The Gospels the Living Picture of Christ
Little's "Historical Lights." Acts 1:1-12 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,… The whole value of the Gospels to Erasmus lay in the vividness with which they brought home to their readers the personal impression of Christ Himself. "Were we to have seen Him with our own eyes, we should not have so intimate a knowledge as they give us of Christ, speaking, healing, dying, rising again, as it were in our very presence. If the footprints of Christ are shown us in any place, we kneel down and adore them. Why do we not rather venerate the living and breathing picture of Him in these Books? It may be the safer course," he goes on, with characteristic irony, "to conceal the state mysteries of kings, but Christ desires His mysteries to be spread abroad as openly as was possible." (Little's "Historical Lights.") Parallel Verses KJV: The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, WEB: The first book I wrote, Theophilus, concerned all that Jesus began both to do and to teach,