There is a similar Trinitarian text in Matthew 28:19, where the risen Christ is represented as appearing to his twelve apostles on a mountain top in Galilee and saying to them: All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.
Here Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, who died about the year 340, and was entrusted by the Emperor Constantine with the task of preparing fifty éditions de luxe of the gospels for the great churches built or rebuilt after the Diocletian persecution was ended, read in such of his works as he wrote before the year 325 as follows: “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations in my name; teaching them,” etc.
It is clear, therefore, that of the MSS. which Eusebius inherited from his predecessor, Pamphilus, at Caesarea in Palestine, some at least preserved the original reading, in which there was no mention either of Baptism or of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It had been conjectured by Dr. Davidson, Dr. Martineau, by the present Dean of Westminster, and by Professor Harnack (to mention but a few names out of many), that here the received text could not contain the very words of Jesus—this long before any one except Dr. Burgon, who kept the discovery to himself, had noticed the Eusebian form of reading.
It is satisfactory to notice that Dr. Eberhard Nestle, in his new edition of the New Testament in Latin and Greek, furnishes the Eusebian reading in his critical apparatus, and that Dr. Sanday seems to lean to its acceptance. That Eusebius found it in his MSS. has been recently contested by Dr. Chase, the Bishop of Ely, who argues that Eusebius found the Textus Receptus in his manuscripts, but substituted the shorter formula in his works for fear of vulgarising and divulging the sacred Trinitarian formula. It is interesting to find a modern bishop reviving the very argument used 150 years ago in support of the forged text in I John 5:7. It is sufficient answer to point out that Eusebius's argument, when he cites the text, involves the text “in my name.” For, he asks, “In whose name?” and answers that it was the name spoken of by Paul in his Epistle to the Philippians 2:10. It is best to cite the entire passage, which is in the Demonstratio Evangelica (col. 240, p. 136 of Migne's edition):
For he [Jesus] did not enjoin them to make disciples of all the nations simply and without qualification, but with the essential addition “in his name.” For so great was the virtue attaching to his appellation that the Apostle says (Phil. 2:10) “God bestowed on him the name above every name: that in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and earth and under the earth.” It was right, therefore, that he should lay stress on the virtue of the power residing in his name, but hidden from the many, and therefore say to his apostles, “GO ye and make disciples of all the nations in my name.”
Surely Dr. Chase would not argue that the name implied in Phil. 2:10, was the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That would be a pretty heresy for an Anglican bishop to entertain. Would he attribute a heresy at once so violent and senseless to Eusebius? Where, then, is the point of arguing that Eusebius, in the score of passages where he cites Matt. 28:I9, in the above form, was moved by the disciplina arcani, or fear of divulging Christian mysteries, from writing the formula out—the more so as it was on the lips of many of his contemporaries and had been published long before by Dionysius of Alexandria, Cyprian, Tertullian, and perhaps by Irenaeus and Origen? Why did they, too, not hide the sacred formula? Moreover, why should Eusebius drop out the command to baptise? Surely the disciplina arcani does not explain his omission of that?
In the case just examined it is to be noticed that not a single MS. or ancient version has preserved to us the true reading. But that is not surprising, for, as Dr. C. R. Gregory, one of the greatest of our textual critics, reminds us, “The Greek MSS. of the text of the New Testament were often altered by scribes, who put into them the readings which were familiar to them, and which they held to be the right readings.”
These facts speak for themselves. Our Greek texts, not only of the Gospels, but of the Epistles as well, have been revised and interpolated by orthodox copyists. We can trace their perversions of the text in a few cases, with the aid of patristic citations and ancient versions. But there must remain many passages which have been so corrected, but where we cannot to-day expose the fraud. It was necessary to emphasise this point because Drs. Westcott and Hort used to aver that there is no evidence of merely doctrinal changes having been made in the text of the New Testament. This is just the opposite of the truth, and such distinguished scholars as Alfred Loisy, J. Wellhausen, Eberhard Nestle, Adolf Harnack, to mention only four names, do not scruple to recognise the fact. Here is a line of research which is only beginning to be worked.
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