conclusive reason may be given :-We have the Targums or Jewish Paraphrases, written about the time of the Apostles or before, of all the Books of our Old Testament, Targums of the Law, Targums of the Prophets, Targums of the Chebuthim or Hagiographa, --but none of the Apocrypha. And, lastly, our Lord and His Apostles make 283 quotations from the Old Testament, and not one of these is from the Apocrypha. Whereas, of the Books which we hold to be canonical there are only six which are not quoted. On this evidence, our Church asserts with some confidence that the Old Testament as we have it was the Old Testament sanctioned by our Lord and His Apostles, exclusive of the Apocrypha.

As regards the Canon of the New Testament there is no difference between the Anglican and any other branch of the Catholic Church. But the reasons for which we hold these twenty-seven Books to be canonical are not quite the same as those assigned by the Church of Rome. The Church of Rome receives them on the simple authority of a decree of a Council,2 believing that the Church is not only "a witness and a keeper," but also an infallible judge of Holy Writ. The English Church believes these twenty-seven Books to have Divine authority—

First, because it is abundantly evident, from the New Testament itself, that a certain group of Apostolic men had a special gift of inspiration; and,

I

Secondly, because the concurrent testimony of the

1 Judges, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, are not quoted in the N. T.

2 The Council of African Bishops at Carthage, A.D. 397, at which St. Augustine was present.

3 Art. XX.

early Church proves that these twenty-seven Books were written by that group of Apostolic men.

Thus our confidence in their Divine authority rests partly on internal evidence and partly on tradition. Thus our appeal is not to the sanction, but rather to the witness of the Church. If we have sufficient witness that the Books are genuine,—written, as they profess to be, by Apostolical men,-then we have Christ's own sanction for their Divine authority. It is quite unnecessary here to give the early Church's testimony to the genuineness of these Books of the New Testament: it consists of four kinds :

1. Manuscripts, as old as the fifth and even fourth centuries.

2. Versions in various languages, the Syriac being made as early as the second century.

3. Catalogues given by the writers already named on page 29 and others, the oldest being that of Papias (A.D. 140-150), and of the Muratorian fragment (A.D. 170?).

4. Quotations, which are so abundant in the writers of the second, third, fourth, and fifth centuries, that almost the whole of our New Testament might be compiled from them.

Such are the grounds on which the several Books of our Bible are received by the English Church as canonical, and distinguished from those which we hold to be uncanonical.

LESSON IV.

OF THE BIBLE AND THE CREEDS CONTINUED.

THE

ARTICLE VII.

Of the Old Testament.

THE Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, Who is the only Mediator between God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises.

Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian Men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.

Notes.-The Article declares two things :-(1) That eternal life is offered to mankind in the Old as well as in the New Testament through Jesus Christ, and that the Fathers looked for a world to come: and (2) that

the civil and ceremonial part of the Mosaic Law is abrogated, while the moral part is still binding.

I. Some (like Bishop Warburton), noticing the absence of any appeal to future rewards or punishments in the Law of Moses, have argued that a knowledge of the world to come was withheld from God's ancient . people. Those who draw this inference misunderstand the intention of the Law of Moses. It was not intended to give the people a religion. They had a religion already. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, makes this quite clear, saying that the Law was a something superadded to a previously existing religion (iii. 19). What was this previously existing religion ? It was the Promise made to Abraham. And what was this Promise? It was the promise of a Seed in Whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed (iii. 17). Abraham and all the Patriarchs clearly looked forward to enjoying in their own persons the fulfilment of this future blessedness. Abraham rejoiced to think that he should see the Messiah's day (John viii. 56); he had so intense a faith that the covenant God had made with him was an everlasting covenant (Gen. xvii. 7), and that death could not frustrate it, that he hesitated not to slay his son, feeling sure death was not the end of life. So Jacob on the very point of death, amid all his dark forebodings about his sons, breaks forth into thankfulness that at last he was on the point of attaining the salvation which God had promised him ("I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord," Gen. xlix. 18). So (as our Lord pointed out to the Sadducees in Luke xx. 37), long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead, God continued to call Himself their God, showing that

they were still in covenant with Him,-living therefore in another world. If any doubt about the patriarchs' belief in a future state were left, the eleventh chapter of Hebrews would entirely remove it :-" These all died in faith, not having" (in this life) "received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. . . . They desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God" (our Lord's argument in Luke xx. 37). And that their hope of this everlasting life was based on Christ, that is, on the promised Messiah, is plain from the way in which they treasured the promise made to Abraham, renewed to David in Nathan's great prophecy (2 Sam. vii. 12-14), and reappearing continually in the Psalms and Prophets. The hope of this Messiah was the national hope. And although it would be too much to affirm that the people generally, before their return from Captivity, embraced the hope of a resurrection to life when their Messiah should appear, yet clearly holy men here and there among them, patriarchs or prophets ("the old Fathers" of this Article), were inspired with this belief; and in the time of the Maccabees it had become the popular creed.

We too, in the light of the New Testament, see and understand that in their whole sacrificial system they were (perhaps unconsciously) pleading the One great Sacrifice which in the fulness of time was to be accomplished. The language of this first part of the Article is, therefore, fully warranted by Scripture.