CHAPTER IV.

Identity of Christ’s character.

The argument expressed by this title I apply principally to the comparison of the first three Gospels with that of Saint John.  It is known to every reader of Scripture that the passages of Christ’s history preserved by Saint John are, except his passion and resurrection, for the most part different from those which are delivered by the other evangelists.  And I think the ancient account of this difference to be the true one, viz., that Saint John wrote after the rest, and to supply what he thought omissions in their narratives, of which the principal were our Saviour’s conferences with the Jews of Jerusalem, and his discourses to his apostles at his last supper.  But what I observe in the comparison of these several accounts is, that, although actions and discourses are ascribed to Christ by Saint John in general different from what are given to him by the other evangelists, yet, under this diversity, there is a similitude of manner, which indicates that the actions and discourses proceeded from the same person.  I should have laid little stress upon the repetition of actions substantially alike, or of discourses containing many of the same expressions, because that is a species of resemblance which would either belong to a true history, or might easily be imitate in a false one.  Nor do I deny that a dramatic writer is able to sustain propriety and distinction of character through a great variety of separate incidents and situations.  But the evangelists were not dramatic writers; nor possessed the talents of dramatic writers; nor will it, I believe, be suspected that they studied uniformity of character, or ever thought of any such thing in the person who was the subject of their histories.  Such uniformity, if it exist, is on their part casual; and if there be, as I contend there is, a perceptible resemblance of manner, in passages, and between discourses, which are in themselves extremely distinct, and are delivered by historians writing without any imitation of, or reference to, one another, it affords a just presumption that these are what they profess to be, the actions and the discourses of the same real person; that the evangelists wrote from fact, and not from imagination.

The article in which I find this agreement most strong is in our Saviour’s mode of teaching, and in that particular property of it which consists in his drawing of his doctrine from the occasion; or, which is nearly the same thing, raising reflections from the objects and incidents before him, or turning a particular discourse then passing into an opportunity of general instruction.

It will be my business to point out this manner in the first three evangelists; and then to inquire whether it do not appear also in several examples of Christ’s discourses preserved by Saint John.

The reader will observe in the following quotations that the Italic letter contains the reflection; the common letter the incident or occasion from which it springs.