2126.—The Four Gospels.
By Editor
Is it true, as I have heard it stated, that the four Gospels were selected by Catholic bishops from a large number of Gospels? Catholic bishops may have selected them, but they did not come to us because they were selected by Catholic bishops. The New Testament has come to us before Rome was in the condition in which we find it now and in which it has been for ages. Before we had any such thing as the Catholic Church with its central authority in Rome, the four Gospels were received as authoritative by the church, by all the various early churches. Very early indeed in the history of the Christian church the New Testament as we now have it was regarded as sacred. There were a great many spurious Gospels, spurious writings of all sorts, written by various fanatics, but these were rejected and the four we have were retained. The authority for these is God's gracious providence and the reception of these things by His own people. Catholic councils may have passed upon them, even as they have our present New Testament and the Apocrypha, but that does not make the books authoritative. They are not so because the Roman Catholic Church says so, but because they bear the stamp of divinity, and so have they been accepted by the church of God.