APPENDIX. I. DISSERTATION ON THE POSSI- they are books of much use to the MENT AND THEIR UNCOR RUPTED PRESERVATION; WITH A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF, AND A "In the New Testament the character of essential sanctity or divinity pertains to the four Gospels and the Apocalypse, FEW REMARKS ON, EACH BOOK. but not to the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. The former, like the Word Which are the plenarily inspired of the Old Testament, were dictated by books of the Word? "The books of the Word are all those which have the internal sense; but those books which have not the internal sense are not the Word. The books of the Word in the Old Testament are the five books of Moses, the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, the two books of Samuel, the two books of Kings, the Psalms of David, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. In the New Testament, the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the Revelation. The rest have not the internal sense."Swedenborg, W. H. 16; A. C. 10325. the inspiring power which took possession of the writers for that time only. The Acts and the Epistles, on the other hand, were written under that general but more lax kind of inspiration which was inseparable from the persons of the writers, and which may, therefore, be properly termed personal, while the other is denominated plenary, implying the dictation of the very words and phrases employed, all of which contain a higher internal sense, couched under the sense of the letter, and to be interpreted on the principle of correspondence."-Statement of Reasons for embrac ing the Doctrines and Disclosures of Swedenborg, by G. Bush, late Professor of Hebrew in the New York City University, p. 117. In reference to the above books of "In the Gospels are the words of the the Bible, as constituting the pure Word Lord himself, all which contain in them of God, and the true mode of interpreta spiritual sense, whereby immediate ing them, the late Rev. John Clowes, communication is given with heaven; rector of St. John's church, Manchester, but in the writings of the Apostles in the preface to his Translation of the there is no such sense, notwithstanding | Gospel of Matthew, thus writes: "The books [of the Word above enumerated], according to this view of their distinguished characteristics, present us with the following curious and interesting facts: "1. That more than twenty different writers, living in ages and places remote and distant from each other, are found to agree in expressing themselves in conformity to certain given laws and rules of speaking and writing, which it was absolutely impossible they could learn from each other. "2. That those laws and rules never entered into the thought or imagination of any writer, either ancient or modern, until he discovered them from the compositions of the above writers. "3. That those laws and rules involve | in them points of most singular wisdom and edification, at once worthy of God to impart, and of the utmost importance to man to comprehend and obey. "4. That unless those laws and rules be applied to the interpretation of the writings which are constructed in agreement with them, it is absolutely impossible for any one to discover the various sublime and instructive truths contained in those writings. refers to all the books of the Word which are plenarily inspired, except the Lamentations and Daniel, makes no mention whatever of Ruth, Chronicles, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, or the Song of Solomon.-See Henderson and Stuart. "Tatian, who wrote about the middle of the second century, composed a digest of the evangelical history, which was called Torcoσapov, that is, the Gospel of the four, or povorcccapwr, that is, one narrative composed out of the four. Tatian is the most ancient harmonist on record; for if Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, had before written on that subject (as Jerome insinuates), his work is long since lost."-Horne's Introd., vol. ii., pt. 1, p. 349, 8th ed. "The four Gospels are alone received without dispute by the whole church of God under heaven."— Origen, as quoted by Euseb., Hist. Eccl., liv. vi., ch. 25. "The authenticity of the book of the Revelation was not denied during the two first centuries of the Christian era, and the respectable names of Hermas, Polycarp, and Justin Martyr may be adduced in its favor."-Pref. to the Rev., Greek Test. for the London University, p. 542. "5. But that if those laws and rules be applied, out of a real sincere desire "The sense of the inspiration of the to understand the will of the Most evangelists-of some providential guidHigh, they are as a golden key to un-ance by which they were led to select lock the immense stores of heavenly wisdom, mercy and truth treasured up in HIS HOLY WORD."-3d ed., pp. xiii., xiv. It is also worthy of profound consideration that all the passages of the Old Testament cited or alluded to in the four Gospels and the Revelation, are from the above plenarily inspired books only, and include nearly the whole of them, evincing the supreme authority to be attached to them by Christian believers. Philo, who was contemporary with the apostles, and who quotes from or each fact in their history and each word in their narrative—is not more complete in Origen [than in Heracleon's commentaries]. The first commentary on the New Testament [or Gospels] exhibits the application of the same laws to its interpretation as were employed in the Old Testament. The slightest variation of language was held to be significant. Numbers were supposed to conceal a hidden truth. The whole record was found to be pregnant with spiritual meaning, conveyed by the teaching of events in themselves real and instructive. It appears also that differences between the Gospels were felt, and an attempt made to reconcile them."Westcott's Canon of the New Test., p. 335. II. THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE. writes in his Theological Lectures (ii., pp. 1051, 1052. Ed. Paris, 1842), The Roman church being the mother and mistress of churches, had power to constitute the true Canon of Scripture.'"- Wordsworth's Canon of the Scriptures, note, p. 14. The classical meaning of the original Greek word kavar, is a straight stick or rod, staff, measuring rod or pole, beam of Well may Newman ask, "On what a balance, etc. Hence tropically, rule, ground do we receive the Canon [of the norma; thence, law, prescription, fun- New Testament], but on the authority damental, a guiding principle. Among of the church of the fourth and fifth censome of the Greek grammarians it was turies. The church at that era decided employed to denote a list or collection that certain books were of authority." of Greek authors, who would serve as-Essay on Development, p. 142. models, or examples for other writers. The absolute want of an authorized Among the Christian Fathers it obtained an enlarged, and occasionally a technical sense. It was sometimes used to designate a list of the clergy, or of others belonging to a church; a list of Psalms and Hymns appropriate for public worship; and even a list of furniture belonging to a church, etc. Very naturally it came to be employed, about the third century, to designate a list of the Scriptural books which were publicly read in the churches. See Davidson's Ed. of Stuart on the Old Test. Canon, p. 22 et seq. Dr. Milner asserts that "the Canon of Scripture was fixed at the end of the fourth century."-End of Controv., letter xi. and determinate Canon of the Word of God, and a true and certain method of interpretation is powerfully illustrated by the extremes of that pernicious system of mythical exposition in which learned men, such as Bauer, Weisse, George, Strauss, and the Hegelian philosophers of Germany have so eagerly and freely speculated; from the awful and absurd rationalistic, materialistic, and pantheistic mode of interpretation adopted by Weescheider, Bretschneider, etc.; from the idealism of Kant, Fichte, and others; and from the numerous and mournful varieties resulting from all these neological systems. The delusive mode of interpretation adopted in Essays and Reviews, written by seven learned clergymen of the Established Church, is but an English outbirth from the fore, most refreshing to extract from the Eclectic Review, for the months of Sept. and Nov., 1825, the following able remarks: " "It is one of the dictates of Pope Gregory VII. that no book or chapter is to be regarded as canonical without | same misleading source. It is, therethe Pope's authority. (See Earl. Baron. Annal. Eccl., xi., p. 632, ad. A. D. 1076.) Pighius says, 'The church [of Rome] can give canonical authority to books which have no such authority from themselves or their author. (See his Hierarch., iii. 3.) Stapleton asserts the same. (Relect. Contr. 5 qu. 2, art. 4. Cont. 5, lib. 9, c. 14.) He says that 'the Shepherd of Hermas and apostolical constitutions may be added to the Canon, if the church of Rome pleases.' And the Roman professor Perrone thus The very fact that the classification of the Jews, in the time of Josephus, was supposed to need a revision, would of itself seem to indicate that this classification was not the original one,— was not the one which was current in the time of our Lord, and which we may presume to have been of prophetic origin, and virtually, therefore, divine those books as canonical Scriptures, and might plead for a canon more literally conformable to our Lord's three-fold classification of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.' In their view, the books of Chronicles and the first book of Maccabees would rank in the same class of writings; and although they could not object to their circulation on the same grounds as apply to the positively exceptionable parts of the Apocrypha, such as Tobit, Baruch, and the spurious additions to the book of Daniel, still they would not be able to recognize them as given by inspiration of God."-Ecl. Rev., 1825, pp. 192, 193. and authoritative; and so far, therefore, confirms, or seems to confirm, the opinion as to the possible difference between the Old Testament of Josephus, and the Old Testament of our Lord. The changing also of the designation of the division known in our Lord's time as 'the Psalms' (an appropriate designation if it contained the Psalms only), into that of 'the writings,' upon the addition to it of writings that were not Psalms, and when, therefore, the appropriateness of the designation no longer existed, would seem also to confirm our yet further opinion, that the third of the three divisions of our Lord's time included only "To the books of Moses, called by the Psalms. With regard to the insertion preëminence the Law, and the writings in this division of the book of Daniel, of the Prophets, including both Daniel see Stuart, p. 263; and for an admira- and David in that number, the characble defence of its veracity and inspira-ter of Revelation in the highest sense attion, see Walton's Genuineness of the taches; and we think exclusively.”— Book of Daniel."-The Law, the Proph- Ib., p. 388. ets, and the Psalms; their Divine Inspiration, by J. Collyer Knight, note, p. 58. "The very import of the term canonical is a disputed point. Whether the declaration that 'All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,' can be safely extended to all the books included in the Jewish canon, - whether the whole of the Chetubim or Hagiographa, though of undoubted genuineness and authenticity as historical documents, can be considered as indited by the Holy Ghost, and as forming part of the rule of faith,-is by no means so clear as to warrant our demanding an unqualified assent and agreement on this point from all Christian men. Many pious persons have doubted whether the book of Esther, in which the name of Jehovah does not once occur, can be regarded as an inspired composition; and others have had difficulties in admitting the inspiration of Solomon's Song. Were we to take the word canonical as synonymous with inspired, such persons might conscientiously object to giving away -- "With regard, however, to the books included in the Protestant canon, to which we have referred as possibly uninspired,-the books of Solomon and of Ezra [including Nehemiah], Esther, and the Chronicles,—we would ask : Do they in fact form any part of the Rule of Faith? Do they reveal a single doctrine? Do they contain a single prediction? Do they bear any prophetic witness to the Messiah? Does any one article of faith rest for its support on any passage in these books? Or are their value, their genuine excellence and authority, in the slightest degree invalidated by the doubt whether they are inspired? Does uncertainty on this point shake any portion of the Rule of Faith? Is there the slightest reason for apprehending that a man would less firmly hold the Divine authority of the Word of God,-less firmly believe in any one Christian doctrine, because, on the grounds above specified, he had doubts as to the inspiration (and canonicity in this sense) of either the book |