a

destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil them," for that verily "till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Equally endless would be the task of culling from the apostolic Epistles the innumerable proofs which they contain, that in the Apostles' minds, by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the divine authority of the Old Testament Scriptures was the basis on which the divine authority of Gospel truth was to be established in the world, not only among the Jews, but also among the Gentiles. Suffice it here to adduce a few passages, particularly suitable to. the argument in hand. Speaking of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, (for the New Testament Scriptures are evidently not contemplated in this passage,) St. Paul asserts that they are "able to make wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus;" thus intimately connecting faith in Christ with the wisdom contained in the law and the prophets; and he adds, "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." It is not our wish to argue in favour of hypothetical propositions; but we cannot help observing by the

a

Matth. v. 17, 18.

2 Tim. iii. 15—17.

b

way, that if any one were, from these words of St. Paul, to draw the inference, that if the New Testament Scriptures had never been written, those of the Old Testament would have afforded us a sufficient document and standard of Christian faith, such a proposition would be far more tenable than the hypothetical assertion before noticed, that "if the inspired Scriptures had either remained unwritten, or perished with so many other monuments of antiquity," the condition, duty, and privileges of the whole Christian world would not have been materially affected, as there would still have been tradition to depend upon. Another interesting passage, chiefly so because it holds forth to the Gentiles the Old Testament as the authoritative evidence of Gospel truth, is the following of St. Paul, in which, referring to the "revelation of the mystery" by the preaching of Jesus Christ, he says, which mystery "was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith."

In conclusion of this part of our argument, and in confirmation of the view we have taken, we cannot do better than refer to the testimony of St. Peter, who, speaking of the Epistles of his

Rom. xvi. 25, 26.

d

"beloved brother Paul," written by him "according to the wisdom given unto him," classes them, as a matter of course, with "the other Scriptures," that is to say, with the canon of "the law and the prophets," showing thereby that the formation of the New Testament canon was not the result of tradition, subsequently sifted and summed up, but that the writings of the Apostles, whose prophetic character was universally evident by the original test, viz. that the things which they said in the name of the Lord came to pass, were from the very first, and by consent, reciprocally, of the Apostles themselves, received like the writings of the Old Testament prophets, as the word spoken

2 Pet. iii. 15, 16. The true reading of this passage, which is by many supposed to contain a qualified commendation of St. Paul's Epistles, is this: ver. 14-16, "Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless; and account the longsuffering of our Lord to be salvation: even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you as well as in all his Epistles, speaking in them of these things; among which things," (not "in which Epistles," as is often imagined,)" there are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, even as the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction." Nothing can be clearer than that St. Peter here appeals to the Epistles of St. Paul as to Scripture, and the expression, "all his Epistles," moreover implies, that collections of the apostolic writings were made (though complete copies of them might not till at a later period find their way into all the churches,) in the life time of the Apostles themselves.

by the commandment of the Lord, and required therefore no tradition to give them authority. If, then, the question be put, "Can you dispense with the authority of tradition as that whereon Scripture itself primarily rests?" our answer is, “Unquestionably: not only we can dispense with it, but we feel it our bounden duty to repudiate tradition as the foundation of our belief in the divine authority of Holy Scripture."

The warrant upon which we receive every prophecy of the Old and New Testament, is the Lord himself descending on Mount Sinai, and there meeting with his people: if we are asked for

• It will be remembered that the question here turns upon the authenticity of the Scriptures as "the oracles of God," not upon the fidelity of the copies which we possess, as transcripts of the books originally published. In regard to this latter point we must have recourse, obviously, to the tradition of the Church, as "a keeper and witness of Holy Writ," in the same manner as we have recourse to the testimony of the profane literature of all ages in regard to the writings of ancient authors. But then we only examine tradition as a witness, we do not defer to it as an authority; still less is our absolute deference to Scripture as a book of divine authority, based upon the alleged prior divine authority of tradition. This point will be more clearly apparent by the sequel of our argument on the ministerial office of tradition; meanwhile it seemed advisable here to point out the fallacy of the reasoning which represents the authority of tradition as indispensable even to the authority of Scripture itself; a fallacy which may receive an apt illustration from the kind of "tradition," by which we receive the authorized version. We

evidence that that original warrant is still in force, and that it authenticates the Scriptures of the New Testament as well as those of the Old, we point to the judgment of the ancient Church of Israel in regard to the Prophet and his Apostles, and to the finger of God, which on one hand, by the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to the ends of the world, confirmed the judgment of one portion of the church, who received that Prophet and his Apostles, and with them as a matter of course their writings, upon the original warrant of divine authority; and on the other hand, by making "Jerusalem heaps," and "Israel a by

take the names of a "succession" of King's Printers to be evidence that the originally authorized version has been handed down to us in our copy of the last edition; but who would think of having recourse to the same evidence for the purpose of ascertaining that our version really expresses the sense of the original? For such a purpose we must clearly go to the original, and to the evidence of its correspondence with the original which is to be found in the version itself; and in like manner, in order to ascertain that the Scriptures really contain the mind of God, i. e. that they are of divine authority, we must go to the original attestation of God himself, and the evidence which the different Scriptures contain to connect them with that attestation. To rest for this upon tradition, is as great a mistake as it would be to take for the correctness of our version the word of the King's Printer, who may or may not be a judge of the merits of the case, although he necessarily is capable of attesting a correct copy, and is by his very office responsible for the correctness of his attestation.