as barely the historians of their Master. In their epistles they assume
a higher character, which renders inspiration still more necessary. All
the benefit which they derived from the public and the private
instructions of Jesus before his death had not so far opened their minds
as to qualify them for receiving the whole counsel of God. And he who
knows what is in man declares to them, the night on which he was
betrayed, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear
them now,” John xv, 12. The purpose of many of his parables, the full
meaning even of some of his plain discourses, had not been attained by
them. They had marvelled when he spake to them of earthly things. But
many heavenly things of his kingdom had not been told them; and they who
were destined to carry his religion to the ends of the earth themselves
needed, at the times of their receiving this commission, that some one
should instruct them in the doctrine of Christ. It is true that, after
his resurrection, Jesus opened their understandings, and explained to
them the Scriptures; and he continued upon earth forty days, speaking to
them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. It appears,
however, from the history which they have recorded in the book of Acts,
that some farther teaching was necessary for them, Acts i. Immediately
before our Lord ascended, their minds being still full of the
expectation of a temporal kingdom, they say unto him, “Lord, wilt thou
at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” It was not till some time
after they received the gift of the Holy Ghost, that they understood
that the Gospel had taken away the obligation to observe the ceremonies
of the Mosaic law; and the action of St. Peter in baptizing Cornelius, a
devout Heathen, gave offence to some of the Apostles and brethren in
Judea when they first heard it, Acts xi. Yet, in their epistles, we find
just notions of the spiritual nature of the religion of Jesus as a
kingdom of righteousness, the subjects of which are to receive remission
of sins, and sanctification through his blood, and just notions also of
the extent of this religion as a dispensation the spiritual blessings of
which are to be communicated to all, in every land, who receive it in
faith and love. These notions appear to us to be the explication both of
the ancient predictions, and of many particular expressions that occur
in the discourses of our Lord. But it is manifest that they had not been
acquired by the Apostles during the teaching of Jesus. They are so
adverse to every thing which men educated in Jewish prejudices had
learned and had hoped, that they could not be the fruit of their own
reflections; and therefore they imply the teaching of that Spirit who
gradually impressed them upon the mind, guiding the Apostles gently, as
they were able to follow him, into all the truth connected with the
salvation of mankind. As inspiration was necessary to give the minds of
the Apostles possession of the system that is unfolded in their
epistles, so many parts of that system are removed to such a distance
from human discoveries, and are liable to such misapprehension, that
unless we suppose a continued superintendence of the Spirit by whom it
was taught, succeeding ages would not have a sufficient security that
those who were employed to deliver it had not been guilty of gross
mistakes in some most important doctrines.
Inspiration will appear still farther necessary, when we recollect that
the writings of the Apostles contain several predictions of things to
come. St. Paul foretels, in his epistles, the corruptions of the church
of Rome, and many other circumstances which have taken place in the
history of the Christian church; and the Revelation is a book of
prophecy, of which part has been already fulfilled, while the rest will
no doubt be explained by the events which are to arise in the course of
Providence. But prophecy is a kind of writing which implies the highest
degree of inspiration. When predictions, like those in Scripture, are
particular and complicated, and the events are so remote and so
contingent as to be out of the reach of human sagacity, it is plain that
the writers of the predictions do not speak according to the measure of
information which they had acquired by natural means, but are merely the
instruments through which the Almighty communicates, in such measure and
such language as he thinks fit, that knowledge of futurity which is
denied to man. And although the full meaning of their own predictions
was not understood by themselves, they will be acknowledged to be true
prophets when the fulfilment comes to reflect light upon that language,
which, for wise purposes, was made dark at the time of its being put
into their mouth.
Thus the nature of the writings of the Apostles suggests the necessity
of their having been inspired. They could not be accurate historians of
the life of Jesus without divine inspiration, nor safe expounders of his
doctrine, nor prophets of distant events.
2. Inspiration was promised by our Lord to his Apostles. It is not
unfair reasoning to adduce promises contained in the Scriptures
themselves, as proofs of their divine inspiration. It were, indeed,
reasoning in a circle, to bring the testimony of the Scriptures in proof
of the divine mission of Jesus. But that being established by sufficient
evidence, and the books of the New Testament having been proved to be
the authentic genuine records of the persons whose names they bear, we
are warranted to argue, from the declarations contained in them, what is
the measure of inspiration which Jesus was pleased to bestow upon his
servants. He might have been a divine teacher, and they might have been
his Apostles, although he had bestowed none at all. But his character
gives us security that they possessed all that he promised. We read in
the Gospels that Jesus ordained twelve that they should be with him, and
that he might send them forth to preach, Mark iii, 14. And as this was
the purpose for which they were first called, so it was the charge left
them at his departure. “Go,” said he, “preach the Gospel to every
creature: make disciples of all nations,” Mark xvi, 16; Matt. xxviii,
19. His constant familiar intercourse with them was intended to qualify
them for the execution of this charge; and the promises made to them
have a special reference to the office in which they were to be
employed. When he sent them, during his life, to preach in the cities of
Israel, he said, “But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or
what ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye
shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father
which speaketh in you,” Matt. x, 19, 20. And when he spake to them in
his prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, of the persecution which
they were to endure after his death, he repeats the same promise: “For I
will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not
be able to gainsay nor resist,” Luke xxi, 15. It is admitted that the
words in both these passages refer properly to that assistance which the
inexperience of the Apostles was to derive from the suggestions of the
Spirit, when they should be called to defend their conduct and their
cause before the tribunals of the magistrates. But the fulfilment of
this promise was a pledge, both to the Apostles and to the world, that
the measure of inspiration necessary for the more important purpose
implied in their commission would not be withheld; and, accordingly,
when that purpose came to be unfolded to the Apostles, the promise of
the assistance of the Spirit was expressed in a manner which applies it
to the extent of their commission. In the long affectionate discourse
recorded by St. John, when our Lord took a solemn farewell of the
disciples, after eating the last passover with them, he said, “And I
will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he
may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth, whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye
know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. The Comforter,
which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall
teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you. I have yet many things to say unto you,
but you cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of
himself, but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak; and he will
show you things to come,” John xiv, 16, 17, 26; xvi, 12, 13. Here are
all the degrees of inspiration which we have seen to be necessary for
the Apostles: the Spirit was to bring to their remembrance what they had
heard; to guide them into the truth, which they were not then able to
bear; and to show them things to come; and all this they were to derive,
not from occasional illapses, but from the perpetual inhabitation of the
Spirit. That this inspiration was vouchsafed to them, not for their own
sakes, but in order to qualify them for the successful discharge of
their office as the messengers of Christ, and the instructers of
mankind, appears from several expressions of that prayer which
immediately follows the discourse containing the promise of inspiration;
particularly from these words: “Neither pray I for these alone, but for
them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all
may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they may be
one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me,” John
xvii, 20, 21. In conformity to this prayer, so becoming him who was not
merely the friend of the Apostles, but the light of the world, is that
charge which he gives them immediately before his ascension: “Go ye,
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world,” Matt. xxviii, 19, 20; I am with
you alway, not by my bodily presence; for immediately after he was taken
out of their sight; but I am with you by the Holy Ghost, whom I am to
send upon you not many days hence, and who is to abide with you for
ever.
The promise of Jesus, then, implies, according to the plain construction
of the words, that the Apostles, in executing their commission, were not
to be left wholly to their natural powers, but were to be assisted by
that illumination and direction of the Spirit which the nature of the
commission required; and we may learn the sense which our Lord had of
the importance and effect of this promise from one circumstance, that he
never makes any distinction between his own words and those of his
Apostles, but places the doctrines and commandments which they were to
deliver upon a footing with those which he had spoken: “He that heareth
you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that
despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me,” Luke x, 16. These words
plainly imply that Christians have no warrant to pay less regard to any
thing contained in the epistles than to that which is contained in the
Gospels; and teach us that every doctrine and precept clearly delivered
by the Apostles comes to the Christian world with the same stamp of the
divine authority as the words of Jesus, who spake in the name of him
that sent him.
The Author of our religion having thus made the faith of the Christian
world to hang upon the teaching of the Apostles, gave the most signal
manifestation of the fulfilment of that promise which was to qualify
them for their office, by the miraculous gifts with which they were
endowed on the day of pentecost, and by the abundance of those gifts
which the imposition of their hands was to diffuse through the church.
One of the twelve, indeed, whose labours in preaching the Gospel were
the most abundant and the most extensive, was not present at this
manifestation; for St. Paul was not called to be an Apostle till after
the day of pentecost. But it is very remarkable that the manner of his
being called was expressly calculated to supply this deficiency. As he
journeyed to Damascus, about noon, to bring the Christians who were
there bound to Jerusalem, there shone from heaven a great light round
about him. And he heard a voice, saying, “I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest. And I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make
thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen,
and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; and now I send
thee to the Gentiles to open their eyes,” Acts xxvi, 12–18. In reference
to this manner of his being called, St. Paul generally inscribes his
epistles with these words: “Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, by the
will” or “by the commandment of God;” and he explains very fully what he
meant by the use of this expression, in the beginning of his Epistle to
the Galatians, where he gives an account of his conversion: “Paul, an
Apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the
Father, who raised him from the dead. I neither received the Gospel of
man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called
me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among
the Heathen: immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither
went I up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before me; but I went
into Arabia,” Gal. i, 1, 12, 15–17. All that we said of the necessity of
inspiration, and of the import of the promise which Jesus made to the
other Apostles, receives very great confirmation from this history of
St. Paul, who, being called to be an Apostle after the ascension of
Jesus, received the Gospel by immediate revelation from heaven, and was
thus put upon a footing with the rest, both as to his designation, which
did not proceed from the choice of man, and as to his qualifications,
which were imparted, not by human instruction, but by the teaching of
the Author of Christianity. The Lord Jesus who appeared to him might
furnish St. Paul with the same advantages which the other Apostles had
derived from his presence on earth, and might give him the same
assurance of the inhabitation of the Spirit that the promises, which we
have been considering, had imparted to those.
3. Inspiration was claimed by the Apostles; and their claim may be
considered as the interpretation of the promise of their Master. We
shall not find the claim to inspiration formally advanced in the
Gospels. This omission has sometimes been stated by those superficial
critics, whose prejudices serve to account for their haste, as an
objection against the existence of inspiration. But if you attend to the
reason of the omission, you will perceive that it is only an instance of
that delicate propriety which pervades all the New Testament. The
Gospels are the record of the great facts which vouch the truth of
Christianity. These facts are to be received upon the testimony of men
who had been eye-witnesses of them. The foundation of Christian faith
being laid in an assent to these facts, it would have been preposterous
to have introduced in support of them that influence of the Spirit which
preserved the minds of the Apostles from error. For there can be no
proof of the inspiration of the Apostles, unless the truth of the facts
be previously admitted. The Apostles, therefore, bring forward the
evidence of Christianity in its natural order, when they speak in the
Gospels as the companions and eye-witnesses of Jesus, claiming that
credit which is due to honest men who had the best opportunities of
knowing what they declared. This is the language of St. John: “Many
other signs did Jesus in the presence of his disciples. But these are
written that ye may believe; and this is the disciple which testifieth
these things,” John xx, 30, 31; xxi, 24. The Evangelist Luke appears to
speak differently in the introduction to his Gospel, Luke i, 1–4; and
opposite opinions have been entertained respecting the information
conveyed by that introduction.
There is a difference of opinion, first, with regard to the time when
St. Luke wrote his Gospel. It appears to some to be expressly intimated
that he wrote after St. Matthew and St. Mark, because he speaks of other
Gospels then in circulation; and it is generally understood that St.
John wrote his after the other three. But the manner in which St. Luke
speaks of these other Gospels does not seem to apply to those of St.
Matthew and St. Mark. He calls them many, which implies that they were
more than two, and which would confound these two canonical Gospels with
imperfect accounts of our Lord’s life, which we know from ancient
writers were early circulated, but were rejected after the four Gospels
were published. It is hardly conceivable that St. Luke would have
alluded to the two Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark without
distinguishing them from other very inferior productions; and therefore
it is probable that when he used this mode of expression, no accounts of
our Lord’s life were then in existence but those inferior productions.
There appears, also, to very sound critics, to be internal evidence that
St. Luke wrote first. He is much more particular than the other
evangelists in his report of our Lord’s birth, and of the meetings with
his Apostles after his resurrection. They might think it unnecessary to
introduce the same particulars into their Gospels after St. Luke. But if
they wrote before him, the want of these particulars gives to their
Gospels an appearance of imperfection which we cannot easily explain.
The other point suggested by this introduction, upon which there has
been a difference of opinion, is, whether St. Luke, who was not an
Apostle, wrote his Gospel from personal knowledge, attained by his being
a companion of Jesus, or from the information of others. Our translation
certainly favours the last opinion; and it is the more general opinion,
defended by very able critics. Dr. Randolph, in the first volume of his
works, which contains a history of our Saviour’s life, supports the
first opinion, and suggests a punctuation of the verses, and an
interpretation of one word, according to which that opinion may be
defended. Read the second and third verses in connection: Καθὼς
ϖαρέδοσαν ἡμῖν ὁι απ’ ἀρχῆς αὐτόπται καὶ ὑπηρέται γενόμενοι τοῦ λογοῦ
Ἔδοξε κἀιμοὶ, ϖαρακολουθηκότι ἄνωθεν ϖᾶσιν ἀκριϐως καθεξῆς σοι γράψαι,
κράτιστε Θεόφιλε, “Even as they who were eye-witnesses and ministers of
the word from the beginning delivered them to us, it seemed good to me
also, having accurately traced,” &c. By ἡμῖν is understood the Christian
world, who had received information, both oral and written, from those
that had been αὐτόπται καὶ ὑπηρέται, “eye-witnesses and ministers.”
Κἀιμοὶ means St. Luke, who proposed to follow the example of those
αὐτόπται in writing what he knew; and he describes his own knowledge by
the word ϖαρακολουθηκότι, which is more precise than the circumlocution,
by which it is translated, “having had understanding of all things.”
Perfect understanding may be derived from various sources; but
ϖαρακολουθέω properly means, “I go along with as a companion, and derive
knowledge from my own observation.” And it is remarkable that the word
is used in this very sense by the Jewish historian, Josephus, who
published his history not many years after St. Luke wrote, and who, in
his introduction, represents himself as worthy of credit, because he had
not merely inquired of those who knew, but ϖαρηκολουθηκότα τοις
γεγόνοσιν, which he explains by this expression: Πολλῶν μὲν αὐτουργὸς
ϖραξέων, and to state in the third verse that he, ϖλεῖϛων δ’ αὐτόπτης
γενόμενος, _an actor in many things, and an eye-witness of most_. If
this interpretation is not approved of, then, according to the sense of
those verses which is most commonly adopted, St. Luke will be understood
to give in the second verse an account of that ground upon which the
knowledge of the Christian world with regard to these things rested, the
reports of the “eye-witnesses and ministers,” having collected and
collated these reports, and employed the most careful and minute
investigation, he had resolved to write an account of the life of Jesus.
Here he does not claim inspiration: he does not even say that he was an
eye-witness. But he says that, having, like others, heard the report of
eye-witnesses, he had accurately examined the truth of what they said,
and presented to the Christian world the fruit of his researches.
The foundation is still the same as in St. John’s Gospel, the report of
those in whose presence Jesus did and said what is recorded. To this
report is added, (1.) The investigation of St. Luke, a contemporary of
the Apostles, the companion of St. Paul in a great part of his
journeyings, and honoured by him with this title, “Luke, the beloved
physician,” Col. iv, 14. (2.) The approbation of St. Paul, who is said,
by the earliest Christian writers, to have revised this Gospel written
by his companion, so that it came abroad with apostolical authority.
(3.) The universal consent of the Christian church, which, although
jealous of the books that were then published, and rejecting many that
claimed the sanction of the Apostles, has uniformly, from the earliest
times, put the Gospel of St. Luke upon a footing with those of St.
Matthew and St. Mark: a clear demonstration that they who had access to
the best information knew that it had been revised by an Apostle.
As, then, the authors of the Gospels appear under the character of
eye-witnesses, attesting what they had seen, there would have been an
impropriety in their resting the evidence of the essential facts of
Christianity upon inspiration. But after the respect which their
character and their conduct procured to their testimony, and the visible
confirmation which it received from heaven, had established the faith of
a part of the world, a belief of their inspiration became necessary.
They might have been credible witnesses of facts, although they had not
been distinguished from other men. But they were not qualified to
execute the office of Apostles without being inspired. And therefore, as
soon as the circumstances of the church required the execution of that
office, the claim which had been conveyed to them by the promise of
their Master, and which is implied in the apostolical character, appears
in their writings. They instantly exercised the authority derived to
them from Jesus, by planting ministers in the cities where they had
preached the Gospel, by setting every thing pertaining to these
Christian societies in order, by controlling the exercise of those
miraculous gifts which they had imparted, and by correcting the abuses
which happened even in their time. But they demanded from all who had
received the faith of Christ submission to the doctrines and
commandments of his Apostles, as the inspired messengers of Heaven. “But
God hath revealed it,” not _them_, as our translators have supplied the
accusative, “revealed the wisdom of God, the dispensation of the Gospel
unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the
deep things of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world,
but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things which are
freely given us of God; which things, also, we speak, not in the words
which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth,” 1 Cor.
ii, 10, 12, 13. “If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual,
let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the
commandments of the Lord,” 1 Cor. xiv, 37; that is, Let no eminence of
spiritual gifts be set up in opposition to the authority of the
Apostles, or as implying any dispensation from submitting to it. “For
this cause, also, thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received
the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of
men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God,” 1 Thess. ii, 13. St.
Peter, speaking of the epistles of St. Paul, says, “Even as our beloved
brother Paul, also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written
unto you,” 2 Peter iii, 15. And St. John makes the same claim of
inspiration for the other Apostles, as well as for himself: “We are of
God: he that knoweth God, heareth us: he that is not of God, heareth not
us,” 1 John iv, 6.