, ye believe; and believing, ye rejoice
with joy unspeakable, and full of glory." Chap. 1 compared with
1 Pet. 1:8. "Believing in him who raised up our Lord Jesus
Christ from the dead, and gave him glory, and a seat at his
right hand." Chap. 2 compared with 1 Pet. 1:21.

9. The relation of the gospel history to the writings now under
consideration--the book of Acts and the apostolic epistles--is of the
most intimate and weighty character. The truth of the earlier narratives
contained in the gospels implies the truth of these later works; for, as
already remarked, they are the natural sequel of the events there
recorded. On the other hand, the truth of these later writings implies
the truth of the gospel history; for in that history they find their
full explanation, and without it they are, and must ever remain,
inexplicable. All the parts of the New Testament constitute one
inseparable whole, and they all shed light upon each other. Like a chain
of fortresses in war, they mutually command each other. Unless the whole
can be overthrown, no one part can be successfully assailed. But to
overthrow the whole is beyond the power of man; for God has guarded it
on every side by impregnable bulwarks of evidence.

10. A special argument for the truth of the Scripture history of the
apostle Paul may be drawn from the numerous _undesigned coincidences_
between the events recorded in the book of Acts and those referred to in
the epistles. This work has been accomplished with great ability and
skill by Paley in his Horae Paulinae, to which the reader is referred. The
argument is very conclusive; for when we consider the "particularity of
St. Paul's epistles, the perpetual recurrence of names of persons and
places, the frequent allusions to the incidents of his private life, and
the circumstances of his condition and history, and the connection and
parallelism of these with the same circumstances in the Acts of the
Apostles, so as to enable us, for the most part, to confront them one
with another," we must be satisfied that the truth of the history can
alone explain such a multitude of coincidences, many of them of a minute
character, and all of them manifestly undesigned.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DISPUTED BOOKS.

The grounds on which each of the disputed books--Antilegomena, chap. 5,
No. 6--is received into the canon of the New Testament, will be
considered in the introduction to these books. In the present chap