as Justin says, that he followed his father's trade of carpentry. So Erasmus', Estiuss, Chemnitius, Grotius", Lightfoot, Dr. Cavey, and many others. Thus much concerning Justin Martyr, till whose time there is the greatest reason to conclude the sacred text of the New Testament continued very pure and incorrupt; soon after the heretics of those times made many and large interpolations and additions to it; such as Marcion, Valentinus, and others, whereby they frequently make both Christ and his apostles to speak what they judged most agreeable to their own sentiments. It would be endless to collect all these, nor would it be of any service in settling the canon, and indeed but little in settling the true reading of the text; Irenæus and Tertullian have mentioned several of them; Epiphanius has made a large collection of Marcion's alterations in the Gospel of Luke, and St. Paul's Epistles. I shall think it sufficient to produce the following remarkable instance of an addition to the gospel history made by the Gnostics in the second century, and perhaps afterwards inserted in some apocryphal gospel. The instance I mean is that out of Irenæus adv. Hæres. lib. 1. c. 17. Speaking of the Gnostics, and their spurious scriptures, he adds, Προσπαραλαμβάνουσι δὲ εἰς τοῦτο Annot. in Matt. xiii. 55. et Mar. vi. 3. In Difficil. Loc. Script. ad Mar. vi. 3. Harmon. Evangel. vol. 3. p. 587. u Annot. in Matt. xiii. 55. x Harmon, of the New Test. §. 8. in They have also forged this false story, that our Lord (when he was a child, and learning his alphabet ") of his schoolmaster, when he said to him, as is usual, Say A; Christ answered A ; again, when the master bid him say B, the Lord said to him, Do you first tell me what A is, and then I will tell you what B is. And this they so expound, as if he fine. y Histor. Literar. in Christ. This parenthesis I have added out of the old Latin translation; the Greek is preserved in Epiphanius, Hæres. 34. §. 18. ἐπισταμένου, ὃ ἐφανέρωσεν ἐν τῷ alone understood the mystery τύπῳ τοῦ ἄλφα. which he revealed in the letter A. This passage is in The Gospel of the Infancy, published by Cotelerius in Greek, chap. 6. and in that translated out of Arabic into Latin by Mr. Sike, chap. 48. though with some variations and additions in both, especially the last; where it is said, that upon Christ's refusing to say the letter B, his master threatening him with the rod, he run through all the alphabet, told his master the meaning of the letters, &c. which he admired, and said he believed he was born before Noah. XV. A Saying of Christ, in Irenæus adv. Hæres. lib. 1. c. 17. ̓Αλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῷ εἰρηκέναι, πολ- But that which [Christ] has said, λάκις ἐπεθύμησα ἀκοῦσαι ἕνα τῶν I have often desired to hear one of λέγων τούτων, καὶ οὐκ ἔσχον τὸν those sayings, but have found no ἐροῦντα, ἐμφαίνοντός φασιν εἶναι one who could tell me, they (viz. διὰ τοῦ ἑνὸς τὸν ἀληθῶς ἕνα Θεὸν, the Gnostics) interpret concernὃν οὐκ ἐγνώκεισαν. ing him who is the only true God, whom they have not known. Dr. Milla thinks this passage to have been in one of the Gospels of the Valentinians or Gnostics; but I fear he is herein much mistaken; for though Irenæus had mentioned their apocryphal books in the beginning of the chapter, yet he had left that subject, and was giving instances of their absurd interpretations of the true Gospels; and this he assigns as one; so that I am apt to think these words were in Irenæus's copy of one of the four Gospels, because it is certain he acknowledged no other b. XVI. A History of the age of Christ, in Irenæus adv. Hæres. lib. 2. cap. 39. Forasmuch as a young man first arrives to a perfect maturity at his thirtieth year, and continues therein till the fortieth, as every one must acknowledge, and that from his fortieth or fiftieth year he begins to decline towards old b Advers. Hæres. 1. 3. c. 11. Dominus noster docebat, sicut Evangelium et omnes seniores testantur, qui in Asia apud Joannem discipulum Domini convenerunt, id ipsum tradidisse iis Joannem. Permansit autem cum eis usque ad Trajani tempora. Quidam autem eorum non solum Joannem, sed et alios apostolos viderunt, et hæc eadem ab ipsis audierunt, et testantur de hujusmodi relatione. age, to which age our Lord having arrived did teach, as the Gospel and all the elders do testify, who attended upon John, the disciple of our Lord, in Asia; [affirming] that John himself gave them this account. Now he continued with them till the time of Trajan, and some of them did not only see John, but also other apostles, and received the same account from them, and they affirm this same tradition to be true. This is indeed somewhat surprising, viz. that Irenæus should so expressly assert, that Christ lived and taught beyond his fortieth, if not till his fiftieth year; whereas it is a thing most notorious, that Christ was crucified between his thirtythird and thirty-fourth year. His arguments to prove it are as extraordinary as his assertion, viz. That since he came into the world to save persons of all ages, viz. infants, little ones, boys, young men, and old men, it was necessary he should pass through all these degrees of age. But if this will prove any thing, it must prove Christ to have lived much longer than Irenæus contends for, and not only to the age of fifty, but even to the age of the antediluvian patriarchs; and even, for the same reason, to the age of Methusalem himself. It is strange indeed he should so positively urge the testimony of St. John for this notorious falsehood, and say that he delivered it to the presbyters of Asia; for this cannot be supposed true, without supposing also at the same time, that our accounts in all the Gospels are false. Indeed, the next argument, which he uses in the beginning of the next chapter, is somewhat more plausible, viz. from those words of the Jews to our Saviour, John viii. 57. Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Whence, says he, it appears, that he was near fifty, they gathering this either from the rolls of the tax, (in which every one's name and age were written,) or from his countenance. But neither is this argument of any force, because if we suppose Christ to have been, as he really was, no more than thirty-three, the Jews might very well be supposed to ask their question thus, viz. either, 1. Because our Saviour, being a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and having gone through infinite fatigues and labours, might very probably be thought eight or ten years older than he really was; which is all that need be supposed to make the Jews' question just and pertinent, and is a very common thing: or, which seems to me to have been the case, 2. Nothing is more common in such cases, than for persons to express themselves by a round number, not confining themselves when the subject is such as does not restrain them to any exact particular number d. Irenæus therefore is certainly mistaken in this matter, although he plead apostolical tradition for the support of his notion; and it seems plain that he was drawn into the mistake by a too warm opposition to the Gnosticks, who asserted, that Christ did not live to the end of his thirtieth year, but was crucified in the twelfth month of his ministry e. And here by the way I cannot but observe, that several of the most celebrated fathers have coincided with the Gnosticks in this opinion, and asserted that Christ preached but one year, and suffered in the end of his thirtieth. Thus Tertullian f, Clemens Alexandrinus¤, Lactantiush, in the places cited in the margin. But to return to Irenæus, however absurd the preceding history is, it cannot be supposed with any reason, that it was in any of the apocryphal gospels, unless we were to suppose with the great annalist cardinal Baronius, that this passage was foisted into the works of Irenæus; but for this there is not the least evidence, as the learned Jesuit Petavius has well demonstrated in his notes on Epiphanius k. Isaiah liii. 3. d Vid. Grot. ad loc. See lib. 1. cap. 1. and lib. 2. cap. 36-38. of Irenæus. f Adv. Judæos, c. 8. 8 Strom. 1. 1. p. 340. h Lib. 4. c. 10. i Annal. t. 1. An. 34. n. 137. apud Daillé, of the right use of the Fathers, b. 2. c. 4. k Hæres. 51. Alog. in Diatrib. 2. de anno et die Dom. Pass. p. 145, 146. XVII. 4 Saying ascribed to Christ in Athenagoras, Legat. pro Christianis, c. 28. Πάλιν ἡμῖν λέγοντος τοῦ Λόγου, Εάν τις διὰ τοῦτο ἐκ δευτέρου και ταφιλήσῃ, ὅτι ἤρεσεν αὐτῷ. Again, the Word saith unto us, If any one shall kiss a woman a second time, because it pleases him, &c. It is not very easy to determine any thing certain concerning this passage. Pfaffius supposes it to have been in some apocryphal gospel, and an addition to those words of Christ, Matt. v. 28. and so makes the following words to be a continuation of it, viz. Καὶ ἐπιφέροντος, οὕτως οὖν ἀκριβώσασθαι τὸ φίλημα, μᾶλλον δὲ τὸ προσκύνημα δεῖ, ὡς εἴ που μι κρὸν τῇ διανοίᾳ παραβολωθείῃ, ἔξω ἡμᾶς τῆς αἰωνίου τιθέντος ζωῆς. And intimates, that we ought to be so discreet in kissing, that it may rather be a civil salutation, because if we defile our minds with an unchaste thought, we shall not attain eternal life. It is evident these last words cannot be the words of our Saviour, because they are delivered in the plural number, we shall not attain eternal life, which is unlike enough to any thing that ever Christ said. Besides, if the words be closely considered, it will appear that the latter part is an explication of, or inference from, the former, the one being delivered in the third person, the other in the first; if therefore either part be to be esteemed as the words of Christ, it can only be the former; although indeed it may be justly questioned, whether Athenagoras intended any such citation, because when he cites any thing of Christ, he prefixes noì to it, i. e. [The Lord] saith, as he does twice in this same paragraph. Conradus Gesnerus, the translator of Athenagoras, seems to have thought the same when he translates the words, Πάλιν ἡμῖν λέγοντος τοῦ λóyou, &c. Rursus quum religio nostra nos doceat, adding, Sicut vir quidam sanctus scripsit, si quis, &c. Again our 66 66 religion teacheth us, as a certain holy man hath wrote, that "if any one," &c. But perhaps Athenagoras might have some such words in his copy of St. Matthew, which were at first indeed a marginal gloss upon these words, chap. v. 28. If any man looketh upon a woman so as to lust after her, &c. but af1 Apud Fabrit. Cod. Apocr. Nov. Test. par. 3. p. 522. |