Commentary on St Matthew by M.F. Sadler

Rev Michael Ferrebee Sadler [1819-1895] provides a fairly detailed commentary on the English text of Matthew’s Gospel.

My thanks to Book Aid for making available a copy of this public domain title for digitisation.

Michael Ferrebee Sadler [1819-1895], The Gospel to St Matthew with Notes Critical and Practical, 2nd edn. London: George Bell & Sons, 1901. Hbk. pp.494. [Click to visit the download page for this title]

Table of Contents

1. Preface to Second Edition
2. Introduction
3. Commentary
4. Excursus I. The Genealogies
5. Excursus II. The Star of the Magi
6. Excursus III. The Primacy of St. Peter

Introduction. 1. The Origin and Sources of the Four Gospels

The account of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which has come down to us in the Four Gospels, was not at the first given to the Church in a. written form, but was taught orally by the preaching of the Apostles. Thus in the notice of the first Church-that which was founded in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost-it is said of those who belonged to it, that they “continued stedfastly in the Apostles’ teaching,” or “doctrine,” though no Gospel was written till many years afterwards.

Throughout the history of the planting of the Christian Church in various cities and countries, which we have in the Acts of the Holy Apostles-an account covering at least thirty years-we have no mention of any book from which the first Christians were taught respecting the Son of God.

That book of the New Testament which almost all agree in considering the first put into writing is the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, and throughout that Epistle it is taken for granted that the members of the local Church, for whose sake it was written, had been instructed in all needful truth, and only required to be reminded of what they had learnt.

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