(3.) By a still further metonymy,1 the written remains of those who have committed the Gospel narrative to writing. If you wish, in Greek, to name at once the four books, which Tertullian styles the Gospel Engine (Evangelicum Instrumentwri), you ought in strictness to make use of the singular number, and say, rt> xard Mar^atbv, xard Mdpxov, x.r.A- EuayyiX/oi/ (the Gospel according to Matthew, according to Mark, etc.2), not in the plural (rd x.r.X. EuayyeX/a, the Gospels), except perhaps for the sake of brevity. For the subject of all four is one and the same ; though treated in one manner xara Mar^aTbv, i.e., as far as Matthew is concerned, according to Matthew, l>y Matthew, as Matthew treated it ; in an other manner Kara Mdpxov : etc. — Cf. Kara, Acts xxvii. 7, fin. — Nevertheless, as in Genesis, the first word which occurs is Bereschith (which was afterwards adopted as the title), so the first word written by Matthew was /3//3Xo£, Book, or Roll (see Gnomon on Matthew i. 1); by Mark dp%ri, the Beginning (see Gnomon on Mark i. 1), and so on. The appellation, however, of Gospel, as a title for the book itself, occurs in the most ancient fathers. By the same authorities, Matthew is said to have written his Gospel in Hebrew. Why should he not have written the same work, the same without the slightest varia tion, in Greek as well as in Hebrew, even though he did not, strictly speaking, translate it from the one language into the other I — Cf. Jeremiah li. 63, xxxvi. 28, and the annotations of Franzius3 on that passage (De Interp. S.S., p. 504); see also La Vie de Madame Guion,4 pt. ii., p. 229. — We now proceed to give the following
1 See explanation of technical terms. See also Home's Introduction, vol. ii., pp. 454-461.— (I. B.)
2 i.e., There is but one Gospel, with & fourfold aspect. — ED.
3 Franzius, Wolfgang, D.D., a Lutheran divine. Born 1564. Educated at Frankfort-on-the Oder, and afterwards removed to Wittemberg, where, in 1598, he was appointed Professor of History, and afterwards of Theology. Died 1628. He wrote, besides other works, Tractatus de Interpretation S. Scripturarum. — (I. B.)
* Her life is said to be written by herself, but believed to have been compiled from her papers by the Abbe de Brion. Querard says of her, in La France Litterairc, " Guyon (Mme. Jeanne-Marie Bouvieres de la Mothe) celebre par sa mysticite et plus encore par la dispute qu'elle tit naitre entre Bossuet et Fenelon sur le quietisme: nee a Montargis en 1648, morte a Blois le 9 Juin, 1717.— (I. B.)