CANONS OF

CHAPTER XIV.

CRITICISM.-DATA OF CRITICISM.- -COROLLA-
RIES. DR. LARDNER'S TABLE.

CANONS OF CRITICISM.

To be applied in judging the comparative claims of the
Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels.

1. The canonical and apocryphal gospels are competitive, i. e. they are reciprocally destructive of each other's pretensions.

2. If the canonical gospels are authentic, the apocryphal gospels are forgeries.

3. If the apocryphal gospels are authentic, the canonical gospels are forgeries.

4. No consideration of the comparative merits or characters of the competitive works, can have place in the consideration of their claims to authenticity.

5. Those writings, which ever they be, or whether they be the better or the worse, which can be shown to have been written first, have the superior claim to authenticity.

6. It is impossible that those writings which were the first, could have been written to disparage or supersede those which were written after.

7. Those writings which have the less appearance of art and contrivance, are the first.

8. Those writings which exhibit a more rhetorical construction of language, in the detail of the same events, with explications, suppressions, and variations, whose evident scope is, to render the story more probable, are the later writings.

9. Those writings whose existence is acknowledged by the others, but which themselves acknowledge not those others, are unquestionably the first.

10. There could be no conceivable object or purpose in putting forth writings which were much worse, after the world were in possession of such as were much better.

11. If the story were not true, in the first way of telling it, no improvement in the way of telling it, could render it

true.

12. If those, who were only improvers upon the original history, have concealed that fact, and have suffered mankind to understand that the improvements were the originals;

they are guilty and wicked forgers, and never could have had any other or better intention, than to mislead and deceive mankind.

DATA OF CRITICISM.

To be applied in judging the comparative claims of the

Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels.

1. It is manifest and admitted on all hands, that the apocryphal gospels are very silly and artless compositions, "full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders."—Mosheim, in loco.

2. It is manifest, and admitted on all hands, that the canonical gospels exhibit a more rhetorical construction of language than the apocryphal, and have a highly-wrought sublimity and grandeur, the like of which is no where to be found in any of the apocryphal gospels.

3. The canonical gospels, but more especially the canonical epistles, which are admitted to have been written before the gospels, do in very many places acknowledge the existence and prevalence of those writings which are now called apocryphal.

4. The apocryphal gospels, as far as we have any traces of them left, do no where recognise or acknowledge the writings which are now called canonical.

5. The apocryphal gospels, are quoted by the very earliest Fathers, orthodox, as well as heretical, as reverentially as those which we now call canonical.

6. The apocryphal gospels, are admitted in the New Testament itself, to have been universally received, and to have been the guide and rule of faith to the whole Christian world, before any one of our present canonical gospels, was in existence.

COROLLARIES.

1. Indications of time, discovered in those gospels which were written first, will indicate time relatively, to those which were written afterwards-exempli gratiá. It being proved that the legend A. was written before the legend C, there will be proof, that events which were contemporary or antecedent to the writing of A., were antecedent, a fortiori, to the writing of C.

2. Indications of the prevalence of a state of things, existing when the earlier gospels were written, will indicate relatively the state of things, when the latter

gospels were written-exempli gratiá. It being proved that the earlier gospels were written under an universal prevalence of the notions and doctrines of monkery, there will be proof of the monkish character necessarily derived to the gospels, derived from those gospels.

DR. LARDNER'S TABLE.

Dr. Lardner's Plan of the Times and Places of writing the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.

A Table of St. Paul's Epistles in the Order of Time; with the Places

where, and the Times when, they were written.

(From Lardner's Supplement to The Credibility, &c. vol. ii. p. iv.)

A Table of the Seven Catholic Epistles, and the Revelation, with the Places where, and the Times when, they were written.

(From Lardner's Supplement to The Credibility, &c. vol. iii. p. iv.) Epistles, &c.

The Epistles of St. James.

The two Epistles of St. Peter.
St. John's first Epistle.
His second and third Epistles.
The Epistle of St. Jude.
The Revelation of St. John.

Places.

A D.

CHAPTER XV.

OF THE FOUR GOSPELS, IN GENERAL.

THE ordinary notion, that the four gospels were written by the persons whose names they bear, and that they have descended to us from original autographs of Matthew and John, immediate disciples, and of Mark and Luke, cotemporaries and companions of Christ; in like manner as the writings of still more early poets and historians have descended to us, from the pens of the authors to whom they are attributed, is altogether untenable. It has been entirely surrendered by the most able and ingenuous Christian writers, and will no longer be maintained by any but those whose zeal outruns their knowledge, and whose recklessness and temerity of assertion, can serve only to dishonour and betray the cause they so injudiciously seek to defend.

The surrender of a position which the world has for ages been led to consider impregnable, by the admission of all that the early objection of the learned Christian Bishop, FAUSTUS, the Manichean, implied, when he pressed Augustine with that bold challenge which Augustine was unable to answer, that,* "It is certain that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while after them, by some unknown persons, who lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to their works the names of apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been their companions, asserting that what they had written themselves, was written ACCORDING TO those persons to whom they ascribed it."

This admission has not been held to be fatal to the claims of divine relation, nor was it held to be so even by the learned Father himself who so strenuously insisted on it, since he declares his own unshaken faith in Christ's mystical crucifixion, notwithstanding.

* Nec ab ipso scriptum constat, nec ab ejus apostolis sed longo post tempore a quibusdam incerti nominis viris, qui ne sibi non haberetur fides scribentibus quæ nescirent, partim apostolorum, partim eorum qui apostolos secuti viderentur nomina scriptorum suorum frontibus indiderunt, asseverantes SECUNDUM eos, se scripsisse quæ scripserunt. Quoted by Lardner, vol. 2, p. 221-See Chapter 7, p. 66, of this DIEGESIS.

Adroitly handled as the passage has been by the ingenuity of theologians, it has been made rather to subserve the cause of the evidences of the Christian religion, than to injure it. Since though it be admitted, that the Christian world has "all along been under a delusion" in this respect, and has held these writings to be of higher authority than they really are; yet the writings themselves and their authors, are innocent of having contributed to that delusion, and never bore on them, nor in them, any challenge to so high authority as the mistaken piety of Christians has ascribed to them, but did all along profess no more than to have been written, as Faustus testifies, not BY, but ACCORDING to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and by persons of whom indeed it is not known who nor what they were, nor was it of any consequence that it should be, after the general acquiescence of the church had established the sufficient correctness of the compilations they had made.

And here the longo post tempore, (the great while after,) is a favourable presumption of the sufficient opportunity that all persons* had, of knowing and being satisfied, that the gospels which the church received, were indeed all that they purported to be; that is, faithful narrations of the life and doctrines of Christ, according to what could be collected from the verbal accounts which his apostles had given, or by tradition been supposed to have given, and as such, "worthy of all acceptation."

While the objection of Faustus, becomes from its own nature the most indubitable and inexceptionable evidence, carrying us up to the very early age, the fourth century, in which he wrote, with a demonstration, that the gospels were then universally known and received, under the precise designation, and none other, than that with which they have come down to us, even as the gospels respectively, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Of course there can be no occasion to pursue the inquiry into the authenticity of the Christian scriptures, lower down than the fourth century.

1. Though, in that age, there was no established canon or authoritative declaration, that such and none other,

* By all persons, understanding strictly all parsons, for the common people were nobody, and never at any time had any voice, judgment, or option, in the business of religion, but always believed, that which their godfathers and godmothers did promise and vow that they should believe. God or devil, and any scriptures their masters pleased, were always all one to them.