RELATIVE STRENGTH OF THE EVIDENCE WHICH SUPPORTS THE GENUINENESS AND
AUTHENTICITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
Some copies of Quintilian’s Institutions of Oratory, very much
corrupted and mutilated by the ignorance or presumption of copyists,
were known in Italy before the fifteenth century. But in 1414, while
the Council of Constance was sitting, Poggio, a learned Italian, was
commissioned by the promoters of learning to proceed to that place,
in search of ancient manuscripts, which were believed to be preserved
in the monasteries of the city and its vicinity. His researches were
rewarded by discovering, in the monastery of St. Gall, beneath a heap
of long-neglected lumber, a perfect copy of the Institutions.
The manuscript, thus discovered, was soon subjected to the examination
of critics; it was collated with existing copies, it was compared with
the references of ancient authors, and thus was ascertained to be
genuine, and, in the main, uncorrupted. And yet the substance of the
evidence on which this decision rests might be comprised in a page.
The abridged history of Rome, by Paterculus, has come down to our
times only in a single manuscript, and that one is so much corrupted,
that critics have despaired of restoring the text to its purity. It
happens, also, that this history is quoted by one ancient author
only--Priscian, a grammarian of the sixth century. Yet, notwithstanding
this scantiness of the evidence, and this corruption of the single
existing copy, the genuineness of the work is fully admitted by
scholars. The style, the allusions, the coincidences, are such as to
satisfy those who are competent to estimate the value of this sort of
proof. But now if this proof were formally set before us, and even if
it were as much expanded as it would bear, it must look exceedingly
meagre; and, to uninformed readers, it must appear slender as a thread,
and insufficient to sustain any weighty consequence. But scholars,
in reading the book, feel that sort of conviction of its genuineness
which is experienced by a traveller, who has spent his life in passing
from country to country, conversing with men of all nations: when this
travelled person meets foreigners in the streets of London, he does not
need to look at passports before he can know whether these strangers,
whom individually he has never before seen, are Swedes, or Hungarians,
or Armenians, or Hindoos, or West Indians; the commonest observer
scarcely hesitates on such occasions; but the old traveller feels a
conviction which mocks at the demand for formal proof.
After we have excepted a few doubtful cases, the genuineness of
classic authors is perceived by scholars, with a vividness and
distinctness that is not dependent upon the quantity of assignable
evidence which must be adduced in reply to objectors. On this ground
it may be affirmed, that, if only a single manuscript, containing
certain of St. Paul’s Epistles, had been preserved, and even if no
quotations from these writings were to be found, competent scholars
(no practical consequences being implied in the question) would doubt
that these writings are in fact what they profess to be. Those minute
and indescribable characters of genuineness which meet the instructed
eye in every line of these Epistles would be enough, apart from that
argument which has been derived from the internal accordances of the
history and the letters, as exhibited by Paley in the Horæ Paulinæ.
But although the external proof of the genuineness of ancient books
might, in a large proportion of instances, be dispensed with as
superfluous, it ought not to be disregarded; especially as it is
the kind of evidence which may best be made intelligible to general
readers. Yet even this, when adduced in its particulars, is not often
duly appreciated; nor is it likely to produce its due impression,
unless it be viewed in its place among facts of the same class. We
propose, therefore, without troubling the reader with details which are
to be found, at large, in many well-known works, and which he may be
supposed to have in recollection--or within his reach--to direct him
to a few principal points of the comparison which may be instituted
between the classical and the sacred writings, in relation to the
proof of the genuineness and authenticity of each kind.
The Jewish and Christian Scriptures may then be brought into comparison
with the works of the Greek and Roman authors, in the following
particulars:--
1. The number of manuscripts which passed down through the middle ages,
in the modes which have been described in the preceding chapters.
About fifteen manuscripts of the history of Herodotus are known to
critics: and of these, several are not of higher antiquity than the
middle of the fifteenth century. One copy, in the French king’s
library (there are in that collection five or six), appears to belong
to the twelfth century; there is one in the Vatican, and one in the
Florentine library, attributed to the tenth century: one in the library
of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, formerly the property of Archbishop
Sancroft, which is believed to be very ancient: the libraries of Oxford
and of Vienna contain also manuscripts of this author. This amount
of copies may be taken as more than the average number of _ancient_
manuscripts of the classic authors; for although a few have many more,
many have fewer.
To mention any number as that of the existing _ancient_ manuscripts,
either of the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures, would be difficult. It
may suffice to say that, on the revival of learning, copies of the
Scriptures, in whole or in part, were found wherever any books had been
preserved. In examining the catalogues of conventual libraries--such
as they were in the fifteenth century, the larger proportion is
usually found to consist of the works of the fathers, or of the
ecclesiastical writers of the middle ages; next in amount are the
Scriptures--sometimes entire; more often the Gospels, the Acts, the
Epistles, or the Psalms, separately; and last and fewest are the
classics, of which, seldom more than three or four, are found in a list
of one or two hundred volumes. The number of _ancient_ manuscripts
of the Greek New Testament, or parts of it, which hitherto have been
examined by editors, is nearly five hundred.
If in the case of a classic author, twenty manuscripts, or even five,
are deemed amply sufficient (and sometimes one, as we have seen, is
relied upon), it is evident that many hundreds are redundant for the
purposes of argument. The importance of so great a number of copies
consists in the amplitude of the means which are thereby afforded of
restoring the text to its pristine purity; for the various readings
collected from so many sources, if they do not always place the true
reading beyond doubt, afford an absolute security against extensive
corruptions.
2. The high antiquity of some existing manuscripts.
A Virgil (already mentioned) in the Vatican, claims an antiquity
as high as the fourth century: there are a few similar instances;
but generally the existing copies of the classics are attributed to
periods between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. In this respect the
Scriptures are by no means inferior to the classics. There are extant
copies of the Pentateuch, which, on no slight grounds, are supposed
to have been written in the second, or the third century: and there
are copies of the Gospels belonging to the third, or the fourth, and
several of the entire New Testament, which unquestionably were made
before the eighth. But the actual age of existing manuscripts is a
matter of more curiosity than importance; since proof of another kind
carries us with certainty some way beyond the date of any existing
parchments.
3. The extent of surface over which copies were diffused, at an early
date.
The works of the most celebrated of the Greek authors always found a
place in the libraries of opulent persons, in all parts of Greece, and
in many of the colonies, soon after their first publication; and a
century or two later they were read, wherever the language was spoken.
But a contraction of this sphere of diffusion took place at the time
when the eastern empire was being driven in upon its centre; and during
a long period these works were found only in the countries and islands
within a short distance of Constantinople. As for the Latin classics,
how widely soever they might have been diffused during three or four
centuries, the incursions of the northern nations, and the consequent
decline of learning in the West, went near to produce their utter
annihilation. Many of these authors were actually lost sight of during
several centuries.
It is a matter of unquestioned history that the Jews, always carrying
with them their books, had spread themselves throughout most countries
of Asia, of southern Europe, and of northern Africa, before the
commencement of the Christian era; nor is it less certain that,
wherever Judaism existed, Christianity rapidly followed it. Carried
forward by their own zeal, or driven on by persecutions, the Christian
teachers of the first and second centuries passed beyond the limits of
the Roman empire, and founded churches among nations that were scarcely
known to the masters of the world. Nor were the Christian Scriptures
merely carried to great distances in different directions;--they were
scattered through the mass of society, in every nation, to an extent
greatly exceeding the ordinary circulation of books in those ages:
these books were not in the hands of the opulent, and of the studious
merely; for they were possessed by innumerable individuals, who, with
an ardour beyond the range of secular motives, valued, preserved,
and reproduced them. And while many copies were hoarded and hidden
by private persons, others were the property of societies, and, by
continual repetition in public, the contents of them were imprinted on
the memories of their members.
The wide, and--if the expression may be used--the _deep_ circulation
of the Scriptures, preserved them, not merely from extinction, but,
to a great extent, from corruption also. These books were at no time
included within the sphere of any one centre of power--civil or
ecclesiastical. They were secreted, and they were expanded far beyond
the utmost reach of tyranny or of fraud.
4. The importance attached to the books by their possessors.
In a certain sense, the religion of the Greeks and Romans was embodied
in the works of their poets; but the religious fervour of the people
had never linked itself with those works, as if they were the
depositories of their faith: books were the possession of the opulent
and the educated classes;--they were prized by the few as the means of
intellectual enjoyment. But Judaism first, and Christianity not less,
were religions of historical fact: the doctrines and the laws of these
religions were inferences, arising naturally from the belief of certain
memorable events, and from the expectation of other events, that were
yet to take place; the record of the past had become at once the rule
of duty, and the charter of hope. To the dispersed and hated Jew his
books were the solace of his wounded national pride: to the persecuted
Christian his books were his title to “a better country,” and his
support under present privations and sufferings. If the canonical
books are valued by the Christian of modern times who believes them
to be divine, they were valued with a far deeper sense by the early
Christians, who, on the ground of undoubted miracles, received them as
the word of Him who is omnipotent.
The veneration felt by the Jews for their sacred books was of a kind
that is altogether without parallel: the reverence of the Christians
for theirs, if it was not more profound, was much more impassioned, and
this feeling gave intensity to a sentiment wholly unlike any with which
one might seek to compare it: the fondness of a learned Greek or Roman
for his books, was but in comparison as the delight of a child with his
toys.
To this deep feeling towards the sacred writings, in the minds of
Christians, was owing, not only the concealment and the preservation of
copies in times of active persecution; but the assiduous reproduction
of them by persons of all ranks who found leisure to occupy themselves
in a work which they deemed to be so meritorious, and which they found
to be so consoling.
5. The respect paid to them by copyists of later ages.
We have seen that, throughout the middle ages, though nothing like
a widely diffused taste for the classic authors existed, yet at all
times, there were, here and there, individuals by whom they were read
and valued, and by whose agency and influence so much care was bestowed
upon their preservation as served to insure a safe transmission of them
to modern times. But that the Latin authors, at any time after the
decline of the western empire, received the benefit of a careful and
competent collation of copies there is little reason to believe. Of
the Greek authors there were issued new _recensions_ from Alexandria,
while that city continued to be the seat of learning; and some measure
of the same care was exercised by the scholars of Constantinople; yet
even there the celebrated works of antiquity suffered a great degree of
neglect during the last four centuries of the eastern empire.
But in this respect, as well as in those already mentioned, the text
of the Scriptures--Jewish and Christian--possesses an incomparable
advantage over that of the classic authors. The scrupulosity and the
servile minuteness of the Jewish copyists in transcribing the Hebrew
Scriptures are well known; in a literal sense of the phrase, “not a
tittle of the law” was slighted: not only--as with the Greeks--was the
number of _verses_ in each book noted, but the number of words and of
letters; and the central letter of each book being distinguished, it
became, as a point of calculation, the key-stone of that portion of
the volume. This unexampled exactness affords security enough for the
safe transmission of the text; and if there were any grounds for the
suspicion that the Rabbis, to weaken the evidence adduced against them
by the Christians, wilfully corrupted some particular passages, we have
other security, as we shall see, against the consequences of such an
attempt.
The flame of true piety was, at no time, extinguished in the Christian
community; nor can any century or half century of the middle ages
be named, in relation to which it may not be proved that there
were individuals by whom the books of the New Testament were known
and regarded with a heartfelt reverence and affection. There were,
besides, multitudes in the religious houses who, influenced perhaps
by superstitious notions, thought it a work of superlative merit to
execute a fair copy of the Scriptures, or any part of them; and all
the adornments which the arts of the times afforded, were lavished to
express the veneration of the scribe for the subject of his labours.
And more than this;--the Scriptures, especially in the first eight
centuries, underwent several careful and skilful revisions in the hands
of learned and able men, who, collating all the copies they could
procure, restored the text wherever, as they thought, errors had been
admitted. The prodigious labours of Origen in restoring the text of
the Septuagint version have been often spoken of. The fathers of the
Western, the African, and the Asiatic Churches--especially Jerome,
Eusebius, and Augustine, with such means as they severally possessed,
did what they could to stop the progress of accidental corruption in
the sacred text, by instituting new comparisons of existing copies.
6. The wide local separation, or the open hostility of those in whose
custody these books were preserved.
This is a circumstance of the utmost significance, and if it be not
_peculiar_ to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, yet it belongs to
them in a degree which places their uncorrupted preservation on a basis
immeasurably more extended and substantial than that of any other
ancient writings. The Latin authors were scantily dispersed over the
Roman world, and never were they in the keeping of distant nations, or
hostile parties. The Greek classics had indeed, to some extent, come
into the hands of the western nations, as well as of the Greeks, in
earlier times, and during the middle ages. And, if any weight can be
attached to the fact, some of these works were also in the keeping of
the Arabians: but they were never the subject of mutual appeal by rival
communities.
The Hebrew nation has, almost throughout the entire period of its
history, been divided, both by local separation, and by schisms.
Probably the Israelites of India, and certainly the Samaritans,
have been the keepers of the books of Moses--_apart from the Jews_,
during a period that reaches beyond the date of authentic profane
history. Throughout times somewhat less remote the Jews have not only
been separated by distance, but divided by at least one complete
schism--that on the subject of the Rabbinical traditions, which has
distinguished the sect of the Karaites from the mass of the nation.
The reproach of the Christian Church--its sects and divisions--has
been, in part at least, redeemed by the security thence arising, for
the uncorrupted transmission of its records. Almost the earliest of the
Christian apologists avail themselves of this argument in proof of the
integrity of the sacred text. Augustine especially urged it against
those who endeavoured to impeach its authority: nor was there ever a
time when an attempt, on any extensive scale--even if otherwise it
might have been practicable--to alter the text would not have raised
an outcry in some quarter. From the earliest times the common Rule
of Faith was held up for the purposes of defence or of aggression by
the Church, and by some dissentient party. Afterwards the partition
of the Christian community into two hostile bodies, of which Rome and
Constantinople were the heads, afforded security against any general
consent to effect alterations of the text. And in still later ages a
few uncorrupted communities, existing within the bounds of the Romish
Church, became the guardians of the sacred volume.
7. The visible effects of these books from age to age.
On this point also the history of the Greek and Latin classics affords
only the faintest semblance of that evidence by means of which the
existence and influence of the Scriptures may be traced from the
earliest times after their publication, through all successive ages.
The Greek and Latin authors indicated their continued existence
scarcely at all beyond the walls of schools and halls of learning.
During a full thousand years the world saw them not--governments
did not embody them in their laws or institutions;--the people had
no consciousness of them. They were less known, and less thought of
abroad, than were the ashes of the dead--than the bones, teeth, blood,
tears, and tatters of the Greek and Romish martyrs.
How different are the facts that present themselves on the side of
the Jewish and Christian Scriptures! The Jews--in the sight of all
nations--have, through a well-known and uncontested period of two
thousand five hundred years, exhibited a living model of the venerable
volume which was so long ago delivered to them, and which still they
fondly cherish. And though long since debarred from the enjoyment of
all that was splendid or cheering in their institutions, and though
rent away from their land as well as their worship, and though too
often blind to the moral grandeur of their law, and mistaken in
the meaning of their prophets, they hold unbroken the shell of the
religious system which is described in their books. Whatever in
their religion was of less value--whatever served only to cover and
protect the vital parts--whatever was the most peculiar, and the
least important, whatever might have been laid aside without damage
or essential change, has been retained by these wanderers; while that
which was precious--the sacred books excepted--has been lost.
The Christian Scriptures have marked their path through the field
of time, not in the regions of religion only, or of learning, or
of politics; but in the entire condition--moral, intellectual, and
political--of the European nations. The history of no period since the
first publication of these writings can be intelligible apart from the
supposition of their existence and diffusion. If we look back along
the eighteen centuries past, we watch the progress of an influence,
sometimes indeed marking its presence in streams of blood--sometimes in
fires, sometimes by the fall of idol temples, sometimes by the rearing
of edifices decked with new symbols; nor can the distant and mighty
movement be explained otherwise than by knowing that the books we now
hold and venerate were then achieving the overthrow of the old and
obstinate evils of idolatry. It is needless to say that the history
of Europe in all subsequent periods has implied, by a thousand forms
of false profession, and by the constancy of the few, the continued
existence of the Christian Scriptures.
8. The body of references and quotations.
The successive references of the Greek authors, one to another,
though they are amply sufficient, in most instances, to establish
the antiquity of the works quoted, furnish a very imperfect aid in
ascertaining the purity of the existing text, or in amending it where
apparently it is faulty. A large number of these references are merely
allusive, consisting only of the mention of an author’s name, with
some vague citation of his meaning. And even in those authors who make
copious and verbal quotations, such as Strabo, Plutarch, Hesychius,
Aulus Gellius, Stobæus, Marcellinus, Photius, Suidas, and Eustathius,
a lax method of quotation, in many instances, robs such quotations of
much of their value for purposes of criticism. And yet, after every
deduction of this kind has been made, the reader of the classics feels
an irresistible conviction that this network of mutual or successive
references could not have resulted from machination, contrivance, or
from anything but reality; it affords a proof, never to be refuted, of
the genuineness of the great mass of ancient literature.
But as to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, this kind of evidence,
reaching far beyond the mere proof of antiquity and genuineness, is
ample and precise enough to establish the integrity of nearly the
_entire text_ of the books in question. These writings were not simply
succeeded by a literature of a similar cast; but they actually created
a vast body of literature altogether devoted to their elucidation; and
this elucidation took every imaginable form of occasional comment upon
single passages--of argument upon certain topics, requiring numerous
scattered quotations, and of complete annotation, in which nearly
the whole of the original author is repeated. From the Rabbinical
paraphrases, and from the works of the Christian writers of the first
seven centuries (to come later is unnecessary) the whole text of
the Scriptures might have been recovered if the originals had since
perished.
If any one is so uninformed as to suppose that this kind of evidence
is open to uncertainty, or that it admits of refutation, let him, if
he has access to an ordinary English library, open the volumes of
writers of all classes since the days of Elizabeth, and see how many
allusions to Shakespeare, and how many verbal quotations from his
plays, and how many commentaries upon portions, or upon the whole of
them he can find; and then let him ask himself if there remains the
possibility of doubting that these dramas--such in the main as they now
are, were in existence at the accession of James I. If these quotations
and allusions were not more than a fifth or a tenth part of what they
actually are, the proof would not, in fact, be less conclusive than it
is.
9. Early versions.
For the purpose of establishing the antiquity, genuineness, and
integrity of the Scriptures, no other proof need be adduced than that
which is afforded by the ancient versions now extant. When accordant
translations of the same writings, in several unconnected languages,
and in languages which have long ceased to be vernacular, are in
existence, every other kind of evidence may be regarded as superfluous.
In this respect a comparison between the classic authors and the
Scriptures can barely be instituted; for scarcely anything that
deserves to be called a translation of those writers--executed at a
very early period after their first publication, is extant. But, on
the other side, the high importance attached by the Jews to the Old
Testament, and by the early Christians to the New, and the earnest
desire of the poor and unlearned to possess, in their own tongue, the
words of eternal life, suggested the idea, and introduced the practice,
of making complete and faithful translations of both.
Thus it is that, independently of the original text, the Old Testament
exists in the Chaldee paraphrases or Targums; in the Septuagint, or
Greek version; in the translations of Aquila, of Symmachus, and of
Theodosian; in the Syriac and the Latin, or Vulgate versions; in the
Arabic, and in the Ethiopic; not to mention others of later date.
The New Testament has been conveyed to modern times, in whole or in
part, in the Peshito, or Syriac translation, in the Coptic, in several
Arabic versions, in the Æthiopic, the Armenian, the Persian, the
Gothic, and in the old Latin versions.
10. The vernacular extinction of the languages, or of the idioms, in
which these books were written.
To write Attic Greek was the ambition and the affectation of the
Constantinopolitan writers of the third and fourth centuries; and thus
also, to acquire a pure Latinity, was assiduously aimed at by writers
of the middle ages; and, in fact, a few of them so far succeeded in
this sort of imitation that they executed some forgeries, on a small
scale, which would hardly have been detected, if they had not wanted
external proof.
But now the pure Hebrew--such as it had been spoken and written before
the Babylonish captivity, had so entirely ceased to be vernacular
during the removal of the Jews from their land, that immediately after
their return the original Scriptures needed to be interpreted to the
people by their Rabbis; nor is there any evidence that the power of
writing the primitive language was affected by these Rabbis, whose
commentaries are composed in the dialect that was vernacular in their
times.
As to the Hellenistic Greek of the New Testament, differing as it
does, from the style of the classic authors, and even from that of the
Septuagint, to which it is the most nearly allied, it very soon passed
out of use; for the later Christian writers, in the Greek language,
had, in most instances, formed their style before the time of their
conversion; or at least they aimed at a style, widely differing from
that of the apostles and evangelists. The idiom of the New Testament,
in which phrases or forms of speech borrowed from the surrounding
languages occur, resulted from the very peculiar education and
circumstances of the writers, which were such as to make their dialect,
in many particulars, unlike any other style; and such as could not fail
soon to become extinct.
11. The means of comparison with spurious works; or with works intended
to share the reputation that had been acquired by others.
Imitations--whether good or bad--are useful in serving to set originals
in a more advantageous light. Good imitations, calling into activity,
as they do, all the acumen and the utmost diligence of critics,
enable them to place genuine writings out of the reach of suspicion.
Bad imitations, by serving as a foil or contrast, exhibit more
satisfactorily, the dignity, the consistency, and the simplicity of
what is genuine.
Several good imitations of the style of Cicero have appeared in
different ages, and they have called for so much acuteness on the
part of critics as have materially strengthened the evidence of the
genuineness of his acknowledged works. In like manner the celebrated
epistles of Phalaris excited a learned and active controversy, the
beneficial result of which was not so much the settling of the
particular question in debate, as the concentration of powerful
and accomplished minds upon the general subject of the genuineness
of ancient books, by means of which other questionable remains of
antiquity received the implicit sanction of retaining their claims,
after they had been brought within the reach of so fiery an ordeal.
Many bad imitations of classic authors have been offered to the world,
and some such are still extant; and sometimes these are appended to
the author’s genuine works. No one can read these spurious pieces
immediately after he has made himself familiar with such as are
genuine, without receiving, from the contrast, a forcible impression of
the truth and reality of the latter. The life of Homer, for example,
which is usually appended to the history of Herodotus, and which
claims his name, and which has something of his manner, yet presents a
contrast which few readers can fail to observe.
No _good_ imitations, either of the Jewish or Christian Scriptures,
have ever appeared; but in the place of that elaborate investigation
which the existence of such productions would have called forth, other
motives of the strongest kind have prompted a fuller and more laborious
examination of the Scriptures than any other writings have endured.
Bad imitations of the style of the Scriptures--some of the Old
Testament, and many of the New--have been attempted, and are still
in existence; and they are such as to afford the most striking
illustration that can be imagined of the difference in simplicity,
dignity, and consistency, which one should expect to find, severally,
in the genuine and the spurious. The apocryphal books (which however
are not, most of them, properly termed _spurious_) afford an
advantageous contrast in this way, to the genuine or canonical writings
of the Old Testament; and as to the spurious gospels--passing under
the names of Peter, Judas, Nicodemus, Thomas, Barnabas--a very cursory
examination of them is enough to enhance, immeasurably, the confidence
we feel in the genuineness of the true Gospels and Epistles.
The preservation of these latter worthless productions to modern
times, is an extraordinary fact, and it affords proof of a state of
things, the knowledge of which is important in questions of literary
antiquity--namely, that there were many copyists in the middle
ages who wrote, and went on writing, mechanically, whatever came in
their way, without exercising any discrimination. Now there is more
satisfaction in knowing that ancient books have come down through
a blind and unthinking medium of this sort, than there would be in
believing that we possess only such things as the copyists, in the
exercise of an assumed censorship, deemed worthy to be handed down to
posterity. It is far better that we should--by accident and ignorance,
have lost some valuable works, and that, by the same means, some
worthless ones have been preserved, than that the results of accident
and ignorance should have been excluded by the constant exercise of a
power of selection governed by, we know not what rule or influence.
Nothing more pernicious can be imagined than the existence, from age
to age, of a synod of copyists sagely determining what works should be
perpetuated, and what should be suffered to fall into oblivion. Happily
for literature and religion, there were, in the monasteries, numbers of
unthinking labourers, who, in selecting the subject of their mindless
toils, seemed to have followed the easy rule of taking--the next book
on the shelf!
12. The strength of the inference that may be drawn from the
genuineness of the books to the credibility of their contents.
Nothing can be more simple or certain than the inference derived from
the acknowledged antiquity and genuineness of an historical work, in
proof of the general credibility of the narrative it contains. If it
be proved that Cicero’s Orations against Catiline, and that Sallust’s
History of the Catiline War, were written by the persons whose names
they bear; or if it were only proved that these compositions were
extant and well known as early as the age of Augustus; that they were
then universally attributed to those authors, and were universally
admitted to be authentic records of matters of fact; and if the same
facts are, with more or less explicitness, alluded to by the writers
of the same, and of the following age, there remains no reasonable
supposition, except that of the truth of the story--in its principal
circumstances, by aid of which the existence and the acceptance of
these narratives, these orations, and these allusions, so near to the
time of the conspiracy, can be accounted for.
In Sallust’s History some facts may be erroneously stated; or the
principal facts may be represented under the colouring of prejudice.
In the Orations of Cicero there may be (or we might for argument sake
suppose there to be) exaggeration, and an undue severity of censure;
but after any such deductions have been made, or any others which
reason will allow, it remains incontestably certain that, _if these
writings be genuine, the story, in the main, is true_. The sophisms of
a college of sceptics, in labouring to show the improbability of the
facts, or the suspiciousness of the evidence, would not avail to shake
our belief if we are convinced that the books are not spurious.
Nor is this inference less direct, or less valid in the case above
mentioned, than in any similar instance of more recent occurrence. It
is as inevitable to believe that Catiline conspired against the Roman
state, and failed in the attempt, as that the descendants of James II.
excited rebellions in Scotland, or that a French General was for a
short time king of Naples. In the one case, as in the others, unless
the documents--all of them, have been forged, the facts must be true.
The principle upon which such an inference is founded, scarcely admits
of an exception. Narratives of alleged, but unreal facts, may have been
suddenly promulgated, and for a moment credited; or false narratives of
events--concealed by place or circumstances from the public eye, may
have gained temporary credit. Or narratives, true in their outline, may
have been falsified in all those points concerning which the public
could not fairly judge; and thus the false, having been slipped in
along with the true, has passed, by oversight, upon the general faith.
But no such suppositions meet the case of various public transactions,
taking place through some length of time, and in different localities,
and which were witnessed by persons of all classes, interests, and
dispositions, and which were uncontradicted by any parties at the time,
and which were particularly recorded, and incidentally alluded to, by
several writers whose works were widely circulated--generally accepted,
and unanswered, in the age when thousands of persons were competent to
judge of their truth.
No one--to recur to the example mentioned above, is at liberty merely
to say that he withholds his faith from Sallust, and from Cicero, as he
might, on many points, withhold it from Herodotus, from Diodorus, or
from Plutarch. Yet even in that case, he ought to show cause of doubt,
if he would not be charged with the frivolous affectation of possessing
more sagacity than his neighbours pretend to. But in the other case,
while in professing to doubt the facts, he is not able to impugn the
antiquity of the records, he only gives evidence of some want of
coherence in his modes of thinking. He who professes not to believe the
narrative, should be required to give an intelligible account of the
existence of the writings, on the supposition that the events never
took place.
When historical facts which, in their nature, are fairly open to direct
proof, are called in question, it is an irksome species of trifling
to make a halt upon twenty indirect arguments, while the _centre
proof_--that which a clear mind fastens upon intuitively, remains
undisposed of. In an investigation that is purely historical, and which
is as simple as any that the page of history presents, it boots nothing
to say that the books of the New Testament contain doctrines which do
not accord with our notions of the great system of things; or that
they enjoin duties which are grievous and impracticable; or that they
favour despotism, or engender strifes. It avails nothing to say that
some professors of Christianity are hypocrites, and that therefore the
religion is not true. No objections of this sort weaken in any way that
evidence upon which we believe that our island was once possessed by
the Romans. But yet they have as much weight in counterpoising _that_
evidence, as they have in balancing the proof of the facts that are
affirmed in the New Testament. If such objections were ten-fold more
valid than sophistry can make them, they would not remove, or alter,
or impair, one grain of the proper proof, belonging to the historical
proposition under inquiry.
The question is not whether we admire and approve of Christianity, or
not; or whether we wish to submit our conduct to its precepts, and to
abide by the hope it offers; or intend to risk the hazards of it being
true. The question is not whether, in our opinion, these books have
been a blessing to the world, or the contrary; but simply this--whether
the religion was promulgated and its documents were extant, and were
well known throughout the Roman empire, in the reign of Nero.
There are evasions enough, by means of which we may remove from our
view the inference which follows from an admission of the antiquity
and genuineness of the Christian Scriptures. But contradiction may be
challenged when it is affirmed that, if the Gospels, the Acts of the
Apostles, the Epistles of Paul, of Peter, of John, and of James, were
written in the age claimed for them, and were immediately diffused
throughout Palestine, Asia Minor, Africa, Greece, and Italy, then this
fact carries with it inevitably the truth of the Christian system.
Remote historical facts, though incapable of that kind of palpable
proof which overrules contradiction, are yet open to a kind of proof
which no one who really understands it can doubt. Just on this ground
stand all the main facts of ancient history;--they are inevitably
admitted as true by all into whose minds the whole of the evidence
enters; and they are believed or doubted, in every degree between blind
faith and blind scepticism, by those whose apprehension of the facts is
defective, or obscure, or perverted.
When it is said that the events recorded in the four Gospels are
presented to us in a form that has been purposely adapted to exercise
our faith, it should be added, by way of illustrating the exact meaning
of the words--that the events recorded by Thucydides and Tacitus are
also presented to us in a form that is adapted to exercise our faith.
Yet it would be more exactly proper to say--that this sort of evidence
is adapted to give exercise to _reason_; for _faith_ has no part in
things which come within the known boundaries of the system in the
midst of which we are called to act our parts. And here it should
be understood that facts (intelligible in themselves) may, in the
fullest sense, be supernatural, and yet when they are duly attested,
in conformity with the ordinary principles of evidence, they as much
belong to the system with which we are every day concerned, as do the
most familiar transactions of common life.
The Scriptures do indeed make a demand upon our faith; but this is
exclusively in relation to facts which belong to a world above and
beyond that with which we are conversant, and of which facts we could
know nothing by any ordinary means of information. Our assent to
miraculous events, when properly attested, is demanded on the ground of
common sense: the facts themselves are as comprehensible as the most
ordinary occurrences; and the evidence upon which they are attested
implies nothing beyond the well-known principles of human nature. If
then we reject this evidence, we exhibit, not a want of faith, for
that is not called for; but a want of reason. To one who affected to
question the received account of the death of Julius Cæsar, we should
not say “you want faith,” but “you want sense.” It is the very nature
of a miracle to appeal to the evidence of universal experience, in
order that, _afterwards_, a demand may be made upon faith, in relation
to extra-mundane facts.