Time & Perspective Quote by Adam Clarke

Clarke is doing more than praising Matthew; he is laying down an epistemology. The sentence stacks credibility like a legal brief: firsthand witness ("what he saw and heard") plus divine guarantee ("influenced by the Holy Spirit"). One pillar would be impressive, two are meant to be unassailable. In an era when biblical criticism and Enlightenment habits of doubt were pressuring traditional claims, this is a defensive move that feels almost modern: he anticipates the skeptic's cross-examination and tries to preempt it with the strongest available credentials.

The subtext is about authority, not mere reportage. "Constant attendant" turns Matthew into an embedded correspondent with total access, while "history" borrows the prestige of factual, orderly chronicle. Clarke is careful with that word: he's not calling it poetry, testimony, or proclamation, but history, the genre that claims to settle arguments. Then he raises the stakes: Matthew isn't just reliable because he was close to events; he is reliable because God supervised the telling. That second claim quietly shifts the burden of proof. If you dispute the account, you're not simply disagreeing with a human author; you're contesting divine agency.

Clarke's specific intent, as a Methodist-era commentator, is pastoral and polemical at once: steady ordinary believers, warn off fashionable skepticism, and give preachers a firm foundation. The rhetoric aims to close the case before it opens, turning faith into a warrant for certainty.