Part 9

"Of the Apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first instil faith into us; whilst, of Apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it afterwards. These all start with the same principles of the faith, so far as relates to the one only God the Creator, and His Christ, how that He was born of the Virgin, and came to fulfil the law and the prophets. Never mind if there does occur some variation in the order of their narratives, provided that there be agreement in the essential matter of the faith in which there is disagreement with Marcion." (Tertullian against Marcion, iv. c. ii.)

Such are the explicit declarations of these three writers respecting the number and authorship of the Four. I shall give at the conclusion of this section some of the references to be found in these writers to the first two or three chapters in each Gospel.

It is but very little to say that they quote the Four as frequently, and with as firm a belief in their being the Scriptures of God, as any modern divine. They quote them far more copiously, and reproduce the history contained in them far more fully than any modern divine whom I have ever read, who is not writing specifically on the Life of our Lord, or on some part of His teaching contained in the Gospels.

But I have now to consider the question, "To what time, previous to their own day, or rather to the time at which they wrote, does their testimony to such a matter as the general reception of the Four Gospels of necessity reach back?"

Clement wrote in Alexandria, Tertullian in Rome or Africa, Irenaeus in Gaul. They all flourished about A.D. 190. They all speak of the Gospels, not only as well known and received, but as being the only Gospels acknowledged and received by the Church. One of them uses very "uncritical" arguments to prove that the Gospels could only be four in number; but the very absurdity of his analogies is a witness to the universal tradition of his day. To what date before their time must this tradition reach, so that it must be relied upon as exhibiting the true state of things?

Now this tradition is not respecting a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact--the fact being no other than the reading of the Gospels or Memoirs of our Lord in the public service of the Church. The "Memoirs of our Lord," with other books, formed the Lectionary of the Church. So that every Christian, who attended the public assemblies for worship, must know whether he heard the Gospels read there or not.

Now any two men who lived successively to the age of sixty-five would be able to transmit irrefragable testimony, which would cover a hundred years, to the use of the Gospels in the lectionary of the Church.

During the last five years we have had a change in our Lectionary, which change only affects the rearrangement of the portions read each day out of the same Gospels, and every boy and girl of fifteen years old at the time would recognize the alteration when it took place. If it had occurred fifty years ago, any man or woman of sixty-five would perfectly remember the change. If it had occurred within the last hundred years, any person of sixty-five could bear testimony to the fact that, when he first began to be instructed in the nature of the Church Services he was told by his elders that up to a time which they could perfectly recollect certain selections from Scripture had been read in Church, but that at such a period during their lifetime a change had been brought about after certain public debates, and that it received such or such opposition and was not at once universally adopted, which change was the reading in public of the present selection. It is clear then, that if all public documents were destroyed, yet any two men, who could scarcely be called old men, would be able to transmit with perfect certainty the record of any change in the public reading of Scripture during the last one hundred years.

But, supposing that instead of a change in the mere selections from the Gospels, the very Gospels themselves had been changed, could such a thing have occurred unnoticed, and the memory of it be so absolutely forgotten that neither history nor tradition preserved the smallest hint of it at the end of a short century?

Now this, and far more than this, is what the author of "Supernatural Religion" asks his readers to believe throughout his whole work.

We have seen how, before the end of this century, no other authoritative memoirs of Christ were known by the Church, and these were known and recognized as so essential a part of the Christian system, that their very number as four, and only four, was supposed to be prefigured from the very beginning of the world.

Now Justin lived till the year 165 in this century. He was martyred when Irenaeus must have been twenty-five years old. Both Clement and Tertullian must have been born before his martyrdom, perhaps several years, and yet the author of "Supernatural Religion" would have us believe that the books of Christians which were accounted most sacred in the year 190, and used in that year as frequently, and with as firm a belief in their authenticity as they are by any Christians now, were unused by Justin Martyr, and that one of the four was absolutely unknown to him--in all probability forged after his time.

We are persistently told all this, too, in spite of the fact that he reproduces the account of the Birth, Teaching, Death, and Resurrection of Christ exactly as they are contained in the Four, without a single additional circumstance worth speaking of, making only such alterations as would be natural in the reproduction of such an account for those who were without the pale of the Church.

But even this is not the climax of the absurdity which we are told that, if we are reasonable persons, we must accept. It appears that the "Memoirs" which, we are told, Justin heard read every Sunday in the place of assembly in Rome or Ephesus which he frequented, was a Palestinian Gospel, which combined, in one narrative, the accounts of the Birth, Life, Death, and moral Teaching of Jesus, together with the peculiar doctrine and history now only to be found in the Fourth Gospel. Consequently this Gospel was not only far more valuable than any one of our present Evangelists, but, we might almost say, more worthy of preservation than all put together, for it combined the teaching of the four, and no doubt reconciled their seeming discrepancies, thus obviating one of the greatest difficulties connected with their authority and inspiration; a difficulty which, we learn from history, was felt from the first. And yet, within less than twenty years, this Gospel had been supplanted by four others so effectually that it was all but forgotten at the end of the century, and is referred to by the first ecclesiastical historian as one of many apocrypha valued only by a local Church, and has now perished so utterly that not one fragment of it can be proved to be authentic.

But enough of this absurdity.

Taking with us the patent fact, that before the end of the second century, and during the first half of the third, the Four Gospels were accepted by the Church generally, and quoted by every Christian writer as fully as they are at this moment, can there be the shadow of a doubt that when Justin wrote the account of our Lord's Birth, which I have given in page 22, he had before him the first and third Evangelists, and combined these two accounts in one narrative? Whether he does this consciously and of set purpose I leave to the author of "Supernatural Religion," but combine the two accounts he certainly does.

Again, when, in the accounts of the events preceding our Lord's Death, Justin notices that Jesus commanded the disciples to bring forth an ass and its foal (page 33), can any reasonable man doubt but that he owed this to St. Matthew, in whose Gospel alone it appears?

Or when, in the extract I have given in page 20, he notices that our Lord called the sons of Zebedee Boanerges, can there be any reasonable doubt that he derived this from St. Mark, the only Evangelist who records it, whose Gospel (in accordance with universal tradition), he there designates as the "Memoirs of Peter?"

Or again, when, in the extract I have given in page 34, he records that our Lord in His Agony sweat great drops [of blood], can there be a doubt but that he made use of St. Luke, especially since he mentions two or three other matters connected with our Lord's Death, only to be found in St. Luke? Or, again, why should we assume the extreme improbability of a defunct Gospel to account for all the references to, and reminiscences of, St. John's Gospel, which I have given in Sections VIII. and IX. of this work?

So far for Justin Martyr.

We will now turn to references in three or four other writers.

In the Epistle of Vienne and Lyons we find the following:--

"And thus was fulfilled the saying of our Lord: 'The time shall come in which every one that killeth you shall think that he offereth a service to God.'"

This seems like a reference to John xvi. 2. The words, with some very slight variation, are to be found there and not to be found elsewhere. The letter of the Churches was written about A.D. 178 "at the earliest," we are told by the author of "Supernatural Religion." Well, we will make him a present of a few years, and suppose that it was written ten or twelve years later, _i.e._ about A.D. 190. Now we find that Irenaeus had written his great work, "Against Heresies," before this date. Surely, then, the notion of the writer of "Supernatural Religion," that we are to suppose that this was taken from some lost Apocryphal Gospel when Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, had actually used a written Gospel which contains it, refutes itself.

We turn to Athenagoras.

We find in his work, "Plea (or Embassy) for the Christians" (ch. x.), the following:--

"But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father in idea and in operation, for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one [I and My Father are one], and the Son being in the Father, and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit," &c. (John xiv. 10.)

Again (ch. xii.):--

"Men who reckon the present life of very small worth indeed, and who are conducted to the future life by this one thing alone, that they know God and His Logos." [This is life eternal, that they may know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.]

Can the writer of "Supernatural Religion" be serious when he writes, "He nowhere identifies the Logos with Jesus?" Does the writer of "Supernatural Religion" seriously think that a Christian writer, living in 177, and presenting to the emperor a plea for Christians, would have any difficulty about identifying Jesus with that Son of God Whom he expressly states to be the Logos of God?

The following also are seeming quotations from the Synoptics in Athenagoras.

"What, then, are those precepts in which we are instructed? 'I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse, pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in the heavens, who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.'

"'For if ye love them which love you, and lend to them which lend to you, what reward shall ye have?'

"'For whosoever, He says, looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart.'

"'For whosoever, says He, putteth away his wife and marrieth another, committeth adultery.'"

When we consider that in the time of Athenagoras, or very soon after, there were three authors living who spoke of the Gospels in the way we have shown, and quoted them in the way we shall now show, why assign these quotations to defunct Gospels of whose contents we are perfectly ignorant, when we have them substantially in Gospels which occupied the same place in the Church then as now?

NOTE ON SECTION XIX.

I have asserted that the three authors, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus, all flourishing before the close of the second century, quote the four Gospels, if anything, more frequently than most modern Christian authors do. I append, in proof of this, some of the references in these authors to the first two or three chapters of our present Gospels.

IRENAEUS.

Matthew, i.

"And Matthew, too, recognizing one and the same Jesus Christ, exhibiting his generation as a man from the Virgin ... says, 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.' Then, that he might free our mind from suspicion regarding Joseph, he says, 'But the birth of Christ was on this wise: when His mother was espoused,'" &c. (iii. xvi.)

Then he proceeds to quote and remark upon the whole of the remainder of the chapter.

"Matthew again relates His generation as a man." For remainder, see page 128.

"For Joseph is shown to be the son of Joachim and Jeconiah, as also Matthew sets forth in his pedigree." (iii. 21, 9.)

"Born Emmanuel of the Virgin. To this effect they testify that before Joseph had come together with Mary, while she therefore remained in virginity, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost." (iii. 21, 4.)

"Then again Matthew, when speaking of the angel, says, 'The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in sleep.' (iii. 9, 2.)

"The angel said to him in sleep, 'Fear not to take to thee Mary, thy wife'" (and proceeding with several other verses of the same chapter). (iv. 23, l.)

Matthew, ii.

"But Matthew says that the Magi, coming from the East, exclaimed, 'For we have seen His star in the East, and are come to worship Him.'" (iii. 9, 2.)

"And that having been led by the star unto the house of Jacob to Emmanuel, they showed, by those gifts which they offered, who it was that was worshipped; myrrh, because it was He who should die and be buried for the human race; gold, because He was a king," &c., &c. (iii. 9, 2)

"He, since He was Himself an infant, so arranging it that human infants should be martyrs, slain, according to the Scriptures, for the sake of Christ." (iii. 16, 4.)

Matthew, iii.

"For Matthew the apostle ... declares that John, when preparing the way for Christ, said to them who were boasting of their relationship according to the flesh, &c., 'O generation of vipers, who hath shown you to flee from ... raise up children unto Abraham.' (iii. 9, 1.)

"As John the Baptist says, 'For God is able from these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.'" (iv. 7, 2.)

There are no less than six quotations or references to the ninth and tenth verses of this chapter, viz., iv. 24, 2; v. 34, 1; iv. 8, 3; iv. 36, 4; v. 17, 4.

"Now who this Lord is that brings such a day about, John the Baptist points out when he says of Christ, 'He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, having His fan in His hand,'" &c. (iv. 4, 3.)

"Having a fan in His hands, and cleansing His floor, and gathering the wheat,'" &c. (iv. 33, 1.)

"Who gathers the wheat into His barn, but will burn up the chaff with fire unquenchable." (iv. 33, ll.)

"Then, speaking of His baptism, Matthew says, 'The heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God,'" &c. (iii. 9, 3.)

Mark, i.

"Wherefore Mark also says, 'The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets.'" (iii. 16, 3.)

"Yea, even the demons exclaimed, on beholding the Son, 'We know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.'" (iv. 6, 6.)

Mark iv. 28.

"His Word, through whom the wood fructifies, and the fountains gush forth, and the earth gives 'first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.'" (iv. 18, 4.)

Luke, i.

"Thus also does Luke, without respect of persons, deliver to us what he had learned from them, as he has himself testified, saying, 'Even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word.'" (iii. 14, 2.)

Another reference to same in preface to Book iv.

"Luke, also, the follower and disciple of the Apostles, referring to Zacharias and Elizabeth, from whom, according to promise, John was born, says, 'And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless,'", &c. (iii. 10, 1.)

"And again, speaking of Zacharias, 'And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office,'" &c. (_Ibid._)

"And then, speaking of John, he (the angel) says: 'For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord,'" &c. (_Ibid._)

"In the spirit and power of Elias." (iii. 10, 6.)

"Truly it was by Him of whom Gabriel was the angel who also announced the glad tidings of His birth ... in the spirit and power of Elias." (iii. 11, 4.)

"But at that time the angel Gabriel was sent from God, who did also say to the Virgin, 'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God.'" (iii. 10, 2.)

"He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest," &c. (iii. 10, 2.)

"And Mary, exulting because of this, cried out; prophesying on behalf of the Church, 'My soul doth magnify the Lord.'" (iii. 10, 2.)

"And that the angel Gabriel said unto her, 'The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,'" &c. (iii. 21, 4.)

"In accordance with this design Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word.'" (iii. 22, 4.)

"As Elizabeth testified when fitted with the Holy Ghost, saying to Mary, 'Blessed art thou among women,'" &c. (iii. 21, 5.)

"Wherefore the prophets ... announced His Advent ... in freeing us from the hands of all that hate us, that is, from every spirit of wickedness, and causing us to serve Him in holiness and righteousness all our days.'" (iv. 20, 4.)

Luke, ii.

"Wherefore Simeon also, one of his descendants, carried fully out the rejoicing of the patriarch, and said, 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant,'" &c. (iv. 7, l.)

"And the angel in like manner announced tidings of great joy to the shepherds who were keeping watch by night." (iv. 7, 1.)

"Wherefore he adds, 'The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all which they had seen and heard.'" (iii. 10, 4.)

"And still further does Luke say in reference to the Lord, 'When the days of purification were accomplished they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him before the Lord.'" (iii. 10, 5.)

"They say also that Simeon, 'Who took Christ into his arms and gave thanks to God,'" &c. (i. 8, 4.)

"They assert also that by Anna, who is spoken of in the Gospel as a prophetess, and who after living seven years with her husband, passed all the rest of her life in widowhood till she saw the Saviour." (i. 8, 4.)

"The production, again, of the Duodecad of the aeons is indicated by the fact that the Lord was twelve years of age when He disputed with the teachers of the law," &c. (i. 3, 2.)

"Some passages, also, which occur in the Gospels receive from them a colouring of the same kind, as the answer which He gave His mother when He was twelve years old, 'Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?'" (i. 20, 2.)

Luke, iii.

"For because He knew that we should make a good use of our substance which we should possess by receiving it from another, He says, 'He that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none, and he that hath meat let him do likewise.'" (iv. 30, 3.)

"For when He came to be baptized He had not yet completed His thirtieth year, but was beginning to be about thirty years of age; for thus Luke, who has mentioned His years, has expressed it." (ii. 22, 5.)

John, i.

"[John] thus commenced his teaching in the Gospel, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,'" &c. (iii. 11, 1.)

"He (St. John) expresses himself thus: 'In the beginning was the Word,'" &c. (i. 8, 5.)

"Thus saith the Scripture, 'By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,' &c. And again, 'All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made that was made.'" (i. 22, 1.)

"For he styles Him 'A light which shineth in darkness, and which was not comprehended by it.'" (i. 8, 5.)

"And that we may not have to ask 'Of what God was the Word made flesh?' He does Himself previously teach us, saying, 'There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came as a witness that he might bear witness of that Light. He was not that Light, but that he might testify of the Light.'" (iii. 11, 4.)

"While the Gospel affirms plainly that by the Word, which was in the beginning with God, all things were made, which Word, he says, was made flesh and dwelt among us." (iii. 11, 2.)

To John i. 14, "The Word was made flesh," the references are absolutely innumerable. Those I have given already will suffice.

"For this is the knowledge of salvation which was wanting to them, that of the Son of God, which John made known, saying, 'Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a Man Who was made before me, because He was prior to me.'" (iii. 10, 2.)

"By whom also Nathaniel, being taught, recognized Him; he to whom also the Lord bare witness that he was an Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile. The Israelite recognized his King, therefore did he cry out to Him, 'Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God. Thou art the King of Israel.'" (iii. 11, 6.)

John, ii.

"But that wine was better which the Word made from water, on the moment, and simply for the use of those who had been called to the marriage." (iii. 11, 5.)

"As also the Lord speaks in reference to Himself, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' He spake this, however, it is said, of the temple of His body." (v. 6, 2.)

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA.

Matthew, i.

"And in the gospel according to Matthew the genealogy which begins with Abraham is continued down to Mary, the mother of the Lord. 'For,' it is said, 'from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David to the carrying away into Babylon," &c. (Miscellanies, i. 21.)

Matthew, iii.

"For the fan is in the Lord's hand, by which the chaff due to the fire is separated from the wheat." (Instructor, i. 9.)

Matthew, iv.

"Therefore He Himself, urging them on to salvation, cries, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'" (Exhortation to Heathen, ch. ix.)

Matthew, v.

"And because He brought all things to bear on the discipline of the soul, He said, 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.'" (Miscellanies, iv. 6.)

Mark, i.

"For he also 'ate locusts and wild honey.'" [In St. Matthew the corresponding expression being 'His food was locusts and wild honey.'] (Instructor, ii. 11.)

Luke, iii.

"And to prove that this is true it is written in the Gospel by Luke as follows: 'And in the fifteenth year, in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zacharias.' And again, Jesus was coming to His baptism, being about thirty years old,' and so on." (Miscellanies, i. 21.)

There are at least twenty more references to the accounts of the preaching of St. John in the third of St. Matthew, first of St. Mark, and third of St. Luke, in Clement's writings, which I have not given simply because it is difficult to assign the quotation to a particular Evangelist, as the account is substantially the same in the three.

Luke xii. 16-20.