"A WEIGHTY AND TIMELY UTTERANCE."
THE FATHERS—THEIR UNRELIABILITY.
THE next head under which Mr. Bailey "proves" his proposition is the testimony of the Fathers. And right here a quotation from the Examiner and Chronicle, a standard Baptist paper, is to the point. Some years ago a correspondent of this paper, signing himself Rev. Philetus Dobbs, D. D., stated that he had received a letter from a young minister, asking how he should prove a thing when there is nothing with which to prove it; and a portion of his reply is as follows:— "I regard, however, a judicious use of the Fathers as being on the whole the best reliance for anyone who is in the situation of my querist. The advantages of the Fathers are twofold: First, they carry a good deal of weight with the masses; and secondly, you can find whatever you want in the Fathers. I do not believe that any opinion could be advanced so foolish, so manifestly absurd, but that you can find passages to sustain it on the pages of these venerable stagers. And to the common mind one of these is just as good as another. If it happens that the point that you want to prove is one that never chanced to occur to the Fathers, why you can easily show that they would have taken your side if they had only thought of the matter. And if, perchance, there is nothing bearing even remotely or constructively on the point, do not be discouraged; get a good, strong quotation, and put the name of the Fathers to it, and utter it with an air of triumph; it will be all just as well; nine-tenths of the people do not stop to ask whether a quotation bears on the matter in hand. Yes, my brother, the Fathers are your stronghold. They are Heaven's best gift to the man who has a cause that cannot be sustained in any other way." The aptness with which this applies to the case in hand will be seen as we proceed. But first we want to give a few quotations to show in what esteem the Fathers are held by some of the best writers, who are themselves first-day observers. We first quote from Mosheim. Speaking of certain works by Clement, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus, etc., he says that these works are lost, and adds:— "But this loss is the less to be regretted, since it is certain that no one of these expositors could be pronounced a good interpreter. They believed the language of Scripture to contain two meanings, the one obvious, and corresponding with the direct import of the words, the other recondite, and concealed under the words like a nut by the shell; and, neglecting the former as being of little value, they bestowed their chief attention on the latter; that is, they were more intent on throwing obscurity over the sacred writings by the fictions of their own imaginations, than on searching out their true meaning."—Ecclesiastical History, book 1, cent. 2, part 2, chap. 3, sec. 5. Archdeacon Farrar in his latest work, "History of Interpretation," says of the Fathers:— "There are but few of them whose pages are not rife with errors,—errors of method, errors of fact, errors of history, of grammar, and even of doctrine; this is the language of simple truth, and not of slighting disparagement."—Pp. 162, 163. On page 164 of the same book, Farrar says:— "Without deep learning, without linguistic knowledge, without any final principles either as to the nature of the sacred writings or the method by which they should be interpreted,—surrounded by Paganism, Judaism, and heresy of every description, and wholly dependent on a faulty translation,—the earliest Fathers and apologists add little or nothing to our understanding of Scripture. . . . Their acquaintance with the Old Testament is incorrect, popular, and full of mistakes; their scriptural arguments are often baseless; their exegesis—novel in application only—is a chaos of elements unconsciously borrowed on the one hand from Philo, and on the other from Rabbis and Kabbalists. They claim 'a grace' of exposition, which is not justified by the results they offer, and they suppose themselves to be in possession of a Christian Gnosis, of which the specimens offered are for the most part entirely untenable." Dr. Clarke in his comment on Proverbs 8 says of the Fathers:— "But of these we may safely state that there is not a truth in the most orthodox creed that cannot be proved by their authority; nor a heresy that has disgraced the Romish Church that may not challenge them as its abettors. In points of doctrine their authority is with me nothing." Chambers's Encyclopedia says of the Fathers:— "Of those who head the list, the Apostolic Fathers—so called from their supposed connection with Christ and the apostles—very little need be said, as their writings, which are mostly of an ascetical character, have come down to us in a corrupt and mutilated state, and as the writers themselves owe their chief celebrity to the times in which they happened to live." We might add many more testimonies to the incompetency and unreliability of the Fathers, but we will pass to notice the special ones which are referred to by Mr. Bailey. He begins thus:— "Barnabas was a fellow-laborer with Paul. Several of the epistles of Barnabas have been published, believed by many of the best scholars to be genuine, though not inspired. Yet as a witness of the customs of the early churches, we may believe his testimony. General epistle of Barnabas 13:9, 10: 'Lastly he saith unto them, Your new moons and your sabbaths, I cannot bear them. Consider what he means by it; the sabbaths, says he, which ye now keep are not acceptable unto me, but those which I have made, when, resting from all things, I shall begin the eighth day, that is, the beginning of the other world. For which cause we observe the eighth day with gladness, in which Jesus rose from the dead, and having manifested himself to the disciples, he ascended into Heaven.' Did not Barnabas know what day the early churches were to keep as the Christian Sabbath?" We are strongly of the opinion that Mr. Bailey has never seen a set of the writings ascribed to the Fathers. He says "several of the epistles of Barnabas have been published." We have two editions of the Anti-Nicene Fathers, and in neither of them is there more than one epistle ascribed to Barnabas. All the church historians of which we have any knowledge speak of "the epistle of Barnabas," but never of the epistles. But that is a matter of no consequence, for if there were forty "epistles of Barnabas" the world would only be so much the worse off. We will now investigate this so-called "epistle of Barnabas," and its author. Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe, in his introductory note to the epistle of Barnabas, published by the Christian Literature Publishing Company, says:— "The writer of this epistle is supposed to have been an Alexandrian Jew of the times of Trajan and Hadrian. He was a layman; but possibly he bore the name of 'Barnabas' and so has been confounded with his holy apostolic namesake." The original introductory note by those who translated the epistle for the Edinburgh edition contains the following:— "Nothing certain is known as to the author of the following epistle. The writer's name is Barnabas, but scarcely any scholars now ascribe it to the illustrious friend and companion of St. Paul. . . . On perusing the epistle the reader will be in circumstances to judge of this matter for himself. He will be led to consider whether the spirit and tone of the writing, as so decidedly opposed to all respect for Judaism—the numerous inaccuracies which it contains with respect to Mosaic enactments and observances—the absurd and trifling interpretations of Scripture which it suggests—and the many silly vaunts of superior knowledge in which its writer indulges—can possibly comport with its inscription to the fellow-laborer of St. Paul. When it is remembered that no one ascribes the epistle to the apostolic Barnabas till the times of Clement of Alexandria, and that it is ranked by Eusebius among the 'spurious' writings, which, however much known and read in the church, were never regarded as authoritative, little doubt can remain that the external evidence is of itself weak, and should not make us hesitate for a moment in refusing to ascribe this writing to Barnabas the apostle. . . . In point of style, both as respects thought and expression, a very low place must be assigned it. We know nothing certain of the region in which the author lived, or where the first readers were to be found." The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia says of this epistle:— "The opinion to-day is that Barnabas was not the author. The epistle was probably written in Alexandria at the beginning of the second century, and by a Gentile Christian." "The epistle of Barnabas, as it is called, was in my judgment the production of some Jewish Christian who lived in this century [the first] or the next, who had no bad intentions, but possessed little genius and was infested with the fabulous opinions of the Jews. He was clearly a different person from Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul."—Book 1, cent. 1, part 2, chap. 2, sec. 21.135 These last two quotations show how little is known about the man who wrote this epistle. One supposes that he was a Jew, the other a Gentile, and none pretend to know when he lived. McClintock and Strong's Encyclopedia says:— "An epistle has come down to us bearing the name of Barnabas, but clearly not written by him. . . . The writer evidently was unacquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures, and has committed the blunder of supposing that Abraham was familiar with the Greek alphabet some centuries before it existed." Dr. Kitto in his "Encyclopedia of Religious Literature" says:— "He makes unauthorized additions to various parts of the Jewish Cultus; his views of the Old Economy are confused and erroneous; and he adopts a mode of interpretation countenanced by none of the inspired writers, and at utter variance with every principle of sound criticism, being to the last degree puerile and absurd. The inference is unavoidable that Barnabas, 'the son of prophecy,' 'the man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,' was not the author of this epistle." Dr. Schaff, "History of the Christian Church," sec. 121, says:— "A genuine production of Barnabas would doubtless have found a place in the Canon, with the writings of Mark and Luke and the epistle to the Hebrews. Besides, the contents of this epistle are not worthy of him. It has many good ideas and forcible testimonies, such as that in favor of the observance of the Christian Sabbath, but it goes to extremes in opposition to Judaism, and indulges in all sorts of artificial, sometimes absurd and allegorical fancies." But what if he does? What if the epistle is a forgery by some unknown and irresponsible person? What if its writer was an ignoramus who indulged in the most absurd notions? He gives "valuable testimony" in favor of the observance of the "Christian Sabbath," and that is sufficient to secure the epistle a place in "Christian literature" as long as time lasts. It will not be long, we apprehend, before these principles will be carried out to a greater extent, and the vilest man will be welcomed in so-called Christian churches, if he is only zealous in his observance of Sunday, and in persecuting those who do not observe it. But what about this "valuable testimony" given by this fellow who steals the name of Barnabas? Why, he says that "we keep the eighth day with joyfulness." Perhaps some admirer of this epistle will tell us when the "eighth day of the week" comes, and how Sunday can be both the first day and the eighth day of a week of seven days. We might quote from the epistle abundance of matter demonstrating the truth of what has been said about it, but much of it is unfit for publication in these columns. We will however give one quotation, which the author of the epistle regarded as much more valuable testimony than that concerning the "eighth day." In the last part of chapter nine he says:— "Learn, then, my children, concerning all things richly, that Abraham, the first who enjoined circumcision, looking forward in spirit to Jesus, practiced that rite, having received the mysteries of the three letters. For (the Scripture) saith, 'And Abraham circumcised ten, and eight, and three hundred men of his household.' What then was the knowledge given to him in this? Learn the eighteen first, and then the three hundred. The ten and the eight are thus denoted—ten by I, and eight by H. You have (the initials of the name of) Jesus. And because the cross was to express the grace (of our redemption), by the letter T, he says also, 'Three hundred.' He signifies therefore Jesus by two letters, and the cross by one. He knows this who has put within us the engrafted gift of his doctrine. No one has been admitted by me to a more excellent piece of knowledge than this, but I know that ye are worthy." With this we leave the pseudo-Barnabas. w.