tions from his own personal knowledge. This seems to me a much better solution of the difficulty, than that which Dr. Whitby has attempted, vainly endeavouring to prove, that St. Luke's preface shews him to have been an eyewitness of all that he wrote, than which nothing can be more repugnant to the plain construction of the words y.

4. St. Luke was for a long time the constant companion of St. Paul in his travels, and his assistant in the work of the ministry. This is proved both from the New Testament and the fathers. In the Acts of the Apostles, (xvi. 10, &c.) which book at present I shall take for granted was written by Luke, we find him accompanying St. Paul in his voyage from Troas to Macedonia; for he speaks there in the first person plural, Immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia; and ver. 11. Therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a strait course, &c. and ver. 13. On the sabbath we went out of the city, and we sat down, and we spake to the women. See ver. 16, 17, &c. The twentieth and twenty-first chapters tell us of Luke's accompanying Paul to Jerusalem, as the twenty-seventh does of his going along with him to Rome; and accordingly St. Paul in several of his Epistles, written from Rome, mentions St. Luke as being with him there. See the places above. Nothing is more commonly affirmed by the ancients; as Irenæus, Eusebius a, Jerome b, Isidorus Hispalensis, &c. nor has it, that I know of, ever been questioned.

5. St. Luke was acquainted with several of the apostles. This indeed seems necessarily to follow, from his having been one of the seventy disciples, and the companion of St. Paul at Jerusalem, and so many other places. Eusebius expressly tells usd, "that he lived a long time with Paul, and was intimately acquainted with the rest of the apostles." The same we find also in Dorotheus Tyrius e.

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6. Epiphanius says, that he preached the Gospel in Dalmatia, France, Italy, and Macedonia f.

7. Concerning his death there is scarce any thing certain.

y Præf. on Luke.

z Adv. Hæres. lib. 3. c. 14.

a Hist. Eccl. lib. 3. c. 4.

b Catalog. Vir. Illustr. in Luc.

c De Vit. et Obit. Sanctor. inter Or

thodoxograph. vol. 1. p. 599.

d Loc. jam cit. Τοῖς λοιποῖς δὲ οὐ παρέργως τῶν ἀποστόλων ὡμιληκώς.

e In Synops.

f Hæres. 51. §. 11.

Jerome & tells us, "that he lived eighty-four years, never mar"ried, was buried at Constantinople, being brought thither” (viz. his bones and relics, together with those of the apostle Andrew)" in the twentieth year of Constantius, from Achaia." Dorotheus says, "he died and was buried at Ephesus, and "that his relics were brought, with those of Timothy and An"drew, to Constantinople, in the time of Constantius." Isidorus Hispalensis i also relates the account of his bones being translated to Constantinople, but will have it to have been in the time of Constantine, not Constantius; and that he died in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and was buried in Bithynia. Aldhelmusk, an abbot of Malmsbury, in the year 680, tells us likewise that he lived to the age of seventy-four, and then died in an unmarried state, and that Constantine brought his bones to Constantinople. Concerning the manner of his death I have met with nothing, but that Nicephorus relates 1 his being hanged upon an olive-tree in Greece; and Hippolytus m, that according to some, he was burnt, according to others, was crucified upon an olive-tree. Some later disputes about St. Luke's body among the papists, see in Spanheim. Histor. Christ. Secul. 15. p. 1336. Hitherto concerning St. Luke.

CHAP. XI.

Of St. Luke's Gospel. It was wrote from the information of the apostles, and other eyewitnesses of Christ's actions. Also under the direction and approbation of St. Paul. The design of it to confute the apocryphal Gospels. An inquiry into the time of its being written.

I PROCEED now to give some account of that Gospel which we have under the name of St. Luke. Concerning which, I observe,

1. That the evangelist wrote it from the informations and relations of those who were eyewitnesses of the things which

8 Catalog. Vir. Illustr. in Luca. h In Synops.

i De Vit. et Obit. Sanctor. inter Orthodoxograph. vol. 1. p. 599.

* De Laudib. Virginit. inter Ortho

doxograph. vol. 2. p. 1690.

1 Lib. 2. c. 43. and Dr. Cave's Life of St. Luke, §. 3.

m MS. in Bibl. Bodleian. apud Mill. Prooem. in Luc.

it contains. For though we cannot yet take his own testimony in the matter, (who ch. i. 2. saith, he wrote the things which were delivered unto him by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word,) yet there is so much other evidence of the truth of the fact, that it cannot with any reason be disputed. Irenæus saith, "that Luke has delivered "to us what the apostles delivered to him." This Tertullian calls authenticam paraturam °; i. e. "authentic intelligence, or "sufficient and credible informations, out of which he compiled "his Gospel." Eusebius P testifies, "that he conversed inti"mately with the apostles, and that he left the doctrines of curing souls, which he learned from them, in two divinely 66 inspired volumes." To the same purpose with all these, Jerome saith, "that Luke wrote not only what he learned from "Paul, but the other apostles 9." This tradition receives no small confirmation from St. Luke's having been one of the seventy disciples, and so much with St. Paul at Jerusalem, and elsewhere, that it cannot without manifest absurdity be supposed that he knew none of the apostles, or learnt nothing from them.

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2. It is probable that St. Luke's Gospel was wrote under the direction, and published with the approbation of St. Paul. Thus much at least seems evident from the testimonies of Irenæus, who carries the matter so far as to assert, "that Luke com"posed his Gospel out of what Paul preached;" of Tertullian, who adds, “that St. Luke's Gospel was ascribed to Paul as "its author, for those things may seem to be the master's, "which the disciples have published." How much this was the opinion of the ancients will further appear from this notion, which seems to have been common among them, that when Paul in any of his Epistles uses the words MY GOSPEL, (as he does Rom. ii. 16. 2 Tim. ii. 8.) he particularly meant this Gospel of Luke. This was thought by several before Eu

n Adv. Hæres. lib. 3. c. 14. Ea quæ ab iis didicerat, tradidit nobis. • Adv. Marcion. lib. 4. c. 2. P Hist. Eccl. lib. 3. c. 4.

a Catalog. Vir. Illustr. in Luca. Non solum a Paulo didicisse evangeliumsed a cæteris apostolis.

* Καὶ Λουκᾶς δὲ ὁ ἀκόλουθος Παύλου τὸ ὑπ ̓ ἐκείνου κηρυσσόμενον εὐαγγέλιον ἐν βιβai xarifero. Adv. Hæres. lib. 3. c. 1. Græc. vid. ap. Eus. H. E. lib. 5. c. 8.

* Nam et Lucæ digestum Paulo adscribere solent. Adv. Marcion. lib. 4. c. 5:

sebiust and Jerome "; and though Mr. Fabricius* will not believe it to be so, yet it shews us clearly that it was the common opinion of those times, that St. Paul was concerned in publishing this Gospel of St. Luke; to which I conceive also, that of Origen is to be referred, where he saith, that the Gospel of Luke was únò Пauλoũ éπαivоúpavov, i. e. "commended, or cited "by Pauly." But how much soever St. Paul was concerned in approving or directing the publication of this Gospel, it is certainly a mistake in Irenæus, and those who have followed him, to suppose St. Luke wrote only what he heard Paul preach, because himself saith, and I have above proved, that he wrote what those who were eyewitnesses delivered to him, of which number St. Paul was not. I therefore chose rather to lay it down in my proposition, that St. Paul approved or directed the publishing of this Gospel, than that he dictated it.

3. The particular view or design which St. Luke had in this Gospel, seems to have been, to confute the many silly apocryphal Gospels which were then extant, and to prevent the bad influence of them, and their heretical doctrines, upon the Christian converts. This is what is so manifest from the first words of the Gospel, and the universal voice of antiquity, that I need say no more, only shall refer the reader to the first volume, Part I. Ch. II. p. 21. and the places there cited. Besides this, which is allowed by all as the principal occasion of St. Luke's writing his Gospel, there have been other more particular reasons guessed at by learned men. The two French critics, Father Simon and Du Pin a, conjecture, that he wrote it at the desire of Theophilus, to whom he dedicates it; Dr. Grabeb and Dr. Millc suppose that St. Luke wrote it in Egypt, and with a particular design to confute the Gospel of the Egyptians, (of which above, Vol. I. Part II. Ch. XVI. &c.) but as the first of these seems but little to agree with the received notions of inspiration, so the latter seems very improbable, because we not only want any good evidence of St.

Luke's having ever been in Egypt, but because we find none of those, which we know to have been the peculiar doctrines of the Egyptian Gospel, so much as once referred to in this of St. Luke.

4. The time or period in which this Gospel was wrote is very uncertain, there being not (as far as I know) any monuments of antiquity, by which it can be fixed or determined. The ancients generally place the writing of this Gospel after those two of St. Matthew and St. Mark. In this order I find them ranged by Origend, Eusebius e, Jerome f, and many other writers of those times; from whence it is plain, they were bound together in their volumes in the order which they are now; this, I think, can be no better way accounted for, than by supposing, that they did imagine them written in the same order; and accordingly they are placed in all the old manuscripts, of which I have met with any account 8, except in that very ancient manuscript of Beza, now called the Cambridge Manuscript, being given by Beza to that university. In this manuscript, the order stands thus h; Matthew is placed first, then John, after him Luke, then Mark. It is certain, this was not the order in which the evangelists wrote; and it is very probable the writer of this manuscript intended to place first those of the evangelists who were apostles, viz. Matthew and John, and then those who were not, Luke and Mark; supposing perhaps, that as John wrote after Matthew, so Mark did after Luke. But according to the general opinion of the ancients, Luke wrote after Mark; the particular time they have not determined. According to several old manuscripts, St. Luke wrote his Gospel fifteen years after the ascension of Christi, viz. about the year 49, but this must certainly be a mistake; for if he wrote after Mark, he must write after the year of Christ 63; i. e. above thirty years after our Saviour's ascension; for I have above proved, that Mark did not write till after that time. Jerome informs us, that St. Luke wrote in the regions of Achaia and