doubted of by some;

            νόθοι, i. e. Apocryphal books rejected by all but heretics.

      In like manner, Cyril of Jerusalem distinguishes between those παρα πασιν ομολογούμενα, owned by all, and αμφιβαλλόμενα, doubted of by some. {Cyril. Cateches. IV. 36}

      Now the undoubted books according to Eusebius, which all received, were the four Gospels, the Acts, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, one of St. Peter, one of St. John.  He adds, that Christians generally received the Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, Revelation.  These he esteemed canonical but tells us that some doubted concerning their genuineness.  He also mentions the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, and the Pastor of Hermas, as esteemed useful by many, but not to be considered a part of Canonical Scripture. {Euseb. H. E. as above; Lardner, LXXII.}  Now the principal reasons for doubting the genuineness and Canonicity of the books, which Eusebius speaks of as αντιλεγόμενα, were of this nature.  The Hebrews has not St. Paul’s name and is thought to be different in style from his other writings. {Hieronym.  De V. I. in Paul.}  St. James might not have been an Apostle, and therefore his Epistle might have no claim to be in the Canon.  The Apocalypse introduces the name of St. John, contrary to that Apostle’s custom elsewhere; and some supposed it was written by John the elder, a person whom Papias mentions, and not by St. John the Apostle. {Euseb. H. E. III. 39.}

      To take first the Epistle of St. James; there is strong reason to believe that, whether the writer was James the son of Zebedee, or James the Lord’s brother, he was in any case an Apostle; for James the Lord’s brother is in Scripture called an Apostle, {Gal. 1:19.} and was in all probability the same as James the son of Alphus, or Cleopas, (the two names being very probably identical) his mother being Mary the sister of the Virgin Mary. {See Lardner, VI. ch. XVI.}  So that there is no reason to exclude his Epistle from the Canon because he was not an Apostle.  But farther, his Epistle is in the Syriac version, and the authority of the Syrian Church is very important on this head; for the Church of Syria bordered on Palestine where St. James, the Lord’s brother, was bishop and spoke the same language as the natives of Palestine itself.  We must remember, too, that Eusebius tells us that this Epistle was received by the great majority of Christians; and that it is by no means wonderful that an Epistle written by the Bishop of Jerusalem to the Jews should not have become known to the Grecian Churches so soon as others; and hence more doubt might arise about it than about other Epistles. {See Marsh’s Lect. Pt. V.  Lect. XXV.}

      Of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse, we learn that the former was not fully admitted by the Latin, nor the latter by the Greek Church among Canonical Scriptures.  {Hieronym.  Dardan.  Epist. CXXIX.  De V. I. s. v. Paul. 1602.}

      Of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we may observe that the absence of the Apostle’s name may be fully accounted for by the fact that he was the Apostle of the Gentiles, not of the circumcision; and therefore, when he writes to the Jews, he does not put his name and claim his Apostleship, as not wishing to put forward the same claim to authority over the Jews which he asserts over the Gentile Churches. {Clem. Alex. ap. Euseb. H. E. VI. 14; Hieron. In Galat. cap. I.}  But the Epistle is probably referred to by Clement of Rome, {Eusebius observes that Clement uses the very language of the Epistle. – H. E. III. 38.  It may be added, that the writer of St. Clement’s Epistle seems to have been thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Epistle to the Hebrews.} and perhaps by Polycarp. {Lardner, ch. VI.}  We have in its favour the testimony of Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Dimysius of Jerusalem, the Council of Laodicea, Epiphanius, Gregory Nazianzen, Jerome. {See the lists above given.}  It is in the Syriac Canon.  And, as regards the supposed difference of style from the general writings of St. Paul, the opinion of Clement of Alexandria, that St. Paul wrote the Epistle in Hebrew or Syriac, and that it was translated by St. Luke into Greek, would explain all the difficulty. { Ap. Euseb. H. E. VI. 14.}  Yet Mr. Forster appears to have proved, by most careful and accurate comparison, that the style of the Epistle to the Hebrews, notwithstanding the apparent dissimilarity, has all the peculiarity of the writings of St. Paul, a peculiarity so great that the genuineness of the Epistle can hardly be questioned. {Forster, On the Apostolical Authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews.}

      The Apocalypse, which is the only other book of any considerable length which is doubted, is ascribed by Papias to John, probably the Apostle.  It is the only book which Justin Martyr mentions by name, and he expressly assigns it to St. John.  Irenaeus constantly quotes it and refers it to St. John.  Tertullian and Theophilus of Antioch quote it.  Clement of Alexandria assigns it to St. John.  So do Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, Cyprian, Eusebius, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Jerome, the Council of Carthage. {See the lists and authorities referred to above.}  All these are witnesses of great importance, and a large number of them living within a century of the date when the book in question was composed.  Especially Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, the very earliest fathers after those called Apostolical, speak much concerning it, and quote frequently from it.  Melito, a contemporary of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, is also, according to Eusebius, a witness to the Apocalypse of St. John. {Και λόγος αυτου (Μελίτωνος) περι προφητείας, και ο περι φιλονεξίας·  και η κλείς·  και τα περι του διαβόλου και της Αποκαλύψεως Ιωάννου. – Euseb.  H. E. IV. 26.}

      We may now close our brief view of the evidence concerning the Canon of the new Testament; and whilst we rejoice that councils in the fourth century, weighing the evidence, decided on the Canon and settled it as we have it now, we cannot admit that the present Church receives the Scriptures, whether of the old Testament or the new, merely on the authority of the Church of the fourth century; inasmuch as the Church of the fourth century itself received them on the testimony of earlier ages, and the present Church receives it on the same.  That testimony, even if Councils had been silent, would be of itself amply sufficient to prove that the new Testament Scriptures which we now possess are the genuine works of the Apostles and Evangelists.

 

Section  III. – On the Real Value of Tradition, and the

Reading of the Apocrypha.

      I.  The Church of England then holds in conformity with the Church of old that Scripture is absolutely perfect in relation to the end to which it tends, namely, the teaching us all things necessary to salvation.  She denies the existence and rejects the authority of any parallel and equal tradition, of any doctrines necessary to salvation, handed down from generation to generation.  But it is not true that the Church of England rejects the proper use of tradition, though she will not suffer it to be unduly exalted.  She does not neglect the testimony of antiquity and cut herself off from the Communion of the Saints of old.

      It has been already remarked that, besides the tradition which the Church of Rome holds necessary to be received, which is a tradition equal and parallel with the Scriptures, there are also traditions which are subservient to Scripture and calculated to throw light upon it.  Such tradition when kept in. its right place the Church of England has ever used and respected.

      Now this tradition is of two kinds, Hermeneutical Tradition, and Ecclesiastical Tradition.  The former tends to explain and interpret the Scripture; the latter relates to discipline and ceremonial.  With regard to the latter we find that the new Testament has nowhere given express rules for rites, ordinances, and discipline; although we evidently discover that rites, ordinances, and discipline did exist, even when the new Testament was written.  For our guidance therefore in these matters, which are useful for edification, but not essential for salvation, we gladly follow the example of the Churches nearest to the Apostles’ times, which we conceive to have been ordered by the Apostles themselves and to be the best witnesses of Apostolic order and Apostolic usages.

      Scripture is, at least, not full on these matters; yet they are essential for the regulating and governing of a Church.  We appeal therefore, to the purest and earliest models of antiquity.  We cannot err in doing this, for in asserting the sufficiency of Scripture, we assert it for the end to which it was designed.  As we do not assert it as fit to teach us arts and sciences, so neither do we assert it as designed entirely to regulate Church discipline and ceremony.  And where it does not profess to be a perfect guide, we derogate not from its authority in seeking other help.  On matters of faith it is complete and full; but not in all things besides.

      With regard to Hermeneutical Tradition, we view matters thus.  Those early Christians who had the personal instruction of the Apostles and their immediate companions, are more likely to have known the truth of Christian doctrine than those of after-ages, when heresies had become prevalent, when men had learned to wrest Scripture to destruction, and sects and parties had warped and biased men’s minds, so that they could not see clearly the true sense of Holy Writ.  Truth is one, but error is multiform; and we know that in process of time new doctrines constantly sprang up in the Church, and by degrees gained footing and took root.  We believe therefore, that if we can learn what was the constant teaching of the primitive Christians, we shall be most likely to find the true sense of Scripture preserved in that teaching: and wherever we can trace the first rise of a doctrine, and so stamp it with novelty, the proof of its novelty will be the proof of its falsehood; for what could find no place among the earliest Churches of Christ can scarcely have come from the Apostles of Christ, or from a right interpretation of the Scriptures which they wrote.  We do not, in thus judging, appeal to the authority of any individual father, not even if he be one of those who had seen the Apostles and had received the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost.  We know that they were fallible men, though we believe them to have been pious and wise men.  But we look to their writings for evidence as to what were the doctrines prevalent in the Church during the earliest ages; and we believe that if we can discover what the doctrines of those earliest ages were, we have a most important clue to guide us in our course through the Scriptures themselves, because we judge that the Church thus early must almost certainly have in the main, preserved the integrity of the faith, and could not, whilst the voice of Apostolic men was in their ears, have fallen away into error and heresy.  We know that, in those days men had many advantages over ourselves for the interpreting of the new Testament.  A knowledge of the language, the customs, the history of events, which illustrate the Scriptures, was of itself most important.  Some of them must have had in their memories the personal teaching of the Apostles, for they were their immediate hearers and followers.  Many of them lived within a comparatively short time from their departure.  They took the utmost pains to preserve the purity of the Apostolic faith in the Church.  The Church of their days had still the charismata, or miraculous gifts of the Spirit, visibly poured out upon it; and we may say that in every, or almost every, manner it was qualified beyond any subsequent Church or age to understand the Scriptures and to exhibit the purity and integrity of the Christian faith.

      The least, then, that can be said, is that the doctrine of the ancient Church is an useful check on any new interpretation of Scripture.  Antiquity is a mark of truth, and novelty a mark of error in religion; and this rule has ever been found valuable in important controversies.  The Socinians have striven to show that Justin Martyr invented the doctrine of the Trinity, deriving it from the writings of Plato.  Catholic Christians, on the contrary, have proved that from the earliest times that doctrine was held in the Church, that therefore it is traceable to the Apostles, and not to Plato, that it springs from a true, not from an erroneous interpretation of Scripture.  A like form has the controversy with the Church of Rome assumed. Many of her peculiar doctrines have been proved to owe their origin to comparatively recent times ; and so they have been shown to be unfit to stand the well-known test of Tertullian, that “ what is first is true, what is later is adulterate.” {Haec enim ratio valet adversus omnes haereses, id esse verum, quodcunque primum, id esse adulterum, quodcunque posterius. – Tertull. Adv. Prax. 2.}

      Thus then tradition may be useful in the interpretation of Scripture, though not as adding to its authority.  We well know that Scripture is perfect in itself for the end for which it was designed.  But we know also that no aid for its interpretation should be neglected.

      That the Church of England takes this view of the right use of tradition, and of the value of the testimony of the primitive Church, will appear from the following documents.

      The Convocation of 1571, which passed the XXXIX Articles in the form in which we have them now, passed also a code of Canons, in one of which is the following clause: “In the first place let preachers take heed that they deliver nothing from the pulpit, to be religiously held and believed by, the people, but that which is agreeable to the old and new Testament, and such as the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected therefrom.” {Imprimis vero videbunt, ne quid unquam doceant pro concione, quod a populo religiose teneri et credi velint, nisi quod consentaneum sit doctrinae Veteris aut Novi Testamenti, quodque ex illa ipsa doctrina Catliolici patres, et veteres episcopi collegerint. – Cardwell’s Synodalia, I. p. 126.}

      In like manner, in the Preface to the Ordination Service we read, “It is evident to all men reading Holy Scripture, and ancient authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been three orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.”

      So Archbishop Cranmer, the great reformer of our Liturgy and compiler of our Articles, writes, “I also grant that every exposition of the Scripture, whereinsoever the old, holy, and true Church did agree, is necessary to be believed.  But our controversy here” (that is with the Romanists) “is whether anything ought to be believed of necessity without the Scripture.” {Cranmer, On Unwritten Verities; Jenkyn’s Cranmer’s Remains, IV. p. 229.  See also p. 126, and III. p. 2.}

      So his great coadjutor Bishop Ridley: “In that the Church of Christ is in doubt, I use herein the wise counsel of Vincentius Lirinensis, whom I am sure you will allow; who, giving precepts how the Catholic Church may be in all schisms and heresies known, writeth in this manner: ‘When,’ saith he, ‘one part is corrupted with heresies, then prefer the whole world before that one part; but if the greatest part be affected, then prefer antiquity.’” {Gloster Ridley’s Life of Ridley, p. 618.}

      Dr. Guest, who was appointed at the accession of Elizabeth, to restore the reformed prayer-book, after it had been disused in the reign of Mary, and who reduced it to nearly its present form, writes thus: “So that I may here well say with Tertullian, That is truth which is first; that is false which is after.  That is truly first which is from the beginning.  That is from the beginning which is from the Apostles.  Tertullian, Cont. Prax. Cont. Marc.” {Guest to Sir W. Cecil, concerning the Service Book, &c.; Strype’s Annals, I.  Appendix, No. XIV; also Cardwell’s Hist. of Conferences, p. 52}

      Bishop Jewel, in his Apology, which is all but an authoritative document, says: “We are come as near as we possibly could to the Church of the Apostles and of the old Catholic bishops and fathers; and have directed according to their customs and ordinances, not only our doctrine, but also the Sacraments, and the form of common prayer.” {Apolog. Enchiridion Theolog. p. 184; where see the original more at length.}

      These passages sufficiently prove that our reformers admitted and made use of the appeal to antiquity, in the interpretation of Scripture, and in the establishing of order and discipline.  Their wisdom has been followed therein by all the great divines who have succeeded them.  Joseph Mede, Hooker, Andrews, Hammond, Overal, Usher, Jeremy Taylor, Bull, Beveridge, Patrick, Waterland, Jebb, Van Mildert, Kaye, G. S. Faber, have been respectively cited as upholding the same principle, and acting upon it.*

            {*The student may especially be referred to Bp. Beveridge, Preface to his Codex Canonum; Patrick’s Discourse about Tradition, in the first volume of Gibson’s Preservative against Popery; Dr. Waterland, On the Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity, ch. VII; Bp. Jebb’s Pastoral Instructions – Chapter, On the Peculiar Character of the Church of England; Bp. Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 229.  See also Rev. G. S. Faber’s Primitive Doctrine of Justification; and also Primitive Doctrine of Election.  On Ecclesiastical Tradition, or tradition concerning rites and discipline, see Hooker, E. P. Bks. II and III; Bp. Marsh’s Comparative View, ch. VII.}

      In the words of Bishop Kaye, “On the subject of religion, there appears to be a peculiar propriety in appealing to the opinions of past ages.  In human science we find a regular advance from less to greater degrees of knowledge.  Truth is elicited by the labours of successive inquirers; each adds something to the stock of facts which have been previously accumulated; and as new discoveries are continually made, the crude notions of those who first engaged in the pursuit are discarded for more matured and more enlarged views.  The most recent opinions are those which are most likely to be correct.  But in the case of a Divine revelation, this tentative process can have no place.  They to whom is committed the trust of communicating it to others are thoroughly instructed in its nature and its objects and possess a knowledge which no inquiries of subsequent ages can improve.  What they deliver is the truth itself; which cannot be rendered more pure, though it may, and probably will, be adulterated in its transmission to succeeding generations.  The greater the distance from the fountainhead, the greater the chance that the stream will be polluted.  On these considerations is founded the persuasion which has generally prevailed, that in order to ascertain what was the doctrine taught by the Apostles, and what is the true interpretation of their writings, we ought to have recourse to the authority of those who lived nearest to their times.” {Bp. Kaye’s Justin Martyr, ch. I. p. 2.  The bishop has satisfactorily shown, that the tradition appealed to by Tertullian in the second century was no other than the kind of tradition admitted by the English Church.  See Bp. Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 297, note.}

      “We allow,” says Bishop Patrick, “that tradition gives us a considerable assistance in such points as are not in so many letters and syllables contained in the Scriptures, but may be gathered from thence by good and manifest reasoning.  Or, in plainer words perhaps, whatsoever tradition justifies any doctrine that may be proved by the Scriptures, though not found in express terms there, we acknowledge to be of great use, and readily receive and follow it, as serving very much to establish us more firmly in that truth, when we see all Christians have adhered to it.  This may be called a confirming tradition: of which we have an instance in Infant Baptism, which some ancient fathers call an Apostolical tradition.”  Again: “We look on this tradition as nothing else but the Scripture unfolded: not a new thing, but the Scripture explained and made more evident.  And thus some part of the Nicene Creed may be called a tradition; as it hath expressly delivered unto us the sense of the Church of God concerning that great article of our faith, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, and of the same substance with the Father.  But this tradition supposes the Scripture for its ground and delivers nothing but what the fathers, assembled at Nice, believed to be contained there and fetched from thence.” {Patrick, On Tradition, as above.}

      So Dr. Waterland: “We allow no doctrine as necessary which stands only on fathers, or on tradition, oral or written.  We admit none for such but what is contained in Scripture, and proved by Scripture, rightly interpreted.  And we know of no way more safe in necessaries, to preserve the right interpretation, than to take the ancients along with us.  We think it a good method to secure our rule of faith against impostures of all kinds, whether of enthusiasm, or false criticism, or conceited reason, or oral tradition, or the assuming dictates of an infallible chair.  If we thus preserve the true sense of Scripture, and upon that sense build our faith, we then build upon Scripture only; for the sense of Scripture is Scripture.”*

            {*Waterland, On the Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity, ch. VII.  The note to this passage is as follows: – “So the great Casaubon, speaking both of himself and for the Church of England, and, at the same time, for Melanchthon and Calvin also: Opto cum Melancthone et Ecclesia Anglicana, per canalem antiquitatis deduci ad nos dogmata fidei, e fonte sacrae Scripturm derivata. – Alioquin quis futurus est innovandi finis? – Etsi omnis mea voluptas est et sola versari in lectione sacrae Scripturae, nullam tamen inde me hausisse propriam sententiam, nullam habere, neque unquam συν Θεω ειπειν, esse habiturum.  Magni Calvini haec olim fuit mens, cum scriberet praefationem suam in commentarium Epistolae ad Romanos; non debare nos εν τοις Κυριωτάτοις, a consensu Ecclesiae recedere,”  A. D. 1611.  Casaub.  Epist. 744.  Dan. Heinsio, p. 434.  Edit. tertia Rotterdami.}

      It is indeed most necessary that we do not suffer our respect for antiquity to trench upon our supreme regard for the authority of Scripture.  To Scripture we look, as the only source of all Divine knowledge.  But when we have fully established this principle, we need not fear to make use of every light with which God has furnished us for the right understanding of Scripture; whether it be a critical knowledge of ancient languages, or history, or antiquities, or the belief of the primitive Christians, and the doctrines which holy men of old deduced from those sacred writings, which were to them, as to us, the only fountain of light and truth.

      II.  The Article, having declared the sufficiency of Scripture and set forth the Canon of Scripture, then speaks of those other books which had been always held in high respect but were not canonical, in the following terms: –

      “The other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth not apply them to establish any doctrine.”*

            {*Απόκρυφα βίβλια or απόκρυφοι βίβλοι, so called either because their authors were unknown; or because not laid up, like the Canonical books, in the ark; or because read in private only, not in public also; though it appears from the XLVIIth Canon of the Council of Carthage, that some apocryphal books were read publicly.  Suicer, s. v. απόκρυφοι. Torn. I. p. 468.

            The passage of Hierome alluded to is probably: “Sicut ergo Judith et Tobit et Maccabaeorum libros legit quidem Ecclesia, sed inter canonicas Scripturas non recipit, sit et haec duo volumina (h. e. H. bros Sapientiae et Ecclesiastici) legat ad aedificationem plebis, non ad auctoritatern Ecclesiasticorum dogmatum confirmandam.” – Hieronym.  In Libros Salomonis, Chromatio et Heliodoro.  Tom. I. p 938.  Ed. Ben.}

      The meaning of these words is, that the Church of God, in all ages, has been used to read the Apocrypha, for example and instruction, but not for doctrine.  This is a simple statement of fact; and if nothing more were said elsewhere, it would need no further explanation.  But, if we look to the Calendar of the Prayer-Book, which was drawn up by the compilers of the Articles, and receives, like the Articles, the assent of all the clergy of the Church, we find that, during a certain portion of the year, in the weekday services, the first lesson is appointed to be read from the Apocrypha.  This is acting on the principle laid down in the Article; and this is one of those customs of the Church of England which has been most exposed to censure, from those who dissent from her, and from some even of her own children.

      There may certainly appear some danger in ordering that to be read as a lesson of the Church which is not Canonical Scripture, lest it should be mistaken for Scripture; and it is moreover urged against the custom, that the Apocrypha not only is not inspired, but also contains some idle legends, and some erroneous doctrines, and therefore ought not to be admitted to be read in the Church.  It is even added, that the Church of Rome has derived some of her errors from, and supports some of her false teaching by, the authority of the Apocrypha.

      It may be well, therefore, to state the grounds on which it is probable that our reformers thought fit to retain the Apocryphal lessons, that we may see what is the weight of the objections urged against our Church on the ground of their use.

      First, it has been replied to the principal objections that, if we would exclude all human compositions from the Church, we must exclude homilies, sermons, metrical psalms and hymns, – nay, prayers, whether written or extempore, except such as are taken out of Scripture itself, – that there is no danger that the Apocrypha should be mistaken for Scripture when it is expressly assigned a far lower place, both in the formularies and in the ordinary teaching of the Church, – that, if it be not free from faults, no more is any human composition, and that on this principle we must still rather exclude sermons, psalms, hymns, and even liturgies, – that it is not true that the Church of Rome has derived her errors from the Apocrypha, which does not support them, and by which she could not prove them; for she has derived them from misinterpreting Scripture, from oral tradition, and from her own assumed infallibility.*

            {*The following is the answer of the Bishops to the exception of the Puritans at the Savoy Conference against the reading of the Apocrypha: “As they would have no Saints’ days observed by the Church, so no Apocryphal chapter read in the Church; but upon such a reason as would exclude all sermons as well as Apocrypha; namely, because the Holy Scriptures contain in them all things necessary either in doctrine to be believed, or in duty to be practised.  If so, why so many unnecessary sermons?  Why any more but reading of Scriptures?  lf, notwithstanding their sufficiency, sermons be necessary, there is no reason why the Apocryphal chapters should not be as useful, – most of them containing excellent discourses and rules of morality.  It is heartily to be wished that all sermons were as good.  If their fear be, that, by this means, those books may come to be of equal esteem with the Canon, they may be secured against that by the title which the Church hath put upon them, calling them Apocryphal; and it is the Church’s testimony which teacheth us this difference, and to leave them out were to cross the practice of the Church in former ages.” – Cardwell, Hist. of Conferences, ch. VII. p. 342.}

      So much is said in answer to the objections.  Farther, in favour of reading the Apocryphal books, their nature and history are alleged.  The origin of them has been already alluded to.  They were written in the period of time which elapsed between the return from captivity and the birth of Christ.  The historical books of the Apocrypha, therefore, supply a most important link in the history of the Jewish people.  Without them we should be ignorant of the fulfillment of many of the old Testament prophecies, especially those in the book of Daniel; and should know nothing of several customs and circumstances alluded to in the new Testament, and essential to its understanding.  The other books are mostly pious reflections, written by devout men, who were waiting for the consolation of Israel.

      The Alexandrian Jews received them with the most profound respect.  The fathers often appealed to them, and cited them; though it has been shown they mostly knew the difference between them and the writings of Moses and the Prophets.  It appears that from very early times they were read in most Churches, at least in the West; as in very many were also read the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas,* – not that they were esteemed Canonical, but as of high antiquity and value, and useful for instruction to the people.

            {*Dionysius, a bishop of Corinth in the second century, in a letter to the Church of Rome lap. Euseb. H. E. in. 16) says, “ they read on the Lord’s day Clement’s Epistle to them in their assemblies ; “ and Eusebius (Id. iv. 23) declares it to have been “universally received, and read in most churches,” both in his and former times. The same he says of the li!Therd of Hermas la. 3), that “ it was read in many churches ; “ which is confirmed by Athanasius (Epist. Paschal. xxxlx.), and Rufinus (Exposit. in Sgmb. Apost. § 36), both concerning this and other books. —Jones, On the Canon, Part t. ch. x.}

      In Rufinus we find a distinction between books Apocryphal and books Ecclesiastical.*  Among the former he classed those which were wholly rejected; among the latter those which were read in Churches.  His division therefore is threefold: Canonical, which embraces all those which we now receive into the Canon; Apocryphal, i. e. those which were altogether rejected; and Ecclesiastical, among which he reckons Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the like.  This distinction occurs elsewhere, though some of the fathers make only a twofold division, into Canonical and Apocryphal. {E. g. Cyril.  Cateches. IV. § 35, where he calls all Apocryphal which are not Canonical.}  Now the Ecclesiastical books are what we at this time call the Apocrypha; and forming part both of the Latin and Greek versions of the old Testament, they continued to be read in most Churches, from the earliest ages to the time of the Reformation.

            {“Sciendum tamen est, quod et alii libri sunt qui non Canonici, sed Ecclesiastici a majoribus appellati sunt; ut est Sapientia Salomonis, et alia Sapientia quae dicitur filii Sirach, qui liber apud Latinos hoc ipso generali vocabulo Ecclesiasticus appellatur, quo vocabulo non auctor libelli sed Scripturae: qualitas cognominata est.  Ejusdem ordinis est libellus Tobiae et Judith et Maccabaeorum libri.  In novo vero Testamento libellus, qui dicitur Pastoris sive Hermatis, qui appellatur duae viae, vel judicium Petri; quae omnia legi quidem in Ecclesiis voluerunt, non tamen proferri ad auctoritatem ex his fidei confirmandam.  Ceteras vero Scripturas Apocryphas nominarunt, quas in Ecclesiis legi noluerunt.” – Rufin. In Symb. Apost. § 38.}

      It was not peculiar to the English reformers to speak with respect of these books.  The foreign reformers use similar language, citing them as a kind of secondary authority; and especially the Swiss and Belgic Confessions, which represent the opinions of the extreme Calvinist section of the Reformation, speak in terms of honour concerning them, the latter allowing them to be read in Churches.*  It may be added that the Eastern Churches, which agree with us in the Canon, yet retain the Apocryphal books in their Bibles, and use them as we do.

            {*Sylloge Confessionum.  Confess. Helvet. Art. I. p. 17.  Confess. Belgic. Art. VI. p. 328.  The latter runs thus: Differentiam porro constituimus inter libros istos sacros et eos quos Apocryphos vocant utpote quod Apocryphi legi quidem in Ecclesia possint, et fas sit ex illis eatenus etiam sumere documenta, quatenus cum libris Canonicis consonant; at nequaquam ea est ipsorum auctoritas et firmitas, ut ex illorum testimonio aliquod dogma de fide et religione Christiana certo constitui possit, &c.}

      One more argument ought not to be wholly omitted.  The new Testament writers, even our Lord himself, appear often to cite from the Septuagint.  We must not consider this as giving full authority to all the books of the Septuagint.  Such authority we have already shown to belong only to the books of the Hebrew Canon.  But it should appear, that such citations from the Septuagint would naturally commend to the Church the use of that volume as the Greek version of the Scriptures.  Now that Greek version contains all the Apocryphal books.  If, then, they were so mischievous or so to be rejected, as some argue, it is scarcely to be accounted for that neither our Lord nor any of His Apostles give any warning against them, whilst they quote, as of sacred authority, other portions of the volume which contains them.

      These views, in the general, appear to have influenced our reformers to retain the Apocryphal books.  They have removed them from the Sunday services and forbidden them to be quoted as authority in matters of faith; but esteeming them as next in value to the sacred Scriptures, from the important information they contain, and from the respect which they have received from the earliest ages, they were unwilling to remove them from the place which they had so long occupied.  The reformers were evidently not insensible to the evil of putting anything else on the same footing as the Canonical writings.  But this danger, they justly esteemed, would be very small in the reformed Church.  And experience has shown, that in this they were right in their judgment, for extreme respect for the Apocrypha has been a feeling in this country almost unknown.  In this question, therefore, they appear to have adhered to the maxim which often guided them in matters of doubt, a maxim quoted with so much approbation by the famous Apologist of the English Church, and which originated ig the fathers of the Council of Nice: έθη αρχαια κρατείτω – Let ancient customs prevail.*

            {*“Cur id a nobis hodie audiri non potest, quod olim in Concilio Niceno, a tot Episcopis et Catholicis Patribus, nullo refragante, pronunciatum est, έθη αρχαια κρατείτω.”—Juelli Apolog. Enchiridion Theologicum, p. 158.

            On the question of the reading of the Apocrypha in churches, see Hooker, E. P. V. 20.  Concerning the ancient custom of reading Apocryphal books, see also Bingham, Eccles. Ant. Bk. XIV. ch. III. §§ 14, 15, 16.

            The following are the words of a pious and judicious writer, closely attached to a school in the English Church not particularly inclined to pay respect to the Apocrypha: “Man is a creature of extremes.  The middle path is generally the wise path; but there are few wise enough to find it.  Because Papists have made too much of some things, Protestants have made too little of them. ... The Papist puts the Apocrypha into his Canon; the Protestant will scarcely regard it as an ancient record,” &c. – Cecil’s Remains, p. 364.  London, 1830.}

      [The commission to write the Scriptures is contained in the promises quoted on page 167, and the divine authority of the New Testament rests on the same promises.  But these do not seem to have been made exclusively to the original Apostles, nor to have been fulfilled, as far as writing Holy Scripture is concerned, in all of them.  For not all of them contributed to the New Testament, and much of what it contains was written neither by them nor under their guidance, as the Epistles of St. Paul.  We are therefore obliged to add that the testimony upon which we receive certain books as inspired, is that of the early Church, which by a divinely guided discrimination accepted what was, and rejected what was not, written by virtue and in fulfillment of those promises; and that discrimination was based upon evidence part of which is still accessible and can be appreciated by us. – H. A. Y. – J. W.]

 

Article  VII

 

Of the Old Testament.

      The old Testament is not contrary to the new; for both in the old and new Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and man.  Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises.  Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called moral.

 

De Veteri Testamento.

      Testamentum vetus novo contrarium non est, quandoquidem tam in veteri quam in novo, per Christum, qui unicus est Mediator Dei et horninum, Deus et homo, aeterna vita humano generi est proposita.  Quare male sentiunt, qui veteres tantum in promissiones temporarias sperasse confingunt.  Quanquam Lex a Deo data per Mosen (quoad ceremonias et ritus) Christianos non astringat, neque Civilia ejus praecepta in aliqua republica necessario recipi debeant, nihilominus tamen ab obedientia mandatorum (quae Moralia vocantur) nullus quantumvis Christianos est solutus.

 

Section  I – History

      The Article, as it now stands, is compounded of two of the Articles of 1552, namely, the sixth and the nineteenth.  The sixth ran thus: –

      “The old Testament is not to be put away, as though it were contrary to the new, but to be kept still; for both in the old and new Testaments everlasting life is offered to mankind only by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man.  Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises.”

      The nineteenth was as follows: –

      “The Law, which was given of God by Moses, although it bind not Christian men, as concerning the ceremonies and rites of the same, neither is it required that the civil precepts and orders of it should he received in any commonweal: yet no man (be he never so perfect a Christian) is exempt and loose from the obedience of those commandments which are called moral; wherefore they are not to be hearkened unto, who affirm that Holy Scripture is given only to the weak, and do boast themselves continually of the Spirit, of whom (they say) they have learned such things as they teach, although the same be most evidently repugnant to the Holy Scripture.”

      I.  We may first consider, what persons have denied the doctrine contained in the original sixth Article, which forms the first part of our present Article; and then, who have been opposed to the statements of the original nineteenth Article, of which the substance is contained in the latter part of our present seventh Article.

      First then, some early heretics held, that the old testament was altogether contrary to the new.

      The Gnostic sects, who believed in the malignity of matter, would not allow that the Creator of the world could be the Supreme God.  Marcion especially appears to have distinctly taught, that the old Testament was contrary to the new, the former being the work of the Demiurge or Creator, the latter of the Supreme and invisible God.  He is said to have composed a work called Antitheses, because in it he set, as it were, in opposition to each other, passages from the old and new Testaments, intending his readers to infer from the apparent disagreement between them that the Law and the Gospel did not proceed from the same author.  Tertullian wrote a work against Marcion, in the fourth book of which he exposes the inconsistency of this attempt. {Tertull. Adv. Marcion, Lib. iv. Bp. Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 499, &c.}  Similar opinions prevailed, more or less, among the Valentinians and other Gnostic sects; all of whom attributed the creation to inferior beings and consequently rejected the old Testament.

      The Manichees in like manner, who believed in two principles eternally opposed to each other, as they had views similar to the Gnostics concerning the evil of matter, so they resembled them in their disrespect to the old Testament Scriptures. {Deum, qui Legem per Moysen dedit, et in Hebraeis prophetis locutus est, non esse verum Deum, sed unum ex principibus tenebrarum. – August.  De Haeres. 46, Tom. VIII. p. 16.  See also Socrat. H. E. C. 22; Epiphan. Haeres. 66, C. 43; Lardner, Hist. of Manichees, III. ch. LXIII.}  And in this they were very probably followed by those medieval sects of heretics, the Bulgarians, Cathari, and others, who appear to have been infected with Manichean heresy. {See Mosheim, Ecc. Hist. Cent. XI. pt. II. ch. V. §§ 2, 8; Cent. XII. pt. II. ch. V. § 4.}

      It is most probable, however, that the framers of this Article, both in the earlier and in the latter part of it, had in view some of the fanatical sects of the period of the Reformation, especially the Antinomians who denied the necessity of obedience to the Law of God, and the Anabaptists who referred all things to an internal illumination; and both of whom were likely to have denied the value and authority of the old Testament.

      The opinion that the fathers looked only for transitory promises, has been held, not only by heretics and fanatics, but, more or less, by some, in the main, orthodox Christians.  Bishop Warburton, in his famous work, The Divine Legation of Moses, has endeavoured to prove that Moses studiously concealed from the Hebrews all knowledge of a future state; and this forms one of the arguments by which he strives to prove the inspiration and Divine authority of the Books of Moses.  Though he allows that the later Jews during and after the Captivity had a gradually increasing knowledge of the immortality of the soul, yet as regards the earlier times of the Jewish commonwealth, he appears to have denied any such knowledge, even to the patriarchs and prophets. {See Warburton’s Divine Legation, Book V. §§ 5, 6.}

      II.  By looking at the wording of the original nineteenth Article, it will appear plainly that the latter part of our present Article is chiefly directed against fanatics, who affirm “that Holy Scripture is given only to the weak, and do boast themselves continually of the Spirit, of whom, they say, that they have learned such things as they teach.”

      This claim to inward illumination, and consequent neglect of the teaching of Scripture, has constantly characterized fanatical sects in all ages. Those against whom the words of the Article were directed are generally supposed to be the Antinomians and the Anabaptists, who sprang up soon after the rise of the Reformation in Germany. The Antinomians were the followers of Agricola, who carried the doctrine of Justification by faith to the length of rejecting the necessity of moral obedience altogether. {Mosheim, Cent. XVI. Sect. III. pt. II. ch I. § 25.}  The Anabaptists were a constant source of annoyance to the Lutheran reformers.  As their name implies, they rejected Infant Baptism and rebaptized adults.  But with this they combined a variety of noxious and fanatic doctrines, which rendered them dangerous both to Church and State.  Claiming a high degree of internal illumination, they appear to have sanctioned and committed a number of excesses and crimes, under pretence of special direction and command of God.  {See a history of them, Mosheim, Cent. XVI. Sect. III. pt. II. ch. III.  Mosheim also in the preceding chapter gives an account of a sect of Libertines calling themselves Spiritual Brothers and Sisters, who sprang up among the Calvinists in Flanders, and against whom Calvin wrote.  They held that religion consisted in the union of the soul with God, and that such as had attained to such a union were free from the restraints of morality.  All ages have been more or less infected by such fanatics.  They naturally flourished in a time of such religious excitement as the Reformation.}

      It seems that this Article also incidentally alludes to some persons, who would have retained, not only the moral, but the ceremonial part of the Mosaic Law.  This of course must have been true of all the early Judaizing Christian teachers.  In the history given of the doctrine of the first Article we have seen that some part of the Eastern Church was materially corrupted with these Judaizing tendencies.  The observance of the Jewish Sabbath, or Saturday, the quartodeciman mode of calculating Easter, and similar observances, have been already mentioned as examples of this kind.

      As regards the belief that Christian commonwealths ought to be regulated after the model of the Jewish polity and according to the civil precepts of the old Testament, it seems likely that the Anabaptists of Munster, who seized on that city and set up a religious commonwealth among themselves, endeavoured to conform their regulations in great measure to the laws of the Jewish economy. {See Mosheim as above.}

      In later times in Great Britain, the Puritans at the period of the Great Rebellion were constantly using the language of the old Testament as authority for their conduct in civil affairs and as a guide for the administration of the Commonwealth.

      It is highly probable that at the period of the Reformation the whole question concerning the agreement of the old with the new Testament was a good deal debated.  The prominent manner in which the subject of Justification was then brought forward naturally suggested topics of this kind.  When men were told in the strongest terms that there was not, and could not be, any hope of salvation to them but by faith in Christ; and that this was altogether independent of any merits of their own, and could not be obtained by works of the Law; it obviously and naturally occurred to them to inquire, How then were the fathers under the old Testament saved?  They had never heard of Christ, and could not be saved by faith in Him.  They had only a law of works for their guidance.  Can then the old Testament be contrary to the new?

 

Section  II. – Scriptural Proof

      In endeavouring to show the correspondence of this Article of our Church with the truth of Scripture, it will be desirable to consider the subjects of it in the order already adopted in speaking of their history.

      I.  First, we may consider the statement that eternal life is offered to mankind, in the old as well as in the new Testament, through Jesus Christ; and that the fathers looked for more than transitory promises.

      II.  Secondly, we may treat of the questions concerning the abrogation of the civil and ceremonial, and concerning the permanency of the moral Law.

      I.  Now we shall find it more convenient to treat the first division of our subject in the following order: –

      1.  To consider the nature of the Law of Moses, and the reason why eternal life is not more clearly set forth as one of its promises.

      2.  To speak of the promises in the old Testament of a Mediator and Redeemer.

      3.  To show that under the old Covenant there was a hope among the pious of a future state and life eternal.

      1.  The character of the Law of Moses was peculiar to itself.  God chose the people of Israel to be His own kingdom on earth.  There were reasons, some known only to God, others revealed to us, why for two thousand years it pleased Him to preserve His truth amid surrounding idolatry by committing it entirely to one chosen race.  That people He constituted His own subjects, and ruled over them, as their Sovereign and Lawgiver.  The Jewish commonwealth, therefore, was neither a Monarchy under the Kings, nor an Aristocracy under the Judges, but it was always a Theocracy.  The people had properly no king but God.  Moses was His vicegerent; so was Joshua; and after them the Judges exercised, from time to time, more or less of the same delegated authority.  In the time of Samuel, the people, in a spirit of unbelief, asked for the presence of a visible king, and thereby greatly sinned against God, as dissatisfied with His invisible empire, and rebelling against the government which He had established over them.  He however consented to grant them a temporal ruler, an earthly king.  Yet the king so appointed did not rule in his own name, but as the viceroy and lieutenant of the LORD of Hosts, the God of the armies, the King of the kingdom of Israel.

      All the laws then were ministered in His name.  All the sanction of those laws had reference to Him, as Ruler and Lawgiver.  The Tabernacle and afterwards the Temple were not simply places of worship; they were rather the Royal Palace, as Jerusalem was the city of the Great King.  In the Temple His throne was the mercy seat, and between the attendant Cherubim He was present in the cloud of glory, to be approached with the homage of incense and prayer, and to be consulted as to His pleasure by His chief minister, the High Priest, with the Urim and Thummim.

      Accordingly, the Law given by Moses was the constitution and statute-book of the Theocratic commonwealth.  It was indeed a guide for the life and manners of the people; but it was their guide, especially as they were subjects of the temporal government of the Lord.  The Almighty is, in His own nature and His own will, unchangeable; and therefore the laws which regulate morality must ever be the same.  Hence, when for a time He assumed the government of a temporal kingdom, murder, theft, adultery, and other crimes against justice, mercy, truth, and purity, were forbidden and punished, as a thing of course.  But, over and above this, when God became the King of the nation, certain sins against Him became not only moral, but civil offences.  Idolatry was high treason and direct rebellion.  It was not, therefore, as in general, left to the judgment of the hereafter, but was proceeded against at once, as a state crime of the highest magnitude, and punished immediately with temporal death.

      The like may be said concerning the destruction of God’s enemies, the Amorites, the Amalekites, the Philistines, and others.  They were the foes of the King of Israel, and were to be exterminated accordingly.

      So again, much of the ceremonial of the Law constituted the state ceremonial of the Invisible King.  The earthly sovereign, the priests, and the Levites, were His court and His ministers.  Custom and tribute were paid to Him, as they would have been naturally paid to the rulers in all the kingdoms of the world.

      Now such being the case, we may understand at once why all the sanctions of the Law are temporal and not eternal.  In many instances, indeed, the punishments denounced were to be executed by the civil magistrate.  There were rules laid down as to the administration of justice by the inferior officers in the commonwealth of Israel.  But in other cases the vengeance denounced is to be executed, not by the inferior magistrate, but by the supreme Head, the King of Israel Himself.  Yet still the principle is the same.  Whether the King Himself is to be the judge, or the priest, or the magistrate, the reason for the judgment is the same.  And accordingly God, who was their King, interfered, not as in other nations by an ordinary Providence, but signally and manifestly, by direct, obvious, miraculous interposition.  The obedient subject was rewarded by his bountiful Sovereign with long life and peace and prosperity; the disobedient was smitten with sickness, afflicted with poverty, or struck down by death.

      If at any time the nation became generally disobedient, Prophets were sent to it who were messengers from the King to exhort His subjects to preserve their allegiance and return to their duty.  Even they, like the Law itself, spoke to the people, for the most part, as subjects of the temporal kingdom of the LORD, and admonished them of the danger of not submitting themselves to their lawful Sovereign.

      Whether then we look to the Law or to the Prophets, we can see good reason why neither eternal life nor eternal death should be the sanction set forth, and the motives pressed upon the people.  The Jewish dispensation was in every way extraordinary.  We often mistake its nature by viewing it as if it were the first full declaration of God’s will to man; whereas the patriarchal religion had already existed for full two thousand years before it, and the Law was “added” (προσετέθη, Gal. 3:19) to serve only for a time, and for a peculiar purpose.  Its object, at least its direct and apparent object, was, not to set forth the way of eternal life, but to be the statute law of the Theocracy, and to subserve the purposes of a carnal and preparatory dispensation, wherein the knowledge of God and the hopes of a Messiah were preserved amid the darkness of surrounding heathenism till the day dawned, and the day-star arose.

      The Jews, indeed, who were contemporary with Christ and His Apostles vainly supposed that the Law of Moses had in it a lifegiving power.  They stumbled at that stumbling stone for they sought eternal salvation, “not by faith in Christ, but as it were by the works of the Law” (Rom. 9:32).  Whereas, the Law was not given for that purpose but with an object remarkably different from that.  “If, indeed, a law had been given which was capable of giving life, then would righteousness (or justification) have been by the Law.” {Gal. 3:21.  Ει γαρ εδόθη νόμος ο δυνάμενος ζωοποιησαι, όντως αν εκ νόμου η_ η δικαιοσύνη.}  But law, though essential for the regulation of manners, is of its own nature incapable of giving eternal salvation; for he who obeys its ordinances can at most but deserve to escape from its penalties.  And this is still more emphatically true of men polluted by sin and compassed by infirmity.  For law provides no propitiation, and offers no spiritual aid.  There must therefore have been something more than law to save men from eternal ruin; and the Jew, by imagining that the Law could do this, failed altogether of the righteousness of faith.

      Even the sacrifices under the Law had but a temporal efficacy.  They served “for a carnal purifying” (προς την της σαρκος καθαρότητα, Heb. 9:13).  They satisfied for offences against the temporal Majesty of the Great King, and screened from the temporal punishment due to all transgressions of the Law which He had enacted.  But there was no profession, no promise whatever, that they should satisfy for the sin of the soul.  Indeed, for the heavier offences there was no propitiation set forth at all; whether these offences were against the King or against his subjects.  For murder and adultery, for idolatry and blasphemy, there was nothing left “but a certain fearful looking for of judgment”.  “The blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin”; “could never make the worshipper perfect as pertaining to the conscience.”

      2.  But beyond all this, there was still another purpose for which the Mosaic economy was designed.  “The Law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.”  It was a dispensation professedly preparatory, and imperfect.  It was, therefore, so constructed by Infinite Wisdom that there should be an inward spirit vastly dissimilar from the outward letter of the Law.  Accordingly, the whole dispensation, as it was preparatory, so it was typical.  The kingdom of Christ was the great antitype of the old Theocracy.  The Church is a theocracy now, as much as Israel was then.  And so all the ordinances of the temporal kingdom were types and images of the blessings of the spiritual kingdom.  To this end, as well as to their immediate object, served the priests and the temple, the altar and the sacrifices, the tribute and the incense, and all the service of the sanctuary.  The letter then of the Law could never offer salvation: but the spirit did.  Nay, the letter of the Law was necessarily condemnatory, as it gave more light and brought more obligations; but neither satisfied for transgressions, nor gave inward sanctification.  And so it is written, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor. 3:6).  The letter brought no promise of immortality, but left men under condemnation; but the spiritual meaning of the Law led men to Christ and so gave them life.

      It will not be necessary to go through the promises of the old Testament and the types of the Law to show that there was a promise of a mediator, and of redemption from the curse which Adam had brought upon us.  The promise to Adam of the seed of the woman, – the promise to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed, – the promise to David concerning his son, who should sit upon his throne, – the types of the passover, the scapegoat, the sacrifices on the day of atonement, the consecration of the high priest, the prophecies of David, of Isaiah, of Daniel, of Zechariah, of Malachi, – all readily occur to us as containing predictions, or exhibiting figures, which set forth to the enlightened understanding the hope of future deliverance, and of a Redeemer who should turn away iniquity.

      It is said most truly that all this was involved in much obscurity; and it can never be denied that the Jew had a much less clear understanding, a much more partial revelation of “the truth as it is in Jesus,” than the least instructed member of the Christian Church.  Nay, “the least in the kingdom of Heaven,” i.e. in the Gospel dispensation, “is greater” in knowledge “than he who was greatest” before the coming of Christ.  But it should not be forgotten that during the patriarchal ages God had revealed Himself to Adam and Enoch, to Noah and Abraham, and perhaps to many besides.  We are not to suppose that the light of such primeval revelation, which guided men for more than twenty centuries, was of a sudden quenched in utter darkness.  The traditionary knowledge concerning a promised Mediator was no doubt carefully cherished and served to enlighten much which in the Law and even in the Prophets might have been otherwise unintelligible.  And hence, the Mediator, though but faintly shadowed out, was yet firmly believed in.  We have our Lord’s assurance, that “Abraham rejoiced to see His day; he saw it and was glad (John 8:56).  We have St. Paul’s assurance that the same Abraham, having received the promise of the Redeemer, believed in it, and was justified by faith. {Rom. 4:1–20.  Gal. 3:6–9, 14–19.}  And we may well suppose that the faith which guided Abraham guided others, both before and after him.

      At first indeed, and whilst patriarchal tradition yet survived, the intimations of a Mediator in the ancient Scriptures are less distinct and less intelligible.  But among the later prophets, when that early tradition may have had less weight, and when the day of Christ was more nearly approaching, the promises may be read more plainly, and the Gospel-history be almost deciphered in the sacred emblems of prophecy.

      3.  Are we then to suppose, notwithstanding this, that the fathers looked only for transitory promises?

      It is a truth which, I think, cannot be denied, that Moses does not bring prominently forward the doctrine of a future state.  That was a subject which did not fall in with his purpose.  His mission was to organize the Jewish Commonwealth and embody in writing the statute law of the Theocracy.  That Theocracy, as has been said, was a temporal kingdom, though God was its King.  Hence naturally he does not bring forward the doctrine of a future life. {Bp. Warburton asserts that he studiously conceals it.  This requires more proof than the Bishop has given.  Eternal life was not a sanction of the Law and therefore does not appear in it.  It does not follow that it was purposely concealed.}  In addition to the writing of the laws of Israel, Moses gives also a brief, a very brief, sketch of the history of the nation and of its more illustrious ancestors.  It is probable enough that no very frequent allusion to a future existence might occur in this history; and it is only in the historical, not at all in the legislative writings, that we can expect to meet with it.  It has been already explained that even the prophets, who succeeded Moses, acted much as messengers from the Sovereign of Israel to His rebellious subjects, and hence naturally spoke much concerning obedience to His Law and the sanctions of that Law, which we know were temporal.  Yet in many of the prophets clear notices, not only of a Mediator and a hereafter, but perhaps also of a Resurrection, are to be met with.  Even Bishop Warburton, though strongly maintaining that the earlier Jews had no knowledge of a life to come, yet admits that in later times they became fully acquainted with the truth of it.

      The principal passages in the books of Moses which seem to prove that the patriarchs believed in an eternity, and that a knowledge of it was general in the days of Moses himself, are as follows: –

      (1)  The account of the translation of Enoch, Gen. 5:24.  This account, indeed, is brief and obscure.  We know, however, from other sources what it means, and its obscurity rather seems to argue that it was, as is most likely, a fact generally known and well understood and so not needing to be longer dwelt upon.  But its obscurity is a little magnified; for we clearly enough learn from the passage that, whereas in general long life was a promised blessing, yet in the case of Enoch a still greater blessing was conferred.  For, whereas all other persons in the same chapter are spoken of as living long and then dying; Enoch’s is said to have been comparatively a short life; and then it is said that, because of his piety, “God took him.”  “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”  It is hard to know what other sense could be attached to the passage, except that given it by St. Paul: “Enoch was translated that he should not see death” (Heb. 11:5).  Now people who knew of the translation of Enoch must have known something of that state of bliss to which he was removed.

      (2)  Accordingly, Jacob on his deathbed utters an ejaculation utterly unconnected with the immediate context: “I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord” (Gen. 49:18).  What salvation Jacob could have waited for, who in this very chapter looks forward to far future fortunes for his children before “the Shiloh should come and to Him should be the gathering of the people,” except it were the salvation of his own soul, which he was just about to breathe forth, has never been clearly explained.

      (3)  Balaam was so well acquainted with the truth (though so little obedient to it) as “to wish to die the death of the righteous, and that his last end should be like his” (Num. 23:10).  Now, the promise of the Law was to the life of the righteous; the promises of temporal blessing must all affect life rather than death.  It is natural for a believer in a blessed immortality to wish for such a death and such a last end as awaits the just.  But from a person who believes all God’s promises to be made to this life, and looks forward to no life beyond, such an exclamation seems hardly intelligible.

      (4)  There is a saying of Moses himself which seems probably to imply the same thing.  Just before his death he says of Israel, “Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end.”  It is undoubtedly not certain that אַחֲדִית, “latter end,” here, means death.  Perhaps it should be said, it probably does not mean death: but it means either futurity, or final condition.  And though we may allow that the force of the passage is not unquestionable, its most natural interpretation would be that it was a wish that the people of Israel were thoughtful of that time when worldly objects of interest should pass away, and their end draw nigh, when wisdom and piety only should profit them.

      We come next to the famous passage in the Book of Job.*  As the words stand in our Authorized Version, they prove Job’s belief, not only in a future life, but in a resurrection of the body: “Oh that my words were now written!  Oh that they were printed in a book!  That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!  For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” (Job 19:23–27.)

            {*The date and authorship of the Book of Job is a question in some degree affecting the question in the text.  Most scholars consider the book as one of the earliest in the Bible; and many have believed that it was written by Moses.  Bp. Warburton argues that it was not written till the captivity or the return from captivity; and that it is a dramatic composition rather than a real history (Divine Legation, Bk. VI. Sect. II.)  The question is not to be settled with a few words.  I can only say that it appears to me to bear the marks of great antiquity.  It is true that it is not such pure Hebrew as some parts of the old Testament; or rather that it contains a great many Hebrew words and phrases which are not common in the other books of the Bible, and for the explanation of which we must look to the Syriac and Arabic languages.  But the style is very little like the style of the later books, which contain a certain number of Chaldaisms and even some Chaldee; such as Daniel, Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and some of the Psalms.  The Aramaisms of Job are very unlike these; and so is the whole style and character of the Hebrew.  It is indeed exactly what might be expected from a very ancient writer who wrote in Hebrew an account of dialogues originally held in an ancient dialect of Arabic.  Whether or not Moses was that writer is another question.  It seems very doubtful if not highly improbable.}

      There are without doubt difficulties in this translation.  The passage is in many points obscure, though not more so than the book of Job in general.  The more literal rendering of the 1st three verses is, perhaps, as follows: –

      “For I, even I, know that my Redeemer liveth, and hereafter shall stand above the dust.  And though, after my skin, this (body) be destroyed, yet from my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and no stranger; my reins are consumed within me.”

      On the whole, whatever rendering is given to it, it is hardly possible that the passage should not appear to prove a belief in a future existence.  The words “from my flesh” indeed may be interpreted differently, according to the different senses attached to the preposition; and whereas our translators have rendered it “in my flesh”, some eminent scholars have maintained that we should render it “without my flesh.”*  Yet the only difference, which such a different interpretation might cause, would be that, according to the first, Job hoped to see his Redeemer at the Resurrection; according to the latter, that he expected the same glorious vision as a disembodied spirit.

            {*So Rosenmüller.  Praefixum מִ ante בְּשָּׂרִי significat defectum, ut Isai. 49:15, An obliviscetur mulier filioli sui מֵרַחֵם resecta miseratione, i.e, ut non misereatur ejus.  1 Sam. 15:26, Rejecit te Deus מֶלֶךְ מִהְיוֹת ut non sis rex.  Ita מִבְּשָּׂרִי accurate respondet priori hemistichio, ut utroque corpus suum dissolvi significet (Schol. in Job 19:26).  Whether the use of מִ in the passages thus adduced from Isaiah and Samuel is at all similar to the use of the same preposition in this passage of Job, others must decide.  To me it appears that there is little or no analogy.  To reject a person, “from being king,” – to “forget a child so as not to love it,” – are vastly different notions of the preposition מִ from that sought to be attached to it here, namely, “without my flesh.”  Rosenmüller, having given this sense to the preposition, is obliged to say that it is only by a strong poetical figure that Job is said to see his Redeemer, “without his flesh,” signifying merely that, though much wasted with disease, he yet hoped to live to see his cause defended and his uprightness vindicated.  Should we venture to apply such criticism to any profane author?}

      It is, however, argued that it is very remarkable that no indication save this of a belief in an immortality occurs in the book of Job.  It would be natural, it is said, when Job’s friends charge him with wickedness and attribute his sorrows to his sins, that he should at once answer that, though miserable in this life, he yet had full hope of happiness in a better.  As therefore no such reasoning is to be found, we must necessarily conclude that Job was ignorant of a future state; and that this particular passage, instead of being an anticipation of a future Resurrection, is a prophetic declaration of his belief in what actually afterwards took place; namely that, though for a time the disease which afflicted him was permitted to destroy his body, yet in the end God should be manifested to defend his cause, and that he should be permitted to see Him with his own eyes.

      I am inclined to attribute but little weight to the previous silence of Job concerning the life to come.  Men at that time generally believed that a special Providence brought good upon the righteous, and evil on the wicked in this life; and in the earlier days of the Jewish commonwealth it doubtless was so.  Job shares this belief with his friends; yet he is conscious of his integrity and defends himself earnestly against their accusations.  It is hardly likely that he should have tried to disprove the justice of a creed which he held himself.  Therefore he does not say that they were wrong in believing in a retributive Providence, or urge them to look forward from this life to a better.  This would have been in Job an improbable and unnatural course.  But from the singular solemnity with which he ushers in the passage in question, the hope that he expresses that it may “be printed in a book,” nay, graven “in the rock for ever”, we may well believe that he is about to give utterance to something different from what he has hitherto been speaking of, and to something so important that he wishes it to be preserved, not only for his own time, as a solemn assertion of his innocence, but that it should be handed down to all future generations as a vital and an eternal truth.

      Now nothing could be more appropriate than such an introduction, if Job were about to speak of the general Resurrection, and his hope that he should be comforted and vindicated then.  That was an argument unlike any he had urged before, and it was a truth of universal and constant interest, so that he might well wish to have the words which spake of it “printed in a book, yea, graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever.”

      It is true, there are expressions in the Book of Job which may be interpreted into a denial of the doctrine of a future existence.  For instance, “As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more “ (Job 7:9).  “So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep” (Job 14:12).  And again (ver. 14) “If a man die, shall he live again?”  Bishop Warburton lays great stress on these passages, as proving that Job was ignorant of a Resurrection, and even of a future state.  But, in all fairness, do they mean any more than this, that if a man die, he shall live no more in this life; if he goes down to the grave, he shall come up no more, while this world is remaining?  This interpretation fully satisfies the force of all the expressions, even of that strongest of all, “man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake.”  Nay, we may almost venture to say that this last expression has a more than commonly Christian sound; for the new Testament teaches us that the general Resurrection at the last day shall not be, till “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” (2 Pet. 3:10, comp. Rev. 20:11).  It may be added that the very verse which follows this passage in Job (a passage which is thought so decisive against his belief in a hereafter) appears to carry with it a refutation of such a theory; for in that verse (Job 14:13) the patriarch prays that God “would hide him in the grave (בִּעְאוֺלׁ in Hades), and keep him secret till His wrath was past; that He would appoint him a set time, and then remember him.”  What could be the meaning of God’s hiding him in Hades, or in the grave, till His wrath was past, and then after a set time remembering him, if such language was used by one who knew nothing of life and immortality?  For the word Sheol, be it observed, whatever diversity of opinion there may be concerning it, has never been supposed by any one to mean anything which is unconnected with the state of the dead.  It must be either the grave, or the state of departed souls.  Choose which we will; Job wishes for a temporary concealment in the grave, or in the state of the departed, and then to be remembered, and, we can scarce fail to infer, to be raised up again.

      With such a hope and such an expectation will well correspond such expressions as, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).  But how shall we interpret them, if they be the language of one whose hopes were all bounded by this life?

      In the book of Psalms, David, in a passage which we know to be prophetic of Messiah, speaks as follows: “I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.  Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory {כְּבוֹדִי “My glory,” probably a poetical expression for the heart or the soul.  See Gesenius, s. v.} rejoiceth; yea my flesh also shall rest in confidence. {לָכֶטַח in confidence, securely.}  For Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.  Thou wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence is the fullness of joy: at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Ps. 16:8–11.)

      In the ears of a Christian such language is so plainly expressive of the hope of resurrection, that it is difficult to attach any other meaning to it.  Nay, we know that St. Peter quotes it as a prophecy that Christ should be raised from the dead, His soul not resting in Hades, His body not turning to corruption (Acts 2:25–31).  The passage then, according to the Apostle’s comment on it, actually did mean a resurrection.  The only question is, Did the Psalmist, when he wrote it, so understand it; or did he write of common things, unconsciously to himself and through the guidance of the Spirit, speaking deep mysteries?  It is possible that the latter may have been the case.  And yet the words chosen seem to make it improbable.  Why does he say, after speaking of the gladness of his heart, and the rejoicing of his spirit, that “even his flesh should rest in confidence”?  This looks much like an assurance that not only the heart might rejoice in God, but even that the body had hope of immortality.  And then, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.”  Had he meant that he should not be permitted to die, it would have been natural to say, “Thou wilt not bring me down to hell.”  But he who hopes not to be left in Hades, must surely have expectation of first going thither.  The words therefore of themselves so plainly imply a resurrection, and are so apparently chosen for the purpose of expressing the hope of a resurrection, that, though we may admit that profound ignorance on the subject may have kept the prophet from understanding them, and have blinded his eyes that he should not see their sense, yet nothing short of this would have hindered him, who uttered the language, from feeling inspired with a hope full of immortality.  {It must be remembered that those persons who think Job and David and others ignorant of a future state, yet admit, nay contend, that all their neighbours round about were fully cognizant of such a doctrine.  (See Warburton, Bk. V. § V.)  How then came it to pass that Job, who was an Arab, and David, who was a conqueror, and had dwelt among the Philistines, and become acquainted with many peoples, should use language concerning a tenet which they almost must have heard from neighbouring nations, and yet not understand it themselves?}

      Again, the view which David takes elsewhere of the difference between the end of the righteous and of the wicked is consonant with the hope of a future retribution and otherwise is unintelligible. (Ps. 37:37, 38.)  “Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.  But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.”

      In like manner his confidence in trial and troubles, when the wicked prosper and the just are oppressed, has at least a striking resemblance to the language of one who looks for a time when the just shall be delivered and the wicked consumed in judgment.

      Thus, in Psalm 23:4, David says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.”  To “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” is probably but a poetical phrase for “to die”; and to those who looked only for temporal blessings, death would be wellnigh the greatest “evil”.  Hence he who could die and yet “fear no evil” must have had a hope after death.  So in Psalm 73, if this were David’s, then David, but if not, then Asaph, who is not likely to have known more than David, having spoken of his having envied the wicked when he saw them in prosperity and when he found himself chastened and afflicted, concludes in this manner: “Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins.  So foolish was I, and ignorant; I was as a beast before Thee.  Nevertheless I am always with Thee; Thou hast holden me by my right hand.  Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory” (Ps. 73:21–24).  The “glory” is not of necessity glory everlasting, but it is hardly necessary to observe that such a sense of the word suits the context better than any lower interpretation of it.*

            {*There are no doubt some expressions in the Psalms which seem to imply an ignorance of a future life, e.g.: –

            “In death there is no remembrance of Thee; in the grave who shall give Thee thanks?  (Ps. 6:5.)  “Shall the dust praise Thee? shall it declare Thy truth?” (Ps. 30:9.)  “Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise Thee? shall thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave, or thy faithfulness in destruction?  Shall thy wonders be known in the dark, and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?”  (Ps. 88:10–12.)

            These are certainly remarkable expressions, but they do not appear unaccountable in a person who had been taught by the dispensation under which he lived to look for temporal blessings as a reward for obedience, even though he was a believer in a future state.  It is doubtful whether such language might not be used even by a Christian.  Death is certainly a part of the curse; and hence there is no wonder if the pious Jew dreaded it.  And speaking concerning the silence of death does not necessarily imply a total disbelief in a resurrection.  The silence and forgetfulness may mean only forgetfulness as regards this world.}

      As David thus seems to have had hopes of something after death, so his son Solomon knew that “when a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish” (Prov. 11:7); that “The wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death” (Prov. 14:32).  But what hope has the righteous more than the wicked, or how does the expectation of the wicked, more than that of the just, perish when he dieth; unless there be a something after death, which gives hope to the one, but takes it away from the other?  Again, Solomon tells us (Eccles. 12:7), that at death “shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it”; signifying, as it plainly seems, that, when the body returns to that from which it was taken, the spirit shall return into the hand of Him who gave it, not perishing with the body, but awaiting the judgment of its God.*

            {On this passage see Bishop Bull, Works, Oxf. 1827, I. p. 29.  Bishop Warburton’s strongest passage is from Ecclesiastes: –

            “The living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward: for the memory of them is forgotten.”  Eccles. 9:5.  The book of Ecclesiastes is one the language of which is singularly obscure.  The passage in question, if taken in its context, may, however, be interpreted with no great difficulty.  The royal Preacher observes that there is one event to all men from which no one shall escape; and whatever good things he may enjoy in this life, yet death will surely soon deprive him of them all.  This may naturally embitter earthly enjoyments, for the living know that they shall die, and they may be assured that in death they will lose their consciousness of all things that have given them pleasure here, and receive no more reward or emolument (שָׂכָר) from them.  “Their love and hatred and envy perish; and they have no longer a portion in anything that is done under the sun.”  Now this seems the obvious meaning of the passage beginning ver. 2 and ending ver. 6.  Does this prove that Solomon did not believe in a future life?  It is plain that he is speaking only of men’s losing by death their good things and consciousness of enjoyment in this life.}

      When we come to the prophets, it is scarcely denied by any that we meet with a mention of immortality.  Bishop Warburton, who is probably the ablest writer at least in the English language, in favour of the opinion that the early Jews knew nothing of a future state, yet admits that in the prophetic writings we begin to see some clear intimations of that doctrine which was to be fully brought to light in the Gospel.

      Two remarkable passages are the following: (Isai. 26:19) “Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise.  Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.”  It is not necessary to determine whether there be here a distinct prophecy of the Resurrection.  It is enough to show that Isaiah and those he wrote for believed in a Resurrection if to express even something else he uses words to illustrate it, which in their most natural sense imply a Resurrection.  When we use a figurative expression, we borrow the figures which we use from things familiar and understood among us.

      In the book of Daniel a description is given which so exactly corresponds with the Christian description of the last Judgment and the general Resurrection that it must require the greatest ingenuity to give any other sense to it: “At that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.  And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.  And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever” (Dan. 12:1–3).

      We have already seen (under Art. III) that the Jews who lived at the time of our Saviour, with the exception of the sect of the Sadducees, not only believed in the immortality of the soul, but in a Resurrection and in an intermediate state between death and Judgment.  Thus St. Paul’s appeal, when he was brought before the Sanhedrim, was agreeable to all except the sect of the Sadducees: “Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.”  And the reason of this was that, though the small and heretical sect of the Sadducees “said there was no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit,” yet the more orthodox and more extensive sect of the “Pharisees confessed both (Acts 23:6, 8).

      There may have been sufficient obscurity in the old Testament Scriptures to admit of the possibility of the existence of two different sects, the one holding, the other denying, a future immortality; yet there is abundant evidence from the new Testament that the true interpretation was that adopted by the Pharisees, and that the Sadducees erred from ignorance and pride.  Our Lord indeed, when the Sadducees came to Him and propounded to Him a difficulty concerning the Resurrection, tells them at once that they “erred, not knowing the Scriptures” (Matt. 22:29).  And though the passage which our Lord adduces from the books of Moses (Exod. 3:6), “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” requires some explanation to show that it proved the doctrine in question, yet it is quite plain that our Lord reproves the Sadducees for dullness in not having learned from the old Testament that “all men live to God.”

      But the passage in the new Testament which most fully assures us that the ancient fathers looked for heavenly promises is the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.  In the first twelve verses the Apostle had been speaking of the faith of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and perhaps of Isaac and Jacob; and he then adds (vv. 13–16), “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims upon earth.  For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.  And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.  But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city.”  In like manner (vv. 25, 26) he tells us, that Moses chose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.”  And other saints of the old Testament, he says, “were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.”  Now those “who seek a better country, that is, a heavenly,” those who despise the pleasures of sin and choose to suffer through life persecution with the people of God, “having respect to the recompense of reward,” those who endure torture, “not accepting deliverance,” that “they may obtain a better resurrection,” must certainly have looked for more than transitory promises, even for those very promises of life and immortality which they indeed saw but afar off, but which at length the Lord Jesus by the Gospel fully brought to light.

      It may seem unnecessary to add anything further to show that the old Testament is not contrary to the new.  Yet it is worth while to remark that the constant quotation of the old Testament by the writers of the new, and their mode of quoting it to confirm and ratify their own teaching, is abundant proof that the one closely corresponds with the other.  Our Lord expressly asserts that the old Testament Scriptures are “they which testify of Him” (John 5:39).  The people of Berea are spoken of with high commendation, because they searched the old Testament to see whether the preaching of the Apostles was the truth; and we read that they were so convinced by this daily searching of the Scriptures, that many of them were led to believe (Acts 17:11, 12).  Nay, St. Paul tells Timothy, that those Scriptures of the old Testament which he had known from a child “were able to make him wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”  2 Tim. 3:15, 16.

      It is certain, therefore, that they who wrote, and He in whose name they wrote the Scriptures of the new Testament, so far from holding that the old Testament was different from the new, ever held and taught their entire agreement, and appealed to the old Testament as the strongest confirmation of their doctrine, and as bearing abundant testimony to their sacred mission and their heavenly inspiration.

      II.  But though the old Testament is not contrary to the new, yet, 1. the ceremonial of the Jewish Law is abolished; but, 2. the commandments called moral still continue in force.

      1.  The very end and object of the Jewish ceremonial were such that of necessity it must have passed away.  It has already been seen that the Law of Moses was, first, the code of statute law for the Theocratic commonwealth; and, secondly, a system of types and emblems preparatory to the coming of the Messiah, who was to fullfil them all.  These two purposes it served so long as these purposes existed.  But now the Jewish Theocracy has given place to the Christian Church; and the great Antitype has come, to whom all the typical ceremonies looked forward.  There is now therefore no longer any reason for the continuance of the Mosaic Law.  Moses and Elias, the Law and the Prophets, have passed away, and we see no one but Jesus only, to whom we are to listen, as God’s beloved Son.

      There cannot be at present any kingdom circumstanced as the kingdom of Israel was.  God is no longer an earthly Sovereign reigning exclusively over the Jewish nation as their temporal King.  He is indeed the great King in all the earth, but not the particular Ruler of a single commonwealth.  The Lord Jesus sits on His Mediatorial Throne.  But His is a spiritual dominion.  It is indeed that great fifth empire, which Daniel saw imaged by a stone hewn without hands, which in course of time filled the earth.  But it is nevertheless a kingdom not of this world; and therefore His servants are not to fight, nor to call down fire from Heaven on their enemies, nor to take the sword, lest they perish by the sword.  The weapons of their warfare are not carnal; their citizenship is in Heaven; their fellow citizens are the saints; their fellow subjects the household of God.

      It is therefore unfit that any kingdom should be governed by the laws, or regulated by the ceremonial of the Jewish polity.  The court of an earthly sovereign must be differently ordered from the court of the King of Heaven; the laws, which relate to all the governments of this world, different from those which had reference to the supremacy of the LORD.  We have seen that blasphemy, idolatry, and similar offences were under the Jewish economy not merely crimes against religion; they were also distinctly crimes, and that of the highest character, against the State.  They tended to nothing less than the dethroning of the King and putting an usurper in His room.  It is therefore clear, that on principles of civil justice they were crimes which deserved to be punished with death.  But in modern nations they are religious, not civil offences; and though the magistrate may justly restrain such acts or words as tend to the offence of society, or the endangering of morality, yet he would not be justified in proceeding against the blasphemer or the idolater on the principle on which the magistrate was bound to proceed against them in Israel, where their crimes were both civil and religious, derogatory to the honour of God, and at the same time rebellion against the authority of the State.  Religious wars and religious persecutions are both utterly alien from the spirit of Christianity.  James and John, who would have called down fire, Peter who smote off the ear of Malchus, both thought and acted in the spirit of the Jewish, not of the Christian economy; and were herein types of the Dominicans, who would convert or destroy by the rack and the flame, and of the zealots of later times, who in fighting for religious liberty, shouted as their war cry, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!”

      We know well how strongly St. Paul condemns those who adhered to the Jewish ceremonial.  Our Lord, indeed, had declared that “one jot or tittle should not pass away till all was fulfilled.” {Matt. 5:18.}  But all was fulfilled when the sceptre departed from Judah, and so the Jewish commonwealth was dissolved; and when the types of the Law had their full accomplishment in their great Antitype, our Prophet, Priest, and King.  The argument of the whole Epistle to the Galatians is directed against the observance of Jewish ceremonies.  The Epistle to the Hebrews equally shows that the Law had “waxed old, and was ready to vanish away,” and that, its accomplishment being perfected in Christ, there was no longer benefit to be gained by adhering to it.  Indeed, in the Epistle to the Galatians the Apostle declares that if a man is circumcised and strives to keep the Law (i.e. the ceremonial Law of Moses), Christ has become of no effect to him, he has fallen from grace. {Gal. 5:4.}

      But, thus clear though it be, that the ceremonial Law is no longer binding on a Christian or on a commonwealth, we ought yet to bear in mind that the organization of the Jewish State proceeded from above.  It was in some degree a model republic.  It was no doubt in a particular age of the world, under peculiar circumstances, and with a special object, that the Jewish nation was set apart to be God’s peculiar people, His own kingdom upon earth.  But taking all these into account, we ought still to be able to derive lessons of political wisdom from the ordinances appointed by the Allwise for the government of His own chosen race.  We can never again see a constitution and a statute law devised by infinite Wisdom.  We know from our Lord’s own words that in some respects the enactments of the Mosaic economy, though coming from God, were yet not perfect because of the hardness of heart of those for whom they were designed; {Matt. 19:8.} and therefore, of course, we must take into account not only the particular circumstances, but also the particular character of the people; but when we have made such allowances, we may rest assured that the commonwealth of Israel would be the fittest pattern and type which legislators could adopt for the government of empires.*

            {*The spiritual nature of Christ’s kingdom does indeed preclude the notion of its being a religion of ceremony.  We must not, however, run into the extreme of supposing that, because the temporal or carnal ceremonies of the Mosaic Law were done away in Christ, therefore all outward ordinances are inconsistent with Christian worship.  We must remember that man is a creature compounded of soul and body, and therefore needing outward as well as inward agency.  Accordingly, our Lord ordained Sacraments and a ministry; and the Apostles enjoined ordinances of public worship and exercised ecclesiastical discipline; all which are essential to the existence of a Church in this world, though they may be unnecessary in that city “where there shall be no temple; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb shall be the temple of it.”}

      2.  As regards that portion of the Law of Moses which is called moral, we must plainly perceive that it is founded in the eternal principles of justice and truth.  It is not a code of enactments, given for the temporary guidance of a temporary government; it is rather a system of moral precepts, for the direction and instruction of rational and accountable beings.  Indeed, as God was the King of Israel, moral obedience was in itself a portion of civil obedience.  Yet the principle, from which its obligation resulted, was not the relation of a subject to his king, but the relation of a creature to his God.  The former was a temporary relation, existing only while the Jewish commonwealth should last; the other is an eternal relation, which must endure forever and ever.  The moral Law, then, which is God’s will, was holy and perfect even as He is perfect.  And St. Paul, when he speaks of it as incapable of justifying, yet carefully guards against any misapprehension of his words, as though he should be supposed to speak disparagingly of the Law itself.  He declares that “the Law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Rom. 7:12).  He says that “the Law is spiritual,” and the reason why it could not sanctify man was not its own deficiency, for in itself and for its own end it was perfect, but because of the weakness and sinfulness of man; because the natural man is “carnal, sold under sin,” and so unable to fullfil the law; and the more perfect the Law, the more unable man is to live up to it (Rom. 7:14).  But that it is still binding upon Christians appears sufficiently from the same Apostle’s reasoning who, when he has shown that by nature man cannot obey the Law, goes on just after to assert that what could not be done by man’s natural weakness could be and was done by the power of God; even “that the righteousness of the Law should be fulfilled in them, who walked not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4).

      Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount not only shows that the moral law is binding on Christians, but shows, moreover, that it is binding in a much stricter and more spiritual sense than was generally understood by the Jews.  It had been taught in the Law that we should not commit adultery.  But Christ enjoined that we should not suffer an impure look, or an unholy thought (Matt. 5:27, 28).  It had been taught in the Law, that we should do no murder.  But Christ taught that the angry feeling and the angry word, which are the first steps to violence and might in some cases lead to murder, were breaches of that commandment and therefore unfit to be permitted in Christian men (Matt. 5:21, 22).  The ordinances of the Law were expressed in terms of simple command and prohibition and were looked on in a light suited to the carnal nature of the dispensation in which they were given.  The Pharisees, who were jealous for the Law, yet mostly looked no farther than the letter, satisfied if they abstained from absolute violation of its negative, and fulfilled the literal injunctions of its positive precepts.  But our Lord told His disciples that, except their righteousness exceeded such righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, they should in no case enter into the kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5:20).  His was a spiritual kingdom, and He required spiritual obedience.  Mere formal compliance with the ordinances of the Law was insufficient for a Christian whose heart must be brought into captivity to the will of God.  Yet because the obedience must be spiritual, it did not follow that it should not be real.  On the contrary, it was to be more real, yea, more strict.  For subjection to the spirit of the Law necessarily involves subjection to the letter, though obedience to the letter does not of necessity produce obedience to the spirit.  A man may cherish lust and anger without their breaking forth into murder and adultery; but if he checks every rising of evil, he cannot be guilty of the more deliberate wickedness.  The first step cannot be arrested, and yet the last plunge be taken.

      But if there could be any question as to our Saviour’s teaching, one sentence alone should set it at rest: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven”  (Matt. 5:19).

      It is most true that some of the moral commandments are accompanied by sanctions which have respect to the state of things under the Jewish Theocracy.  For example, the fifth commandment enjoins obedience to parents, with the promise, “that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”  But this by no means proves that the injunction is not binding upon all.  All we can learn from it is that beyond the sanctions by which the eternal will of God is upheld in all religion, natural or revealed, the Jew as a subject of the Theocracy had also temporal promises to be expected as the reward of obedience; which, from the peculiar nature of the Mosaic economy, were constantly put prominently forward.  And in the case of this particular commandment, St. Paul expressly enjoins all Christian children to observe it, on the very ground that it was a commandment of the Law of God.  And he adds, as a special motive for attending to this commandment, that it must plainly have been an important commandment, inasmuch as in the Law it was the first to which a promise was specially attached.  “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  Honour thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:1, 2, 3).  The Apostle first enjoins the duty, quotes in confirmation of his injunction the words of the commandment, and then shows the peculiar importance of that commandment, by pointing out that, under the Mosaic economy, a special promise of blessing was annexed to it.  This by no means shows that we are to fulfill this commandment in hope of that peculiar promise; but it shows that the commandment is binding on Christians as well as upon Jews; and that it is binding because it is a part of the moral Law given by God to man, which is in itself unchangeable – as unchangeable as He who gave it.

 

Article  VIII

 

Of the Three Creeds

      The Three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius’ Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.

 

De Tribus Symbolis

      Symbola tria, Nicenum, Athanasii, el quod vulgo Apostolorum appellatur, omnino recipienda sunt, et credenda, nam firmissimis Scripturarum testimoniis probari possunt.

 

      [The American Article reads, “The Nicene Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed,” &c.  There is no mention, therefore, of “the Creed of Athanasius,” and, correspondently, it does not appear in our Service.

      That our Church accepts the Athanasian definition is placed beyond doubt, by the declaration in the Preface to the Prayer Book, that we do not intend to depart “from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine”; by the retention of the Preface for Trinity Sunday in the office for Holy Communion, and by the adoption of the first five Articles.

      That she is not singular in omitting the Athanasian Symbol from her public worship is proved by the fact that it does not occur in the authorized formularies of the Orthodox Greek Church.  And these two facts must, it would seem, place her beyond any well-grounded charge of unsoundness or even carelessness on such a vital point.

      Bishop White’s “Memoirs” show, that all these considerations were present to the minds of the Bishops – White and Seabury – who composed the House of Bishops in 1789.  Whether they were equally present to the minds of the other House is, to say the least, uncertain.  That body was very strenuous in its opposition, refusing to allow the insertion of the Creed – or, as it should rather be called, Hymn – at all, even with the provision that it might be used or omitted at discretion.  This refusal the New England clergy, not without reason, considered intolerant.  The difficulty probably arose from those clauses which even Dr. Waterland thought might be separated from the symbol itself. – J. W.]

 

Section  I. – Of Creeds in General

      The Church, after having defined the authority to which she appeals for the truth of her doctrines, proceeds to require belief in those formularies of faith which from very early times had been in constant use in the Church universal, and that upon the principle already laid down, namely, that they are in strict accordance with holy Scripture.

      It seems generally admitted that the probable origin of Creeds is to be traced to the form or confession of faith which was propounded to the Catechumens previously to their baptism.  In the Scriptures such forms appear to have been brief.  Our Lord commanded that men should be baptized “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”: and perhaps a confession in some such simple form as, “I believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost,” was all that was at first required.  Indeed, Philip required of the Eunuch no more than a profession of a belief that “Jesus Christ was the Son of God.” {See King, On the Creed, p. 33; Wall, On Infant Baptism, II. pt. II. ch. IX. § X. p. 439.}  It is probable that the Apostles and their immediate disciples used several Creeds, differing in form though not in substance.  Hence, no certain form existing, all Churches were at liberty to make their own Creed as they did their own liturgies, not being tied to a particular form of words so long as they kept to the analogy of faith and doctrine delivered by the Apostles.  Then, as heretics arose who denied the fundamental doctrines of the faith, the Creeds became gradually enlarged to guard the truth from their insidious designs and false expositions.

      Dr. Grabe, who examined the question as to what forms were used even in the Apostles’ days, came to a conclusion that all the Articles in the Creed commonly called the Apostles’ Creed were in use in the Apostolic Confessions of faith, with the exception of these three, “The Communion of Saints,” “the Holy Catholic Church,” and “the descent into Hell.” {Bingham’s Eccles. Antiq. Bk. X. ch. III. §§ 6, 7.  It is not to be supposed, because these Articles do not occur in the most ancient copies of the Creed, that they were therefore of comparatively modern invention.  There is abundant testimony to the doctrines expressed by them in the earliest ecclesiastical writings.  Evidence of this may be seen as regards one of them, “The descent into Hell,” under Art. III.}

      Many confessions of faith are to be found, nearly corresponding with the Creeds which we now possess in the writings of the earliest fathers.  For example, in Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, the Apostolic Constitutions. {These are given at length in Wall, as above; and in Bingham, Bk. X. ch. IV.}  We have also Creeds of several different Churches preserved to us, agreeing in substance, but slightly varying in form; as the Creed of Jerusalem, Caesarea, Alexandria, Antioch, Aquileia, {See them at length in Bingham, as above.} &c.  But until the time of the Council of Nice there does not appear to have been any one particular Creed which prevailed universally in exactly the same words and commended by the same universal authority.

      The prevalence, however, of some authoritative standard in the Church, although varied by diversity of expression, is apparent from the language of many of the earliest Christian writers.  Thus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and others, speak of a “Canon, or rule of faith, according to which we believe in one God Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His Son, &c.”  And it is quite clear that this Κανων αληείας, or Regula fidei, was no other than the Creed of the Church, expressed in a regular formulary. {See Bingham, Bk. X. ch. III. § 2; Bp. Marsh, Lectures, Camb. 1828, p. 470.  See also the meaning of the term, “Rule of faith,” discussed under Art. VI.}

      The commonest name by which the Creed was designated was that of Σύμβολον, or Symbolum.  The meaning of the term is confessedly obscure.  (1) It has been said to have arisen from the fact that the twelve Apostles met together, and each contributed (συνέβαλον) one article to the Creed; hence called Symbolum, or collation.  (2) It has been said to mean a Collation, or Epitome of Christian doctrine.  (3) It has been supposed to be, like the Tessera Militaris among the Roman soldiers, a symbol, or sign, by which the soldiers of the Cross were distinguished from heathens or heretics.  (4) It has been thought again that it was borrowed from the Military oath (sacramentum), by which the Roman soldiers bound themselves to serve their general. {Symbolum cordis signaculum, et nostrae militia; sacramentum. – Ambros. Lib. III.  De velandis Virginibus, apud Suicer.}  (5) And lastly, Lord King has suggested that it may have been borrowed from the religious services of the ancient heathens, who gave to those who were initiated into their mysteries certain signs or marks (symbola), whereby they knew one another and were distinguished from the rest of the world. {Suicer, voc. Σύμβολον. – Bingham, Bk. X. ch. III.  King, On the Creed, pp. 6, 11, &c.  Wheatley, Dr. Hey, and others have adopted King’s derivation.  Bingham totally rejects it.}

      It is not very easy to decide which of these five senses may with most propriety be attached to the word.  The first is the least probable, inasmuch as the tradition on which it rests appears not to have existed before the fourth century.  {St. Augustine says, the name was given, “quia symbolum inter se faciunt mercatores, quo eorum societas pacto fidei teneatur.  Et vestra societas est commercium spiritualium, ut similes sitis negotiatoribus bonam margaritam quaerentibus.” – Serm. CCXII.  Oper. Tom V. p. 985.  Paris, 1683.}

      The word “Creed,” by which these ancient formularies of faith are designated in English, is derived from the word Credo, with which the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds commence.

 

Section  II. – The Apostles’ Creed

      Rufinus mentions a tradition, handed down from ancient times that after our Lord’s ascension the Apostles, having received the gift of tongues and a command to go and preach to all nations, when about to depart from one another determined to appoint one rule of preaching, that they should not set forth diverse things to their converts.  Accordingly, being met together, and inspired by the Holy Ghost, they drew up the Apostles’ Creed, contributing to the common stock what each one thought good.  {Rufinus, Expositio in Symb. Apost. ad calcem Cypriani, p. 17, Oxf. 1682; King, p. 24; Bingham, Bk. X. ch. III. § 5.  Bingham translates, “each one contributing his sentence”.  But Rufinus’s words are “conferendo in unum quod sentiebat unusquisque.”}  The author of the Sermons de Tempore, improperly ascribed to Augustine, {Serm. De Tempore, 115; Augustini Opera, Paris, 1683, Tom. V. Append. p. 395, Serm. CCXLI.} tells us that “Peter said, I believe in God the Father Almighty; John said, Maker of Heaven and earth; James said, And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Andrew said, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; Philip said, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; Thomas said, He descended into Hell, the third day He rose again from the dead; Bartholomew said, He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; Matthew said, From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead; James the son of Alphoeus said, I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church; Simon Zelotes said, The Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of Sins; Jude the brother of James said, The Resurrection of the Flesh; Matthias concluded with, The Life Everlasting.”

      The principal objections to the truth of these traditions, which are fatal to the last and nearly fatal to the other, are these: –

      First, that Rufinus himself tells us, that the article of the descent into hell was not in the Roman (i.e. the Apostles’), nor in the Eastern Creeds.  It has been proved by Archbishop Usher and Bishop Pearson that this statement is true; and also that two other articles, “the Communion of Saints” and “the Life Everlasting”, were wanting in the more ancient Creeds.

      Secondly, the formation and existence of the Creed is not mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, nor in any of the more ancient fathers or Councils; which is most extraordinary, if any such formulary was known to have existed, a formulary which would have had the full authority of Scripture itself, and would therefore probably have been continually appealed to, especially in Councils where new confessions of faith were composed.

      Thirdly, it is plain that the ancient Creeds, though alike in substance, were not alike in words; which could never have been the case if one authoritative form had been handed down from the Apostles. {See Suicer, s. v. Σύμβολον; King, p 26; Bingham, Bk. X. ch. III. § 5.}

      Fourthly, we may add to this that the ancients scrupulously avoided committing the Creed to writing; and it is hardly probable, if there was in the Church a deposit so precious as a Creed drawn up by the Apostles, that it would have been left to the uncertainty of oral tradition, or that, if it were so left, it would have been preserved in its perfect integrity. {See Aug. Opera, Tom. V. p. 938.  See also King, p. 31.}

      But though this Creed was not drawn up by the Apostles themselves, it may well be called Apostolic, both as containing the doctrines taught by the Apostles, and as being in substance the same as was used in the Church from the times of the Apostles themselves.  This will appear to any one who will compare it with the various ancient forms preserved in the works of the most ancient fathers, and which may be seen in Bingham, Wall, and other well-known writers already referred to. {Suicer, Bingham, and Wall, as above; Pearson, at the head of every Article in his Exposition of the Creed.}

      It was, no doubt, “the work neither of one man nor of one day”; yet it is probable that the Apostles themselves used a form in the main agreeing with the Creed as we now have it, except that the articles concerning the descent into hell, the communion of saints, and the life everlasting, were most likely of later origin.  The form indeed was never committed to writing but, being very short, was easily retained in the memory and taught to the catechumens to be repeated by them at their baptism.  It differed in different Churches in some verbal particulars and was reduced to more regular form owing to the necessity of guarding against particular errors.  The form most nearly corresponding to that now called the Apostles’ Creed was the Creed of the Church of Rome; though even that Creed lacked the three clauses mentioned above. {Bingham, Bk. X. ch. III. § 12.}  And it is an opinion, not without great probability, that the reason why it was called Apostles’ Creed was that the Church of Rome, being the only Church in the West which could undeniably claim an Apostle for its founder, its see was called the Apostolic See, and hence its Creed was called the Apostolic Creed. {Wall, On Infant Baptism, Part II. ch. IX. p. 472. Oxford, 1835.}

      It is hardly necessary here to enter into any exposition or proof from Scripture of the different clauses of the Apostles’ Creed.  Most of them occur in the Articles of the Church of England.  The few which are not expressed in them may be more profitably considered in regular treatises on the Creed than in a necessarily brief exposition of the Articles.

 

Section III. – The Nicene Creed

      When the Council of Nice met, A. D. 325, summoned by the authority of the Emperor Constantine, Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, recited to the assembled fathers the Creed, which he professed to have received from the bishops which were before him, into which he had been baptized, even as he had learned from the Scriptures, and such as in his episcopate he had believed and taught.  The form of it was as follows: –

      “We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.  And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only-begotten Son, begotten before every creature (Πρωτότοκον πάσης κτίσεως, Col. 1:15); begotten of the Father before all worlds, by whom all things were made; who for our salvation was made flesh, and conversed among men, and suffered and rose again the third day, and ascended to the Father, and shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead.  And we believe in the Holy Ghost.”

      This confession of faith both Constantine and the assembled bishops unanimously received ; and it should seem that this would have been all that was required. But Arius himself, soon after the Council, A. D. 328, delivered a Creed to the Emperor, which was unobjectionable, if viewed by itself, but which studiously omitted anything which might have led him either to express or to abjure his most heretical opinions; {Arius’s Creed runs thus: – “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son our Lord, begotten of Him before all ages, God the Word, by whom all things were made that are in Heaven and that are in earth; who descended, and was incarnate, and suffered, and rose again, and ascended into Heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead: and in the Holy Ghost; and in the resurrection of the flesh, and in the life of the world to come, and in the kingdom of Heaven; And in one Catholic Church of God, from one end of the earth to the other.” – Socr. H. E. Lib. I. C. 26; Suicer, voc. Σύμβολον; Bingham, Bk. X. ch. IV. § 10; Wall, Part IV. ch. IX. p. 453.} namely, that there was a time when the Son of God was not, that He was made out of nothing, and that He was not of one substance with the Father.  This shows that there was an absolute necessity that the Council should word its Confession of faith, not only so as to express the belief of sound Christians, but also so as to guard against the errors of the Arians.  Accordingly, the symbol set forth by the Council was in these words: –

      “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.  And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, Begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father: by whom all things were made, both things in Heaven and things in earth; who, for us men and for our salvation, came down, and was incarnate, and was made man: He suffered, and rose again the third day: and ascended into Heaven: and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.  And in the Holy Ghost.

      “And those who say that there was a time when he was not; or that before He was begotten, He was not; or that He was made out of nothing; or who say that the Son of God is of any other substance, or that He is changeable or unstable, these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.” {The Greek may be seen in Routh’s Scriptorum Ecelesiasticorum Opuscula, Tom. I. p. 351; and in Suicer, voc. Σύμβολον; also Athanasii Opera, Tom. X. p. 247, Epist. ad Jovian. Colon. 1686.}

      The Nicene Creed thus set forth, and the decrees of the Council against Arius, were received by the whole Church throughout the world, and thus marked by the stamp of Catholicity.  Athanasius, in A. D. 363, informs us that all the Churches in the world, whether in Europe, Asia, or Africa, approved of the Nicene faith, except a few persons who followed Arius. {Και ταύτης σύμψηφοι τυγχάνουσι πασαι αι πανταχου κατα τόπον Εκκλήσιαι ... πάρεξ ολίγων τα Αρείου φρονούντων. – Epist. ad Jovian, Tom. I. p. 246.  See Palmer, On the Church, Pt. IV. ch. IX.}

      It appears to many that this Creed of the Council of Nice was but an abridgment of the Creed commonly used in many parts of the Church, and that the reason why it extended no further than to the Article, “I believe in the Holy Ghost,” was, because it was intended to lay a stress on those Articles concerning our Lord to which the heresy of Arius was opposed. Epiphanius, who wrote his Anchorate some time before the Council of Constantinople, says that every catechumen repeated at his baptism, from the time of the Council of Nice to the tenth year of Valentinian and Valens, A. D. 373, a Creed in the following words: –

      “We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible: and in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, that is of the substance of His Father, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, both things in Heaven and things on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and ascended into Heaven; and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

      “And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.  And in one Catholic and Apostolic Church.  We acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, We look for the Resurrection of the dead, and the Life of the world to come.  Amen.

      “And those who say there was a time when He was not, or that He was made out of nothing, or from some other substance or essence, or say that the Son of God is liable to flux or change, those the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.”

      This Creed Epiphanius speaks of as handed down from the Apostles, and received in the Church, having been set forth by more than 310 Bishops (the number at Nice being 318). {Epiphanius, In Anchorato, juxta finem; Suicer, s. v. σύμβολον; Bingham, Bk. X. ch. IV. § 15.}

      It has also been observed that Cyril of Jerusalem, who died A. D. 386, and delivered his Catechetical Lectures early in his life, in the eighteenth lecture repeats the following Articles, as part of the Creed: – “In one Baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, and in one Holy Catholic Church; and in the Resurrection of the flesh; and in eternal Life.” {Cyril, Catech. XVIII.}

      We must infer then, either that a larger as well as a shorter Creed was put forth at Nice, such as Epiphanius has recorded, or that such a longer form had existed of old time, and that the Council only specified those parts which bore particularly on the controversy of the day; or, lastly, that shortly after the Council of Nice the Nicene fathers, or some of them, or others who had high authority, enlarged and amplified the Nicene symbol, and that this enlarged form obtained extensively in the Church. {See Suicer and Bingham as above.}

      The Council of Constantinople met A. D. 381, consisting of 150 fathers.  Their principal object was to condemn the Macedonian heresy which denied the Deity of the Spirit of God.  They accordingly put forth an enlarged edition of the Creed of the Council of Nice.  It agreed almost word for word with the Creed of Epiphanius, the only omission being of the following clauses, “that is of the substance of His Father”, and “both things in Heaven and things in earth”; which were already fully expressed in other words.

      The chief clauses contained in this Creed which do not occur in the Creed as put forth by the Council of Nice are as follows: –

      “Begotten of the Father before all worlds”, “By the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary”, “Was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and was buried”, “Sitteth on the right hand of the Father”, “Whose kingdom shall have no end”; and all those clauses which follow the words “We believe in the Holy Ghost.”

      The most important of these expressions is “the Lord, and Giver of life” (το Κύριον και το ζωοποιον).  The Arians spoke of Him as a creature.  The Macedonians called Him a ministering spirit.  In opposition to these, in the Creed of Constantinople, after an expression of belief in the Holy Spirit το Πνευμα το άγιον is added το Κύριον, “the Lord.”  This was in allusion to 2 Cor. 3:17, 18, where the Spirit is spoken of as the Lord i.e. Jehovah); and is called “The Lord the Spirit”; {ο δε Κύριος το Πνευμα εστιν, and απο Χυρίου Πνεύματος} and therefore in this Creed He is called το Πνευμα το Κύριον, “the Spirit, which is the LORD”. {See Wall, On Infant Baptism, II. p. 465.}

      It is unnecessary to repeat here what was said in the History of the fifth Article, concerning the famous addition of the Filioque; which was the chief cause of the schism of the Eastern and Western Churches.

      The Creed of Constantinople was solemnly confirmed by the third general Council, the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431; whose seventh Canon decrees that “No one shall be permitted to introduce, write, or compose any other faith, besides that which was defined by the holy fathers assembled in the city of Nice with the Holy Ghost.” {Beveridge, Synodicon, I. p. 103; Routh’s Opuscula, II. p. 392.}

      It is said that the first to introduce the Constantinopolitan Creed into the Liturgy was Peter Fullo, Patriarch of Antioch, about the year 471, and that he ordered it to be repeated in every assembly of the Church. {Πέτρον φησι τον κναφέα επινοησαι ... κα εν πάση συνάξει το σύμβολον λεγέσθαι – Theodor. Lector. Hist. Eccles. Lib. II. p. 556, Paris, 1673; Bingham, Bk. X. ch. IV. § 7; Palmer’s Origines Liturgicae, II. ch. IV. § 6.}  It is further said that Timotheus, Bishop of Constantinople, first brought the same custom into the Church of Constantinople, about A. D. 511. {Theodor. Lector. p. 563; Bingham and Palmer, as above.}  From the East the custom passed into the Western Churches, and was first adopted in Spain by the Council of Toledo about A. D. 589, when that Church was newly recovered from an inundation of Arianism.  The Roman Church appears to have been the last to receive it, as some say, not before A. D. 1014; though others have assigned, with probability, an earlier date. {Bingham and Palmer, as above.}

 

Section  IV – The Creed Of St. Athanasius

      I.  The original of this, as of the Apostles’ Creed, is obscure.  In former times, many learned men believed it to have been composed by Athanasius when he was at Rome, and offered by him to Pope Julius, as a confession of his faith.  This was the opinion of Baronius, and in it he was followed by Cardinal Bona, Petavius, Bellarmine, Rivet, and many others of both the Roman and the reformed communions. {Bingham. Bk. X. ch. IV. § 18.}  The first who entered critically into an examination of the question of its authorship, was Gerard Vossius in his work De Tribus Symbolis, A. D. 1642, who threw strong doubts on the received opinion, having given good reason to believe that this Creed was the work, not of Athanasius, but of some Latin writer, probably much posterior to Athanasius.  Indeed he did not set it higher than A. D. 600.  He was followed by Archbishop Usher, who in his tract De Symbolis (A. D. 1647) produced new evidence, of which Vossius was ignorant, agreed with him in denying it to Athanasius, but scrupled not to assign it a date prior to the year 447.

      In the year 1675 Paschasius Quesnel, a learned French divine, published the works of Pope Leo with some dissertations of his own.  In the fourteenth of these, he discusses the authorship of this Creed, and assigns it to Vigilius Tapsensis, an African Bishop who lived in the latter end of the fifth century in the time of the Arian persecution by the Vandals.  His arguments have so prevailed as to carry a majority of learned writers with him; amongst whom may be mentioned Cave, Dupin, Pagi, Natalis Alexander, Bingham.

      The principal arguments against the authorship of Athanasius, and in favour of Vigilius, are thus summed up by the last mentioned writer, Bingham. {Bingham, as above; Waterland, Hist. of Athanasian Creed, ch. I.}  First, because this Creed is wanting in almost all the MSS. of Athanasius’ works.  Secondly, because the style and contexture of it does not bespeak a Greek, but a Latin author.  Thirdly, because neither Cyril of Alexandria, nor the Council of Ephesus, nor Pope Leo, nor the Council of Chalcedon, have even so much as mentioned it in all they say against the Nestorian or Eutychian heresies.  Fourthly, because this Vigilius is known to have published several others of his writings under the borrowed name of Athanasius, with which this Creed is commonly joined.” {Ibid.}

      In 1693, Joseph Antelmi, a learned divine of Paris, in his Dissertatio de Symbol° Athanasiano, attacked with great success the opinion of Quesnel, and ascribed the Creed to Vincentius Lirinensis, who flourished in Gaul, A. D. 434.

      His arguments appear to have produced considerable effect on the learned world.  The famous Tillemont (1697) commends the performance of Antelmi, though still inclining to Quesnel’s opinion.  Montfaucon (1698) is convinced that the Creed is not the work of Athanasius nor Vigilius, nor is he convinced that it is due to Vincentius; but thinks there is great reason to conclude that it was the work of a Gallican writer or writers about the time of Vincentius.  In like manner Muratori, a famous Italian writer (1698), commends the opinion of Antelmi, as nearest to the truth. {Waterland, as above.}

      Lastly, our learned Dr. Waterland, in his valuable History of the Athanasian Creed, having given an account of the opinions of his predecessors, brings many strong arguments to prove that the writer was Hilary who became Bishop of Arles, A. D. 429, and that he in all probability put forth this creed when he first entered his diocese.

      The arguments, by which the time and place in which this Creed was written have been pretty certainly arrived at, may be classed under two beads: 1 External ; 2 Internal Proofs.

      1.  External Proofs are as follows: –

      (1)  We have ancient testimonies as early as the Council of Autun, A. D. 670, where this Creed is enjoined to be recited by the clergy.  After this, Regino, Abbot of Prom in Germany, A. D. 760.  The Council of Frankfort, A. D. 794. Theodulph,  Bishop of Orleans, A. D. 809.  Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, A. D. 852, &c.

      (2)  There is an ancient commentary, as early as A. D. 570, by Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian who became Bishop of Poictiers.  Afterwards commentaries by Hincmar, Bishop of Rheims, A. D. 852; Bruno, Bishop of Warzburgh in Germany, A. D. 1033; the famous Abelard, 1120, &c.

      (3)  There are MSS. as early as the seventh century, and one was found in the Cotton Library by Archbishop Usher, as early as A. D. 600; though this has since disappeared.  This is a very early date, considering how few MSS., even of the most ancient writers, are much earlier.

      (4)  There are French versions of the year 850; German, 870; Anglo-Saxon, 930; Greek, 1200, &c.

      (5)  The reception of this Creed may be shown to have been in Gaul as early as A. D. 550; Spain, 630; Germany, 787; England, 800; Italy, 880; Rome, 930.

      From these considerations we trace the Creed to the middle of the sixth century, when it appears to have been well known, commented on, and treated with great respect; and that more especially in the churches of Gaul.

      2.  The Internal Evidences are these: –

      (1)  It was clearly written after the rise of the Apollinarian heresy; for the Creed is full, clear, and minute in obviating all the cavils of that heresy concerning the incarnation of Christ. {It will be remembered that the Apollinarians denied a human soul to Christ, and said that the Godhead supplied the place of the rational soul.  See August. Haeres. 49. Tom. VIII. p. 19.}  This heresy arose about A. D. 360, and grew to a head about A. D. 370.  Epiphanius marks the time when Creeds began to be enlarged in opposition to Apollinarianism, namely, A. D. 373, {Epiphanius Anchorat. c. 121, ap. Waterland.} about which year Athanasius died.

      (2)  The Creed appears to have adopted several of St. Augustine’s expressions and modes of reasoning.  Now he wrote his books on the Trinity about A. D. 416.  Especially this Creed contains the famous Filioque; and Augustine was the first who brought the doctrine of the Procession from the Son prominently forward; whence he has been charged by the Greeks with being the father of that doctrine.  This would make it probable that the Creed was not written much before A. D. 420.

      (3)  It appears, however, to have been written before the rise of the Eutychians; for there is not a word plainly expressing the two natures of Christ, and excluding one nature; which critical terms are rarely or never omitted in the Creeds after the Eutychian times.  Nay, though this Creed does in effect oppose this, as well as other heresies, there are expressions in it which, it has been thought, might have been laid hold of by Eutyches in his favour, and therefore would not have been written after his heresy had arisen; e. g. “One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God.”  This might have been perverted to prove the Eutychian dogma that Christ’s manhood was converted into and absorbed in His Godhead.  Again, “As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.”  The Eutychians might have argued from this clause that, as body and soul make up the one nature of man, so God and man in Christ made one nature also.

      Hence it is concluded that this Creed was written before the Council of Chalcedon, where Eutyches was condemned, A. D. 451.

      (4)  It was probably before the spread of the Nestorian heresy.  It is certain that this Creed does not condemn Nestorianism in the full, direct, and critical terms which Catholics made use of against that heresy.  There is nothing about the Deipara in it, or about one Son only in opposition to two Sons, or about God being born, or suffering and dying.  But such terms ever occur in Creeds drawn up or writings directed against Nestorianism.  And though terms occur in it which may be held to condemn both Eutychianism and Nestorianism, yet they are not stronger than were used by those who, before the rise of both these heresies, wrote against the Apollinarians, whose doctrine bore considerable resemblance in some points to that of Eutyches, and the maintainers of which often charged the Catholics with something very like the doctrine afterwards held by Nestorius.  Hence, in the Apollinarian controversy the fathers were often led to condemn by anticipation both Nestorius and Eutyches.  If this reasoning be correct, the Athanasian Creed must have been written before the Council of Ephesus where Nestorianism was condemned, A. D. 431.

      Thus the internal evidence leads us to conclude that the Athanasian Creed was in all probability composed between A. D. 420 and A. D. 431.

      As to the place where it was made, evidence tends to show that it was Gaul.

      (1)  It seems to have been received first in Gaul.  (2) It was held in great esteem by Gallican councils and bishops.  (3) It was first admitted into the Gallican Psalter.  (4) The oldest versions of it, commentaries on it, citations from it, and testimonies to it, are Gallican, or connected with Gaul.  (5) The greatest number of the manuscripts of it and those of greatest antiquity are found in Gaul.

      From such arguments as these it has been concluded with the greatest probability that this Creed was written in France, and at some time in the interval between A. D. 420 and 431. {See Waterland, as above.}

      The authorship of it then must be assigned to some person or persons who flourished at this period in the church of Gaul.

      Now Vincentius Lirinensis and Hilary of Arles both were Gallican divines, and both flourished at the required time.

      Vincentius was a writer of great celebrity and judgment, and his works contained thoughts and expressions which bear a great similarity to the expressions in the Athanasian Creed.  It is true his famous work, the Commonitorium, is assigned to the date 434, i.e. a few years later than the probable date of the Athanasian Creed; but there seems no reason why he should not have written the Creed before the Commonitorium.

      On the other hand, it is argued by Dr. Waterland, that Hilary was a bishop, which Vincentius was not; and such a work appears much fitter for a bishop than for a private presbyter.  He was made a bishop A. D. 429, which falls exactly within the limits assigned for the date of the Creed; and what more likely than that he should have set it forth when he entered on his diocese?  He is spoken of as a man of great powers.  His writings are said to have been small tracts, but extremely fine; and Honoratus of Marseilles, who wrote his Life, says that he wrote an excellent Exposition of the Creed; which is the proper title for the work in question, a work which was rarely called a Creed (Symbolum) by the ancients.  Again, he was a great admirer of St. Augustine (in all but his views of predestination), whence we may account for the similarity of the expressions in this Creed to the language of that father.  The resemblance, which is traced to the language of Vincentius, may have resulted from the fact that Hilary and Vincentius were not only contemporaries, but had been inmates about the same time of the same monastery at Lerins; that so Vincentius might borrow expressions from Hilary, to whom he would be likely to look up with respect.  Lastly, the style of this Creed answers well to what is told us of the style and character of Hilary.

      To conclude: whether we assign the Athanasian Creed to Hilary or Vincentius, or to both or neither of them, it was pretty certainly the work of some Gallican writer in the beginning of the fifth century.  It was very probably called Athanasian because it clearly expressed the doctrines which Athanasius so ably defended; and because when Arianism was rife in Gaul, as it was soon after the publication of this Creed, the Arians very probably called the Catholics Athanasians, and the Creed, which especially and most fully expressed their doctrines, the Athanasian Creed. {See Waterland’s History of the Athanasian Creed; Works, IV.}

      II.  The particular value of this Creed consists in this, that it guards the doctrine of the Trinity and of the Incarnation against the various heretical subtilties by which it has been explained away: and although it may be argued that most of these heresies are ancient and therefore out of date, it is far from being true that they may never recur.  Arianism, Sabellianism, Apollinarianism, against which it seems chiefly to have been directed, have all been revived in late times; even Nestorian and Eutychian doctrines, which the Creed, as it were, anticipates and condemns, have been more or less approved in our days.  And although none of these errors were openly professed, yet the loose way in which many modern writers on Theology often express themselves requires to be restrained by something like the Creed in question, which by its accurate language is calculated to produce accuracy of thought.

      Even then, if some people may think the damnatory clauses, as they are called, unduly strong, yet the occurrence of one or two strong expressions should not so far weigh with us as to induce us to wish the removal of this confession of our faith from the formularies of the Church.  It is in the main unquestionably true that he who, having the means of learning the truth of Christ, shall yet reject and disbelieve it, shall on that account be condemned.  It is probable that the damnatory clauses in the Creed of Athanasius mean no more than the words of our Lord, “He that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16).  What allowance is to be made for involuntary ignorance, prejudice, or other infirmities, is one of those secret things which belong only to the Lord our God; concerning which we may hope but cannot pronounce.  The Gospel declares that unbelief in the truth shall be a cause of condemnation; and the Church is therefore justified in saying the same.  The extreme earnestness and, as to some it seems, harshness with which the Creed expresses it resulted from the imminent danger at the time it was composed from the most noxious heresy, and the need there was to hedge round the faith of the Church, as it were, with thorns and briers.  If we think such language unnecessarily severe, still we must remember that nothing human is free from some mark of human infirmity, and should be slow to doubt the value of a Catholic exposition of the Faith because one or two expressions seem unsuited to modern phraseology.

      The meaning and importance of the different clauses will be best appreciated by observing what errors they respectively opposed.  Thus, let us begin with ver. 4: “Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.”  The Patripassians and Sabellians confounded the Persons; the Arians divided the Substance of the Godhead.  After this, the next 14 verses, down to “yet not three Lords, but one Lord,” seem principally designed to oppose the Arian heresy, which denied the homo-ousion.  Accordingly they declare that in the Holy Trinity there are Three, with a distinction of Person but with an Unity of Substance or Essence; so that, though it is lawful to say that the Father, Son, and Spirit, are distinct Persons, and that each Person is Lord, God, Almighty, untreated, and incomprehensible, yet it is not lawful to say that there are three Gods, three Lords, three Almiglities, three Untreated, or three Incomprehensibles. {The original of the word “incomprehensible” is “immensus”, i.e. άπειρος, boundless,, immeasurable, or omnipresent.  See Waterland Hist. of Ath. Cr. Ch. X; Works, IV. P. 385.}

      The 19th verse concludes this portion of the Creed in the words, “For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, There be three Gods or three Lords.”  Now the former part of this clause has been supposed by some to speak, so that we might infer from it, that any one Person in the Trinity, by Himself, would constitute the whole Godhead.  This, however, is far from being the real or natural sense of the passage.  The meaning is this: Each Person in the Trinity is essentially God.  And we must not view God as we would a material being, as though the Godhead could be divided into three different parts, which three united together made up one whole, and so imagine that the Father alone was not God, but required to have the Son and the Spirit added to Him in order to make up the Godhead.  No!  The spiritual unity of the three Blessed Persons in the Trinity is far closer, more intimate, and more real, than that unity by which parts make up a whole.  Each by Himself, or considered alone, must be confessed to be God; and yet all make not up three Gods, but are One in Essence, and therefore but one God.

      The next four verses are opposed to those who confounded the Persons of the Godhead, making the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost not only one God, but one Person.  And they state the relations of the Son to the Father, and of the Holy Ghost to both of them.

      The 23d verse runs thus: “So there is one Father, not three Fathers: One Son, not three Sons; One Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.”  It may be asked here, of what use is this clause?  Did any heretics ever teach that there were three Fathers, or three Sons, or three Holy Ghosts?  The answer is, Those who asserted that there were three unoriginated principles (τρεις άναρχοι), were considered to teach virtually that there were three Fathers, or three Sons, or three Holy Ghosts, or a Trinity of Trinities.  Thus one of the Apostolical Canons is directed against presbyters who should baptize “in three unoriginated principles, or in three Sons, or in three Paracletes, or in three Holy Ghosts.”  The Council of Bracara denounces those who shall say, “as the Gnostics and Priscillianists, that there is a Trinity of Trinities.”  And Pope Vigilius decrees that if any “baptize in one Person of the Trinity, or in two, or in three Fathers, or in three Sons, or in three Comforters,” he should be cast out of the Church. {Bingham, E. A. Bk. XI. ch. III. § 4.}

      The Creed from verse 27 treats of the Incarnation, and excludes the various heretical opinions on this subject.

      Some denied that Christ was God, as the Ebionites, Arians, &c.  Others denied that He was Man; as the Gnostics, the Apollinarians, and afterwards the Eutychians.  Especially the Apollinarians denied that He was perfect man, having both a reasonable soul and human flesh besides His Godhead, ver. 30.

      Again, the Apollinarians charged the Catholics with saying that Christ was two, since they assigned Him a human soul as well as a Divine Spirit.  Therefore the Creed adds that “though He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ,” – a clause which afterwards was suitable to oppose the Nestorians who held that there were two Persons united in Christ, ver. 32.

      Once more, the Apollinarians made the Godhead of Christ act the part of a soul to His Manhood; which was virtually converting the Godhead into flesh. {Contentiosissime affirmantes, Verbum carnem factum, hoc est, Verbi aliquid in carnem fuisse conversum atque mutatum. – Agustin. Haeres. 55.}  The true doctrine is not that God was changed into man, but that the Word of God took human nature into union with His Godhead.  Therefore the Creed says, “One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God,” ver. 33.

      Again, the Apollinarians made a “ confusion of substance “ in Christ, for they confounded His Godhead and His Manhood ; as the Eutychians did afterwards, inasmuch as they made His Godhead act the part of His human soul. Therefore says the Creed “ One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person,” i.e. by uniting both natures in one Person, ver. 34. And this is further explained, that, as in the ordinary man there are two different substances, body and soul, united in one, so in Christ two different natures, God and Man, are intimately united, yet not confounded together, ver. 35 : “ As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ.”

      Thus the principal clauses of the Creed are drawn up, to obviate the principal errors on the two chief doctrines of the Christian faith.  If such errors had never arisen, the accurate language of the Creed would have been useless.  But when dangers have been shown to exist, opposition to them seems inevitably forced upon the Church.  Peace is infinitely to be desired, but it is better to contend for the faith than to lose it.

 

The Three Creeds In Their Original Languages

 

1.  Symbolum Apostolorum

      Πιστεύω εις τον Θεον Πατέρα παντοκράτορα ποιητην ουρανου και γης, και Ιησουν Χριστον Υιον αυτου τον μονογενη τον κύριον ημων.  τον συλληφθέντα εκ Πνεύματος Αγίου, γεννηθέντα εκ Μαρίας της παρθένου, παθόντα επι Ποντίου Πιλάτου, σταυρωθέντα, θανόντα, και ταφέντα, κατελθόντα εις άδου, τη τρίτη ημέρα αναστάντα απο των νεκρων, ανελθόντα εις τους ουρανους, καθεζόμενον εν δεξια Θεου Πατρος παντοδυνάμου, εκειθεν ερχόμενον κριναι ζωντας και νεκρούς.  Πιστεύω εις το Πνευμα το άγιον, αγίαν καθολικην εκκλησίαν, αγίων κοινωνίαν, άφεσιν αμαρτιων, σαρκος ανάστασιν, ζωην αιώνιον.  Αμήν.

 

2.  Symbolum Constantinopol

      Πιστεύομεν εις ένα Θεον, Πατέρα παντοκράτορα, ποιητην ουρανου και γης, ορατων τε πάντων και αοράτων.  Και εις ένα Κύριον Ιησουν Χριστον, τον Υιον του Θεου μονογενη, τον εκ του Πατρος γεννηθέντα προ πάντων των αιώνων· φως εκ φωτος, Θεον αληθινον εκ Θεου αληθινου.  γεννηθέντα, ου ποιηθέντα, ομοούσιον τω Πατρί· δι ου τα πάντα εγένετο, τον δι ημας τους ανθρώπους, και δια την ημετέραν σωτηρίαν, κατελθόντα εκ των ουρανων, και σαρκωθέντα εκ Πνεύματος αγίου, και Μαρίας της παρθένου, και ενανθρωπήσαντα· σταυρωθέντα τε υπερ ημων επι Ποντίου Πιλάτου, και παθόντα, και ταφέντα, και αναστάντα τη τρίτη ημέρα κατα τας γραφάς· και ανελθόντα εις τους ουρανους, και καθεζόμενον εκ δεξιων του Πατρος, και πάλιν ερχόμενον μετα δοξης κριναι ζωντας και νεκρούς· ου της βασιλείας ουκ έσται τέλος.  Και εις το Πνευμα το άγιον, το Κύριον, και το ζωοποιον, το εκ του Πατρος εκπορευόμενον, συν Πατρι και Υιω συμπροσκυνούμενον, και συνδοξαζόμενον, το λαλησαν δια των προφητων.  Εις μίαν αγίαν καθολικην και αποστολικην εκκλησίαν  ομολογουμεν έν βαπτίσμα εις άφεσιν αμαρτιων, προσδοκωμεν ανάστασιν νεκρων, και ζωην του μέλλοντος αιωνος.  Αμήν.

 

3.  Fides Sancti Athanasii

      1.  Quicunque vult salvus esse, ante omnia opus est ut teneat Catholicam Fidem.

      2.  Quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque servaverit, absque dubio in aeternum peribit.

      3.  Fides autem Catholica haec est, ut unum Deum in Trinitate, et Trinitatem in Unitate veneremur:

      4.  Neque confundentes Personas, neque Substantiam separantes.

      5.  Alia est enim Persona Patris, alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti.

      6.  Sed Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, una est Divinitas, aequalis Gloria, coaeterna Majestas.

      7.  Qualis Pater, talis Filius, talis et Spiritus Sanctus.

      8.  Increatus Pater, increatus Filius, increatus et Spiritus Sanctus.

      9.  Immensus Pater, immensus Filius, immensus et Spiritus Sanctus.

      10.  AEternus Pater, aeternus Filius, aeternus et Spiritus Sanctus.

      11.  Et tamen non tres aeterni, sed unus aeternus.

      12.  Sicut non tres increati, nec tres immensi, sed unus increatus, et unus immensus.

      13.  Similiter, Omnipotens Pater, Omnipotens Filius, Omnipotens et Spiritus Sanctus.

      14.  Et tamen non tres Omnipotentes, sed unus Omnipotens.

      15.  Ita Deus Pater, Deus Filius, Deus et Spiritus Sanctus.

      16.  Et tamen non tres Dii, sed unus est Deus.

      17.  Ita Dominus Pater, Dominus Filius, Dominus et Spiritus Sanctus.

      18.  Et tamen non tres Domini, sal unus est Dominus.

      19.  Quia sicut singillatim unamquamque Personam et Deum et Dominum confiteri Christiana veritate compellimur; ita tres Deos aut Dominos dicere Catholica religione prohibemur.

      20.  Pater a nullo est factus, nec creatus, nec genitus.

      21.  Filius a Patre solo est, non factus, nec creatus, sed genitus.

      22.  Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio, non factus, nec creates, nec genitus est, sed procedens.

      23.  Unus ergo Pater, non tres Patres; unus Filius, non tres Filii; unus Spiritus Sanctus, non tres Spiritus Sancti.

      24.  Et in hac Trinitate nihil prius aut posterius, nihil majus aut minus, sed totae tres Personae coaeternae sibi sunt, et coaequales.

      25.  Ita ut per omnia, sicut jam supra dictum est, et Unitas in Trinitate, et Trinitas in Unitate veneranda sit.

      26.  Qui vult ergo salvus esse, ita de Trinitate sentiat.

      27.  Sed necessarium est ad aeternam Salutem, ut Incarnationem quoque Domini nostri Jesu Christi fideliter credat.

      28.  Est ergo Fides recta, ut credamus et confiteamur, quia Dominus noster Jesus Christus, Dei Filius, Deus pariter et Homo est.

      29.  Deus est ex substantia Patris ante saecula genitus: Homo, ex substantia Matris in saeculo natus.

      30.  Perfectus Deus, perfectus Homo ex anima rationali et humana came subsistens.

      31.  AEqualis Patri secundum Divinitatem: minor Patre secundum Humanitatem.

      32.  Qui licet Deus sit et Homo, non duo tamen, sed unus est Christus.

      33.  Unus autem, non conversione Divinitatis in carnem, sed assumptione Humanitatis in Deum.

      34.  Unus omnino, non confusione Substantia, sed unitate Personae.

      35.  Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est Homo; ita Deus et Homo unus est Christus.

      36.  Qui passus est pro salute nostra, descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis.

      37.  Adscendit ad coelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris; inde venturus judicare vivos et mortuos.

      38.  Ad cujus adventum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis, et reddituri sunt de factis propriis rationem.

      39.  Et qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam aeternam, qui vero mala, in ignem aeternum.

      40.  Haec est Fides Catholica, quam nisi quisque fideliter, firmiterque crediderit, salvus ease non poterit.