of the first comprehended THE FIVE BOOks of MoSES; the second ALL THE PROPHETS; and the third those WRITINGS which they call the Chethubim, or BOOKS that were written by the holy men of God, who were not so properly to be ranked among the Prophets : From whom both the five Books of Moses and these Chethubim were distinguished, because howsoever they were all written by the same prophetical spirit and instinct, which the Books of the Prophets were; yet Moses having been their special lawgiver, and the writers of these other books having had no public mission or office of Prophets, (for some of them were Kings, and others were great and potent persons in their times,) they gave either of them a peculiar class by themselves.

"In this division, as they reckoned Five Books in the first class, so in the second they counted Eight, and in the third Nine; Two-and-Twenty in all; in number equal to the letters of their Alphabet, and as fully comprehending all that was then needful to be known and believed, as the number of their letters did all that was requisite to be said or written. And hereof after this manner they made their enumeration.

"Which last Book of the Chronicles, containing the sum of all their former histories, and reach ing from the creation of the world to their return from Babylon, is a perfect epitome of all the old Testament, and therefore not unfitly so placed by them, as that it concluded and closed up their whole BIble.

"Other divisions of these books were afterwards made, and the order of them was somewhat altered, (as in divers respects they may well be,) but the books were still the same; and as the number of them was never augmented, during the time of the Old Testament, so there were no additional pieces brought in, or set to any of them at all.

"It is generally received, that after the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, all the BOOKS of the SCRIPTURE, having been revised by Ezra, (then their priest and their leader,) who digested them likewise into those several classes before rehearsed, were by him, and the Prophets of God that lived with him, consigned and delivered over to all posterity. But this is sure, that after his age, and the time of the prophet Malachi, (who was one among those that prophesied in that time,) there were no more prophets heard of among the Jews till the time of St John the Baptist, and therefore no more prophetical and divine SCRIPTURES between them.

"The BOOKS then of the OLD TESTAMENT, such and so many as they were after the captivity of Babylon, in the time of Esdras, (Ezra,) the same and so many being accurately preserved by the Jews, and continuing among them unto the time of our blessed Saviour (as they do likewise still unto this very day) without any addition, imminution, or alteration, descended to the Christians."

Nothing then can be better authenticated than the canon* of the Old Testament, as we now possess it. We have the fullest evidence that it was fixed 280 years before the Christian era, when, as has been noticed, the Greek translation, called the Septuagint, was executed at Alexandria, the books of which were the same as in our Bible. And as no authentic records of a more ancient date are extant, it is impossible to ascend higher in search of testimony. As held by the Jews in the days of Jesus Christ, their canon was the same as when that translation was made, and it has since then been retained by them without any variation, though by separating books formerly united, they increase their number. The integrity and divine original of these Scriptures are thus authenticated by a whole nation the most ancient that exists-who have preserved them and borne their testimony to them from the time of Moses down to the present day. That nation was selected by God himself to be his witnesses, Isaiah, xliii. 10, to whom he committed "the lively oracles," and amidst all their wickedness he prevented them from betraying their trust, the Jews never having

* The word canon signifies a rule or a law. the Holy Scriptures taken together are called the by God to be the rule of our faith and practice.

Hence the books of canon, as designed

given admission into their canon to any other books but to those which by his prophets and servants were delivered to them.

In addition to the unanimous testimony of the Jewish nation to the genuineness and authenticity of the Old Testament Scriptures, of which they had been constituted the depositaries, we have the decisive attestation of the Son of God. Jesus Christ, who appeared on earth 1500 years after Moses, the first of the prophets, and 400 years after Malachi, the last of them, bore his testimony to the sacred canon as held by the Jews in his time, and recorded it by his holy Apostles. Among all the evils with which he charged the Jews, he never once intimated that they had in any degree corrupted the canon either by addition, or diminution, or alteration. Since with so much zeal he purged the temple, and so often and sharply reprehended the Jews, for perverting the true sense of the Scriptures, much more, we may be assured, would he have condemned them, if they had tampered with, or vitiated, these sacred writings; but of this he never accused them. By often referring to the " Scriptures," which he declared "cannot be broken," the Lord Jesus Christ has given his full attestation to the whole of them as the unadulterated Word of God. "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me." Here he warrants, in the most explicit manner, the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures. He told the Jews that they made the Word of God of none effect through their traditions. By calling them the WORD OF GOD, he indicated that these Scriptures proceeded from God himself. In his conversation with the disciples going to Emaus, when, " beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, he expounded to them in

all the Scriptures the things concerning himself," he gave the most express testimony to every one of the books of the Old Testament canon. Just before his ascension, he said to his Apostles, "These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me." By thus adopting the common division of the Law, and the Prophets, and the Psalms, which comprehended all the Hebrew Scriptures, (to which division Josephus, as we have seen, refers,) he ratified and sanctioned by his authority the canon of the Old Testament, as it was received by the Jews; and by declaring that these books contained prophecies which must be fulfilled, he established their Divine inspiration, since God alone can enable men to foretell future events.

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The same testimony is repeated by the Apostles, who constantly appeal to the Jewish Scriptures as "the lively oracles" of God. Referring to the whole of the Old Testament, Paul declares, that " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." The term " Scripture," or the Scriptures," (the writings,) was then, as it is still, appropriated to the written Word of God, as both the Old Testament and the New are now, by way of eminence and distinction, called the Bible, or the Book. The same Apostle recognises the entire canon of the Jews, when he says, " unto them were committed the oracles of God." The fidelity of the Jews to their trust is here asserted by Paul; and those to whom he writes are required to acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old Testament as of divine authority. While the Apostles affirmed that they spoke "not the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost