he members of a large church to believe
that an Apostle wrote it. The first Christians, then, were absolutely
certain that the documents which they received as apostolic, were
really so. The Church of Rome could attest the Epistle to them, and the
Gospels of Mark and Luke written there. The Church of Ephesus could
attest the Epistle to them, and the Gospel, and Letters, and Revelation
of John written there. And so on of all the other churches; and these
veritable autographs were long preserved. Says Tertullian, who was
ordained A. D. 192: "Well, if you be willing to exercise your curiosity
profitably in the business of your salvation, visit the apostolical
churches in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside--in
which their authentic letters themselves are recited (apud quae _ipsae
authenticae literae_ eorum recitantur), sounding forth the voice and
representing the countenance of each one of them. Is Achaia near you,
you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi,
you have Thessalonica. If you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus; but if
you are near to Italy, you have Rome." There can not be the least doubt
about the preservation of documents for a far longer time than from Paul
to Tertullian--one hundred and fifty years. I hold in my hand a Bible,
the family Bible of the Gibsons--printed in 1599--two hundred and
fifty-seven years old, in perfect preservation; and we have manuscripts
of the Scriptures twelve to fourteen hundred years old, like the
Sinaitic Codex, perfectly legible.

They were moreover directed to be publicly read in the churches, and
they were publicly read every Lord's day. Is it credible that an
impostor would direct his forgery to be publicly read? If the epistle
was publicly read during Paul's lifetime, that public reading in the
hearing of the men who could so easily disprove its genuineness, was
conclusive proof to all who heard it, that they knew it to be the
genuine writing of the Apostle. The primitive churches then had
conclusive proof of the genuineness of the Apostolic Epistles and
Gospels.

The only difficulty which now remains is the objection that they might
have been corrupted by alterations and interpolations by monks, in later
times. We have two securities against such corruptions, in the way these
documents were given, and the nature of their contents. They were sacred
heirlooms, and they were public documents. Could you, or could any man,
have permi