ratives had been more or less interrupted here. We have no right to suppose that additional matter would be arbitrarily inserted any where; and much less where, by being inserted, it would break and interrupt, not connect and preserve, the continuity of a certain account. No previously entire and uninterrupted narrative would furnish room for any such insertions; and no insertions in any such narrative would appear otherwise than incongruous and out of place. Yet neither of these effects is visible in the cases which we are considering. Nothing appears less continuous than the preexisting narratives, as judged of by their internal evidence, in the particular places where the matter in question may be found incorporated with them; nothing less foreign or inappropriate, as referred to its connection with what precedes or follows it, than the matter which is thus introduced. On this subject therefore these observations may suffice.

APPENDIX.

DISSERTATION II.

On the principle of Classification us applied to St. Luke's

Gospel.

Cf. Dissertation iii. vol. i.

page 237.

IT is a favourite hypothesis of many modern expositors, that, without maintaining the regularity of St. Luke's Gospel, the peculiarities of its structure, which are the immediate consequences of its supposed irregularity, may all be satisfactorily accounted for upon the principle of a certain classification. I have not thought proper formally to combat this hypothesis any where; because it appeared to me to be so utterly destitute of foundation that the best refutation of it would be the practical; such as the Harmony of the Gospels itself could not fail to exhibit: nor shall I dwell long upon the consideration of it at present.

Five heads of the classification in question are proposed by Rosenmüller in his Prolegomena to the Gospel; which Mr. Horne also has transferred into his Introduction. If these were proposed as a mere digest or division of the contents of St. Luke's Gospel, it would be perfectly indifferent whether we adopted them or not for they follow each other consecutively, and the order of the classes is the order also of the chapters. But if it is implied by them, as I presume it must be, that these distinct classes are to be appropriated to so many divisions or successions of events, which must be brought together, and comprehended within them respectively, on the ground of some sup

posed affinity or connection among themselves, but without regard to the order of time; no supposition can be more gratuitous or more absurd.

For first it is founded altogether on a petitio principii; insomuch as it must begin with assuming that the Gospel of St. Luke abounds in irregularities, and possesses no such property as that of a distinct supplementary adaptation to the Gospels in being before it. No principle of classification like this could apply to the constitution of a narrative which was either simply regular, or simply supplementary; and much less to one which was both regular and supplementary ; regular, as regarded the order and succession of its own accounts; and supplementary, as regarded the perceptible relation of its own to those of others. It would be abundantly sufficient, then, to sap the foundation of this hypothesis, if we could prove that St. Luke's Gospel in particular possesses in an eminent degree each of these distinctive characteristics; both that of being historically exact in itself, and that of being supplementary to St. Matthew's and St. Mark's: the former of which conclusions will be demonstratively established, if it can be made out that every supposed instance of a transposition in his Gospel, truly and impartially considered, is no such thing; while the latter is almost a direct consequence of the former. For if the Gospel of St. Luke, both where it accompanies the other two Gospels, and where it proceeds by itself, is still a regular account, it follows that where it ceases to accompany the rest, yet continues to proceed by itself, if it does not cease to be regular, it must begin to be supplementary. These two terms are in fact almost convertible. A regular gospel, wheresoever it introduces fresh matter into defective or noncontinuous accounts, must be supplementary; and a supplementary

Gospel, wheresoever it connects or fills up defective accounts, must be regular.

It is an obvious objection, however, to the very principle of this hypothesis, that the construction of a Gospel upon any such plan would be little in unison with the characteristic simplicity of the Gospel historians. Such a method of compiling history might be adapted to a period of advancement in the cultivation of literature, and might recommend itself to the choice of a writer who was ambitious of novelty or refinement; but it would be utterly incongruous in the infancy of history, and repugnant to the disposition of authors who, like the Evangelists, were solicitous about nothing but the truth and perspicuity of their accounts; and neither sought nor wanted any recommendation from the arts of composition as such. The first and most obvious tendency, in writing history, is to follow that plan which the nature of the subject dictates, viz. the order and succession of events; nor could one act contrary to this tendency without doing violence to one's natural sense of propriety,nor without experiencing the bad effects of it in the result. When an historical composition is deprived of that lucidus ordo, which is the spontaneous consequence of the series juncturaque rerum, it is deprived of what Scaliger denominated one of its eyes; and instead of clearness and simplicity, which ought to be its distinctive characteristics, like a body deprived of sight, it is left to grope about in darkness and confusion.

It is in vain too to search for any parallel to this supposed principle of St. Luke's classification, in the structure of Suetonius' Lives of the Cæsars. There is little affinity between the character of a Roman grammarian, and that of a Gospel historian; and still less between the Life of a Roman emperor, and a Gospel

of Jesus Christ. For though, for argument's sake, we were to admit that any one of the Gospels might be regarded in the light of a memoir of Jesus Christ, just as one of Suetonius' Lives may be considered a memoir of a particular emperor; what would the two subjects have in common, that they should allow of being handled alike? What would there be in the simple, and uniform, and homogeneous tenor of the Gospel history, to admit of comparison with the complex and multifarious character of the Life of Julius or of Augustus Cæsar? This very diversity might suggest to Suetonius the plan upon which he proceeded in treating of his subject: he might not consider it possible, except by digesting it into a number of distinct assortments or classes, to reduce such a mass of particular facts to order, and to exhibit in their mutual relations, and yet their individual distinctness, the incidents in a certain Life, all tending to compose the history, or to illustrate the character of his hero. But will any one maintain that the simple narrative of our Saviour's personal history could not be related except on this artificial principle; or that the complexity of the subject was such as, a priori, to suggest the adoption of it to the writer? Besides which, the Roman biographer had to exhibit in detail the accumulated materials of a great number of years, which in the case of Augustus more especially was little short of a century; whereas the Gospel history, as such, from first to last, cannot be said to contain more than the events of three or four.

The classification of St. Luke's Gospel upon any such peculiar principle, if it implied no more than a division or table of contents, would be, as I before observed, a mere nominal distinction, without any real difference: but if it implies more than this, it must imply, as I