A POPULAR COMMENTARY ON THE NEW TESTAMENT. BY D. D. WHEDON, D.D., OF THE AMERICAN EPISCOPAL METHODIST CHURCH. INTRODUCTION. THE word Testament is a term for any document which is attested by seal or otherwise. Such documents, in law, are a Will bequeathing property, or a Covenant embodying a solemn treaty or contract. It is in this latter sense that the word is biblically used. The Old Testament embraces the covenant between God and his people, expressing the terms of service and favour under the old dispensation; the New Testament embodies a similar covenant under the later dispensation of his Son. Both Testaments constitute what (from the Greek & Bißhos, the book) is preeminently styled The Bible. The New Testament is that body of twenty-seven books, or treatises, written by eight different authors, which the Christian Church from the apostolic age has considered as providentially designed by Jesus Christ, the Great Head of the Church, as the true, and perfect, and infallible expression and record of his religion. The authenticity of these books, their historical truth, and the verity of the religion they teach, have been demonstrated with great learning and force, and at great length, by many able writers. The vast mass of proof we may very imperfectly classify as Historical, Prophetical, and Internal. Of these we briefly notice the first two. HISTORICAL PROOF. The Historical Proof embraces, I. The testimony of profane or pagar. authors to the facts of Christianity. 1. Tacitus, the greatest of Roman historians, says, in words which show his own pagan hostility to Christianity, that the emperor Nero "inflicted the severest punishments upon a class of people held in abhorrence for their crimes, called Christians. The founder of that name was Christ, who suffered death in the reign of Tiberius under his procurator, Pontius Pilate. This destructive superstition, thus checked for a while, broke out again, and spread, not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but through Rome also." This extract furnishes, in fact, a brief history of the origin of Christianity; of the existence, time, and death of its founder, and the early martyrdoms of his Church. 2. Suetonius, another Roman pagan historian, says, in his Life of Nero: "The Christains were punished-a set of men of a new and mischievous superstition." 3. Pliny, one of the most elegant of pagan writers, in a letter to the emperor of Rome about thirty or forty |