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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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OBSERVATIONS IN DISPROOF OF THE OPINION THAT ST . LUKE * S GOSPEL WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL COMPOSITION OF THAT EVANGELIST , AND IN VINDICATION OF THE AUTHENTICITY AND CONSISTENCY OF THE PRELIMINARY CHAPTERS IN MATTHEW AND LUKE , AGAINST THE REMARKS OF DR . SCHLEIERMACHER IN HIS CRITICAL ESSAY ON ST . LUKE ' GOSPEL , AND OF MR . BELSHAM IN HIS CALM INQUIRY CONCERNING THE PERSON OF CHRIST .
The very able Review of Dr . Schleiermacher ' s work , distinguished as that Review is for great acuteness and nice discrimination , cannot fail to be highly gratifying to the readers of the Monthly Repository . But it is not more for the display of talent than for its beneficial usefulness that it so strongly recommends itself , inasmuch as its tendency is to vindicate the character of the Evangelist and the authority of that work which bears his name , against the depreciating influence of the German Doctor ' s notion , that , " with the
exception of the four introductory verses , and an occasional connecting particle or phrase , the Gospel of St . Luke was not his own composition ; but , on the contrary , that he is from beginning to end no more than the compiler of the written documents of others , which he found in existence , and which he allowed to pass unaltered through his hands . " Were the truth of the learned Doctor ' s conjecture satisfactorily established , it would obviously operate to diminish the weight and reputation of the Gospel according to Luke , in so
far as a work which is merely made up of a number of detached pieces by various authors—and those authors too unknown—must necessarily be less influential on the mind of the Christian reader , than the original composition of an independent historian , who had really derived the information which he professed to detail from the first and purest sources . Only let it be conceded that this part of the critical essay of Dr . S . is in any degree well founded , and in the same proportion will the credibility of the evangelical historian be lessened ; since in his introductory observations he distinctly
asserts , that " those things which he writes in order to Theophilus , he had from the first a * perfect understanding of , ' from those who were * eyewitnesses and ministers of the word . ' " That St . Luke ' s Gospel in many places bears indications of having been written in detached portions may be admitted , without compromising the veracity of the Evangelist in the least : and what could have been more natural in writing to a correspondent a long history of a person ' s life , than to do so at different times , and in different portions , rather than to have performed the whole in one communication ?
There is , however , one supposition advanced by Dr . S ., which the Reviewer rather seems to acquiesce in . That ' ch . iii . 1—20 , was originally part of a memoir relating exclusively to John . " But , had that been the case , is it to be believed that such memoir would have concluded as it now
does with John ' s imprisonment ? On the contrary , would it not have gone on to narrate another ( and assuredly not an unimportant ) incident in the Baptist ' s career—the loss of his head ? : Clearly it is the chronology of John ' s history abstractedly considered , and not that of Jesus , which is given in the first 20 verses of the 3 rd chapter ; but then it is given as the history of a subordinate , character only , as one who was to " prepare the way" for that chief and glorious personage " whose shoes' latchet John was not worthy to unloose . " Although the part alluded to treats of the ministry of John , and although mention is made , of the impri-
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 172, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/12/
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