|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 62
The next Christian father who mentions the Gospel of Matthew is
Irenoeus, who says also that �Matthew wrote his gospel in the
Hebrew Language.� The character of Irenoeus is discoverable
from his work against the Heresies of his time, to that I refer the
Reader, who will find him to have been a zealous, though a very
credulous, and ignorant man; for he believed the story of Papias
just quoted, and many others equally absurd. He however furnishes
this important intelligence, that in the second century, the Christian
world was overrun with heresy, and a swarm of apocryphal, and
spurious Books were received by many as genuine.
The next witness in favour of the Gospel is Tertullian, who lived in
the latter end of the second century. And the soundness of his
Judgment, and his capability to distinguish the genuine Gospels
from among a hundred apocryphal ones, and above all his regard
for truth, may be judged of from these proofs given by himself. He
asserts upon his own knowledge, �I know it,� says he--�that the
corpse of a dead Christian, at the first breath of the prayer made by
the priest, on occasion of its own funeral, removed its hands from
its sides, into the usual posture of a supplicant; and when the
service was ended, restored them again to their former situation.�
(Tertul. de anima c. 51.) And he relates as a fact, which he, and all
the orthodox of his time credited, that--�the body of another
Christian already interred moved itself to one side of the grave to
make room for another corpse which was going to be laid by it.�
And it is on the testimony of such men as these, that the
authenticity of the gospels entirely depends as to external
evidence; for these are all the witnesses that can be produced as
speaking of them, who lived within two hundred years after Jesus:
Three men, (for Justin cannot be reckoned as a witness in favour of
the gospels.) Three men, who are all of them evidently credulous,
and two of whom are certainly *****.
To convince a thinking man that histories recording such very
extraordinary, ill supported, improbable facts as are contained in
the gospels are divine, or even really written by the men to whom
they are ascribed, and are not either some of the many spurious
productions with which (as we learn from Irenoeus) that early age
abounded, calculated to astonish the credulous, and superstitious,
or else writings of authors who were themselves infected with the
grossest superstitious credulity; of what use can it be to adduce the
testimony of the very few writers, of the same, or next succeeding
age, when the very reading of their works shews him that they
themselves were tainted with that same superstitious credulity, of
which are accused the real authors of the New Testament?
It is an obvious rule in the admission of evidence in any cause
whatsoever, that the more important the matter to be determined
by it is, the more unsullied and unexceptionable ought the
characters of the witnesses to be. And when no court of Justice, in
determining a question of fraud to the amount of six pence, will
admit the� testimony of witnesses who are themselves notoriously
convicted of the same offence of which the defendant is accused;
how can it be expected, that any reasonable, unprejudiced person,
should admit similar evidence to be of weight, in a case of the
greatest importance possible, not to himself only; but to the whole
human race?
But there is still a greater defect in the testimony of those early
writers, than their superstitious credulity, I mean their disregard of
honour, and veracity, in whatever concerned the cause of their
particular system.
Though Luke asserts, that many (even before he wrote his histories
for the use of Theophilus,) had written upon the same subject:
(who of course must have been of the Jewish nation,) and many
more must have been written afterwards, whose writings must have
been particularly valuable yet so singularly industrious have the
fathers, and succeeding sons of the orthodox church been, in
destroying every writing upon the subject of Christianity, which
they could not by some means, or other, apply to the support of
their own unholy superstition, that no work of importance of any
Christian writer, within the three first centuries, hath been
permitted to come down to us, except those books which they have
thought fit to adopt, and transmit to us as the canon of apostolic
scripture; and the works of a few other writers, who were all of
them, not only converts from Paganism, but men who had been
educated and well instructed in the Philosophic Schools of the
latter Platonists, and Pythagoreans.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|