records of the Christian faith. During their lives, they could easily rectify the mistakes and heresies that arose to disturb the peace of the churches. But after their decease, things would fall into their ordinary course, the state of the church would be altered from the extraordinary guidance of the apostles, to the ordinary guidance of imperfect men. Feeble persons would soon mistake in doctrine; their memory would fail to retain what had been taught them; false brethren would come in; damnable heresies would be privily taught. There would want authoritative decisions, a standard, a rule to which all claims might be referred. God, who inspired the apostles to teach the world, inspired them therefore to write what they taught, for the preservation of the faith uncontaminated to every future age. And can any thing be more pernicious, than to suppose, without any one argument from reason or scripture, that the Holy Spirit assisted them in the temporary instruction of a passing age, but left them to themselves in their permanent doctrine, in which the church, through all future ages, was interested; that they were inspired in discharging one part of their office, but deserted by the divine Enlightener when they sat down to the other; that the Spirit was bountifully with them in their assemblies, but withdrew when they retired to their studies; that their speech was with infallibility and power, but their writing with a mixture of feebleness and imperfection; that they were supernaturally aided in explaining the mysteries of the gospel in their discourses, but left destitute when reducing those discourses to writing; that their sermons were the word of God, but their books the word of man! 7

7" You will remember, that the doctrines of the Christian revelation," says Bishop Horsley against them who denied the miraculous nativity, and the inspiration of the evangelists, "were not originally delivered in a system, but interwoven in the history of our Saviour's life. To say, therefore, that the first preachers were not inspired in the composition of the

Besides, we are to recollect, that the apostles perpetually appeal in their espistles to what they had taught, as corresponding with what they wrote, and confirming it. They speak of their preaching and writing indifferently as the same gospel. "Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, how I told you of these things ?-We write none other things unto you, than what you read or acknowledge, and I trust you shall acknowledge even unto the end.-Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me." Such is the language which marks the identity of their discourses and letters. But this identity is definitely settled by the authority of God himself. Every one of the attestations in the New Testament to the full inspiration of the Old, as the words of the Holy Ghost, is applied indifferently to what was spoken by Moses, and David, and Isaiah, and the other prophets, and to what was written by them; nay, though the passages, as cited, were of necessity taken from the written canon of the Jewish church, they are expressly described as spoken by God, uttered by the mouth of God, said or declared by the Holy Ghost.

narratives in which their doctrine is conveyed, is nearly the same thing as to deny their inspiration in general. You will perhaps, think it incredible, that they who were assisted by the divine Spirit when they preached, should be deserted by that Spirit when they committed what they had preached to writing. You will think it improbable, that they who were endowed with the gift of discerning spirits, should be endowed with no gift of discerning the truth of facts. You will recollect one instance in which St. Peter detected a falsehood by the light of inspiration; and you will, perhaps, be inclined to think, that it could be of no less importance to the church, that the apostles and evangelists should be enabled to detect falsehoods in the history of our Saviour's life, than that St. Peter should be enabled to detect Ananias's lie, about the sale of his estate. You will think it unlikely, that they who were led by the Spirit into all truth, should be permitted to lead the whole church for many ages into error."-Sermon xxxiv. Luke i. 28.

Further, the epistles were chiefly addressed to the newly-founded churches, to guard them, as we have just observed, against seducers; to correct rising errors, to communicate a full knowledge of the gospel, to establish them in the faith, to call them back from false teachers, to the doctrine and teaching of the apostles; to remind them of what they had heard from their fathers in Christ at their first conversion ; to be the guide and standard of truth, after the decease of the apostles; to supply, in short, the personal presence and authority of the evangelists and apostles in every age. The epistles, therefore, are silent preachers, representatives of those who wrote them; summaries of their oral instructions; sermons adapted to the most important emergencies of the churches, and delivered permanently by pen and ink, instead of, on any one occasion, by actual bodily presence and voice. But what would all this have availed, if the slightest suspicion of inaccuracy could have been justly imputed to these communications? What disputes would have been adjusted? What errors corrected? What agitations calmed? What authoritative determinations concluded? What measures of peace and truth restored? What standard erected for future ages?

The churches, also, then abounded with persons endued themselves with miraculous gifts; themselves speaking with tongues, themselves illuminated with the word of wisdom and knowledge, themselves capable of prophecying and interpreting tongues, and discerning spirits. To have addressed, therefore, to converts thus gifted, human and fallible epistles, would have been to send an uninspired writing to an illuminated and inspired body of Christians.

Would the Corinthians, for instance, divided amongst themselves, vain of the spiritual gifts with which they abounded, and distracted by false teachers, have listened for one moment to the exhortations and reproofs

of the Apostle, if they had not known that "Christ was speaking in him," and that miraculous punishments would visit the disobedient? In fact, the very "unction from the Holy One by which the first Christians knew all things, and needed not," comparatively speaking, "that any should teach them," but were enabled to " try the spirits whether they were of God;" would most assuredly have detected a defective canon of faith, and induced them to refuse obedience to a rule inferior in any respects, to that which their own recollection of the apostolical discourses, and their own comparison of the Old Testament with the gospels, might in some points have supplied.

The inspiration, then, of the instructions, oral and written, of the apostles, was full and complete, in consequence of the abundant gifts of the Holy Ghost; and absolutely excluded all intermixture of human frailty with their divine communications.

III. But I appeal to what THE APOSTLES THEMSELVES CLAIM UPON THIS SUBJECT. I appeal to THEIR OWN assertions of the divine inspiration of their writings.

Bear in mind the acknowledged facts of the case. The apostles received a revelation from heaven to communicate to mankind; they place their books on the same footing, and claim for them the same authority, as the divinely-inspired writings of the Old Testament. They are endowed with an exuberant supply of miraculous gifts according to the promise of their Lord. They are accompanied in their progress in promulgating the gospel, with incessant demonstrations of the Holy Ghost. They are not merely authentic and credible witnesses; they are persons divinely-authorized, divinely-gifted, divinely-inspired. All this we now take for admitted, because it has been fully and distinctly proved. If, therefore,

they use such language as manifestly asserts a direct and plenary inspiration in all their epistles; if they claim the implicit obedience of mankind to their instructions as to the direct word of God, we cannot doubt that they were assisted and conducted by the full superintendence and suggestions of the Holy Ghost.

We begin, then, with the first letter addressed by the College of Apostles to the Brethren of the Gentiles. This brief address on a temporary subject, will give us a pledge of what aid they received in their writings designed for every age. In the course, then, of this short letter, they use, without any mark of its being an unexpected circumstance, these words, "for it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." Hence the apostolical epistles are inspired by the Holy Ghost.

Open, in the next place, the first of the epistles to the churches generally, to the Romans for instance; what is the authority which it assumes? How does it begin and close? "Paul a servant of Jesus Christ called to be an Apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name; grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." The Apostle, you see, is separated unto the gospel; he receives, not only the apostleship, but grace for that apostleship; all nations are required to receive with implicit faith his instructions; every word he writes is as from Christ himself. And how does he conclude his epistle? "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Amen. Now unto him that is of power establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began; but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of

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