New Testament epistles

“ These classes are six in number; that containing [pg 078] the Gospels (Evangelia or Evan.) , or the Acts and Catholic Epistles (Act. and Cath.) , or the Pauline Epistles (Paul.) , or the Apocalypse (Apoc.) , or Lectionaries of the Gospels (Evangelistaria or Evst.) , or those of the Acts and Epistles (Apostolos or Apost.) . When one manuscript (as often happens) belongs to more than one of these classes, its distinct parts are numbered separately, so that a copy of the whole New Testament will appear in four lists, and be reckoned four times over. ”

“ The distinctive character of text exhibited by A in the Gospels, by Δ in St Mark, and by Β in the Pauline Epistles, as also the orthography of Β (Ιστρ.) peculiar to the Acts, are instances of indications which equally shew the precariousness of assuming with respect to any one MS of the New Testament that all the books in it were copied from a single volume. ”

“ For the New Testament is not a whit behind the Old in insisting upon this truth. 'All things work together for good to them that love God.' 'All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's.' 'Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?' The New Testament is committed to the same conviction as that to which the faith of Old Testament saints clung as the sheet anchor of their lives. ”

“ The Old Testament is appointed for the first Lessons at Morning, and Evening Prayer; so as the most part thereof will be read every year once as in the Kalendar is appointed.
The New Testament is appointed for the second Lessons at Morning and Evening Prayer, and shall be read over orderly every year thrice, besides the Epistles and Gospels; except the Apocalyps, out of which there are only certein proper Lessons appointed vpon divers Feasts. ”

“ A theory is already propounded, both in private and in a naïve simple way in sermons, that the {229} Old Testament is of no particular moment, all that we need being the New Testament, which has been defended by our valiant apologists and expounded by our admirable interpreters. ”

“ Besides, prophecies fulfilled, seem the most proper of all arguments to evince the truth of a new revelation which is designed to be universally promulgated to men. For a man who has the Old Testament put into his hands, which contain prophecies, and the New Testament afterward, which is said to contain their completions, and is once satisfied, as he may be with the greatest ease, that the Old Testament existed before the New, may have a complete, internal, divine, demonstration of the truth of Christianity, without long, and laborious enquiries. ”

“ There are four Testaments: an Oldest and an Old, a New and a Newest. The Oldest Testament is the Nature of Things. The Newest is Christ’s continued life in the present influences of the Holy Spirit. The Oldest and the Newest are unwritten ”

“ The attempt which is often made to show that the New Testament writers have established, by their testimony, the Old Testament canon, as containing just those books which are in our Old Testament, and no more, is a most unwarrantable distortion of the facts. ”

“ True, the New Testament presents a more complete and perfect revelation, but there are few New Testament truths which have not their roots in the Old. The former presents the full-grown revelation; nevertheless, a vast number of people, who have not yet reached a state of perfection, will understand even New Testament truths more readily as they are presented in the Old Testament; for here they can see the truths in more concrete form; they have flesh and blood; they are struggling for victory over darkness and superstition. ”

“ Thus I finished the Old Testament, considerably shaken in faith; but as the Old Testament belonged to a long past dispensation, I considered it of little value anyway, and approached the study of the New with the hope that all difficulties would be removed and all doubts made clear. If the New Testament was truly inspired of God and infallibly true, what difference did it make if the Old was doubtful and uncertain? ”

“ They accept implicitly and literally the New Testament as the infallible guide in spiritual matters, holding it to be the inspired word of God, revealed through Jesus Christ and, by inspiration, through the Apostles. ”

“ The Old Testament is an anticipatory figure of all the New Testament tells us. The Mosaic dispensation contains, as in an allegory, what the Christian religion shows us in reality; the history of the People of God, its principal personages, its sayings and doings, the very accessories round about it, are a series of images ”

“ By an overwhelming amount of evidence, the author proves that that which is miraculous, found in the New Testament, cannot be of Christian origin, nor can anything of the same kind found in the Old Testament be of Hebrew origin, the conclusion being irresistible, that if the Christian Bibles are of Divine origin, so must also be all the other and older books which contain these parallels. ”