LECT. III.]

2

EUSEBIUS A COMPETENT WITNESS.

65

these Epistles being the same which Eusebius at least saw.' Indeed, he admits in his subsequent work that they are the same, as though Eusebius, a consideration which Bishop Pearson presses on him with very great force, was not competent to detect the imposture-Eusebius, whose knowledge of Greek literature was most conspicuous, πολυμαθέστατος oTwp, as Sozomen calls him; the intimate friend of Pamphilus, who was the greatest collector of ecclesiastical authors of his time; the correspondent to whom Constantine applies for manuscript copies of the Scriptures, when he wanted them for his library at Constantinople; the scholar who wore his life out amongst books and parchments; as though he was taken in by these forgeries, and it was reserved for Daillé to find them out. Accordingly, his argument spends itself in damaging their credit before the time of Eusebius, in showing that those with which Eusebius was conversant were spurious. There is no need, therefore, to enter into the proofs which the language of Eusebius affords, that his copies at any rate are ours to describe how he speaks of them at length, and in detail; tells us where each of the Epistles was written (for they were written in more places than one); who were the Bishops at the time of the several Churches to which they are addressed; quotes long passages from them: thus furnishing many data by which we can institute a comparison between the Epistles known to Eusebius and those in our own possession-the result of which is, that they appear to be the same. There is no need, I say, on the present occasion to pursue this matter further. Enough has been said to show that Daillé deals out his denunciations of forgery with much too liberal a hand, and that the readers of his book "De Vero Usu Patrum" need not lose all heart about the study of ecclesiastical antiquity because they find him representing it as so little to be trusted. Let them explore the question for themselves, by mastering for themselves the primitive documents which are of good repute, and I undertake to say that they will then rise from the perusal of Daillé very often, perhaps generally, with a feeling that he is a special pleader, and has a cause to make good.

3 c. viii.

1 His words are, "Quo exemplo non | feruntur."-p. 58. minus validè argumentamur supposi2 Vind. Ign. I. c. ii. titias esse eas epistolas, quæ jam ab Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. iii. c. 36. Eusebii seculo Ignatii nomine circum.

4

F

LECTURE IV.

Fourth argument of Daillé. Vagueness of it. The Fathers disposed of in the same way by Priestley. Paucity of MSS. Antiquity of some of the Versions. Improbability that the Fathers previous to Cyprian have been tampered with by the Romanists. Discussion of passages claimed as favourable to Romish views. The writings of Irenæus full of evidence against them. His appeal to tradition the same as that of the Church of England. The writings of Clemens occasionally corrupt. Discussion of passages in them claimed by the Romanists. Germ of Romish errors discoverable in Clemens. The same remark true of Tertullian. But neither his writings nor those of Hippolytus in a condition satisfactory to a Romish interpolator.

DAILLE has been hitherto chiefly contemplating entire

spurious works as distinguished from such as are genuine; and has been expatiating upon the difficulty even in this case of discriminating the false from the true; but he has not yet done with this argument of forgery, and the plea it affords for damaging the credit of the Fathers. Accordingly he now proceeds to another branch of it, and contends that if it is difficult to decide even upon the genuineness of whole books (which was the consideration we were dealing with in the last Lecture), how much more, upon all the component parts of even unsuspected books, what has been interpolated, and what expunged in them'; yet, until this has been done, the real sentiments of the author can never be attained; not to speak of the errors of transcribers in the copies that have been made during ten or a dozen centuries, and the depredations on the manuscripts occasioned by moths, worms, decay.

I notice all this, for the same reason I before noticed his array of fictitious works (works which everybody allows to be fictitious), simply in order to show the animus of the man, and the determinate exaggeration with which he states his case against the Fathers. For who does not see that most or all of these objections bear, if not with equal strength yet certainly with great strength, against the genuineness of all an

1 Daillé, pp. 59, 60.

USE MADE OF IT BY PRIESTLEY.

67

LECT. IV.] cient books whatever, even of the Scriptures themselves, and reduce one to principles of universal scepticism? Nothing is more easy than to throw out a charge that a book is interpolated, when the subject-matter of it does not happen to suit our taste; and in the case of an ancient book, nothing is more difficult than to disprove the objection by any distinct evidence. The expedient may serve the turn of Daillé, in order to dispose of testimony on the Romish question, which he might fancy was inconvenient, and those who think with him might feel inclined to favour his temerity; but the same expedient might serve the turn of a Priestley equally well, and was in fact employed by him to extinguish evidence which the same quarter supplies on the Socinian question and the Divinity of the Son, so that it is a dangerous edge-tool to use. "We find nothing like Divinity ascribed to Christ before Justin Martyr," says Dr. Priestley.'-But the Epistle of Barnabas is against you?—Yes, but the text and translation of that Epistle are interpolated. And the Epistle of Clemens Romanus ? But the manuscript of Clemens is faulty. And the Epistles of Ignatius? But the numerous passages in which the Divinity of Christ is clearly confessed in those Epistles are foisted in, every one of them. "Having by this compendious process," says Mr. Wilson in his "Illustration of the method of explaining the New Testament by the early opinions of Jews and Christians concerning Christ," 2 "reduced the Apostolical Fathers to his own theological standard, he next actually reckons on their silence, a silence of his own creation, in favour of his own opinions; and confidently affirms that we find nothing like Divinity ascribed to Jesus Christ before the time of Justin Martyr.'" "The most extraordinary method," adds Mr. Wilson, "of conducting an historical inquiry that ever was adopted." The remarks of Daillé, however, ultimately settle on the question, not of accidental, but of fraudulent interpolation or mutilation of ecclesiastical authors.3

The manuscripts of the early Fathers are in general few in number, so that we cannot find any strong argument against

4

those who throw out charges of interpolation or mutilation from the universal consent of a multitude of manuscripts; but then we have, in several instances, the check of early translations of these Fathers. We have nearly the whole of Barnabas both in the Greek and Latin-the Latin barbarous enough, no doubt, and occasionally defective, but early; at least before the year 900, when the corruptionists, according to Daillé, had scarcely begun their work.' We have the Shepherd of Hermas in a Latin version only; but that version most ancient, probably the one through which the work itself was known to the Latin writers of the Primitive Church; and we have very many passages of the original Greek text preserved in other authors as fragments, by which the fidelity of the old translation may in general be tested. We have again a very ancient version of the Epistles of Ignatius, the history of which, indeed, very remarkably illustrates the argument I am now using, and

tolici Codicum manu scriptorum penu-plar nullum oculis meis perlustrare riâ, utpote quorum non nisi singulis Clementis et Ignatii uti liceat, &c. Jacobson, Patres Apostol. Monitum, p. vi.

Nolite vero oblivisci codicum manu scriptorum usu destitutum me id tantum egisse, ut, &c. -Hefele, Patres Apostol. Præf. p. 1.

Valde est dolendum quod pauci tantum supersunt in bibliothecis codices operum Justinianorum manu scripti. Otto, Justin. Martyr. Prolegom. p. xxxi. And again-Interdum vero destitutus codicum manu scriptorum auxilio-hoc maxime accidit in Apologiis et in Dialogo, quorum, quod sane dolendum, non extant nisi duo codices scripti iique recentiores ac sibimetipsis consimillimi, &c.-Hefele, Patres Apostol. Præf. pp. xlviii. xlix.

It should appear from Archbishop Potter's address to the Reader that he had met with few MSS. of Clemens Alexandrinus. Manu scripta, quæcunque reperire potui, exemplaria diligenter perlegi. And these consisted of a MS. of the Cohortatio and of the two last books of the Pædagogue in New College Library, a MS. of the three books of the Pædagogue in the Bodleian, and another, almost the same, in the King's Library. Scriptum Stromatum exem

hactenus licuit. But Bernard Montfaucon had sent him a list of various readings, non solum ex Ottoboniano, qui eorum prolixiora quædam Fragmenta, sed ex Parisiensi etiam codice, qui integrum Stromatum opus complectitur.

The MSS. used in Priorius' edition of Tertullian, which has for its basis that of Rigaltius, are the Codices Claudii Puteani et Petri Pithæi, and the Fuldensian, the Codex Agobardi, the Codex Fulvii Ursini, the Codex Divionensis. But these appear to have been the MSS. of parts of Tertullian, not of his entire works.

The MSS. of Irenæus seem to be more numerous for the Latin version than for the Greek text: Non minor in recognoscendâ eâ parte Græci textûs, quæ extat, cura fuit adhibita, quamvis deficientibus MSS., minori successu.Præf. ad Edit. Benedict. p. viii.

The MSS. of Cyprian are numerous. Baluzius who furnished the text chiefly or altogether of the Benedictine edition, præter codices MSS. qui Pamelio, Rigaltio et Anglis usui fuerant, alios circiter triginta in subsidium sibi adhibuit. -Præf. ad Edit. Benedict. P. iv.

LECT. IV.]

THE WRITINGS OF JUSTIN

69

shows by example the singular value of these early translations in preserving the original text entire. For this version having been discovered before any copy of the Greek text of the shorter Epistles of Ignatius had come to light, on being compared with the Greek text of the Interpolated Epistles, which was already known, served to detect the interpolations, and enabled Usher, in a new edition, to weed them all out, and expose them by printing them in red ink. His corrections, thus obtained, were confirmed by the discovery of the Greek text of the shorter Epistles soon afterwards at Florence. We may, however, observe in passing, that these interpolations bear no mark of having been made for the purpose of upholding any Romish articles of faith or practice; nor is it easy to find that any principle of any kind guided their contrivers in the fabrication of them.

Of Justin Martyr we have no early Latin translation to refer to; but Justin bears no marks of having been tampered with by the Romanists. There is only one passage in his works which could be even suspected of having been submitted to their manipulation'—a passage which has certainly been produced by Romanists as favouring the worship of angels, but it has no appearance whatever of interpolation-the argument is consecutive and unbroken-and if in reply to heathens who charged the Christians with atheism, Justin, in his zeal to show that they were no atheists, should say, not only that they worshipped God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost, but also ex abundanti should touch upon their belief in angels, what wonder? But if the Romanists had introduced the paragraph respecting the angels in order to cover their practice of worshipping them, would they not have so worded it, as to make the meaning they intended to impart to it, clear? Whereas, the fact is, that many scholars, as Grabe, Cave, and Le Nourry, though a Benedictine, consider the passage to admit of a translation perfectly consistent with the Protestant doctrine, punctuation having much to do with it2; and Bishop Bull, who discusses it at great length, so far from contending that it is corrupt, rests his interpretation mainly on its relation to the context, which the Romanists, he considers, had not

'Justin Martyr, Apol. I. § 6.

2 See the note in Chevallier's translation of the Apology, p. 178, and

Bishop Kaye's, in p. 53 of his Justin
Martyr.

3 Def. Fid. Nic. sect. 2, c. iv. § 8.