Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE WRITINGS OF THE APOSTOLICAL FATHERS WERE NOT INSPIRED. In denying that the Apostolical Fathers derived any assistance in their writings, from direct inspiration, we are met, at the threshold of the subject, with a circumstance which naturally enough presents itself to the mind as a difficulty of some magnitude. The Epistles of Clement and Barnabas were written from twenty to thirty years before the completion of the New Testament canon, and those of Ignatius and Polycarp a very short time afterwards. Now, of Barnabas, we know that he was for a long period the companion and fellow-labourer of the apostle St. Paul. The constant tradition of the Church regarding Clemens Romanus is, that he was the individual of whom the same apostle informs us, Phil. iv. 3., that his name was in the book of life:—and from the same authority we learn, that Ignatius was ordained bishop of Antioch, and Poly- carp of Smyrna, by St. John Theologus.1 Plainly, therefore, they flourished at the period when the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit were bestowed upon the church of Christ:—were not they, as well as the canonical writers, favoured with the gift of inspiration ? We can only obviate this difficulty, by opening a perplexing question ;— that of the cessation of miracles. 1 Euseb. Hist. lib. 3. At what precise period the thaumaturgic gifts were withdrawn from the church, and the advance of Christianity was left to the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit and to the intrinsic powers of its own verity, is a point which has been frequently argued, but upon which no satisfactory conclusion has yet been arrived at. I do not, therefore, presume to offer any opinion of my own upon it, without, in the first instance, laying before the reader the evidence upon which I conceive it ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.