According to ancient accounts, St. John wrote his Gospel at Ephesus, over the church in which city he presided during the latter part of his long life. It is not improbable that, before his death, its circulation had been confined to the members of that church. Thence copies of it would be afterwards obtained; and the copy provided for transcription was, we may suppose, accompanied by the strong attestation which we now find, given by the church, or the elders of the church, to their full faith in the accounts which it contained, and by the concluding remark made by the writer of this attestation in his own person.

"There is no external authority, properly speaking, for rejecting this passage. In one manuscript, the last verse is omitted; and in several others, it is said to have been thought by some to be an addition. The character of the language, however, is different from that of John.*” Genuineness of the Gospels, Vol. I. Additional Note A, Section V. IX. pp. xevi, xcvii.

.

"The use of oσa (whatever), as equivalent simply to the relative a (which, that), is not common, and does not occur elsewhere in John. It was accordingly changed to a by Origen, Chrysostom, and Cyril; and a is substituted for it in the Vatican and other manuscripts. Kaev is nowhere else found in what was probably written by the Apostle. (It occurs once in the Apocalypse; and eis κa eis is a various reading in the interpolated passage in the eighth chapter of his Gospel.) It is here used illogically, its proper meaning being one by one, severally; whereas the meaning intended is all. Oipai (in this form) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament or Septuagint; nor is any form of olopai elsewhere used by John."

APPENDIX.

NOTE A.

(See p. 23.)

THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS OF THE PRESENT GREEK GOSPEL

OF MATTHEW.

"THERE is no doubt that these chapters have always made a part of our Greek translation; but this does not decide the question, whether they proceeded from the Apostle. As has been already suggested, they may have been an ancient document, written in Hebrew, originally a separate work, but which, on account of its small size and the connection of its subject, was transcribed into manuscripts of the Hebrew original of Matthew, till in time it became blended with his Gospel as a part of it, in some copies, one or more of which came into the hands of his translator.

"The first point, then, to be attended to in this inquiry, is, that a large portion of the Jewish Christians did not believe the miraculous conception of our Lord, and had not the account of it, that is, the two chapters in question, in their copies of Matthew's Gospel. There was nothing in their prejudices or habits of mind which could have led them to reject the belief of that fact, and especially to mutilate their Gospel in order to

*See before, p. 5.

get rid of the account of it. But if this be so, as it is altogether improbable that the two chapters would be lost by accident from any number of copies, it follows that they were an addition to the original in the copies in which they were found, and not an omission in those in which they were wanting.

"The chapters themselves are next to be examined, in order to determine whether the narrative contained in them is such as we can believe to have proceeded from the Apostle; and, in doing so, we must compare it with the account of the nativity given by Luke, which, there is no plausible reason for doubting, always made a part of his Gospel."- Genuineness of the Gospels, Vol. I. Additional Note A, Section V. 1. pp. lvi, lvii. For such an examination and comparison, see what follows in the work just quoted.

"BUT, if we reject the two chapters, a difficulty arises; as the original Hebrew Gospel could not have commenced with the first words of the third chapter,But in those days.' The difficulty, however, is removed by considering that these words may have been added as a form of transition to a new subject, when the two chapters were blended with the Gospel, and that the Gospel may originally have begun with the words that follow: John the Baptist came preaching in the Desert of Judæa'; that is, in a manner corresponding to the commencement of Mark's Gospel. Or the first words may originally have been, 'In the days of Herod,' meaning Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, which supposition is, perhaps, countenanced by the story of Epiphanius, before mentioned, that the Gospel of the Ebionites began, 'In the days of Herod, king of Judæa'; the addition of which last words, king of Judæa, seems to have been a blunder of his own.