it is the admitted fact that not a few things have been narrated by the other evangelists, which Luke himself has not touched upon in his history. The sense therefore is, that he wrote a treatise of all these things, in so far as he made a selection out of the whole mass of materials for his narrative, and introduced those facts which he judged fit and suitable for the satisfactory discharge of the responsible duty laid upon him. Again, when he speaks of many who had “taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which have been fulfilled among us,” he seems to refer to certain parties who had not been able to complete the task which they had assumed. Hence he also says that it seemed good to him also to “write carefully in order, forasmuch as many have taken in hand,” etc. The allusion here, however, we ought to take to be to those writers who have attained to no authority in the Church, just because they were utterly incompetent rightly to carry out what they took in hand. Moreover, the author at present before us has not confined himself to the task of 230 bringing down his narrative to the events of the Lord’s resurrection and assumption; neither has it been his aim simply to have a place commensurate in honour with his labours in the company of the four writers of the Gospel Scriptures. But he has also undertaken a record of what was done subsequently by the hands of the apostles; and relating as many of those events as he believed to be needful and helpful to the edification of the faith of readers or hearers, he has given us a narrative so faithful, that his is the only book that has been reckoned worthy of acceptance in the Church as a history of the Acts of the Apostles; while all these other writers who attempted, although deficient in the trustworthiness which was the first requisite, to compose an account of the doings and sayings of the apostles, have met with rejection. And, further, Mark and Luke certainly wrote at a time when it was quite possible to put them to the test not only by the Church of Christ, but also by the apostles themselves who were still alive in the flesh. 514 Of Luke’s Gospel, and Specially of the Harmony Between Its Commencement…