In truth, however, the internal evidence in favour of the authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures is that on which the mind can rest with far greater satisfaction than on any external testimonies, however valuable.  On one point, which might seem most to require other evidence—­the age, namely, and origin of the writings of the New Testament—­it has been wonderfully ordered that the books, generally speaking, are their own witness.  I mean that their peculiar language proves them to have been written by persons such as the apostles were, and such as the Christian writers immediately following them were not; persons, namely, whose original language and habits of thinking were those of Jews, and to whom the Greek in which they wrote was, in its language and associations, essentially foreign.  I do not dwell on the many other points of internal evidence:  it is sufficient to say that those who are most familar with such inquiries, and who best know how little any external testimony can avail in favour of a book where the internal evidence is against it, are most satisfied that the principal writings of the New Testament do contain abundantly in themselves, for competent judges, the evidence of their own genuineness and authenticity.

That the testimony of the early Christian writers goes along with this evidence and confirms it, is matter indeed of sincere thankfulness; because more minds, perhaps, are able to believe on external evidence than on internal.  But of this testimony of the Christian writers it is essential to observe, that two very important points are such as do indeed affect this particular question much, but yet do not confer any value on the judgment of the witness in other matters.  When a very early Christian writer quotes a passage from the New Testament, such as we find it now in our Bibles, it is indeed an argument, which all can understand, that he had before him the same Bible which we have, and that though he lived so near to the beginning of the gospel, yet that some parts of the New Testament must have been written still nearer to it.  This is an evidence to the age of the New Testament, valuable indeed to us, but implying in the writer who gives it no qualities which confer authority; it merely shows that the book which he read must have existed before he could quote it.  A second point of evidence is, when a very early Christian writer quotes any part of the New Testament as being considered by those to whom he was writing as an authority.  This, again, is a valuable piece of testimony; but neither does it imply any general wisdom or authority in the writer who gives it:  its value is derived merely from the age at which he lived, and not from his personal character.  And with regard to the general reception of the New Testament by the Christians of his time, which, in the case supposed, he states as a fact, no doubt that the general opinion of the early Christians, where, as in this case, we can be