Secondly: In treating of the written evidences of Christianity, next to
their separate, we are to consider their aggregate authority. Now, there
is in the evangelic history a cumulation of testimony which belongs
hardly to any other history, but which our habitual mode of reading the
Scriptures sometimes causes us to overlook. When a passage, in any wise
relating to the history of Christ is read to us out of the epistle of
Clemens Romanus, the epistles of Ignatius, of Polycap, or from any other
writing of that age, we are immediately sensible of the confirmation
which it affords to the Scripture account. Here is a new witness. Now,
if we had been accustomed to read the Gospel of Matthew alone, and had
known that of Luke only as the generality of Christians know the
writings of the apostolical fathers, that is, had known that such a
writing was extant and acknowledged; when we came, for the first time,
to look into what it contained, and found many of the facts which
Matthew recorded, recorded also there, many other facts of a similar
nature added, and throughout the whole work the same general series of
transactions stated, and the same general character of the person who
was the subject of the history preserved, I apprehend that we should
feel our minds strongly impressed by this discovery of fresh evidence.
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