A large portion too of
the difficulties would be removed by the easy and nowise improbable
supposition, that Peter, no great scholar or grammarian, had dictated
the substance, the matter, and left the diction and style to his
'amanuensis', who had been an auditor of St. Paul. The tradition which
connects, not only Mark, but Luke the Evangelist, the friend and
biographer of Paul, with Peter, as a secretary, is in favour of this
hypothesis. But what is of much greater importance, especially for the
point in discussion, is the character of these and other similar
descriptions of the 'Dies Messiae', the 'Dies ultima', and the like. Are
we bound to receive them as articles of faith? Is there sufficient
reason to assert them to have been direct revelations immediately
vouchsafed to the sacred writers? I cannot satisfy my judgment that
there is;--first, because I find no account of any such events having
been revealed to the Patriarchs, or to Moses, or to the Prophets; and
because I do find these events asserted, and (for aught I have been able
to discover,) for the first time, in the Jewish Church by uninspired
Rabbis, in nearly or altogether the same words as those of the Apostles,
and know that before and in the Apostolic age, these anticipations had
become popular, and generally received notions; and lastly, because they
were borrowed by the Jews from the Greek philosophy, and like several
other notions, taken from less respectable quarters, adapted to their
ancient and national religious belief.
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