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	THK BEQUSST OF 3"^ ' ISAAC MYER
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THK BRQITKK'r <)!' J" ISAAC MYER RKCKIVEi> VKDRI.AHV 10OI

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liRY

) EARLY HISTORY

JiitH.

:.\VHERB SO POLLY AND >Kr FORTH.

AYLORi a'Jb. 8t m. r. c. s.

i#inw. Imp. guoait Apofhnii Tvnum Vol. IV. p. aei.

DON:

88, FLEET STRKEi II, OXFORD STIi'^.V ;.

39.

THE

D I E G E S I S;

6B1N0

A DISCOVERY

OFTHB

ORIGIN, EVIDENCES. AND EARLY HISTORY

OF

€bri0tiantti{t

NEVER YET BEFORE OR ELSEWHERE SO FULLY AND

FAITHFULLY SET FORTH.

• • •

. * •

BY : *.."-•' •••

«, '••; .

The Rev. ROBERT TAYLOR; a.'b. &m. b. c. s.

9^i\ocrofiav ii nnr i^n Kara fuo'iv^ n ffq^iXiv, ifcami Hat ao'^atoyp my h 6iOM>MTitf facxoucratf Tofdirou* — Euphrates PhOowpfu ad' VespanoM, Imp, ^oad Apolionii Tyana Miraeala: citanie Lardnero^ Vol, IV, p. 291.

LONDON:

RICHARD CARLILE, 62, FLEET STREET; JOHN BROOKS, 421, OXFORD STREET.

1829. A

2^V

25«>»64

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DEDICATION.

TO THE

MASTER, FELLOWS, AND TUTORS OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Reverend and learned Sirs,

In interesting remembrance of the high sense your learned body were pleased to express of my successful studies, when I received your general vote of thanks, delivered to me by the Master himself, the late Dr. Craven, for the honour you were pleased to consider that my poor talents and application, in statu pupilariy had conferred on our College, which holds such distinguished rank in the most distinguished University in the world ; I very respectfully dedicate the Dusgesis, the employment of my many solitary hours in an unjust imprisonment, incurred in the most glo- rious cause that ever called virtue to act, or

f

IV DEDICATION.

fortitude to suffer. You will appreciate (far beyond any wish of mine that you should seem to appre- ciatjg) the merits of this work. Your assistance for the perfecting of future editions^ by animad- version on any errors which might have crept into the first ; and the feeling with resj^ect to it, which I cannot but anticipate, though it may never be expressed ; will amply gratify an ambition whose undivided aim was to set forth truth, and nothing else but truth.

ROBERT TAYLOR, A.B.

PRISONER.

Oakham Gaol, Feb. 19, 1S29.

CONTENTS.

Prolegomena. p^ Importance of the subject — Criminality of indifference— Dr. Whitby's last thoug^hts, &c 1

Chapter I.

Definitions — Hme, Place, Circumstances, Identity of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, necessary to be established — Geography of Palestine 4

Chaptkb II.

The Christian and Pagan Creeds collated — The Apostle's Creed, a Forgery — Inference that it is a Pagan document applied to Christian purposes — Necessity of examining the pretences of all writings that lay claim to Canonical authority 9

Craptsr III.

State of the Heathen World— -Heathenism to be judged as Christians would wish their own religion to be judged — The Pacific Age — The genius of Paganism most tolerant and philosophical — Vast difference between the philosophers and the vulgar — The philosophers were Deists — The vulgar infinitely credulous 11

Chapter IV.

The State of the Jews— The Jews the grand exception to the prevalence of universal toleration — They plagiarized Pagan fables into their pretended divine theology — Were as gross Idolaters as the Heathens^-Truth of Judaism not essen- tial to the truth of Christianity — The Pharisees — The Sad- ducees — The Cabbala — The Jews had no notion of the immor- tality of the soul ; while the Heathens had more practical faith therein, than any Christians of the present day 20

Chapter V.

State of Philosophy — A generally prevailing debility of the human understanding—- Vitiation of morals — Destruction of documents — Maxims of deceiving the vulgar, and perpetuating ignorance, approved by St. Paul — King's College, London — Gnosticism — Systems of philosophy 30

YI CONTENTS.

Pafce

Chapter VI.

Admissions of Christian writers — Deficiency of evidence- Christians before the Christian era — Christian frauds — Chris- tian scriptures not in the hands of the laity — Christianity and Paganism hardly distinguishable — Miraculous powers, dreams, visions, charms, S|>ell8 — Name of Jesus a spell 38

Chapter VII. Of the Essenes or Therapeuts — Differences of opinion with respect to them — Every thing of Christianity is of Egyptian origin — Apostolic and Apotactic monks — The Therapeuts were Christians before the Augustan era — Eclectics — ^The forgery of the gospels ascribed to mongrel Jews •'^S

Chapter VIII.

The Christian scriptures, doctrines, discipline and eccle- siastical polity, long anterior to the period assigned as that of the birth of Christ — Recapitulation — An original translation of the famous 16th chapter of the 2nd book of £usebius*s Ecclesiastical History 66

Chapter IX. Of Philo and his testimony — Sum of his admissions 74

Chapter X.

Corollaries — Eusebius — Sufficient guarantee for the text of Philo— Conflicting opinions — Severe sarcasm of Gibbon — The demonstration absolute that the monks of Egypt were the authors of the gospels — Mr. Evanson's perplexities relieved — Alexandria the cradle of Christianity — Its slow progress — Episcopal insolence of Dionysius — St. Mark, a monk 7^

Chapter XI.

Corroborations of the evidence arising from the admissions of Eusebius, in the New Testament itself 86

Chapter XII.

References to the monkish or Therapeutan doctrines to be traced in the New Testament — John the Baptist, a monk — Monkish rules in the New Testi>ment — Apollos, a Therapeuts — Vagabond Jews — The New Testament entirely allegorical — The English translation of it. Protestantizes in oreler to keep its monkish origin out of sight — St. Paul's account of the resurrection wholly different from that of the Evangelists —The conclusion 90

Chapter XIII.

On the claims of the scriptures of the New Testament to be considered as genuine and authentic — Preliminary — The authenticity of St. Paul's epistles, and of so much of his his-

00NTENT8. til

Page

tory (miracles excepted) as is contained in the Acts of the Apostles, affords no presumption in favour of the Canonical gospels — The canon of the New Testament not settled even so late as the middle of the sixth century — Mode of argument to be observed in this Dibgesis 109

Chapter XIV.

Canons of criticism — Data of criticism to be applied in judging the comparative claims of the apocryphal and canonical gospels— Corollaries — Dr. Lardner's table of times and places 113

Chapter XV.

Of the four gospels in general — Confession of the forgery of the gospels, by Paustus — ^Twenty objections to be sur- mounted— Order for a general alteration of the gospels by Anastasius — Alterations by Lanfranc 114

Chapter XVI.

Of the origin of our three first canonical gospels — The great plagiarism gradually discovered — Le Clerc — Dr. Sem- ler — Lessing*shypothesis,Niemeyer's,Halfeld*s,Beausobre*s, Bishop Marsh's— The Diegesia— The Gnomologue 119

Chapter XVII.

Of St. John's gospel in particular — Dr. Semler's hypo- thesis—^Evansoo — Bretschneider — Falsehood of gospel geo- graphy, of gospel dates, of gospel statistics, of gospel phraseology 130

Chapter XVIII. Ultimate result — The monks of Egypt, the fabricators of the whole Christian system • 136

Chapter XIX.

Resemblances of the Pagan and Christian theology — Augury and bishops — iEsculapius — Hercules — Adonis— Parallel passages in Cicero and the New Testament — Royal priests — Subordinate clergy— Priests of Cybele — Parasites or domestic chaplains — Conversion from Paganism to Christianity brought about entirely by a transfer of property 199

Chapter XX.

iGtculapius and Jesus Christ, the same figment of imagi- nation— Miracles of iEsculapius better authenticated than those of Jesus — iEsculapius distinguished by the very epithets afterwards ascribed to Jesus 148

Chapter XXI. Hercules and Jesus Christ, the same figment of imagi- natioD^Dr. Parkhurst's anger at those who doubt that

Vlil CONTENTS.

Page

Hercules was a divinely intended type of Jesus Christ — Pagan form of swearings — Superior moral virtue of Turks. ... 1 54

Chapter XXII.

Adonis — Ridiculous literal renderings of the Psalms — Jehovah and Adonis used indifferently as common names of the same deity — Words of our Easter hymn used at the festival of the Adonia 158

Chapter XXIII.

The mystical sacrifice of the Phc»nicians — A draft of the whole Christian system — Archbishop Magee, one of the Author's persecutors 168

Chapter XXIV.

Chrishna^ of the Brahmins, the original Jesus Christ — The absolute identity of Chrishna and Christ, triumphant in the complete overthrow of all the attempts of Drs. Bentley and Smithy Beard, and others to disprove it*— Dishonest engage- gement of Christian Missionaries 168

Chapter XXV.

Apollo, Jesus Christ the Egyptian version of the Indian Christ 180

Chapter XXVI.

Mercury, Jesus Christ — The Word, Jesus Christ — Ame- lius proves their identity • 183

Chapter XXVU.

Bacchus, Jesus Christ — His name Yes — Bacchus ad- dressed in the very words of Christian worship — A personi- fication of the Sun — The Bacchanalia identical with Chris- tian sanctification 186

Chapter XXVIII.

Prometheus, Jesus Christ — ^The Grecian version of the Indian Chrishna, identical with the Christian god. Provi- dence— The preternatural darkness at the Crucifixion a pal- pable falsehood, derived from iEschylus's tragedy of Prome- theus Bound 191

Chapter XXIX.

The Sign of the Cross entirely Pagan — Found in the temple of the god Serapis — The high priests of Serapis known and distinguished by the title of Bishops of Christ.... 198

Chapter XXX.

The Tauribolia — The whole theory and practice of the Christian doctrine of Regeneration. ••••••• 20?

Chapter XXXI. Baptism — The Baptists an effeminate and debauched order

CONTENTS. IX

Page

of Pagan priests — Astrological character of John the Baptist — H)f St. Thomas — the New Testament entirely allegorical. 208

Chaptsr XXXII.

The Eieusinian Mysteries entirely the same as the Chris- tiao Sacrament of the Lord's Supper— Bacchus, as the Sun, the common object of worship in both 212

Chaptee XXXIII. Pythagoras, the type of the human or man- Jesus — The Pythagorean Metempsychosis the best system of supematu- ralism 217

Chaptbr XXXIV,

Archbishop Tillotson's Confession of the identity of Chris- tianity and Paganism • •...• 224

CAaptbr XXXV.

Resemblance of Pagan and Christian forms of worship^ The White Surplice— The Baptismal Font — ^Nundination and Infant Baptism— -The old stories of the ancient Paganism adopted into Christianity — ^The Pantheon — Similar inscrip- tions in Pagan Temples and ChristiaB Churches — Saints and Martyrs that never existed ^ 229

Chapter XXXVI.

Specimens of Pagan Piety— The first Orphic Hymn to Prothynea — Hymn to Diana — ^The Creed and Golden Verses of Pythagoras — The Morals of Confbcins 239

Chapter XXXVII.

Charges brought against Christianity by its early adversa- ries, and the Christian manner of answering those charges — The Doctrine of Manes and his History — Demonstration that no such person as Jesus Christ ever existed— Admisssion of Bishop Herbert Marsh — Admissions to the same effect of the early Fathers 244

Chapter XXXVIIL

Christian Evidences adduced from Christian Writings — Dorotheus' Lives of the Apostles — Origin of the Acts of the Apostles, Cephas, Judas, Mark, Luke, Paul — That there is no difference between the Popish legends and the canonical acts of the Apostles — That no such persons as the twelve Apostles ever existed • 260

Chaptkr XXXIX.

The Arguments of Martyrdom — ^That Martyrdom is not the kind of evidence which we have a right to expect — The impropriety of the argument as it respects the charac- ter of God — The impropriety of the argument as it respects the character of Man — ^That the ai^fument of martyrdom is afaeolurtely not lnie>-^€(pecimenfr of Martyrelogy 274

X CONTENTS.

Page

Chapter XL.

The Apostolic Fathers— St Barnabas, St. Clement, St. Hermas, St. Polycarp, St. Ignatius — Correspondence of Ig- natius with the Virgin Mary — Result --Perfect parallel of Pagan and Christian Mysteries 287

Chapter XLI.

The Fathers of the Second Century — Papias Quadratus, Aristides, Hegesippus, Justin Martyr, Melito, St. Irenceus, Pantsenus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian 304

Chapter XLII.

The Fathers of the Third Century — Origen — The dolo- rous lamentation of Origen — His answer to Celsus, St. Gre- gory Thaumaturgus, St. Cyprian 328

Chapter XLIII.

The Fathers of the Fourth Century — Constantine the Great — Motives of his Conversion — ^The Evidences of Chris- tianity as they appeared to Constantine. His oration to the clergy-*— Eusebiusy the great Ecclesiastical Historian — ^Tbe holy dog 345

Chapter XLIV.

Testimony of Heretics^ who denied Christ's humanity — Cordon, Marcion, Leucius, Apelles, Faustus — Who denied Christ's^ divinity — Who denied Christ's Crucifixion — Who denied Christ's Resurrection.... • 364

Chapter XLV.

The whole of the external evidence of the Christian Re- ligion— The testimony of Lucian, of Phlegon*— The passage of Macrobius — ^Publius Lentulus-^The Veronica handker- chief— The testimony of Pilate— A coincident passage from Amobius — The passa^ of Josephus — The celebrated in- scription to Nero— Similar Inscriptions-— Tacitus, Sueto- nius, Pliny, Epictetus, Plutarch, Juvenal, Emp. Adrian, Emp. Aurelius Antoninus, Martial, Apuleius, Lncian — List of An-^ cient writers * 375

Appendix.

Containing an account of the various known M.S. copies of the New Testament, and the source of the present received copy — Various versions, Greek editions, and translations, of the New Testament — Spurious passages in ditto— False re- presentations— Abbreviations — Dates of the reigns of the Roman Emperors — Names and order of the succession of the Christian fathers and heretics — Ecclesiastical Historians and councila^-Sketch of the general councils — Present ecclesias- tical revenues—Numerical extent of Christianity — Authori- ties adduced in this Diegesi»— Texts of Scripture brought ioto illustration in this Dii^fesis • • • • 416

PROLEGOMENA.

On all hands 'tis admitted that the Christian religion is matter of most serious importance: it is so, if it be truth, because in that truth a law of faith and conduct measuring out to us a propriety of sentiment and action, which would otherwise not be incumbent upon us, is pro- pounded to our observance in this life; and eternal conse- quences of happiness or of misery, are at issue upon our observance or neglect of that law.

To deny to the Christian religion such a degree of im- portance, is not only to launch the keenest sarcasm against its whole apparatus of supernatural phenomena, but is virtually to withdraw its claims and pretensions alto- gether. For if men, after having received a divine reve- lation, are brought to know no more than what they knew before, nor are obliged to do any tiling which other- wise they would not have been equally obliged to do ; nor have any other consequences of their conduct to hope or fear, than otherwise would have been equally to be hoped or feared ; then doth the divine revelation reveal nothing, and all the pretence thereto, is driven into an admission of being a misuse of language. On the other hand* the Christian religion is of scarce less importance, if it be false ; because, no wise and good man could pos- sibly be indifferent or unconcerned to the prevalence of an extensive and general delusion. No good and amiable heart could for a moment think of yielding its assent to so monstrous an idea, as the supposition that error could possibly be useful, that imposture could be beneficial, that the heart could be set right by sc^tting the under- standing wrong, that men were to be made rational by being deceived, and rendered just and virtuous by cre- dulity and ignorance.

To be in error one's self, is a misfortune ; and if it be such an error as mightily affects our peace of mind, it is a very grievous misfortune ; to be tlie cause of error to others, either by deceiving them ourselves, or by conniv- ance, and furtherance of the councils and machinations by which we see that they are deceived, is a crime ; it is a most cruel triumph over nature's weakness, a most

B

2 PROLBUOMENA.

barbarous wrong done to our brother man ; it is the kind of wrong which we should most justly and keenly resent, could we be sensible of its being put upon ourselves.

A Nero playing upon his harp, in view of a city in flames, is a less frightful picture than that of the soli- tary philosopher basking in the serenity of his own speculations, but indifferent to the ignorance he could remove, the error he could correct, or the misery he could relieve.

As then there is no falsehood more apparently false^ and more morally mischievous, than to suppose that error can be useful, and delusion conducive to happiness and virtue : so, there can be no place for the medium or al- ternative of indifference between the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion. Every argument that could show it to be a blessing to mankind, being true, must in like degree tend to demonstrate it to be a curse and a mischief, being false.

If it be true, there can be no doubt that God, its all wise and benevolent author, must have given to it such suf- ficient evidence and proofs of its truth, that every crea- ture whom he hath endued with rational faculties, upon the honest and conscientious exercise of those faculties, must be able to arrive at a perfect and satisfactory con- viction. To suppose that there either is, or by any pos- sibility could be, a natural disinclination or repugnancy in man's mind, to receive the truths of revelation, is '' to charge God foolishly */' as if, when he had the making of man's mind, and the making of his revelation also, he had not known how to adapt the one to the other ; nor is it less than to open the door to every conceivable ab- surdity and imposture, and to give to the very grossness and palpability of falsehood, thtctdvantage over evidence, truth, and reason. If we are to conceive that any thing may be the more likely to be true, in proportion to its ap- pearing more palpably and demonstrably false, and that God can possibly have intended us to embrace that, which he has so constituted our minds, that they must na- turally suspect and dislike it, why so, then, all principles and tests of truth and evidence are abolished at once ; we may as well take poison for our food, and rush on what our nature shudders at, for safety.

To suppose that belief or unbelief can either be a virtue or a crime, or any man morally better or worse for belief or unbelief, is to assume that man has a faculty which

PROLEGOMENA. 3

we see and feel that he has not;* to wit, — a power of making himself belieye, of being convinced when he is not convinced, and not convinced when he is: which is a being and not being at the same time, the sheer end of ^' all discourse of reason."

To suppose that a suitable state of mind, and certain previous dispositions of meekness, humility, and teacha- bleness are necessary to fit us for the reception of divine truth, as the soil must be prepared to receive the seed, is in like manner to argue preposterously, and to open the door to the reception of falsehood as well as of truth ; as the prepared ground will fertilize the tares as prolifi- cally as the wheats and is indifferent to either.

^d in proportion as the state of mind so supposed to be necessary, is supposed to be an easily yielding, readily consenting, and feebly resisting state ; the more facile is it to the practices of imposture and cunning, and the less worthy conquest of evidence and reason. The property of truth is not, surely, to wait till men are in right frames of mind to receive it, but to find them wrong, and to set them right ; to find them ignorant and to make them wise ; not created by the mind^ but itself the mind's creator ; it is the sovereign that ascends the throne, and not the throne that makes tlie sovereign ; where it reigns not, right dispositions cannot be found, and where it reigns, they cannot be wanting.

The highest honour we can pay to truth, is to show our confidence in it, and our desire to have it sifted and ana- lyzed, by how rough a process soever; as being well assured that it is that alone that can abide all tests, and which, like the genuine gold, will come out all the purer from the fiercer fire.

While there arQ bad hearted men in the world, and those who wish to make falsehood pass for truth, they will ever discover themselves and their counsel, by their impatience of contradiction, their hatred of those who differ from them, their wish to suppress inquiry, and their bitter resentment, when what they call truth, has not been handled with the delicacv and niceness, which it was never any thing else but falsehood that required or needed.

All the mighty question now before us requires, is, at- tention and ability ; without any presentiment, prejudica-

* This thonght in Dr. Whitby's ; who, after publishing his ▼oluminoos Conneiittry on the Scriptures, published this among his '' I^st Thoughts.*'

B 2

4 DEFINITIONS.

tioii) or prepossession whatever ; but with a perfect and eqaal willingness to come to such conclusion as the evi- dence of moral demonstration shall offer to our convic- tion, and to be guided only by such c&nons or rules of evidence as determine our convictions with respect to all other questions.

CHAPTER I.

DEFINITIONS.

By the Christian religion, is to be understood the whole system of theology found in the Bible, as consisting of the two volumes of the Old and New Testament ; and as that system now is^ and generally has been understood, by the many^ or general body of that large community of persons professing and calling themselves Christians.

That this system of theology might not be confounded with previously existing pretences to divine revelation, or held to be a mere enthusiasm or conceit of imagina- tion, its best and ablest advocates challenge for it, his- torical data, and affect to trace it up to its origination in time, place, and circumstance, as all other historical facts may be traced.

Upon this ground, the doctrines become facts, and we are no longer called on to believe, but to investigate and examine. We are permitted, fearlessly to apply the rules of criticism and evidence, by which we measure the credi- bility of all other facts.

The time assigned as that of the historical origination of Christianity, is, the three or four first centuries of the prevalence and notoriety of a system of theology under that name; reckoning from the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus, to its ultimate and complete estab- lishment under Constantine the Great.

Any continuance of its history after this time, is unnecessary to the purpose of an investigation of its evidences ; as any proof of its existence before tliis time, would certainly be fatal to the origination challenged for it.

The place assigned as that of the historical origination of this religion, is, the obscure and remote province of Judea, which is about equal in extent of territory to the

»<

DEP114ITION8. 5

priDcipality of Wales^ being one hundred and sixty miles in length, trom Dan to Beersheba, and forty six miles in brea4th, from Joppa to Bethlehem, between 35 and 96 degrees east longitude from Greenwich, and between 31 and 33 degrees south latitude, in nearest coasting upon the eastern extrebiity of the Mediterranean sea, and in the neighbourhood of Egypt, Arabia, Phoenicia, and Syria.*

The circumstances assigned as those of the his- torical basis of this religion, are., that in the reigns of the Roman Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, and in the pro- vince of Judea, a Jew, of the lower order of that lowest and most barbarous of all the subjects of the Roman empire, arose into notoriety among his countrymen, from the circumstance of leaving his ordinary avocation as a labouring mechanic, and travelling on foot from village to village in that little province, affecting to cure diseases ; that he preached the doctrines, or some such, as are as- cribed to him in the New Testament ; and that he gave himself out to be some extraordinary personage : but fail- ing in his attempt to gain popularity, he was convicted as a malefactor, and pubUcly executed, under the pre- sidency and authority of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. This extraordinary person was called Jesus or Joshua, a name of ordinary occurrence among the Jewish clan; and from the place of his nativity, or of his more general residence, he is designated as Jesus op Nazareth : the obscurity of his parentage, or his equi- vocal legitimacy having left him without any name or designation of his family or descentf

These are circumstances which fall entirely within the scale of rational probability, and draw for no more than an ordinary and indifferent testimony of history, to command the mind's assent. The mere relation of any historian, living near enough to the time supposed, to guarantee the probability of his competent information on the subject, would have been entitled to our acquiescence. We could have had no reason to deny or to doubt, what such an historian could have had no motive to feign or to exag-

* ** The geography of Palestine lies in a narrow compass. It comprises a tract of country of nearly 200 miles In length, in its full extent, from the riter of Erypt south of Gaza to the furthest bounds towards Damascus, and perhaps ofmorethan 100 in breadth, including Perea, from the Mediterranean eastward to the desert Arabia/' — Elslby.

f Being, a$ wai tupposed^ the son of Joseph, Luke iv. 23. It wa^no mat- ter of supposition that his mother had yielded to the embraces of 7^ *)33 Gabriel ; that is, literally, the man of God, Lulie i. SB.

D DEFINITIONS.

gerate. The proof even to demonstratioD, of these cir- cunuitancesy would constitute no step or advance towards the proof of the truth of the Christian religion ; while the absence of a sufficient degree of evidence to render* even these circumstances unquestionable^ must, a fortiori, be fatal to the credibility of the still less credible circum- stances founded upon them.

If there be no absolute certainty that such a man ex-> iated, still less can there be any proof that such and such were his actions, as have been ascribed to him. Those who might have reasons or prejudices to induce them to deny that such and such were the actions ascribed to such a per- son, could have none to deny or to conceal the mere fact of his existence as a man. To this effect, the testimony of enemies is as good as that of friends. One competent historian, (if such can be adduced), speaking of Jesus of Nazareth as an impostor, would be as unexceptionable a witness to the fact of his existence, as one who should assert every thing that hath ever been asserted of him.

The autfientic and unsophisticated testimony of Cblsus, that Jesus of Nazareth wrought miracles by the power of magic ; though it be no proof that Jesus of Nazareth wrought miracles by the power of magic, and no proof that Jesus of Nazareth wrought miracles, yet as far as it avails, it avails to the proof of the conviction of Celsus, that such a person as Jesus of Nazareth really existed.* We emphatically say such a person as Jesus of Nazareth ; because the name Jesus being as common among the Jews, as John or Thomas among Christians ; nothing hinders but there might have been some dozen, score, or hundred Jesuses of Nazareth; so that proof (if it could be adduced) of the existence of any one of these, unless coupled with an accompanying proof that that one was tlie Jesus of Nazareth distinguished from all others of that designation, by the circumstance of hav- ing been *' crucified under Pontius Pilate," would be no proof of the existence of the Jesus of the Gospel, of whose identity the essential predicates are, not alone the name Jestis, and the place Nazareth,hikt the characteristic distinction of crucifixion.

Still less, and further off than ever from any absolute identification with the Jesus of the Gospel, is the regal

* It roust never be forgotten, that we hiTe no testimony of CeUus, but only the teitimony which Origen has fathered on him : which is a very different thing.

DEFINITIONS. 7

tiile Christ,* or tlie Anointed, which was not only held by all the kings of Israel, but so commonly assumed by all sorts of impostors, conjurors, and pretenders to super- natural communications, that the very claim to it, is in the gospel itself, considered as an indication of impos- ture, and a reason and rule for withholding our credence : there being no rule in that gospel more distinct^ than, that ** if any man shall say to you, lo^ here is Christ, or lo,he is there, believe him not/' Mark xiv. 21. No reason more explicit, than, that " many false Christs should arise,*' Matt. xxiv. 24, Luke xxi, 8 ; and no statement more definitive, than that, when one of his immediate disciples applied that title to the Jesus of the gospel, he himself disclaimed it, '^ and straitly charged and commanded them to tell no man that thing," Luke ix. 2l,t Matt. xyi. 29.

So that should authentic and probable history present us with a record of the existence of a Christ, pretending to a supernatural commission : we should have but that one chance /or, against the many chances against the identity of such a Christ with the person of the Jesus of Nazareth.

Should authentic history present us even with a Christ who was CRUCIFIED, though such a record would cer- tainly come within the list of very striking coincidences, in relation to the evangelical story ; yet as we certainly know that Christ was one of the most ordinary titles that religious impostors were wont to assume, and Cru- cifixion, an ordinary punishment consequent on detected imposture, a Christ crucified, would by no means identify the " Jesus Christ, and Him crucified/' of the New Testament.

The testimony of Tacitus however, which we shall consider in its chronological order, purports to be more specific than this, and to come up nearly to the fall amount of the predications necessary to establish the iden- tification required '' Christ, who was put to death under the Procurator Pontius Pilate^X This is either genuine,

* ETen the heathen Prince Cyrus, is called, by Isaiah, the Christ of God. —Isaiah xlv. 1.

t This is not the usaal sense given to these words, but it is borne ont by bis questions to the Pharisees, *' What thinit ye of Christ? whose son is he?-' Matt. xxii. 42. A mode of speal&ing that no man could use with reference to himself.

^X It wants only the addition of the name, Jesus. It is however hardly likely that two claimants of the name Christ, should have been erucifled niider 'im lune goTernor.

8 DEFINITIONS.

aathentic^ and valid evidence to the full extent to which it purports to extend ; or it is the forgery of a wonder- fully adroit and well-practised sophisticator.

The extent of its purport will be matter of subsequent investigation. Our respect for it, in the present stage of of our process^ stands in guarantee of our willingness and desire to receive and admit whatever bears the character of that sort of rational evidence^ which is admitted on all other questions ; while we lay to the line and the plummet^ that irremeable and everlasting border of distinction that separates the bright focus of truth and certainty, from the misty indistinctness and confusion of fallacy and fable.

But further off, even to an infinite remoteness from any designation or reference to the person of the crucified Jesus, arc the complimentary and idolatrous epithets of honour or of worship, which the heathen nations, from the remotest antiquity, were in the habit of applying to thpir gods, demigods, and heroes, who from the various services which they were believed to have rendered to mankind, were called saviours of the world, redeemers of mankind, physicians of souls, &c., and addressed by every one of the doxologies, even, not excepting one of those which Christian piety has since confined and appropriated to the Jewish Jesus.

Nor are any of the supernatural, or extraordinary cir- cumstances, which either with truth or without it, are asserted or believed of the man of Nazareth, at all cha- racteristic or distinctive of that person, from any of the innumerable host of heaven-descended, virgin-bom, won- der-working sons of God, of whom the like supernatural and extraordinary circumstances were asserted and be- lieved, with as great faith, and with as little reason.

To have been the whole world's desideratum, to have been foretold by a long series of undoubted prophecies, to have been attested by a glorious display of indisput- able miracles, to have revealed the most mystical doc- trines, to have acted as never man acted, and to have suffered as never man suffered, were among the most ordinary credentials of the gods and goddesses with which Olympus groaned.

As our business in this treatise is, with stubborn fact and absolute evidence, 1 shall subjoin so much of the Christian creed as is absolutely and unquestionably of Pagan origin, and which, though not found as put toge- ther in this precise formulary, is certainly to be deduced

CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN CREEDS COLLATED.

9

from previoasly existing Pagan writings. ITuit only, which could not, or would not, have expressed the fair sense of any fonu of Pagan faith, can be pecu- liarly Christian. That only which the Christian finds that he has to say, of which a worshipper of the gods could not have said the same or the like before him, ^is Christianity.

CHAPTER II.

THE CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN CREEDS COLLATED.

The Christian Creed,

1. 1 believe in God the Fa- ther Almighty, maker of Lea- ven and earth.

2. And in Jesus Christ his only Kon our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

3. Born of the Virgin Mary.

4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate.

5. Was crucified.

6. Dead and buried.

7. He descended into hell.

8. The third day he rose again from the dead.

9. He ascended into heaven.

10. And sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Al- mighty.

11. From whence he shall eome to judge the quick and the dead.

12. I believe in the Holy Ghost.

13. The Holy Catholic Church.

14. The Communion of Saints.

The Pagan Creed.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jasius* Christ his only son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Born of the Virgin Electra.

Suffered under (whom ii might be,)

Was struck by a thunder- bolt.

Dead and buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven.

And sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

From whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

1 believe in the Holy Ghost

The Holy Catholic Divinity. The Communion of Saints.

15. The forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins.

* ** Jasiusque Pator, genus' a quo priiici|>e uustrum." And father Jafiiuff, fir<iB which Prince our race is dericcnded. — Virgil,

10

CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN CREEDS COLLATED.

16. The resurrection of the body.

17. And the life everlasting.

This creed, though not to be found in this form in the Chris- tian Scriptures, is evidently de- ducible from them as their sense and purport.

'* This creed still bears the name of the Apostle's Creed, From the fourth century down- wards it was almost generally considered as a production of the Apostles. AU^ however, who have the least knowledge of antiquity, look upon this opinion as entirely false and destitute of all foundation. There is much more reason in the opinion of those who think that this creed was not all composed at once, but from small beginnings was imper- ceptibly augmented, in propor- tion to the growth of heresy, and according to the exigen- cies and circumstances of the church, from which it was de- signed to banish the errors that duly arose.''— Mosheim, vol. i.

p.H6, U7.

The immortality of the soul. And the life everlasting.

This creed, though not to be found in this form in the Pagan Scriptures, is evidently deduci- ble from them as their sense and purport

The reader is to throw into this scale, an equal quantity of allowance and apology to that claimed by the advocate of Christianity for the opposite. He will only observe that on this side, apology and pallia- tion for a known and acknow- ledged imposture and forgery for so many ages palmed upon the world, is not needed.

It is not the Pagan creed that was imposed upon man- kind, under a false superscrip- tion, and ascribed to an autho- rity from which it was known not to have proceeded. Whe- ther a church, which stands convicted of having forged its creed, would have made any scruple of forging its gospels ; is a problem that the reader will solve according to the in- fluence of prejudice or proba- bility on his mind.

INFERENCE.

As then, the so called Apostle's Greedy is admitted to have been written by no such persons as the Apostles^ and with respect to the high anthority which has for so many ages been claimed for it, is a convicted imposture and forgery ; the equity of rational evidence will allow weight enough, even to a probable conjecture, to overthrow all Siat remains of its pretensions. The probability is, that it is really a Pagan document, and of Pagan origi- nation; since, even after the trifling alteration and sub- stitution of one name perhaps for another, to make it subserve its new application, it yet exhibits a closer resem-

STATE OF THE HEATHEN WOBUD. 11

blance to its Pagan stock, than to the Christian stem on ^hich it has been engrafted.

By a remarkable oversight of the keepings and congmi- ties of the system, the Christian creed has omitted to call for our belief of the miracles or prophecies which constitute its evidence, or for our practice of the duties which should be the test of its utility.

If then, as the learned and judicious Jeremiah Jones, in his excellent treatise on the canonical authority of the New Testament, most justly observes, '^ In order to es- tablish the canon of the Mew Testament, it be of ab- solute necessity that the pretences of all other books to canonical authority be first examined and refuted:"* much more must it be absolutely necessary to establish the paramount and distinctive challenges of Christianity, that we should be able to refute and overthrow all the pretences of previously existing religions, by such a co- gency and fairness of argument, as in being fatal to them, shall admit of no application to this, which battering down their air-built castles, shall, when brought to play with equal force on Christianity, leave its defences un- shaken and its beauty unimpaired.

CHAPTER III.

STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD.

It is manifestly unworthy of any cause, in itself con- taining an intrinsic and independent excellence, that its advocates should condescend to set it off by a foil, or to act as if they thought it necessary to decry and disparage the pretensions of others, in order to magnify and exidt their own. It is certain that the vileness of falsehood can add nothing to the glory of truth. Showing the va- rious systems of heathen idolatry to be, how vile soever, would be adducing neither evidence nor even presumption for the proof of the divinity of a system of religion that was not so vile, or even if you please, say infinitely supe- rior; as a beautiful woman would certainly feel it to be but an ill compliment to her beauty, to have it constantly obtruded upon her observance, how hideously deformed and monstrously ugly were those, than whom she was so much more beautiful.

♦ Vol, I. p. 16. Sfo. Ed.

12 STATE OP THB HEATHEN WOULD.

As it would not be fair to take ap our notion of the Christian religion, from the lowest and most ignorant of its professors, and still less, perhaps, to estimate its merits, by the representations which its known and avowed enemies would be likely to give ; the balance of equal justice on the other side, will forbid our forming our estimate of the ancient paganism from the misconceptions of its unworthy votaries, or the interested detractions and exaggerations of its Christian opponents.

The only just and honourable estimate will be that which shall judge of paganism, as Christians would wish their own religion to be judged — ^by its own absolute docu- ments, by the representations of its advocates, and the admissions of its adversaries.

When it is borne in mind, that a supernatural origin- ation or divine authority is not claimed for these systems of theology, there can be no occasion to fear their rivalry or encroachment on systems founded on such a claim ; and still less, to decry, vituperate, and scan- dalize these, as any means of exalting or magnifying those. There cannot be the least doubt, that in dark and barbarous ages, the rude and unlettered part of mankind would grossly pervert the mystical or allegorical sense, if such there were, in the forms of religion propounded to their observance or imposed on their simplicity ; while it is impossible, that those enlighted and philosophical characters, who have left us in their writings the most un- doubted evidence of the greatest shrewdness of intellect, extent of inquiry, and goodness of heart, should have un- derstood their mythology in no better or higher signifi- cancy than as it was understood by the ignorant of their own persuasion, or would be represented by their ene- mies, who had the strongest possible interest in defaming and decrying it. When the worst is done in this way, Christianity would be but little the gainer by being weighed in the same scales. Should we be allowed to fix on the darkest day of her eleven hundred years of dark ages, and to pit the grossest notions of the grossest igno- rance of that day, as specimens of Christianity ; against the views which Christians have been generally pleased to give as representations of paganism ; how would they abide the challenge, '' look on this picture and on this V Those doctrines only, of which no form or forms of the previously existing paganism could ever pretend the same or the like doctrines, can be properly and distinctively

1.

STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD. 13

called Christian. That degree of excellence, whose very lowest stage is raised above the very highest acme of what is known &nd admitted to have been no more than human, can alone put in a challenge to be regarded as divine. Thai which was not known before, is that only which a subsequent revelation can have taught.

To justify the claims, therefore, of such a subsequent revelation, we must make the full allowance, and entirely strike out of the equation, all quantities estimated to their ftillest and utmost appreciation, which are, and have been claimed as the property of pre-existent systems ; and as they were not divine, while it is pretended that this w, the discovery of a resemblance between the one and the other, can only be feared by those who are con- scious that diey are making a false pretence. Resem- blance to a counterfeit is, in this assay, proof of a coun- terfeit. Brass may sometimes be brought to look like gold, but the pure gold had never yet the ring and imper- fections of any baser metal.

At the time alleged as that of the birth of Jesus, all na* tions were living in the peaceful profession and practice of the several systems of religious faith which they had, as nations or as families, derived from their ancestors, in an antiquity lying far beyond the records of historical commemoration. Christians generally claim for this epocha of time the truly honourable distinction of being the pacific age.'"' The benign influence of letters and philosophy, was at this time extensively diffused through countries which had previously lain under the darkest ignorance ; and nations, whose manners had been savage and barbarous, were civilized by the laws and commerce of the Romans. The Christian writer Orosius^ maintains that the temple of Janus was then shut, and that wars and discords had absolutely ceased throughout the world : which, though an allegorical, and very probably an hy- perbolical representation of the matter, is at least an honourable testimony to the then state of the heathen world.

The notion of one supreme being was universal. No calumny could be more egregious, than that which charges the pagan world with ever having. lost sight of that notion, or compromised or surrendered its paramount importance, in all the varieties and modifications of pagan

* Moiheim, Vol. 1. Chap. 1.

14 STATE OF TlIK HEATHEN WORLD.

piety.* This predominant notion (admits Mosheim) showed itself, even through the darkness of the grossest idolatry.

The candour which gives the Protestant Christian credit for his professed belief in the unity of God, even against the conflict of his own assertion of believing at the same time in a trinity of three persons, which are each of them a Grod ; the fairness which respects ti^e dis- tinction which the Catholic Christian challenges between his Latria and Doulia, his worship of the Almighty, and bis veneration of the images of the saints, will never suppose that the divinity of the inferior deities was understood in any sense of disparagement to the alone supreme and undivided godhead of their ** one first — one greatest — only Lord of adl."

The evidences of Christianity must be in a labouring condition indeed, if they require us to imagine that a Cicero, Tacitus, or Pliny were worshippers of gods of wood and stone ; or to force on our apprehensions such a violence, as that we should imagine that the mighty mind that had enriched the world with Euclid's Elements of Geometry, could have bowed to the deities of Euclid's Egypt, and worshipped leeks and crocodiles.

Orthodoxy itself will no longer suggest its resistance to the only faidiful and rational account of the matter, so elegantly given us by Gibbon.f '^ The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered, by Uie people as equally true, — by the phi- losopher, as equaUy false, — and by the magistrate, as equally useful.

'^ Both the interests of the priests, and the credulity of the people were sufficiently respected. In their writings and conversation, the philosophers of antiquity asserted the independent dignity of reason; but they resigned their actions to the commands of law and custom. View- ing with a smile of pity and indulgence the various errors of the vulgar, they diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of the gods ; and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of

* All the inferior deitiM in Homer, are represented at thas addressing the tvproM Jove : —

** Oh first and greatest, GOD! by gods adored. We own thy power, our father and our lord.** — Iliad.

t DmUm and Fall of the Roman Empire, toI. i. chap. 2. p. 46.

STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD. 16

an atheist under the sacerdotal robe. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith, or of worship. It was indiffer- ent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume ; and they approached with the same inward contempt and the same external reverence to the altars of the Lybian, the Olympian, or the Capitoline Jupiter/^*

It was a common adage among the Greeks, davfiara fiwpoic — Miracles for fools; and the same proverb obtained among the shrewder Romans, in the saying, Vulgus vult decipi— decipiatur, '' The common people like to be deceived— deceived let them be."

The Christian, perhaps, may boast of his sincerity, but a moment's thought wUl admonish him how little virtue there is in such a quality, when it forces a necessity of hypocrisy on others. Sincerity should be safe on both sides of die hedge. It was never taken for a virtue in an unbeliever.

'^ Every nation then had its respective gods, over which presided one more excellent than the rest ;" and the de- gree of this pre-eminency, as versified by Pope from the 6th book of the Iliad, is an absolute vindication of the Pagan world from the charge of the grosser and more revolting sense of Polytheism. They were virtually Deists. None of their divinities were thought to ap- proach nearer to the supremacy of the father of gods and men, than the various orders of the Cherubim and Sera- phim, to the God and Father of J esus Christ,

*' Who but behold his utmost skirts of gloiy.

And far off, his steps adore.*'

So in the language of their Iliad (and language has nothing more sublime) we read the august challenge : —

** Let down our golden everlasting chain, Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main ; Strive all of mortal or immortal birth. To drag by this the thunderer down to earth. Ye strive in vain. If I but lift this hand, I heave the heavens, the ocean, and the land ; For such I reign unbounded and above. And such are men, and gods, compared to Jove.**

Mosheim, upon an evident misunderstanding, assumes that their supreme deity, in comparison to whom the

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, p. 40, 60.

16 8TATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD.

gods and goddesses were as far off from an absolute divinity, as ever were the guardian angels and tutelary saints of Christianity ; was himself believed to be subject to the rigid empire of the faieSy or what the philosophers called eternal necessity. But the word fate, by its deri- vation from the natural indication of command — Fiat ! Be it so; may satisfy us, that nothing more was meant, than that the supreme deity was bound by his own en- gagements, that his word was irrevocable, and that all his actions were determined and guided by the everlast- ing law of righteousness, and conformed to the counsels and sanctions of his own unerring mind. So that He, and He cdone, could say with truth,

** Necessity and Chance

Approach roe not, and what i will — is fatb.**

" One thing, indeed," says our authority, (Mosheim), " appears at first sight very remarkable — that the variety of religions and gods in the heathen world, neither pro- duced wars nor dissentions among the different nations/'* A diligent and candid investigation of historical data will demonstrate, that from this general rule, there is no valid and satisfactory instance of exception. The Greeks may have carried on a war to recover lands that had been distrained from the possession of their priests; and the Egyptians may have revenged the slaughter of their crocodiles; but these wars never proposed as their object, the insolent intolerance of forcing their modes of faith or worship on other nations. They were not offended at their neighbours for serving other divinities, but they could not bear that theirs, should be put to death. And if, perhaps, where we read the word divini- ties, we should understand it to mean nothing more than favourites; and instead of saying that people worshipped such and such things, that they were excessively or fool- ishly attached to them ; considering that such language owes its original modification to Christian antipathies, it might be brought back to a nearer affinity to probability, as well as to charity. An Egyptian might be as fond of onions, as a Welshman of leeks, a Scot of thistles, or an Irishman of shamrock, without exactly taking their gar- bage for omnipotence.f

* Their religion had not made fools of them.

i" Who tJiat wished to be a thriving wooer, ever hesitated to drop on his knee and adore hit mistress ? ** With my body I thee worship.*'-— .Vafri- mtmUU Servicf.

Ik

STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD. 17

** £ach nation suffered its neighbours to follow their own method of worship, to adore their own gods, to enjoy their own rites and ceremonies, and discovered no displeasure at their diversity of sentiments in religious matters. They all looked upon the world as one great empire, divided into various provinces, over every one of which, a certain order of divinities presided, and that, therefore, none could behold with contempt the gods of other nations, or force strangers to pay homage to theirs.

The Romans exercised this toleration in the amplest manner. As the sources from which all men's ideas are derived, are the same, namely, from their senses, there being no other inlet to the mind but thereby, there is nothing wonderful in the general prevalence of a same- ness of the ideas of human beings in all regions and all ages of the world. The affections of fear, grief, pain, hope, pleasure, gratitude, &c., are as common to man as his nature as a man, and could not fail to produce a cor- responding similarity in the objects of his superstitious veneration. To have nothing in common with the already established notions of mankind, to bear no fea- tures of resemblance to their hallucinations and follies, to be nothing like them, to be to nothing so unlike, should be the essential predications and necessary credentials of the " wisdom which is from above."

It has, however, been alleged by learned men, with convincing arguments of probability, " that the prin- cipal deities of all the Gentile nations resembled each other extremely, in their essential characters ; and if so, their receiving the same names could not introduce much confusion into mythology, since they were probably derived from one common source. If the Thor of the ancient Celts, was the same in dignity, character, and attributes with the Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans, where was the impropriety of giving him the same name f Dies Jovis is still the Latin form for our Thor's day. When the Greeks found in other countries deities that resembled their own, they persuaded the worshippers of those foreign gods that their deities were the same that were honoured in Greece, and were, indeed, themselves convinced that this was the case. In consequence of this, the Greeks gave the names of their gods to those of other nations, and the Romans in this followed their example. Hence we find the names of Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, 8cc., frequently mentioned in the more recent

c

18 STATE OP THE HEATHEN WORLD.

monuments and inscriptions which have been found amongf the Gauls and Germans, though the ancient in- habitants of those countries had worshipped no gods under such denominations/' — Note in Moshnm.

To have been goddess-born, heaven-descended; to have *^ lived and died as none could live and die/' to have been believed to have done and suffered great things for the service of mankind, but above all, to have propitiated the wrath of the Superior Deity, and to have conquered the invisible authors of mischief, in their behalf, was such an overwhelming draft on the tender feelings, the excite- ment of which is one of the strongest sources of pleasure in our nature, that the best hearts and the weakest heads never gave place to the coolness and apathy of scepti* cism. Not a doubt was entertained that a similar seriecl of adventures was proof of one and the same hero, and that the Grecian Apollo, the Phoenician Adonis, the iBsculapius of Athens, the Osiris of Egypt, the Christ of India, were but various names of tiie selfsame deity; so that nothing was so easy at any time, as the business of conversion. Not incredulity, but credulity, is the charac- teristic propensity of mankind.

A disposition to adopt the religious ceremonies of other nations, to multiply the objects of faith, to listen with eagerness to any thing that was offered to them under a profession of novelty, to believe every pretence to divine revelation, and to embrace every creed, presents itself in the history of almost every society of men, and is found as inalienable a characteristic of uncivilized, or but par- tially civilized man, as cunning is of the fox, and courage of the lion. Unbelief is no sin that ignorance was ever capable of being guilty of; to suspect it of the Gentile nations previous to the Christian era, is to outrage all inferences of our own experience, and to suppose the human race in former times to have been a different species of animals from any of which the wonder-loving and credu- lous vulgar of our own days could be the descendants.

Of all miracles that could possibly be imagined, the miracle of a miracle not being believed, would be the most miraculous, the most incongruous in its character, and the nearest to the involving a contradiction in its terms. If proof of a truth so obvious were not super- fluous, the Christian might be commended to the consi- deration of authorities, to whose decision he is trained and disposed to submit.

STATE OF TUB HEATHEN WORLD. 19

His Paul of Tarsus finds^ in the city of Athens^ an altar erected to the Unknown Oods;* and taking what Le Clerc considers a justifiable liberty with the inscription, com- pliments the citizens on such a proof of their predisposi- tion to receive the God whom he propounded to them, or any other, as well without evidence as with it, and to be oonTMTted without putting him to the trouble of a miracle. Acts xvii. 23.

The inhabitants of Lystra, upon only hearing of the most equivocal and suspicious case of wonderment that could well be imagined, even that a lame beggar, who migfat have been hired for the purpose, or probably had never been lame at all, had been cured, or imagined him- self cured, by two entire strangers, itinerant Tberapeutse, or tramping quack-doctors, without either inquiry or doubt, set up the cry, ^' That Jupiter and Mercury were come down from heaven in the shape of these quack-doc- tors ;" and with all the doctors themselves could do to check the intensity of their devotion, ** scarce restrained Umf the people that they had md done sacrifice** — Acts xiv. 18. ^

* '* Quamvi* plurali numero lef^uretnr iotcriptio tgyiwarots dcou, rccte de Deo Ignoto, locuius est Paulas. Quia plurali uumero continctur singulari^.*' —Cleric. H. G. A. 52. p. 874. There is suflScient evidence, however, that Paul read the inscription correctly ; so that the commentator's ready quibble is not called for.

The various translations given of this text, make a good specimen of the difl&cttlty of coming at the real sense of any ancient legends.

THE GREEK. THE LATIN.

ISfrmBtis S^ 6 UavXos cy fit<ru tb aptiB- Stans autem Paulus in medio Areo- •ivyia c^ aifUpts A^moi Kwra wamams pAgi* >it, Viri Athenensis, ]>er omnia l>iim>a^iorfgy«pgf vyMs d^vpw. quasi superstitiores vos aspicio.

1. DK. LARDNER's translation.

'* Paul, therelbre, standing up in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that ye are in all things very religious/*

2. UNITARIAN VERSION.

^ Then Paul stood in the midst of the court of Areopagus, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that ye are exceedingly addicted to the wershfp of demooa.'*

8. ARCHBISHOP NEWCOMB*S VERSION.

*« Ye men of Athens, 1 perceive that in all things ye are somewhat too rallgiouB.*'

4. OOHIION VERSION,

" Ye iiiea of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitiou<>.*' These various translators, however, did not mean exactly to discover, that

religion and superstition were convertible terms. — Six, is one thing, and

half a dflzen it another.

c 2

90 9ITATG OP THE JEWS.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STATE OP THE JEWS.

The grand exception to the hannonious universalism of religions, and to that entire prevalence^ as far as religion was concerned^ of peace on earth and good will among men/' which arose from the practical conviction of a sentiment which had passed into a common proverb^ *' Deorum injuria, Diis cuRiE," that" The wrongs of the gods were the concerns of the gods" occurred among a melancholy and misanthropic horde of exclusively superstitious barbarians, who, from their own and the best account that we have of them, were colonized from their captivity, by a Babylonian prince, on the sterile soil of Judea, about twenty-three hundred years ago; and, by the exclusive, unsocial, and uncivilized charac- ter of their superstition^^ere exposed to frequent wan and final dispersion. The exclusive character of their superstition, and the constant intermarriage with their own caste or sect, have, to this day, preserved to them, in an countries, a distinct character. These barbarians, who resented the consciousness of their inferiority in the scale of rational being, by an invincible hatred of the whole human race, being without wit or invention to devise to themselves any original system of theology, adopted from time to time tbe various conceits of the various nations, by whom their rambling and predatory tribes had been held in subjugation. They plagiarized the religious legends of the nations, among whom their characteristic idleness and inferiority of understanding bad caused them to be vagabonds ; and pretended that the furtive patch-work was a system of theology intended by heaven for their exclusive benefit There is, however, nothing extraordinary in this ; the miserable and the wretched always seek to console themselves for the absence of real advantages, by an imaginary counterbalance of spiritual privilege. An' let them be the caterers, they shall always be the favourites of Omnipotence, and their afflictions in this world, shall be to be overpaid with a ^' far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," in another. In some instances it will be found, that the means of detecting the original idea has been washed down the

STATIS OF THE JEWS. 31

Stream of time. The Jewa, vfho, probably, always were, as they are at present, the old'clothes-men of the world, have had but little difficulty in scratching up a sufficient freshness of nap upon borrowed or stolen theology, to disguise its original character. Very often, however, has their idleness betrayed their policy, and left us scarcely so much as an sdteration of names to put us to the trouble of a doubt.

Tliey give us the story of the sacrifice of Ipthegenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, as an original legend of 9 judge of Israel, who had immolated his daughter tt Yahouh, or Jao, without so much as respecting the wish to be deceived, not even being at the pains to vary the name of the heroine of the fable. By a division of the syUables into two words, Ipthi-genia is literally Jeptha's daughter ; and even the name of Mos£S himself, as it stands in the Greek text, is composed of the same consonant letters as Misbs, the Arabian name of Bac- chus, of whom precisely the same adventures were related, and believed, many ages before there existed a race known on earth as the nation of Israel, or any indi- vidual of that nation capable of committing either truth or falsehood to written documents. There have been dancing bears, sagacious pigs, and learned horses in the world, but the Jews are as innocent as any of them of the faculty of original invention.

Their strong man (Samson) carrying away the gates of Gasa, is scarcely a various reading from the story of Hercules' pillars at Gades, Cades, or Cadiz.

That this melancholy race of rambling savages had derived the principal features of their theology from the deities of Egypt, is demonstrable from the literal identity of the name of the god of Memphis, Jao, with that of the boasted god of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, who are each of them believed to have been either natives or very long residents of that country.

Moses himself, on the face of their own report, was confessedly an Egyptian priest. The Jewish Elohim were the decans of the Egjrptians ; the same as the genii of the months and planets among the Persians and Chal- deans ; and Jao, or Yahouh, considered merely as one of these beings generically called Elohim or Alehim, appears to have been only a national or topical deity. We find one of the presidents of the Jewish horde, negociating with a king of the Amorites, precisely on

S2 STATE OF THE JEWS.

these teims of a common understanding between them. '' Wilt not thon possess that which Chemosh, thy Alehim, giveth thee to possess ? So whomsoever Jao, our Alehim, shall drive out from before us, them will we possess.'**

Nor is it at all concealed, that the power of J Ao, as much as of any other topical god, was confined to the province over which he presided. ** The Jao Alehim of Israd, fought for Israelyf and Jao drave out the inhabitants of the mountain ; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.;):" The God of Israel was no match for the tutelary deities of the valley. The first commandment of the decalogue involves a virtual recognition of the existence, and rival, if not equal claims of other deities. ** Th&ti shalt have none other gods but me,'' is no mandate that could have issued from one who had been entirely satisfied of his own supremacy, and that those to whom he had once revealed himself, were in no danger of giving a preference to the idols of the Gentiles. To say nothing of the highest implied compliment to those idols, in the confession of Jao, that he was jealous of his people's attachment. '' / the Lord thy God am a jealous God,'* Exod. xx. He was Lord of heaven and earth, &c. in such sense as the Empe- ror of China, the Grand Sultan, fltc., — by courtesy.

It would be difiicult to imagine, and surely impossible to find, among all the formularies of ancient Paganism, any manner of speaking ascribed to their deities more truly contemptible, more egregiously absurd and revolting to common sense, than the language which their lively oracles put into the mouth of their deity. Sometimes he is described as roaring like a lion, at others as hissing like a snake, as burning with rage, and unable to restrain his own passions, as kicking, smiting, cursing, swearing, smelling, vomiting, repenting, being grieved at his heart, his fury coming up in his face, his nostrils smoking, &c. For which our Christian divines have invented the apology, ^' that these things are spoken thus, in accom- modation to the weakness of human conceptions," and av^ptamovra^iMfc AS humanly siiffering ; without, however, allovmig benefit of the same apology, to throw any sort of

Salliation over the grossnesses of the literal sense of the ^agan theology. It is weU known, that the Pagan wor-

* Judges xi. 84. + Joshua z. 42.

X Judges i. 19. And note welly that this Chemosh, called in I Kings xi. 7. thv abomination oFMosh, is nonp other than the Christian Messiah, or 8an •f Rtfhteoasness, of Maiachi iii. 80, or iv. 8.

STATE OF THE JEW8. 28

ship by no means involved such a real prostration of intellect^ and such an absolute surrender of the senses and reason, as is involved in the Christian notion of pay- ing divine honours. It often meant no more than a habit of bolding the thing so said to be worshipped^ in a par- ticolar degree of attachment, as many Christians carry alK>nt them a lucky penny, or a curious pebble, keep- sakes or mementos of past prosperity, or something which is to recall to their minds those agreeable associa- tions of idea, which

*' Lingering haunt the greenest spot On memVy's waste."

Thus the Egyptian's worship of onions, however at first view ridiculous and childish, and exposing him to the scorn and sarcasm both of Christian and Heathen satirists;* in his own view and representation of the matter, (which surely is as fairly to be taken into the account as the representations of those who would never give theQiselves the trouble to investigate what had onc« moved their laughter,) by no means implied that he took the onion itself to be a god, or forgot or neglected its Cnlinary uses as a vegetable. The respect he paid to it referred to a high and mystical order of astronomical speculations, and was purely emblematical. The onion presented to the eye of the Egyptian visionary, the most curious tjrpe in nature of the disposition and arrange- ment of the great solar system. " Supposing the root and top of the head to represent the two poles, if you cut any one transversely or diagonally, you will find it divided into the same number of spheres, including each other, counting from the sun or centre to the cir- cumference, as they knew the motions or courses of the orbs (or planets) divided the fluid system of the heavens into; and so the divisions represented the courses of those orbs.'' This observation of Mr. Hutchinsonf has since been made or borrowed by Dr. Shaw, who observes, that " the onion, upon account of the root of it, which consists of many coats enveloping each other, like the orbs (orbits) in the planetary system, was another of their sacred vegetables."! Our use of these observations, how-

* Porram et cepe nefas violare et frar.gere niorsu. O sanctas gentes, qablus hsec nascuntur in hortis Numina I Juvenal Sat. 16. liu. 0. 1 1 .

A tin^/orsootk^ to riolate and brwak by bUin(j (he leek and o%ion». O holy people, in trhoBe garden* tkene divinities are bom !

f Hia tvorka, vol. 4. p. 968. % Shaw's TraTvls, p. 856.

24 STATE OP THE JEWS.

ever^ is only to supply a demonstration that the grossest fonns of apparent nonsense and absurdity in which Paganism ever existed, were never more distressed for a good excuse, or the pretence of some plausible emble- matical and mystical sense, than Judaism, and lliat if we acquit the Jewish religion from the chaise of extreme folly, tiiere was never any religion on earth that could be fairly convicted of it.

The plurality of the Hebrew word Aleim, for God, in the first chapter of Genesis, and in the Old Testament throughout, is urged by orthodox divines as an argument for their favourite doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

The Jews find their text thus burthened with a sense which they themselves disclaim. A similar plural word — THE HEAVENS — expressive of precisely the same sense, where plucality is by no means the leading idea, is found in our own language, and among all nations whose ideas of deity were drawn as our own evidentiy are, from the visible heavens, the imaginary ceiling of an upper story, in which the Deity was supposed to reside.

The Hebrew WD^ Skemmim, and the Chaldee H^tt^ Shemmai, are in like manner plural words — literally, the heavens, and used sjrnonymously with D^H^t^ Alehim — the gods — for God.*

The pagans used the same plural words, the gods, for God, sdthough it was to one being alone that in the stricter sense that tide was applicable. We use precisely the same plural form, '* Heavens defend us /" synechdochi- cally for God defend us ! as in that beautiful and moral apostrophe of King Lear —

'' — Take physic, pomp !

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.

That thou may*st shake the superfloz to them,

And show the keaveiu more just.** Shakspbark.

that is, show God more just.

This, our adherence to the Pagan phrase, happens to be consecrated by the text of the New Testament,t in

* Daniel iv. 26. *' Thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee after that thou shall have known that the heavens do rule,'* {. e, that God, t. e. that the most HIGH, above our heailty doth rule. By the heavetUy says Parkhurst, are signified the true Aleim, or persons of Jehovah. Heb. Lex. p. 741. 1.

f Matt. xxi. 35.— Mark xi. 30, SI . Luke xv. 18. xx. 4, 6.— John iv. 97.

H /ScuriAcm rwy &peuwy. The kingdom of the heavens and the

H /SairiAcia re ^ttt- kingdom of God are throughout Mat-

thew and Mark interchangeable.

STATE OF THE JEWS. 25

which the kingdom of the heavens, and the kingdom of €rod, and Odd, and the hbavbms, are perfectly synony- mens, and nsed indifferently for the expression of pre- cisely the same sense. Not a plurality of thrbb^ then, nor of any definite number, was implied by that plural nonn used with a verb singular, in the Jewish AUhim, but merely that vague reference to the planets, from which the very name of Grod is derived,* and to which the primitive idea of all the multifarious modifications of idc^atry or piety, superstition or religion, may ultimately be traced. The Jews themselves are as justly chargeable vrith polytheism, as the nations whose spiritual advan* tages they affect to despise.

llieir historian, Josephus, who lived and wrote about sixty years after Christ, sought in vain for the testimony of Egyptian authors to support the high pretensions he advanced. Not one has so much as mentioned the prodigies of Moses, or held out the least glimpse of probability or coincidence to his romantic tale.

The whole fable of Moses, however, will be found in the Orphic verses sung in the orgies of Bacchus, as cele* brated in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece, for ages before such a people as the Jewish nation were known to be in existence. (See the chapter on Bacchus, 'in this

DlBGBSIS.)

Christianity, however, is not so essentially connected vrith the Jewish religion as to stand or fall with it. PaJey and other of the shrewder advocates of the estab- lished faith have intimated their wish that the two sys- tems were considered as more independent of each other than they are generally held to be. There might be evidence enough left for the Christian religion, though

* Offos which is the soarce of the ^olic dialect, or T^tin Deus, from #f« (ffciy, eurrere^ to run as do the planets.

The Grecian philosophers generally believed that nature U God. No authors of any order of Christians whatcTer, in any of their writings, gi?e vs any positive idea on the subject, nor indeed any negative one, not derived from some or other of those philosophers.

^* The Y^sOs of the New Testament preached only a sort of indeterminate, or at most, only Pharisaical deism. Those who have professed and ealM tbeDMelves Christians, have been hardly such characters as any rational mind could imagine to have been the followers of such a roaster. Animated only with a furious zeal against idolatry, to which YdsQs does not allnde, tbeae iconoclasts (image-breakert) seem to have maintained few positive metaphysical dogmata, till they wanted excuses for plundering from one Another the plunder of Paganism.*' — I take this sentence from a treatise, en- titled, Variout Drjinitiont of an Important Word^ p. IS., in a printed but unpublished work of a learned and excellent friend.

26 STATE OF THE JEWS.

the Mosaic dispensation were considered as altogeiber fabulous ; and some have thought, that the evidence of Christianity would gain by a dissolution of partnership ; and a man might be tlie better Christian, as he certainly would be better able to defend his Christianity^ by throw- ing over the whole of the Old Testament as indefensible, and contenting himself entirely with the sufficient guid- ance and independent sanctions of the New. ^' The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,"* is an apothegm which Christians receive as of the highest authority : and yet no conceivable sense can be found in those words, short of an indication not only of distinctness, but of absolute contrariety of character, between the two religions. '' Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," in the antithesis, can imply nothing else than that neither grace nor truth came by Moses ; to say nothing of those innumerable contemptuous manners of speaking of the old dispensation, as '^ those weak and beg- garly elements^**-]; and that ** burthen which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear ;" J *' all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers ;" § in which Christ and the Apostles themselves refer to the religion of Moses. Certainly, none with whom we have to deal would ever care to defend Judaism, if once induced to doubt the independent challenges of Christianity. If this be unten* able, that may very well be left to shift for itself in the wardrobes of Holywell- street and the Minories. '^The lion preys not upon carcases !"

It is unquestionable, however, that even if tlie gospel story were altogether a romance, and all its dramatis per- soMBf as connected with what is called in poetical lan- guage, its machinery, merely imaginary, it is still a romance of that character, which mixes up its fantastical personages with rea/ characters, and fastens events which never happened, speeches which were never spoken, and doings which were never done, on persons, times, and places that had a real existence, and stood in the relations assigned to them. So that the romance is properly dra- maticaly and answers to the character of such ingenious and entertaining fictions, as in our own days arc called romances of the particular century to which they are assigned, in which of course we have the Sir llowlands. Sir Olivers, and Sir Mortimers of the author's invention,

* John i. 17. t Galat. ix.

X Acts zf . 10. ^ John x. b.

STATE OF THE JEWS. 37

transactiDg buriness and holding dialogues with the Sala- dtns. King Richards, Henrys, and Edwards of real his- tory. Nor are there wanting instances of plagiarism in the department of fiction. A shrewd novelist will often aTail himself of an old story, will change the scene of action fh>m one country to another, throw it further back, tor bring it lower down, in the order of time ; and make the heroes of the original conceit, contemporaries and comrades of either an earlier or a later race of real per- sonages*

^' Josephus, and heathen authors have mado mention of Herod, Archelaus, Pontius Pilate, and other persons of note, whose names we meet with in the Gk>spels and Acts of the Apostles, and have delivered nothing mate- rial concerning their characters, posts, and honours, that is different from what the writers of the New Testament have said of them."

Such is the first of Dr. Lardner's arguments for the credibility of the gospel history, the sophism of which will in an instant start into observance, upon putting the simple questions — ^What is material? And is it no fatal deficiency, that they should have omitted to mention what they by no possibility could have omitted to men- tion, had the personages so spoken of been so coi^cemed in the gospel history, as they are therein represented to have been ?

One of the most striking coincidences of the scriptural and profane history, is the reference to the death of Herod, in Acts xii. 21. 23, as compared with the account given by Josephus, whose words are, ^' Having now reigned three whole years over all Judea, Herod went to the city Caesarea. Here he celebrated shows in honour of Csesar. On the second day he came into the theatre dressed in a robe of silver of most curious workmanship. The rays of the sun, then just rising, reflected from so splendid a garb, gave him a majestic and awful appear- ance. In a short time they began in several parts of the theatre flattering acclamations, which proved pernicious to him. They called him a god, and entreated him to be pro- pitious to them, saying, ' Hitherto we have respected you as a man, but now we acknowledge you to be more than mortal.' The King neither reproved those persons, nor rejected the impious flattery. Soon after this,* casting

* Ammcv^ Vw tw /SuAtfi'a r^i §auTa Kc^a\i}s vir€pKQd€J!ofUPOv ciScy cirx cxows riPM teyy^kov t< rerw cia^s tvofifaw k<uc»v ^ivai rw koi irvr^ rmf aryadutr ywoftvfw Ku luucofitw €(rx€v o9vyriv. — Antiq. lib. 10. c.8. sect. 2.

28 STATE OF THE JEW8.

his eyes upwards, he saw an owl sitting upon a rope over his head. He perceived it to be a messenger of evil to him, as it had been before of his prosperity, and was grieved at heart. Immediately after thiis he was affected with extremely violent pains in his bowels, and taming to his friends, in anguish said, ' I, your God, am reqmred to leave this world; fate instantly confuting the fidse applauses you have bestowed on me ; I, who have been called immortal, am hurried away to death ; but Grod's appointment must be submitted to.' These pains in his bowels continually tormenting him, he died on the fifth day, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and of his reign the seventh."

There is a curious ambiguity in the Greek word for messenger (angelos)j of which £usebius availing himself, says nothing about the owl, but gives as the text of Josepbus, that he beheld an angel hanging over his head upom a rope, and this he knew immediately to be an omen of eml.^ Lardner justly reproves this fault in Eusebius, but has no reproof for the author of the Acts of the Apostles, who was privileged to improve the story still farther by add- ing that the ansel of the Lord smote hirn, because he gave not God the clary, (t. e. the spangles and gaudery of his silver dress.) This Herod was a deputy king holding his power under the appointment of Caius Caligula.

The Pharisees were a sect of self-righteous and sanc- timonious hypocrites, ready to play into and keep up any religious farce that might serve to invest them with an imaginary sanctity of character, and increase their influence over the minds of the majority, whose good nature and ignorance in all ages and countries, is but ever too ready to subscribe the claims thus made upon it

They were the Quakers of their day, a set of commercial, speculating thieves, who expressed their religion in the eccentricity of their garb ; and, under professions of extra- ordinary punctiliousness and humanity, were the most over-reaching, oppressive, and inexorable of the human race. Of this sort was the apostolic chief of sinners, and this character he discovers through all accounts of his life and writings, that have entailed the curse of his example on mankind.

The Sadducees were a set of materialists, who, as they were too sensible to be imposed on themselves, were

** AyoKu^of 8c Ti|s fatrre K§^>aX'ns vwtptca&tlofuvov ctScy 0771X01' cvi <rxoirt<r riiws. T«ror ci«|^ wyrni^t kqkmv ctym euriov.—Euseb. Ecct. Hist. lib. H. c.O. B.

STATE OP THE JEWS.

tke less disposed to cajole others. They were the most respectable part of the Jewish community^ and by the infltlence of their more rational tenets and more moral example, served to infase that leaven of reason and virtiie, without wbich, the frame of society could hardly be held together.

It is enough to know, in addition to the more than enough that every body may know, of the Mosaic insti- tutions, that the pretensions of the Jews, as a nation, to philosophy, never exceeded that of the dark and hidden science which they called the Cabbala, which, like their hidden theology, was nothing more than the Oriental philosophy, plagiarized and modelled to their own con- ceit, and a crude jumble of the various melancholy notions, which had forced themselves upon their minds m the course of their ramblings into the adjacent coun- tries of Egypt and Phcenicia, and the little that ignorance itself could not help learning, in the course of their traffic with the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians.

Their sacred scriptures of the Old Testament contain no reference to the Platonic doctrine of a future state.* Though the metaphysical notion of the immortality of the soul, had been inculcated and embraced in India, in Assyria, in Egypt, and in Gaul, and was believed widi so influential and practical a faith, that its votaries would lend their money to be returned them again in the other world,f (a proof of sincerity less equivocal than martyr- dom itself.) Yet this doctrine appears to have been wholly unknown to the Jewish legislator, and is but darkly insinuated in any part of the prophetical writ- mgs.j: Hence the Sadducees, who, according to Jose- phus, respected only the authority of the Pentateuch (or five books of Moses), had no belief in a resurrection, angels or spirits, or any such chimerical hypostases. Nor does the Christ of the New Testament seem to have had the least idea of the possible existence of the soul, in a state

* The only reward proposed for obedience to the law of God, was, thai attached to the fifth, which is called by the Apostle, the firut eommandmtni withpromiie — '' that thy days may be long in the land.*'

t Yetas ille mos Gallorum occurrit, (says Valerias Maximus, 1.2. c. 6. p. 10.) (|uos nuemoria proditum est, pecunias motuas dare solitos que his, apod inferos redderentur.

\ It is better for thee to enter halt into life, than ha?ing two feet to be cast into hell. It is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.-— Mark ix. 'Ii5.47. Here was no idea of heaven, or the state of the blessed, above a hospital of in« cnrables.

aO STATE OP PHILOSOPHY.

of separation trom the body, All his attempts to alarm the cowardice and weakness of his hearers, are founded on the assumption, that the body must accompany ' the soul in its anabasis to heaven, or its descent to hell, and indeed that there was no virtual distinction between them. It must, however, be admitted to be a good and valid apology for the omission — that none of his followers have been able to supply the deficiency.

CHAPTER V.

STATE OP PHILOSOPHY.

There is nothing that can be known of past ages, known with more unquestionable certainty, than that t/^, about, and immediately after the epocha of time ascribed to the dawning of divine light, the human mind seems generally to have suffered an eclipse. The arts and sciences, intel- ligence and virtue, were smitten with an unaccountable palsy. The mind of man lost all its energies, and sunk under a generally prevailing imbecility. We look in vain among the successors of Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Horace, and Virgil, the statesmen, orators, and poets of the golden age of literature, for a continuation of the series of such ornaments of human nature. A blight had smitten the growth of men's understandings ; not only no more such clever men rose up, but with very few exceptions^ no more such men as could have appreciated the talents of their predecessors, or possessing so much as the rela- tive degree of capacity, necessary to be sensible of the superiority that had preceded them. After reasonings so just, and eloquence so powerful, that even so late after the revival of literature as the present day, mankind have not yet learned to reason more justly, or to declaim more powerfully; a race of barbarous idiots possessed themselves of the seat of science and the muses ; and all distinction and renown was sought and obtained by absur- dities disgraceful to reason, and mortifications revolting to nature. '' The groves of the academy, the gardens of Epicurus, and even the porticoes of the Stoics, were deserted as so many different schools of scepticism or impiety, nnd many among the Romans were desirous that

STATE OP PHILOSOPHY. U

the writings of Cicero should be condemned and sup- pressed by the authority of the senate."*

The reasoning of which all men see the absurdity, when applied by the yictorious Caliph to justify the destruction of the library of Alexandria^f appeared unanswerable whea adduced on the side of the true faith.

Omar issued his commands for the destruction of that celebrated library^ to his general^ Amrus^ in these words : *' As to the books of which you have made mention, if there be contained in them what accords with the book of Ood (meaning the Koran of Mahomet), there is without them, in the book of God, all that is sufficient. But if there be any thing in them repugnant to that book, we in no respect want them. Order them, therefore, to be all destroyed."' — Harris.

Precisely similar in spirit, and almost in form, are the respective decrees of the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, which generally ran in the words, ^* that all writings adverse to the claims of the Christian religion^ in the possession of whomsoever they should be found, should be committed to the fire," as the pious Emperors would not that those things which they took upon them- selves to assume, tended to provoke God to wrath, should be allowed to offend the minds of the pious4 Mr. Gib- bon, in his usual strain of caustic sarcasm, mentions the elaborate treatises which the philosophers, more espe- cially the prevailing sect of the new Platonici<an6, who endeavoured to extract allegorical wisdom from the fictions of the Greek poets, composed ; and the many ela- borate treatises against the faith of the Gospel, which have since been committed to the flames, by the prudence of orthodox emperors. The large treatise of Porphyry - / against the Christians^ consisted of thirty books, and was composed in Sicily about the year 270. It was against the writings of this great man especially, who had acquired the honourable addition to his name, of thb VIRTUOUS, that the exterminatory decree of Theodosius was more immediately directed. There is little doubt, that had the discoveries his writings would have made, been permitted to come to general knowledge, all the pre- tended external evidence of Christianity must have been

* Gibbon, ch. 16.

t Tlie destruction of this celebrated library gave safety to tlie e? idences of the Christian religion. } See the decrees quoted in my Syntagma, p. 86.

38 STATE OF PHILOSOPHY.

given up as wholly uutenable. But while what the vir- tuous Porphyry had really written^ was committed to the flames^ a worse outrage was committed against his repu- tation, by Christians, who. a^are of the ereat influence of his name and authority, ascribed the vile trash which they had composed themselves to him, for the purpose of making him seem to have made the admissions which it was for the interest of Christianity that he should have made, or to have attacked it so feebly, as might serve to show the advantage of their defences. The celebrated treatise on the Philosophy of Oracles^ which even the pious Dod- dridge, and the learned Macknight, have ascribed to this great man^ and availed themselves of, for that fraudulent purpose, has, by the greater fidelity and honesty of Lard- ner, been demonstrably traced home to the forging hands of Christian piety."" '

Before the Christian religion had made any perceptible advance among mankind, two grand and influential prin- ciples characterized all the moving intelligence that then ex- isted in the world ; and to these two principles, Christianity owed its triumph over all the wisdom and honesty that feebly opposed its progress. These principles were, — the

8UPP0SBD NECESSITY OP DECEIVING THE VULGAR, and THE IMAGINED DUTY OF CULTIVATING AND PERPETU- ATING IGNORANCE. Of the former of these principles, the most distinguished advocates were the whole train of deceptive legislators ; Moses in Palestine, Mneues (if he be not the same) in £g3rpt, Minos in Crete, Lycurgus in Lacedaemon, Numa in Rome, Confucius in China^ Triptolemus, who pretended the inspirations of Ceres, Zaleucus of Minerva, Solon of Bpimenides, Zamolxis of Vesta, Pythagoras, and Plato.f Euripides maintained that in the early state of society, some wise men insisted on the necessity of darkening truth with falsehood, and of persuading men that there is an immortal deity, who hears and sees and understands our actions, whatever we may think of that matter ourselves.;}: Strabo shews at great length the general use and important effects of theological fables. ^' It is not possible for a philosopher to conduct by reasoning a multitude of women, and of the low vulgar, and thus to invite them to piety, holiness, and faith;

* Hfpi Ti^% %K "Kcfywv ^tXoffo^as. See this ezpoF^ in my Syntagma, p. 1 16. i It will be seen that I have largely availed myself of my friend*s printed bat «apubli8hed work on Deisidemony. X Quoted in the pseudo-Plutarcheaii treatise, de placitis phiU^s. B. I, Cli.7.

STATE OP PHILOSOPHY. 33

bat the philosopher most also make use of superstition^ and not omit the invention of fables, and the performance of wonders. For the lightning, and the aegis, and the trident, and the thyrsolonchsd arms of the gods, are but fables ; and so is all ancient theology. But the founders of states adopted them as bugbears to frighten the weak- minded/**

Varro says plainly, ''that there are many truths which it is useless for the vulgar to know, and many falsities which it is fit that the people should not know are falsi-^ ties." t

Paul of Tarsus, whose fourteen epistles make up the greater part of the bulk of the New Testament, repeatedly inculcates and avows the principle of deceiving the common people, talks of his having been upbraided by his own converts with being crafty and catching them with guile,j: and of his known and wilful lies, abounding to die ^ory of 6od.§ For further avowals of this prin- ciple of deceit, the reader may consult the chapter of Admissions.

Accessory to the avowed and consecrated principle of deceitj was that of ignorance. St Paul, in the most explicit language, had taught and maintained the absolute necessity of extreme ignorance, in order to attain celestial wisdom, and gloried in the power of the Almighty as des- troying the wisdom of the wise, and bringing to nothing, the understanding of the prudent; and purposely choosing the foolish things, and the weak things, and the base tliings,|| as objects of his adoption, and vessels of his* grace And St. Peter, or whoever was the author of the epistles ascribed to him, inculcates the necessity of the most absolute prostration of understanding, and of a state of mind, but little removed from slobbering idiotcy, as necessary to the acquisition of divine knowledge ; that even ** as new bom babes, they should desire the sincere milk of the word, that they might grow thereby.'* If

Upon the sense of which doctrine, the pious and orthodox Tertullian glories in the egregious ridiculous-

^ Dr. Isaac Vossias, when asked what had become of a certain man of letters, answered bluntly, ** he has turned country parson, and is deceiving ike vnlgar" — See Desroaiseaaz*8 Life of St Evremond.

t Aogust. de Cio. Dei. B. 4.

t 9 Corinth, xii. 16. § Romans lii. 7. |) I Corinth, i. 27.

n 1 Peter ii. 2. 1 Thess. ii. 7, "* E?cn as a nurse cherisheth her chil- dren.** Compare also 2 Corinth, xi. 28, where Paul says, *•' 1 spealc as a fool,'* which he need not have said.

D

34 STATE OF PHILOSOPHY.

ness of the Christian religion, and the debilitating effects which the sincere belief of it had produced on his own understanding : his main argument for it, being, '' I reve- rence it, because it is contemptible ; I adore it, because it is absurd ; I believe it, because it is impossible/'*

Nothing was considered more obnoxious to the cause of the gospel, than the good sense contained in the writings of its opponents. The inveteracy against leam« ing, of Gregory the Great, to whom this country owes its conversion to the gospel, was so excessive, that he not only was angry wim an Archbishop of Vienna, for suffering grammar to be taught in his diocese, but studied to write bad Latin himself, and boasted that he scorned to conform to the rules of grammar, whereby he might seem to resemble a heathen.f The spirit of super- stition quite suppressed all the efforts of learning and philosopny.

Christianity was first sent to the shores of England by the missionary zeal of Pope Gregory the First, not earlier than the sixth or the beginning of the seventh century. Our King Alfred, who is said to have founded the Uni- versity of Oxford, in the ninth century, lamented that there was at that time not a priest in his dominions who understood Latin,! and even for some centuries after, we find that our Christian bishops and prelates, the ^* teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters," of the whole Christian community, were Marksmen, t . e. they sup- plied by the sign of the cross, their inability to write their own names.§

Though philology, eloquence, poetry, and histoiy, were sedulously cultivated among those of the Greeks and Latins, who in the fourth century still held out their resistance against the Christian religion : its just and honourable historian, Mosheim, admonishes his readers by no means to conclude that any acquaintance with the sciences had become universal in the church of Christ|| ^ It is certain, (he adds^ that the greatest part both of the bishops and presbyters, were men entirely destitute of learning and education. Besides, that savage and illiterate party, who looked upon all sorts of erudition, particulariy

* De ctrne Christ! Semleri, Edit. Hile Magdeborgiea, 1770, toI.S, p. 862. Qnoted in Syntagma, page 106. + Dr. MaDde?Tlie*8 Free Thoughts, page ld3.

See Histery.of England, almost any one.

Bf ans^t Sketches.

Eeelesiastieal History, Cent. 4, part S, ehap. I, see. 6, p. S46.

k.«

STATE or PHlLOBOmY. 85

that of a philoiophical kind, as pernicious, and even de- stnictiye of trae piety and religion, increased both in nunber and authority. The ascetics, monks^ and hermits, augmented the strength of this barbarous faction, and not only the women, but also all who took solemn looks, sordid garments, and a lore of solitude, for real piety, (and in this number we comprehend the generality of mankind) were yehemently prepossessed in j&eir favour/'

Happily the security and permanency given to the once won triumphs of learning over her barbarous foes, by the invention of the art of printing,* the now extensive spread of rational scepticism, and the never again to be surrendered achievements of superior intelligence, have forced upon the advocates of ignorance, the necessity of expressing their still too manifest suspicions and hostility against tl^ cause of general learning, in more guarded and qualified teims. fiut what they still would have, the sameness of their principle, the identity of their purpose, and the sincerity of their conviction that the cuitivatioa of the mind, and the continuance of the Christian religion, are incompatible, is indicated in the institution of an otherwise superfluous university in the city of London, for the avowed puipose of counteracting the well foreseen effeots of suflfering leaming to get her pass into the world untrammelled wi& the fetters of superstition. The ad- vertisement of subscriptions to the intended King's Col* lege, in the Tknea newspaper, even so late as the 16th of this present month of August, in which I write from this prison, in the cause and advocacy of intellectual free«> dcnn, avows the principle in these words : — '' We, the undersigned, fully concurring in the fundamental PRINCIPLBS on which it is proposed to be established, namely, that every principle of general education for die youth of a Christian community, ought to comprise in- struction in the Christian religion, as an indUpensable part ; without which, the acquisition of other branches of know- ledge, will be conducive neither to the happiness, nor to the weUbre of the state." In other words, and most

* Ib the year 1444, Cazton pnbliiihed the first book ever printed in EiiglMid. In 1474, the then Bishop of London, in a cooYocation of his elerfv, said, **ifwe do not deHrojf thU dangerous inventi&n, it wiUone dajf de$trop ««•" The reader should compare Pope Leo the Tenth's avowal, tlict '' it wa9 ftell knoftn how pr^tahU thi$ fabie qf ChriMi hat been to «M .-** with Mr. Beard's Apology for it, in hfs tlilrd letter to the.Rer. Robert Taylor, page 74, and Archdeacon Paley's declaration, that '* he eoukt moi tlfirtl to kawe a t^Kteienee,*' — See Life of the Author attached to his work OB tiM Bfldenoee of Christianity, p. 11. London 19mo. edit. 18C6.

D S

36 err ATE op philosophy.

mieqniyocally in the sense intended, the ntmost extent of learning i^hich the oniyersity propounds, will never reach to the rendering any of its members competent to conflict with the learning of the enemies of the Christian faith ; to produce either orators who dare attempt to vie on eqnal grounds with their orators ; readers, who dare trust their conscious inferiority of understanding to read^ or writers that shall have ability or disposition to answer their writings. The old barbarous policy of Goth and Vandal ignorance, to suppress and commit to the flames the writings of Infidels, to decry their virtues, and to imprison their persons; to shelter conscious weakness under airs of affected contempt; to crush the man when they can no longer cope widi his argument, to destroy the reasoner, when they dare not encounter his reasoning, is still the dernier resource of a system, that cannot he defended by other means, but must needs be left in the dust from whence it sprang, whenever the mind of man shall be allowed to get a fair start, without being clogged vnth it.

'' In consequence of the conquests of the Romans, there arose imperceptibly, but entirely by the operation of natural and most obvious causes, a new kind of religion, formed by the mixture of the ancient rites of the con- quered nations with those of the Romans. Those nations, who before their subjection, had their own gods, and their own particular religious institutions, were persuaded by degrees, to admit into their worship, a great number of the sacred rites and customs of their conquerors."* And from this conjunction, helped on or retarded from time to time, by those exacerbations and paroxysms, which ever attend the fever of religion, as it aflUcts the sincerely religious, and the policy of those wicked tacticians, who have always known how to raise or lower the spiritual temperament to their purpose, arose that heterogeneous compound of all that was good and all that was bad in all religions, whidi, after having existed under various names and modifica- tions, and gained by gradual usurpations a considerable ascendancy over any or all the idolatrous forms from which it had been collected, began to be called Chris- tianity. " The wiser part of mankind, however, (says Mosheim) about the time of Christ's birth, looked upon the whole system of religion, as a just object of contempt and ridicule.''t

♦ MosMnn, Cent. 1. + Mosheim, Cent. I, Ch. I.

STATE OP PHIL080FRY. 87

'' About the time of Christ's appearance upon earth,* there were two kinds of philosophy which prevailed among the civilized nations. One was the philosophy of the Greeks, adopted also by the Romans ; and the other, that of the Orientals, which had a great number of votaries in Persia, Syria, Chaldea, Egypt, and even among the Jews."

The Oreek and Roman mode of thought and reasoning, was designated by the simple title of PniLosoPHY.t

That of the eastern nations, as opposed to it, was called Gnosticism.^:

The Philosophy y signified only the love and pursuit of wisdom.

The Gnosisy signified the perfection and full attainment of wisdom itself.

The followers of both these systems, as we might natu- rally suppose, split and subdivided into innumerable sects and parties. It must be observed however, that while the Philosophers, or those of the Grecian and Roman school, were infinitely divided, and held no common prin- ciple of union among themselves, some of them being opposed to all religion whatever ; the Gnostics, or adhe- rents of the oriental system, deduced all their various tenets from one Amdamental principle, that of their com- mon deism, and universally professed themselves to be the restorers of the knowledge of God, which was lost in the world. St. Paul mentions and condemns both these modes of thought and reasoning; that of the Greeks, in his Epistle to the Colossians, and that of the Orientals, in his first to Timothy.§

The Gnosis, or Gnosticism, comprehends the doctrine of the Magi,|| the philosophy of the Persians, Chaldeans, and Arabians, and the wisdom of the Indians and Egyp- tians. It is distinctly to be traced in the text and doctrines of the New Testament. It was from the bosom of this pretended oriental wisdom, that the chiefs of those sects, iriiich, in the three first centuries, perplexed the Christian church, originally issued. The name itself signified, that its professors taught the way to the true ktiowledge of the

* Oar lathor means toy time about or uear the era of Augustas.

t H ♦tXinro^a. } H Tvttffis.

^ Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and Tain deceit. — Coloat.ti. 8. Avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so calli^. — 1 Tim. vi. SO.

g The Magi, or wise men of the oast, (Matthew ii. 1,) t. e. the Brahmins^ who int got up tha allegorical story of Curishna.

8B ADIIISBIQIIS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS.

Deity. Thsir most distinpiished sect incnlcated the aotion of a triumvirate of beings, in which the Supreme Jhity was distinguished both from the material evil prim^ eiple, and from the creator of this sublunary world.

The Philosophy, comprehended the Epicureans the most virtuous and rational of men, who maintained that wisely consulted pleasure, was the ultimate end of man ; the Academics, who placed the height of wisdom in doobt and scepticism; the Stoics, who maintained a fortitude indifferent to all events ; the Aristotelians, who, after their master, Aristotle, held the most subtle disputations con- cerning Crod, religion, and the social duties, maintaining that die nature of Grod resembles the principle that gives motion to a madiine, that it is happy in the contemplation of itself, and entirely regardless of human affairs ; the PUUonists, from their master Plato, who taught the im- mortality of the soul, the doctrine of the trinity, of the manifestation of a divine man, who should be crucified, and the eternal rewards and punishments of a future life ; and from all these resulting, the Eclectics, who, as their names signifies elected, and chose what they held to be wise and rational, out of the tenets of all sects, and rejected whatever was considered futile and pernicious. The Eclectics held Plato in the highest reverence. Their ooUege or chief establishment was at Alexandria in Egjrpt. Their founder was supposed to have been one Potamon. The most indubitable testimonies prove, that this Philo- sophy was in a flourishing state, at the period assigned to, tife birth of Christ The Eclectics are the same whom we' find described as the Therapeuts or Essenes of Philo, and whos e sacred writings are, by Eusebius, shown to be the same as our gospels. Nought, but the supposed expediency of deoeiving the vulgar, and of perpetuating ignorance, hinders the historian to whom I am, for the substance of this chapter, so much indebted, from acknowledging the fact, that in every rational sense that can be attached to die word, they were the authors and real founders of Chris- tianity.

CHAPTER VL

ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS.

In stndjring the writings of the early advocates of Chris- tianity, and fathers of the^ Christian church ; where we should naturally look for the language diat would indicate

ADMfltiONI OP CHEIiniAN WRimttS. 99

the real oocarrence of the facts of the gospel, if real occurrences they had ever been ; not only do we find no soch sort of language^ bat every where, find we, any sort of sophistical ambages, ramblings from the subject, and eivasions of the very business before them, as if of purpose to balk our research, and insult our scepticism. If we travel to the very sepulchre of Christ, we have only to discover that he was never there : history seeks evidence of his existence as a man, but finds no more trace of it, tiMm of the shadow that flitted across the wail. The star of Bethlehem shone not upon her path, and the order of the universe was suspended without her observance* She asks with the Magi of the east, \' where is he that is born King of the Jews,"" and like them, finds no solution of her inquiry, but the guidance that guides as well to one place as another ; descriptions that apply to Esculapius, as well as to Jesus ; prophecies, without evidence that they were ever prophesied ; miracles, which those who are said to have seen, are said also to have denied that they saw ; narratives without authorities, &ct8 without dates, and records without names.

Where we should naturally look for the evidence of recentness, and a mode of expression suitable to the character of witnesses, or of those who had conversed with witnesses, we not only find no such modes of expres- sion ; but both the recorded language and actions of tiie parties, are found to be entirely incongruous, and out of keeping with the supposition of such a character. We find the discourses of the very first preadiers and martyrs of this religion, outraging all chronology, by claiming the iionours of an even then remote antiquity, for the doctrines they taught.

1. We find St. Stephen,* the very first martyr of Chris- tianity, in the very city where its stupendous events are supposed to have happened, and, as our Bible chronologies inform us, within the very year in which they happened ; and on the very occasion on which above all others that could be imagined, he must, and would have borne testi- mony to them, as constituting the evidences of his faith, the justification of his conduct, and the grounds of his martyrdom; nevertheless, bearing no such testimony; yea ! not so much as glancing at those events, but found-

* ,Stbphkn, 1 luupe of the aame order as NicodenittS» Philip, Andrew, AYexender, &c.^ entirely of Grecian origin, ascribed to Jews, who noTor had sadi namee, nor any lilce then.

40 ADilill810N8 OK' ClUUSTIAN WRITfiBB.

ibg his whole argmnent on the ancient legends of the Jewiflli superstition. What a falling off is there !

2. We find St Paul, the very first Apostle of the Grentiles, expressly avowing that " he was made a minister of the gospel, which had already been preached to every creature under heaven ;'' (Col. i. 23,) preaching a god manifest in the flesh, who had been " believed on in the world," (1 Tim. iii. 16,) .before the commencement of his ministry; and who therefore could have been no such person as the man of Naaareth, who had certainly not been preached at that time, nor generally believed on in the world, till ages after that time.

3. We find him, moreover, out of all character and con- sistency of circumstance, assuming the most intolerant airs of arrogance, and snubbing Peter at Antioch, as if Ae were nobody, or had absolutely been preaching a false doctrine, of which Paul were the more proper judge, and the higher authority. A circumstance absolutely demon- strative that the Peter of the Acts was no such person as the Peter of the Gospels, who would certainly not have suffered himself to be called over the coals, by one who was but a new setter up in the business, but would in all probability have cut his ear off, rapt out a good oath or two, or knock him down with his keys, for such audacious presumption.

4. It is most essentially remarkable, that as these Acts of the Apostles bear internal evidence of being a much later production than the epistles and gospels, and are evidently mixed up with the journals of real adventures of some travelling missionaries ; they are not mentioned with the epistles and gospels which had constituted the ancient writings of the Therapeutce. Chrysostom, Bishop of Con- stantinople, (a. d. 398,) informs us, that at that time, *' this book was unknown to many, and by others it was des- pised.*'

5. Mill, one of the very highest authorities in biblical literature, tells us, '^ that the gospels were soon spread abroad, and came into all men's hands ; but the case was somewhat different with the other books of the New Tes- tament, particularly the Acts of the Apostles, which were not thought to be so important, and had few trans- cribers."

6. And Bbausobrb acknowledges, that the book of the Acts, had not at the beginning in the eastern churches, the same authority with the gospels and the epistles.

ADMttSiaNS OP CHRISTIAN WSITBRS. 41

'7. IiARONEH, (roL 2, p. 605,) would rather gire St. Chrysostom the lie, than surrender to the pregnant con- sequence of so fatal an admission. The gospels were soon received, for they were ready before the world was awake. The Acts were a second attempt Where we should look for mariu of distinction, as definite as those which must necessarily and eternally exist between truth and falsehood, between divine wisdom and human weak- ness, between what man knew by the suggestion of his own unassisted shrewdness, and what he onJy could have known by the further instruction of divine revelation ; not only find we no such lines or characters of distinction, but alas i in the stead and place thereof, we find the most entire and perfect amalgamation, an entire surrender of all chal* lengeto distinction,a complete capitulation, going over, and '' haU-feUatO'well'met'' conjunction, of Jesus and Jupiter. Christianity and Paganism are frankly avowed to have been never more distinct from each otiier, than six fnnn half-a-dooen, never to have been at variance or diviiM, but by the mere accidental substitution of one set of names for the other, and the very trifling and immaterial misunderstanding, that the new nomenclature had occa- sioned.

'' Some of the andentest writers of the church have not scrupled expressly to call the Athenian Socrates, and some others of the best of the heathen moralists, by the name of Christians, and to affirm, that as the law was as it were a schoolmaster, to bring the Jews unto Qirist, so true moral philosophy was to the GentUes a prepa^- rative to receive the gospel." — Clarke'i Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 284.

8.* ** And those who lived according to the Logos, (says Clemens AJexandrinus) were reaUy Christians, Uiou^ they have been thought to be Atheists ; as Socrates and Heraclitus were among the Greeks, and such as resembled them."

9. t For Grod, says Origen, revealed these things to them, and whatever things have been well spoken.

lO.j: And if there had been any one to have coUected

• * Koi M /MTflt Xay9 imaarm, xpufruami cun, itw al^wt ^voiuff^naw wmr v EXXifO'i /iCK Smk^otiis koi HfcwXciros mu oi ofUMoi avroci. — CLemvnt Alex, Strom*

^ O 0CO9 yap mnots roura, mu ova KoXmr AtXcirrai c^oycMvo'c.— Orta. ad Mb. Bib 6.

% Qaod si eztilisset iliqois qui Teritatem sparsam per singulos, per sti^Mqiie dithuim colligeret in anvm, ac redigerot in corpu?, is profectu son disicBtlret anobis."— loefaiie. Hb. 7.

42 ADMIMIONB OF GHRISTIAN WBTTBRa.

the trath that was scattered and diffused, sa3ni Lactan- tausy among sects and indiyidnals, into one, and to have reducfd it into a system, there would, indeed, hare been no difference between him and us.

11*. And if Cicero's works, says Amobius, had been read as they ou^t to have been by the heathens, there woidd have been no need of Christian writers.

12.t '' That, in our times is the Chhistian rbligion, (says St. Augustin,) which to know and follow is the most sure and certain health, called according to that name, but not according to the thing itself, of which it is the name ; for the thing itself, which is now called the Christian Rbligion, really was known to the ancients, nor was wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race, until the time when Christ came in tihe flesh, from whence the true religion, which had previously existed, began to be called Christian: and this in our days is the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as having in later times received this name.''

184 '* What then ? and do the philosophers recommend nothing like the precepts of the gospel V* SLaks Lactantius. Yes, indeed, they do very many, and often approach to truth ; only their precepts have no weight, as being merely human and devoid oi that greater and divine authority; and nobody believes, because the hearer thinks himself as much a man, as he istwfao prescribes tiiem.

14. Monsieur Daill^e, in his most excellent treatise, called. La Religion Catholique Ramaine, imtituee par Numa Pampile, demonstrates, that ''the Papists took their idolatrous worship of images, as well as all other cere- monies from the old heathen religion," and

16. Ludovicus Vivus, a learned Catholic, confesses,

* So quoted and translated by Tindal, in his *' Christianity as Old as the Creation,'* p. 807.

t Ea est nostris temporibus Christiana religio, qaam coguoscere ac scqnl leeorlsaiaa et certiaaima salas est : seeondom hoc nomen dietan est non secnndam ipsam remcajus hoc nomen est: nam res ipsa que nunc Christiana religio nuncupatur erat et apud antiques, nee defuit ab initio generis humani, qnoasqae ipse Chrlstas teniret In came, undo vera religio que jam erat cspit appellari Christiana. Httc est nostris temporibns Christiana religio, non quia prioribns temporlboa non fuit, sed quia posterioribus hoc nomen aocepit. — Opera Augustini, tol. i, p. 18. Basil edit. 1589.

X Quid ergo, nihil ne illi (philosophi) simile prncipiunt 7 fmmo permalta et ad veritatem frequenter accedunt. Sed nihil ponder! s habent ila preeepta, qaia sunt humana, et auctoritate majori id est divina, ilia carent. Nemo igitur ondit ; quia tarn se hominem potat esse qui audit, quam est llle qui prmciplt. ^Laetant. lib. t, ut Citat Clarke, p. 801:

AMUWONS or CHRiniAN WAITBEi. 48

that ** there could be found no other diffeience between Pagfanieh and Popish worship befimre images, but only this, that names and titles aie changed/' — Qw^Ud in Bhunfs Philoitratus, p. 138, 114.

16.* Epiphanias freely admits, of all the heretical forms of Christianity, that is, of all that differed from his own, that they were derived from the heathen mythology.

17. The Manichees, the most distinguished of all who dissented from the established church, and unquestionably the most intelligent and learned of all who ever professed and called themselves Christians, boasted of being in possession of a work called the Theosoj^y, or the W isdom of Gk>d ; (and such a work we actually find quoted hj St. Paul, 1 Corinth. 2,) in which the purport was to SBOW,t that Judaism, Paganism, and Manicheeism, t. e. as they understood it, Christianity, were one and the same religion, and

18. Even our own orthodox Bishop Burnet, in his treatise De Statu Mortuorumy purposely written in Latin, that it might serve for the instruction of the clergy only, smd not come to the knowledge of the laity, because, as he says, ** too much light is hurtful for weak eyes ;" not only justifies, but recommends the practice of the most consummate hypocrisy ,'and that too, on the most awful of all subjects; and would have his clergy seriously preach and maintain the reality and eternity of hell torments, even though they should believe nothing of the sort them* selves4

What is this, but an edition, by a Christian bishop, of the very sentiment which Cicero reproves in Pagan phi- losophers:— '^Quid? ii qui dixerunt totam de Diis im- mortalibus opinionem^/ifcf am esse ab hominibus sapientibus, Reipublicn caus&, utquos Ratio non posset, eos ad offidum Religio duceret, nonne omnem religionem funditus sus* tulerunt" — ^De Nat. Deor. lib. 1, ch. 42, p. 405. — Can there be any doubt, thiCt Bishop Burnet, witii all his cant about converting the Earl of Rochester, was himself an Atheist?

19. Dr. Mosheim, among his many and invaluable

* Ec TOf cAXifyuHiy fanftwy mi^at m ai^cii tftwa^M fovroif nir wAanpi MirflCaAMr.— Hier. 26, n. 16, p. 9B, D.

t Ir If vMffiroi 9wanmm rw ia8«Mr/u«r km re» tXkiiifWiiMf km tov ifmnxmrnprn m wamu ttm ro ovro So^fiA.— Flibrieias, tOH. 1, p. SS4.

1 Si Be Umen aodire veils, mallem te psaai has dlcere iDdeflDitai qsam iiiiilM.-*8ed veDlet dies, ema non muiiis abswnUt, hebebitsr et odiosa bcc oplBi« i|«aB traiMabiKaiilialio bodie.«''I>e Stat« Mort. p« SOA.

44 ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRimS.

writmgs, pablished a dissertation, showing the reasons and causes of supposititions writings in the first and second century. And all own, says Lieirdner, that Chris- tians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud ; indeed, we may say, it was one great fault of the times.*

20. t *^ And in the last place, (says the great Casaubon,) it mightily affects me, to see how many there were in the earliest times of the church, who considered it as a capital exploit, to lend to heavenly truth the help of their own inventions, in order that the new doctrine might be more readily allowed by the wise among the Gentiles. These ojflicious lies, they were wont to say, were devised for a good end. From which source, beyond question, sprung nearly innumerable books, which that and the following age saw published by those who were far from being bad iiien4: (for we are not speaking of the books of heretics,) under the name of the Lord Jesus Christy and of the apostles, and other saints.""

The reader has only to satisfy himself with his own solution of the question emergent from such an admission. If those who palmed what they knew to be alie^ upon the woild, under the name and sanction of a Grod of truth, are to be considered as still worthy of our confidence, and/ar from being bad men : who are the bad men ? Illud me quo- que vehementer movet.

21. '^ There is scarce any church in Christendom at this day, (says one of the church's most distinguished orna- ments) which doth not obtrude, not only plain falsehoods^ but such falsehoods as will appear to any free spirit, pure contradictions and impossibiUties; and that with the same gravity, autiiority, and importunity, as they do the holy oracles of God.*' — Dr. Henry Moore.

Here again emerge the anxious queries. — Why should not a man have a free spirit? and what credit can be due to the holy orades of Grod, standing on no better evidence

* Ltrdner, toI. 4, p. fM.

t ** Postremo iUad qooqiie me Tehementer mo?et, quod Tideam primis flceletis temporibus, qoam plorimus ezUtisse, qui faciaas palmarium judi- etbant, cceleatem ▼eritatein, figmentis ania ire adjatum, qao facilius noya dictrioa a geotiuni aapientibus admitteretur. Officlosa h»e meodacia vocabant bono doe ezcogitata. Qao ex fonte dnbio procul, sunt orti libri fer^ sezcenti, qooa iUa ataa et prozima Tiderunt, ab nomioibua minime malis, (nam de iMaratieorain libria noe loqnfmur) sub nomine etiam Domini Jean Cnriati et npoitoloram aliorumqne sanctorum publieatos.**— Casaubon, quoted in Ltfdner, vol. 4, p. 584.

% Mosbeim treats these holy forgers with the same tenderness, '* they were I, (he says) whose intentions were not bad.*'— £ccl. Hist. to). I, p. 100.

AMintiONS OF CSUaiOTIAN WBiTBRflU 46

of being such, than the testimony of those, who we know have palmed the grossest falsehoods on us, with the same gravity, and as of equal authority with those holy orades ? and

22. ** This opinion has always been in the world, that to settle a certain and assured estimation upon that which is good and true, it is necessary to remove out of the way, whatsoever may be an hindrance to it Neither ought we to wonder, that even those of the honest innocent primitive times made use of these deceits, seeing for a good end they made no scruple to forge whole books." — Daille, on the Use of the Fathers, b. 1, c. 3.

What good end was that, which needed to be prosecuted by the forgery of whole books V*

23. ** But If our unrighteousness commend the riehteousnesi of God, what shall we say f — Rom. iii. 6. ** For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie, unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner f" — Romans, iii. 7.

24. The apostolic father. Hernias, who was the fellow- labourer of St Paul in the work of the ministry ; who is greeted as such in the New Testament: and whose writings are expressly quoted* as of divine inspiration by the early fathers, ingenuously confesses that lying was the easUy-besetting sin of a Christian. His words are,

'' O Lord, I never spake a true word in my life, but I have always lived in dissimulation, and affirmed a lie for truth to all men, and no man contradicted me, but all gave credit to my words.'' To which the holy angel, whom he addresses, condescendingly admonishes him, that '^ as the lie was up, now, he had better keep it up, and as in time it would come to be believed, it would answer as well as truth." #

25. Even Christ himself is represented in the gospels as inculcating the necessity, and setting the example of deceiving and imposing upon the common people, and purposely speaking unto tiiem in parables and double entendres, **that seeing, they might see, and not perceive; and hearing, they might hear, but not understand.'' — Mark, iv. 12.

* The words of the text are, **Now thou hearest, tak'e care from hence- forth, that even those things which thoa hast formerly spoken falsely, may by thy present truth, receive credit. For even those things may be credited ; if for the time to come, thou sbalt speak the truth, and by so doing, thou mayst attain unto life." — Archbishop Wake's Genuine Epistles of the Apostolic Fathers, tn <oco. See this article, where Hbrwas occurs in the regular succession of apostolic fathers, in this Dibgesis.

4fi ADMIflflONS OP CHRISmAN WEITHM.

26* And dhrine inspiratioD, so far firom inTolTmg any goarantee that tmth would be spoken nnder its immediate mflaence, is in ttie scripture itself, laid down as the criterion whereby we may know that nothing in the shape of truth is to be expected: — ^* And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet.'* — ^Esek. xiv. 9.

27. When it was intended that King Ahab should be seduced to his ineyitable destruction, God is represented as having employed his faith and piety as the means of his overthrow : — " Now, therefore, the Lord hath put a lying ^irit in the mouth of cUl thy prophets.'' — ^1 Kings, xxii. 2S There were four hundred of them, all speaking under the influence of divine inspiration, ali having received the spirit from on high, all of them the servants of God, and engaged in obeying none other than his godly motions, yet lying as fast as if the father of lies himself had com- missioned them. Such a set of fellows, so employed, cannot at least but make us suspect some sort of sarcasm in our Tb Dbum, where we say, '' the goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee.** The devil would hardly thiu such sort of praise, a compliment* Happy would it have been for Ahab, had he becai an InfideL

28. The New Testament, however, one might hope, as being a second revelation from God, would have given him an opportunity of *^ repenting of the evil he had spoken ;" but alas ! orthodoxy itself is constrained to tremble and adore, before that dreadful declaration, than which no religion that ever was in the world besides, ever contained any thing half so horrible : — ^* For this cause, God shdl send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned." — ^2 Thess. ii. 11, 12. Such was to be the effect of divine revelation.

Should then, our further prosecution of the inquiry

S reposed by this Dibobsis, lead us to the conviction that le amount of evidence for the pretensions of the Chris- tian religion, is as strong as it may be, it will yet remain for an inquiry, which we shall never venture to prosecute, whether that strength of evidence itself, may not be strong delusion. Strong enough must that delusion needs be, by which Omnipotence would intend to impose on the credulitv and weakness of his creatures. Is it for tiiose who will defend the (parent inferences of such a passage, to point out any thing in the grossest conceits, of the

AimiStlOIIS OP CHRISTIAN WBinBft. 47

grosaest fonius of Paganism, that ndght not have admitted of a palliatiYe interpretation ?

2ft St Paul himself, in an ambiguous text, either openly glories in the avowal, or but faintly repels the charge of practising a continued system of imposture and dissimulation. ** Far unto the Jewi, (says he) / became a$ a Jew, that I m^ht gam the Jews. To the weak, became I ae weak, that I migM gain the weak ; lam made aU thmgt to alt men.** — 1 Corinih. ix. 22.

30. And in a passage still more pregnant with inference to our great inquiry, (2 Galat. ii.) he distinguishes the gospel which he preached on ordinary occasions, from " that gotpel which he preached privately to them that were of reputation."

31. Dr. Mosheim admits, that the Platonists and Pytha- goreans held it as a maxim, that it was not only lawful, but praiseworthy to deceive, and even to use the expedient of a lie, in order to advance the cause of truth and piety. The Jews who lived in Egypt, had learned and received this maxim from them, bNefore the coming of Christ, as appears incontestibly f^m a multitude of ancient records, and the Christians were infected from both these sourcei^ with the same pernicious error. — Mosheim, vol. 1, p, 107.

82. In the fourth century, the same great author in*- structs us '* that it was an almost universally adopted maxim, that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of the church might be promoted.'*— Vol. 1. p. 198.

33. And as it regards the fifth century, he continues, the simplicity and ignorance of the generality in those times, fiimished the most favourable occasion for the ex- ercise of fraud; and the impudence of impostors in con- triving false miracles, was artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar : while the sagacious and the wise, who perceived these cheats, were overawed into silence by the dangers that threatened their lives and fortunes, if they shoidd expose the artifice." — Mosheim, Eccl. Hist, vol. 2. p. 11.

34. Nor must we, in any part of our subsequent investi- gation, quit our hold on die important admission of the met supplied to us by the research of that most eminent of critics, the great Sbmler — that the sacred books of the Christian Scriptures (from which circumstlmce, it may be, they derive their name of sacred) were, during the early

48 ADMIBttONS OP CHBI8TIAN WRimS.

ages of Christianity, really kept sacred. *^ The Christian Doctors (says he) never brought their sacred tM>oks before llie common people ; although people in general have been wont to think otherwise ; during the first ages, they were in the hands of the clergy only." * I solemnly invoke the- rumination of the reader to the inferences wiUi which this adnussion teems. I write, but cannot think for him. The light is in his hand : what it shall show him, must depend on his willingness to see.

35. How the common people were christianized, we gathei; from a remarkable passage which Mosheim has- preservM^r us, in the life of Gregory, sumamed Than- matui^s^llipt is, the wonder-worker : the passage is as follows If

When Gregory perceived that the simple and unskilled multitude persisted in their worship of images, on account of the pleasures and sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the Pagan festivals, he granted them a permis- sion to indulge themselves in the like pleasures, in cele- brating the memory of the holy martyrs, hoping, that in process of time, they would return, of their own accord, to a more virtuous and regular course of life." The his* torian remarks, that there is no sort of doubt, that by this permission, Gregory allowed the Christians to dance, sport, and feast at the tombs of the martjrrs, upon their respec- tive festivals, and to do every thing which the Pagans were accustomed to do in their temples, during the feasts celebrated in honour of their gods." — Mosheim, vol. 1. Cent. 2. p. 202.

36. This accommodating and truly Christian spirit was- carried to such an extent, that the images of the Pagan deities were in some instances allowed to remain, and continued to receive divine honours, in Christian churches. The images of the sybills, of which Gallseus has given us prints, were retained in the Christian church of Sienna." :t^ — Belis, Panth. 2. 237.

* Christiaui doctores non in Tiilgns prodebant libros sacros, licet solpant pleriqne aliter opinari, erant tantomin manibus clericorum, priora per scecula. '"DiBBertaLin TertuL 1. § 10. note 57.

1" Cam animadTertisset Gregorias quod ob corporeas delectationes et ?o- loptates, aimplez et imperitnm Tulgua in simalacroram cuUus errore perma- neret— permisit eis, ut in memoriam et recordationem gaoctorum martyram 8«se oblectarent, et in Istitiam effonderentur, quod soccesau temporis ali- qoando futnroni esiiet, ut sua sponte, ad honestiorem et accuratiorem ▼!!» rationem, transirent.'*

} The head of tlie Jupiter Olympiua of Phidias, carved in the mahogany transept, officiates at this day, as loeum ienens for God Almighty, in the chapel of King's College, Cambridge.

^

AimWIIONS OP CHRISTIAN WR1TBR8. 49

Among the sacred writings which the church has seen fit to deem apocryphal, there was a book attributed to Christ himself^ in which he declares that he was in no way against the heathen gods. — Jones on the Canon, vol. 1. p^rlL Origen vindicates, without denying the charge of Celsns, '' that tihe Christian Religion contained nothing but- what Christians held in common with heathens: nothing that was new, or truly greaf — Bellamy's Transla^ tion, chap. 4.

37. Even under the primitive discipline, and before the conversion of Rome, while the Church was cautious of admitting into her worship any thing that had a relation to the old idolatry: yet even in this period, Gregory Tbaumaturgus, is commended by his namesake of Nyssa, fordianging the Pagan festivals into Christian holidays, the better to draw the heathens to the religion of Christ.*

88. Thus Paulinus, a convert from Paganism, ofsena- torian rank, celebrated for his parts and learning, and who became Bishop of Nola, apologizes for setting up certain

Cintings in ms episcopal church, dedicated to Felix the artyr^ ^' that it was done with a design to draw the rude multitude, habituated to the profane rites of Paganism, to .a knowledge and good opinion of the Christian doctrine, bv learning from these pictures, what they were not capa- ble of learning from books ; i. e. the Lives and Acts of Christian Saints." — See Works of Paulinus, B. 9.

90. Pope Gregory, called the Great, about two centu- ries later, makes the same apology for images or pictures in churches ; declaring them to have been introduced for the sake of the Pagans ; that those who did not know, and could not read the Scriptures, might learn from those images and pictures what they ought to worship.f

40. Paulinus declares the object of these images and pictures to have been, ^' to draw the heathens the more easily to the faith of Christ, since by flocking in crowds to gaze at the finery of these paintings, and by explaining to each other the stories there represented, they would gra- dually acquire a reverence for that religion, which inspired so much virtue and piety into its professors."

* Nyssen, in Vttt Greg. Thaomat. cit. Middleton, Lettiir from Rome, 836. Thegood-natore of Gregory is the more commendable, inasmuch as it was a ' gratafal retnm of the like degree of indulgence as has been shown to hhnself. He was taken in to the Christian miuistrv, and consecrated a bishop of Christ, and wrought miracles, even while he continued a Pagan, and was entirely ignorant of the Christian doetrine.

t Epitt. 1. 9, e. 9.

IM ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WEfTERS.

41. But these compliances^ as Bishop SlillingJUet ob- serves, were attended with very bad consequences ; since Chrisiianity became at last, by that means, to be tiothing eke but reformed Paganism, as to its divine worhsip.*

42. The learned Christian advocate, M. Turretiny in describing the state of Christianity in the fourth century, has a well turned rhetoricism, the point of which is, '^thi^t it was not so much the empire that was brought oyer (o the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the em- pire : not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but Christianity that was converted to Paganism." f

48. '^ From ttiis era, then, according to the accounts of all writers, though Christianity became the public and es- tablished religion of the government, yet it was forced to sustain a perpetual struggle for many ages, against the obstinate efforts of Paganism, which was openly espoused by some of the emperors ; publicly tolerated waA privately favoured by others ; and connived at in some degree by all.'* — Middletons Letters from Rome.

4A» Within thirty years after Constantino, the emperor Julian entirely restored Paganism, and abrogated aU the laws which had been made against it. Though it is utterly untrue that he was ever guilty of any act of perse- cution or intolerance towards Christians. % ^be three emperors, who next in order succeeded Julian, t. e. Joimam^ Valentinian, Valens; though they were Christians by pro- fession, were yet wholly indifferent and neutral between the two religions ; granting an equal indulgence and tole- ration to them both. So that they may be as fiedrly claimed to be Pagan as Christian emperors* Nor had even Constantino himself, the first for whom the designa- tion of a Christian emperor has been challenged, accepted the rite of Christian baptism before he was dying* or ever in his life ceased to be, and to officiate, as a priest of the gods.

Oratian, the seventh emperor from him, and fourth after Julian, though a sincere believer, never thought fit to annul what Julian had restored. He was the first nowevcf

* See Bithap StUlingjlecVt Defence of the charge of Idolatry against the Romanists, toI. 6 of his Works, p. 4fiO, where the reader wilt find the charge demonstrably proved afraiust the chnrch of Rome.

t ** Non imperio ad Idem adducto, sed et imperii pompa ecclesiam iafi- eiente. Non ethnicis ad Chrlstam conversis, sed et Christi religiooe adi Ethnics formam depra¥ata."~Orat. Academ. De Variis Christ. Rel. fatis.

* See vindication of his character, in the Lion, vol. I. No. IS. 18th Letter from Oakham.

ADinnnoNs of chriotian writers. 51

oiAe emperors who refnsed the title and habit of the Fmtifex Maminus, as hicompatible with the Christian character. So that till then^ up to the year 384, there WM no aetmal disiimcm between Christ and Belial; no evidence of miracles or strength of reason had been oAnwd to attest the superiority of the Christian religion, to deMonstrate that there was any material distinction between that and Paganism, or to determine the mind of any one of the Roman emperors, that there was an incon- sSaA&mef in being^ a Christian and a Pagan at the saane

45. The affront put by Gratian upon the Pagan priest- hood, in lefvsing to wear their pontifical robe, was so faigftly resented, Aat one of them is recorded to ba-ve sai<F, smee the empefor refuses to be our Pontifex Maximus, toe will very skmthf take eare that our Pontifex shall be Maxtmus.

w. In the snbsequent reign of Theodosias, whose laws wwn fenendly severe npon the Pagans, Symmachcrs, tlie gowmot of Rome, presented a mem<maF in the strongest t^rms, and in the name of the Senate and people of Rome^ for lon^ro to replace the altar of victory in the senate house, Wkonce it had been removed by Gratian. This memorial wnn aflMETwered by St. AmUrose, who in a letter upon it to tb^ emperor, observes, that, ^ when the petitioners had so fTMR^templen and attars of their own, in all the streets of tbeme^ where they might freely offer their sacrifices, it lymmeA tc^ be a mere itisutt on Christianity, to demand still ooe altnr more; and especially in the senate house, where tbo grfmkU9 pavt were then Christians/' This petition was rojiicled by Vakntiniany against the advice of all hi(# oovneM, bnt wae granted presently after by the Christian emoetot, Engenins, who mnrthered and succeeded him.

Thus entering on the fifth century, and further surely wo need not descend : we ha»ve the surest and> most une- qaifocai demonstration, that Christianity, as a religion dfaitSnct fiDni' the ancient Paganism, up to that time, had gained no extemrive footing in the worid. After that pe- riod^ aD that there was of religion in the world, merges in the palpable obscure of the dark ages. The pretence to aa avgoment for Ae Christian religion, from any thing eMier miraeilons or extraordinary in its propagation, is tborefore, a sheer defiance of all' evidence and' reason whatovor.

47^ '^Pantonus, the head of the Alexandrian school, was prciNUiiy tte first who enriched die church with w

B 2

5ri ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WE1TEB8.

I*

version of the sacred writings, which has been loil among the ruins of time." — Mosk. vol. I. 186. — CojHpcfr with No. 34. in this Chapter.

48. ^* They all (t. e. all the fathers of the second c«b» tnry) attributed a double sense to the words of Scriptun^ the one obvious and literal, the other hidden and mjxrta^ rious, which lay concealed, as it were, under the veil of the outward letter. The former they treated with the utmost neglect," &c. — Ibid. 186.

49. ^* God also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter but of the spirit : for the let- ter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." — 2 Ck>rinth. iii. 8. '

60. *^ It is here to be attentively observed (says .Mo^ sheim, speaking of the church in the second century) thai the form used in the exclusion of heinous offenders firan the society of Christians, was, at first, extremely simple ; but was however, imperceptibly altered, enlarged by an addition of a vast multitude of rites, and new-modelled according to the discipline used in the ancient mysteries." — Mosh. vol. I. p. 199. ■

51. *' The profound respect that was paid to the Greek and Roman mysteries, and the extraordinary sanctity that was attributed to them, induced the Christians, (of the second century) to give their religion a mystic air, in order to put it upon an equal footing, in point of dignity, with that of the Pagans. For this purpose, they gave the name of mysteries to the institutions of the gospel, and decorated, particularly the holy sacrament, with that solemn title. They used, in that sacred institnti<m, as abo in that of baptism, several of the terms employed in the heathen mysteries, and proceeded so far at lengdi, as even to adopt some of the rites and ceremonies of which thoee renowned mysteries consisted." — Ibid. 204.

52. ^' It may be further observed, that the custom of teaching their religious doctrines, by images, actions, signs, and other sensible representations, which prevailed : among the Egyptians, and indeed in almost all the eastern nations, was another cause of the increase of external rites in the church.** — Ibid. 204.

53. '^ Among the human means that contributed to mnt tiply the number of Christians, and extend the limits Of the church in the third century, we shall find a great variety of causes uniting their influence, and contributing jointly to this happy purpose. Among these most be reckoned the zeal and labours of Origen, and the different

ADMISSIONS OP CURiSTlAM WRITERS. 53

works which were published by learned and pious men in defence of the gospel. If among the causes of the pro- pagation of Christianity^ there is any place due to pious FRAUDS, it is certain that theif merit a very small part of the honour of having contributed to this glorious purpose, siiice they were practised by few, and that very rarely."* — Masheim, vol. I, p. 246.

. 54. ^' Origen, invited from Alexandria by an Arabian prince, converted by his assiduous labours a certain tribe of wandering Arabs to the Christian faith. The Goths, a fierce and warlike people, received the knowledge of the gospel by the means of certain Christian doctors, sent Uiither from Asia. The holy lives of these venerable teacbers, and the miraculous powbrs with which they were endowed, attracted the esteem, even of a people educated to nothing but plunder and devastation, and absolutely uncivilized by letters or science: and their authority and influence became so great, and produced in process of time such remarkable effects, that a great part of this barbarous people professed themselves the disciples of Christ, and put off, in a manner, that ferocity which had been so natural to them." — Vol. I, 247.

. S&» '^ Among the superhuman means," which, after all that be has admitted, this writer thinks can alone suffi- ciently account for the successful propagation of the gospel, ^^ we not only reckon the intrinsic force of celestial tratn, and the piety and fortitude of those who declared it to the world, but also that especial and itUerposing pro- vidence, which by dreams ?aid nisions, presented to the minds of many, who were either inattentive to the Christian doctrine, or its professed enemies, touched their hearts with a conviction of the truth, and a sense of its import- ance ; and engaged them without delay to profess them- selves the disciples of Christ."

56. ** To this may also be added, the healing of diseases, and other miracles, which many Christians were yet enabled to perform, by invoking the name of the Divine Saviour." — Mosheim, vol. I, p. 245.

On these last four most important admissions; the leader will observe, that it may be enough to remark, that the principle on which this work is conducted, so

^ How nast every ingeeuous and virtuous sensibility in man's nature, li^ve smirted luider the distress of being obliged te use language like this. 1 know the inan who hath preferred the fate of felons, and would rather itiai; put only from the prison to the tomb, than he would use the like.

54 ADMISSIONO OF CHRISTIAN WS1TU8.

well expressed in its motto, that philosophy which m agreeable to fuiture, approve and cherUh; but thai which pretends to commerce with the deity ^ avoid! pledges os to view all references to supernatural agency, as being no proof of such agency, but as demonstration absokite of the idiotish stupidity, or errant knavery of the party, rest* ing any cause whatever on such references. It is not in the former of these predicaments, that such an histodaii as Mosheim, can be impeached; nor could either th^ emoluments or dignities of the theological chair at HeLn^ stadt, or the Chancellorship of the University of Gottingen, allay the smartings of sentiment, and the anguish cMf ooq* scions meanness, in holding them at so dear a prioe» as the necessity of making such statements, of thus selUng his name to the secret scorn of all whose praise was worth ambition, thus outraging his own convictions, thus oon- flicting with his own statements ; thus bowing down his stupendous strength of talent, to harmonise with the fig* ments of drivelling idiotcy, making learning do homage to ignorance, and the clarion that should have roused the sleeping world, pipe down to concert with the rattl^-tnqp and Jews's-harp of the nursery.

Of the pious frauds, which this historian admits to share only a small part of the honour of contributing to the propagation of the gospel, because they were ^'prac- tised by so few ;" he had not the alleviation to his feelings, of bein^ able to be ignorant that he has falsified that statement in innumerable passages of this and his othor writings ; and that his whole history of the church, from first to last, contains not so much as a single instance, of one of the fathers of the church, or first preachers of the gospel, who did not practice those pious frauds.

S7. *^ The authors who have treated of the innocence and sanctity of the primitive Christians, have fallen into the error of supposing them to have been unspotted models of piety and virtue, and a gross error indeed it is, as the strongest testimonies too evidently prove."*— Ibid. p. 120.

58.* '' Such was the license of inventing, so headlong the readiness of believing, in the first ages, that the credibility of transactions derived from thence, must haTe been hugely doubtful: nor has the world only, but the

* *< Tanta fuit primis skcuIih fingendi licentia, tam prona in crodendo facilitas, ut reruni ge&taruiii fides cxindo gravilcr laboraverat. Nrave enim orbis tcrraruin tantuiii, scd et Dei ccclesia de tcmporihuB suis mytlKls merlto quairalur.'*— Fell, Bishop of Oxford, quoted by Laitkier aud Tiodal.

▲mumoNB or outisriAM wbitbbs. ^

church of Qod also, ha5 reasonably to complain of its anysCical times/' — IHshop Fell, so rendered in the Author's Syntagma^ p. 84.

SOk ** The extraT€igant notions which obtained among the Christians of the primitive ages, (says Dupin) sprang flfoiti the opinions of the Pagan philosophers^ smd from tile aiysteries, which crack-brained men put on the history of the Old and New Testament, according to their imagi- nations. The more extraordinary these opinions were^ the more did they relish^ and the better did they like thMi; and those who inrented them, published them gfa¥aly> as great mysteries to the simple, who were all diiqiosed to receive them.'' — Duma's Short History of the Church, vol. 2, c. 4, a« quoted by lifidalj p. 224.

00. ''They have bat little knowledge of the Jewish juMon, and of the primitive Christians, who obstinately rsfese to believe that such sort of notions could not pro- ceed from thence ; for on the contrary, it was their very oharaoter to turn the whole scripture into allegory." — Arch- Ushop Wak^s Life of the Apostle Barnabas, p. 78,

Of the MIRACULOUS POWBRS with which Mosheim* would persuade us that the Christians of the third century wete still endowed ; we have but to confront him with his own cofifficting statement, on the 11th page of his second volume : concluding with his own reflection on that ad- missimi :~^' Thus does it generally happen in human life, fliat when danger attends the discovery and the profession of the truth, the prudent are silent, the multitude believe. aad impostors triumph."

Of the DR£AMS AND VISIONS, of which he speaks; it is enough to answer him with the intuitive demonstration, that such sort of evidence for Christianity, might be as easily pretended for one religion as another; it is such as none but a desperate cause would appeal to, such as no rational man would respect, and no honest man nudntain ; not only of no nature to afibrd proof to the claims of a divine revelation, but itself unproved ; and not alone unproved ; but of its own nature, both morally and physically, incapable of receiving any sort of proof. TPbe heart smarts for the degradation of outraged reason, for the humiliation of torn and lacerated humanity ; that a Mosheim should talk of dreams jand visions—that it should come to this ! O Christianity, bow great are thy

trhunphs !

* VoM,p.247.

56 ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITBRS.

Of the HRALiNG OP DIREASBS9 by the invoking of a name. It is impossible not to see, that this anthor did not believe his own argument: because it is impossiUe not to know that no man in his senses could believe it, and impossible not to suspect, that so weak and foolish an argument, was by this auUior, purposely exhibited as one of the main pillars of the Christian evidence, in order to betray to future times, how weak that evidence was, and to encourage those who should come to live in some happier day when the choused world might better endure the being undeceived ; — to blow it down with their breath. Beausobre, Tillotson, South, Watson, Paley, and some high in the church, yet living, hai^e given more than pr^- nant inuendoes of their acting on this policy.

Nothing is more obvious, than that persons diseased in body, must labour under a corresponding weakness of mind. There is no delusion of such obvious practi- cability on a weak mind in a diseased body ; as that which should hold out hopes of cure, beyond the promise of nature. A miracle of healing, is therefore of all miracles, in its own nature most suspicious, and least capable of evidence.

It was the pretence to these gifts of healings that gave name to the Thefapeut€e^ or Healers ; and consequently sup- plies us with an infallible clue to lead to the birth-place and cradle of Christianity. The cure being performed by invocation of a name, still lights us on to the germ and nucleus of the whole system. Neither slight nor few are the indications of this magical or supposed charming operation of the Brutumfulmen ; the mere name only of the words, Jesus Christ, in the New Testament itself; and con- sequently neither weak nor inconsecutive are our reasons, for maintaining that it was in the name, and the name only, that the first preachers of Christianity believed ; that it was not supposed by them to be the designation of any person who had really existed, but was a vox et preeterea nihil, — a charm more powerful than the Abraxas, more sacred than Abracadabra: in short, those were but the spells that bound the services of inferior demons — this, conjured the assistance of omnipotence, and was indeed, the Grod's spell. " There is none other name under heaveti, (says the Peter of the Acts of the Apostles) given among men, whereby we must be saved." — Chap. iv. 12.

61. Origen, ever the main strength and sheet-anchor ot the advocates of Christianity, expressly maintains, that

ADIIU8ION8 OF CHRISTIAN WAITERS. fi7

** the miraculous powers which the Christians possessed, were not in the least owing to enchantments, (which he makes Celsus seem to have objected,) but to their pro^ nouncing the name I . E . S . U . S,* and making mention of some remarkable occurrences of his life. Nay, the name of I • E . S . U • S, has had such power over demons, that it has sometimes proved effectual, though pronounced by ▼eiy wicked persons." — Answer to Celsus, chap. 6.

62. << And the name of I . £. S . U. S, at this very day, composes the ru£9ed minds of men, dispossesses demons, cures diseases ; and works a meek, gentle, and amiable temper in all those persons, who make profession of Christianity, from a higher end than their worldly inte* rests/' — Ibtd. 517. So says Origen. No Christian will for a moment think that there is any salving of the matter in such a statement. Friar's balsam was found in every case without fail ; to heal the wound, even after a man's head was clean cut off, provided his head were set on again the fight way.

63. '* When men pretend to work miracles, and talk of immediate revelations, of knowing the truth by revelation, and of more than ordinary illumination ; we ought not to be frightened by those big words, from looking what is under them ; nor to be afraid of calling those things into question, which we see set off with such high-flown pre- tences. It is somewhat strange that we should believe men the more, for that very reason, upon which w^ should believe them tiie less." — Clagit's Persuasive to an Ingenuous Trial of Opinions, p. 19, as quoted by Tindal, p. 217.

' 64. St Chrysostom declares, '^ that miracles are only proper to excite sluggish and vulgar minds, that men of sense have no occasion for them, and that they frequently carry some untoward suspicion along with them." — Quoted in Middkton's Prefatory Discourse to his Letter from Rome, p. 104.

In this sentiment it must be owned, that the Christian saint strikingly coincides with the Pagan philosopher Polybius, who considered all miracles as fables, invented to preserve in the vulgar a due sense of respect for the deity." — Reimmann, Hist. Ath. p. 233.

65. The great theologian, Beausobre, in his immense Histoire de Maniche6, torn. 2, p. 568, says,t '' We see in

* See similar mystical senses of the epithets, Christ and Cbrest, under the articles Serapis, and Adrian's Letter, t ** On Tpit dans I'histoire qne j*ai rapport^e, one sorte d'hypocrisie, qni

58 B8SENB8 OR THBU APBUTS.

the history which I have related, a sort of hypocrisy, that has been perhaps, bat too common at all* times: that churchmen not only do noi say what they think, but they do say, the direct contrary of what they think. Philo* sophers ia their cabinets ; out of them, they are content with fieUbles, though they well know that they are fables. Nay more : they deliver honest men to the executioner, for having uttered what they themselves know to be true. How many Atheists and Pagans have burned holy men under the pretext of heresy? Every day do hypocrites con- secrate, and make people adore the host, though as widl convinced as I am, that it is nothing but a bit of bread." 06. The learned Grotius has a similar avowal : " He that reads ecclesiastical history, reads nothing but the roguery and folly of bishops and churchmen.''-^GfoliJ

No man could quote higher authorities.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THB BSSENES OR THBRAPEUTS.

A KNOWLBDGB of the character and tenets of that most remarkable set of men that ever existed, who were known by the name of Essenes or Thereapcuts, is absolutely necessary to a fair investigation of the claims of the New Testament, in the origination and references of which, they bear so prominent a part.

The celebrated German critic, Michaelis, whose great work, the Introduction to the New Testament, has been trans- lated by Dr. Herbert Marsh, the present Lord Bishop of Peterborough, defines them as *' a Jewish sect, which began to spread itself at Ephesus, and to threaten great mischief to Christianity, in the time (or, indeed, previous to the time) of St. Paul ; on which account, in his epistles to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, and to Timothy ; he decbures himself openly against them." f

n*a peut-^tre 6X6 quo trop commane dans tous les terns. C*est qae des ecd^astiqaea, non seuleraent ne diseat pM ce qu'ils pensent, imds disent tout le contraire de oe qu'ils pensent. Philosophes dans leur cabioal, bora delk, ils conteat des liabfes, quoiquHls sacheiit bien que ce sont des fables. Ils font plus ; lis llrrent au bourreau des gens dc biens pour I'aroir dit. CombieDs d*ath^es et dc pronhanes ont fait briilcr de saiiils personnages, sous pretexte d*hdr^sio I Tous les jours des hypocrites consacrcnt ct font adorer Thostie, bien qu'ils soicnt aussi conTaincQS que moi, que ce Q*est qu*un morcoau de pain.*' — Ibid, t MicliaeliSy vol. 4, p. 70.

MBOiBa OR TUBRAHSirm. 60

But mrdy this admisaon of the sect's beginning to spread itself at Ephesns, and its existence at C!olosse, and in the diocese of Timothy, to a sufficient extent to call for the serious opposition of one who^ in any calculations of chronology, nuist have been the contemporary of Jesus Christ ; is no disparagement of the fact of its preyious establishment in Egypt; while the admitted fact,* that tiiese three Epistles of St Paul, in which he so earnestly oi^^oses himself to this sect, w^re written brfore any one of our four Gospels, involves the d fortiori demonstraticm; that their tenets and discipline, whatever they were, were not corruptions or perversions of those gospds, however dMise gospels may turn out to be improvements or plagia- lisms upon the previously established tenets and discipline of that sect.

Tiie ancient writers who have given any account of this sect, are Fbilo, Josephus, Pliny, and Solinus. Infinite perf^xity, however, is occasioned by modem historians attempting to describe differences and distinctions where there are really none. The Therapeuta and the Essenes are one and the same sect : the Therapeuta, which is Greek, being nothing more than Essenes, which is of the same sense in Egyptian, and is in fact a translation of it : — as, perhaps^ Surgeons, Healers, Curates, or the. most vulgar sense of Doctors, is the nearest possible plain English of Thbra- P£UTiB. The similarity of the sentiments of the Essenes, or Therapeutse, to those of the church of Rome, induced the learned Jesuit, Nicolaus Serarius, to seek for them an honourable origin. He contended, therefore, that they were Asideans, and derived them from the Rechabites, described so circumstantially in the S5th chapter of Jere- miah ; at the same time, he asserted that the first Christian m<mks were Essenes.

Both of these positions were denied by his opponents, D^sius and Scaliger ; but in respect to the latter, says Michaelis, certainly Serarius was in the right.

'^ The Essenes," he adds, ^^ were indeed a Jewish, and not a Christian sect.** Why, to be sure, it would be awk- ward enough for a Christian divine to admit them to the honours of that name before '' that reUgion which St. Au- gustine tells us ^ was before in the world,' began to be called Christian." (See Admission 12.) The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch (Acts). But sure, it was something more than the name that made them such ; they

* It is admitted by Dr. Lardaer.

UO . E88ENBS OR THERAPEUTll.

were none the less what the name signified, ere yet it was conferred on them : and the Essenes had every thing bat the name/'

'^ It is evident," continues Michaelis, ^' from the above- mentioned epistles of St Paul, that to the great morti- fication of the apostle, they insinuated themselves very early into the Christian church."

But is it not, in reason, as likely that the Christians, who were certainly the last comersy should have insinuated themselves into the Therapeutan community t

Ensebius has fully shown that the monastic life was derived from the Essenes ; and, because many Christians adopted the manners of the Essenes, Epiphanius took the Essenes in general for Christians, and confounded them with the Nazarenes : — a confusion to which the similarity of this name, to that of the Nazarites of the Old Testa- ment, might in some measure contribute. But we find this confusion still worse confounded, in the remarkable oversight of the passage, Matthew ii. 28, which betrays that Jesus himself was believed to be one of this fraternity of monks.*/

Montfaucon and Uelyot have attempted to prove them Christians, but have been confuted by Boubier. Lange has contended that they were nothing more than circum- cised Egyptians, but has been confuted by Uenmann.—- Marsh*sMichaelis, vol. 4, p. 79, 80, 81.

*' It was in Egypt," says the great ecclesiastical historian, Mosheim, " that the morose discipline of Asceticism f (t. e. the Essenian or Therapeutan discipline) took its rise; and it is observable, that that country has in all tiroes, as it were by an immutable law or disposition of nature, abounded with persons of a melancholy complexion, and produced, in proportion to its extent, more gloomy spirits than any other parts of the world. It was here that the Essenes dwelt principally, long before the coming of Christ.*' — Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 196.

* Matthew ii. 28. <* That it might be fulfilled which was Bpoken by the prophets. He Bball be called a Nazarene ;" that is (as we see from Epipha- nias)^ a ThereapeuU It is certain that none of the Jewish prophets had lo said. Some other equally sacred writings are referred to. Though their aeeomplishment by the mere resemblance of the name of the city in which Jesus IS said to have resided, to that of the order of monlis to which he was belieTed to have belonged, is a most miserable pun. The Jews, howe? er, who think it reasonable to admit that such a person as Jesus really existed, place his birth near a century sooner than the generally assumed epocha.— BoMnage Huioire den Ju\f$, 1. 5, c. 14, 16.

t From the Greek oxrtcnfns^ exercUey dUcipUnCj study, meditation^ signi- fyiDg also M€{f'morl{fication.

mSBNBS OR THERARUTS. 01

' It is not the first glance, nor a cnrsory observance, that will sufiiciently admonish the reader of the immense his- torical wealth put into his hand, by this stupendous admi^ sioH, this surrender of the key-stone of the mighty arch, — this giving-np of every thing than can be pretended for the evidences of the Christian religion.

This admission of the great ecclesiastical historian (than whom there is no greater) will serve as as the Pythagorean theor^m«-the great geometrical element of all subsequent sci^ce, of continusd recurrence, of infinite application — ever to be borne in mind, always to be brought in proof — presenting the means of solving every difficulty, and the due for guiding us to every truth. " Bind it about thy neck, write it upon the tablet of thy heart"' — Every THING OP Christianity is of Egyptian origin.

The first and greatest library that ever was in the world, was at Alexandria in Egypt The first of that most mischievous of all institutions — universities, was the University of Alexandria in Egypt ; where lazy monks and vrily fanatics first found the benefit of clubbing together, to keep the privileges and advantages of learning to them- selves, and concocting holy mysteries and inspir^ legends, to be dealt out as the craft should need, for the perpe- tuation of ignorance and superstition, and consequently of the ascendancy of jugglers and Jesuits, holy hypocrites, and reverend rogues, among men.

All the most valued manuscripts of the Christian scrip- tures are Codices Alexandrinu The very first bishops of whom we have any account, were bishops of Alexandria. Scarcely one of the more eminent fathers of the Christian church is there, who had not been educated and trained in the arts of priestly fraud, in the University oi Alexandria^ — that great sewer of the congregated feculencies of fana- ticism*

In those early times, the professions of Medicine and Divinity were inseparable. We read of the divinity stu- dents studying medicine in the School, or University of Alexandria, to which all persons resorted, who were after- wards to practice in either way, on the weak in body or the weak in mind, among their fellow creatures. The Thereapeuts, or Essenes, as their name signifies, were expressly professors of the art of healing — an art in those days necessarily conferring the most mystical sanctity of character on all who were endued with it, and the most convenient of all others for the purposes of imposture and

(i2 E88ENE8 OR THRRAPEUT8.

wonderment. It was invariably consideied to be attainable only by ttie especial ^ft of heaven,* and no cure of any sort, or in any way effected, was ever ascribed to natnrad causes merely. Those who, after dne training in the ascetic discipline, were sent out from the University of Alexandria to practice their divinely acquired art in the towns and villages, were recognized as regular or canonical apostles : while those who had not obt^ned their credentiah from the college, who set up for themselves^ or who, after having left the college, ceased to recognise its app|pnt- ment» were csMed false apostles, quacks, heretics, and empirics. And in several of the early apocryphal scrip-* tures> we find the titles Apostolici and Apostactid (aposto- lical, and apostactical, t. e, of the monkish order of Apo»- tactitesy or Solitaires,) perfectly synonimous. Euselms emphatically calls the apostactical Therai>euts apostolical. ** Philo (he says) wrote also a treatise on the contemplative Ufe, or the Worshippers ; from whence, we have borrowed tk^ things, which we allege concerning the manner of life of those apostolical men.'*t Indeed, Christ himself, is represented as describing his apostles as members of this solitary order of monks, and being one himself: — *' The^ are not of the world, even as I am not of the ihorltL** — John xvii. l& What then but monks ? The seceders or dis- senters (and of this class was St, Paul),j: upon finding the advantage of setting up in the trade upon their own inde^ pendent foundation, pleaded their success in miracles of healing, as evidence of their divine commission ; and abun- dantly returned the revilings of the Therapeutan college. Unaided by the lights oif anatomy, and untbundied on any principles of rational science ; recovery from disease could only be ascribed to supernatural powers. A fever was supposed to be a daemon that had taken up his abode in the body of the unfortunate patient, and was to be expelled, not by any virtue of material causes ; but by incantations, spells, and leucomancy, or white magic ; as opposed to necromancy, or black magic, by which diseases and evils of all sorts were believed to be incurred. The white fsogtc consisted of prayers, fastings,§ baptisms,

* '* To another the i^ifts of healing, by the same Spirit. Have all the gHtrn of hetlinf^?*' I Cor. xH. — Query. How did he spend three years in Arabia, but in a conrs« of study for the ministry 7

t O (\oyos) Vf/K fiim dfotpfiruta, ri uur^nf, c| 8> to ircpi r& fits raw amomokutw avSptt¥ 8icXi}Av6aficy. — Reel. Hiit. lib. 2, c. 17, A. X GvlIkU 1. 17.

§ *' Howbeit this kind gocth not oat, bat by prayer and fasting.** Matt, xviil. 91.

E8SENE8 OR THBRAPEUT8. 63

saoramenta, &c« which were believed to have the same power over good daemons^ and even over God himsell^ as the black magic had over evil daemons and their supreme head) the Devil. The trembling patient was only entitled to expect his core in proportion to his faiths to believe withoat Q]iderataBding> and to surrender his fortune and life itself to the purposes of his phjrsician, and to the biudness of imposing upon others, the deceits that had been practiced upon himself.

Even to this day, the name retained by our sacied writings, is derived from the belief of their magical influ* tBCOy as a spell or charm of 6od, to drive away diseases. The Irish peasantry still continue to tie passages of 8U John's SpdU, or St. John's God's-spell, to the horns of cows to make them give more milk ; nor would any ]>owers of rational argument shake their conviction of the efficacy of a bit of the word, tied round a colt's heels, to prevent them from swelling.

It will become physicians of higher claims to science mmd rationality, to triumph over the veterinary piety of the Bog of Allen, when their own forms of prescription shall no longer betray the wish to conceal from the patient the nature of the ingredients to which he is to trust his Ufe, nor bear, as the first mark of the pen upon the paper, the mystical hieroglyphic of Jupiter, the talismanic B^ under whose influence the prescribed herbs were to be gathered, and from whose miraculous agency their opera- tion was to be expected.

The Thereapeutae of Egypt, from whom are descended the vagrant hordes of Jews and Gypsies, had well found by what arts mankind were to be cfyoled ; and as they boasted their acquaintance with the sanative qualities q£ herbs of all countries ; so in their extensive peregrinations through cdl the then knoMrn regions of the earth, they had not failed to bring home, and remodel to their own pur- poses, those sacr^ spells or religious romances, which they found had been successftilly palmed on the creduUty of r^note nations. Hence the Indian Chriskna might have become the Therapeutan head of the order of spiritual physicians.

No principle was held more sacred than that of du necessity of keeping the sacred writings from the know- ledge of the people. Nothing could be safer from the danger of discovery than the substitution, with scarce a change of names, ** of the incarnate Deity of the Sanscrit

64 E88BNE8 OR THERAPEUTS.

Rimiance " for the imaginary founder of the Thereapentan college. What had been said to have been done in India, Goold be as well said to have been done in Palestine. Tho change of names and places, and the mixing up of Tarious sketches of the Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, and fioman mythology, would constitute a sufficient disguise to evade the languid curiosity of infant scepticism. A knowledge within the acquisition only of a few, and which the strongest possible interest bound that few to hold inviolate, would soon pass entirely from the records of human memory. A long continued habit of imposing upon others would in time subdue tlie minds of the impostors themselves, and cause them to become at length the dupes of their own deception, to forget the temerity in which ^eir first assertions had originated, to catch the infection of tike prevailing credulity, and to believe their own lie.

In such, the known and never-changing laws of nature, and the invariable operation of natural causes, we find the solution of every difficulty and perplexity that remote- ness of time might throw in the way of our judgment of past events.

But when, to such an apparatus of rational probability, we are enabled to bring in the absolute ratificatioili of unquestionably testimony, — to show that what was in supposition more probable than any thing else that could be supposed, was in fact that which absolutelv took place, — wc have the highest degree of evidence of which history is capable; we can give no other definition of hiUorical truth itself.

The probability, then, that that sect of vagrant quack- doctors, the Therapeutae, who were established in Egypt and its neighbourhood many ages before the period assigned by later theologians as that of the birth of Christ, were the original fabricators of the writings contained in the New Testament; becomes certainty on the basis of evidence, than which history hath nothing more certain — by the unguarded, but explicit — unwary, but most unqualified and positive, statement of the historian Eusebius, that '' those ancieut Therapeut€e were Christians, atid that their ancient writings were our Gospels and Epistles." * The wonder with which Lardper quotes this astonishing confession of the great

* The above most important passage of all ecclesiastical records, is in the 9d book, the 17th chapter, and &3d and following pages of his History. The title of a whole chapter (the fourth of the first book) of this work is, that

THB RILIGION Pl/BLISURD BY JeSUS ChRIBT TO ALL NATIONS IS NEITIIRR iraW NOB 8TRANOB.

fiSSENES OR THERAPEUT8. 6&

pillar of the pretended evidences of the Christian religion,* only shows how aware he was of the fatal inferences with which it teems.

It is most essentially observable, that the Essenes or Thereapeuts, in addition to their monopoly of the art of healing, professed themselves to be Eclectics ; they held Plato in the highest esteem, though they made no scruple to join with his doctrines, whatever they thought conformable to reason in the tenets and opinions of the other philo- sophers.

^ These sages were of opinion that true philosophy, \ the greatest and most scdutary gift of God to mortals, was scattered, in various portions, through all the diiferent aects ; and that it was, consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it from the several comers where it lay dispersed, and to employ it, thus re-united, in destroying the dominion of impiety and vice." :|: The principal seat of this philosophy was at Alexandria ; and '' ft manifestly appears/" says Mosheim,§ ^ from the testimony of Philo the Jew, who was himself one of this sect, that this (Eclectic) philosophy (of this Essenian or Therapcutan sect) was in a flourishing state at Alexandria when our Saviour was upon earth." — EccL Hist, Cent, 1, p. 1.

1. We have only to collate the admission of the ortho- dox Lactantius, that Christianity itself ^^«5 the Eclectic Philosophy y inasmuch as that " if there had been any one to have collected the truth that was scattered and diffused among the various sects of philosophers and divines into one, and to have reduced it into a system, there would indeed be no difference between him and a Christian :"|| % To compare the various tenets and speculations of the different philosophers and religionists of antiquity with the strong and particular smatch of the Platonic philo- sophy, which we actually see pervading the New Testa- ment : and to add the weight in all reason and fairness due to the positive testimony of that unquestionably learned* and intelligent Manichaean Christian and bishop^ Faustus, — that *^ it is an undoubted fact, that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his

• Credibilily, vol. 2, 4to. p. 861.

+ Obsenre well, the phrases, — ''* the philosophy — our philosophy ^^^ and the ** true philosophy " occur throughout the Fathers, in a hundred passages for one, where ** Christianity ** should have been the word.

I Moshelm, toI. 1, p. 160. \ Ibid, p. 87.

II Admission No. 10 in the chapter of Admissions.

F

G6 CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST.

apostles, but a long while after their time, by some nnknown persons, who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote of aflairs they were little acquainted with, aflixed to their works the names of apostles^ or of such as were supposed to have been their companionSb and then said that they were written according to them.*' — Faust, lib. 2.

To this important passage, of which I resenre the original text for my next occasion of quoting it,* I hers subjoin what the same high authority objects, if possibly with still increasing emphasis, against the arguments of St. Augustine :t — ^' For many things have 1)een inserted by your ancestors in the speeches of our Lord, which, though put forth under his name, agree not with his faith ; especially since, — as already it has been often proved by us, — that these things were not written by Christ, nor his apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not i^hat sort of half-jews, not even agreeiiig with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely ; and yet, fathering the whole upon the names of the apostles of the Lord, or on those who were supposed to have followed the apostles ; they men- daciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits^ according to them." The conclusion is irre- sistible.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES, DOCTRINES, DISCIPLINB. AND ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY, LONG ANTERIOR TO THE PERIOD ASSIGNED AS THAT OF THE BIRTH 09 CHRIST.

From the more general account of that remarkable sect of philosophical religionists, the Egyptian Thereapeuts, which we have collected from the admissions of the most

♦ In chapter 15.

t *' Multa cnim a majoribus Testris, eloquiis Domini nostri inserta Terba sunt ; quae nomine signata ipsius, cum ejaa fide non coagruant, prasertim, quia, ut jam sspe probatum a nobis est, nee ab ipso hsc sunt, nee ab ejas apostoUs scripta, sed multo post eorum assumptionem, a nescio qui baa, et ipsis inter so non concordantibus iemi-jud^is, per famas opinJoDesque comperta sunt ; qui tamcn omnia eadem in apostolorum Domini conferentea. nomiua, vcl coram qui secuti apostolos Tiderentur, errores ac mendacU •■« sfcundum eos ss scripsisse mentlti sunt.** — Fau9t. lib. 83, c. 8.

CHRISTIAN SdUPTURfiS ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. 87

strenaons defenders of the evidences of the Christian religion ; we pass into the more immediate sanctuary of the sect itself, to learn from the unquestionable authority of one who was a member of their community, all that can now be known of what their scriptures, doctrines, discipline, and ecclesiastical polity, were.

On the threshold of this avenue, we only pause to recapitnlate for the reader's admonition, the certainties of information already established ; which, carrying with him through the important discoveries to which we now a]»proach, he shall with the quicker apprehension discern, aad with the easier method weigh and appreciate the value of the further information to which now we tend. ^ 1. The Essenes, the Therapeuts, the Ascetics, the Monks, ike Ecclesiastics, and the Eclectics, are but different Barnes for one and the self-same sect.

2. The word Essene is nothing more than the Egyptian word for that of which Therapent is the Greek, each of Aem signifjring healer or doctor, and designating the diaracter of the sect as professing to be endued with the miraculous gift of healing ; and more especially so with respect to the diseases of the mind.

& Their name of Ascetics indicaXed the severe discipline and exercise of self-mortification, long fastings, prayers, contemplation, and even making of themselves eunuchs for ike kingdom of heaven's sakej'^/^s did Origen, Melito, and others, who derived their Christianity from the same school; and as Christ himself is represented to have recog- nised and approved their practice.

4. Their name of Monks indicated their delight in soli- tude, their contemplative life, and their entire segregation and abstraction from the world : which Christ, in the Gospel, is in like manner represented, as describing as characteristic of the community of which he himself was a member .*!/

ft. Their name of Ecclesiastics was of the same sense, and indicated their being called out, elected, separated ttom the general fraternity of mankind, and set apart to tke more immediate service and honour of God.

6. Their name of Eclectics indicated that their divine

* ** And there be eunuchs, which have made themseWeH eunuchs for the hinsfkim of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let iain receive it." Matt. six. 12.

t *^They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.** John zvii. 16. **• I pray for them, I pray not for the world.** Ibid. 9. Surely, the world ought to be much obliged to him !

f2

68 CHEUmAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST.

philosophy was a collection Of all the diverging rays of truth which were scattered through the various systems of Pagan and Jewish piety, into one bright focus — ^that their religion was made up of '' whatsoever thittgs are trut^ ^whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever thinss are just, what' soever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report — if there were any virtue^ and if there were any praise,'^ (Phil. iv. 8,) wherever found ; alil^e indif- ferent/whether it were derived from '' saint, from savage, or from sage — ^Jehovah, Jove, or Lord/*

.7. They had a flourishing university, or corporate body, established upon these principles at Alexandria in E^7pt> long before the period assigned to the birth of Christ.

8. From this body they sent out missionaries, and had established colonies, auxiliary branches, and aflUiated communities, in various cities of Asia Minor ; which colo- nies were in a flourishing condition, before the preaching of St. Paul.

9. Eusebius, from whom all our knowledge of eccle- siastical antiquity is derived, declares his opinion, that '' the sacred writings used by this sect, were none otheif than our Gospels, and the writings of the apostles ; and that certain Diegbses, after the manner of allegorical inter- pretations of the ancient prophets; these w^re their epistles." *

10. It is certain, that the Epistles and Gospels, and the whole'system of Christianity, as conveyed to us upon the credit of the Fathers ; do at this day bear the character of being such an Eclectic epitome or selection from all the forms of religion and philosophy then known in the worlid^ as these Eclectic philosophers professed to have formed.

11. It is certain that our three first Gospels were not written by the persons whose names they bear, but are derived from an earlier draft of the evangelical story^ which was entitled the Diegesis.

With these lights in thy hand, enter reader, on the stupendous vista that I unlock for thee, by the best trans- lation I could make, and better than any that I could find ready-made, of the most important historical document ia the whole world : whichever be the second in importance.

* Taxa V^tKos a ^n^rw apx"*^^ ^^ avrois ciroi <nryypanfi€era, fvay ytkta, ras rttv awoaroXwf ypcupas^ AIHTHSEIS tc riras'Kcera ro tiieos rofv iraXcu vpo^ufnm tpfiriywriKos — nrurroXai^ rcana €ivcu, — Emeb. EecL Hist. lib,2, cap, \6.J4U, ed» ColonieB AUobrogum, 1612, p. GU, ad literam D, Unea C.

CHRISTIAK. SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. 60

T%e Sixteenth C/iapter of the Second Book of tlie Ecclesiastical

History, of Eusebius Pamphilus.

** St.Mark^ the Evangelist, is said first to have been sent into Egypt, and to have preached there the same gospel wliich he afterwards committed to writing. There he established the churches of Alexandria ; and so great was the number of both men- and women that became believers- upon his first address, on account of the more philoso- phical and intense Asceticism, (which he both taught and practised,) that Philo has seen fit to write a history of their manner of living, their assemblies> their sacred feasts, and their whole course of life.

1. He so accurately details the manner of living of those who with us have been called Ascetics, as to seem not merely the historian of their most remarkable tenets, nor as? being acquainted with them merely; but as having em- braced them ; and both joining their religious rites, and extolling those apostolical men, who, as it is likely, were descended' from Hebrews, and who therefore were wont to observe very many of the customs of the ancients, after a more Jewish fashion.

2. In the first place, then, in the discourse which he ha^ written'co/icfrw/wg the contemplative life, or oi men of prayer : having pledged himself to add nothing to his history of Sr foreign nature, of his own invention, or beyond truth ; be mentions that they were called healers, or curates, and the women who were among them doctresses, or Thera- pentesses ; adding the reasons of such a designation, that as a sort of physicians, delivering the souls of those who applied to them from evil passions, they healed and restored them to virtue ; or on account of their pure and sincere ministry and religion with respect to the Deity.

8. Whether, therefore, of himself, as writing suitably to their manners, Philo gave them this designation: or whe- ther> indeed, the first of that sect took the name when the appellation of Christians had as yet been no where an- nounced, it is by no means necessary to discuss ;

4. So at the same time, in his narration, he bears wit- ness to their renunciation of property, in the first instance ;

5. And that, as soon as they begin to philosophise, they divest themselves of all revenues of their estates ;

6* And then, having laid aside all the anxieties of life ; and leaving society, they make their residence in solitary wilds and gardens ;

^

70 CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHR18T.

7. *' For from the time that they resolved from enthu- siasm and the most ardent faith (which indeed was need- fnl), to practice themselves in the emulation of the pro- phetic life, they were well aware that converse vrith persons of dissimilar sentiments, would be unprofitable and hurtful :

8. Even as it is related in the accredited Acts of the Apostles,* that all who were known of the apostles (luul imbibed their doctrine) were wont to sell their possessions and substance, and divided them among all, according as any one had need, so that there was not one among them in want ;

9. For, whoever were owners of estates or houses, as the wordf says, sold them, and brought the prices of the things sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet, that it might be divided to each as every one had need.

10. Philo relates things exacdy similar to these which we have referred to; bearing witness to their resemblance, even to the letter, saying,

11. For though this race of men are to be found in all parts of the world: nor would it be fitting that either Greece or Barbary should not participate in so perfect a good ; yet they abound in Egjrpt, in each of the provinces called the Pasturages, and more especially in the neigh- bourhood of Alexandria ;

12. And the best of men, from all parts of the world, betake themselves to the country of the Therapeutae, as to a colony, in some most convenient place ; such as is situate near the Lake of Maria,! on a small eminence, very opportune both on account of its safety, and the agreeable temperature of the climate.

13. And so, after having described what sort of haUta- tions they occupied, he speaks of the churches ^ established throughout the country, as follows :

14. In each parish tliere is a sacred edifice which is called the temple, and a monastery Jji in which the monks perform the mysteries of the sublime life, taking nothing with them, neither meat nor drink, nor any thing necessary for the wants of the body; but the laws, the divinelv inspired oracles of the prophets, and hymns,, and such other things as in which is understanding, and by which true piety is increased and perfected ;

15. And among other things, he says, that their religious exercise occupies the whole time from morn till evening ;

* Acts Ir. • t Note bene.. % Nota !>ene.

^ Note bene. |) Note bene.

CHSirriAN 8CRIPTUREB ANTBRIOR TO CHR18T. 71

16. " For those who preside over the holy scriptures, philosophise upon them, expounding their literal sense by allegory;

17. Since they hold that the sense of the spoken mean- ing is of a hidden nature, indicated in a double sense,*

18. They have also the writings of the ancients : and those who were the first leaders of their sect, have left them many records of the sense conveyed in those alle- gories : using which as a sort of examples^ they imitate tiie manner of the original doctrine : f

19. And these things, it seems, are reported by a man who listened to the holy scriptures,as they expounded them;

20. And, in short, it is very likely that those scriptures of the ancients, of which he speaks, were the Gospels, and the writings of the Apostles ;

21. And that certain Dibgksbs,:]^ as it seems, of the ancient prophets, interpreted ; such as the Epistle of VnxHL to the Hebrews contains, and many others — these were the Epistles.

22. So, again, he proceeds to write concerning the new Psalms which they make :

83. For they do not confine themselves to contempla- tion, but they compose canticles and hymns to God, arranged conveniently in every measure, and in the most sublime sorts of metre.

24. And many other things he relates in the discourse of which we treat ;

25. But these it seemed necessary to recount, in which the characteristics of the ecclesiastical institution § are laid down.

26. But if it seem to any one that what has been said is not strictly and essentially meant of the gospel polity, but may be thought to harmonise with other things than those referred to, he may be convinced by the very words of Philo, in order following (so he be but an impartial judge), in which he will receive an unanswerable testimony on this matter; for thus he writes :

27. And laying down temperance || as a sort of founda- tion to the soul, Uiey build the other virtues upon it ;

28. * Neither meat nor drink do any of them tcike before son-set,' as considering the business of philosophy worthy of the light, but the necessities of the body only apt for darkness ;

* Nota bene. t NoU bene. % Nota bene. % Nota bene.

I EyKp€n'maw, c9Hiinence^ temperance, obtHnence, from whence their name, EncraUles, or Abstainers.

72 CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR XO CHRIST.

29. Whence to this they assigned the day, but only a small part of the night to that :

30. And some of them think not of nourishment for three days, so much greater is their desire of under- standing ; •

31. And some so delight themselves and triumph, as banquetted on wisdom, so richly and satisfactorily minis- tering her doctrine ; as to abstain for a double length of time, and scarce after six days to taste of necessary food in the way of eating !

32. These clear and i|;tdisputable remarks of Philo, we consider to be spoken of men of our religion only.*

33. But if any one should yet be so hardened as to con- tradict these things, yet may he be moved from his incre- dulity, yielding to such cogent evidences as can be found with none, but only in the religion of Christians, according to the Gospel :\

34. For he mentions, that even women are found among the men of whom we speak, and that many of them are virgins, at an extreme age ; preserving their chastity, not from necessity, like the sacred virgins among the Greeks, but from a voluntary law, from their zeal and desire of wisdom ;

35. With whom studying to live, they have abjured the pleasures of the body, no longer desiring a mortal offspring, but that which is immortal, and which 'tis certain that the soul which loves God can alone beget upon itself.

cKi. From whence proceeding, he delivers these things still more emphatically :

37. That their expositions of the holy scriptures are, by an under-sense, delivered in allegories ; j:

38. For the whole divine revelation, to these men seems to resemble an animal, and that the words spoken are the body, but tlie soul is the invisible sense involved in the words: which it is their religion itself which first began to exhibit distinctively, as in a glass, putting the beautiful results of the things understood under the indecencies of the names.

39. 'What need is there to add to these things, their meetings together, and their residences, — the men in one place, and the women in another ?

40. And the exercises according to the custom this day continued among us, and which, especially upon the festival of our Saviour's passion, wc have been accus-

• Nola bene. + Nota bene.

X ** Which things are an allegory. '^^Gal. iv. 24.

CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. 73

tomed to observe, in f astiogs^ in watchings^ and in studying the diviuc discourses '?

41. And which are kept to this day in the same manner only among us : as the same author hath shown most manifestly^ and delivered in his own writing ;

42. And especially relating the vigils of the great fes- tival, and the exercises in them, and their hymns, which are the very same as those used to be said among us ;

43. And how, as one of them sang the psalm in a pleasing voice ; the others leisurely listening, took up the last stanza of the hymus ; and how, on the afore-named days, lying on beds of straw upon the ground, they would taste no wine at all ?

44. As he has in so many words written. Nor would they eat any thing that had blood in it ; * that water only is their drink ; and hyssop, bread, and salt, their food.

45. In addition to these circumstances, he describes the orders of preferment among those of them who aspire to ecclesiastical ministrations, — the offices of the deacons, the humbler rank, and the supreme authority of their bishops.f

46. Whoever wishes a clear understanding of these mat- ters, may acquire it from the afore-mentioned work of this author. " But that Philo wrote these things with reference to those who were the first preachers of the discipline which is according to the Gospel, and to the manners first handed down from tlie Apostles, must be manifest to every man." J

This conclusion on the whole matter is so strong, that though I am confident a more faithful translation of the whole cannot be made by any man, I recommend a refer- ence to the original, that the scholar may see at once that I have taken no liberty with my author; and have no occasion to conciliate his favour, or to deprecate his criti- cism. I offer him my own translation, not on the score of ita being mine, but on the score of its being as good as the best that could possibly be made, and better than any that is not the best.

• *' For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burthen than these necessary thin^^s : that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things stranicled, and from

; from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well." — Acts

xr. 29.

t ** For they that have used the office of a deacon well, purchase to them- selves a good degree." — 1 Tim. iii. IS.

i Ori 8c T89 irfwres icripvKas rris Kara to wayytXMP StScurKoXxas, ra tc apxri^etf •^pof rmf aMo<rT9hMV ^^rri irofiaScSo/icya K0fra\afimf o ^iKuv Tainr*€ypa^, •wam>'ru li|\ar.— Ibid.

74 PUILO.

CHAPTER IX.

OP PHILO AND HIS TESTIMONY.

Op PhilOy or as be is commonly called, Philo-Judseus — Philo the Jew ; whom Easebius thus largely quotes ; it becomes of supreme importance that we should be able to ascertain the age in which he wrote^ and who and what he was; since his treatise on ^Uhe Contemplate life/* or Monkery^ is a demonstration, than which history could not possibly have a stronger, that the monastic institution was in full reign at and before his time.

Philo«Judaeus was a native of Alexandria, of a priest's family, and brother to the Alabarch, or chief Jewish magistrate in that city. He was sent at the head of an embassy from the Egyptian Jews, to the Emperor Caius Caligula, a. d. 39, and has left an interesting recital of it, ususJly printed in Josephus. He also wrote a defence of the Jews against Flaccus, then President of E^pt ; yet extant. He was eminently versed in the Platonic philosophy, of which both his style and his opinions par- take. His works consist chiefly of allegorical expositions of the Old Testament.

Eusebius places his time in the reign of Caius ClaudinSf the immediate successor of the Emperor Tiberius, and says of him, that he was a man not only superior to the most of our own religion, but by far the most renowned of all the followers of profane knowledge :* and that he was by lineal descent a Hebrew, and not inferior to any in rank at Alexandria; but by following the Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy, he surpassed all the learned men of his time.

Eusebius is anxious to have it believed, that Philo was in such sense ^* one of us" as to have been to all intents and purposes a Christian : and intimates that ^* it was reported that Philo had met and conversed with St Peter, at Rome, in the reign of Claudius.'*t

But alas, Philo has been insensible, or ungrateful, for the honours with which he was so distinguished, and

^■tNfrg' opfmi»/9P9i¥ ircuScMU, ^wunifjunaros, — Ecc. Hist. lib. 2, c.4.

i* Oricflu X07OS ixti tuna KAouSioy ewt nyf pMftifs cis ofuXuu^ tKl^m^ llerfm rmi c roTc atiifwrTorri, kcu' m cnrciicoY av c<if T0rt7c< — lib. 8, c. 15.

COBOLLARl£8. 75

tboagh he has so accurately described the discipline of a relirious community^ of which he was himself a member : 1* Having parishes^ 2. Churches, 3. Bishops, priests, and deacons; 4. Observing the g^and festivals of Chris- tianity ; 5. Pretending to have had apostolic founders ; 6. Practising the very manners that distinguished the immediate apostles of Christ ; 7. Using scriptures which fhey believed to be divinely inspired, 8. And which Eusebius himself believed to be none otiier than the sub- stance of our gospels; 9. And the selfsame allegorical method of interpreting those scriptures, which has since obtained among Christians ; 10. And the selfsame manner And order of performing public worship ; 11. And having Hiissionary stations or colonies — of their community estab- lished in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica ; precisely such, and in such circumstances, as those addressed by St. Paul, in his respective epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, l^hesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians ; and 12. Answering to every circumstance described of the state and discipline of the first community of Christians, to the very letter ; 13. And all this, as nothing new in niilo's time, but of then long-established notoriety and venerable antiquity: yet Philo, who wrote before Jose- phus, and gave this particular description of Egyptian monkery, when Jesus Christ, if such a person had ever existed, was not above ten years of age, and at least fifty years, before the existence of any Christian writing what- ever, has never once thrown out the remotest hint, that he Iiad ever heard of the existence of Christ, of Christianity, or of Christians.

CHAPTER X.

COROLLARIES.

1. Should it turn out, that the text of Philo, as it may have come down to our times, presents material dis- crepancies from the report which Eusebius has here made of it ; that discovery would bring no relief to the cogency of the demonstration resulting from Euscbius's testimony merely ; because it is with Eusebius alone, that we are in this investigation concerned ; and.

76 COROLLARIES.

2. Because Christianity would be but little the gainer by overthrowing the credibility of Eusebius in thisinstance^ at so dear an expence, as the necessary destruction of his credibility in all others. If we are not to give Eusebius predit for ability and integrity, to make a fair and accurate quotation, upon a matter that could have no room for mistake, or excuse for ignorance ; if on such a matter he would knowingly and wilfully deceive us ; and the variations of the text of Philo, from the quotations he has given us, be held a sufficient demonstration that he has done so : there remains no alternative, but that his testimony must lose its claim on our confidence, in all other cases what- ever: with the credit of Eusebius must go, all that Eusebius*s authority upheld, and the three first ages of Christianity, will remain without an historian, or but as

" A tale.

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.*'

But the evidences of the Christian religion are not yet in this distress.

The testimony of Eusebius on this subject, is neither more nor less valid, for any confirmation or impeachment it might receive, from any extant copies of the writings of Philo.

3. Because, nothing is more likely, than that the text of Philo, might have been altered purposely to produce sucb an appearance of discrepancy, and so to supply to Chris- tians, (what *tis known they would stop at no means to come by,) a caveat and evitation of the most unguarded and portentous giving-of-tongue, that ever fell from so shrewd and able an historian ; and,

4. Because, nothing is more certain, than that no writings have ever been safe from such interpolations; the text of the New Testament itself, at this day, pre- senting us with innumerable texts, which were not con- tained in its earlier copies, and being found deficient of many texts that were in those copies.*

5*. Wc have certainly Eusebius's testimony in this chapter, and in such a state as that it may be depended on, as being bona Jide his testimony, really and fairly exliibiting to us, what his view and judgment of Chris- tianity was, or— (the Christian is welcome to the alter- native !)

* See chapter 16.

COROLLARIES. 77

6. And Eusebias*s testimony is Talid to the fall effect for which we claim it, and that is, to the proof of what the origin of the Christian scriptures was, as it appeared

TO HIM.

7. And the validity of his testimony cannot be im- peached in this particular instance, without overthrowing the authority of evidence altogether, opening the door to everlasting quibbling, turning history into romance, and making the admission of facts depend on the caprice or prejudice of a party.*

8. And if what Eusebius has delivered in this chapter, cannot be reconciled to what he may seem to have delivered in other parts of his writings, it will be for those idio refuse to receive his testimony, here, to show how, or where he ever hath, or could have, delivered a contrary testimony more explicitly, intelligibly, and positively, than he has this.

9. Nor can they claim from us, that we should respect bis testimony in any other case, when they themselves refuse to respect it, where it stands in conflict with their own foregone conclusion.

10. And if, what he may anjrwhere else have said, be found utterly irreconcileable with what he hath here delivered, so as to convict him of being an author who cared not what he said ; the Christian again is welcome|to the conclusion on which his own argument will drive him, i. e. the total destruction of all evidence that rests on the veracity of Eukebius.

11. And if Eusebius be not competent testimony to what Christianity was in his day,.£r$ it appeared to him; we hold ourselves in readiness to receive and respect any other testimony of the same age, which those who shall bring it forward, shall be able to show to be superior to that of Eusebius.

12. But the conflict itself, which this most important passage has excited in the learned world, has thoroughly winnowed it from all the chaflf of sophistication, and in the admissions of those who have contended most stre- nuously against its pregnant consequences ; we possess the strongest species of evidence of which any historical document whatever, is capable.

* In these Corollaries, be it obserTed, we respect the wi^e distinction between his testimony to miracles ; in which he speaks as a divine, from whom therefore truth is not to be too rigidly expected ; and hit testimony as «n historian, from whom nothing but truth is to be endured.

78 COROLLARIES.

13. The learnod Basnage* has been at the paSna of examining with the most critical accuracy^ the curious treatise of Philo, on which our Easebius builds his argu- ment, that the ancient sect of the Therapeutse were really Christians so many centuries before Christ, and were actually in possession of those very writings which have become our gospels and epistles.

14. Gibbon^ with that matchless power of sarcasm, which, in so little said, conveys so much inte