Probably there are few results of historical investigation, that will
make a more decided impression of disappointment on the mind of a
common reader, than the sentence, which a rigid examination compels
the writer to pass, with almost uniform condemnatory severity, on all
apostolic stories which are not sanctioned by the word of inspiration.
There is a universal curiosity, natural, and not uncommendable, felt
by all the believers and hearers of the faith which the apostles
preached, to know something more about these noble first witnesses
of the truth, than the bare broken and unconnected details which the
gospel, and the apostolic acts can furnish. At this day, the most
trifling circumstances connected with them,――their actions, their
dwelling-places, their lives or their deaths, have a value vastly above
what could ever have been appreciated by those of their own time, who
acted, dwelt, lived, and died with them,――a value increasing through
the course of ages, in a regular progression, rising as it removes from
the objects to which it refers. But the very course of this progression
implies a diminution of the means of obtaining the desired information,
proportioned to the increase of the demand for it;――and along with
this condition of things, the all-pervading and ever-active spirit
of invention comes in, to quench, with deep draughts of delightful
falsehood, the honest thirst for literal truth. The misfortune of this
constitution of circumstances, being that the want is not felt till the
means of supplying it are irrecoverably gone, puts the investigation of
the minutiae of all antiquity, sacred or profane, upon a very uncertain
ground, and requires the most critical test for every assertion,
offered to satisfy a curiosity which, for the sake of the pleasure
thus derived, feels interested in deceiving itself; for
“Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat.”
Even the spirit of deep curiosity which beguiles the historical
inquirer into a love of the fabulous and unfounded tales of tradition,
though specifically more elevated by its intellectual character, is yet
generically the same with the spirit of superstitious credulity, that
leads the miserable Papist to bow down with idolatrous worship before
the ridiculous trash, called relics, which are presented to him by
the consecrated impostors who minister to him in holy things; and the
feeling of indignant horror with which he repulses the Protestant zeal,
that would rob his spirit of the comfortable support afforded by the
possession of an apostolical toe-nail, a lock of a saint’s hair, or by
the sight of the Savior’s handkerchief, or of a drop of his blood,――is
all perfectly kindred to that indignant regret with which even a
reformed reader regards all these critical assaults upon agreeable
historical delusions,――and to that stubborn attachment with which he
often clings to antique falsehood. Yet the pure consolations of the
truth, known by research and judgment, are so far above these baser
enjoyments, that the exchange of fiction, for historical knowledge,
though merely of a negative kind, becomes most desirable even to an
uncritical mind.
The sweeping sentence of condemnation against all traditionary stories,
may, however, be subjected to some decided exceptions in the case
of John, who, living much longer than any other of the apostles,
would thus be much more widely and lastingly known than they, to the
Christians of the first and second generations after the immediate
contemporaries of the twelve. On this account the stories about John
come with much higher traditionary authority, than those which pretend
to give accounts of any other apostle; and this view is still further
confirmed by the character of most of the stories themselves; which are
certainly much less absurd and vastly more probable in their appearance,
than the great mass of apostolic traditions. Indeed, in respect to
this apostle, may be said, what can _not_ be said of any other, that
some tolerably well-authorized, and a very few decidedly authentic,
statements of his later life, may be derived from passages in the
_genuine_ writings of the early Fathers.