faithful When the names of the authors were known, as it generally happened, the authenticity or genuine character of their writings would be at once admitted; when this was not the case, or any doubt prevailed, as it did in regard to the Book of Revelations and the Epistle to the Hebrews, some hesitation in admitting them as genuine would necessarily ensue.
But as these several works appeared, the Pastors of the New Churches, in recommending them to their flocks, were in possession of an infallible rule by which to judge of the truth of the facts related, and of the soundness of their doctrines. For some of those Pastors would be the Apostles themselves, who had received their faith from the mouth of Christ, together with the commission of preaching that faith to all nations;” while others would be the disciples of these men, and instructed by them in all truth. With the knowledge which they had just acquired, they would compare the relations of the Evangelists and the lessons of the various Epistles; and finding them to accord, they could confidently pronounce that as those several writings, given under the respective names of their authors, were genuine or authentic, so were their contents true; in other words, that those contents were divine, or the Word of God; for they conveyed, they would say, the very truths that Christ had himself delivered. Thus, in the probable interpretation of the clause of the last chapter of St. John's Gospel, the Asiatic Bishops, at whose entreaty it was written, recommend it to the acceptation of other Churches in the following words: (chap. xxi. 24.) This is that Disciple who giveth testimony of these things, and hath written these things; and we know that his testimony is true. They had often heard from his mouth what he had written in his Gospel; others, probably, had attested the same; and therefore they declared his testimony to be true.
As on this principle of conformity with what Christ had
