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Show 6 the influence of the Holy Spirit, to be lost. It is no small reflection on the wisdom of the Divine Being, to say that he first influenced the writing of a set of books, (i. e., by his own extraordinary impressions on men's minds caused them to be written,) and afterwards permitted them by chance, or the negligence of men, to he lost. And, in thesecond place, the contrary to this is manifest from the great care which God has in all ages taken to preserve the Holy Scriptures,, even. when the persons with w h o m they were entrusted were under circumstances, in which, without a special interference of a superintending Providence, it would have been almost impossible for them to have preserved them. For instance, when the Jews were under the tyranny of Antiochus Epbinanes, although that monster of iniquity laid their temple and their city waste, destroyed all their sacred books he could meet with, and at length published a decree that all those should1 suffer immediate death who did not resign their copies, yet was. the sacred volume preserved, and care was taken of it by its Author. So also, under the Christian persecutions, no endeavours have been wanting to extirpate and abolish the Holy Scriptures ; and yet they have hitherto been preserved.. Even when the EmperOr Dioclesiah, in his imperial edict, among other cruelties, enacted, that all the sacred books should be burned, wherever they were found, the courage and resolution of the Christians, (under God,) which baffled and frustrated the designs of bis rage in all other instances, frustrated them very remarkably in this. Nor indeed could it be otherwise, when we consider that the canonical books, either in the original languages, or by means of numerous versions, were dispersed into the most distant countries, and were in the possession of innumerable persons. W e may, therefore, be satisfied with the perfect assurance, that for any of the canonical books to be lost would be next to impossible. What has given credit to the objection of infidel writers, that some of these books are lost, is the notion that the books, so supposed to be lost, were fo/ttmes,aridthat all of them Were indited by the Holy Spirit. This, however, is a perfectly erroneous notion, as may be very easily shown :-1st, The Hebrew word sepher, which we render book, properly signifies the bare rehearsal of anything, or any kind of writing, however small; and it was the custom of the Jews to call every little memorandum by that name. Thus, in Deut. xxiv. 1, the original of a bill of divorcement is a book of divorcement ; and the same is the case in Matt. xix. 7, and Mark x. 4. c In like manner, David's letter to Joab, in 2 Sam. xi. 14, 15, is a book in the Hebrew and Greek; as, also, the- King of Syria's letter to the King of Israel, mentioned in 2 Kings v. 5. 2d, Several of these tracts, which are not now |
