the entire series in such a way as to answer any useful end. shall appropriate the following chapter to the illustration of a select portion of it; drawing up a table of the principal writers of each age, and adding such brief general remarks as may seem calculated to give it a more connected character than a bare list of names: it will be sufficient to dwell on a few only of the more important and earlier writers some what more at length. CHAPTER IV. DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE of the IDENTITY 65 SECT. I. The history of the Greek text. Canon of the New Testament.-Early Editions.—Manuscripts. Their close agreement.-Various readings.Discrepancies between the Greek text and ancient Versions and citations. THE only writings Protestants admit as absolutely and divinely authoritative in matters relating to the Christian Faith, are those comprehended in the Canon of Holy Scripture; by which is meant, the list of books esteemed to be inspired. For the present I am restricting myself to the New Testament, the authenticity of which, as now received, we have to establish by such testimony as is, strictly and properly, that of man. For whatever use, by way of evidence, or explanation, we make of other writings, it is solely as of human productions; the productions it may be of pre-eminently learned, wise, and pious men; yet still of uninspired men. Rejecting utterly the supposed divine authority of tradition, we admit that when the volume of divine inspiration was closed, it was committed to the custody of men. The history of its uncorrupted preservation does indeed most strongly mark the guardianship of a special Providence. Still that Providence has interfered in no supernatural way; for when the purposes of our God can be brought about by ordinary means, he leaves his own constituted laws, controlled, but unaltered by his directing hand, to work out the ends for which they were designed; and his wisdom is surely as surpassingly displayed in the original conception of laws, whether of the natural or of the moral world, so admirably and so extensively applicable to the carrying on his government without overstepping their provisions, as his power is, when an occasion worthy of his interference calls for their suspension. In tracing upwards the Canon of the New Testament, the English Version of the Scriptures will at one step take us back above two hundred years, to 1611; and the Articles of the English Church about fifty more, to the year 1562. It is remarkable that the Articles specify by name the books of the Old Testament, as well as those of the Apocrypha, excluded from the Canon; but their framers thought it enough to say of the New; "All the Books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive, and account them Canonical:" thus clearly manifesting the total absence of any doubt or difference of opinion as to these prevailing at the time. What the books were then commonly received, we can have no difficulty in ascertaining. Numerous translations had before this been completed and were widely circulated; and confessions of faith were from time to time put forth, in many of which the Canon of Scripture is set down in detail, while others assume it as already agreed on and well known. Moreover the very important Council of Trent was sitting about the middle of the sixteenth century, and the Canon of Scripture was the subject of discussion in its fourth session, in 1546. The Romish Church, it is well known, admit the Apocrypha to a place in their Canon, which we deny it; and the decree of the session in question further exalts tradition to an authority utterly repudiated by Protestants. But their Canon includes by name all the Books, both of the Old and New Testament, acknowledged by the reformed Churches; and in the New Testament no other books are added. The earliest printed editions of the Greek text also belong to nearly the same period. Four of these are esteemed principal editions. The latest of them is that of the Elzevirs, first published at Leyden in 1624, the text of this, from its forming the basis of most subsequent editions, has acquired the appellation of the received text. The third is that of Stephens, printed in 1546, 1549, 1550, and 1568 at Paris, and at Geneva in 1551. The other two appeared at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and contest the palm of priority. That of Erasmus was first published at Basle, in 1516, and went through five editions in the course of the next twenty years, of all which copies still remain. The other forms the fifth volume of the Complutensian Polyglott, printed in Spain at the expense of Cardinal Ximenes, and bears the date of 1514, but it was not allowed to be sold till 1522. These all contain our present books and no others; we shall therefore take it as a truth, than which none can be more demonstratively certain, that from the commencement of the sixteenth century, that is for more than the last three hundred years, the Canon of the New Testament has been the same. We are plunged now into a darker period: and deprived, at the same time, of the immense advantage inseparable from printed books. The remains of ages anterior to that at which we have now arrived, have come down to us or ly in manuscript; there is still a period of fifteen hundred years to be filled up by these; from them our present copies were printed; and on their authority we necessarily depend. The existence of literary works in manuscript will, however, be far more familiar to the native of India, than to the generality of readers in Europe, where the facility of multiplying copies by the press has rendered manuscripts scarce and little known. The author, or his amanuensis, pens the original merely for the printer's use. This purpose answered, it becomes, if preserved, a mere literary curiosity, and is more usually neglected, or designedly destroyed. In earlier ages the autograph of the writer may have been as little intended for preservation as it usually is now. There were persons of a calling very similar to that of the compositors and pressmen of the present day, whose business. it was to transcribe, either for individuals, or for public libraries; and after the rise of monastaries, this formed one the most useful, as it was one of the most unexceptionable occupations of their inmates. The reputed sanctity of these last mentioned institutions sheltered them, to some extent, from the violence of those terrific storms which swept away the expiring embers of the Roman Empire, and with it the civilization of the ancient world; and hence we are indebted to them for almost all that remains of the literature of for mer times, whether sacred or profane. This will account for the form which many of our manuscripts assume. Most of them are more or less injured by time, or want of care; but independently of this, a portion only contain the whole of the New Testament. On some copies great pains were bestowed; and other existing manuscripts were carefully and extensively collated, to insure the highest attainable accuracy. But beside these standard copies, as we might term them, very many more were transcribed, probably in a far more hasty manner, for ordinary use in the public services of the Church; and hence the greater number of existing manuscripts contain the parts more commonly read in these services. The Gospels, for instance, are more frequently met with than the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, and these again more often than the book of Revelations, the copies of which are comparatively few; and several manuscripts contain merely the lessons appointed to be read on particular days, arranged according to the recurrence of these days, and not in the usual order of the books from whence the selections have been made. These manuscripts, it is scarcely necessary to say, are not all of equal value in point of correctness, but we still possess many on which the very greatest labour and attention has manifestly been bestowed; and, what is more to our present purpose, whether we put together the broken fragments, (the mere accidental separation of which cannot affect the integrity of the whole, when reunited,) or examine the contents of the complete collections; the books they contain, with scarcely a single exception, are confined to those uniformly found in our printed books, and received by the Christians of the present day as constituting their sacred Canon. We possess, however, no remnant of the apostolic age. For the notion, once current, that an autograph of St. Mark was one of the treasures of the Church which bears his name at Venice, has been long since exploded; and our earliest copies are assigned to the fourth or fifth century of the Christian æra. There is indeed much difficulty in determining their date with any degree of certainty; and even when the copyist, or some one for him, has subscribed his name, and the time at which his work was executed, this |