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النشر الإلكتروني

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VIEW OF THE EVIDENCE,

&c.

CHAPTER I.

THE FORTITUDE AND CONSTANCY OF ST. PETER, AS A PREACHER OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED, AFFORD THE STRONGEST GROUND FOR BELIEVING THAT HE WAS AIDED BY THE SPIRIT Of God.

ST. PETER, during his attendance upon Christ, gave little promise of the character which he afterwards sustained. He was naturally of an ardent and zealous spirit, but he showed no marks of the patient courage, the stedfastness in the hour of trial, the settled resolution in the face of danger, for which he is distinguished in the history of the Acts of the Apostles1. He once obtained permis

1 When appeal is made to the occurrences of the life and ministry of St. Peter, recorded in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles, I suppose myself addressing readers, who believe that these Histories were written by the authors to whom they are

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sion to walk to Jesus on the water, but his confidence forsook him, when he was suffered to make the experiment. After the most vehement protestations of affection and fidelity, he could not watch with his Lord one hour in the garden of Gethsemane. He left Him in the hands of His enemies,

ascribed, and have been transmitted to our times free from alteration of any moment. It was, at first, my intention to prefix a summary of the arguments for the genuineness and uncorrupted preservation of the Historical Records of the New Testament, these being points upon the truth of which the reasoning in the following pages depends for support; but I abandoned this design, considering that it had been most satisfactorily executed by several well-known writers, and that the chief opponents of Christianity, ancient and modern, have admitted the genuineness and integrity of the accounts of the origin of our faith by levelling their objections, not against the Histories as forgeries, but against the doctrines disclosed, or the matters related in them. Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, and Julian directed their attacks against our historical Scriptures, as Records unquestionably bearing the names of the writers by whom they had been composed. Julian alleged that neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark, called Jesus GoD, but that John alone it was, who gave our Saviour this title. Cyrill. contr. Julian. lib. 10. "Now how wrong soever he was in his observation (says Ditton) yet his concession deserves to be particularly taken notice of; for he lets us know here that he took those writings, which in his times bore the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, to be the genuine products of those authors, or else there had been very little sense in his quoting them to the purpose that he does quote them in this passage. The Emperor was certainly very sensible that the evidences for the genuineness of these Books were, at that time of day in the world, so very clear and convincing that it would have been plainly scandalous for a man to have called them in question." On the Resurrection. Part iii. Sect. 18.

to secure his own safety by flight. He denied Him in the hall of the high-priest.

Was this a disciple to go forth into an unbelieving world, and "stand in jeopardy every hour'," as an assertor of the Gospel truths? Was this a man qualified to resist "the kings of the earth setting themselves in array, and the rulers taking counsel together, against the Lord, and against His Anointed ? ?"

Yet look to this disciple after our Saviour's ascension into glory, and see how "power" was given to the faint," and "strength" increased to him that had "no might "."

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When the Blessed Redeemer had finished the work assigned to Him, and ascended to "the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,' His first act of regal bounty was to send down the Holy Ghost to fit His disciples for the discharge of their commission. This is the Scripture account, and one evidence of the truth of it is discerned in the astonishing alteration in the mind and conduct of St. Peter, from the time at which he is represented as "endued with power from on High "."

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View, on the day of Pentecost, this once disheartened servant of Jesus. He and his brethren

had before held private meetings. They had assem

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bled with the doors of their apartment shut," for fear of the Jews1." No longer did any fear of man perplex their minds. They appeared in public with invincible courage; and Peter, standing up with the eleven, declared in the presence of a vast multitude, gathered together at Jerusalem on occasion of the high festival, that "God had made that same Jesus," whom His enemies had crucified, " both Lord and Christ "." This truth he resolutely proclaimed in the city in which, fifty days before, Jesus had been condemned to death, and in the hearing of the people, at whose instigation He had been scourged, blindfolded, spit upon, treated with every expression of indignity which malice could devise, and led, fainting beneath the cross, to mount Calvary. Peter cared not for the anger of those who had exclaimed with blind obstinacy, "We have no king but Cæsar 3," who had insultingly cried out, "Not this man, but Barabbas +," who had uttered the horrid imprecation, "His blood be on us and on our children 5." He distinctly charged them with their dreadful crime: "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles,

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2 Acts ii. 36.

3 John xix. 15.
5 Matt. xxvii 25.

1 John xx. 19. 4 John xviii. 40. 6 "Ανδρα ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀποδεδειγμένον εἰς ὑμᾶς δυνάμεσι. Kypke proposes to place a comma after Oɛo~—a man from God, manifested among you by miracles - i. e., to have been sent from God.

and wonders, and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands 2 have crucified and slain 3."

The Apostle here asserted, in direct and positive terms, that miracles had been wrought by Jesus in the midst of the Jewish nation, and that the fact of His having wrought them was known to the people addressed. Would Peter have ventured upon this assertion-could he have made it with any advantage to his cause, if the miraculous works of our Saviour had not been evident to all, witnessed and acknowledged by the body of the Jewish people?

The priests and elders had propagated a report, that the body of our Lord had been stolen by His disciples from the sepulchre while the soldiers, ap

1ékdorov, given, or delivered up, or (as Pearce renders ekdorov in this place) having been given forth; i. e., sent into the world, and manifested by being made flesh, and dwelling among you, as it is said in John i. 14. See Acts iv. 28.

2 διὰ χειρῶν ἀνόμων. Allusion may be here made to the Romans, who were avoμot, men without law, (Rom. ii. 12.) strangers to the revealed law of God. Whether this be the allusion, or not, the Jews were the crucifiers of Jesus, by the instrumentality of the Romans; and Peter, in his next address, lays the sin directly to the charge of the Jewish nation: "YE killed the Prince of Life." Acts iii. 15.

3 Acts ii.

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