the auditor of his discourses. Without tracing the more doubtful history of his life and sufferings, after the death of his master, we have sufficient here to convince us, that " he knew those things whereof he spake,” that he was a competent evidence of the facts which he related, and that (as I shall afterwards show) we possess his relation of them.

There is no question, however, but that he fulfilled that injunction of our Saviour, after his resurrection, which he has recorded at the close of the Gospel, and which would otherwise rise up in judgment against him: "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father, "and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of "the world"." In obedience to this divine command, he is said to have first preached the Gospel in Judea, and afterwards to have passed into Macedonia, making many con

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St. Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.

verts, and finally to have suffered martyrdom in a city of Ethiopia, of which the name is given by some early writers. But to us, my brethren, he still preaches the word of truth; to us he still testifies of the life and sufferings of his Divine Master; to us he still unfolds our future destination, and prescribes our present duty in that sacred record which he has left behind him, and to which I now call your attention: having spoken of the man, I proceed to consider his work.

I shall pass over briefly a discussion which has arisen, whether St. Matthew, addressing his Gospel principally to the Jews, might not have composed it in their language, which still retained the name of Hebrew, and is so called by the writers of the New Testament, after the Hebrew had ceased to be a living language': because the ques

The testimony of the fathers is varying and uncertain respecting the language in which the Gospel of St. Matthew was originally written. Yet the evidence of Eusebius, Lib. III. c. 22. that the Hebrew Gospel was not received by the Church, and the fact that it was suffered to perish, whilst the work in Greek has been preserved, seem decisive of the questions of originality and authen

D

tion is not essentially connected with the subject-matter of the work; and because the proof that it was in substance written by him, as we now possess it, is of more importance. This Gospel, like the others, has always borne the name of the writer which is now prefixed to it from the time at which it first appeared; nor has any copy of it been ever known to exist bearing any other name or superscription than that of the

ticity. M. Simon, leaning to the opinion that the present work is the translation, states what is perfectly satisfactory to the argument: "Il suffit pour autoriser cette ancienne "version Grecque, qu'elle ait été lue dans les églises fon"dées par les apôtres, et qu'elle soit venue de siècle en “ siècle jusqu'à nous par une tradition constante.”—Hist. Critique du Nouv. Test. c. ix.

On the language spoken by the Jews in the time of our Saviour, see the learned and accurate little work of Giambernardo de Rossi, "Della Lingua propria di Cristo e

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degli Ebrei Nazionali della Palestina da' Tempi de' Mac"cabei." This learned person clearly establishes that the language spoken in Palestine in the time of our Saviour, namely, the Syro-Chaldaic, is that which is familiarly called in the New Testament the Hebrew: "E certo che quella "lingua di spesso viene da essi (i scrittori sagro-santi del "Nuovo Testamento) chiamata col nome di Ebraica."Dissert. II. c. 25.-See also Salmasius de Hellenistica, p. 181. ed. Lugd. Bat. 1643.

Gospel according to Matthew, or St. Matthew. Under this appellation it is cited by those early writers who, living close to the time of the Evangelist, could neither be ignorant of the real author, nor have any common motive inducing them to conspire in the groundless assumption of this disciple's name. Further, it contains none of those discrepancies in unessential matters from the usages of the time in which it professes to have been written, or from the manners and polity of the people of which it treats, from whence forgeries are invariably detected by the scrutinizing eye of criticism. Its authenticity is sustained by the testimony of enemies as well as friends; for though there were some early heretics in the Church, (the Marcionites and Cerdonians,) who denied the paramount authority of this Gospel, as refuting their peculiar

• We learn from Epiphanius that Marcion, who was the disciple of Cerdon, came to Rome after the death of Pope Hyginus, that is, according to the computation of Baronius, A.D. 157. Tertullian is more doubtful, and assigns two dates for the occurrence. The difference of four is not worth discussing here.

years

tenets, none ever denied that it was written by the hand of him whose name it bore. That it is essentially unaltered, that it has descended to us as its author first sent it forth into the world, is rendered indisputably evident by the quotations from it, to be found in ecclesiastical writers of different countries through every age, from the very era of its promulgation to the invention of that art which now places it in the hands of the humblest Christian. It is further proper to remark, that the value of this, and the other Scriptures, was greatly enhanced to their first possessors by the danger to which they were exposed who retained them in their possession during seasons of persecution and that which men guard with imminent peril from external violence, they will with equal care protect from internal change or corruption. Various persecutions have been raised against the sacred writings themselves, and the converts to Christianity have been ordered, on pain of death, to deliver up the records on which their faith was founded, in order to be destroyed. The Emperor Diocletian, a man