the object be to direct doubt
instead of suppressing it, and to lead a sinner to Christ by the bands of
love.

The first will be the literary one, as to the trustworthiness of the books
of the New Testament, which are the record of this teaching.

The second, the inquiry into the fact whether the books teach, and whether
the early church taught, dogmatic Christianity as the church now presents
it.

The third, though of such a nature as in a great degree to be suppressed
by the claim of authority already conceded to the apostolic teachers, may
still rise up to harass the mind if a further answer be not supplied: it
refers to the reason that we possess for believing, that if these teachers
asserted such truths as dogmatic Christianity, and especially vicarious
atonement, these doctrines were a real verity, and not merely a passing
form under which the truth presented itself to their minds, to be
explained away by after ages into less mysterious and more self-evident
truths.

The first of these questions, which concerns the trustworthiness of the
books, has been most thoroughly tested by the historical criticism of
Germany. The data are thus presented for forming a final decision, which
in the opinion of most persons will probably be widely different from that
which has been arrived at by critics in that country. Yet, supposing we
should meet with a doubter who accepted all the views of the Tuebingen
school,(1038) there are nevertheless four books of the New Testament, the
genuineness of which the most extravagant criticism fully admits; viz. the
Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the two to the
Corinthians. These four would be sufficient to establish the main articles
of dogmatic teaching as presented in the creeds of the Christian church,
and the main outline of Gospel and Jewish history as facts on the reality
of which St. Paul and his converts relied, and for which he was staking
his life. Suppose the Gospels and the Acts(1039) involved in the historic
uncertainty which these critics have attributed to them; yet we possess in
the Galatians the outline of the life of Paul, the statement of the reason
why Paul accepted a religion which he detested. The incomparable argument
of Lyttleton(1040) irrefragably proves his honesty. He cannot have been a
deceiver. Let the reader of the Galatians say if he was deceived. The two
Epistles to Corinth attest the history of the early church; the Epistle to
t