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who wrought them, and of that cause which he came to support. Predicted beforehand, they were directed to beneficent purposes, and never performed as mere displays of power. They are in strict correspondence with the nature of the end designed, and are essentially necessary to account for the effects they produced. They are related to us by eye-witnesses; are inseparably connected with the rest of the history of which they are a part; and are every way suitable to our notions of the wisdom and goodness of God.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE

HOLY SCRIPTURES.*

OLD TESTAMENT.

THE Bible, which contains the account of the origin, progress, and nature of the Christian religion, is the production, not of one period, but of many ages. The writers of it succeeded each other, during the space of about 1500 years. The Scriptures of the Old Testament far exceed, in antiquity, all other historical records. Moses, who wrote the first five books, lived more than 1000 years before Herodotus, the father of Grecian history; and rather earlier than the time of Herodotus, Ezra and Nehemiah completed the historical part of the Old Testament Scriptures.

The longevity of the first generations of men, which accelerated the population of the world from a single pair, rendered a written revelation, between the fall of man and the promulgation of the law at Sinai, less necessary, as the knowledge of the Divine will was, during

* A genuine book is one written by the person whose name it bears, as the author of it. An authentic book is one that relates matters of fact, as they really happened.

that period, transmitted from one age to another, by very few individuals. From Adam to Moses, although a space of about 2500 years, it passed through only four intermediate persons. In all that time, God made himself known by visible interpositions and signs, as in the cases of Cain and Babel, and held direct communication with prophets, who were revered as such by the people among whom they lived, which tended to preserve his truth from being corrupted. Thus it was sufficiently early in the days of Moses, permanently to record that authentic revelation, which was then delivered. But, at that period, when the age of man was reduced nearly to its present limits, God separated a people from the nations, and gave them such an establishment, that full security was afforded for preserving entire his written word.

Moses, who, at the giving of the law, acted the part of a mediator between God and the people of Israel, was called up to Mount Sinai, where he received those laws and institutions that were then enjoined. These, together with the history of the creation, and of whatever, from the beginning, was necessary for the instruction of the people of God, were committed by him to writing, in five books, and deposited in the tabernacle by the side of the ark.

These five books, called the Book of the Law, and also known by the name of the Pentateuch, (or five volumes,) constituted the first part of the sacred records, and include the history of about 2550 years. The law was read every Sabbath-day in the synagogues, and again solemnly every seventh year. The king was required to copy it, and the people were commanded to teach it to their children, and to bear it as signs upon their hands, and frontlets between their eyes."

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The remaining books* of the Old Testament, composed by different writers, carry the history of Israel beyond the Babylonish captivity, and contain the messages of a succession of prophets till 420 years before the coming of Christ, when, at the distance of about 1030 years from Moses, Malachi, the last of the prophets, wrote.

The books which compose the Old Testament Scriptures, were held by the Jews, in every age, to be the genuine works of those persons to whom they are ascribed; and they have also been universally and exclusively, without any addition or exception, considered by them as written under the immediate influence of the Spirit of God. They preserved them with the greatest veneration; and, at the same time, carefully guarded against receiving any apocryphal or uninspired books. While the Jews were divided into various sects, which stood in the most direct opposition to each other, there never was any difference among them respecting the authority of the sacred writings.

The five books of Moses were also preserved by the Samaritans, who received them nearly 700 years before the coming of Christ. Whatever disagreement, in other respects, subsisted between them and the Jews, and however violent their enmity against each other, they perfectly united in admitting the authenticity and inspiration of the law of Moses, which they both adopted as their religious rule. In addition to all this, about 280 years before the Christian era, the whole of the Old Testament was translated into Greek; a language which, from the time of Alexander's conquests, was commonly understood by the nations of the world. Thus Jews, Samaritans, and all the civilized world,

*The exact time when the book of Job was written is not known. VOL. I.

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had access to these sacred books, which prevented the possibility of their being either corrupted or altered without its being generally known.

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We are assured by Josephus, the Jewish historian, who was born about five years after the death of Christ, and who lived in the time of the Apostles, that the Jews acknowledged no books as divine, but twenty-two. "We have not," he says, " an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from, and contradicting one another, (as the Greeks have,) but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be Divine. And of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws, and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of 3000 years. But as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes King of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time: And how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation, is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one hath been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews, immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them.”—Josephus, ed. 1784, vol. ii.

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