Shall we give less credence to John and Paul themselves? Surely the heart
and soul of every Christian give him sufficient assurance that, in all
things that concern him as a _man_, the words that he reads are spirit and
truth, and could only proceed from Him who made both heart and soul.--
Understand the matter so, and all difficulty vanishes: you read without
fear, lest your faith meet with some shock from a passage here and there
which you cannot reconcile with immediate dictation, by the Holy Spirit of
God, without an absurd violence offered to the text. You read the Bible as
the best of all books, but still as a book; and make use of all the means
and appliances which learning and skill, under the blessing of God, can
afford towards rightly apprehending the general sense of it--not solicitous
to find out doctrine in mere epistolary familiarity, or facts in clear _ad
hominem et pro tempore_ allusions to national traditions.
* * * * *
Tertullian, I think, says he had seen the autograph copies of some of the
apostles' writings. The truth is, the ancient Church was not guided by the
mere fact of the genuineness of a writing in pronouncing it canonical;--
its catholicity was the test applied to it.
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