al
customs, and to the present posture of public affairs, civil and
ecclesiastical. In all these the severest scrutiny has been able to
detect _no trace of a later age_. This is a weighty testimony to the
apostolic origin of the gospels. Had their authors lived in a later age,
the fact must have manifested itself in some of these references. The
most artless writer can allude in a natural and truthful way to present
events, usages, and circumstances; but it transcends the power of the
most skilful author to multiply incidental and minute references to a
past age without betraying the fact that he does not belong to it.

17. Every age has, also, its peculiar impress of thought and reasoning
in religious, not less than in secular matters. Although the gospel
itself remains always the same, and those who sincerely embrace it have
also substantially the same character from age to age, there is,
nevertheless, continual progress and change in men's apprehension of the
gospel and its institutions, and consequently in their manner of
reasoning concerning them. No man, for example, could write a treatise
on Christianity at the present day without making it manifest that he
did not belong to the first quarter of the present century. The
primitive age of Christianity is no exception to this universal law.
Under the auspices of the apostles it began to move forward, and it
continued to move after their decease. The pastoral epistles of Paul
bear internal marks of having been written in the later period of his
life, because they are adapted to the state of the Christian church and
its institutions that belonged to that, and not to an earlier period.
If, now, we examine the writings of the so-called apostolic
fathers--disciples of the apostles, who wrote after their death--we find
in them circles of thought and reasoning not belonging to the canonical
writings of the New Testament, least of all to the canonical gospels,
though they are evidently derived from hints contained in these
writings, whether rightly or wrongly apprehended. In this respect, the
works of the apostolic fathers are distinguished in a very marked way
from those which bear the names of the apostles themselves or their
associates.

18. Another decisive argument lies in the _character of the Greek_
employed by the evangelists, in common with the other writers of the New
Testament. It is the Greek language employed by Jews, (or, in the case
of Luke, if his Jewish o