The Lost Gospel and Its Contents by Michael F. Sadler (most popular ebook readers TXT) 📖

made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind." (Apol. I. ch. xxii.)

Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who makes our Lord to say, "Now I tell you before it come, that when it is come to pass ye may believe." (John xiii. 19; xiv. 29; xvi. 4) And Justin adopts and amplifies this very sentiment with reference to the use of prophecy:--

"For things which were incredible, and seemed impossible with men,
these God predicted by the Spirit of prophecy as about to come to
pass, in order that, when they came to pass, there might be no
unbelief, but faith, because of their prediction." (Apol. I. ch.
xxxiii.)

Again, St. John alone of the Evangelists records that our Lord used with the unbelieving Jews the argument that they believed not Moses, for, had they believed Moses, they would have believed Him, for Moses wrote of Him. (John, v. 46, 47) And Justin reproduces in substance the same argument:--

"For though ye have the means of understanding that this man is
Christ from the signs given by Moses, yet you will not." (Dial.
xciii.)

Again, St. John is the only sacred writer who speaks of our Lord "giving the living water," and causing that water to flow from men's hearts, and Justin (somewhat inaccurately) reproduces the figure:--

"And our hearts are thus circumcised from evil, so that we are happy
to die for the name of the Good Rock, which causes living water to
burst forth for the hearts of those who by him have loved the Father
of all, and which gives those who are willing to drink of the water
of life." (Dial. ch. cxiv.)

Again, St. John alone records that Christ spake of Himself as the Light, and Justin speaks of Him as "the only blameless and righteous Light sent by God." (Dial. ch. xvii.)

Again, St. John alone speaks of our Lord as representing Himself to be the true vine, and His people as the branches. Justin uses the same figure with respect to the people or Church of God:--

"Just as if one should eat away the fruit-bearing parts of it vine,
it grows up again, and yields other branches flourishing and
fruitful; even so the same thing happens to us. For the vine planted
by God and Christ the Saviour is His People." (Dial. ch. cx.)

Again, St. John alone represents our Saviour as saying, "I have power to lay [my life] down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father." (John x. 18) And Justin says of Christ that, in fulfilment of a certain prophecy,--

"He is to do something worthy of praise and wonderment, being about
to rise again from the dead on the third day after the Crucifixion,
and this He has obtained from the Father." (Dial. ch. c.)

Some of these last instances which I have given are reminiscences rather than reproductions; but like all other reminiscences they imply things remembered, sometimes not perfectly correctly, and so not applied as applied in the original; but they are all real reminiscences of words and things to be found only in our fourth Gospel.


SECTION X.

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS.--HIS TESTIMONY SUMMED UP.


From all this it is clear that Justin had not only seen and reverenced St. John's Gospel, but that his mind was permeated with its peculiar teaching.

I hesitate not to say that, if a man rejects the evidence above adduced, he rejects it because on other grounds he is determined, cost what it may, to discredit the Fourth Gospel.

Let us briefly recapitulate.

Justin reproduced the doctrine of the Logos, using the words of St. John. He asserted the Divine and human natures of the Son of God in the words of St. John, or in exactly similar words. He reproduced that peculiar teaching of our Lord, to be found only in St. John, whereby we are enabled to hold the true and essential Godhead of Christ without for a moment holding that He is an independent God. He reproduced the doctrine of the Logos being, even before His Incarnation, in every man as the "true light" to enlighten him.

He reproduces the doctrine of the Sacraments in terms to be found only in the Fourth Gospel. He reproduces, or alludes to, arguments and types and prophecies and historical events, only to be found in St. John's Gospel.

It seems certain, then, that if Justin was acquainted with any one of our four Gospels, that Gospel was the one according to St. John.

What answer, the reader will ask, does the author of "Supernatural Religion" give to all this? Why, he simply ignores the greater part of these references (we trust through ignorance of their existence), and takes notice of some three or four, in which, to use the vulgar expression, he picks holes, by drawing attention to discrepancies of language or application, and dogmatically pronounces that Justin could not have known the fourth Gospel.

Well, then, the reader will ask, from whom did Justin derive the knowledge of doctrines and facts so closely resembling those contained in St. John?

Again, we have reference to supposed older sources of information which have perished. With respect to the Logos doctrine, the author of "Supernatural Religion" asserts:--

"His [Justin's] doctrine of the Logos is precisely that of Philo,
and of writings long antecedent to the fourth Gospel, and there can
be no doubt, we think, that it was derived from them."
("Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 297.)

It may be well here to remark that, strictly speaking, there is no Logos
doctrine in St. John's Gospel,--by doctrine meaning "scientifically expressed doctrine," drawn out, and expounded at length, as in Philo. The Gospel commences with the assertion that the Logos, Whoever He be, is God, and is the pre-existent Divine nature of Jesus; he does this once and once only, and never recurs to it afterwards.

The next passage referred to is the assertion of the Baptist, "I am not the Christ," and the conclusion of the author is that "There is every reason to believe that he derived it from a particular Gospel, in all probability the Gospel according to the Hebrews, different from ours." (Vol. ii. p. 302.)

The last place noticed is Justin's reproduction of John iii. 3-5, in connection with the institution of baptism. After discussing this at some length, for the purpose of magnifying the differences and minimizing the resemblances, his conclusion is:--

"As both the Clementines and Justin made use of the Gospel according
to Hebrews, the most competent critics have, with reason, adopted
the conclusion that the passage we are discussing was derived from
that Gospel; at any rate it cannot for a moment he maintained as a
quotation from our fourth Gospel, and it is of no value as evidence
for its existence." ("Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 313.)

We have now tolerably full means of judging what a wonderful Gospel this Gospel to the Hebrews must have been, and what a loss the Church has sustained by its extinction.

Here was a Gospel which contained a harmony of the history, moral teaching, and doctrine of all the four. As we have seen, it contained an account of the miraculous Birth and Infancy, embodying in one narrative the facts contained in the first and third Gospels. It contained a narrative of the events preceding and attending our Lord's Death, far fuller and more complete than that of any single Gospel in the Canon. It contained a record of the teaching of Christ, similar to our present Sermon on the Mount, embodying the teaching scattered up and down in all parts of SS. Matthew and Luke, and in addition to all this it embodied the very peculiar tradition, both in respect of doctrine and of history, of the fourth Gospel.

How could it possibly have happened that a record of the highest value, on account both of its fulness and extreme antiquity, should have perished, and have been superseded by four later and utterly unauthentic productions, one its junior by at least 120 years, and each one of these deriving from it only a part of its teaching; the first three, for no conceivable reason, rejecting all that peculiar doctrine now called Johannean, and the fourth confining itself to reproducing this so-called Johannean element and this alone? It is only necessary to state this to show the utter absurdity of the author's hypothesis.

But the marvel is that a person assuming such airs of penetration and research [63:1] should not have perceived that, if he has proved his point, he has simply strengthened the evidence for the supernatural, for he has proved the existence of a fifth Gospel, far older and fuller than any we now possess, witnessing to the supernatural Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

The author strives to undermine the evidence for the authenticity of our present Gospels for an avowedly dogmatic purpose. He believes in the dogma of the impossibility of the supernatural; he must, for this purpose, discredit the witness of the four, and he would fain do this by conjuring up the ghost of a defunct Gospel, a Gospel which turns out to be far more emphatic in its testimony to the supernatural and the dogmatic than any of the four existing ones, and so the author of this pretentious book seems to have answered himself. His own witnesses prove that from the first there has been but one account of Jesus of Nazareth.


SECTION XI.

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON OUR LORD'S GODHEAD.


The author of "Supernatural Religion" has directed his attacks more particularly against the authenticity of the Gospel according to St. John. His desire to discredit this Gospel seems at times to arise out of a deep personal dislike to the character of the disciple whom Jesus loved. (Vol. ii. pp. 403-407, 427, 428, &c.)

On the author's principles, it is difficult to understand the reason for such an attack on this particular Gospel. He is not an Arian or Socinian (as the terms are commonly understood), who might desire to disparage the testimony of this Gospel to the Pre-existence and Godhead of our Lord. His attack is on the Supernatural generally, as witnessed to by any one of the four Gospels; and it is allowed on all hands that the three Synoptics were written long before the Johannean; and, besides this, he has proved to his own satisfaction, and to the satisfaction of the Reviewers who so loudly applauded his work, that there existed a Gospel long anterior to the Synoptics, which is more explicit in its declarations of the Supernatural than all of them put together.

However, as he has made a lengthened and vigorous attempt to discredit this Gospel especially, it may be well to show his extraordinary misconceptions respecting the mere contents of the Fourth Gospel, and the opinions of the Fathers (notably Justin