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

many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ.
And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us,
had condemned Him to the cross, those that loved Him at the first
did not forsake Him; for He appeared to them alive again the third
day; as the Divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand
other wonderful things concerning Him. And the tribe of Christians,
so named from Him, are not extinct at this day."

Now, on external grounds there seems little doubt of the genuineness of this passage. It is in all copies of the historian's work, and is quoted in full by Eusebius, though not alluded to by fathers previous to his day. [183:1] If it is an interpolation, it must have been by the hand of a Christian; and yet it is absolutely inconceivable that any Christian should have noticed the Christian Church in such words as "the tribe of Christians, so named from Him, are not extinct at this day." It would have been absurd beyond measure to have described the Christians, so early as Justin's time even, as "not extinct," when they were filling the world with their doctrine, and their increase was a source of great perplexity and trouble to the Roman Government. It is just what a Jew of Josephus' time would have written who really believed that Jesus wrought miracles, but expected that nothing permanent would result from them.

And yet there can be no doubt but that the passage is open to this insurmountable objection, that if Josephus had written it he would have professed himself a Christian, or a man of incredible inconsistency. Setting aside the difficulty connected with the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Christ, inasmuch as this name was frequently given to Him by those who did not believe in Him, yet how could Josephus state that His Resurrection was predicted by the prophets of his nation, and continue in appearance an unbeliever?

But, whether genuine or not, this passage is decisive as to the impossibility of what is styled an independent testimony to our Lord: "He that is not with Me is against Me." The facts of our Lord's chief miracles and Resurrection were such, that the nearer men lived to the time the more impossible it would have been for them to have suspended their judgment.

So that, instead of having the witness of men who, by their prudent suspension of judgment, betrayed their lurking unbelief, we have the testimony of men who, by their surrender of themselves, soul and body, evinced their undoubting faith in a matter in which there could be really no middle opinion.


SECTION XXV.

DATE OF TESTIMONY.


One point remains--the time to which the testimony to our Lord's miracles reaches back. Can it be reasonably said to reach to within fifty years of His Death, or to within twenty, or even nearer?

The author of "Supernatural Religion" asserts that it was not contemporaneous or anything like it. In fact, one might infer from his book that the miracles of Christ were not heard of till say a century, or three quarters of a century, after His time, for he says, "they were never heard of out of Palestine until long after the events are said to have occurred." [185:1] (P. 192.)

In such a case, "long after" is very indefinite. It may be a century, or three quarters of a century, or perhaps half a century. It cannot be less, for every generation contains a considerable number of persons whose memories reach back for forty or fifty years. In a place of 3,000 inhabitants, in which I am now writing, there are above fifty persons who can perfectly remember all that took place in 1830. There are some whose memories reach to twenty years earlier. Now let the reader try and imagine, if he can, the possibility of ascribing a number of remarkable acts--we will not say miraculous ones--to some one who died in 1830, and assuming also that these events were the basis of a society which had commenced with his death, and was now making way, and that the chief design of the society was to make known or keep up the memory of these events, and that there had been a literature written between the present time and the time of the said man's death, every line of which had been written on the assumption that the events in question were true, and yet these events had never really taken place. We must also suppose that the person upon whom these acts are attempted to be fastened was regarded with intense dislike by the great majority of his contemporaries, who did all they could to ruin him when alive, and blacken his memory after he had died, and who looked with especial dislike on the idea that he was supposed to have done the acts in question. Let the reader, I say, try and imagine all this, and he will see that, in the case of our Lord, the author's "long after" must be sixty or seventy years at the least; more likely a hundred.

Let us now summon another witness to the supernatural, whose testimony we promised to consider, and this shall be Clement of Rome--the earliest author to whom it has suited the purpose of the author of "Supernatural Religion" to refer.

If we are to rely upon the almost universal consent of ancient authors rather than the mere conjectures of modern critics, he is the person alluded to by St. Paul in the words, "With Clement also, and with other my fellow labourers, whose names are written in the book of life." (Phil. iv. 3.)

Of this man Eusebius writes:--

"In the twelfth year of the same reign (Domitian's), after Anecletus
had been bishop of Rome twelve years, he was succeeded by Clement,
whom the Apostle, in his Epistle to the Philippians, shows had been
his fellow-labourer in these words: 'With Clement also and the rest
of my fellow-labourers, whose names are in the book of life.' Of
this Clement there is one Epistle extant, acknowledged as genuine,
of considerable length and of great merit, which he wrote in the
name of the Church at Rome, to that of Corinth, at the time when
there was a dissension in the latter. This we know to have been
publicly read for common benefit, in most of the Churches both in
former times and in our own." (Eccles. Hist. B. III. xv. xvi.)

Origen confirms this. Clement of Alexandria reproduces several pages from his Epistle, calling him "The Apostle Clement," [187:1] and Irenaeus speaks of him as the companion of the Apostles:--

"This man, as he had seen the blessed Apostles and been conversant
with them, might be said to have the preaching of the Apostles still
echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes." (Bk.
III. ch. iii. 3)

Irenaeus, it is to be remembered, died at the end of the second century, and his birth is placed within the first quarter of it, so that, in all probability, he had known numbers of Christians who had conversed with Clement.

According to the author of "Supernatural Religion," the great mass of critics assign the Epistle of Clement to between the years A.D. 95-100.

In dealing with this Epistle I shall, for argument's sake, assume that Clement quoted from an earlier Gospel than any one of our present ones, and that the one he quoted might be the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and I shall ask the same question that I asked respecting Justin Martyr--What views of Christ's Person and work and doctrine did he derive from this Gospel of his?

The Epistle of Clement is one in which we should scarcely expect to find much reference to the Supernatural, for it is written throughout for the one practical purpose of healing the divisions in the Church of Corinth. These the writer ascribes to envy, and cites a number of Scripture examples of the evil effects of this disposition and the good effects of the contrary one. He adheres to this purpose throughout, and every word he writes bears more or less directly on his subject. Yet in this document, from which, by its design, the subject of the supernatural seems excluded, we have all the leading features of supernatural Christianity. We have the Father sending the Son (ch. xlii.); we have the Son coming of the seed of Jacob according to the Flesh (ch. xxxii.); we have the words, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, the sceptre of the Majesty of God, did not come in the pomp of pride and arrogance, although He might have done so, but in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit had declared regarding Him" (ch. xvi.); and at the end of the same we have:--

"If the Lord thus humbled Himself, what shall we do who have through
Him come under the yoke of His grace?"

Clement describes Him in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews as One--

"Who, being the brightness of His [God's] Majesty, is by so much
greater than the angels as He hath by inheritance obtained a more
excellent name than they." (Ch. xxxvi.)

We have Clement speaking continually of the Death of Jesus as taking place for the highest of supernatural purposes,--the reconciliation of all men to God. "Let us look," he writes, "steadfastly to the Blood of Christ, and see how precious that Blood is to God, which, having been shed for our salvation, has set the grace of repentance before the whole world." (Ch. vii.) Again, "And thus they made it manifest that Redemption should flow through the Blood of the Lord to all them that believe and hope in God." (Ch. xii.) Again, "On account of the love He bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His Blood for us by the will of God, His Flesh for our flesh, and His Soul for our souls." (Ch. xlix.) His sufferings are apparently said by Clement to be the sufferings of God. (Ch. ii.) But, above all, the statement of the truth of our Lord's Resurrection, and of ours through His, is as explicit as possible:--

"Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord continually proves to us
that there shall be a future resurrection, of which He has rendered
the Lord Jesus the first fruits by raising Him from the dead." (Ch.
xxiv.)

"[The Apostles] having therefore received their orders, and being
fully assured by the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
established in the Word of God, with full assurance of the Holy
Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was at
hand." (Ch. xlii.)

When we look to Clement's theology, we find it to have been what would now be called, in the truest and best sense of the word, "Evangelical," thus:--

"We too, being called by His