IV.
General Considerations Concerning Patristic Testimony

            Patristic
testimony, although it has limitations, provides contemporary information about
early Christian history, and consequently has definite value in the study of
events of its era.  A Christian writer
who lived not long after the composition of the gospels would be more likely to
advance correct theories about their origin than would, say, a German
rationalistic critic writing eighteen hundred years ex post facto.  Nevertheless,
patristic compositions are manifestly inferior to the NT in matters of
history.  First, they are
uninspired.  Second, unlike Scripture,
God has not promised to preserve them, so textual questions can arise which
make their current texts uncertain. 
Third, assuming a lack of Catholic or other heretical interpolation in
our current texts, many patristic writers held to dangerous doctrinal errors,
which tended to increase in number as their distance from the first century
increased;  baptismal regeneration
appears very early, and idolatry, hierarchicalism, the real presence, and other
Popish errors quickly followed. 
Believers who opposed the Babylonian apostasy were labeled heretics, and
their writings were destroyed.  Many
extant ante-Nicene writers, and certainly those after the Constantinian
revolution, must not be considered members of true churches of Christ, nor
among the number who have received the NT gospel of justification by faith
alone.  Despite these drawbacks, valuable
historical testimony, including textual-critical material, may be gleaned from
their compositions.

V.
Patristic testimony to the continued existence of the autographa

            Tertullian,
in his The Prescription Against Heretics,
states:

Come
now, you who would indulge a better curiosity, if you would apply it to the
business of your salvation, run over the apostolic churches, in which the very
thrones of the apostles are still pre-eminent in their places, in which their
own authentic writings are read, uttering the voice and representing the face
of each of them severally. Achaia is very near you, (in which) you find
Corinth. Since you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi; (and there
too) you have the Thessalonians. Since you are able to cross to Asia, you get
Ephesus. Since, moreover, you are close upon Italy, you have Rome, from which
there comes even into our own hands the very authority (of apostles
themselves). How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their
doctrine along with their blood! Where Peter endures a passion like his Lord’s!
Where Paul wins his crown in a death like John’s where the Apostle John was
first plunged, unhurt, into boiling oil, and thence remitted to his
island-exile! See what she has learned, what taught, what fellowship has had
with even (our) churches in Africa! One Lord God does she acknowledge, the
Creator of the universe, and Christ Jesus (born) of the Virgin Mary, the Son of
God the Creator; and the Resurrection of the flesh; the law and the prophets
she unites in one volume with the writings of evangelists and apostles, from
which she drinks in her faith.[i]

The Prescription
was written c. A. D. 200.[ii]  Schaff indicates that the phrase “authentic
writings” here (Latin, authenticae),
“may refer to the autographs or the
Greek originals,” or at the very
least to “full unmutilated copies as opposed to the garbled ones of the
heretics.”[iii]
There is no definite reason why the phrase would not refer to the autographs
themselves;  this would suit Tertullian’s
argument, that “the Christian Scriptures . . . are a deposit, committed to and
carefully kept by the church,”[iv]
which the heretics have perverted, better than the alternative sense.  What would better prove heretical corruption
of Scripture than a reference to the still extant autographs themselves?[v]  However, the second sense would still support
a long period of accurate transmission, for “full unmutilated copies” requires
an absence of corruption.  Tertullian
continues, “What of our own have we introduced, that we should have to take it
away again, or else add to it, or alter it, in order to restore to its natural
soundness anything which is contrary to it, and contained in the Scriptures?
What we are ourselves, that also the Scriptures are (and have been) from the
beginning.”[vi]  His argument assumes the orthodox, unlike
their heretical opponents, possess uncorrupted Scripture.  Tertullian affirms that the autographs, or at
least copies a very small number of generations from them, were still preserved
in the churches that had received them at the beginning of the third century.

            Furthermore,
Tertullian, in book four of his Five
Books Against Marcion, while arguing against Marcionite alteration of
Scripture, declares:

On
the whole, then, if that is evidently more true which is earlier, if that is
earlier which is from the very beginning, if that is from the beginning which
has the apostles for its authors, then it will certainly be quite as evident,
that that comes down from the apostles, which has been kept as a sacred deposit
in the churches of the apostles. Let us see what milk the Corinthians drank
from Paul; to what rule of faith the Galatians were brought for correction;
what the Philippians, the Thessalonians, the Ephesians read by it; what
utterance also the Romans give, so very near (to the apostles), to whom Peter
and Paul conjointly bequeathed the gospel even sealed with their own blood. We
have also St. John’s foster churches.[vii]

Context points to the conclusion that the “sacred deposit”
kept in the “churches of the apostles” would include the autographical MSS, the
uncorrupted foundation of apostolic doctrine and the counterpoint to the
corruptions of Marcion and his disciples. He likewise affirms that the “the
(Gospels) of the apostles have come down to us in their integrity . . . [and]
Luke’s Gospel [which was doctored by Marcion] also has come down to us in like
integrity until the sacrilegious treatment of Marcion.”[viii]  In his Prescription
Against Heretics, Tertullian speaks of the “Christian Scriptures . . . [as]
my property. I have long possessed it; I possessed it before you [heretics of
his day]. I hold sure title-deeds from the original owners themselves, to whom
the estate belonged. I am the heir of the apostles. Just as they carefully
prepared their will and testament, and committed it to a trust, and adjured
(the trustees to be faithful to their charge), even so do I hold it.”[ix]  He considered the Scriptures he used “sure
title-deeds from the original owners,” which were “carefully prepared” and
passed down uncorrupted from the apostolic churches to the African churches
where he ministered.  Tertullian, in
these texts, appears to affirm that the originals were still extant in the
apostolic churches in his day, while faithful copies made from them were widely
circulated.

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