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have received at first from that Apostle's mouth, and have afterwards employed in the instruction of their own converts? Why did none of them record any of the Prayers, of which they must have heard so many from an Apostle's mouth, both in the ordinary devotional assemblies, in the administration of the Sacraments, and in the "laying on of hands," by which they themselves had been ordained?

Paul, after having given the most general exhortations to the Corinthians for the preservation of decent regularity in their religious meetings, adds, "the rest will I set in order when I come." And so doubtless he did; and so he must have done, by verbal directions, in all the other churches also; is it not strange then that these verbal directions should nowhere have been committed to writing? This would have seemed a most obvious and effectual mode of precluding all future disorders and disputes: as also the drawing up of a compendious statement of Christian doctrines, would have seemed a safeguard against the still more important evil of heretical error. Yet if any such statements and formularies had been drawn up, with

the sanction, and under the revision of an Apostle, we may be sure they would have been preserved and transmitted to posterity, with the most scrupulous and reverential care. The conclusion therefore seems inevitable, that either no one of the numerous Elders and Catechists ever thought of doing this, or else, that they were forbidden by the Apostles to execute any such design; and each of these alternatives seems to me alike inexplicable by natural causes.

For it should be remembered that, when other points are equal, it is much more difficult to explain a negative than a positive circumstance in our Scriptures. There is something, suppose, in the New Testament, which the first promulgators of Christianity, considered as mere unassisted men,—were not likely to write; and there is something else, which they were, we will suppose, equally unlikely to omit writing now these two difficulties are by no means equal. For, with respect to the former, if we can make out that any one of these men might have been, by nature or by circumstances, qualified and induced to write it, the phenomenon is solved. To point out even a single individual

able and likely to write it, would account for its being written. But it is not so with respect to the other case, that of omission. Here, we have to prove a negative;-to show, not merely that this or that man was likely not to write what we find omitted, but, that no one was likely to write it. Suppose we could make out the possibility or probability, of Paul's having left no Creed, Catechism, or Canons, why have we none from the pen of Luke, or of Mark? Suppose this also explained, why did not John or Peter supply the deficiency? And why again did none of the numerous Bishops and Presbyters whom they ordained, undertake the work under their direction? The difficulty therefore in this case exceeds the other, cæteris paribus, more than a hundred-fold.

§ 4. It is not, I think, unlikely that some hasty and superficial reasoners may have found an objection to Christianity in the omission of which I have been speaking. It is certain that there are not a few who are accustomed to pronounce this or that supposition improbable, as soon as they perceive that it involves great

difficulties; without staying to examine whether there are more or fewer on the other side of the alternative: as if a traveller when he had the choice of two roads, should, immediately on perceiving that there were impediments in the one, decide on taking the other, before he had ascertained whether it were even passable. I can conceive some such reasoners exclaiming, in the present case, "Surely, if the Apostles had really been inspired by an all-wise God, they would never have omitted so essential a provision as that of a clear systematic statement of the doctrines to be believed, and the worship to be offered, so as to cut off, as far as can be done, all occasions of heresy and schism. If the Deity had really bestowed a revelation on his creatures, He would have provided rules of faith and of practice so precise and so obvious, as not to be overlooked or mistaken; instead of leaving men, whether pretending to infallibility, as the Romanists, or interpreting Scripture by the light of reason, as the Protestants, to elicit by a laborious search, and comparison of passages, what doctrines and duties are, in their judgment, agreeable to the Divine Will."

You think it was to be expected (one might reply) that God would have proceeded in this manner; and is it not at least as much to be expected that Man would? It is very unlikely, you say, that the Apostles would have omitted these systematic instructions, if they had really been inspired: but if they were not, they must have been impostors or enthusiasts; does then that hypothesis remove the difficulty? Is it not at least as unlikely, on that supposition, that no one of them, or of their numerous followers, should have taken a step so natural and obvious? All reasonable conjecture, and all experience show, that any men, but especially Jews, when engaged in the propagation and establishment of a religion, and acting, whether sincerely or insincerely, on their own judgment as to what was most expedient, would have done what no Christian writer during the age of (supposed) inspiration, has done. One would even have expected indeed, that, as we have four distinct Gospels, so, several different writers would have left us copies of the Catechisms, &c. which they were in the habit of using orally. This or that individual might have been pre

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