Excerpt from Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles

It would be superfluous to pursue this testimony farther. It may be proper to add that no trace of any Opposition to it or dissent from it has come down to us from the first ages Of the church. Some of the early heretical sects, it is true, as the Marcionites, Manicheans, Severians, rejected the religious authority of the Acts but as they did this because it contradicted their peculiar views, and as they admitted without question the source from which their Opponents claimed to receive it, their rejection Of the book, under such circumstances, becomes a conclusive testimony to its genuineness.

In the second place, the relation in which the Acts of the Apostles stands to the Gospel which is ascribed to Luke proves that the author of the two productions must be the same individual. The writer introduces his work as a continuation or second part of a previous history, and dedicates it to a certain Theophilus, who can be no other than the person for whose special information the Gospel was written. As to the iden tity of the writer of the Acts with the writer Of the Gospel attributed to Luke, no well founded question has been, or can be, raised. Consequently, the entire mass Of testi mony which proves that Luke the Evangelist wrote the Gospel which bears his name proves with equal force that he wrote also the Acts Of the Apostles. Thus the Acts may be traced up to Luke through two independent series of witnesses. And it may be confidently asserted that, unless the combined historical evidence from this twofold source be admitted as conclusive in support of Luke's claim to the authorship of the Acts, there is then no ancient book in the world the author of which can ever be asoer tained by us.

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