GOSPELS. The expression is derived from the Anglo-Saxon, and means literally good news. The message of Christ, or time doctrine of Christianity, was called the gos pel. (to euaggelion); and the inspired records by which this message or doctrine have been transmitted to the church in successive ages, have received the name of the gospels Oa euaggelia). When this name was first distinctly applied to these records, is uncertain.. The use of it in Justin Martyr, about the middle of the 2d c., is a subject of dispute. It appears to have been in common use in the course of the 3d century.
I. primary and most interesting inquiry concerning the gospels is as to their genuineness. They profess to be the inspired records of our Lord's life—of his sayings and doings---proceeding in two cases from menwho were his apostles and companions (Matthew and John); and in the two other cases from men who, although not themselves apostles, were apostolic in their position and character, the immediate companions and fellow-laborers of the apostles (Mark and Luke). According to their profession, they were all composed during the latter half of the 1st c.; the three synoptic gospels, as they are called, probably during the decade preceding the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (6040), and the fourth gospel of St. John near the close of the cen tury. • The question as to their genuineness is in the main the question as to the fact of their existence at this early period; the special authorship of each gospel is a compara tively less important•question.
It is obvious that the existence of the gospels within the 1st c. is a point which can only be settled by the ordinary rules df historical evidence. What traces have we of their existence at this early period? As Paley illustrates the matter, we can tell of the existence of lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion at .a period antecedent to bishop Burnet's History of his Own Times, by the fact that Burnet quotes Clarendon. If the gospels existed in the 1st c., therefore, we shall expect to find similar evidences of their existence in the Christian writings of the 2d and 3d centuries. We do find such evi dence in abundance during the 311 century. In such writers as Origen and Cyprian, we not only find quotations from the gospels, but we find the gospels themselves mentioned by name as books of authority amongst Christians. From the writings of Origen alone, if they had survived, we might have collected, it has been said, the whole text not only of the gospels, but the Ohl and New Testaments. At this point, then, there is no ques tion. No one can dispute the existence of the gospels in the age of Ori
significant and important that it deserves to be extracted. " We," he says (Contra Hares. lib. iii. c. 1), "have not received the knowledge of the way of our salvation by any others than those through whom the gospel hiss come down to us; which gospel they first preached, and afterwards, by the will of God, transmitted to us in writing, that it might be the foundation and pillar of our faith." "For after our Lord had risen from the dead, and they (the apostles) were clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit descend ing upon them from on high, were filled with all gifts, and possessed perfect knowledge, they went forth to the ends of the earth, spreading the glad tidings of those blessings which God has conferred upon us. Matthew among the Hebrews published a gospel in their own language; while Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel at Rome and founding a church there. And after. their departure (death), Mark the disciple and interpreter of Peter himself delivered in writing what Peter had preached; and Luke, the companion of Paul, recorded the gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple, of the Lord, who leaned upon his breast, likewise published a gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus in Ada." These words are very explicit and to the point; and elsewhere, Irenteus speaks still more par ticularly of the seVeral gospels, and endeavors to characterize them in a somewhat fan ciful way, which, if it does not prove his own judgment, at least proves the kind of veneration with which the gospels were regarded in his time. It is equally beyond question, then, that the gospels were in existence in the end of the 2d c., and that they were attributed to the authors whose names they bear. "It is allowed by those who have reduced the genuine apostolic works to the narrowest limits. that, from the time of Irenatus, the New Testament was composed essentially of the same books as we receive at present; and that they were regarded with the same reverence as is now shown to them."—Westcott, history of Canon. The evidence upon which we accept as undoubtedly genuine the productions of many classic authors, is not to be compared in clearness and fullness to the evidence for the genuineness of the gospels at this stage. Any difficulties that the subject involves begin at a point higher up than this. ' The age of Irenmus is the fifth generation from the beginning of the apostolic era— the third
termination of it. The ascending generations may be characterized as those (4) of Justin Martyr, and (3) of Ignatius and Papias; and (2) of St. John, or the later apostolic age. It is within these three generatiqns, and especially within the third and fourth, that the subject of the genuineness of the gospels gives any cause for hesi tation and discussion.