In communicating Christ's doctrine to the heathen for their information, it seems to me that Justin's statements are just what we might expect in a philosophical mind like his, proving clearly that he had read and used our Gospels, though occasionally referring to other traditions, as all the Fathers did. If men were to consult him for various readings, it would be the same kind of folly as the author's who is looking for the identical words. Justin is communicating Christ's moral instruction to the heathen, and it is done in the most natural way; his repeating the summing-up and motive is thoroughly so. He spoke thus, He taught thus, He said thus, just show the true character of the citations. The author of Supernatural Religion does not even understand the force of the reasoning. The existence of the Gospel according to the Hebrews is admitted and known, though perhaps seriously altered by certain parties, but it never was in the canon. The possibility of Justin having used it is not generally denied. What is said is that his quotations are sufficient to prove he knew our Gospels. That is a question of judgment on comparing them. The possibility of another Gospel having what is in Justin does not alter this. If it be produced with the whole passage as he has it, and all else is consistent, we shall have another witness. I do not believe it is or can be. Nor have they any hint of the existence of any such thing in all the writings of that day, save the Gospel according to Peter, the supposed reference to which is quite otherwise understood by sober critics, as it is in the only place in which Justin refers to it.
What were the numerous other works in use in the early church? Various accounts were current but were lost, I may say, at once, in the prevalence of the four Gospels recognized as an authority and divine, and so used. And the author must remember that what we have in the written Gospels is the account of what Jesus said, and three witnesses or four alters nothing if they are true. The facts may be called to memory by the Holy Ghost according to Christ's promise, according to the point they were connected with, and a writer quoting it may give it according to the point which is in his mind, and in the connection which the subject he is on suggests. The question, further, is not whether Justin may not have known other current writings or traditions, but whether what he writes furnishes evidence of acquaintance with the Scriptures, particularly with the Gospels, as we have them. We have only to read what he says to be convinced of it, the four canonical being acknowledged thus as such. The way in which the book Sup. Rel. insists on verbal quotation is, for any one who has read Justin or other Fathers, perfectly absurd. Indeed, in the Apologies it is the last thing we should look for; these are addresses sent by a philosopher to the heathen authorities to give an idea of what Christians were and did, to clear them from certain charges, and sometimes appealing, to show the principles they held, to what their Master had said.
Indeed I must say that the discussion on Justin Martyr and other like writers seems to me to be the poorest piece of superficial criticism I ever wearied myself with reading, full of unproved assertions too, the difficulties raised by Fathers and traditions diligently searched out second-hand. The reconciling Papias and Irenmus, and Jerome and others, proved to be difficult, but no serious research after truth at all. It is simply putting into English the infidelity of the Baur school, Schwegler, Hilgenfeld, etc., and nothing else. Of course all inspiration is ignored—bringing up uncertainties of what may be, to prove what is to be uncertain, and the positive testimonies to mean nothing. What is not spoken of may be true, hence what is said cannot be. The Fathers, as to their judgment, are worth nothing; and tradition as untrustworthy for certainty of details as you please; but they suppose and prove to an intelligent mind certain facts. My faith does not rest on external evidence, but there is a certain kind of pretentious destructive criticism which is profoundly contemptible.
Our critic speaks of many other Gospels, our four thus coming into an uncertain mass. But no one can examine the facts without knowing that these four were, from the earliest days, recognized as distinct. But which are these many? He speaks of the Egyptian, the Gospel according to Peter, the Ethiopian; and all depends upon this kind of thing. But these—unless the Gospel of Peter once mentioned in a phrase of disputed meaning—are all the same, if we can trust various patristic accounts. Adapting an account, say the Gospel according to the Hebrews, to the Ethiopians was very natural; but it is not another, and says nothing about the recognition of the four which were not counted with them, nor does it alter anything. The Gospel according to the Hebrews, and the Ethiopians was not in Greek, so that reasoning from quotations is utterly without force; but it serves a turn. I must add that I do not think an honest man, knowing our Gospels, could read the passage in Justin through, and hesitate one moment as to his acquaintance with them. It is a long discourse, in which he brings forward, to satisfy the heathen, the various teachings of Christ as they stood in his mind from the Gospels, to clear the Christians from the false notions held of them, quoting as I might quote scripture myself, sometimes verbally exact, sometimes the sense, and bringing in passages from another place which gave the connected thoughts which were in his mind for the heathen. There is one passage, “and walk,” not accounted for, in reference to the cross, and not a whit more accounted for by the infidel writers. For their view of Justin's quotations there is not the least ground whatever. In one place the author of Sup. Rel., to make it easy to think that he used a Hebrew Gospel or other Jewish traditions, says he was a Jewish Christian; whereas he states himself, as was the ease, that he was a heathen, and after trying Stoicism, Peripateticism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism, found rest in Christianity; visited many Grecian cities, and afterward went to Rome. The best thing the reader can do is to read the passage chiefly referred to (in my copy of Justin, Col. 1686, pp. 61-66, about a tenth of the whole Apology from the beginning).
As to the apocryphal Gospels which remain to us, of which there are several, their contents speak for themselves; a proof of the total want of spiritual discernment in the primitive church, and also how impossible it was for an age, which concocted and more or less valued such stuff, to have produced anything in the least resembling our Gospels. In this sense they afford the strongest proofs of the inspiration of the others. The Epistles according to the Hebrews, of Peter, to the Egyptians, are not extant, and so afford a fine field for rational criticism, the connection of which with Justin I have spoken of. In Bleek's Introduction, sec. 118, and also, 87, 88, the reader will find the whole system fully judged. Bleck is a rationalistic critic. Perhaps it may be well to quote his words (Clark's Translation, Sec. 119, i. 335): But with regard to the memoirs of the apostles, so repeatedly cited by Justin, it is at once quite clear that these were not some single treatise, but a collection of writings differing from one another, and usually called Gospels.” Now, since he expressly attributes these writings to the apostles and their coadjutors, we are directly led to conclude that they were the canonical Gospels we have, which ecclesiastical traditions and their very titles assign partly to the apostles and partly to their fellow-laborers and disciples. The citations made from the memoirs are, at any rate as to the greater part, unquestionably taken from our present Gospels: only, like most of the Fathers, and according to his own practice in Old Testament passages, Justin uses greater freedom in quoting, and mixes together the text of different Gospels, especially Matthew and Luke. He describes them as written by the apostles and their companions. The supposition of some modern scholars that what Justin refers to and makes use of was some one distinct work is clearly false. Again: “His own words (Justin's) explicitly declare that they were more than one, and the citations themselves witness that all our four canonical Gospels were included” (Sec. 87, p. 242).
De Wette says (sec. 74, p. 124) of the Gospel to the Hebrews: “This is the oldest (of the uncanonical Gospels), but its use is traceable no further back than Hegesippus (about A.D. 160), nor beyond the circle of the Jewish Christians; for the orthodox Fathers, far from placing it on a par with the canonical Gospels, reckon it among the ungenuine.” And (76, 125) as to the current acceptance of the four Gospels; “Various countries and parties in the church also furnish testimonies which run back nearly to the Apostolic age.” Again, as to the Gospel to the Hebrews he says, “But the oldest accounts contradict the idea of its being an original and independent work by representing it as apocrypha], and as wavering between Matthew and Luke” (sec. 63, p. 88). One of the alterations indicates a Greek original. Hence the opinion that the Gospel to the Hebrews is the most ancient Gospel writing falls to the ground (sec. 65, p. 93).
Justin mentions, as the source of these sayings and accounts, writings left behind by the apostles and their assistants, which he calls memoirs of the apostles, also Gospels. The old opinion that they mean our canonical Gospels is by no means contradicted by the inexactness of the citations; for it is probable, nay it is established by the repetitions that occur, that parties cited the Gospels, as sometimes the Old Testament writers, freely from memory and Gospels which were read in the assemblies of the Christians cannot well be other than our canonical Gospels, all of which (Mark and John more seldom) he made use of (comp. s. 56, p. 94).
De Wette enters into the objections which I have already gone over; but I do not go farther into them, Those whom I have now quoted are in the fullest sense rationalist writers, but sober and serious men, who weighed facts instead of indulging in inflated and foundationless speculations, where there is no trace of a search after truth, but merely the effort of an advocate to prove his point.
(Continued from page 19.)