The Lost Gospel and Its Contents, Michael F. Sadler [great novels to read .TXT] 📗

PREFACE.


This book is entitled "The Lost Gospel" because the book to which it is an answer is an attempt to discredit the Supernatural element of Christianity by undermining the authority of our present Gospels in favour of an earlier form of the narrative which has perished.

It seemed to me that, if the author of "Supernatural Religion" proved his point, and demonstrated that the Fathers of the Second Century quoted Gospels earlier than those which we now possess, then the evidence for the Supernatural itself, considered as apart from the particular books in which the records of it are contained, would be strengthened; if, that is, it could be shown that this earlier form of the narrative contained the same Supernatural Story.

The author of "Supernatural Religion," whilst he has utterly failed to show that the Fathers in question have used earlier Gospels, has, to my mind, proved to demonstration that, if they have quoted earlier narratives, those accounts contain, not only substantially, but in detail, the same Gospel which we now possess, and in a form rather more suggestive of the Supernatural. So that, if he has been successful, the author has only succeeded in proving that the Gospel narrative itself, in a written form, is at least fifty or sixty years older than the books which he attempts to discredit.

With respect to Justin Martyr, to the bearing of whose writings on this subject I have devoted the greater part of my book, I can only say that, in my examination of his works, my bias was with the author of "Supernatural Religion." I had hitherto believed that this Father, being a native of Palestine, and living so near to the time of the Apostles, was acquainted with views of certain great truths which he had derived from traditions of the oral teaching of the Apostles, and the possession of which made him in some measure an independent witness for the views in question; but I confess that, on a closer examination of his writings, I was somewhat disappointed, for I found that he had no knowledge of our Lord and of His teaching worth speaking of, except what he might be fairly assumed to have derived from our present New Testament.

I have to acknowledge my obligations to Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh, for allowing me to make somewhat copious extracts from the writings of Justin in their ante-Nicene Library. This has saved a Parish Priest like myself much time and trouble. I believe that in all cases of importance in which I have altered the translation, or felt that there was a doubt, I have given the original from Otto's edition (Jena, 1842).


CONTENTS.


SECTION I.--Introductory
SECTION II.--The Way Cleared
SECTION III.--The Principal Witness--His Religious
Views
SECTION IV.--The Principal Witness--The Sources of
his Knowledge respecting the Birth of Christ
SECTION V.--The Principal Witness--His Testimony
respecting the Baptism of Christ
SECTION VI.--The Principal Witness--His Testimony
respecting the Death of Christ
SECTION VII.--The Principal Witness--His Testimony
respecting the Moral Teaching of our Lord
SECTION VIII.--The Principal Witness--His Testimony
to St. John
SECTION IX.--The Principal Witness--His Further
Testimony to St. John
SECTION X.--The Principal Witness--His Testimony
summed up
SECTION XI.--The Principal Witness on our Lord's
Godhead
SECTION XII.--The Principal Witness on the Doctrine
of the Logos
SECTION XIII.--The Principal Witness on our Lord as
King, Priest, and Angel
SECTION XIV.--The Principal Witness on the Doctrine
of the Trinity
SECTION XV.--Justin and St. John on the Incarnation
SECTION XVI.--Justin and St. John on the Subordination
of the Son
SECTION XVII.--Justin and Philo
SECTION XVIII.--Discrepancies between St. John and the
Synoptics
SECTION XIX.--External Proofs of the Authenticity
of our Four Gospels
Note on Section XIX.--Testimonies of Irenaeus, Clement
of Alexandria, and Tertullian to the use of
the Four Gospels in their day
SECTION XX.--The Evidence for Miracles
SECTION XXI.--Objections to Miracles
SECTION XXII.--Jewish Credulity
SECTION XXIII.--Demoniacal Possession
SECTION XXIV.--Competent Witnesses
SECTION XXV.--Date of Testimony


SECTION I.

INTRODUCTORY.


In the following pages I have examined the conclusions at which the author of a book entitled "Supernatural Religion" has assumed to have arrived.

The method and contents of the work in question may be thus described.

The work is entitled "Supernatural Religion, an Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation." Its contents occupy two volumes of about 500 pages each, so that we have in it an elaborate attack upon Christianity of very considerable length. The first 200 pages of the first volume are filled with arguments to prove that a Revelation, such as the one we profess to believe in, supernatural in its origin and nature and attested by miracles, is simply incredible, and so, on no account, no matter how evidenced, to be received.

But, inasmuch as the author has to face the fact, that the Christian Religion professes to be attested by miracles performed at a very late period in the history of the world, and said to have been witnessed by very large numbers of persons, and related very fully in certain books called the Canonical Gospels, which the whole body of Christians have, from a very early period indeed, received as written by eye-witnesses, or by the companions of eye-witnesses, the remaining 800 pages are occupied with attempts at disparaging the testimony of these writings. In order to this, the Christian Fathers and heretical writers of a certain period are examined, to ascertain whether they quoted the four Evangelists. The period from which the writer chooses his witnesses to the use of the four Evangelists, is most unwarrantably and arbitrarily restricted to the first ninety years of the second century (100-185 or so). We shall have ample means for showing that this limitation was for a purpose.

The array of witnesses examined runs thus: Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Papias of Hierapolis, the Clementines, the Epistle to Diognetus, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Tatian, Dionysius of Corinth, Melito of Sardis, Claudius Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Epistle of Vienne and Lyons, Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, Celsus and the Canon of Muratori.

The examination of references, or supposed references, in these books to the first three Gospels fills above 500 pages, and the remainder (about 220) is occupied with an examination of the claims of the fourth Gospel to be considered as canonical.

The writer conducts this examination with an avowed dogmatical bias; and this, as the reader will soon see, influences the manner of his examination throughout the whole book. For instance, he never fails to give to the anti-Christian side the benefit of every doubt, or even suspicion. This leads him to make the most of the smallest discrepancy between the words of any supposed quotation in any early writer from one of our Canonical Gospels, and the words as contained in our present Gospels. If the writer quotes the Evangelist freely, with some differences, however slight, in the words, he is assumed to quote