CHAPTER II.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
CLEMENT OF ROME—THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS—THE PASTOR OF HERMAS.
The argument based on the investigation which is carried on in the seven hundred pages of the second and third parts of our author's work, is chiefly the negative one from "silence." He examines with great minuteness the date, character, and authorship of all the four Gospels, and refers to all the writings of the early Church for traces of them; insisting upon the silence of those early writings as being of as much importance as any "supposed allusions" to the Gospels found in such authors as Justin Martyr, Clement of Rome, and others who lived soon after the apostolic age; the result being, in our author's opinion, unfavourable to the view entertained by orthodox believers.
I demur to his conclusions. I notice a want of fairness in some of his quotations and in some of his translations, and a want of accuracy in some of his statements, as well as defects in his reasoning, which I have no doubt others will comment upon who may review the book. Some of these defects will appear as I proceed.
When I find him saying, as he does, vol. ii. page 387, "We must, however, carefully restrict ourselves to the limits of our inquiry, and resist any temptation to enter upon an exhaustive discussion of the problem presented by the Fourth Gospel from a more general literary point of view," I expect to find difficulties, which of course there are and must be, brought into prominence and carped at, while the general evidence upon which Divine revelation is immovably based is "carefully" avoided.
The second part, on the Synoptic Gospels, is a long investigation, extending over five hundred pages, and dealing with three and twenty works by separate non-biblical authors of the first and second centuries; and its object is to disprove that they were written solely by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and to support the hypothesis that those Gospels were not in existence until long after the times of the apostles, and, therefore, that they furnish no evidence from eye-witnesses of the miracles they record.
The third part deals with the Fourth Gospel in a similar manner, and occupies more than two hundred pages. Our author's inquiry into the reality of Divine revelation seems, at this point, to involve the following questions: Does the extant literature of the close of the first and the beginning of the second century quote from, or allude to, the three Synoptic Gospels? And if this cannot be answered in the affirmative, does such silence prove they were not then written; and, if so, is the conclusion deducible that the miracles recorded are not credible?
In the preliminary remarks with which he opens the second part, he says: "When such writers, quoting largely from the Old Testament and other sources, deal with subjects which would naturally be assisted by references to our Gospels, and still more so by quoting such works as authoritative, and yet we find that not only they do not show any knowledge of those Gospels, but actually quote passages from unknown sources, or sayings of Jesus derived from tradition, the inference must be that our Gospels were either unknown, or not recognised as works of any authority at the time." In reference to this sentence I remark that many of the passages he specifies and examines are not from unknown sources, but from the Gospels, because, if not strictly verbatim, they are in the sense identical, and almost identical in the language; therefore such quotations are evidence that the Gospels existed at the time. The insinuation that they are from tradition is purely conjecture, and altogether improbable, because our Gospels contain the passages. There is not the slightest reason for looking away from our gospels, and imagining the quotations to be either from unknown sources or tradition. This will appear as we proceed. I will give in his own words the results of his examination of what he designates "evidence for the Synoptic Gospels," and then follow him step by step through the journey he takes into early Patristic Church history.
He says (vol. ii. page 248): "We may now briefly sum up the results of our examination of the evidence for the Synoptic Gospels. After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on the point, we have not found a single distinct trace of any of those Gospels during the first century and a half after the death of Jesus. Only once during the whole of that period do we find any tradition even that any one of our Evangelists composed a Gospel at all, and that tradition, so far from favouring our Synoptics, is fatal to the claims of the first and second. Papias, about the middle of the second century, on the occasion to which we refer, records that Matthew composed the Discourses of the Lord in the Hebrew tongue, a statement which totally excludes the claim of our Greek Gospel to apostolic origin. Mark, he said, wrote down from the casual preaching of Peter the sayings and doings of Jesus, but without orderly arrangement, as he was not himself a follower of the Master, and merely recorded what fell from the apostle. This description likewise shows that our actual Second Gospel could not in its present form have been the work of Mark. There is no other reference during the period to any writing of Matthew or Mark, and no mention at all of any work ascribed to Luke. If it be considered that there is any connection between Marcion's Gospel and our Third Synoptic, any evidence so derived is of an unfavourable character for that Gospel, as it involves a charge against it of being interpolated and debased by Jewish elements. Any argument for the mere existence of our Synoptics, based upon their supposed rejection by heretical leaders and sects, has the evitable disadvantage that the very testimony which would show their existence would oppose their authenticity. There is no evidence of their use by heretical leaders, however, and no direct reference to them by any writer, heretical or orthodox, whom we have examined. We need scarcely add that no reason whatever has been shown for accepting the testimony of these Gospels as sufficient to establish the reality of miracles and of a direct Divine revelation." (Here he says, in a foot-note: "A comparison of the contents of the three Synoptics would have confirmed the conclusion, but this is not at present necessary, and we must hasten on.") "It is not pretended that more than one of the Synoptic Gospels was written by an eye-witness of the miraculous occurrences reported; and whilst no evidence has been, or can be, produced even of the historical accuracy of the narratives, no testimony as to the correctness of the inferences from the external phenomena exists or is now even conceivable. The discrepancy between the amount of evidence required and that which is forthcoming, however, is greater than under the circumstances could have been thought possible."
There is a plausibility, combined with an assumed conclusiveness, in this summary, which may impose for a moment on those readers of his book who are not conversant with the question under discussion. They will be likely to have glanced at the foot-notes indicating the great number of books referred to, and take it for granted that an author so learned and painstaking would scarcely have asserted conclusions so boldly without having found good reasons for them, which, before he has done, he will adduce and make plain. It is evident, however, that whatever his reasons may be as a whole, when his promised further volume has been published, it is quite certain that, so far, his argument from the silence of early writings, supposing he had conducted it successfully, combined with his logic on the abstract question of the credibility of miracles, is not sufficient to justify his assertion that the testimony of the Gospels is insufficient to establish the reality of miracles; because the Gospels might have existed, although no trace of them can be found in the fragments extant of books written during the few years between the composition of the Gospels and the period when they were generally acknowledged as authoritative, and read everywhere in the Christian assemblies on the Lord's Day, that is, from about A.D. 100 to 150.
The reader will be unwise if he allow himself to be impressed by the multiplicity of selected witnesses from a selected period, other evidence being unappealed to. If a hundred of witnesses are, in a court of justice, produced to swear to the identity of a man, the impression is created that it cannot but be established. We have lately seen how from being inevitable is such an outside verdict. The special pleading of authorship, like that of the Queen's Bench, startles and impresses for a moment; but after the investigation of all the facts and circumstances of the case is complete, and the judge has dissected the evidence, the sophistry is found not to have helped the side which used it, but has tended to strengthen the other. I remark, before following our author in his references to the witnesses he has selected for cross-examination, it is not conceded to him the right to draw a line where it best suits him in Church history, and decide the case in the absence of the evidence of witnesses on the outside of it. He draws such a line in specifying "the first century and a half after the death of Christ." If the probable date of Christ's birth be the third year before the commencement of the Christian era, we have this line drawn at A.D. 180, at which point the second generation of Christians had only just passed away, when direct tradition had not lost its freshness. While men and women were living who had heard from eye-witnesses of the events of Christ's life on earth, the story of His advent, death, resurrection, and ascension, the books recording the facts for future ages were in a less prominent position in the Church than immediately afterwards. They were then read in all the Churches, but commentaries on them and written references to them were not very numerous; therefore what we can trace of such before that time is comparatively scanty. But, immediately afterwards, in the third and fourth generation of Christians, when there were no men living who could say, My grandfather or my venerable teacher told me so and so of Christ, and he saw Christ in Galilee after His resurrection, when there were not less than five hundred of His disciples assembled, and he was present when He ascended in a cloud—while such persons were living, the testimony of a book was to them of lesser weight and importance, for they could say that they had the truth, not from the written words of a disciple, but from his own lips. As Irenæus well remembered Polycarp, so might persons living about the middle of the second century remember the teaching of the Apostle John. The argument from "silence," applied to the early period restricted to the year 180, is for this and other reasons far from being conclusive, while the evidence furnished by such writings as those of Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Theophilus of Antioch, Tatian, Hippolytus, and Origen, who belong to the subsequent years of the first and the opening of the second century, is much more important than is indicated by our author. His investigation ignores to a great extent the circumstantial evidence of this later period. He says (vol. ii. p. 387) he "must be careful to restrict himself to the limits of his inquiry," and to avoid the "more general literary point of view," and he does so restrict himself. If a person really desires to decipher an obscure antiquarian manuscript or inscription, he does not say, I must carefully keep to this imperfectly-lighted room, and not step into broad daylight.
Here is a specimen of the way he draws an inference. In arguing against the authority of the four Gospels, he says, vol. ii. p. 457, "No two of them agree even about so simple a matter of fact as the inscription on the cross." Now the exact words, as given in each Gospel, are as follows: Matthew gives the inscription in eight words—"This is Jesus the King of the Jews;" Mark in five words—"The King of the Jews;" Luke in seven words—"This is the King of the Jews;" and John in eight words—"Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews."
This needs no comment. Could anything be more natural than such slight discrepancies? Would four shorthand reporters of the present day have been more exact?
The first early writer he examines is Clement, Bishop of Rome, who, towards the close of the first century, wrote an epistle to the Corinthians. It is attached to the ancient copy of the Scriptures known as the Codex Alexandrinus, written in the fifth century, and preserved in the British Museum.
This writer's fame surpassed all others in the first century. His first Epistle to the Corinthians, written in Greek, is deemed to be genuine; but, says Dr. Mosheim, "it seems to have been corrupted and interpolated."
Eusebius assures us it was received by all, and reverenced next to the Holy Scriptures, and therefore publicly read in the Churches for some ages, even till his time.[21]
The epistle itself makes no mention of the author's name. It purports to be addressed by "the Church of God which sojourns at Rome to the Church of God sojourning at Corinth." But in the Codex Alexandrinus the title of "The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians" is added at the end. Internal evidence shows it was written after some persecution of the Church, either that of Nero, A.D. 64-70, or Domitian, at the end of the century. The epistle contains these words:—
"Especially remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, which he spake teaching gentleness and long-suffering. For thus he said, Be pitiful, that ye may be pitied; forgive, that it may be forgiven you; as ye do, so shall it be done to you; as ye give, so shall it be given to you; as ye judge, so shall it be judged to you; as ye show kindness, shall kindness be shown to you; with what measure ye mete, with the same it shall be measured to you."
Our author himself shows that these precepts cannot be mere floating tradition. He says such "seems impossible" (vol. i. p. 226). They are evidently the words of Jesus taken from a written source, but he contends that they are not a quotation from the Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in the Gospels as we have them, but from some other Gospel which is not extant. He says: "When the great difference is considered between the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke, and still more between these and the passage in Mark, it is easy to understand that that other Gospel may have contained a version differing as much from them as they do from each other."
I remark, supposing that Clement had before him all three versions, which differ from each other, what is more natural than that he should give the sense without adhering to the exact words of any. Only an inquirer who has a bias against Christianity would think of disputing the quotation.
If Epiphanius "clearly wrote without having the Gospel of Luke before him," as our author states on page 100, and if Tertullian "evidently quotes that Gospel from memory," as he also says on the same page; why should it be assumed as a matter of course that Clement had the writings before him? He also may have quoted from memory.
There is something strangely marvellous about the disappearance of these imaginary lost records of the Sermon on the Mount. We know that in the year A.D. 139 Justin Martyr wrote that the "Memoirs of the Apostles," called "Evangels" (gospels), were read after the prophets every Lord's Day in the assembly of the Christians. Where were they then? Were they identical with these memoirs called Gospels? Where were they about the year A.D. 180, when Irenæus proves that four Gospels were held in the highest esteem, and were read in all the Churches; alluding to them as the four columns of the Church, and comparing them to the four quarters of the world, the four principal winds, and the four figures of the Cherubim? Where were they when he says: "So well established are our Gospels, that even teachers of error themselves bear testimony to them: even they rest their objections on the foundations of the Gospels"?[22] This hypothesis of our author is certainly going out of the way to find the reason for a thing. It is to be remembered that what is evidenced by Irenæus, who wrote about A.D. 180, and was the pupil of Polycarp, is highly important. Dr. Mosheim says his five books against heresies, the only writings of his extant, are a splendid monument of antiquity.[23] From the evidence of Irenæus, it is clear that the four Gospels must have been occupying a special and authoritative place in the Church some time before the time he wrote his five books on heresies, about the year 180. Tischendorf, who knows as much as any man about the Scripture manuscripts, says: "It is a well-established fact that, already between A.D. 150 and 200, not only were the Gospels translated into Latin and Syriac, but also that their number was defined to be only four, neither more nor less." The Syriac version of the New Testament called the Peshito, a work of immense value, as the language is almost identical with that spoken by Christ, a translation admirably executed, "is generally assigned," says Tischendorf, "to the end of the second century, though we have not any positive proof to offer;" and "the Latin version had acquired before this period a certain public authority." As the man who translated Irenæus's five books from Greek into Latin follows the Italic version, and as Tertullian, in the quotation which he makes from the Latin translation of Irenæus copies that translator, Tischendorf justly argues that some time must have elapsed between that date when the translation is known to have been in existence, and the period when they were first separated from other Church writings, and attained a prominent and sacred character. Thus we get to the apostolic age for the origin of all the four Gospels, and there seems to be no interval of time sufficient to account for our author's primitive Gospels to have disappeared, leaving no trace of their existence. It is enormously more probable that the four Gospels alluded to by Irenæus and Tertullian contained the records from which Clement quoted the passage of the Sermon on the Mount, than that there were primitive independent writings which were soon lost, obtaining no recognition when the separate Gospel manuscripts became associated with the Old Testament, and were read after them in the Christian assemblies. Our author says the passage quoted by Clement, referring to the Sermon on the Mount, is decidedly opposed to "the pretensions made on behalf of the Synoptics." I do not quite know what "pretensions" he alludes to, but I am not defending pretensions, either ecclesiastical or non-ecclesiastical. It is not necessary, in the defence of the Gospels, to assert that the four Evangelists whose names are attached to them wrote every word; that they only contain records of what those disciples were either eye-witnesses of, or, in the case of Mark and Luke, heard Peter and Paul preach. The formulæ, "according to Matthew," "according to Mark," "according to Luke," "according to John," do not imply that, in the most ancient opinion, these recitals were written from beginning to end by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.[24] It is enough to know that the writings so far emanated from those disciples as to justify the titles they bear, and their reception by the early Church, as the true record of the important transactions to which they refer. That reception of them was sufficiently near to the date of their composition to preclude the probability that the early Christian Church had not the means of testing their genuineness or historical data, while their internal evidence is such as to confirm their truthfulness and authority.
"As to Luke," says Rénan, "doubt is scarcely possible. It is a regular composition, founded on anterior documents, the work of one man, who selects, prunes, and combines. The author is certainly the same as that of the Acts of the Apostles. Now the author of the Acts is a companion of Paul, a title which applies to Luke exactly. The name of Lucus (contraction of Lucanus) being very rare, we need not fear one of those homonyms which cause so many perplexities in questions of criticism relative to the New Testament. It is beyond doubt that the author of the Third Gospel and of the Acts was a man of the second generation, and that is sufficient for our object. The date can be determined by considerations drawn from the Gospel itself. The twenty-first chapter, inseparable from the rest of the work, was certainly written a short time after the destruction of Jerusalem. We are here upon solid ground, for we are concerned with a work written entirely by the same hand, and of the most perfect unity. If the Gospel of Luke is dated, those of Matthew and Mark are dated also; for it is certain that the Third Gospel is posterior to the first two, and exhibits the character of a much more advanced composition."
"Every one drew largely on the Gospel tradition then current. The Acts of the Apostles and the ancient Fathers quote many words of Jesus which appear authentic, and are not found in the Gospels we possess. The life of Jesus in the Synoptics rests upon two original documents—first, the discourses of Jesus collected by Matthew; second, the collection of anecdotes and personal reminiscences which Mark wrote from the recollections of Peter. We may say that we have these two documents still, mixed with accounts from another source, in the two first Gospels, which bear, not without reason, the name of the Gospel according to Matthew, and of the Gospel according to Mark. It was when tradition became weakened, in the second half of the second century, that the texts bearing the name of the apostles took a decisive authority, and obtained the force of law."
I have selected these passages from Rénan's "Life of Jesus," as they bear upon the view of the origin of the Gospels which may be entertained with consistency by those who accept their authority, without insisting upon any such pretensions as our author seems to combat, and which are not necessary for their defence.
I object also to the case being tried upon an indictment which includes a uniform, plenary, and verbal inspiration. Nor is it, I submit, necessary to defend the view that the Old and New Testaments include no words but what are of Divine authority.
I maintain that God has supernaturally revealed His character and His will in the Bible, but I know not where the hard and fast line is which separates the human from the superhuman in our versions of these sacred documents, the general characteristic of which is that they are inspired productions; that therein "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."[25] "Not the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth."[26]
"God at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers," and having subsequently spoken by His Son, authenticates His message, which, we cannot doubt, the Holy Spirit inspired the apostles to record, by a special inspiration, as He did in pre-Christian times.
It is human nature for man to pervert even his best of blessings. Jews and Christians alike have done so. When we think of the translators of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek altering the prophetical dates, to mislead as to the coming of Messiah, as was done in the Septuagint Version; of the genealogy of Joseph being fitted into three periods of fourteen generations each, to square with Jewish notions of numerical precision and completeness; of the verse in John's first epistle (v. 7) inserted in the text to add strength to the theological phraseology of a creed; and of the first verses of the eighth chapter of the Fourth Gospel being left out in several of the most ancient MSS., evidently owing to some great authority, such as Eusebius (who was ordered by Constantine to prepare copies of the Scriptures), having suppressed them; we cannot but be suspicious that human infirmity and meddlesomeness have, to some extent, interfered with the transmission of the Divine oracles. The fountain is undoubtedly pure, but has not the channel been polluted through which the Divine truths have been transmitted?
We have next a reference to the "Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Pastor of Hermas," both of which are attached to that ancient copy of the Scriptures known as the Codex Sinaiticus, recently found by Tischendorf, in a monastery in the desert of Sinai, and now preserved at St. Petersburg. It is the most ancient MS. of the Scriptures we can refer to, and is supposed to have been written in the fourth century.
After the New Testament, in this valuable MS., is placed the epistle ascribed to Barnabas. It is complete. It was written some time between the year 70 and the close of the first century, and it contains these words:—"Let us therefore beware lest we should be found as it is written, Many are called, few are chosen." These words certainly appear to be quoted from the twenty-second chapter of Matthew, but our author says there is a similar passage in the apocryphal book of Ezra—"There be many created, but few shall be saved," and he asks us to believe it is quoted from the latter. As we have not the same bias as he has, we decline, for obvious reasons, to do so, although he points out that the verse in Matthew is not in the oldest codex. Unfortunately the one in the British Museum is defective at that part, but the verse appears in later MSS. He says, had the Epistle of Barnabas been seriously regarded as a work of the apostle of that name, it could scarcely have failed to attain canonical rank. If this be our author's opinion, there was more discrimination used by the men who decided what writings were admissible into the canon than he has elsewhere given them credit for. The Epistle of Barnabas also contains the following important passage:—
"But when he selected his own apostles, who should preach his gospel, who were sinners above all sin, in order that he might show that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners, then he manifested himself to be the Son of God."
Our author says that the words "he came not to call the righteous, but sinners," very probably a pious scribe added in the margin, and they were afterwards included in the text of the epistle.
I remark that this is quite a gratuitous assumption. I see no probability of anything of the kind, and I agree with Tischendorf, who asks, "Could any one mistake the words being a quotation from Matt. ix. 13?" But our author insinuates that this chapter should be dissected, and the miraculous eliminated. He says the words of Jesus, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," "evidently belong to the oldest tradition of the Gospel;" and he gives the opinion of Ewald, who ascribed them (ver. 1214), apart from the remainder of the chapter, originally to the collection of discourses[27] from which, with two intermediate books, he considers our present Gospel of Matthew was composed.
These are the sort of conjectures upon which our author builds his argument. The ninth chapter of Matthew is too full of the miraculous to be accepted as a whole. It records how Jesus forgave sins, to the sick gave health, to the blind sight, to the dumb speech, and to the dead life; all of which is out of keeping with his bias and the German rationalism with which he has such profound sympathy.
Tischendorf finds a further analogy between the Epistle of Barnabas and the Gospel of Matthew in the words, "David prophesied, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool;" and inquires, "Could Barnabas so write without the supposition that his readers had Matt. xxii. 4 before them? and does not such a supposition likewise infer the actual authority of Matthew's Gospel?" Because the passage is in the Psalms, our author ridicules Tischendorf's inference. It is, to say the least, quite as probable that Barnabas quoted from the Gospel as from the Psalms, and there is propriety in Tischendorf's opinion and inference.
In designating his argument "rabid" and "preposterous," our author exposes himself to arrows winged with similar feathers. When he unwarrantably pretends to know that the earliest records of what Jesus did and taught did not contain anything but what comports with the German school of theology which he favours, and which he has done his best to make familiar to English readers, without exposing himself personally to the odium which attaches to such opinions in a Christian community, he has no claim to indulgence from those who examine his language and animadvert thereupon.
Considering that, according to his own showing, the belief was, at all events, prevalent in the Christian Church in the middle of the second century that these writings of the apostles were authentic, and that he cannot account for their being so esteemed, so soon after the events occurred to which they refer, as to be universally read in all the Christian Churches; it is, to say the least, unbecoming in him to exalt his conjectures into oracles. Other critics, quite as inquiring, able, and learned, more modestly say, "The subject presents a variety of embarrassing circumstances, so that it is difficult to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion." He lays himself open to be classified with those who "rush in where angels fear to tread." There is a close analogy between those who say in their hearts there is no God, and those who say He has never spoken; and we know what is said in the Bible of the former.
I will give here a specimen of the way our author quotes to suit his own argument, and you will see whether the epithet "preposterous" is at all applicable to him.
In showing how much John was opposed to Paul on the question of Gentile Christians observing Jewish rites, he says, "Allusion is undoubtedly made to Paul in the Epistle to the Churches, in the Apocalypse;" and, "It is clear that Paul is referred to in the address to the Church of Ephesus." The first passage is Rev. ii. 2, "I know thy works and thy patience, ... and how thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not, and hast found them false;" implying that John was so opposed to Paul as to deny his being an apostle, which is grossly improbable.[28] But the full absurdity of the idea is more manifest in the next quotation from Rev. ii. 14: "But I have a few things against thee because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols," &c. It would not have answered his purpose to finish the sentence, so he stops at the word "idols," and puts "&c." When I mention that the words which are represented by the "&c." are "and to commit fornication," you will agree with me, that not only is the idea of John saying that Paul had taught the Christians at Pergamos to sin in this respect the climax of absurdity, but that an author who quotes so unfairly, and reasons so strangely, is not to be implicitly trusted, nor his conclusions accepted. He has adopted the erroneous notion of Baur, the late eminent Professor of Theology at Tübingen, and other German writers, that the difference between the Jewish and Christian converts, in reference to circumcision and other Jewish observances, amounted to a party contest, which caused Paul and Peter and James to be seriously at variance. Now we know the facts of the temporary disagreement, and they certainly do not justify such a conclusion. The hypothesis of such a Pauline and a Petrine contest needs only to be brought into contact with the letters of Paul, in which he refers frequently to the Gentile Churches sending help to the Jewish church at Jerusalem, and it is at once exploded. He tells the Galatians how it was arranged at Jerusalem, after the matters in dispute had been discussed, that he and Barnabas, receiving the right hand of fellowship, should go to the heathen, and James, Peter, and John to the circumcision; only the latter stipulated that the poor at Jerusalem were to be remembered, which Paul says, "I was forward to do." And he instructs the Corinthians in his first epistle as to their collections on the first day of the week before he came, that their liberality might be ready to send to the poor saints at Jerusalem. There is here the very opposite of such extreme hostile and disgraceful party feeling as must have existed if John could indulge in such language regarding Paul as our author attributes to him. There were false men, such as Simon the sorcerer; false apostles, such as Paul alludes to; and corrupters of morals, such as the Nicolaitanes; so that there is not the slightest necessity to think of Paul and his dispute about Jewish rites, to make the words of the Apocalypse intelligible.
Clement's letter, written from Rome to the Corinthians, probably about the year 94 or 95, supplies us with evidence as to the nature of the difference between Peter and Paul, as well as proves the epistle to be genuine. He says, "Do take up the writings of the blessed apostle. What did he say to you in the beginning of the Gospel? Truly, by Divine Inspiration, he gave you directions concerning himself and Peter and Apollos, because even then ye were splitting into parties. But your party spirit at that time had less evil in it, because it was exercised in favour of apostles of eminent holiness, and of one much approved of by them. But now consider who they are that have subverted you. These are shameful things, brethren, very shameful, that the ancient and flourishing Church of Corinth have quarrelled with their pastors, from a weak partiality for one or two persons."
Clement contrasts the eminent holy Peter and Paul and Apollos with the persons who were subverting them, and the latter were undoubtedly the sort of false apostles that John alludes to in the Apocalypse. The evidence of the Second Epistle of Peter is not to be set aside because our author includes it among the questionable writings of the New Testament; and Peter there speaks of Paul as "our beloved brother, who according to the wisdom given him hath written unto you."[29] It is not convenient for such critics to allow the letter to be genuine, on account of this very passage. But there is ample proof, from internal evidence, as shown by Dr. Macnight, Dr. Blackwell, and Dr. A. Clarke, that it is a genuine letter. What a weak case he must have in hand who has to resort to such means to defend it!
The foregone conclusion that miracles are incredible, hampers all the investigations of these German scholars, and compels them to resort to all sorts of conjectures and devices to account for things which, on the basis of Evangelical views, are neither mysterious nor inharmonious. If it be true of Germany that her ablest theologians are now exploding such fallacies, the argument of our author is one, the force of which is expended, a gun brought into the field of battle when the fight is nearly over. It may do some damage, but cannot affect materially the issue of the contest. The outspokenness of the sceptics has roused the believers, and the result, we cannot doubt, will be for the furtherance of the gospel.
"The natural and spiritual miracles of the sacred narrative are only the notes of a higher harmony which resound throughout the discords of earthly history. To our dull sense indeed they may seem disconnected, but the more we listen the more we perceive a connected law of higher euphony, now presaging, and finally bringing about the solution of all dissonance into an eternal harmony. Surely then a believer may look down with pity upon the spirit of the age and its declaration, that the harmony of the Kosmos is destroyed by the miracles of the Bible." (Beyschlag.)
The "Shepherd of Hermas" is next alluded to, but as it is not pretended that it contains any quotation from, or reference to, any passage of the Old or New Testament, it is simply a negative witness in this case. It is found in the Codex Sinaiticus, after the Epistle of Barnabas. The following is Mosheim's description of the work: "The book entitled the 'Shepherd of Hermas' (so called because an angel is the leading character in the drama) was composed in the second century, by Hermas, the brother of Pius, the Roman bishop. The writer, if he was indeed sane, deemed it proper to forge dialogues held with God and angels, in order to insinuate what he regarded as salutary truths more effectually into the minds of his readers. But his celestial spirits talk more insipidly than our scavengers and porters."
What a contrast between the writings of the New Testament and those left out of the canon does such a book as this "Shepherd of Hermas" exhibit! Bunsen thus alludes to it: "That good but dull novel which Niebuhr used to say he pitied the Athenian Christians for being obliged to hear read in their meetings." "From the very dawn of Catholic literature, beginning with 'Hermas the Shepherd,' it had been the object of the Christian writers to render the Greek and Roman mind, by degrees, independent of the heathen philosophers, and to create a Catholic literature and library, more particularly for the use of children and catechumens."[30]
Failing to distinguish between what was intended to be true, what was meant to be fiction, and what was fraudulently spurious, theologians have often been misled, and important doctrines have been thereby perverted.