ing in citations as undoubtedly the word of God. Among the following Church fathers we find the Gospel of John as reverently quoted as the other three, and all alike treated as inspired records, and we also find a complete agreement from the earliest times in the reception of most of the Pauline Epistles; indeed we may say that historical criticism can do nothing to shake the fact that the bulk of what we call the New Testament was received from the earliest times as authoritative by the Christian Church, and all its controversies were settled by an appeal to it as to the oracles of God. Indeed it is quite remarkable to see what a general accord there is among the ante-Nicene fathers in the essential features of the Christian faith. Irenæus and Justyn Martyr, Cyprian and Tertullian, Clement and Origen, all preached substantially the same Gospel. With all these Christ was the Alpha and Omega, the sum and substance of their religion, and the great historical facts vouched for in the New Testament were never doubted by them. It is quite true they all had their minor differences; some of them had what we might even call extravagances, but there was no more difference

between them than can be accounted for by the individuality of the human mind, and by their varying circumstances; they differed as Luther and Calvin did, as Zwingle and Melancthon, as Cranmer and Knox; but there runs through all their writings that grand moral unity which attests the presence of one Divine spirit, and the groundwork of a common book of inspiration. We think the moral agreement of the early fathers in all their laborious controversies with the enemies of Christianity a very strong argument in favour of the existence and authority of a divine record of Christ's religion. They all appeal to it as to a final arbiter, and all their divergences of view are supported by reference to, or inference from, the word of God.

It was at a later age that the voice of the Church-the Catholic Church, as it was now called -came to be looked upon as having a conjoint, though not equal, authority with, the Holy Scriptures. When the Church, in the time of Constantine, passed from the phase of persecution to that of earthly power, an irruption of worldliness took place, and a rapid deterioration was witnessed in

the character of its teachers; the pure morality and spiritual religion of the New Testament became distasteful, and, as a natural consequence, were kept out of view as far as decency allowed. The idea of an infallible judgment residing in the Church, once started, spread with portentous rapidity, for it was obvious that such a claim, once admitted, gave boundless opportunity to the clergy to arrogate power; the copestone was laid on this theory when the infallible voice of the Church was made to speak through the Bishop of Rome, and the Papacy became the full-fledged embodiment of this doctrine. For many centuries the voice of God's word was seldom heard, and heaps of corrupt and frivolous additions were made to its simple requirements; but it is a noticeable fact that during all the dark ages of Popery there was no attempt to dispute the paramount authority of Scripture, or to tamper with the sacred text, and in this we recognise an unwilling testimony to the authority of God's revelation, and a proof of His watchful providence over the Sacred Volume. When we reflect upon the duplicity, the frauds, and even the barefaced forgeries that disgraced the Vatican

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during the middle ages, one cannot but see the hand of God in the preservation intact of the Inspired Book. When we reflect that the canon law of Rome, as Janus has scathingly demonstrated, is little better than a compilation of wicked forgeries-pretended Papal decrees, pretended imperial concessions, and so forth-it is truly surprising that the unscrupulous priesthood, who then had the custody of most of the manuscripts of the New Testament, never dared to alter the sacred text so as to support any of these fictitious claims, and the Codex Vaticanus ranks at this day, in the judgment of scholars, as equal in authority to the Sinaitic and Alexandrian, the three oldest and purest MSS. of the New Testament that are known to exist.

But what shall we say about the textual errors of the New Testament? Is it not true that we have many different readings of the sacred text, and how can this be reconciled with the theory of an authoritative record, inspired by God Himself? No subject of modern times has engaged so much erudition as this one of the proper text of the New Testament. Hundreds of scholars

have made it a life work, many of them possessed of the acutest minds and extraordinary perseverance, and it may fairly be asserted now, that no important variation among the ancient codices remains undiscovered. The eagerness with which this question has been pursued may be judged from the fact that great questions of ecclesiastical policy sometimes hung upon the rendering of a few words of Scripture, and sects that had vehemently opposed each other for centuries would have given worlds to get a morsel of additional weight to their respective theories from the Word of God. But what has been the net result of all this investigation? We believe we are within the mark when we say that not a single leading doctrine has been touched or any of the great features of Revelation altered in an appreciable degree. The textual variations, and they amount to thousands, are, in the great majority of cases, minute verbal alterations, in no way affecting the sense of the passage-just such variations as must have resulted from repeated copyings of dusty and well-worn MSS. by human hands. There is a marvellous absence of intentional interpolation,