On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
transpired . If there really were no such occurrences , it is impossible that a person so circumstanced as Matthew could have imagined that there were , much less have received and recorded them with the same
confidence and in the same manner as if they formed a necessary part of the particulars to which he was specially appointed to bear his personal testimony . But it will be said . " If the account
of the birth and early life of Christ , recorded in the Gospel of Matthew , and contained in every manuscript and version of it now extant , and which Is also confirmed by the testimony of the orthodox fathers , was not written
by Matthew , how could it have been so generally received under the sanction of his authority ? " The answer is , that this passage must have been one of those forgeries in the name of the apostles which are known to have been committed toward the end of
the first , and the earlier part of the second centuries . How many false Christs were there in the very age of the apostles ? So also were there c < false apostles / ' false pretenders to miracles , acting in their name , and to the writing * of epistles as * ' from them / ' " Jewish fables' * were
attempted to be imposed upon the first Gentile Christians , no doubt as realities . These fables would eagerly seek shelter under apostolic authority , and being addressed to recent Gentile converts , who , having little knowledge of Jewish affairs , excepting those miraculous facts relative to Jesus which
trad been made known and proved to them by the Apostle Paul , might yield an easy credence to other miraculous particulars , especially when they appeared honourable to their adopted Lord , and calculated to wipe off the ignominy which they could not help attaching to his lovv birth , and withal a little congenial to their
remaining Gentile prejudices . The temptation to avail themselves of apostolic authority for the promotion of their favourite systems , would operate powerfully on the minds of the
ambitious , and when these pretences , as in this case , fell in with the predilections of those for whom they were intended , they might soon find access into some of the copies of st > me of the Evangelists ; not perhaps , in the first instance ,
Untitled Article
as certainly written by them , but rather as interesting particulars collected from other sources , and forming * a suitable introduction to their narratives . As the three first evangelical records were written in countries
remote from each other , and each of them was intended as a sufficient gospel history , a considerable time elapsed before they could all of them become generally known in the churches and probably a much longer time before copies of them all were collected
together and read in all the churches . The respective records would continue to be read in the particular churches or districts far whose use they were originally written , in a great degree , to the exclusion of any of the others which were less known to them . This
appears to have been the case as it respects the Hebrew Christians and the adherents of Cerdon and Marcion ; the former adhering to the sole use of Matthew ' s , and the latter of Luke ' s Gospel . In the mean time other copies of these Gospels might easily be
tampered with in churches who , being more in the use of the other Gospels , were comparatively little acquainted with them , and therefore the less solicitous about preserving them in their purity . It is not , however , easy to conceive that those for whose use
the respective Gospels were originally written , or who were in the habit of having them constantly read in their assemblies as the records on which they rested their confidence , would suffer such considerable additions to
be made to them , without the best authority ; and , accordingly , we find that neither of those sects who adhered to the sole use of the respective Gospels of Matthew and Luke , would admit of the passages which treat of matters anterior to the preaching of John the Baptist . This fact is , I
apprehend , of much greater weight a gainst the genuineness of those passages , than that in their favour arising from their subsequent introduction into all the copies . ] t should appear that so long as there subsisted a distinct sect of Hebrew Christians , they
adhered , many of them at least , to the use of Matthew ' Gospel without the two first chapters ,, and that it was in consequence of the dropping of the Hebrew original , into which these chapters were never admitted , that
Untitled Article
338 On the Passages ascribed to Matthew and Luke .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1826, page 338., in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2549/page/22/
-