have been so great as it came to be in the case of Cornelius, and in the afterwards. Though it was never altercation that Paul had with him at doubted that Paul was an inspired Antioch. apostle, and received the knowledge he On the former of these occasions, had of the gospel from Jesus Christ when the conduct of Peter was arhimself, yet we find by his own writings, raigned, he vindicated himself, not by that there were violent factions against asserting that what he did was by the him all his life, and that his opinions express direction from heaven, (though were by no means implicitly received. he was led to what he did by express He himself is far from insisting that revelations made both to himself, and everything he asserted was to be re- also to Cornelius,) but by a simple ceived without examination. On the narrative of facts, from which they contrary, the various arguments he might themselves judge, that what he produces in support of his assertions, had done was not without sufficient without alleging any other authority authority. And even when all the for them, shows that his conclusions were drawn from the premises which he alleged, and which he submitted to the examination of his readers. He must, therefore, have supposed that they would think themselves at liberty to judge for themselves; and that, as he submitted his reasoning to their examination, they would decide for or against him, according as his arguments should appear to them conclusive or inconclusive.

When this apostle does not reason at all, but merely declares that he had his information from Christ, we receive it on the credit of a man whom we suppose to have been neither imposed upon himself, nor to have had any interest in imposing upon others; and likewise of his being a person whose authority in general was supported by his power of working miracles. Of this kind is the account which he gives us of the resurrection of the dead, and the change that will pass upon the living subsequent to it; and also his account of the institution of the Lord's supper, &c.

Nor was this the case of Paul only, who was peculiarly obnoxious to the Jews, on account of his zeal in preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. For Peter himself, who is called the apostle of the circumcision, and was considered as the very chief of the apostles, was not more respected, whenever he said or did anything that was thought to be improper. This appeared very clearly

apostles were met, to consider of what was to be done with respect to the supposed obligation of the Gentile converts to observe the Jewish ceremonies, they seem not to have had any immediate inspiration. For they reasoned and deliberated upon the subject; which seems to imply that there was for some time a difference of opinion among them, though they afterwards concurred in giving the advice that they did, and in which they concluded that they had the concurrence of the Holy Spirit.

But even this decree, as it is now generally called, which had the authority, as we may say, of the whole college of apostles, does not seem to have been relished by all Christians; as we may infer from the enmity which the Jewish converts in general bore to Paul, and from the Nazarenes or Jewish Christians, never making use of his writings. For though they were not written in a language which they understood, it would not have been more difficult to procure a translation of them, than of the gospel of Matthew, which was also probably written in Greek.

Indeed, what is universally ac knowledged to have been the state of the Jewish Christians could not have been true, if they had had the same ideas that were afterwards entertained, of the constant inspiration of the apostles and evangelists. A great part of them rejected the account of our Lord's miraculous conception, and though they made use of the gospel of Matthew in

incidents of little consequence; and to contend for anything more than this is in effect to injure their credibility. If the agreement among them had been as exact as some pretend, it would have been natural for the enemies of Christianity to have said, that they must have been written by combination, and therefore that the history has not the concurrent testimony of independent witnesses; and if the exactness contended for cannot be proved, the authority of the whole must be given up.

Hebrew, they omitted the two first but they differ exceedingly in the order chapters, in which it is asserted; not, of their narrative, and with respect to as far as appears, questioning their being written by Matthew, but not thinking the contents of them sufficiently well-founded; and yet they did not, on account of this difference of opinion, cease to communicate with one another. Nor does Justin Martyr, who mentions their opinion long afterwards, pass any censure upon them on account of it. He only says that he cannot think as they did; and what is more remarkable, he does not mention the authority of Matthew and Luke, as what was decisive against them. These Jewish Christians would certainly have treated the gospel of Luke in the same manner as they did that of Matthew, if they had been acquainted with it, and had thought proper to make use of it at all.

When the Jewish church was first formed, and indeed so late as the publication of the gospel, many of the disciples would think themselves as good judges of the history of Christ, as the evangelists themselves. They did not want those books for their own use, and would judge concerning the contents of them, as they would concerning other books which implied an appeal to living witnesses. That the books were generally received, and not immediately rejected by those to whom they were addressed, is a proof that the history which they contained is in the main authentic, but by no means proves that every minute circumstance in them is true. Indeed, the evangelists, varying from one another in many particulars, (which may be seen in the Observations prefixed to my Harmony of the Gospels,) proves that they wrote partly from their recollection, which may be imperfect in things of little consequence, and partly from the best information which they could collect from other persons.

Like other credible historians, all the evangelists agree in the main things,

1 Sect. xi.-xvi., also the Essays in Theol. Repos. Vol. II.

more

Besides, what would have been the use of appointing twelve apostles, or witnesses of the life and resurrection of Christ, if their testimony was not naturally sufficient to establish the credibility of the facts; and what would have signified even the original inspiration, unless all error in transcribing, and translating, &c., had been prevented, by the same miraculous interposition, in all ages, and in all nations afterwards ? Having written largely on this subject in my Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, and also in the Preface to my Harmony of the Gospels, to those works I beg leave to refer any readers with respect to this subject. I would also refer them to what I have written under the signature of Paulinus, in the Theological Repository, in which I think I have shown, that the apostle Paul often reasons inconclusively, and, therefore, that he wrote as any other person, of his turn of mind and thinking, and in his situation, would have written, without any particular inspiration. Facts, such as I think I have there alleged, are stubborn things, and all hypotheses must be accommodated to them.

Not only the Nazarenes, but Christians of other denominations also, rejected several of the books of our New Testament, and without denying the authenticity of them, (for with this they are not, in general, charged,) but be

2 See [Rutt's Priestley] Vol. II. pp. 123-130, 208-211.

cause they did not approve of their found to favour some superstitious contents. Thus the Gnostics in general opinions and practices, the rise of which made but little use of the canonical I have already traced, and especially books, and pleaded the authority of tradition, and the Elcesaites, in the time of the emperor Philip,' are said to have rejected all the epistles of Paul, though the authenticity of them was never questioned.

shown the same dread of the Scriptures. with the Catholics; many of the errors For Sixtus V. caused an Italian trans- and abuses of Popery being discovered lation of the Bible to be published, in the earliest Christian writers, after though the zealous Catholics were the apostolical age. But at present all much offended at it. 1 Protestants seem to entertain a just So much were the minds of all men opinion of such authority, and to think oppressed with a reverence for anti- with Chillingworth, that the Bible quity, and the traditions of the church, alone is the religion of Protestants. at the time of the Reformation, that We may, however, be very much emthe Protestants were not a little em- barrassed by entertaining even this barrassed by it in their controversy opinion in its greatest rigour, as I have shown in the introduction to this Appendix,

1 Histoire des Papes, V. p. 80. (P.)

PART XII.

THE HISTORY OF THE MONASTIC LIFE.

THE INTRODUCTION.

BESIDES those ministers of the Christian church whose titles we meet with in the New Testament, but whose powers and prerogatives have been prodigiously increased from that time to the present, we find that, excepting the popes alone, no less conspicuous a figure was made by other orders of men, of whom there is not so much as the least mention in the books of Scripture, or the writings of the apostolical age; I mean the monks, and religious orders of a similar constitution, which have more or less of a religious cha

tion and mortification of its corporeal incumbrance. This notion operating with the indolent and melancholy turn of many persons in the southern hot climates of Asia, and especially of Egypt, led them to affect an austere solitary life, as destitute as possible of everything that might pamper the body, or that is adapted to gratify those appetites and passions which were supposed to have their seat in the flesh. Hence arose the notion of the greater purity and excellency of celibacy, as well as a fondness for a retired and unsocial life, which has driven so many persons in all ages, from the society of their brethren, to live either The set of opinions which laid the in absolute solitude, or with persons of foundation for the whole business of the same gloomy turn with themselves. monkery, came originally from the It is the same principle that made East, and had been adopted by some Essenes among the Jews, monks of the Greek philosophers, especially among Christians, dervishes among Plato, viz. that the soul of man is a Mahometans, and fakirs among Hinspiritual substance, and that its powers doos. are clogged, and its virtues impeded, How apt Christians were to be struck by its connexion with the body. Hence with the example of the Heathens in they inferred that the greatest perfec- this respect, we see in Jerome, who tion of mind is attained by the extenua- "takes notice that 'Paganism had

racter.