APPENDIX.

DISSERTATION I.

On the Supplemental relations of the Gospels.

Vide Dissertation i. vol. i. page 40-71.

THOUGH the most material objections which occurred to me, as capable of being urged against the supposition of these relations, were stated, and, as I trust, satisfactorily answered, in their proper place at the outset of the work; there is one objection, however, which may be considered to lie at the bottom of every other, and yet does not appear among the rest. I shall take the liberty, then, of noticing it here; especially since it admits of being refuted with the same facility as any of the preceding.

The objection in question is this: allowing that the Gospels might be written in the order in which they stand, and allowing also that the Gospels last composed might be designed to be supplementary to the Gospels first composed, how are we to know where the one were defective, and where the others are supplementary? None of the Gospels acknowledges its own deficiencies: they all appear at least to be continuous accounts: where, then, are we to detect hiatuses in some, and where, consequently, are we to look for the supplement of them in others? It is equally a certain fact both that, where any of the Gospels is really defective, it leaves the discovery of the defect only to implication; and that even where another is supplying this defect, it effects its purpose without declaring what it is doing. The answer to this question is simple and obvious.

We are enabled to discover deficiencies in one Gospel, because we possess others which are more complete; we can perceive that some are supplementary, and that others stand in need of supplement, because the narrative of one continues where the narrative of another breaks off. The four Gospels are four distinct histories; and yet the subject to which they relate is one and the same in all. The ministry of our Saviour had its proper beginning, and its proper termination; each of which is marked out in them all alike: its intermediate duration, therefore, besides being something definite in itself, must necessarily be supposed the same in each of the Evangelical accounts; and the corresponding periods in this duration, if they were distinguished by their proper events, must have been distinguished by corresponding events in each.

It would be in vain, in short, to contend that, while the outline of the history in all the Evangelists must be acknowledged to be the same, the distribution and succession of its parts can be materially different. The contrary is more naturally the inference; that as they agree in the general, so they should be found to agree in the particular: if they begin and conclude together, they must go along with each other in the mean time. Upon the admission of this presumption, the mere comparison of the Gospel accounts demonstrates that some are more or less defective, and others proportionally more or less complete; from which it is an obvious inference that as the former stand in need of supplement, so the latter have furnished it to them. It is a further and a no less obvious inference that the authors of the latter had seen the former; and both were aware of their deficiencies, and wrote expressly to supply them. If there were deficiencies in the one, and there are actually supplements of the same

in the other, it is too much to suppose that these last in particular were made at random. We cannot believe that even the preexisting deficiencies were left in existence by accident; and it is much less credible that the provision, which compensates for their existence, was made and introduced by accident.

It is a notorious fact that sometimes even the four Gospels, but much more frequently the three first, or the two first of them in particular, run parallel to each other, and in such a manner as to leave no reasonable doubt that they are actually proceeding together, and giving an account of the same tissue and succession of events. This fact, I say, is undeniable; and it would be the height of absurdity, beyond what the most bigoted follower of the principle of Osiander himself could be supposed capable of entertaining, to pretend to dispute it. Nor shall I now stop to shew how, even in the circumstances of such accounts as are most clearly identical, some of the Evangelists, and those in every instance the latest, are distinctly supplementary to others, and those the earliest: it has been the main object of the preceding Dissertations to shew that already. All which I think it worth while to observe is this that if it is possible to discover beyond a question at what period, in a common series of events, any two or more of the Gospels are coincident, or proceeding in conjunction; it must be possible to discover where they cease to be coincident, or when one of them in particular begins to proceed by itself.

This is a case which is perpetually occurring. A joint account is begun, and for a time is continued, by two or more of the Gospel historians: nor do I mean to say, that what they have once begun in common they do not also complete in common. But when this end has been attained, and the integrity of a particular

narrative has been duly consulted, they no longer proceed in conjunction; the thread of the narration is suspended by some one, or more, of the number, though it may be carried forward by the rest. Nor does it happen in these cases, that they never rejoin each other: on the contrary, it is as certain that they do not perpetually go on alone, as that they do not perpetually go on in conjunction. The thread of the narrative may be suspended for a time, but it is never absolutely broken off: and the accounts which were once coincident, and went along with each other, after a certain interval of separation, are found to meet together again, and to become coincident as before. And this alternation is observed to pervade the whole of the Gospels.

Now it is with the duration of these intervals, and with the particular nature of the matter which is found interposed, for any one of these intervals, in one of the Gospels independently of another, that we are chiefly concerned upon the question of their supplementary relations; and of the consequences to which the admission of those relations immediately leads. It would be only to repeat what has been done already, were we to enter upon this examination afresh. I shall observe merely, that the interval in many instances is determined by the internal evidence of the narrative itself; and is sometimes found to embrace even months in extent. And as to the nature of the matter interposed, it frequently constitutes a large and integral portion of a particular Gospel; in St. John and in St. Luke, by far the greatest portion of the whole: in many instances it consists of such accounts as are peculiar to some one Gospel, and have nothing which resembles them in any of the rest; the effect of which peculiarity is, or should be, that there is not, or ought not to be, a

shadow of pretence for questioning the regularity of the position of the accounts in such instances. Though something like what is related there may be found, at a different time and place, in others of the Gospels, yet it has been seen that, without impeaching the similarity of the narratives, it may be justly contended that they are not the same; and therefore, that the position of the one is no criterion of the order of the other: each may belong to a distinct time and place; and therefore, each may naturally be related in its own.

Now when the continuity of one of the Gospel narratives has been broken off in this manner, and yet the thread of the account is carried forward by another; will any one deny that the matter which is thus introduced into the latter is supplementary, as far as regards what is found in the former? Can any one doubt, then, whether the former account was so far defective, and the latter is so far supplementary to it? It is not possible to avoid this inference, except by contending either that the matter, which is thus introduced, is not fresh or additional matter: or that, if it is so, it is inserted out of its place.

With regard to the first of these assertions, I should reply, If the matter, thus introduced, is not fresh or supplementary matter, shew me where it occurred before; and prove to me, beyond the possibility of a question, that the matter, which occurred there, is the very same matter which occurs here. With respect to the second, I reply, If you cannot deny that fresh or additional matter, strictly so called, is introduced here, you have no right to question whether it is introduced in its place or not. Fresh matter, we may presume, would not be introduced here, if it did not properly come in here; and it could never properly come in here, unless the order of the preexisting nar