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laces, her frizzles, and her bobbins, though she wince and fling never so peevishly.'

"Remonst. Those verbal exceptions are but light froth, and will sink alone.'

"Ans. O rare subtlety, beyond all that Cardan ever dreamed of! when will light froth sink? Here, in your phrase, the same day that heavy plummets will swim alone. Trust this man, readers, if you please, whose divinity would reconcile England with Rome, and his philosophy make friends nature with the chaos, sine pondere habentia pondus.'

"Remonst. That scum may be worth taking off, which follows.'

"Ans. Spare your ladle, sir: it will be as the bishop's foot in the broth; the scum will be found upon your own remonstrance.'

"It is evident," our critic might say, "that the man who could write pages of such stuff as this, could not be the author of Paradise Lost."' Which of these, then, was John Milton? Ancient writers declare Milton to have been a Puritan, a friend and secretary of Cromwell, a schoolmaster, the writer of a Latin dictionary and the 'History of England.' When could he have written the 'Paradise Lost'? All tradition agrees, that it was not published till 1667. But then he was already fifty-nine years old; and he died seven years after, blind, and tormented with the gout. Is it credible that this splendid poem could have been composed at such a time of life, and under such circumstances, by one who had given all his mature years to politics, sectarian theology, and Latin dictionaries?

"It is true," our thirty-fifth century critic might add, "that the scattering notices of this poem before the nineteenth century do all attribute it to the puritan John Milton. But it is a suspicious circumstance, that one of these writers, named Johnson (who flourished about A.D. 1760), speaks of the 'long obscurity and late reception' of this poem, 'and that it did not break into open view' till the Revolution of 1688. It is also remarkable, that the most eminent contemporaries of this writer do not speak of the poem, or know of it. Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Locke, Newton, Leibnitz, all living at the

same time, are ignorant of the existence of 'Paradise Lost.' If such a great poem had then been published, is it possible that they should not have read it? It is still more singular, that the public attention was first called to it, forty or fifty years after its supposed date, by a writer of periodical papers, named Addison. Before his time, only one eminent man appears to have known of it, and that one another poet, named Dryden, who gives it great praise. Now, Dryden was universally admitted to have been a genius of the first order, and a celebrated poet; while Milton, as we have seen, was known only as a prose writer, and a very prosaic prose writer. Milton was incapable of writing the 'Paradise Lost;' for though some shorter poems seem to have been attributed to him, yet the critic before referred to (Johnson) says that those who pretend to like them force their judgment into false approbation of these little pieces, and prevail on themselves to think that admirable which is only singular.' He adds of one, that 'its diction is harsh, its rhymes uncertain, and its numbers unpleasing;' and of another, in this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth.' If, therefore, Milton wrote the shorter poems, he evidently did not write the longer one. Youth is the season of poetry. If in his youth he tried to write poetry, and wrote it so badly, is it probable that, old and blind, after spending his life in teaching school, making dictionaries, and writing bitter theological essays, he could suddenly fall heir to the splendid genius which irradiates the 'Paradise Lost'? Milton could not have written this poem. But Dryden could. And there was very good reason why Dryden should conceal the fact; for he had been a Puritan, and had become a Catholic. He probably wrote the poem before his change of opinion; and this accounts for the religious views which it contains. He dared not publish it openly under his own name, after becoming a Catholic, and could not bear to suppress it. Nothing remained but to publish it under the name of another; and he selected that of Milton the Puritan, as an obscure man, to whom it might easily be attributed. This supposition, and only this, accounts for all the facts in the case."

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An ingenious critic can always find such arguments as these by which to unsettle the authenticity of any book, no matter how long or how universally ascribed to a particular author. But which is likely to be right, the individual critic, or the universal opinion? Shall we trust the common belief of a period near enough to have the means of knowing the truth, yet distant enough to have had time to gather up all the threads of evidence; or the reasonings and judgment of a man living ten or fifteen centuries after?

Mr. Tayler says, "With Irenæus and Tertullian, who mark the transition from the second to the third century, the testimony to the apostolic origin and authority of the fourth Gospel becomes so clear, express, and full, and the verdict of the Catholic Church respecting it so decisive, that it is quite unnecessary to pursue the line of witnesses any farther." Now Mr. Tayler supposes it to have been forged or invented after A.D. 135. In less than sixty-five years, then, this false book is universally received as the work of a great apostle, who could hardly have been dead fifty years when the Gospel was written, and not a hundred when it was thus universally received as his. Wesley has now been dead just about as long as the Apostle John had been dead when the fourth Gospel was universally ascribed to him. Who can think that a work on religion, essentially differing from Wesley's other books, could have been forged a few years after his death and be now universally accepted in all the Methodist churches of Europe and America as his authentic writing? Yet this is what we are invited to believe concerning the fourth Gospel.

In deciding such questions, too much extent is given to the function of criticism, which only judges by the letter. The critical faculty in man is an important one, certainly; but as certainly gives us no knowledge of God or man, of spirit or matter, of law or love. All it can do is to "peep and botanize; "take to pieces the living flower, in order to see how many stamens it has; "murder to dissect." All the large movements of man's soul are above its reach. It gropes in the dark, like a mole. A single new experience, one inspired

impulse, will set aside its most carefully built up array of evidence. It can judge of the future only by the past,—and usually by a very narrow past; and so is very apt to be deceived.

The French proverb says, "On peut être plus fin qu'un autre, mais pas plus fin que tous les autres." We may believe that our critics in the nineteenth century are very sharp fellows indeed; but do they know more about John and his writings than all the Christian Churches in the third century together? Possibly there may have been some critical persons there too, and with much better means of knowledge than we have. There were Christians then who had some power of trying spirits, to see whether they were of God or not; who could tell if a new Gospel, which was no Gospel, was handed to them, giving a wholly new account of their Master than that which they had been taught by apostolic tradition. According to Mr. Tayler's supposition, there was not in all the churches, at the beginning of the third century, a single man who could look this false John in the face, and tear off his mask, saying, "Jesus I know, Paul I know, Matthew and Mark and Luke I know; but who are you?" But there were men in the churches then, as well as before and after, who had been taught acuteness in the keen discussions of the Jewish and Greek schools, whose wits had been sharpened by rabbinical debates, and who were quite able to see the difference between the Jesus of Luke and the Christ of John. Why, then, was not a single voice raised, in all the churches, against this intruder? The only possible answer is, that he came with such guarantees of his character as silenced all question. Can we imagine that Christians in the first and second century were ignorant of the fact, if one of the twelve apostles was still living at Ephesus?

Mr. Tayler's book is a full discussion of the whole question. All that bears on the authority and authorship of the fourth Gospel has been brought together; and he has not found one writer in the first centuries expressing any doubt of St. John's being the author of the fourth Gospel. All that is said is in its favor: the only objection is, that there is not more. As

far as external evidence goes, one should, methinks, be satisfied if it is all one way. But a critic, whose object is to discredit a book or writer, can find fault very easily. Not that Mr. Tayler means to be unfair; but he is a student in the school of Baur, and would be more than human if he had not caught the habit there of hinting a fault and hesitating dislike.

The external evidence, pro and con, may be summed up thus: All that we have, in regard to the fourth Gospel in the first two centuries, is in its favor; and by the end of the second century the testimony is so full and plain, that even Tübingen critics must admit it to be satisfactory. When the young lady complained that she had not time enough, the reply was not unreasonable,-that she had "all the time there was." To those who want more evidence of the authenticity of the fourth Gospel, we may in like manner reply, that "they have all the evidence there is."

The unanimity of the churches at the end of the second century, in receiving this Gospel as the work of the apostle, is such an inexplicable fact, supposing it to have been forged, that the defenders of this hypothesis are obliged to take the position, that Christians were then so uncritical, that they were willing to accept any writing which seemed edifying, as authentic, without examination or evidence. But this is a mere assumption, contradicted by all the facts of the case. Luke, in the preface to his Gospel, already assumes the critical position, though he criticises and denies for the sake of affirming. He rejects the false, in order to retain the true. His reason for writing his Gospel, he tells us, is, that because so many were undertaking to relate the apostolic traditions concerning Jesus, he wrote his Gospel from very accurate knowledge and the best opportunities, so that Theophilus might have "certainty" (uoqάleur) in his belief. His object was a critical one, to separate the uncertain and doubtful accounts of Jesus from those well-ascertained and verified. This does not look as if there was no critical sense in the Church.

We know, moreover, that many apocryphal and doubtful Gospels were in circulation at the beginning. They were not

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