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very remote from the firft publication of it. Of these, befides St. John, we have a remarkable inftance in Simeon, who was one of the Seventy fent forth by our Saviour, to publish the Gospel before his crucifixion, and a near kinfman of the Lord. This venerable perfon, who had probably heard with his own ears our Saviour's prophecy of the deftruction of Jerufalem, prefided over the Church established in that city, during the time of its memorable fiege, and drew his congregation out of those dreadful and unparallel'd calamities which befel his countrymen, by following the advice our Saviour had given, when they fhould fee Jerufalem encompaffed with armies, and the Roman ftandards, or abomination of defolation, fet up. He lived till the year of our Lord 107, when he was martyred under the Emperor Trajan.

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VI.

I. The tradition of the Apoftles fecured by other excellent inftitutions;

11. But chiefly by the writings of the Evangelifts.

III. The diligence of the Difciples and firft Chriftian converts, to fend abroad thefe writings,

IV. That the written account of our Saviour was the fame with that delivered by tradition:

V. Proved from the reception of the Gofpel' by thofe Churches which were established before it was written;

VI. From the uniformity of what was believed in the feveral Churches;

VII. From a remarkable paffage in Irenæus. VIII. Records which are now loft, of use to the three first centuries, for confirming the hiftory of our Saviour.

IX. Inftances of such records.

TH

'HUS far we fee how the learned Pagans might apprize themselves from oral information of the particulars

of

of our Saviour's hiftory. They could hear, in every Church planted in every diftant part of the earth, the account which was there received and preferved among them, of the hiftory of our Saviour. They could learn the names and characters of thofe firft miffionaries that brought to them these accounts, and the miracles by which God Almighty attested their reports. But the Apostles and Difciples of Chrift, to preferve the hiftory of his life, and to fecure their accounts of him from error and oblivion, did not only fet afide certain perfons for that purpose, as has been already fhewn, but appropriated certain days to the commemoration of thofe facts which they had related concerning him. The first day of the week was in all its returns a perpetual memorial of his refurrection, as the devotional exercises adapted to Friday and Saturday, were to denote to all ages that he was crucified on the one of thofe days, and that he rested in the grave on the other. You may apply the fame remark to several of the annual feftivals inftituted by the Apostles themselves, or at furtheft by their immediate fucceffors, in memory of the most important partiD 2 culars

culars in our Saviour's hiftory; to which we must add the Sacraments inftituted by our Lord himself, and many of those rites and ceremonies which obtained in the moft early times of the Church. These are to be regarded as ftanding marks of fuch facts as were delivered by thofe, who were eye-witneffes to them, and which were contrived with great wifdom to last till time fhould be no more. Thefe, without any other means, might have, in fome measure, conveyed to pofterity, the memory of feveral transactions in the hiftory of our Saviour, as they were related by his Difciples. At least, the reafon of thefe inftitutions, though they might be forgotten, and obfcured by a long course of years, could not but be very well known by thofe who lived in the three first centuries, and a means of informing the inquifitive Pagans in the truth of our Saviour's hiftory, that being the view in which I am to confider them.

II. But left such a tradition, though guarded by fo many expedients, fhould wear out by the length of time, the four Evangelifts within about fifty, or, as Theodoret affirms, thirty years, after our

Sa

Saviour's death, while the memory of his actions was fresh among them, configned to writing that hiftory, which for fome years had been publifhed only by the mouths of the Apostles and Difciples. The further confideration of these holy penmen will fall under another part of this difcourfe.

III. It will be fufficient to obferve here, that in the age which fucceeded the Apoftles, many of their immediate Difciples fent or carried in perfon the books of the four Evangelifts, which had been written by Apoftles, or at least approved by them, to most of the Churches which they had planted in the different parts of the world. This was done with fo much diligence, that when Pantanus, a man of great learning and piety, had travelled into India for the propagation of Christianity, about the year of our Lord 200, he found among that remote people the Gospel of St. Matthew, which upon his return from that country he brought with him to Alexandria. This Gofpel is generally fuppofed to have been left in those parts by St. Bartholomew the Apostle of the Indies, who probably carried it with him before the writings D 3

of.

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