are among them were to be destroyed; for they take them to be such discourses as are framed agreeably to the inclinations of those that write them; and they have justly the same opinion of the ancient writers, since they see some of the present generation bold enough to write about such affairs, wherein they were not present, nor had concern enough to inform themselves about them from those that knew them; examples of which may be had in this late war of ours, where some persons have written histories, and published them, without having been in the places concerned, or having been near them when the actions were done; but these men put a few things together by hearsay, and insolently abuse the world, and call these writings by the name of Histories."*—It is further well that on this subject, we have such a galaxy of evidence, in the authors whom Josephus refers to in the foregoing passage—who wrote the Jewish history since the days of Artaxerxes; and who, though not esteemed of like authority with the canonical writers, might nevertheless (at least some of them) be confided in as faithful historians. Josephus intimates, as the reason why they were not so esteemed, that the nation was not so privileged as formerly with the visits of prophetical • Joseph. against Apion, Book I. § 8. Had Josephus not chanced to bequeath this passage to posterity, ought the evidence for the Hebrew scriptures to have been sensibly weaker in conse quence? Should not the faith of the whole nation of the Jews, accredited by the like faith of the whole body of Christians as to the books deemed sacred, and more especially when accompanied by such a mass and amount of evidence as can be educed from the scriptures themselves-should not this have compensated for the want of the exscriptural testimony of Josephus ? men. In other words, these authors did not rank with the sacred writers, and yet might rank very high as authentic narrators of the state and affairs of the Jewish people. The truth is, that most of them have incurred an undue discredit in consequence of the extravagant pretensions which have been made in their behalf, to an equal place with the writers of the Old Testament. But for this, they would have been more generally appealed to; for the Apocrypha too contain a great amount of exscriptural evidence in favour of the Jewish scriptures-such evidence as is exhibited in favour of the Christian scriptures, by Lardner, in his Credibility; where he makes a collection of citations and references to the New Testament from the works of the Christian fathers, who stood in the same relation to the New that the Apocryphal writers did to the Old Testament. It were well, if from these Apocrypha, along with the works of the earliest Jewish authors not canonical,* there could be presented to the world such a digest or enumeration of testimonies in favour of the Hebrew scriptures, as Lardner has made for the Christian scriptures from the writings of the fathers as well as of the Jews and Heathens. The common reader will find it a confirmatory and profitable exercise, to read those Apocrypha which are well provided with marginal references-whence he will be able to collect a body of evidence both for the books of the Old Testament and for the his * More particularly Josephus and Philo. The latter has expressly quoted or referred to almost all the books of our present Old Testament, as authoritative scriptures-and to none others. tory contained in them.* Ere we conclude this brief notice of the exscriptural evidence for the Old Testament, we would advise those readers who might wish to attain a complete view of this department, to make themselves acquainted with the express written testimonies of the Christian fathers who, in innumerable instances, depone to the canonical authority of separate books; and sometimes present us with catalogues of the whole. Of these, one of the most full and distinct is the catalogue by Melito, bishop of Sardis, who * Were a Lardnerian collection made from the Apocrypha in favour of the Old Testament, the following articles would find a place in it among many others of the same character:— 2 Esdras, c. i. 39, 40, “Unto whom I will give for leaders, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Oseas, Amos, and Micheas, Joel, Abdias, and Jonas, Nahum, and Abacuc, Sophonias, Aggeus, Zachary, and Malachy, which is called also an angel of the Lord.” The twelve last named, associated with the three ancestral patriarchs of the Jewish people include all the minor prophets, whose books were bound up in one volume. It is difficult to imagine that the author of Esdras should have derived these names from any other quarter than from this volume, or that his collection should have quadrated so accurately with the biblical one, but on the hypothesis of its anterior and separate existence -confirming therefore our other evidence for the ancient existence of these books-while, associated as these authors are with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it proves at least the degree of veneration in which they were held by the author of this Apocryphal writing. Tobit ii. 6. "Remembering that prophecy of Amos, as he said, Your feasts shall be turned into mourning, and all your mirth into lamentation.'"-An express quotation from Amos viii. 10. And like quotations may be had from the Apocrypha, of Jeremiah, Malachi, Joshua, Judges, Samuel-besides a large body of evidence scarcely less effective for most of the other books of the Old Testament. We may add, that most invaluable confirmations are to be found in the book of Ecclesiasticus-of which I shall only instance the attestations of its author, in favour of Ezekiel and Nehemiah. Eccles. c. xlix. flourished a little after the middle of the second century. He travelled into Palestine on purpose to learn the number of the books of the Old Testament. Eusebius says of his catalogue that it contains those scriptures of the Old Testament which are universally acknowledged. The only difference in it from our present Old Testament, is that he does not mention the book of Esther. The difference, however, it is probable, is only apparent. The likelihood is that Esther was appended to some other book, as Ruth was to the book of Judges; and that neither could be named therefore in those catalogues which observed that particular kind of distinction. At all events, the book of Esther has abundance of other evidence to rest upon. 4. But without dwelling any further on the exscriptural evidence which there is for the canon of the Old Testament, let us now attend to the evidence which might be found on this subject, in both the Old Testament and the New-which, instead of scripture speaking for itself, is one part of scripture composed perhaps by a different author and in a different age speaking for another part of it. We behold a succession of authors in the Old Testament, and a large contemporaneous group of authors in the New; and who, on every principle by which we estimate the credit and the confidence due to written testimonies, is each of them ten-fold more valuable, than if, instead of being ranked as a sacred, he had been ranked as an Apocryphal or profane writer. The circumstance of his being reckoned worthy of such a dis tinction in ancient times, is the very reason why in modern times we should place all the firmer reliance on him. The Bible is not one book, but an aggregate of many; and if, viewing it as such, we were to compute aright the force of that argument which lies in the concurrence of distinct and independent witnesses-we should find, not only for the facts of scripture history, but for the deference and respect in which the various writers particularly of the Old Testament were held, a stronger chain of testimony, and on the whole, a brighter galaxy of light and evidence, than can be exhibited in any collection or credibility which might be framed of the best extracts from all other authors. 5. But before considering in detail, the scriptural evidence for each particular book of the Old Testament-there is a certain general evidence, of this very species too, that is applicable to them all; and which attaches to these Hebrew writings such proofs of genuineness and authority, as are quite unexampled of any other documents that have been transmitted to us from ancient times. 6. First there can be no doubt in respect to the Jewish nation, that one of their most resolute and characteristic principles, in every family where principle had the ascendancy, was a respect for their law; and, by consequence, for the books which contained that law, as well as for all other books received by their nation as of divine authority. We cannot imagine a greater security for the faithful transmission of these books, than the obligation under which every conscientious Hebrew |