1. The Holy Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate, &c., and first published by the English college at Douay, anno 1609, newly revised and corrected according to the Clementine edition of the Scriptures. Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Carey Stewart & Co., 1790.

2. The Holy Bible, Sc. London: Printed by Mark Baskett, printer to the king's most excellent majesty, 1769.*

3. The Apocryphal New Testament, being all the Gospels, Epistles, and other pieces now extant, attributed in the first four centuries to Jesus Christ, his apostles and their companions, and not included in the New Testament by its compilers. New York: Henry Daggers.

HAVE placed at our head the first American edition of the volume which the Catholic church declares to be inspired writings, as translated for those of her flock who speak the English tongue; next, the first American edition of the volume which the Church of England gives to its followers as divine Scripture, which is also that received by the majority of Protestants. The third work is a collection of books, spurious and genuine, which have enjoyed, by fraud or error, the reputation of" inspired Scripture."

Every one knows that the first volume contains several books and parts of books which are not in the second, and which nearly all, if not all, Protestants reject as not inspired or apocryphal. Both Catholics and Protestants consider not inspired

*The title of one printed in fact by Daniel Henchman, Boston, 1769, who copied exactly the title page of the London edition, as his most sacred majesty had the monopoly of Bible printing.

the books contained in the third volume, and the various books, now lost, of which a list is to be found in it, which purported to be inspired Scripture, written after the coming of our Saviour, as well as the books called 3d and 4th Esdras, 3d and 4th Machabees, the prayer of Manasses, with the 151st Psalm, the book of Enoch, that of the resurrection of Moses and some others purporting to be inspired Scripture, written before the coming of our Saviour.

We may here observe, that nearly twenty books are referred to by name, in those books received by all, of which not a fragment has reached us, as the Wars of the Lord (Numb. xxi, 14), Nathan the Prophet, the Prophecy of Elijah, the Vision of Iddo (1 Paral. ad. finem 2 Paral. ix, 29), Samuel the Seer, Gad the Seer (ibid.), Book of the Words of the Days of the Kings of Israel (3 Kings xiv, 19), Book of the Words of the Days of the Kings of Juda (ibid. 29), Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor. v. 9), and his Epistle to the Laodiceans, (Coloss. ad fin.)

There are references, too, to prophets and others, not in terms to books, but which undoubtedly were to written authorities, as in Matt. ii, 23; Jude xxvii, 9.*

Looking at such a state of things, is it not a primary question for the Protestant to determine what is the Bible, if by Bible is meant "the sacred volume in which are contained the revelations of God?"

It is evident that it does not contain all the revelations of God, from Acts i, 4, (see John xxi, 25), speaking of instructions of our Saviour to his apostles, which were never committed to writing; it also shows,

*From these of Jude some maintain the inspiration of the books of Enoch and Moses' Resurrection which contain the passages.

as we have seen, that it does not contain all the written books.

Then a question remains, does the volume I call the Bible contain all the inspired writings extant? and is it a perfect transcript of the original books?

There are two modes of answering this, or rather deciding this.

1. The Catholic, declaring that God has left on earth a church, the sole authority to decide this.

2. The Protestant, denying any authority beyond the individual.

1. The Catholic exclaims, with St. Augustine, "I would not believe the Gospels if I were not moved by the authority of the Catholic church," and appeals to that church as the infallible authority to decide what Scriptures are inspired and what uninspired; what versions are correct, and what erroneous. For him it suffices that a council of Hippo (A. D. 393), the 3d council of Carthage (A. D. 399), at which St. Augustine was present, another in A. D. 419, and the council of Trent, by decree of April 8th, 1546, decreed those he receives as sacred writings should be received as divine Scripture, and no others; that a council held at Rome under Pope Gelasius, A. D. 493, after reciting as the canonical Scriptures those he now receives, condemned as apocryphal the greater part of those contained in the third volume in our heading. Or rather the Catholic, without going to this historical proof, relies on the duly commissioned teachers of the church as an infallible guide.

The Catholic, in thus attributing authority to the church, is far from setting it up above the Bible; for he does not admit the possibility of that church teaching any thing contrary to the revelation of God, believing that Christ will be with that church "all days even to the consummation of the world ;" nor does he reason in a circle, as his church is not founded on the Bible, like those which are called " evangelical;" he does not assert that her authority is derived from the Bible, but

immediately from Christ; to prove his church to be true, he need not appeal to the Bible; he appeals to his church as a historical fact, and from that church receives the Bible.

2. Now the Protestant rule is that of private judgment; he recognises no authority empowered to say, "this is inspired and that is not," which he is bound to obey implicitly. Each consistent Protestant must undertake, on purchasing at a book store a "Bible," to determine for himself all questions relating to it by personal examination, or waive them all by assuming all intermediate transcribers, translators, printers and binders, as well as those who collected the parts together, to have made no errors, intentional or unintentional; in a word, to have been infallible.

Strange as this "infallible authority" may be, it is recognised by the majority of Protestants, for how few have ever attempted, compared with the great mass, to convince themselves by any reasonable grounds of even the authenticity of a single page of it!

Some, however, do attempt the alternative, and the Catholic exclaims: "Nisi Dominus ædificaverit domum, in vanum laboraverunt qui ædificant eam," on beholding the immense labors of Protestant critics, especially in Germany, to defend the inspiration, authenticity, and veracity of the books each critic may deem inspired and true. New researches are made into the history, geography, manners, customs, rites and languages of the people whose history is there chiefly narrated, but "in vanum laboraverunt,"they labor in vain!

They have produced nothing but divisions; each has a canon of his own, and these canons contain every number of books from zero to those received by the majority thus we see Strauss denying the inspiration of the four Gospels, opposed by Tholuck who defends them, but at the same time receives only thirteen Pauline epistles, rejecting that to the Hebrews.

There are two facts to be determined by the Protestant in this inquiry.

I. Are the books inspired?

II. Are those I have true copies of true translations of the original?

The first is purely a matter of fact to be determined like any other by witnesses; but it is a supernatural fact whether these books were written by direction of God or not; no human power can tell, the witness must be supernatural; this is plain. Now the Catholic has a supernatural witness, the church: the Protestant has none, and can not prove the inspiration; he may show general reputation, the statement of the book, but this is no proof.

The second is also purely a matter of fact, but we deny that any man can procure the necessary testimony without recurring to authority: the originals are lost long since; the transcribers are unknown; many of the translators are unknown; in fact, the whole is encompassed with uncertainty.

But in point of fact Protestants have two authorities; for the Old Testament, the Jewish synagogue; for the New, the Catholic church. They do not say, nor probably will they admit this, but it is clear nevertheless.

At the time of the reformation all Christendom received those books which the Catholic church declares inspired, and no others, and, at the present day, the eastern churches, the Greek, Nestorian, Eutychian, &c., agree on this point with the Catholic church; now some of these separated from her as early as the sixth century. At the time of the reformation the reformers and their churches for the first time altered the canon, and rejected from the Old Testament those books which the Jews of that day did not receive; they retained the New Testament as it was before.

We speak generally, though Luther at times seems to slight the Pentateuch, Job, the Epistle of James, and the Apocalypse, and other portions of the Scriptures.

1. They rejected the books of Tobias,

Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I and II Machabees, with parts of Daniel and Esther, because they were not in the Jewish Bible.

2. They continued to reject the various books in the third volume in our heading because they were not in the Catholic Testament.

I. These books of the Old Testament, it is said, are not in the canon as settled by Esdras; the Catholic admits this, but affirms that at that time they were not written or published, and that the Jews do not receive them now is certainly no ground, unless we admit the synagogue to be infallible, and to have decided that these books are uninspired; but they will not say that the synagogue is, and, if they rely on the Sanhedrim, they must show that it so decided directly or indirectly. That the Jews never did receive them is contradicted by the fact that the Jews, in our Saviour's time, spoke Greek generally, and used the Septuagint version of the Scriptures; that the apostles wrote in Greek, and quoted from that version. (Heb. xi, 21.) This gives this version the authority of the apostles, and this version contains those books which the Jews and Protestants reject from the canon of the Old Testament.

It is incredible that the apostles would thus have used this version if it contained books not inspired, or additions to the inspired books, without warning the faithful against them.

Protestants, moreover, by relying so confidently on the canon as settled by Esdras and the Sanhedrim, rely either on a fallible or an infallible authority. If fallible, they may have rejected inspired books, and we can not rely on their decision with certainty, but may appeal from it; if infallible, they then assert that God had constituted an "ecclesia docens," an infallible teacher under the Mosaic dispensation, one having and exercising the power to declare what is and what is not inspired, while, at the same time, they deny that he has constituted such a one

If

under the Christian dispensation. such a one were necessary when the faithful were found in one nation, speaking the same language, how much more is it needed when men of every nation and every tongue are brought into the fold? That such a necessity exists we have but to look around us.

II. Let us now turn to the third volume in our heading, on what ground do Protestants reject these books? or rather, why are they silent in regard to them? Do they assume that, though the Catholic church might receive as inspired what was uninspired, she could not reject as uninspired what was inspired? They are bound to make these a part of their course of examination, as they have been received by persons calling themselves Christians; they can not say of any that they were heretics, as their exclusion alone from the Catholic church made them heretics; they are, therefore, to examine the Gospels, the letter of Christ, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and the letters of Paul to Seneca, and his Epistle to the Laodiceans, received by a few Christians as genuine and inspired, and still more so the Epistles of Clement, Barnabas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, and the pastor of Hermas, so generally admitted to be genuine, and by so many believed to have been inspired.

The Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp were collected into one volume early in the second century, by transmission of copies between the different churches to which they were addressed, in the same manner as those of St. Paul had been. This transmission was directed by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Colossians (iv, 6), and those addressed to different churches were, at an early period, formed into a volume; but those addressed to individuals, as those to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, were not so soon received, not being transmitted by them to the different churches, and that to the Hebrews was still more slowly received, being, like the Catholic Epistles, addressed neither to

a particular church nor individual, it was not transmitted from one church to another, and its genuineness was doubted by many even after those of Ignatius and Polycarp were received. We find that after the collection of these latter was made, they, as well as Hermas, were in some places publicly read in the churches, while in others they were read, but not publicly, with those universally admitted.

We do not intend here to go into the historical proof of this by citations from early fathers and other writers, referring to the authorities adduced by Archbishop Wake, in his edition of these Epistles of the Apostolic Fathers.

"The apocryphal New Testament" purports to contain Wake's translation, but it is published too suspiciously to be relied on in all its particulars; it was originally published in London in 1820, and, in an article on it in the Quarterly Review of October, 1821, the charge is made that it was published by a set of infidels, and that, in the notices or prefaces to the Gospels, "sometimes facts are concealed, at other times they are perverted, and, where neither artifice will avail, recourse is had to direct falsehood," and several false citations are shown. On these facts, and the internal evidence of the Gospels themselves, no less than on the want of the authority of the early church in their favor, the reviewer relies; he does not approach the genuine works of the apostolical fathers in it, as to which he would have, but the last ground; to face an infidel, he has to plant himself on Catholic ground, but hastens to leave it the instant he thinks the enemy repelled, but does not leave it without a fling at the Catholic church, assuring us that the publication might do "for a religion and a time in which the understandings of the people were to be degraded and enthralled; but in an age and country in which the great aim is to inspire juster and sounder views of religion, no motive but a mischievous one could have suggested the introduction

of such impure and noxious matter to those who would never otherwise have heard of its existence." Now, with all due deference, is not this an unblushing attempt to keep the people in ignorance, and an open admission that to Catholics this book is not dangerous, but that to Protestants, who recognise the authority of the individual in such matters, it is, and that from them it should be concealed?

On what ground, then, does the Protestant decide whether the writings of Luke and Barnabas, disciples and followers of St. Paul, and of Mark and Clement, disciples of St. Peter, are inspired, or which of them are inspired? All are mentioned by the apostles, and as regards personal history, Barnabas and Clement are better known than Mark and Luke. With regard to them as well as the Gospels of the Infancy, the Protevangelium, the Gospel of Nicodemus, the letter of Christ to Agabus, the letters of Paul to Seneca and his Epistle to the Laodiceans and the Shepherd of Hermas, they are forced to appeal to antiquity, to the universal usage of the Christian church, to the fact that the great majority of Christians have received the Gospels of Mark and Luke as inspired, and rejected the rest as uninspired they rely on the fathers to the same purpose; they have no witness of the fact of the inspiration of the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke: they rely in fact, as we asserted, on the Catholic church.

Now if this mode of proving the inspiration of the two Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke is a proper mode, it must surely be a proper mode to prove the inspiration of any other sacred writings; but they do not venture to adopt it, in regard to those books received by the Catholics, which they brand as apocryphal: these books are quoted by the apostolic fathers of each succeeding age; the majority of the Christian world has at all times received them; they are received alike by

Latins and the Orientals; they have the authority of many early councils; they are found in the oldest versions, the Vetus or Itala, and the Syriac, as well as in the Septuagint, which formed a part of the Greek Bible from the very beginning.

That any of them were doubted by individuals, fathers or others, is of little importance against these testimonies in their favor; for it is clear that no greater doubts were entertained of them than of the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Apocalypse, and, indeed, the number who doubted them was less than the number of those who received some of the books in the "Apocryphal New Testament."

But again, and in conclusion, we must not forget that the Protestant does not make his private judgment alone his rule of faith; it is his private judgment of the Bible, and the Bible is the only rule of faith a Protestant then, who takes the authority of the synagogue for the Old Testament, and that of the Catholic church for the new, or one, who rejecting alike the authority of both, sets about determining the canon of the Scriptures by his own private judgment, or he who receives a canon laid down by any church, assuredly controverts the proposition, that the Bible is the only rule of faith.

To the Bible they must go; the Bible itself must decide the question, what books were written by divine inspiration and what were not: it is a question on which Christendom is divided; but the Bible itself does not determine even the number, much less the names, length and contents of the books; nor if the Bible is the only rule of faith, and if it is necessary for man to know what are the divine revelations and what mere human writings, the Bible should determine it, it does not; then either the Bible is not the only rule of faith, or it is not necessary to know what are sacred Scriptures and what are not.