DIEGESIS

BEING
A DISCOVERY
OF THE
ORIGIN, EVIDENCES, AND EARLY HISTORY
OF
CHRISTIANITY,
NEVER YET BEFORE OR ELSEWHERE SO FULLY AND FAITHFULLY SET FORTH

By the Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S.

Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S.
Founder of the
Christian Evidence Society
and of the
Society of Universal Benevolence

Prolegomena
CHAP. I. —Definitions ... Time, Place, Circumstances, Identity of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, necessary to be established ... Geography of Palestine
CHAP. 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
CHAP. 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
CHAP. 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 essential to the truth of Christianity ... The Pharisees ... The Sadducees ... The Cabbala ... The Jews had no notion of the immortality of the soul; while the Heathens had more practical faith therein, than any Christians of the present day
CHAP. V. —State of Philosophy... A general 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
CHAP. VI. —Admissions of Christian writers ... Deficiency of evidence ... Christians before the Christian era ... Christian frauds ... Christian scriptures not in the hands of the laity ... Christianity and Paganism hardly distinguishable ... Miraculous powers, dreams, visions, charms, spells ... Name of Jesus a spell
CHAP. 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 gospel ascribed to mongrel Jews
CHAP. VIII.—The Christian scriptures, doctrines, discipline and ecclesiastical 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 Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History
CHAP. IX. —Of Philo and his testimony ... Sum of his admissions
CHAP. 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 authors of the gospels ... Mr. Evenson's perplexities relieved ... Alexandria the cradle of Christianity ... Its slow progress ... Episcopal insolence of Dionysius ... St. Mark, a monk
CHAP. XI.—Corroborations of the evidence arising from the admissions of Eusebius, in the New Testament itself
CHAP. 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 Testament ... Apollos, A Therapeut ... Vagabond Jews ... The New Testament entirely allegorical ... The English translation of it, Protestantizes in order to keep its monkish origin out sight ... St. Paul's account of the resurrection wholly different from that of the evangelists ... The conclusion
CHAP. 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 history (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 o£ the sixth century ... Mode of argument to be observed in this Diegesis
CHAP. XIV.—Canons of criticism ... Data of criticism to he applied in judging the comparative claims of the apocryphal and canonical gospels ... Corollaries ... Dr. Lardner's table of times and places
CHAP. XV. —Of the four gospels in general ... Confession of the forgery of the gospels, by Faustus ... Twenty objections to be surmounted ... Order for a general alteration of the gospels by Anastasius ... Alterations by Lanfranc
CHAP. XVI. —Of the origin of our three first canonical gospels ... The great plagiarism gradually discovered ... Le Clerc ... Dr. Semler ... Lessing's hypothesis, Niemeyer's, Halfield's, Beausobre's, Bishop Marsh's ... The Diegesis ... The Gnomologue
CHAP. XVII.—Of St. John's Gospel in particular ... Dr. Semler's hypothesis ... Evanson....Bretschneider. ... Falsehood of gospel geography, of gospel dates, of gospel statistics, of gospel phraseology
CHAP. XVIII. —Ultimate result ... The monks of Egypt, the fabrications of the whole Christian system
CHAP. XIX. —Resemblances of the Pagan and Christian theology ... Augury and bishops ... Æsculapius ... 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
CHAP. XX. —Æsculapius and Jesus Christ, the same figment of imagination ... Miracles of Æsculapius better authenticated than those of Jesus ... Æsculapius distinguished by the very epithets afterwards ascribed to Jesus
CHAP. XXI. —Hercules and Jesus Christ, the same figment of imagination ... Dr. Parkhurst's anger at those who doubt that Hercules was a divinely intended type of Jesus Christ ... Pagan form of swearing ... Superior moral virtue of Turks
CHAP. 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
CHAP. XXIII.—The mystical sacrifice of the Phoenicians ... A draft of the whole Christian system ... Archbishop Magee, one of the Author's persecutors
CHAP. 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 Smith, Beard, and others to disprove it ... Dishonest engagement of Christian Missionaries
CHAP. XXV. —Apollo, Jesus Christ the Egyptian version of the Indian Christ
CHAP. XXVI. —Mercury, Jesus Christ ... The Word, Jesus Christ ... Amelius proves their identity
CHAP. XXVII.—Bacchus, Jesus Christ ... his name Yes ... Bacchus addressed in the very words of Christian worship ... A personification of the Sun ... The Bacchanalia identical with Christian sanctification
CHAP. XXVIII.—Prometheus, Jesus Christ ... The Grecian version of the Indian Chrishna, identical with the Christian god, Providence ... The preternatural darkness at the Crucifixion a palpable falsehood, derived from Æschylus's tragedy of Prometheus Bound
CHAP. 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
CHAP. XXX. —The Tauribolia ... The whole theory and practice of the Christian doctrine of Regeneration
CHAP. XXXI. —Baptism ... The Baptists an effeminate and debauched order of Pagan priests ... Astrological character of John the Baptist ... Of St. Thomas ... The New Testament entirely allegorical
CHAP. XXXII. —The Eleusinian Mysteries entirely the same as the Christian Sacrament of the Lord's Supper ... Bacchus, as the Sun, the common object of worship in both
CHAP. XXXIII. —Pythagoras, the type of the human or man Jesus ... The Pythagorean Metempsychosis the best system of supernaturalism
CHAP. XXXIV. —Archbishop Tillotson's Confession of the identity of Christianity and Paganism
CHAP. 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 inscriptions in Pagan Temples and Christian Churches ... Saints and Martyrs that never existed
CHAP. XXXVI. —Specimens of Pagan piety ... The first Orphic Hymn to Prothyræa ... Hymn to Diana ... The Creed and Golden Verses of Pythagoras ... The Morals of Confucius
CHAP. XXXVII. —Charges brought against Christianity by its early adversaries, 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 ... Admission of Bishop Herbert Marsh ... Admissions to the same effect of the early Fathers
CHAP. XXXVIII.—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
CHAP. 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 character of God ... The impropriety of the argument as it respects the character of Man ... That the argument of martyrdom is absolutely not true ... Specimens of Martyrology
CHAP. XL. —The Apostolic Fathers ... St. Barnabas, St. Clement, St. Hermes, St. Polycarp, St. Ignatius ... Correspondence of Ignatius with the Virgin Mary ... Result ... Perfect Parallel of Pagan and Christian Mysteries
CHAP. XLI. —The Fathers of the Second Century ... Papias Quadratus, Aristides, Hegesippus, Justin Martyr, Melito, St. Irenæus, Pantænus, Clemens, Alexandrinus, Tertullian
CHAP. XLII. —The Fathers of the Third Century ... Origen ... Thedolorous lamentation of Origen ... His answer to Celsus, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Cyprian
CHAP. XLIII.—The Fathers of the Fourth Century ... Constantine the Great ... Motives of his Conversion ... The Evidences of Christianity at they appeared to Constantine. His oration to the clergy ... Eusebius, the great Ecclesiastical Historian ... The holy dog
CHAP. XLIV. —Testimony of Heretics, who denied Christ's humanity ... Cerdon, Marcion, Leucius, Apelles, Faustus ...Who denied Christ's divinity ... Who denied Christ's Crucifixion ... Who denied Christ's Resurrection
CHAP. XLV. —The whole of the external evidence of the Christian Religion ... The testimony of Lucian, of Phlegon ... The passage of Macrobius ... Publius Lentulas ... The Veronica handkerchief ... The testimony of Pilate ... A coincident passage from Arnobius ... The passage of Josephus ... The celebrated inscription to Nero ... Similar Inscriptions ... Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, Epictetus, Plutarch, Juvenal, Emp. Adrian, Emp. Aurelius Antoninus, Martial, Apuleius, Lucian ... List of Ancient writers
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 representations ... Abbreviations ... Dates of the reigns of the Roman Emperors ... Names and order of the succession of the Christian fathers and heretics ... Ecclesiastical Historians and councils ... Sketch of the general councils ... Present ecclesiastical revenues ... Numerical extent of Christianity ... Authorities adduced in this Diegesis ... Texts of Scripture brought into illustration in this Diegesis.

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 propounded to our observance in this life; and eternal consequences 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 importance, is not only to launch the keenest sarcasm against its whole apparatus of supernatural phenomena, but is virtually to withdraw its claims and pretensions altogether. For if men, after having received a divine revelation, are brought to know no more than what they knew before, nor are obliged to do any thing which otherwise 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 possibly 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 setting the understanding wrong, that men were to be made rational by being deceived, and rendered just and virtuous by credulity 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 the cause of error to others, either by deceiving them ourselves, or by connivance, 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 [p.2] 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 solitary 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 alternative 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 sufficient evidence and proofs of its truth, that every creature 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 conviction. To suppose that there either is, or by any possibility 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 absurdity and imposture, and to give to the very grossness and palpability of falsehood, the advantage 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 appearing 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 naturally 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 [p.3] we see and feel that he has not;¹ to wit,—a power of making himself believe, 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 teachableness 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 prolifically as the wheat, and is indifferent to either.

And 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 the 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 analyzed. 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 are 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 delicacy and niceness, which it was never any thing else but falsehood that required or needed.

All the mighty question now before us requires, is, attention and ability; without any presentiment, prejudication or [p.4] prepossession whatever; but with a perfect and equal willingness to come to such conclusion as the evidence of moral demonstration shall offer to our conviction, and to be guided only by such canons or rules of evidence as determine our convictions with respect to all other questions.

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 imagination, its best and ablest advocates challenge for it, historical 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 credibility 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 establishment 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 this 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 [p.5] principality of Wales, being one hundred and sixty miles in length, from Dan to Beersheba, and forty six miles in breadth, from Joppa to Bethlehem, between 35 and 36 degrees east longitude from Greenwich, and between 31 and 33 degrees north latitude, in nearest coasting upon the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean sea, and in the neighbourhood of Egypt, Arabia, Phoenicia, and Syria.²

THE CIRCUMSTANCES assigned as those of the historical basis of this religion, are, that in the reigns of the Roman Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, and in the province of Judea, a Jew, of the lower order of that lowest and most barbarous of all 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 ascribed to him in the New Testament; and that he gave himself out to be some extraordinary personage: but failing in his attempt to gain popularity, he was convicted as a malefactor, and publicly executed, under the presidency 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 OF NAZARETH : the obscurity of his parentage, or his equivocal legitimacy having left him without any name or designation of his family or descent.³

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 exaggerate.

[p,6] The proof even to demonstration, of these circumstances, 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 circumstances founded upon them.

If there be no absolute certainty that such a man existed, 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 person, 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 authentic and unsophisticated testimony of CELSUS, 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.⁴ 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 the Jesus of Nazareth distinguished from all others of that designation, by the circumstance of having 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 Jesus, and the place Nazareth, but 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 [p.7] title CHRIST,⁵ or the Annointed, which was not only held by all the kings of Israel, but so commonly assumed by all sorts of impostors, conjurors, and pretenders to supernatural communications, that the very claim to it, is in the gospel itself, considered as an indication of imposture, 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. 21,⁶ Matt. xvi. 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 for, 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 certainly 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 CRUCIFIXION, 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 full amount of the predications necessary to establish the identification required "Christ, who was put to death under the Procurator Pontius Pilate."⁷ This is either genuine, [p.8] authentic, and valid evidence to the full extent to which it purports to extend; or it is the forgery of a wonderfully adroit and well-practised sophisticator.

The extent of its presort will be matter of subsequent investigation. Our respect for it, in the present stage 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, are the complimentary and idolatrous epithets of honour or of worship, which the heathen nations, from the remote antiquity, were in the habit of applying to their 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 circumstances, which either with truth or without it, are asserted or believed of the man of Nazareth, at all characteristic or distinctive of that person, from any of the innumerable host of heaven-descended, virgin-born, wonder-working sons of God, of whom the like supernatural and extraordinary circumstances were asserted and believed 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 indisputable miracles, to have revealed the most mystical doctrines, 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, I shall subjoin so much of the Christian creed as is absolutely and unquestionably of Pagan origin, and which, though not found as put together in this precise formulary, is certainly to be deduced [p.9] from previously existing Pagan writings. That only, which could not, or would not, have expressed the fair sense of any form of Pagan faith, can be peculiarly 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.

This creed, though not to be found in this form in the Christian Scriptures, is evidently deducible from them as their sense and purport.

"This creed still bears the name of the Apostle's Creed. From the fourth century downwards it was almost generally considered as a production of the Apostles. All, however, 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 imperceptibly augmented, in proportion to the growth of heresy, and according to the exigencies and circumstances of the church, from which it was designed to banish the errors that daily arose."—Mosheim, vol. I. P. 116, 117.

This creed, though not to be found in this form in the Pagan Scriptures, is evidently deducible 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 palliation for a known and acknowledged imposture and forgery for so many ages palmed upon the world, is not needed.

It is not the Pagan creed that was imposed upon mankind, under a false superscription, and ascribed to an authority from which it was known not to have proceeded. Whether 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 influence of prejudice or probability on his mind.

As then, the so called Apostle's Creed is admitted to have been written by no such persons as the Apostles, and with respect to the high authority 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 that remains of its pretensions. The probability is, that it is really a Pagan document, and of Pagan origination; since even after the trifling alteration and substitution of one name perhaps for another, to make it subserve its new application, it yet exhibits a closer resemblance [p.11] to its Pagan stock, than to the Christian stem on which it has been engrafted.

By a remarkable oversight of the keepings and congruities 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 establish the canon of the New Testament, it be of absolute necessity that the pretences of all other books to canonical authority be first examined and refuted:"⁹ 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 cogency 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 unshaken and its beauty unimpaired.

IT is manifestly unworthy of any cause, in itself containing 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 exalt their own. It is certain that the vileness of falsehood can add nothing to the glory of truth. Showing the various 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 superior; 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.

[p.12] As it would not be fair to take up 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 documents, by the representations of its advocates, and the admissions of its adversaries.

When it is borne in mind, that a supernatural origination 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 scandalize 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 undoubted evidence of the greatest shrewdness of intellect, extent of inquiry, and goodness of heart, should have understood their mythology in no better or higher significancy than as it was understood by the ignorant of their own persuasion, or would be represented by their enemies, 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 ignorance 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"? 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 [p.13] called Christian. That degree of excellence, whose very lowest stage is raised above the very highest acme of what is known and admitted to have been no more than human, can alone put in a challenge to be regarded as divine. That 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 full allowance, and entirely strike out of the equation all quantities estimated to their fullest 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 is, the discovery of a resemblance between the one and the other, can only be feared by those who are conscious that they are making a false pretence. Resemblance to a counterfeit is, in this assay, proof of a counterfeit. Brass may sometimes be brought to look like gold, but the pure gold had never yet the ring and imperfections of any baser metal.

At the time alleged as that of the birth of Jesus, all nations 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 epoch of time the truly honourable distinction of being the pacific age.¹⁰ 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 hyperbolical 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 [p.14] piety.¹¹ 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 God; the fairness which respects the distinction which the Catholic Christian challenges between his Latria and Doulia, his worship of the Almighty, and his 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 all."

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 faithful and rational account of the matter, so elegantly given us by Gibbon.¹² "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered, by the people, as equally true,—by the philosopher, as equally 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. Viewing 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 or the gods; and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of [p.15] 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 indifferent 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."¹³

It was a common adage among the Greeks, [Greek]—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 will 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 the 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 degree 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 approach nearer to the supremacy of the father of gods and men, than the various orders of the Cherubim and Seraphim, to the God and Father of Jesus Christ,

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

Mosheim, upon an evident misunderstanding, assumes that their supreme deity, in comparison to whom the [p.16] 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 fates, or what the philosophers called eternal necessity. But the word fate, by its derivation 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 engagements, that his word was irrevocable, and that all his actions were determined and guided by the everlasting law of righteousness, and conformed to the counsels and sanctions of his own unerring mind. So that He, and He alone, could say with truth,

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 produced wars nor dissentions among the different nations."¹⁴ 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 divinities, 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 foolishly 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 garbage for omnipotence.¹⁵

[p.17] Each 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 sameness of the ideas of human beings in all regions and all of the world. The affections of fear, grief, pain, hope, pleasure, gratitude, &c., are as common to man as nature as a man, and could not fail to produce a corresponding similarity in the objects of his superstitious veneration. To have nothing in common with the already established notions of mankind, to bear no features 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 principal 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? 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, convinced themselves 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, &c., frequently mentioned in the more recent [p.18] monuments and inscriptions which have been found among the Gauls and Germans, though the ancient inhabitants of those countries had worshipped no gods under such denominations."—Note in Mosheim.

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 on overwhelming draft on the tender feelings, the excitement 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 scepticism. Not a doubt was entertained that a similar series of adventures was proof of one and the same hero, and that the Grecian Apollo, the Phoenician Adonis, the Æsculapius of Athens, the Osiris of Egypt, the Christ of India, were but various names of the self-same deity; so that nothing was so easy at any time, as the business of conversion. Not incredulity, but credulity, is the characteristic 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 particularly 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 credulous 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 superfluous, the Christian might be commended to the consideration of authorities, to whose decision he is trained and disposed to submit.

[p.19] His Paul of Tarsus finds, in the city of Athens, an altar erected to the Unknown Gods;¹⁶ and taking what Le Clerc considers a justifiable liberty with the inscription, compliments the citizens on such a proof of their predisposition to receive the God whom he propounded to them, or any other, as well without evidence as with it, and to be converted without putting him to the trouble of a miracle. Acts xvii. 22.

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 might have been hired for the purpose, or probably had never been lame at all, had been cured, or imagined himself cured, by two entire strangers, itinerant Therapeutæ 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-doctors;" and with all the doctors themselves could do to check the intensity of their devotion, "scarce restrained they the people that they had not done sacrifice."—Acts xiv. 18.

THE grand exception to the harmonious 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 INJURIE DIIS CURÆ," 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 character of their superstition, were exposed to frequent wars 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 all 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 the 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 had caused them to be vagabonds; and pretended that the furtive patchwork 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 [p.21] stream of time. The Jews, who, 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 alteration of names to put us to the trouble of a doubt.

They give us the story of the sacrifice of Ipthegenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, as an original legend of a judge of Israel, who had immolated his daughter to 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 syllables into two words, Ipthi-geni is literally Jeptha’s daughter; and even the name of MOSES himself, as it stands in the Greek text, is composed of the same consonant letters as MISES, the Arabian name of Bacchus, 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 individual 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 Gaza, 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 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 Egyptians; the same as the genii of the months and planets among the Persians and Chaldeans; 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, negotiating with a king of the Amorites, precisely on [p.22] these terms of a common understanding between them: "Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh, thy Alehim, giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever JAO, on Alehim, shall drive out from before us, them will we possess."¹⁷

Nor is it at all concealed, that the power of JAO, as much as of any other topical god, was confined to the province over which he presided. "The JAO Alehim of Israel, fought for Israel,¹⁸ 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."¹⁹ 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. "Thou 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. "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God," Exod. xx. He was Lord of heaven and earth, &c. in such sense as the Emperor of China, the Grand Sultan, &c.,—by courtesy.

It would be difficult 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 engregiously 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 accommodation to the weakness of human conceptions," and [Greek] as humanly suffering; without, however, allowing benefit of the same apology, to throw any sort of palliation over the grossnesses of the literal sense of the Pagan theology. It is well known, that the Pagan worship [p.23] 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 paying divine honours. It often meant no more than a habit of holding the thing so said to be worshipped, in a particular degree of attachment, as many Christians carry about them a lucky penny, or a curious pebble, keepsakes or mementos of past prosperity, or something which is to recall to their minds those agreeable associations of idea, which

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;²⁰ 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 themselves the trouble to investigate what had once moved their laughter,) by no means implied that he took the onion itself to be a god, or forgot or neglected its culinary 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 type in nature of the disposition and arrangement 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 circumference, 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. Hutchinson²¹ 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."²²

Our use of these observations, [p.24] however, is only to supply a demonstration that the grossest forms of apparent nonsense and absurdity in which Paganism ever existed, were never more distressed for a good excuse, or the pretence of some plausible emblematical and mystical sense, than Judaism, and that if we acquit the Jewish religion from the charge of extreme folly, there 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 plurality 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 evidently are, from the visible heavens, the imaginary ceiling of an upper story, in which the Deity was supposed to reside.

The Hebrew [Hebrew] Shemmim, and the Chaldee [Hebrew] Sheminai, are in like manner plural words—literally, the heavens, and used synonymously with [Hebrew] Alehim—the gods—for God.²³ The Pagans used the same plural words, the gods, for GOD, although it was to one being alone that in the stricter sense the title was applicable. We use precisely the same plural form, "Heavens defend us! synechdochically for God defend us! as in that beautiful and moral apostrophe of King Lear—

This, our adherence to the Pagan phrase, happens to be consecrated by the text of the New Testament,²⁴ in [p.25] which the kingdom of the heavens, and the kingdom of God, and GOD, and THE HEAVENS, are perfectly synonymous, and used indifferently for the expression of precisely the same sense. Not a plurality of THREE, then, nor of any definite number, was implied by that plural noun used with the verb singular, in the Jewish Alehim, but merely that vague reference to the planets, from which the very name of God is derived,²⁵ and to which the primitive idea of all the multifarious modifications of idolatry or piety, superstition or religion, may ultimately be traced. The Jews themselves are as justly chargeable with polytheism, as the nations whose spiritual advantages they affect to despise.

The Grecian philosophers generally believed that nature is God. No authors of any order of Christians whatever, in any of their writings, give us any positive idea on the subject, nor indeed any negative one, not derived from some or other of those philosophers.

"The Yesûs of the New Testament preached only a sort of indeterminate, or at most, only Pharisaical deism. Those who have professed and called themselves Christians, have been ‘hardly such characters as any rational mind could imagine to have been the followers of such a master. Animated only with a furious zeal against idolatry, to which Yesus does not allude, these iconoclasts (image-breakers) 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 frown a treatise, entitled, Various Definitions of an Important Word, p. l8, in a printed but unpublished work of a learned and excellent friend.

Their 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 celebrated 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 DIEGESIS.)

Christianity, however, is not so essentially connected with the Jewish religion as to stand or fall with it. Paley and other of the shrewder advocates of the established faith have intimated their wish that the two systems 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 [p.26] the Mosaic dispensation were considered as altogether fabulous; and some have thought, that the evidence of Christianity would gain by a dissolution of partnership; and a man might be the better Christian, as he certainly would be better able to defend his Christianity, by throwing over the whole of the Old Testament as indefensible, and contenting himself entirely with the sufficient guidance and independent sanctions of the New. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by JESUS CHRIST,"²⁶ 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 beggarly elements,"²⁷ and that "burthen which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear;"²⁸"all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers;"²⁹ 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 untenable, that may very well be left to shift for itself in the wardrobes of Hollywell-street and the Minories. "The lion preys not upon carcases!"

It is unquestionable, however, that even if the gospel story were altogether a romance, and all its dramatis personæ as connected with what is called in poetical language, its machinery, merely imaginary, it is still a romance of that character, which mixes up its fantastical personages with real 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 dramatical, and answers to the character of such ingenious and entertaining fictions, as in our own days are called romances of the particular century to which they are assigned, in which of course we have the Sir Rowlands, Sir Olivers, and Sir Mortimers of the author’s invention, [p.27] transacting business and holding dialogues with the Saladins, King Richards, Henrys, and Edwards of real history. Nor are there wanting instances of plagiarism in the department of fiction. A shrewd novelist will often avail himself of an old story, will change the scene of action from one country to another, throw it further back, or 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 personages.

"Josephus, and heathen authors have made mention of Herod, Archelaus, Pontius Pilate, and other persons of note, whose names we meet with in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, and have delivered nothing material 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 mention, had the personages so spoken of been so concerned 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 Cæsarea. Here he celebrated shows in honour of Cæsar. 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 appearance. 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 propitious 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,³⁰ casting [p.28] 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 this he was affected with extremely violent pains in his bowels, and turning to his friends, in anguish said, ‘I, your God, am required to leave this world; fate instantly confuting the false applauses you have bestowed on me; I, who have been called immortal, am hurried away to death; but God’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), of which Eusebius availing himself, says nothing about the owl, but gives as the text of Josephus, that he beheld an angel hanging over his head upon a rope, and this he knew immediately to be an omen of evil.³¹

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 adding that the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the clary, (i.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 sanctimonious 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 extraordinary 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 [p.29] the less disposed to cajole others. They were the most respectable part of the Jewish community, and by the influence of their more rational tenets and more moral example, served to infuse that leaven of reason and virtue, without which, 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 institutions, 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 conceit, and a crude jumble of the various melancholy notions, which had forced themselves upon their minds in the course of their rambling into the adjacent countries of Egypt and Phoenicia, 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.³² 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 with so influential and practical a faith, that its votaries would lend their money to be returned them again in the other world,³³ (a proof of sincerity less equivocal than martyrdom 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 writings.³⁴ Hence the Sadducees, who, according to Josephus, 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 [p.30] of separation from 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.

There is nothing that can be known of past ages, known with more unquestionable certainty, than that in, about, and immediately after the epoch of time ascribed to the dawning of divine light, the human mind seems generally to have suffered an eclipse. The arts and sciences, intelligence 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 relative 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 absurdities 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, and many among the Romans were desirous that [p.31] the writings of Cicero should be condemned and suppressed by the authority of the Senate."³⁵

The reasoning of which all men see the absurdity, when applied by the victorious Caliph to justify the destruction of the library of Alexandria,³⁶ appeared unanswerable when 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 God (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 themselves to assume, tended to provoke God to wrath, should be allowed to offend the minds of the pious.³⁷ Mr. Gibbon, in his usual strain of caustic sarcasm, mentions the elaborate treatises which the philosophers, more especially the prevailing sect of the new Platonicians, who endeavoured to extract allegorical wisdom from the fictions of the Greek poets, composed; and the many elaborate 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 870. It was against the writing of this great man especially, who had acquired the honourable addition to his name, of THE 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 pretended external evidence of Christianity must have been [p.32] given up as wholly untenable. But while what the virtuous Porphyry had really written, was committed to the flames, a worse outrage was committed against his reputation, by Christians, who, aware of the great 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 Doddridge, 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 Lardner, been demonstrably traced home to the forging hands of Christian piety.³⁸

Before the Christian religion had made any perceptible advance among mankind, two grand and influential principles characterized all the moving intelligence that then existed 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 SUPPOSED NECESSITY OF DECEIVING THE VULGAR, and THE IMAGINED DUTY OF CULTIVATING and PERPETUATING 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 Egypt, Minos in Crete, Lycurgus in Lacedæmon, Numa in Rome, Confucius in China, Triptolemus, who pretended the inspirations of Ceres, Zaleucus of Minerva, Solon of Epimenides, Zamolxis of Vesta, Pythagoras, and Plato.³⁹Euripides 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.⁴⁰ Strabo shows 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; [p.33] but the philosopher must also make use of superstition, and not omit the invention of fables, and the performance of wonders. For the lightning, and the ægis, and the trident, and the thyrsolonchal 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."⁴¹

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 falsities."⁴²

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,⁴³ and of his known and wilful lies, abounding to the glory of God.⁴⁴ For further avowals of this principle of deceit, the reader may consult the chapter of Admissions.

Accessory to the avowed and consecrated principle of deceit, 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 destroying 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 things,⁴⁵ 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 born babes, they should desire the sincere milk of the word, that they might grow thereby."⁴⁶

Upon the sense of which doctrine, the pious and orthodox Tertullian glories in the egregious ridiculousness [p.34] 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 reverence it, because it is contemptible; I adore it, because it is absurd; I believe it, because it is impossible."⁴⁷

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 learning, of Gregory the Great, to whom this country owes its conversion to the gospel, was so excessive, that he not only was angry with 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.⁴⁸ The spirit of superstition quite suppressed all the efforts of learning and philosophy.

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 University of Oxford, in the ninth century, lamented that there was at that time not a priest in his dominions who understood Latin,⁴⁹ 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, i. e. they supplied by the sign of the cross, their inability to write their own names.⁵⁰

Though philology, eloquence, poetry, and history, 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.⁵¹ "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, particularly [p.35] that of a philosophical kind, as pernicious, and even destructive of true piety and religion, increased both in number 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 love of solitude, for real piety, (and in this number we comprehend the generality of mankind) were vehemently prepossessed in their 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,⁵² 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 the cause of general learning, in more guarded and qualified terms. But what they still would have, the sameness of their principle, the identity of their purpose, and the sincerity of their conviction that the cultivation 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 purpose of counteracting the well foreseen effects of suffering learning to get her pass into the world untrammelled with the fetters of superstition. The advertisement of subscriptions to the intended King’s College, in the Times 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 freedom, avows the principle in these words:—"We, the undersigned, fully concurring in the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES on which it is proposed to be established, namely, that every principle of general education for the youth of a Christian community, ought to comprise instruction in the Christian religion, as an indispensable part; without which, the acquisition of other branches of knowledge, will be conducive neither to the happiness, nor to the welfare of the state." In other words, and most [p.36] unequivocally in the sense intended, the utmost extent of learning which the university 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 equal 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 with his argument; to destroy the reasoner, when they dare not encounter his reasoning, is still the dernier resource of a system, that cannot be 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 with 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 conquered 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."⁵³ 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 afflicts 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, which, after having existed under various names and modifications, 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 Christianity. "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."⁵⁴

[p.37] "About the time of Christ’s appearance upon earth,⁵⁵ there were two kinds of philosophy which prevailed among the civilized nations. One was the philosophy of the Greeks, adopted also by the Roman’s; 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 Greek and Roman mode of thought and reasoning was designated by the simple title of PHILOSOPHY.⁵⁶

The followers of both these systems, as we might naturally 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 principle of union among themselves, some of them being opposed to all religion whatever; the Gnostics, or adherents of the oriental system, deduced all their various tenets from one fundamental principle, that of their common 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.⁵⁸

The GNOSIS, or Gnosticism, comprehends the doctrine of the Magi,⁵⁹ the philosophy of the Persians, Chaldeans, and Arabians, and the wisdom of the Indians and Egyptians. 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, which, in the three first centuries, perplexed the Christian church, originally issued. The name itself signified, that its professors taught the way to the true knowledge of the Deity.

[p.38] Their most distinguished sect inculcated the notion of a triumvirate of beings, in which the Supreme Deity was distinguished both from the material evil principle 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 doubt and scepticism; the Stoics, who maintained a fortitude indifferent to all events; the Aristotelians, who, after their master, Aristotle, held the most subtle disputations concerning God, religion, and the social duties, maintaining that the nature of God resembles the principle that gives motion to a machine, that it is happy in the contemplation of itself, and entirely regardless of human stairs; the Platonists, from their master, Plato, who taught the immortality 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 name 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 college or chief establishment was at Alexandria in Egypt. Their founder was supposed to have been one Potamon. The most indubitable testimonies prove, that this Philosophy was in a nourishing state, at the period assigned to the birth of Christ. The Eclectics are the same whom we find described as the Therapeuts or Essenes of Philo, and whose sacred writings are, by Eusebius, shown to be the same as our gospels. Nought, but the supposed expediency of deceiving 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 he attached to the word, they were the authors and real founders of Christianity.

In studying the writings of the early advocates of Christianity, and fathers of the Christian church; where we should naturally look for the language that would indicate the real occurrence of the facts of the gospel, if real [p.39] occurrences they had ever been; not only do we find no such sort of language, but every where, find we, any sort of sophistically ambages, ramblings from the subject, and evasions 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, than of the shadow that flitted across the wall. 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 Æsculapius, 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, facts 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 expression; but both the recorded language and actions of the 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 preachers and martyrs of this religion, outraging all chronology, by claiming the honours of an even then remote antiquity, for the doctrines they taught.

1. We find St. Stephen,⁶⁰ the very first martyr of Christianity, 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 testimony 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 founding [p.40] his whole argument on the ancient legends of the Jewish superstition. What a falling off is there!

2. We find St. Paul, the very first Apostle of the Gentiles, 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 Nazareth, 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 consistency of circumstance, assuming the most intolerant airs of arrogance, and snubbing Peter at Antioch, as if he 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 demonstrative 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 Therapeutæ. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, (A. D. 393,) informs us, that at that time, "this book was unknown to many, and by others it was despised."

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 Testament, particularly the Acts of the Apostles, which were not thought to be so important, and had few transcribers."

6. And Beausobre 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.

[p.41] 7. Lardner, (vol. 2, p. 605,) would rather give St. Chrysostom the lie, than surrender to the pregnant consequence 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 marks of distinction, as definite as those which must necessarily and eternally exist between truth and falsehood, between divine wisdom and human weakness, between what man knew by the suggestion of his own unassisted shrewdness, and what he only could have known by the further instruction of divine revelation; not only find we no such lines or characters of distinction, but alas! in the stead and place thereof, we find the most entire and perfect amalgamation, an entire surrender of all challenge to distinction, a complete capitulation, going over, and "hail-fellow-well-met" conjunction, of Jesus and Jupiter. Christianity and Paganism are frankly avowed to have been never more distinct from each other, than six from half-a-dozen, never to have been at variance or divided, 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 occasioned.

" Some of the ancientest 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 Christ, so true moral philosophy was to the Gentiles a preparative to receive the gospel."—Clarke’s Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 284.

8.⁶¹ "And those who lived according to the Logos, (says Clemens Alexandrinus) were really Christians, though they have been thought to be Atheists; as Socrates and Heraclitus were among the Greeks, and such as resembled them."

9.⁶² For God, says Origen, revealed these things to them, and whatever things have been well spoken.

10.⁶³ And if there had been any one to have collected [p.42] the truth that was scattered and diffused, says Lactantius, among sects and individuals, into one, and to have reduced it into a system, there would, indeed, have been no difference between him and us.

11.⁶⁴ And if Cicero’s works, says Arnobius, had been read as they ought to have been by the heathens, there would have been no need of Christian writers.

12.⁶⁵ "That, in our times is the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, (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 Religion, 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 the 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."

13.⁶⁶ "What then? and do the philosophers recommend nothing like the precepts of the gospel?" asks Lactantius. Yes, indeed, they do very many, and often approach to truth; only their precepts have no weight, as being merely human and devoid of that greater and divine authority; and nobody believes, because the hearer thinks himself as much a man, as he is who prescribes them.

14. Monsieur Daillee, in his most excellent treatise, called, La Religion Catholique Romaine, instituee par Numa Pompile demonstrates, that "the Papists took their idolatrous worship of images, as well as all other ceremonies from the old heathen religion," and

15. Ludovicus Vivus, a learned Catholic, confesses, [p.43] that "there could be found no other difference between Paganish and Popish worship before images, but only this, that names and titles are changed."—Quoted in Blount’s Philostratus, p. 113, 114.

16.⁶⁷ Epiphanius 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 Theosophy, or the Wisdom of God; (and such a work we actually find quoted by St. Paul, 1 Corinth. 2,) in which the purport was to show,⁶⁸ that Judaism, Paganism, and Manicheeism, i.e. as they understood it, Christianity, were one and the same religion, and

18. Even our own orthodox Doctor Burnet, in his treatise De Statu Mortuorum, purposely written in Latin, that it might serve for the instruction of the clergy only, and 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 themselves.⁶⁹

What is this, but an edition, by a Christian bishop, of the very sentiment which Cicero reproves in Pagan philosophers:—"Quid? ii qui dixerunt totam de Diis immortalibus opinionem fictam esse ab hominibus sapientibus, Reipublicæ causa, ut quos Ratio non posset, eos ad officium Religio duceret, nonne omnem religionem funditus sustulerunt."—De Nat. Deor. lib. 1, ch. 42, p. 405—Can there be any doubt that the Rev. Dr. Burnet, with all his cant about Christianity and truth, was afraid to promulgate the latter sincerely and openly to the people?

19. Dr. Mosheim, among his many and invaluable [p.44] writings, published a dissertation, showing the reasons and causes of supposititious writings in the first and second century. And all own, says Lardner, that Christians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud; indeed, we may say, it was one great fault of the times.⁷⁰

20.⁷¹ "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 officious 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 men,⁷² (for we are not speaking of the books of heretics,) under the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, 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 a lie, upon the world, under the name and sanction of a God of truth, are to be considered as still worthy of our confidence, and far from being bad men: who are the bad men? Illud me quoque vehementer movet.

21. "There is scarce any church in Christendom at this day, (says one of the church’s most distinguished ornaments) which doth not obtrude, not only plain falsehoods, but such falsehoods as will appear to any free spirit, pure contradictions and impossibilities; and that with the same gravity, authority, 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 oracles of God, standing on no better evidence [p.45] of being such, than the testimony of those, who we know have palmed the greatest falsehoods on us, with the same gravity, and as of equal authority with those holy oracles? 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 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?

23. "But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say?"—Rom. iii. 5. "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie, unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?"—Romans, iii 7.

24. The apostolic father, Hermas, 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 quoted⁷³ as of divine inspiration by the early fathers, ingenuously confesses that LYING was the easily-besetting sin of a Christian. His words are,

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 them in parables and double entendres, "that seeing, they might see, and not perceive; and hearing, they might hear, but not understand."—Mark, iv. 12.

[p.46] 26. And divine inspiration, so far from involving any guarantee that truth would be spoken under its immediate influence, is in the 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.—Ezek. xiv. 9.

27. When it was intended that King Ahab should be seduced to his inevitable 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 spirit in the mouth of all thy prophets."—1 Kings, xxii. 23. There were four hundred of them, all speaking under the influence of divine inspiration, all 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 commissioned them. Such a set of fellows, so employed, .cannot at least but make us suspect some sort of sarcasm in our TE DEUM, where we say, "the goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee." The devil would hardly think such sort of praise, a compliment. Happy would it have been for Ahab, had he been 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 shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that till 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 proposed by this Diegesis, lead us to the conviction that the amount of evidence for the pretensions of the Christian 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 credulity and weakness of his creatures. Is it for those who will defend the apparent inferences of such a passage, to point out any thing in the grossest conceits, of the [p.47] grossest forms of Paganism, that might not have admitted of a palliative interpretation?

29. 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. "For unto the Jews, (says he) I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To the weak, became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; l am made all things to all men."—1 Corinth. 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 gospel which he preached privately to them that were of reputation."

31. Dr. Mosheim admits, that the Platonists and Pythagoreans 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, before the coming of Christ, as appears incontestibly from a multitude of ancient records, and the Christians were infected from both these sources, with the same pernicious error.—Mosheim, vol. 1. p. 197.

32. In the fourth century, the same great author instructs 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, furnished the most favourable occasion for the exercise of fraud; and the impudence of impostors in contriving 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 should expose the artifice."—Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. vol. 2. p. 11.

34. Nor must we, in any part of our subsequent investigation, quit our hold on the important admission of the fact supplied to us by the research of that most eminent of critics, the great SEMLER—that the sacred books of the Christian Scriptures (from which circumstance, it may be they derive their name of sacred) were, during the early [p.48] ages of Christianity, really kept sacred. "The Christian Doctors (says he) never brought their sacred books before the 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."⁷⁴ I solemnly invoke the rumination of the reader to the inferences with which this admission 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 gather from a remarkable passage which Mosheim has preserved for us, in the life of Gregory, surnamed Thaumaturgus, that is, the wonder-worker: the passage is as follows:⁷⁵

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 permission to indulge themselves in the like pleasures, in celebrating 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 historian 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 martyrs, upon their respective 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 Gallæus has given us prints, were retained in the Christian church of Sienna."⁷⁶—Bell’s Panth. 2. 237.

[p.49] Among the sacred writings which the church has seen fit to deem apochryphal, 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. I. p. 11. Origen vindicates, without denying the charge of Celsus, "that the Christian Religion contained nothing but what Christians held in common with heathens: nothing that was new, or truly great."—Bellamy’s Translation, 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 Thaumaturgus, is commended by his namesake of Nyssa, for changing the Pagan festivals into Christian holidays, the better to draw the heathens to the religion of Christ.⁷⁷

38. Thus Paulinus, a convert from Paganism, of senatorian rank, celebrated for his parts and learning, and who became Bishop of Nola, apologizes for setting up certain paintings in his episcopal church, dedicated to Felix the Martyr, "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, by learning from these pictures, what they were not capable of learning from books; i.e. the Lives and Acts of Christian Saints."—See Works of Paulinus, B. 9.

39. Pope Gregory, called the Great, about two centuries later, makes the same apology for images or pictures in churches; declaring them to have been introduced for the sake of 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.⁷⁸

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 gradually acquire a reverence for that religion, which inspired so much virtue and piety into its professors."

[p.50] 41. But these compliances, as Bishop Stillingfleet observes, were attended with very bad consequences; since Christianity became at last, by that means, to be nothing else but reformed Paganism, as to its divine worship.⁷⁹

42. The learned Christian advocate, M. Turretin, in describing the state of Christianity in the fourth century, has a well turned rhetoricism, the point of which is, "that it was not so much the empire that was brought over to the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the empire: not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but Christianity that was converted to Paganism."⁸⁰

43. "From this era, then, according to the accounts of all writers, though Christianity became the public and established 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 and privately favoured by others; and connived at in some degree by all."—Middleton’s Letters from Rome.

44. Within thirty years after Constantine, the emperor Julian entirely restored Paganism, and abrogated all the laws which had been made against it. Though it is utterly untrue that he was ever guilty of any act of persecution or intolerance towards Christians.⁸¹ The three emperors, who next in order succeeded Julian, i.e. Jovian, Valentinian, Valens; though they were Christians by profession, were yet wholly indifferent and neutral between the two religions; granting an equal indulgence and toleration to them both. So that they may be as fairly claimed to be Pagan as Christian emperors. Nor had even Constantine himself, the first for whom the designation 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.

Gratian, 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, however, [p.51] of the emperors who refused the title and habit of the Pontifex Maximus, as incompatible with the Christian character. So that till then, up to the year 384, there was no actual disunion between Christ and Belial; no evidence of miracles or strength of reason had been offered 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 inconsistency in being a Christian and a Pagan at the same time.

45. The affront put by Gratian upon the Pagan priesthood, in refusing to wear their pontifical robe, was so highly resented, that one of them is recorded to have said, since the emperor refuses to be our Pontifex Maximus, we will very shortly take care that our Pontifex shall be Maximus.

46. In the subsequent reign of Theodosius, whose laws were generally severe upon the Pagans, Symmachus, the governor of Rome, presented a memorial in the strongest terms, and in the name of the Senate and people of Rome, for leave to replace the altar of victory in the senate house, whence it had been removed by Gratian. This memorial was answered by St. Ambrose, who in a letter upon it to the emperor, observes, that, "when the petitioners had so many temples and altars of their own, in all the streets of Rome, where they might freely offer their sacrifices, it seemed to be a mere insult on Christianity, to demand still one altar more; and especially in the senate house, where the greater part were then Christians." This petition was rejected by Valentinian, against the advice of all his council, but was granted presently after by the Christian emperor, Eugenius, who murthered and succeeded him.

Thus entering on the fifth century, and further surely we need not descend: we have the surest and most unequivocal demonstration, that Christianity, as a religion distinct from the ancient Paganism, up to that time, had gained no extensive footing in the world. After that period, all that there was of religion in the world, merges in the palpable obscure of the dark ages. The pretence to an argument for the Christian religion, from any thing either miraculous or extraordinary in its propagation, is therefore, a sheer defiance of all evidence and reason whatever.

47. "Pantænus, the head of the Alexandrian school, was probably the first who enriched the church with a [p.52] version of the sacred writings, which has been lost among the ruins of time.—Mosh. vol. I. 186—Compare with No. 34 in this Chapter.

48. "They all, (i.e. all the fathers of the second century) attributed a double sense to the words of Scripture, the one obvious and literal, the other hidden and mysterious, 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 letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."—2 Corinth. iii. 6.

50. "It is here to be attentively observed (says Mosheim, speaking of the church in the second century) that the form used in the exclusion of heinous offenders from 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 institution, as also in that of baptism, several of the terms employed in the heathen mysteries, and proceeded so far at length, as even to adopt some of the rites and ceremonies of which those 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 multiply 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 must be reckoned the zeal and labours of Origen, and the different [p.53] works which were published by learned and pious men in defence of the gospel. If among the causes of the propagation of Christianity, there is any place due to PIOUS FRAUDS, it is certain that they merit a very small part of the honour of having contributed to this glorious purpose, since they were practised by few, and that very rarely."⁸²—Mosheim, 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 thither from Asia. The holy lives of these venerable teachers, and the MIRACULOUS POWERS 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.

55. "Among the superhuman means," which, after all that he has admitted, this writer thinks can alone sufficiently account for the successful propagation of the gospel, "we not only reckon the intrinsic force of celestial truth, and the piety and fortitude of those who declared it to the world, but also that especial and interposing providence, which by dreams and visions, 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 importance; and engaged them without delay to profess themselves 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 reader will observe, that it may be enough to remark, that the principle on which this work is conducted, so [p.54] well expressed in its motto, that philosophy which is agreeable to nature, approve and cherish; but that which pretends to commerce with the deity, avoid! pledges us to view all references to supernatural agency, as being no proof of such agency, but as demonstration absolute of the idiotish stupidity, or arrant knavery of the party, resting any cause whatever on such references. It is not in the former of these predicaments, that such an historian as Mosheim, can be impeached; nor could either the emoluments or dignities of the theological chair at Helmstadt, or the chancellorship of the University of Gottingen, allay the smartings of sentiment, and the anguish of conscious meanness, in holding them at so dear a price, as the necessity of making such statements, of thus selling his name to the secret scorn of all whose praise was worth ambition, thus outraging his own convictions, thus conflicting with his own statements; thus bowing down his stupendous strength of talent, to harmonize with the figments 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 rattle-trap and Jew’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 "practised by so few;" he had not the alleviation to his feelings, of being able to be ignorant that he had falsified that statement in innumerable passages of this and his other 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.

57. "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.

58.⁸³ "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 have been hugely doubtful: nor has the world only, but the [p.55] church of God also, has reasonably to complain of its mystical times."—Bishop Fell, so rendered in the Author’s SYNTAGMA, p. 34.

59. "The extravagant notions which obtained among the Christians of the primitive ages, (says Dupin) sprang from the opinions of the Pagan philosophers, and from the mysteries, which crack-brained men put on the history of the Old and New-Testament, according to their imaginations. The more extraordinary these opinions were, the more did they relish, and the better did they like them; and those who invented them, published them gravely, as great mysteries to the simple, who were all disposed to receive them."—Dupin’s Short History of the Church, vol. 2. c. 4, as quoted by Tindal, p. 224.

60. "They have but little knowledge of the Jewish nation, and of the primitive Christians, who obstinately refuse to believe that such sort of notions could not proceed from thence; for on the contrary, it was their very character to turn the whole scripture into allegory."—Archbishop Wake’s Life of the apostle Barnabas, p. 73.

Of the MIRACULOUS POWERS with which Mosheim⁸⁴ would persuade us that the Christians of the third century were still endowed; we have but to confront him with his own conflicting statement, on the 11th page of his second volume: concluding with his own reflection on that admission:—"Thus does it generally happen in human life, that when danger attends the discovery and the profession of the truth, the prudent are silent, the multitude believe, and impostors triumph."

Of the DREAMS 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 maintain; not only of no nature to afford 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. The heart smarts for the degradation of outraged reason, for the humiliation of torn and lacerated humanity; that a Mosheim should talk of dreams and visions—that it should come to this! O Christianity, how great are thy triumphs!

[p.56] Of the HEALING OF DISEASES, by the invoking of a name. It is impossible not to see, that this author did not believe his own argument: because it is impossible 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 author, 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, have given more than pregnant 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 practicability 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 healing, that gave name to the Therapeutæ, or Healers; and consequently supplies 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 Brutum fulmen; the mere name only of the words, Jesus Christ, in the New Testament itself; and consequently 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 proeterea 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 God’s spell. "There is none other NAME under heaven, (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 of the advocates of Christianity, expressly maintains, that [p.57] "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 pronouncing the name I. E. S. U. S,⁸⁵ 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 very wicked persons."—Answer to Celsus, chap. 6.

62. "And the name of I. E. S. U. S, at this very day, composes the ruffled 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 interests."—Ibid. 57. 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 right 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 pretences. It is somewhat strange that we should believe men the more, for that very reason, upon which we should believe them the 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 Middleton’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 Manichee, tom. 2, p. 568, says,⁸⁶ "We see [p.58] in the history which I have related, a sort of hypocrisy, that has been perhaps, but too common at all times: that churchmen not only do not say what they think, but they do say, the direct contrary of what they think. Philosophers in their cabinets; out of them, they are content with fables, 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 consecrate, and make people adore the host, though as well convinced as I am, that it is nothing but a bit of bread.

66. The learned Grotius has a similar avowal: "He that reads ecclesiastical history, reads nothing but the roguery and folly of bishops and churchmen."—Grotii Epist. 22.

A KNOWLEDGE of the character and tenets of that most remarkable set of men that ever existed, who were known by the name of Essenes or Therapeuts, 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 translated 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 declares himself openly against them."⁸⁷

[p.59] But surely this admission of the sect’s beginning to spread itself at Ephesus, and its existence at Colosse, and in the diocese of Timothy, to a sufficient extent to call for the serious opposition of one who, in any calculations of chronology, must have been the contemporary of Jesus Christ; is no disparagement of the fact of its previous establishment in Egypt; while the admitted fact,⁸⁸ that these three Epistles of St. Paul, in which he so earnestly opposes himself to this sect, were written before any one of our four Gospels, involves the a fortiori demonstration; that their tenets and discipline, whatever they were, were not corruptions or perversions of those gospels, however those gospels may turn out to be improvements or plagiarisms upon the previously established tenets and discipline of that sect.

The ancient writers who have given any account of this sect, are Philo, Josephus, Pliny, and Solinus. Infinite perplexity, however, is occasioned by modern historians attempting to describe differences and distinctions where there are really none. The Therapeutæ and the Essenes are one and the same sect: the Therapeutæ, 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 THERAPEUTÆ. The similarity of the sentiments of the Essenes, or Therapeutæ, 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 35th chapter of Jeremiah; at the same time, he asserted that the first Christian monks were Essenes.

Both of these positions were denied by his opponents, Drusius 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 awkward enough for a Christian divine to admit them to the honours of that name before "that religion which St. Augustine 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 [p.60] were none the less what the name signified, ere yet it was conferred on them: and the Essenes had every thing but the name."

"It is evident," continues Michaelis, "from the above-mentioned epistles of St. Paul, that to the great mortification 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 comers, should have insinuated themselves into the Therapeutan community?

Eusebius 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 Testament, might in some measure contribute. But we find this confusion still worse confounded, in the remarkable oversight of the passage, Matthew ii. 23, which betrays that Jesus himself was believed to be one of this fraternity of monks.⁸⁹

Montfaucon and Helyot have attempted to prove them Christians, but have been confuted by Bouhier. Lange has contended that they were nothing more than circumcised Egyptians, but has been confuted by Henmann.—Marsh’s Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 79, 80, 81.

"It was in Egypt," says the great ecclesiastical historian, Mosheim, "that the morose discipline of Asceticism⁹⁰ (i. e. the Essenian or Therapeutan discipline) took its rise; and it is observable, that that country has in all times, 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.

[p.61] It is not the first glance, nor a cursory observance that will sufficiently admonish the reader of the immense historical wealth put into his hand, by this stupendous admission, this surrender of the key-stone of the mighty arch,—this giving-up of every thing that 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 us as the Pythagorean theorem—the great geometrical element of all subsequent science, of continual 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 clue for guiding us to every truth. "Bind it about thy neck, write it upon the tablet of thy heart"—EVERY THING OF 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 wily fanatics first found the benefit of clubbing together, to keep the privileges and advantages of learning to themselves, and concocting holy mysteries and inspired legends, to be dealt out as the craft should need, for the perpetuation of ignorance and superstition, and consequently of the ascendency of jugglers and jesuits, holy hypocrites, and reverend rogues, among men.

All the most valued manuscripts of the Christian scriptures are Codices Alexandrini. 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 of Alexandria,—that great sewer of the congregated feculencies of fanaticism.

In those early times, the professions of Medicine and were inseparable. We read of the divinity students studying medicine in the School, or University of Alexandria, to which all persons resorted, who were afterwards to practice in either way, on the weak in body or the weak in mind, among their fellow creatures. The Therapeuts 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 [p.62] wonderment. It was invariably considered to be attainable only by the especial gift of heaven,⁹¹ and no cure of any sort, or in any way effected, was ever ascribed to natural causes merely. Those who, after due training in the ascetic discipline, were sent out from the university of Alexandria to practice their divinely acquired art on the towns and villages, were recognized as regular or canonical apostles: while those who had not obtained their credentials from the college, who set up for themselves, or who, after having left the college, ceased to recognise its appointment, were called false apostles, quacks, heretics, and empirics. And in several of the early apocryphal scriptures, we find the titles Apostolici and Apotactici (apostolical, and apotactical), i.e. of the monkish order of Apotactites, or Solitaires,) perfectly synonimous. Eusebius emphatically calls the apotactical Therapeuts apostolical. "Philo (he says) wrote also a treatise on the contemplative life, or the Worshippers; from whence, we have borrowed those things, which we allege concerning the manner of life of those apostolical men."⁹² Indeed, Christ himself, is represented as describing his apostles as members of this solitary order of monks, and being one himself:—"They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."—John xvii. 16. What then but monks? The seceders or dissenters (and of this class was St. Paul),⁹³ upon finding the advantage of setting up in the trade upon their own independent foundation, pleaded their success in miracles of healing, as evidence of their divine commission; and abundantly returned the revilings of the Therapeutan college.

Unaided by the lights of anatomy, and unfounded on any principles of rational science; recovery from disease could only be ascribed to supernatural powers. A fever was supposed to be a dæmon 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 magic consisted of prayers, fastings,⁹⁴ baptisms, [p.63] sacraments, &c. which were believed to have the same power over good dæmons, and even over God himself, as the black magic had over evil dæmons and their supreme head, the Devil. The trembling patient was only entitled to expect his cure in proportion to his faith, to believe without understanding, and to surrender his fortune and life itself to the purposes of his physician, and to the business of imposing upon others, the deceits that had been practised upon himself.

Even to this day, the name retained by our sacred writings, is derived from the belief of their magical influence, as a spell or charm of God, to drive away diseases. The Irish peasantry still continue to tie passages of St. John’s Spell, or St. John’s God’s-spell, to the horns of cows to make them give more milk; nor would any powers 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 and 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 life, nor bear, as the first mark of the pen upon the paper, the mystical hieroglyphic of Jupiter, the talismanic R, under whose influence the prescribed herbs were to be gathered, and from whose miraculous agency their operation was to be expected.

The Therapeutæ of Egypt, from whom are descended the vagrant hordes of Jews and Gypsies, had well found by what arts mankind were to be cajoled; and as they boasted their acquaintance with the sanative qualities of herbs of all countries; so in their extensive peregrinations through all the then known regions of the earth, they had not failed to bring home, and remodel to their own purposes, those sacred spells or religious romances, which they found had been successfully palmed on the credulity of remote nations. Hence the Indian Chrishna might have become the Therapeutan head of the order of spiritual physicians.

No principle was held more sacred than that of the necessity of keeping the sacred writings from the knowledge 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 [p.64] Romance" for the imaginary founder of the Therapeutan college. What had been said to have been done in India, could be as well said to have been done in Palestine. The change of names and places, and the mixing up of various sketches of the Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman 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 the minds of the impostors themselves, and cause them to become at length the dupes of their own deception, to forget the temerity in which their first assertions had originated, to catch the infection of the 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 remoteness of time might throw in the way of our judgement of past events.

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

The probability, then, that that sect of vagrant quack-doctors, the Therapeutæ, 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 Near 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 ancient Therapeutæ were Christians, and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and Epistles."⁹⁵The wonder with which Lardner quotes this astonishing confession of the great [p.65] pillar of the pretended evidences of the Christian religion,⁹⁶ only shows how aware he was of the fatal inferences with which it teems.

It is most essentially observable, that the Essenes or Therapeuts, 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 philosophers.

"These sages were of opinion that true philosophy,⁹⁷ the greatest and most salutary gift of God to mortals, was scattered, in various portions, through all the different sects, and that it was, consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it from the several corners where it lay dispersed, and to employ it, thus re-united, in destroying the dominion of impiety and vice."⁹⁸ The principal seat of this philosophy was at Alexandria; and "it manifestly appears," says Mosheim,⁹⁹ "from the testimony of Philo the Jew, who was himself one of this sect,-that this (Eclectic) philosophy (of this Essenian or Therapeutan 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 orthodox Lactantius, that Christianity itself was the Eclectic Philosophy, 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:"¹⁰⁰

2. To compare the various tenets and speculations of the different philosophers and religionists of antiquity with the strong and particular smatch of the Platonic philosophy, which we actually see pervading the New Testament: and to add the weight in all reason and fairness due to the positive testimony of that unquestionably learned and intelligent Manichæan Christian and bishop, Faustus,—that "it is an undoubted fact, that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his [p.66] apostles, but a long while after their time, by some unknown persons, who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to their works the names of apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been their companions, and then said that they were written according to them." —Faust lib. 2.

To this important passage, of which I reserve the original text for my next occasion of quoting it,¹⁰¹ I here subjoin what the same high authority objects, if possibly with still increasing emphasis, against the arguments of St. Augustine:¹⁰²—"For many things have been 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 what sort of HALF-JEWS, not even agreeing 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 mendaciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits, according to them." The conclusion is irresistible.

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

FROM the more general account of that remarkable sect of philosophical religionists, the Egyptian Therapeuts, which we have collected from the admissions of the most [p.67] strenuous 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 recapitulate for the reader’s admonition, the certainties of information already established; which, carrying with him through the important discoveries to which we now approach, he shall with the quicker apprehension discern, and 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, the Ecclesiastics, and the Eclectics, are but different names for one and the self-same sect.

2. The word Essene is nothing more than the Egyptian word for that of which Therapeut is the Greek, each of them signifying healer or doctor, and designating the character 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.

3. Their name of Ascetics indicated the severe discipline and exercise of self-mortification, long fastings, prayers, contemplation, and even making of themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake,¹⁰³ as did Origen, Melito, and others, who derived their Christianity from the same school; and as Christ himself is represented to have recognised and approved their practice.

4. Their name of Monks indicated their delight in solitude, 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.¹⁰⁴

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

6. Their name of Eclectics indicated that there divine philosophy, [p.68] 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 things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 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; alike indifferent, 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 Egypt, 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 affiliated communities, in various cities of Asia Minor; which colonies were in a flourishing condition, before the preaching of St. Paul.

9. Eusebius, from whom all our knowledge of ecclesiastical antiquity is derived, declares his opinion, that "the sacred writings used by this sect, were none other than our Gospels, and the writings of the apostles; and that certain DIEGESIS, after the manner of allegorical interpretations of the ancient prophets; these were their epistles."¹⁰⁵

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 world, 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 translation I could make, and better than any that I could find ready-made, of the most important historical document in the whole world: whichever be the second in importance.

The Sixteenth Chapter of the Second Book of the 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 which 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 philosophical 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 embraced 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 has written concerning the contemplative life, or of men of prayer; having pledged himself to add nothing to his history of a foreign nature, of his own invention, or beyond truth; he mentions that they were called healers, or curates, and the women who were among them doctresses, or Therapeutesses; adding the reasons of such a designation, that as 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.

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

4. So at the same time, in his narration, he bears witness 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;

[p.70] 7. "For from the time that they resolved from enthusiasm and the most ardent faith (which indeed was needful), to practice themselves in the emulation of the prophetic life, they were well aware that converse with persons of dissimilar sentiments, would be unprofitable and hurtful:

8. Even as it is related in the accredited Acts of the Apostles,¹⁰⁶ that all who were known of the apostles (had 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 word says,¹⁰⁷ 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 exactly 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 Egypt, in each of the provinces called the Pasturages, and more especially in the neighbourhood of Alexandria;

12. And the best of men, from all parts of the world, betake themselves to the country of the Therapeutæ, as to a colony, in some most convenient place; such as is situate near the Lake of Maria,¹⁰⁸ 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 habitations they occupied, he speaks of the churches¹⁰⁹ established throughout the country, as follows:

14. In each parish there is a sacred edifice which is called the temple, and a monastery,¹¹⁰ 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 divinely 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;

[p.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 meaning is of a hidden nature, indicated in a double sense.¹¹¹

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 allegories: using which as a sort of examples, they imitate the manner of the original doctrine.¹¹²

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 DIEGESIS,¹¹³ as it seems, of the ancient prophets, interpreted; such as the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews contains, and many others --- these were the Epistles.

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

25. But these it seemed necessary to recount, in which the characteristics of the ecclesiastical institution¹¹⁴ 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 temperance¹¹⁵ as a sort of foundation to the soul, they build the other virtues upon it;

28. ‘ Neither meat nor drink do any of them take before sun-set,’ as considering the business of philosophy worthy of the light, but the necessities of the body only apt for darkness;

[p.72] 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 understanding;

31. And some so delight themselves and triumph, as banquetted on wisdom, so richly and satisfactorily ministering 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 indisputable remarks of Philo, we consider to be spoken of men of our religion only.¹¹⁶

33. But if any one should yet be so hardened as to contradict these things, yet may he be moved from his incredulity, yielding to such cogent evidences as can be found with none, but only in the religion of Christians according to the Gospel.¹¹⁷

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.

37. That their expositions of the holy scriptures are, by an under-sense, delivered in allegories;¹¹⁸

38. For the whole divine revelation, to these men seems to resemble an animal, and that the words spoken are the body, but the 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, we have been accustomed [p.73] to observe, in fastings, in watchings, and in studying the divine 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 festival, 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 hymns; 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;¹¹⁹ 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 ministration, --- the offices of the deacons, the humbler rank, and the supreme authority of their bishops.¹²⁰

46. Whoever wishes a clear understanding of these matters, 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 the Apostles, must be manifest to every man."¹²¹

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 reference 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 criticism. I offer him my own translation, not on the score of its 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.

Of Philo, or as he is commonly called, Philo-Judæus—Philo the Jew; whom Eusebius 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 "the Contemplative 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-Judæus 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, usually printed in Josephus. He also wrote a defence of the Jews against Flaccus, then President of Egypt; yet extant. He was eminently versed in the Platonic philosophy, of which both his style and his opinions partake. --- His works consist chiefly of allegorical expositions of the Old Testament.

Eusebius places his time in the reign of Cais Claudius, 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:¹²² 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."¹²³

But alas, Philo has been insensible, or ungrateful, for the honours with which he was so distinguished, and [p.75] though he has so accurately described the discipline of a religious community, of which he was himself a member. 1. Having parishes, 2. Churches, 3. Bishops, priests, and deacons; 4. Observing the grand festivals of Christianity; 5. Pretending to have had apostolic founders; 6. Practising the very manners that distinguished the immediate apostles of Christ; 7. Using scriptures which they believed to be divinely inspired, 8. And which Eusebius himself believed to be none other than the substance 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 missionary stations or colonies—of their community established 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, Ephesians, 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 Philo’s time, but of then long-established notoriety and venerable antiquity: yet Philo, who wrote before Josephus, 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 whatever, has never once thrown out the remotest hint, that he had ever heard of the existence of Christ, of Christianity, or of Christians.

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

[p.76] 2. Because Christianity would be but little the gainer by overthrowing the credibility of Eusebius in this instance, at so dear an expence, as the necessary destruction of his credibility in all others. If we are not to give Eusebius credit 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 whatever: 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

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 such an appearance of discrepancy, and so to supply to Christians, (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, presenting us with innumerable texts, which were not contained in its earlier copies, and being found deficient of many texts that were in those copies.¹²⁴

5. We have certainly Eusebius’s testimony in this chapter, and in such a state as that it may be depended on, as being bona fide his testimony, really and fairly exhibiting to us, what his view and judgment of Christianity was, or—(the Christian is welcome to the alternative!)

[p.77] 6. And Eusebius’s testimony is valid to the full 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 impeached 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 to depend on the caprice or prejudice of a party.¹²⁵

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 who 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 his 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 any where 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 Eusebius.

11. And if Eusebius be not competent testimony to what Christianity was in his day, as 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 chaff of sophistication, and in the admissions of those who have contended most strenuously against its pregnant consequences; we possess the strongest species of evidence of which any historical document whatever, is capable.

[p.78] 13. The learned Basnage¹²⁶ has been at the pains of examining with the most critical accuracy, the curious treatise of Philo, on which our Eusebius builds his argument, that the ancient sect of the Therapeutæ 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 intended, and which carries instruction and conviction to the mind, by making what is said, knock at the door to ask admission for what is not said,¹²⁷ significantly tells us that, "by proving that this treatise of Philo was composed as early as the time of Augustus, Basnage has demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius, and a crowd of modern Catholics, that the Therapeutæ were neither Christians nor monks. It still remains probable, (adds the historian), that they changed their name, preserved their manners, adopted some new articles of faith, and gradually became the fathers of the Egyptian Ascetics." —Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 15, note.

15. Under the overt sense of this important criticism, the sagacious historian protects his call on our observance of the monstrous absurdity of a modern theologian attempting to demonstrate what primitive Christianity was, in spite of the only authority from which our knowledge of primitive Christianity can be derived, and challenging our surrender to his peculiar view of the subject, in preference to the conclusions of a crowd of modern Catholics, who are certainly as likely to know, and as able to judge, as himself.

16. Nor are we to overlook the palpable inference, that a demonstration that this treatise of Philo was written as early as the time of Augustus; so far from demonstrating the conclusion which the demonstrator aims to establish, demonstrates all the premises, and grounds of the very opposite conclusion.

[p.79] 17. The apology for this dilemma, so sarcastically suggested by Gibbon, that "it is probable that these Therapeutæ changed their name," conveys the real truth of the matter, in the equally suggested probability, that their name was changed for them. It was not they who embraced Christianity, but Christianity that embraced them.

18. We know that those most admired compositions of Shakspeare and Otway, the "Hamlet" and "Venice Preserved," as now presented to the public, are but little like the first draughts of them, as they fell from the pen of those great authors; yet no one doubts their proper origination, nor thinks of ascribing the merit of them to any other than those authors, though they be re-edited with thousands of various readings, and we are now content to recognise as the best copies, the "Hamlet" according to Malone or Garrick, and the "Venice Preserved" according to Colley Cibber.

19. Considering the remote antiquity in which all evidence on the subject must necessarily be obscured. So positive and distinct an avowal as this, of the very highest authority that could possibly be, or be pretended, that the gospels and epistles of the New Testament, constituted the sacred writings of the ancient sect of the Therapeutæ, before the era which modern Christians have unluckily assigned as that of the birth of Christ; supported as that avowal is, by internal evidence and demonstrations of those scriptures themselves, even in the state in which they have come down to us, and explaining and accounting as that avowal does, for all the circumstances and phænomena that have attended those scriptures, which no other hypothesis can explain or account for, without calling in the desperate madness of supposing the operation of supernatural causes:—we hold ourselves to have presented a demonstration of certainty, than which history hath nothing more certain—that the writings contained in the New Testament, are hereby clearly traced up to the Therapeutan monks before the Augustan age; and that no ancient, or equally ancient work, was ever by more satisfactory evidence, shown to have been the composition of the author to whom it has been ascribed, than that by which the writings of the New Testament are proved to have been the works of those monks.

20. To be sure they have been re-edited from time to time, and all convenient alterations and substitutions made upon them "to accommodate them to the faith of the [p.80] orthodox."¹²⁸ Some entire scenes of the drama have been rejected, and some suggested emendations of early critics have been adopted into the text; the names of Pontius Pilate, Herod, Archelaus, Caiaphas, &c. picked out of Josephus’s and other histories, have been substituted in the place of the original dramatis personæ: and since it has been found expedient to conceal the plagiarism, to pretend a later date, and a wholly different origination, texts have been introduced, directly impugning the known sentiments and opinions of the original authors: by an exquisite shuffle of ecclesiastical management, what was really the origination of Christianity, has been represented as a corruption of it. The epocha and reign of monkish influence and monkish principles, has been wilfully misdated; those who are known, and demonstrated by the clearest evidence of independent history, to have existed for ages before the Christian era, are represented to have sprung up, in the second, third, or fourth century of that era; and in spite of the still remaining awkwardness and hideousness of the dilemma, that so pure and holy a religion, should come so soon to have been so universally misunderstood; the monks who originated, are branded as the monks who corrupted; the makers for the marrers: and it has remained for Protestant illumination, after sixteen hundred years of dark ages, to discover evidence that escaped the observance of the very authorities from which it is derived, and to show us divine inspiration, and more than human means for the exaltation and improvement of the human character, in the hands of monks and solitaires, eremites and friars.

21. We have here the clearest and most complete solution of the difficulty that seems to have so much perplexed the faith of the Unitarian Christian, Evanson, in his Dissonance of the Four Gospels,¹²⁹ namely—that though [p.81] they are to be received as the composition of Jews, contemporaries, and even witnesses of the scenes and actions they describe; those compositions do nevertheless betray so great a degree of ignorance of the geography, statistics, and circumstances of Judea at the time supposed, as to put it beyond all question, that the writers were neither witnesses nor cotemporaries--neither Jews, nor at any time inhabitants of Judea. This, the learned Dr. Bretschneider¹³⁰ has demonstrated with respect to St. John in particular, most convincingly, in his admirable work, modestly entitled, Probabilia de Evangelii Johannis indole et origine; in which he points out, such mistakes and errors of the geography, chronology, history, and statistics of Judea, as no person who had ever resided in that country, or had been by birth a Jew, could possibly have committed.

22. The Therapeutæ, we see, though not Jews, nor inhabitants of Palestine, were, says Eusebius, "it is likely, descended from Hebrews, and therefore were wont to observe very many of the customs of the ancients, after a more Jewish fashion." Now, as those customs of the ancients could have been none other than ancient Pagan customs, ‘their hereditary respect for every thing Jewish, accounts for their observing those ancient customs "after a more Jewish fashion," and for the Jewish complexion which the ancient Oriental or Grecian mythology would be made to wear, after passing through their hands.

23. This account of the matter is the more confirmed, from the entirely incidental and undesigned character of the admission, as it appears in Eusebius, who lets it fall, without the least observance of the argument with which it teems, and without any intention of subserving the uses that that argument will supply; and still further, by the known character of the Jews themselves, who have introduced the stories of the Pagan heroes, disguised in a Jewish garb, into their Old Testament, turning Ipthigenia into Jeptha’s daughter, Hercules into Sampson, Deucalion into Noah, and Arion on the dolphin’s back, into Jonah in the whale’s belly; &c. &c.

24. "The extensive commerce of Alexandria, (says Gibbon,) [p.82] and its proximity to Palestine, gave an easy entrance to the new religion. It was, at first,¹³¹ embraced by great numbers of the Therapeutæ, or Essenians, of the lake Mareotis, a Jewish sect which had abated much of its reverence for the Mosaic ceremonies. The austere life of the Essenians, their feasts and excommnnications, the community of goods, their love of celibacy, their zeal for martyrdom, and the warmth, though not the purity of their faith, ALREADY offered a very lively image of the primitive discipline. It was in the school of Alexandria that the Christian theology appears to have assumed a regular and scientifical form; and when Hadrian visited Egypt, he found a church composed of Jews and Greeks, sufficiently important to attract the notice of that inquisitive prince."—Gibbon, chap. 15.

The progress of Christianity was for a long time confined within the limits of this single city (of Alexandria); and so slow was the progress of this religion, that notwithstanding the rhetorical flourishes and hyperbolical exaggerations of the Fathers, "we are possessed of an authentic record, which attests the state of religion in the first and most populous city of the then known world. In Rome—about the middle of the third century, and after a peace of thirty-eight years; the clergy consisted but of one bishop, forty-six presbyters, fourteen deacons, forty-two acolythes, and fifty readers, exorcists and porters. We may venture, (concludes the great historian) to estimate the Christians at Rome, at about fifty thousand, when the total number of inhabitants cannot be taken at less than a million; and of the whole Roman Empire, the most favourable calculation that can be deduced from the examples of Antioch and of Rome, will not permit us to imagine that more than a twentieth part of the subjects of the Empire had enlisted themselves under the banner of the cross, before the important conversion of the Emperor Constantine."—Ibid.

25. It should never be forgotten, that miraculously rapid as we are sometimes told the propagation of the gospel was, it was first preached in England by Austin, the monk, under commission from Pope Gregory, towards the end of the seventh century. So that the good news of salvation, in travelling from the supposed scene of action [p.83] to this favoured country, may be calculated as having posted at the rate of almost an inch in a fortnight.

26. This however, when compared with the rate at which the evidence of any beneficial effects of the religion upon the morals of its .professors hath advanced, may be admitted to be surprising velocity; for certain it is, that not the most distant hearsay of such effects, had reached the Court of King’s Bench, Westminster, so late as the 7th of February, 1828.

27. Here then have we, in the cities of Egypt, and in the deserts of Thebais, the whole already established system of ecclesiastical polity, its hierarchy of bishops, its subordinate clergy, the selfsame sacred scriptures, the selfsame allegorical method of interpreting those scriptures, so convenient to admit of the evasion or amendment from time to time, of any defects that criticism might discover in them; the same doctrines, rites, ceremonies, festivals, discipline, psalms, repeated in alternate verses by the minister and the congregation, epistles and gospels—in a word, the every-thing, and every iota of Christianity, previously existing from "time immemorial, and certainly known to have been in existence, and as such, recorded and detailed by an historian of unquestioned veracity, living and writing at least fifty years before the earliest date that Christian historians have assigned to any Christian document whatever.

28. Here we see through the thin veil that would hide the truth from our eyes, in the admissions that Christians have been constrained to make, that the Therapeutæ were certainly the first converts to the faith of Christ; and that the many circumstances of doctrine and discipline, that they had in common with the Christians, had previously prepared and predisposed them to receive the gospel. We find that the faith of Christ actually originated with them, that they were in previous possession, and that those who, by a chronological error, or wilful misrepresentation, are called the first Christians, were not the converters of the Therapeutæ, but were themselves their converts.

29. This accounts for a phenomenon that every where meets us, and which were otherwise utterly unaccountable; that the religion of one who had expressly admonished his disciples, that his kingdom was not of this world, and which purports to have been first preached by unambitious and illiterate fishermen, should in the very [p.84] first and earliest documents of it that can be produced, present us with all the full ripe arrogance of an already established hierarchy; bishops disputing for their prerogatives, and throne-enseated prelates demanding and receiving more than the honours of temporal sovereignty, from their cringing vassals, and denouncing worse than inflictions of temporal punishment against the heretics who should presume to resist their decrees, or dispute their authority.

30. We find the episcopal form of government, even before the end of the first century, fully established; and if not the very Galilean fishermen themselves, at least those who are called the apostolic fathers, and who are supposed to have received their authority and doctrine immediately from them, established in all the pride, pomp, and magnificence of sovereign pontiffs, and lords of the lives and fortunes,¹³² as well as of the faith of their flocks; and every where inculcating, as the first axiom of all morality and virtue, that there was no sin so great, as that of resistance to the authority of a bishop.

31. "Since the time of Tertullian and Irenæus, it has been a fact, as well as a maxim, Nulla ecclesia sine episcopo—no church without a bishop."—Gibbon.

32. We find Ignatius, Bishop of. Antioch, even while the Apostles, or John, at least, is supposed to have been living, venturing to stake his soul for theirs, and himself the expiatory offering, for those who should duly obey their bishop; and,

33. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria the very seat and centre of the Therapeutan doctrine, in his epistles to Novatius, maintains that schismatics, or those who should venture to follow any opinions unsanctioned by the bishop, were "renegadoes, apostates, malignants, parricides, anti-christs, blasphemers, the devil’s priests, villainous, and perfidious, were without hope, had no right to the promises, could not be saved, were, no more Christians than the devil, could not go to heaven, the hottest part of hell their portion, their preaching poisonous, their baptism pestiferous, their persons accursed, &c. &c., [p.85] and much more, to the same heavenly-tempered purport."¹³³

34. Such a state of things, such sentiments and language, and the like thereof, invariably found as it is in the very earliest documents of Christianity that can be adduced, and attested by the corroboration of independent historical evidence, is utterly incongruous, wholly irreconcileable and out of keeping with any possibility of the existence of the circumstances under which the Christian revelation is generally supposed to have made its appearance on earth.

35. But it is in perfect probability and in entire coincidence with all the circumstances discovered to us by this wonderful passage of Eusebius, from whom we learn that the Evangelist, St. Mark, was believed to have been the first who extended his travels into Egypt, and became the founder of this same Therapeutan church, in the city of Alexandria, by preaching in the first instance to them, the gospel which has come down to us under his name.¹³⁴

36. Even the necessary decency of supposing that at least one of the Evangelists should have written a gospel in the language of his own country, has been given up with the pitiful apology, that the invincible unbelief of the Hebrew nation rendered the gospel which St. Matthew may be supposed to have written in Hebrew, not worth preserving. So that no gospel, in the language of the country [p.86] in which its stupendous events are said to have happened, can be shown to have been ever in existence.

We should naturally think, that any thing rather than an account of events that had really happened, must have been intended by English authors, who chose to write the history of England, in any other language than English. But the conduct of the Evangelists is still more unaccountable, in that they must have gone so much out of their way, to deprive their countrymen of the knowledge of salvation, to write in a language, that ‘tis certain they could never have understood themselves, without divine inspiration. Are we to suppose that persons of their mean and humble rank, in the most barbarous province of the Roman Empire, were better educated than persons of the same calling at this day in any country in Christendom, and that the fishermen of the Galilean lake, could handle the pen of the ready writer, in an age, ages before the age, in which, as yet, even prelates, priests, and princes, were marksmen, and comprehended their whole extent of literature, in the sign of the X.

CORROBORATIONS OF THE EVIDENCE ARISING FROM THE
ADMISSIONS OF EUSEBIUS, IN THE NEW TESTAMENT ITSELF

IN order to enable the reader to see and apply the force of these admissions and their corollaries, and for the innumerable necessities of reference throughout this DIEGESIS, I have presented him with the best account of the times and places usually assigned as those of the first publication of the several books of the New Testament, on the very highest authority that Christians themselves can affect to refer to on this subject, which he will find in the chapter of Tables.

1. Upon referring to this, it will be seen, that the highest authorities admit, that all of the epistles were written some considerable time before any of the four gospels; and as a necessary consequence it follows, that they must have been written at a still more considerable length of time, before any one of those gospels could have come into general use and notoriety.

2. Nor must we forget, that from the very nature of epistolary writing, the information contained in letters, [p.87] that would necessarily be put in the channel of conveyance to the persons to whom they were addressed, immediately upon being written, must as necessarily outrun the slow gradual and uncertain arrival of information conveyed in general treatises, which were no more one man’s business than another’s, and which might remain unknown to the majority of Christians, even on the very site of their most extended publication.

3. Add too, the equally essential calculation of the effect of distance of places, in those remote ages, when our arts and means of conveyance were utterly unknown, which would necessarily render a published narration of events that had occurred in a distant province, of infinitely tardier authentication, than any epistles sent by hand, as those of the New Testament purport to be, and only passing to and from the comparatively neighbouring cities of Corinth, Ephesus, and Thessalonica.

4. Upon the admitted fact, that the most important of these epistles, (say, that to the Galatians) was written eleven or twelve years before the earliest date of any one of our gospels, we may fairly put in challenge, that that, or any other of the epistles, must have been received, read, and known, even many years, before the credit of the gospels was established.

5. These admissions seem to have been yielded, with however ill a grace, by theologians, on account of the manifestly greater difficulties, that would attend the admission of the opposite hypothesis; to wit, that, of the prior existence and prevalence of the gospels; which would palpably throw the language and style of these epistles in reference to those gospels, sheer out of the latitude of all possibility of being received as the compositions of the cotemporaries of the Evangelists.

6. Nor is there more than one single passage in the whole of these epistles, that so much as appears to conflict with this arrangement; and as that is a verbal coincidence merely, it can hardly be held sufficient to overthrow the universal consent supported by the manifest sense and character of every other chapter and verse of those epistles.

That passage is l Cor. xi. 24, 25, referring to the institution of the sacrament, in which the Apostle says, "I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in [p.88] remembrance of me. After the same manner also, he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood: this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

This passage, indeed, has the appearance of being a direct quotation from the text of Luke’s gospel, xxii. verses 19, 20. "And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you."

If there were no relieving alternative, but that the former of these passages must be acknowledged to be a quotation from the latter, as certainly no work could be quoted before it existed; the arrangement, which it will be seen by Dr. Lardner’s table, makes the Epistle to have been written at least six years before the Gospel, is convicted of anachronism; and as far as this evidence is concerned divines are thrown again upon the stakes of all the difficulties that attend the hypothesis they have been at such pains to evade.

2. The distinct declaration of the apostle in this place, that he had received what he delivered from the Lord;

3. And in other places (Gal. i. 11), that "the gospel which he preached was not after man; for he neither received it of man, neither was he taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ;

4. The most striking resemblance and coincidence of these words with the formularies and ritual of the Pagan mysteries of Eleusis;

5. And the admission in the preface of Luke’s Gospel, that his work was only a compilation of previously existing documents, and derived in common with the works which many had taken in hand before him to copy from the DIEGESIS,¹³⁵ or original narration preserved in the sacred archives of the church:

These are arguments entirely sufficient to relieve the dilemma, and to leave it rather probable that Luke took his [p.89] account from the same document which the apostle had previously quoted, or even from the text of the apostle himself.

Thus, no exception from the general rule remains; and we must admit, with all its consequences, the prior existence of these epistolary writings, detailing, as they do, the history of communities of Christians, and fully established churches in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica, "rooted and grounded in faith,"—"beloved of God,"—"called of Christ Jesus,"—"in every thing enriched, in all utterance and all knowledge,"—"coming behind in no good gift," and having, as the apostle, in the case of the Galatian church, emphatically declares, so certainly received the only true and authentic Gospel, that "if even the apostle himself, or an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel than that which they had received, LET HIM BE ACCURSED." Gal. i. 8.—See Syntagma of the Evidences, p. 75.

6. Here we find the Gospel already so fully established, that there was a sense in which it could be said that it had been preached unto every creature under heaven (Colos. i. 23), before the date assigned to any one of the gospels that have come down to us, before any one of the disciples had suffered martyrdom, before any one of them could have completed his commission. Here we find a spiritual dynasty established, exercising the most tremendous authority ever grasped by man, not merely over the lives and fortunes, minds and persons, but over the supposed eternal destinies of its enslaved and degraded vassals, and confirmed by so strong an influence over all their powers of resistance, that its haughty possessor could bear them witness that they were ready to pluck their eyes out, and give them to him. Here we find churches already perfectly organized "to their power," yea (and the Apostle boasts), beyond their power, contributing to the pomp and splendour of their ministers, and beseeching them, with much entreaty, to take their money from them.¹³⁶ (2 Cor. viii. 4).

7. Here we find the distinct orders of bishops and deacons already reigning in the plenitude of their distinctive authorities; and the bishops, forsooth, the proudest of the proud, already of such long prescription in their seat of power, as often to have abused that power, and to need admonitions "not to be self-willed, not to be given to wine, no strikers, [p.90] not given to filthy lucre," (Tit. i. 7,) as some of that right-reverend order must have been proved to be, ere such admonitions could have been called for; yet called for they were, and necessary they had become, as the reader will see by the table, some eight or ten years before the date assigned to the writing of the four Gospels.

"The Essenians, of whom Philo has written the history, were confessedly Pythagorians, and I think we may see some traces of these people among the Druids. They existed before Christianity, and lived in buildings called monasteria or monasteries, and were called Koinobioi¹³⁷ or Coenobites. They were of three kinds, some never married, others of them did. They are most highly spoken of by all the authors of antiquity who have named them."—The Celtic Druids, by Godfrey Higgins, Esq.¹³⁸ A.D. 1827, p. 125.

Were there any degree of difficulty in accounting for such a scheme of tyrannous aggrandisement, and of obtaining unbounded power and influence over the subjugated reason of mankind, philosophy, that forbids all supposition of supernatural agency, would acknowledge that difficulty; but to imagine any, in accounting for the rise and progress of Christianity, we must, by a laborious effort of imagination, imagine nature to be the very reverse in every thing from what we experience it to be; we must suppose a man to be at a loss to find his own head; we must suppose Infinite Wisdom teaching trickery to a thief, and the orchestra of the spheres supplying resin for a fiddlestick—introducing our God not to extricate the mystery of the scene, but to sweep the stage, and grease the pulleys.

REFERENCES TO THE MONKISH OR THERAPEUTAN DOCTRINES,
TO BE TRACED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

1. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their’s is the kingdom of heaven." —Matt, v. 3.

This, the first principle put into the mouth of the Galilean Thaumaturge, was also the first principle of the [p.91] Therapeutæ, and as such had been known and taught for ages, before the time assigned to the first publication of Gospel.

It is to be found in the previously existing writings of Menander, in the sentence [Greek]—We ought to consider the poor as especially belonging to the gods; and in the ancient Latin adage, "Bonæ mentis soror paupertas"—Poverty is the sister of a good mind. It is observable, that this Menander the comedian, is not only quoted by name, by the first of the Fathers (not apostolical), Justin Martyr, in his apology to the Emperor Adrian, as one of the authorities with whom the Christians held so many sentiments in common, but is again plagiarised into the text of 1 Cor. xv. 33—[Greek] "Evil communications corrupt good manners."

2. "And the disciples came and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given."—Matt, xiii. 10. "Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing, they may hear and not understand."—Mark iv. 11.

Surely, here, and in the innumerable passages to the same effect, the principle of deceiving the vulgar is held forth in its most disgusting deformity. Here the double and mystical-sense system, as adopted by the Therapeutæ, is put in full exemplification.

3. "And there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."—Matt, xix. 12.

Let the reader only ask himself the obvious questions, what eunuchs could they be? Certainly, not followers of the law of Moses, which held a personal defect, however involuntarily incurred, as disqualifying the unfortunate from ever entering into the congregation of the Lord, Deut. xxiii. 1. Nor was a future state of rewards ever propounded to the selfishness or ambition of the children of Israel.

4. John the Baptist is described as a Monk, residing in the wilderness, practising all the austerities of the contemplative life, neither eating nor drinking in observance of the demands of nature; "his food was locusts and wild-honey;" and not only a monk, but a father confessor, since "all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, were all baptized [p.92] of him, confessing their sins." Here, then, is certainly an Ascetic—in the strictest circumstances of description, a Monkish confessor—the admitted forerunner of Christ, of whom he is represented as saying, that "Moses and the prophets were until John the Baptist, but since then the kingdom of God¹³⁹ was preached." The great absurdity, however, of representing the sinless Jesus as receiving baptism of John for the remission of his sins, would have been evaded, had the compilers of our Gospels stuck to the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or that of these Hebrew-descended Therapeuts, which Lessing and Niemeyer¹⁴⁰ have so convincingly shown to have been the original from which their legends are copied, and from which it appears that Jesus actually refused to be baptized, saying, "What sin have I committed, that I should be baptized by him?" And how could that horrible species of self-martyrdom, the greatest evidence of sincerity in the faith that could be imagined, have been practised "for the kingdom of heaven’s sake," if the kingdom of heaven had not been propounded to the faith of these visionaries as the reward of such a sacrifice, sufficiently long before, and sufficiently notoriously, to be quoted thus as an historical example, by the speaker in the text of Matthew?

It is evident that Origen, the most distinguished and learned of all the Christian Fathers, must have read Christ’s recommendation of this suicidal act in its very strongest sense, or have found it in some earlier copies of the Gospel than have come down to us, urged in stronger terms, or his excellent understanding would never have fallen under the horrors of a belief that it was necessary to imitate the example thus commended, and to prepare himself for singing in heaven, by spoiling his voice for preaching upon earth.

5. But Matt. xviii. 15, betrays, in the most indisputable evidence, the previous existence and established discipline of a Christian church, such as that of the Therapeutæ is described to have been, from any length of time anterior to the Christian era.

"Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou has gained thy brother: 16 But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in [p.93] the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. 17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto THE CHURCH: but if he neglect to hear THE CHURCH, let him be unto thee an heathen man and a publican. 18 Verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven," &c. &c.

If this does not involve all that the unwary admissions of Eusebius and Epiphanius would lead us to, even the previous existence of the whole Christian dynasty in all its corruption, or in all its purity, long anterior to any time when such language could have been used, or the Gospel which contained such language could have been written; if it betray not its design to subserve the purposes of ecclesiastical usurpation; if it savour not of popery in the rankest tank that ever pope himself was popish; there is no skill in criticism to discover any truth below the surface of expression--no wrong in any wrong that can be put off as right—no Rome in Italy—no day-light in the sun-shine.

6. "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive."—Acts xx. 35.

No such words as these are contained in either of our four Gospels; they must, therefore have been contained in some gospel which previously existed, which was known and established in the esteem of the persons who were thus reminded of it, and which therefore ought not to have been rejected.

"It is, I think," says Lardner, (vol. 1, p. 71, 4to. edit.) "a just observation of Dr. Prideaux, that almost all that is peculiar in this sect, is condemned by Christ and his apostles."

But from this admission follows, at any rate, the certainty of the previous notoriety of this sect, and of those tenets which were peculiar to it.

And if, excepting the "almost all that was peculiar to this sect," which Christ and his apostles condemned, there yet remained something which was peculiar to this sect, which they adopted, what other conclusion can follow, than that the Christian tenets were but a reformation upon the pre-existent Essenian principles, and had no claim of themselves to a character of originality? We say, in like manner, at this day, that our Protestant church condemns almost all that is peculiar to the church of Rome, while in that condemnation itself is involved an admission of its prior existence, and of its common origin. There can be [p.94] no conceivable reason why the peculiar tenets of a particular sect should be singled out for particular condemnation, unless the condemners stood in some more immediate relation, or knew something more particularly of the tenets so condemned, than of any other condemnable tenets.

The force of so particular a condemnation of almost all that was peculiar, involves as particular an approbation and sanction of whatever it was that was not included in so particular a condemnation.

Not to object, that, in ordinary fairness, the gauging of the Essenian tenets so as to determine which, and how many of them, amounted to almost all, should hardly be trusted to the fidelity of those who have the strongest interest in disparaging and under-rating those tenets.

Again, the conjoining Christ and his Apostles as concurring in the condemnation of almost all that was peculiar to this sect, is assuming a concurrence unsupported by evidence, and inconsequential in reason.

It by no means follows, that he and they, in every instance, must have approved and condemned by the same rule; the need they had of being instructed by him, is a reason, and the rebukes they frequently received from him, is a proof, that their judgments and his might be the reverse of each other.

Nor is it a just and fair conclusion, that all the apostles of Christ condemned what it cannot be shown that more than one of them condemned, and which all the rest may in all probability have approved. Nor, if it be Paul alone who hath condemned, is it just or fair to conclude that even one of the apostles of Christ has done so; since the claim of Paul to be considered as one of the apostles of Christ, rests on his own presumption only, and, to say the least against it, is in the highest degree questionable.¹⁴¹

Surely, nothing could be more peculiar to any sect, than the conceit of making themselves "Eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake;" and as surely, it is any other sort of language rather than that of condemnation, in which Christ is represented as speaking of that peculiarity, Matt. xix. 12.

[p.95] What the other peculiarities of this sect were, may be collected from the version I have given of the text of Eusebius on the subject. Michaelis supplies, from the further authorities of Philo; from Josephus, Solinus, and Pliny, that their principles were generally derived from the Oriental or Gnostic Philosophy, of which they observed the moral part, while they ejected all its more absurd and egregious metaphysical speculations.¹⁴² They abstained from blood, and would not even offer a sacrifice, because they regarded the slaying of beasts as sinful.

Most of them abstained from marriage, and thought it an obstacle to the search after wisdom.

The places in which they pursued their meditations, and which they held sacred, were called [Greek] (that is, MONASTERIES). "All ornamental dress they detested."—Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 83.

7. Whose language, then, but their’s, or of the followers of their sect, could that be?

"Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel," &c.—Pet. iii. 3.

"Not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array."—1 Tim. ii. 9.

"They maintained a perfect community of goods, and an equality of external rank, considering vassalage as a violation of the laws of nature."—Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 83.

What could more naturally and directly tend to render their system acceptable to the poor, and to spread it at any time among those who had neither honour nor wealth to lose? What language could more nearly describe the primitive condition of the evangelical community as pourtrayed in Acts iv. 32, or more entirely harmonize with those words ascribed to Christ?

8. "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." —Matt xx. 25.

[p.96] "Be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven."—Matt. xxiii. 9. "They believed the soul would live for ever; but they seem to have denied the resurrection of the body, which, according to their principles, would only render the soul sinful, by being re-united with it. They attributed a natural holiness to the Sabbath-day, because it is the seventh, and because the number (seven) results from adding the sides of a square to those of a triangle. They spent most of their time in contemplation, which they called philosophical, and boasted of philosophy pretended to be derived from their ancestors. And, notwithstanding their general profession of the contemplative life, great numbers of their sect were established in populous towns. "Nor is it one city only that they occupy,’’ says Josephus, "but many dwelt in each city; and the provider for the faction is especially discernible among strangers, by his engagement in storing up clothing and necessary articles:"¹⁴³ from which it should seem they were the old-clothes-men of the world, from the remotest antiquity. "It is manifest," argues Michaelis,¹⁴⁴ "that the Epistle to the Ephesians, that to the Colossians, and the 1st to Timothy, were written with a view of confuting this sect; for even the very words which Philo has used in describing their tenets, are for the most part retained by St. Paul.

9. "And a certain Jew, named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John; and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom when Aquilla and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly."—Acts xviii. 24.

Let the reader follow the clue that is here put into his hands, in this historical and evidently credible part of the real adventures of these schismatical missionaries from the original Essenian sect. Here is Apollos, of Pagan-name; [p.97] born in the very metropolis in which the Essenian sect was of highest repute; ere any one of the apostles can be pretended to have preached the Gospel in that country; already instructed in the way of the Lord, and set up as a preacher of that way, in Ephesus. And our most learned critic rather maintains than conceals the incontrovertible fact, that "the earliest and principal members of the Christian community were attached to this sect."—Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 88.

Surely, then, it is only want of moral fortitude, and an unwillingness to embrace truths contrary to preconceived prejudices, that hinders man from seeing truths so evident, as that this Essenian or Therapeutan sect itself were, as Eusebius has honestly admitted them to be, Christians: that Alexandria, and not Jerusalem, was the cradle of the infant church; that their ancient scriptures were the first types of the Gospels and Epistles; that the natural and probable parts of the Acts of the Apostles, are journals of the real adventures of schismatical missionaries from this ancient fraternity of Monks, who, after leaving their monasteries in the deserts of Thebais, cut out to themselves a new path to fame and fortune, by throwing off the stricter discipline of their mother church, opposing its less popular doctrines, and retaining what they chose to retain, in such new-fangled or reformed guise, as to give them the advantage of laying claim either to antiquity or originality, as their drift of argument might require. Like the Protestant reformers in later ages, those who were called Christians first at Antioch, turned round upon their ecclesiastical superiors, heaped all manner of abuse and misrepresentation upon them and their tenets, and pretended to a purer system of doctrine, and even a higher antiquity, than the church from which they sprang.

"It is not impossible (though till further proof be given, it cannot be asserted as a fact) that the "Vagabond Jews, exorcists, who took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits, the name of the Lord Jesus," (Acts xix. 13,) were likewise Essenes; for it is well known that the Essenes applied themselves to superstitious arts, and pretended to have converse with spirits. Some of them laid claim to the gift of prophecy, of which we find many instances in Josephus;" and of which we find as certainly, similar instances of the same claim, advanced by the first preaches and earliest members of the Christian community: [p.98] so that the only question on this evidence is which party had the juster claim to a faculty, of which reason denies the possibility to either? In a word, we have only to decide who were the greater— that is, the more successful impostors.

"Among the first professors of Christianity," says Mosheim, "there were few men of learning—few who had capacity enough to insinuate into the minds of a gross and ignorant multitude, the knowledge of divine things, God, therefore, in his infinite wisdom, judged it necessary to raise up in many churches, extraordinary teachers, who were to discourse in the public assemblies, upon the various points of the Christian doctrine, and to treat with the people in the name of God, as guided by his direction, and clothed with his authority. Such were the prophets of the New Testament. They were invested with the power of censuring publicly such as had been guilty of any irregularity; but to prevent the abuses which designing men might make of this institution, by pretending to this extraordinary character, in order to execute unworthy ends, there were always present in the public auditories, judges DIVINELY APPOINTED, who, by certain and infallible marks, were able to distinguish the false prophets from the true. This order of prophets ceased, when the want of teachers, which gave rise to it, was abundantly supplied."— Mosh. Eccl. Hist. vol. 1, p. 102.

The mind smarts for the degradation which the necessity of maintaining popular delusion could impose on so intelligent and highly-cultivated a scholar, in obliging him to this language of utter idiotcy,—this reasoning that might disgrace the nursery. Here is infinite wisdom, to be sure, having recourse to expedients to insinuate its communications into the minds of the gross and ignorant multitude; divinely raised-up prophets, clothed with the authority of God himself; and divinely appointed judges, clothed with still higher authority, to judge whether infinite wisdom was right or wrong, but leaving the gross and ignorant multitude as much in need as ever of some other divinely appointed, still higher judges, to judge whether the other judges judged fairly; as ‘tis certain that the gross and ignorant multitude for whose benefit the divine insinuations were intended, were held to be no judges at all, and God or Devil was all as one to them. How must a man have looked when he reasoned thus? But the absurdity of this reasoning is not worse than an attempt [p.99] to give respectability to the authority which makes it the best account that can be given of the matter.

10. "How is it," asks the Apostle himself, that "every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation? If there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?—1 Cor. xiv. 23.

Could language convey clearer evidence, that in the worst and grossest sense of what Philo or Josephus have represented the Essenian churches to have been, that in reality the first assemblies of these primitive Christians were. And this is a state of things described as obtaining, several years before the writing of any one of our four Gospels.

If there were really any features of distinctive and different origination between these long anterior Therapeutan societies, and those who, in an after-age, acquired the name of Christian churches, all traces of that distinctiveness are lost. To all scope of history, and possibility of understanding, they must be pronounced and considered to be, one and the same class and order of religious fanatics.

As for the pretence to any thing supernatural, philosophy teaches us to view it only as a certain and incontestible mark of imposture, by whomsoever advanced. PROPHECY! the very name of such a thing is a surrender of all pretence to evidence; ‘tis the language of insanity! The fetor of the charnel-house is not more charged with its admonition to our bodily health, to withdraw from the proximities of death, than the cracky sound of the thing is, with warning to our reason, that we are out of the regions of sobriety, wherever it is so much as seriously spoken of: no honest man ever pretended to it.

11. Matthew (xviii. 18) relates a story of Jesus rebuking a devil who kept his hold so obstinately on the body of a boy, that his disciples, with all the miraculous powers with which he had previously gifted them, were unable to cast him out; which Jesus is represented as accounting for by saying, "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer."—Matt, xviii. 21.

"Now we know," says Michaelis, "that the Jews ascribed almost all diseases to the influence of evil spirits. To cure a disease, therefore, was, according to their notions, to expel an evil spirit: this they pretended to [p.100] effect by charms and herbs: and we have seen from Eusebius, what extraordinary efficacy and virtue the Therapeutans ascribed to prayer and fasting."

12. The whole doctrine of election, which distinguishes the epistolary writings of St. Paul, is but an application to the persons whom he addresses, of the notions which the Jews from previous ages had maintained, whose hopes of acceptance with God were founded on the merits of their ancestry. We have Abraham to our father, is represented as the reason they offered, why they had no need to bring forth fruits meet for repentance. One of their principal maxims was, [Hebrew]—that is, " All Israel have the portion of eternal life allotted to them."

Another of the Jewish doctrines is, "God promised to Abraham, that if his children were wicked; he would consider them as righteous on account of the sweet odour of his circumcised foreskin."¹⁴⁵

The holding out a similar inducement to the selfishness and cruelty of the Gentile nations, with reservation of Jewish prerogative, constituted all the difference of the reformed Esseneism, after it took the name of Christianity.

13. The allegorical method of expounding their scriptures, so characteristic of the Therapeutan monks, we find entirely adopted and avowed by Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, chap. 4. in which, of the most simple and obvious apparent facts of the Old Testament, he asserts, " which things are an allegory." The two sons of Abraham are to be understood as two covenants; his kept-mistress is a mountain in Arabia; and, again, the mountain in Arabia, is the city Jerusalem.

14. Again, in 2 Cor. iii. 6, the allegorical method, so entirely Essenian, is spoken of as the chief design and intention of the Gospel ministry, and that too, even with respect to the sense of writings which constituted what was known and recognized as the New Testament, when this epistle was written, of which, therefore, the four Gospels which have come down to us, could have constituted no part; as it will be seen by the table, that they were not written till six or seven years after this epistle.

"God also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter killeth," &c. which principle the Christian Fathers carried to such an [p.101] extent, that they hesitated not to admit that the Gospels themselves were not defensible as truth according to their literal text. "There are things contained therein," says Origen,¹⁴⁶ "which, taken in their literal sense, are mere falsities and lies." And of the whole divine letter, St. Gregory¹⁴⁷ asserts, that "it is not only dead, but deadly." And Athanasius¹⁴⁸ admonishes us, that "should we understand sacred writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies."

15. Many objectionable tenets of the Essenian sect are reproved and opposed in passages of Paul’s epistles, too numerous to be quoted; but all in the manner and style of one who had been particularly acquainted with those tenets, and who admitted and recognized their affinity and relation to the Christian doctrines, as much nearer than any of the errors or absurdities of the other forms of heathenism.

16. Throughout all these epistles, we find the Gospel spoken of by all the varieties of designation that could be applied to it, as already preached, as read in all the churches, as the rule of faith, the test of orthodoxy—as being then of high antiquity—containing all the received doctrines with respect to the life and adventures of Jesus Christ, all that was necessary to make a man wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus: how he died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures.—l Cor. xv. 4.

17. Upon the strength and faith of these doctrines, we find churches already established, and the distinct orders of bishops, elders or priests, and deacons, as described by Philo, already of so long standing, and of such high honour and emolument, that it could have become a common adage, that "if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work;" many of the community having held that office in such a way as to render it necessary, in the election of future bishops, that care should be had, to appoint such as should be "not given to wine, no strikers, not greedy of filthy lucre," &c.—1 Tim. iii. 3.

And this was the state of things, in actual existence, before the writing of any one of the four gospels.

18. "In my father’s house are many mansions; I go to [p.102] prepare a place for you."—John xiv. 2. A fair translation of the passage would render it "In my father’s house are many monasteries."—[Greek].

The translation here, egregiously protestantizes. Monastery is the correct rendering of the word [Greek]; and of all possible derivatives and combinations of it; the leading or radical idea is, a solitary abode, where each individual is excluded, or excludes himself, from intercourse with others.

To those who consider Monachism, or Monkery, as a corruption of Christianity, sprung up in some later age, this and such like texts must bear the appearance of interpolations, or modernisms, tending to betray a later date than that challenged for these writings. But, taking nature for our guide, we must necessarily conclude, that an imperfect and defective system was infinitely more likely to improve by time, and gradually to throw off its original imperfections and defects, than a system that started from a state of excellence and perfection at first, to become in a few ages entirely deteriorated and corrupted.

The positive evidence, then, of Philo, to the prior existence of Monkery, has that challenge on our conviction, which must ever attend the highest species of testimony, when borne to the highest degree of probability.

19. In the first verse of the Epistle to the Philippians, there is a distinction made between the general congregation of the Saints, or Christians, and the Bishops and Deacons, which, by the learned Evanson, is adduced as an instance savouring very strongly of a much later age than that of the Apostles.—Dissonance, p. 264.

The antipapistical antipathies of this Unitarian divine, allowed him only to see matter of offence in the term SAINTS, an order of men, as he supposes, first constituted by the superstitious piety of the Roman Catholic Church: but surely a moment’s ingenuous speculation on the probabilities of circumstances, would discover matter of equal incongruity in the idea of the existence of the distinct orders of bishops and deacons, in a flourishing national church, when this epistle was written, ten or twelve years before the date of any one of our four gospels, and within the life time of one who was the contemporary of Christ, and the companion of his immediate disciples.

That church, and all others that could have had in them the distinct orders of bishops and deacons, must [p.103] have been ancient at the time. There could be no bishops and deacons among new converts. Such a state of the church, at that time, involves a certain demonstration, that its doctrine, discipline and government must have been of many years standing, anterior to the Augustan age.

20. It is a violence to imagination, and costs it a sort of painful effort to suppose that St. Paul could have written his epistle to the Romans, in the Greek language: We could as easily fancy a general address to the inhabitants of London, in Arabic.

21. In the earliest Greco-Latin Codices, the passage, Romans xii. 13. "Distributing to the necessity of saints."—[Greek]—stood "communicating to the memories of the saints." i.e.—[Greek]—Of this passage, Michaelis remarks, that it conveys the language and sentiments of a later age; [Greek], being used in the ecclesiastical sense of the word, for saints or martyrs, characters unknown at Rome, when St. Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans; and this fault, for a fault he conceives it evidently is, could hardly have taken place before the end of the second, or the beginning of the third century.

Mosheim describes the festival and commemorations of the martyrs, being celebrated in the most extravagant manner, as characteristic of the depravity of the fourth century: and all Protestant ecclesiastics, strain every nerve to throw the odium of what they esteem corruptions of the primitive purity, on later ages.

"It is well known, among other things, what opportunities of sinning were offered to the licentious, by what were called the vigils of Easter and Whitsuntide, or Pentecost." Mosheim—vol. i. p. 398. We find however that this religious observation of the vigils of the great festivals, especially that of Easter, in commemoration of Christ’s resurrection, was observed in a distinguished manner among the Therapeutan or Essenians, and as it was an annual observance, must have obtained many years before the birth of Christ—See the translated chapter from Eusebius, verse 41.

22. "Moreover, brethren, I delivered unto you first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of about five hundred brethren at once, of [p.104] whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep: after that, he was seen of James, then of all the apostles; and last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."—1. Corinth xv. 1.

The writer of this epistle, here refers to higher authority than his own, "that, which he also received," that is, scriptures, which related that Christ died for our sins; that he appeared after his resurrection to five hundred brethren at once, and in an especial manner, to Cephas,¹⁴⁹ and in a like especial manner to James.

1. These circumstances partake largely of the more marvellous and exaggerative character of the apocryphal gospels.

3. And yet are insisted on, as so essential to the Christian faith, that unless they were kept in memory, Christians would have believed in vain.

4. No laws of evidence would endure the unsupported assumption that the witness, Cephas, was the same person as the apostle, Peter.

5. Nor were there twelve disciples, after Judas, who was one of the number, had hanged himself.

6. Nor is there the least intimation, in any of our gospels, of an especial appearance to James.

7. Nor was the number of the brethren, at their first meeting, after Christ’s ascension from the top of Mount Olivet, more than "about an hundred and twenty."¹⁵⁰

9. Nor was it possible, that the scriptures, which detailed the circumstances of Christ’s appearances after his resurrection, in this exaggerative style, could have been in any way derived from our four gospels, or any of them: they not having been written till twelve years after this epistle.¹⁵¹

That, other scriptures than those which have come down to us, telling the Christian story in a different way, were the original basis of the Christian faith; and that those other scriptures were in vogue and notoriety, not only before our gospels were written, but before the events related in our gospels had occurred; are facts, whose force of evidence amounts to the utmost degree of certainty of which historical fact is capable. That those scriptures were the sacred writings of the Egyptian-Therapeuts described by Philo, and so expressly considered by Eusebius, is matter of the strongest presumption that can be supposed in the absence of all other grounds of presumption.

[p.105] 23. "Else what shall they do, which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?"— I Cor. xv. 29.

Here is a reference to some, then well known and established religious ceremony, existing in a Christian church; of which ceremony and its significancy, and purport, no trace or vestige has come down to us: nor can our commentators come to any sort of agreement, as to what sense should be attached to the words. It is utterly impossible, that such a baptism could have come into use, or have acquired such a notoriety, as to make it stand for so general an argument, as that of the resurrection of the dead, within the term of life of any one who had conversed with St. Peter, on whom it hath been pretended, that the Christian church is founded. Let the reader, if he can, conceive any other way of accounting for the text, than its reference to some ancient ceremony of the Egyptian Therapeuts, which, after the schismatics and seceders from their communion, had acquired the name of Christians, grew gradually into disuse, and so finally sunk in oblivion.¹⁵²

24. Acts xx. 18. St. Paul addresses the elders of the Ephesian church,—"I have been with you at all seasons. Ye all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God:" a style of the most affectionate intimacy. Yet the writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians, addresses them as a stranger, who had only heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints." (Eph. i. 15.)—QUERY.

—Could the Paul, who declared in the one case, and the Paul who wrote in the other, be the same individual? Query,—Who were all the saints, who were loved by the Ephesians, at least twelve years before any one of our gospels was written? and consequently as many years before there could be any saints whatever, whose faith had been founded on those gospels?

25. "Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists: whereby we know that it is the last time."—1 John ii. 12.

Here is a full confession of the comparatively modern character of this epistle:—

l. The time which could be spoken of as "the last," with relation to Christianity, could not but at least have been late, and late enough to have given the persons so addressed, time to have heard [p.106] of the prophecy that Antichrist should come: and,

3. And if the time when this epistle was written (about A. D. 80) was the last of Christianity, there can have been no Christianity in the world since then:

4. And if then, while St. John was living, Antichrist was come, and it was the last time, the Christ whom St. John intended to preach, must have been much earlier in the world than that time.

All which agrees in style and manner with the character of an angry Egyptian monk, complaining of the corruptions and perversions which his contemporaries had put upon the pure and original Therapeutan doctrines; but presents not a single feature in keeping with the character of one, supposed to be himself one of the earliest preachers of an entirely new religion, who existed not in the last time, but in the first; not after Christianity had run to seed, but before it had fully sprung up. "And if Christianity," says Archbishop Wake, "remained not uncorrupted so long, surely we may say, it came up and was cut down like a flower, and continued not even so long as the usual term of the life of man."

26. "I wrote unto the church; but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence among them, receiveth us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words; and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the FRIARS, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church."—3 John 9. 10.

1. If this John were the disciple of Christ, this text is fatal to the claims of St. John’s Gospel, since it shows that the rulers of the church had rejected his writings.

2. Its reference to the circumstances of mendicant friars, or travelling quack-doctors, is as clear as the day.

3. But who was this Diotrephus, whose name signifies literally the ward or pupil of Jupiter? Any thing rather than a Christian name.

4. And with what conceivable state of a Christian community, that could have existed during the life-time of one of its first-preachers, can we associate the idea of such a struggle for pre-eminence ? The phænomena admit of no solution but that which determines that these writings are the compositions of no such persons as is supposed, and that, however ancient we take them to be, they refer to a state of ecclesiastical polity still more ancient.

[p.107] 27. "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls, as THEY that must give an account."—Heb. xiii. 17.

28. "Remember them that have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God!"—Heb. xiii. 7.

What have we here, but references to ecclesiastical government and spiritual power, already established in all its plenitude? A state of things which could not possibly have existed—a sort of language that could not possibly have been used, in any reference to an authority which had originated within the life-time of the persons so addressed, or to a word of God, of which the then preachers, were the first.

29. "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ; and no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light."—2 Cor. xi. 13.

Aye! aye! And with what state of a religion, whose founder had been crucified, and whose doctrines had not yet passed into the hands of a second generation, and whose apostles had nothing but spiritual blessings to confer on others, and nothing but martyrdom to expect for themselves, can we imagine that apostleship to be so winning a game, that the Devil himself would play it?¹⁵³

Is inevitable. We are not, perhaps, entitled certainly to pronounce that it was so; but the hypothesis (if it be no more), that Paul and his party were sent out, in the first instance, as apostles, or missionaries, from this previously existing society of Monks, which had for ages, or any length of time before, fabricated and been in possession of the allegorical fiction of Jesus Christ, that the Acts of the Apostles, with the exception of all the their supernatural details, are a garbled journal of his real adventures; and the Epistles, with the exception of some improved passages and superior sentiments that have been foisted into them, are such as he wrote to the various communities in which he had established his own independent supremacy, by a successful schism from the mother church: this hypothesis will solve all the phænomena; which is what no other will.

ON THE CLAIMS OF THE SCRIPTURES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
TO BE CONSIDERED AS GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC

There is no greater nor grosser delusion perhaps in the world, than that of the common sophistry of arguing for the genuineness and authenticity of the writings of the New Testament, upon the ridiculous supposition, that the state of things of which we are witnesses, with respect to these writings in our times, is the same, or much like what it was, in the primitive ages; that is, that these writings were generally in the hands of professing Christians, were distinguished as pre-eminently sacred, had their authority universally acknowledged, or were so extensively diffused, that material alterations in them from time to time, could not have been effected without certain discovery, and as certain reprobation of so sacrilegious an attempt.

The very reverse of such an imaginary resemblance of past to present circumstances, is the truth of history, as borne out by the admissions of all who have devoted their time and labours to the investigation of ecclesiastical antiquity.

The learned Dr. Lardner is constrained to admit, that "even so late as the middle of the sixth century, the canon of the New Testament had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged: but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostical, and to determine according to evidence."—Vol. 3. Pp. 54-61.

We have shown also, that the scriptures were not entrusted to the hands of the laity. The mystical sense which we find by the very earliest Fathers to have been attached to them, is strongest corroboration of those positive testimonies which we have, that the Christian people were kept in profoundest ignorance of the contents of the sacred volume. The clergy only, [p.109] were held to be the fit depositaries of those mystical legends, which in the hands of the common people, were so liable to be "wrested to their own destruction." Not to insist on the deplorable ignorance of lay-people all over Christendom for so many ages, during which, scarce any but the clergy were able to read at all.

It would be hard to authenticate a single instance of the existence of a translation of the gospels into the vulgar tongue, of any country in which Christianity was established, at any time within the first four centuries.

The clergy, or those engaged and interested in the business of dealing out spiritual edification, whose testimony alone we have on the subject, mutually criminate and recriminate each other, according as they grasp or lose their hold on the ascendancy, (and so are held to be orthodox or heretical) with corrupting the scriptures.

The epistolary parts of the New Testament, entirely independent and wholly irrelevant of the gospels as they manifestly are, may be considered as the fairest and most liberal specimen of the manner, in which the stewards of the mysteries of God, "brought forth things new and old,"¹⁵⁴ according to the spiritual necessities of the congregations which they addressed, while they steadily kept the key of the sacred treasure, the right of expounding it, and even of determining what it was, exclusively in their own hands. Hence, though the gospel is spoken of in innumerable passages of these epistles, (written, as we have seen they were, before any gospels which have come down to us, except those which are deemed apocryphal,) there occurs not in them, a single quotation or text seeming to be taken from the gospel so spoken of, or sufficient to show what the contents of that gospel, were.

Hence the authenticity and genuineness of the writings of St. Paul, and of all those parts of the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles, which Paley in his Horæ Paulinæ has shown, present such striking coincidences with his writings, is a wholly distinct and irrelevant question, to that of the genuineness and authenticity of the writings on which the Christian faith is founded: for, as all persons must see and admit at once, that if the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which have come down to us, could be shown to be the compositions of such [p.110] persons, as those to whom, under those names, they are ascribed, and so to be fairly and honourably genuine and authentic—this, their high and independent sanction, would lose nothing, nor even so much as to be brought into suspicion, by a detection of the most manifest forgery and imposture of those subordinate, or, at most, only supplementary writings: so the genuineness of these supplementary writings, involves no presumption of the genuineness or authenticity of those; but rather, as being admitted to have been written earlier than our gospels, and referring continually to gospels still earlier than themselves, which had previously been the rule of faith to so many previously existing churches; these epistles supply one of the most formidable arrays of proof that can possibly be imagined against the claims of our gospels; and having served this effect, like expended ammunition that has carried the volley to its aim, they dissipate and break off into the void and incollectible inane. The gospels once convicted of being merely supposititious and furtive compositions, it is not the genuineness and demonstrable authenticity of any other parts of the New Testament, that its advocates will care to defend, or its enemies to impugn. They fall as a matter of course, like the provincial towns and fortresses of a conquered empire, to the masters of the capital.

In this DIEGESIS, we shall therefore more especially confine our investigation to the claims of the Evangelical histories; and as our arguments must mainly be derived from the admissions which their best learned and ablest advocates have made with respect to them, we shall throughout, speak of them and of their contents, in the tone and language which courtesy and respect to the feelings of those for whose instruction we write, may reasonably claim from us; and which being understood as adopted for the convenience of argument only, can involve no compromise of sincerity.

1. The canonical and apocryphal gospels are competitive, i.e. they are reciprocally destructive of each other’s pretensions.

2. If the canonical gospels are authentic, the apocryphal gospels are forgeries.

3. If the apocryphal gospels are authentic, the canonical gospels are forgeries.

4. No consideration of the comparative merits or characters of the competitive works, can have place in the consideration of their claims to authenticity.

5. Those writings, which ever they be, or whether they be the better or the worse, which can be shown to have been written first, have the superior claim to authenticity.

6. It is impossible that those writings which were the first, could have been written to disparage or supersede those which were written after.

7. Those writings which have the less appearance of art and contrivance, are the first.

8. Those writings which exhibit a more rhetorical construction of language, in the detail of the same events, with explications, suppressions, and variations, whose evident scope is, to render the story more probable, are the later writings.

9. Those writings whose existence is acknowledged by the others, but which themselves acknowledge not those others, are unquestionably the first.10. There could be no conceivable object or purpose in putting forth writings which were much worse, after the world were in possession of such as were much better.

11. If the story were not true, in the first way of telling it, no improvement in the way of telling it, could render it true.

12. If those, who were only improvers upon the original history, have concealed that fact, and have suffered mankind to understand that the improvements were the originals; [p.112] they are guilty and wicked forgers, and never could have had any other or better intention, than to mislead and deceive mankind.

1. It is manifest and admitted on all hands, that the apocryphal gospels are very silly and artless compositions, "full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders."—Mosheim, in loco.

2. It is manifest, and admitted on all hands, that the canonical gospels exhibit a more rhetorical construction of language than the apocryphal, and have a highly-wrought sublimity and grandeur, the like of which no where to be found in any of the apocryphal gospels.

3. The canonical gospels, but more especially the canonical epistles, which are admitted to have been written before the gospels, do in very many places acknowledge the existence and prevalence of those writings which are now called apocryphal.

4. The apocryphal gospels, as far as we have any traces of them left, do no where recognise or acknowledge the writings which are now called canonical.

5. The apocryphal gospels, are quoted by the very earliest Fathers, orthodox, as well as heretical, as reverentially as those which we now call canonical.

6. The apocryphal gospels, are admitted in the New Testament itself, to have been universally received, and to have been the guide and rule of faith to the whole Christian world, before any one of our present canonical gospels, was in existence.

1. Indications of time, discovered in those gospels which were written first, will indicate time relatively, to those which were written afterwards—exempli gratia. It being proved that the legend A. was written before the legend C, there will be proof, that events which were contemporary or antecedent to the writing of A., were antecedent, a fortiori, to the writing of C.

2. Indications of the prevalence of a state of things, existing when the earlier gospels were written, will indicate relatively the state of things, when the latter [p.113] gospels were written—exempli gratia. It being proved that the earlier gospels were written under an universal prevalence of the notions and doctrines of monkery, there will be proof of the monkish character necessarily derived to the gospels, derived from those gospels.

Dr. Lardner’s Plan of the Times and Places of writing the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.
(Supplement to The Credibility, &c. vol. I. p. iv.)

THE ordinary notion, that the four gospels were written by the persons whose names they bear, and that they have descended to us from original autographs of Matthew and John, immediate disciples, and of Mark and Luke, cotemporaries and companions of Christ; in like manner as the writings of still more early poets and historians have descended to us, from the pens of the authors to whom they are attributed, is altogether untenable. It has been entirely surrendered by the most able and ingenuous Christian writers, and will no longer be maintained by any but those whose zeal outruns their knowledge, and whose recklessness and temerity of assertion, can serve only to dishonour and betray the cause they so injudiciously seek to defend.

The surrender of a position which the world has for ages been led to consider impregnable, by the admission of all that the early objection of the learned Christian Bishop, FAUSTUS, the Manichean, implied, when he pressed Augustine with that bold challenge which Augustine was unable to answer, that,¹⁵⁵ "It is certain that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while after them, by some unknown persons, who lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to their works the names of apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been their companions, asserting that what they had written themselves, was written ACCORDING TO those persons to whom they ascribed it."

This admission has not been held to be fatal to the claims of divine relation, nor was it held to be so even by the learned Father himself who so strenuously insisted on it, since he declares his own unshaken faith in Christ’s mystical crucifixion, notwithstanding.

[p.115] Adroitly handled as the passage has been by the ingenuity of theologians, it has been made rather to subserve the cause of the evidences of the Christian religion, than to injure it. Since though it be admitted, that the Christian world has "all along been under a delusion" in this respect, and has held these writings to be of higher authority than they really are; yet the writings themselves and their authors, are innocent of having contributed to that delusion, and never bore on them, nor in them, any challenge to so high authority as the mistaken piety of Christians has ascribed to them, but did all along profess no more than to have been written, as Faustus testifies, not BY, but ACCORDING to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and by persons of whom indeed it is not known who nor what they were, nor was it of any consequence that it should be, after the general acquiescence of the church had established the sufficient correctness of the compilations they had made.

And here the longo post tempore, (the great while after,) is a favourable presumption of the sufficient opportunity that all persons¹⁵⁶ had, of knowing and being satisfied, that the gospels which the church received, were indeed all that they purported to be; that is, faithful narrations of the life and doctrines of Christ, according to what could be collected from the verbal accounts which his apostles had given, or by tradition been supposed to have given, and as such, "worthy of all acceptation."

While the objection of Faustus, becomes from its own nature the most indubitable and inexceptionable evidence, carrying us up to the very early age, the fourth century, in which he wrote, with a demonstration, that the gospels were then universally known and received, under the precise designation, and none other, than that with which they have come down to us, even as the gospels respectively, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Of course there can be no occasion to pursue the inquiry into the authenticity of the Christian scriptures, lower down than the fourth century.

1. Though, in that age, there was no established canon or authoritative declaration, that such and none other, [p.116] than those which have come down to us, were the books which contained the Christian rule of faith.

2. And though "no manuscript of these writings now in existence is prior to the sixth century, and various readings which, as appears from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the Greek Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are at present remaining."—Michaelis, vol. 2, p. 160.

3. And though many passages which are now found in these scriptures were not contained in any ancient copies whatever;

4. And though "in our common editions of the Greek Testament, are MANY readings, which exist not in a single manuscript, but are founded on MERE CONJECTURE."—Marsh’s Michaelis, vol. 2, p. 496.

5. And though "it is notorious, that the orthodox charge the heretics with corrupting the text, and that the heretics recriminate upon the orthodox."—Unitarian New Version, p. 121.

6. And though, "it is an undoubted fact, that the heretics were in the right in many points of criticism, where the Fathers accused them of wilful corruption."—Bp. Marsh, vol. 2, p. 362.

7. And though "it is notorious, that forged writings under the names of the Apostles were in circulation almost from the apostolic age."—See 2 Thess. ii. 2, quoted in Unitarian New Version.¹⁵⁷

8. And though "not long after Christ’s ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance."—Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 109.

9. And though, says the great Scaliger, "They put into their scriptures whatever they thought would serve their purpose."¹⁵⁸

10. And though "notwithstanding those twelve known infallible and faithful judges of controversy (the twelve Apostles), there were as many and as damnable heresies crept in, even in the apostolic age, as in any other age, [p.117] perhaps, during the same space of time."—Reeves Preliminary Discourse to the Commonitory of Vincentius Lirinensis, p. 190.

11. And though there were in the manuscripts of the New Testament, at the time of editing the last printed copies of the Greek text, upwards of ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND various readings."—Unitarian New Version, p. 22.

12. And though "the confusion unavoidable in these versions (the ancient Latin, from which all our European versions are derived), had arisen to such a height, that St. Jerome, in his Preface to the Gospels, complains that no one copy resembled another."—Michaelis, vol. 2. p. 119.

13. And though the gospels fatally contradict each other; that is, in several important particulars, they do so to such an extent, as no ingenuity of supposition has yet been able to reconcile: only the most stupid and ignorant of Methodist parsons, and canting, arrogant fanatics, any longer attempting to reconcile them, after Marsh, Michaelis, and the most learned critics, have struck, and owned the conquest.¹⁵⁹

14. And though the difference of character between the three first gospels, and that ascribed to St. John, is so flagrantly egregious, that the most learned Christian divines, and profoundest scholars, have frankly avowed that the Jesus Christ of St. John, is a wholly different character from the Jesus Christ of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and that their account and his should both be true, is flatly impossible.¹⁶⁰

15, And though such was the idolatrous adulation paid to the authority of Origen, that emendations of the text which were but suggested by him, were taken in as part of the New Testament; though he himself acknowledged that they were supported by the authority of no manuscript whatever.—Marsh, in loco.

16. And though, even so late as the period of the Reformation, we have whole passages which have been thrust into the text, and thrust out, just as it served the turn which the Protestant tricksters had to serve.

[p.118] 17. And though we have on record the most indubitably historical evidence, of a general censure and correction of the Gospels having been made at Constantinople, in the year 506, by order of the emperor Anastasius.¹⁶¹

18. And though we have like unquestionable historical evidence, of measureless and inappreciable alterations of the same, having been made by our own Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the avowed purpose of accommodating them to the faith of the orthodox.¹⁶²

19. And though there are other passages retained and circulated as part of the word of God, which are known and admitted by all parties to be wilful interpolations, and downright forgery and falsehood.

20. And though we see with our own eyes, and witness in our own experience—as per example, in the Athanasian Creed—that nothing could be so absurd, so false, so wicked, but that it would be retained and supported by our Christian clergy, on the selfsame principle as that on which they support all the rest on’t,—even because it supports them!

Yet, after all, we shall find thousands of interested and aspiring pedants, pretending to reconcile what cannot be reconciled, to prove what cannot be proved, and to show that to be true, which every sense and faculty of man attests and demonstrates to be false. It is, however, on the ground of inspiration, that they ultimately rest their pretensions: it was built on that ground that the Tower of Babel was built; that we leave them; but on the ground of history, criticism, reason, and natural evidence, they have no rest for the sole of their foot. I recommend them to treat us with contempt, and to send us to Coventry, and not to Oakham.

THAT our three first canonical gospels have a remarkable similarity to each other; and that the three first evangelists (sc. Matthew, Mark, and Luke) frequently agree, not only in relating the same things in the same manner, but likewise in the same words, is a fact of which every one must be convinced who has read a Greek Harmony of the Gospels. In some cases, all the Evangelists agree word for word, as thus:

Matthew, xxiv. 33.	Mark, xiii. 20.	Luke, xxi. 31.
Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; when his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise, ye when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.	Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; when her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: so ye, in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily, I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass away, But my words shall not pass away.	Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your ownselves, that summer is now nigh at hand: so likewise, ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away, till all he fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

These phænomena are inexplicable on any other than one of the two following suppositions, either that St. Matthew, St. Mark, and Saint Luke, copied from each other, or that all three drew from a common source.

In Mark xiii. 13 to 32, there is such a close verbal agreement, for twenty verses together, with the parallel passage in St. Matthew’s gospel, that the texts of St. Matthew and St. Mark might pass for one and the same text.

"The most eminent critics are at present decidedly of opinion that one of the two suppositions must necessarily be adopted—either that the three evangelists copied from each other, or that all the three drew from a common source, and that the notion of an absolute independence, in respect to the composition of our three first gospels, is no longer tenable. Yet the question, which of these two [p.120] suppositions ought to be adopted in preference to the other, is still in agitation; and each of them has such able advocates, that if we were graded by the authority of names, the decision would be extremely difficult."¹⁶³

Difficult as the decision may be; to the great end of this general view of the evidence affecting the claims of divine revelation, it is utterly indifferent; since either alternative affords results equally conclusive, and equally militant against the character of those through whose hands these writings have come down to us. In either alternative, they are not original writings; they are not what they purport to be; and the writers stand convicted, at least, of negative imposture, (if indeed the imposture is attributable to them,) in passing their compositions off as original, and attempting to conceal from us the help they borrowed from each other, or what the common source was from which they each of them drew.

Le Clere, in his Historia Critica, published at Amsterdam, A.D. 1716, seems to have been the first among modern divines who ventured to put forth the startling supposition that these three gospels were in part derived from either similar or the self-same sources.¹⁶⁴

This opinion lay dormant upwards of sixty years, till it was revived by Michaelis, in the third edition of his Introduction, published 1777. Dr. Semler, however, was the first writer who made it known to the public that our three first evangelists used in common a Hebrew or Syriac document or documents, from which they derived the principal materials of their history; in a treatise published at Halle, in 1783; but he has delivered it only in a cursory manner; and as the thought was then new, he does not appear to have had any very determinate opinion on the subject. The probability is, that he dared not at that time have ventured to put forth a determinate opinion on the subject. We find Bishop Marsh himself, even in this learned dissertation, the highest authority I could adduce on the subject, confessing "that the easiest and the most prudent part that he could take, would be merely to relate the opinions of others, without hazarding an opinion of his own." There was little fear that so high a dignitary of the church would, for any opinion he might hazard, be liable to be dealt with as an humbler heretic of his communion.

[p.121] The episcopal palace of Peterborough is far enough from Oakham Gaol; yet, for all that, a bishop will never be found wanting of the virtue of prudence.

The express declaration of Eusebius, that the Therapeutæ described by Philo were Christians, and that their sacred scriptures were our Gospels, after having lain dormant for fourteen hundred years, now at length rises upon the admissions of these learned divines, into the dimensions of its real importance. From these sacred legends, of a sect so long anterier to the epocha assigned to Christ and his apostles, our Christian scriptures have been plagiarised; and the first position of the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, for the public maintenance of which the author of this DIEGESIS endures the fate of felony and crime, is nothing more than had in other words been previously published, by the learned bishop in whose diocese he is a prisoner.

Eusebius, however, is not alone, even among the ancients, in betraying the fact of this GREAT PLAGIARISM. Hints and inuendoes occur in a thousand places, pointing out the same fact, to those who were entitled by learning and office to be intrusted with what Origen significantly calls the ARCANA IMPERII, or secrets of the management; while, as the custody of the sacred books was never committed to the people, and they were expressly forbidden to examine into the foundations of their faith, nothing was more facile, nothing more practicable, than for the heads and rulers of the church to modify and adopt those previously existing romances, whose effect in subduing the reason of mankind had been found by long experience, and which were too ancient to be found out, too sacred to be suspected, and too mysterious to be understood.

Epiphanius, as long ago as the fourth century, speaking of the verbal harmony of the gospels, which he calls their preaching harmoniously and alike,¹⁶⁶ accounts for it by saying, that they were drawn from the same fountain;¹⁶⁷ though he has not explained what he meant by the same fountain.

But it was in the year 1784, in the posthumous works of Lessing, published at Berlin, that the hypothesis of a common Syriac or Chaldee origin was decidedly maintained, and put forth to the world with much more precision than the fortitude of Semler had ventured. Lessing was dead first. It is not from living authors, or from those who wish to live, that the world has to look for important discoveries in theology. Those who offer truth to the Christian community, must ever provide for their escape from the consequences of doing so.

Six years afterwards (in 1790), the important, truth was taken up, and allowed to be spoken, in consequence of meeting the approbation of Dr. Niemeyer, Professor of Divinity in Halle, who, in his Conjectures in illustration of the Silence of most of the Writers of the New Testament, concerning the beginning of the Life of Jesus Christ, says, that "If credit be due to the authority of the Fathers, there existed a most ancient narration of the life of Jesus Christ, written especially for those inhabitants of Palestine who became Christians from among the Jews."¹⁶⁸—"This narrative is distinguished by various names, as the GOSPEL of the Twelve Apostles—the GOSPEL of the Hebrews—the GOSPEL according to Matthew—the GOSPEL of the Nazarenes; and this same, unless all things deceive me, is to be considered as the fountain from which other writings of this sort have derived their origin, as streams from the spring."¹⁶⁹

Dr. Niemeyer further adds, in a passage to which Bishop Marsh invokes our especial attention, that¹⁷⁰ "Since this book of which we speak contained the [p.123] narrations of the apostles concerning the life of Christ, not only is it credible from the importance of its argument, that copies of it should have been in the hands of the generality of Christians, whom it ought chiefly to have concerned to behold the divine image of their master, but that in each particular copy, would be written as a sort of supplement, whatever any one had found to be true concerning Christ from other sources: so that indeed, even in the age of the apostles, there might have been several selections of these memoirs: which if it be admitted; many things can be most easily explained, which otherwise render the origin of our gospels very obscure. In the first place, the clear agreement of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in many parts of their gospels, not only in the resemblance of the subjects of which they treat, but in the use of the same words, is understood. Make a hundred men to have been witnesses of the same fact; make the same hundred to have written accounts of what they saw; they will agree in matter, they will differ in words:—nor will any one say that it happened by accident, if even three or four out of their number, had so related the story, as to answer word for word, through a course of many periods.

"But who is ignorant, that such an agreement is to be observed repeatedly in the commentaries of the Evangelists? But this is not wonderful: since they drew from the same fountain. They translated the memorable sayings and actions of Christ, which were written in Hebrew, into Greek, for the use of those who spoke the Greek language. But, how came it that Luke should follow a different [p.124] arrangement from Matthew? That many things should be wanting in Mark, that are readily to be met with in Matthew, whose steps he seems to follow? That in particular parts, one should be found more wordy than the other; in observing minute circumstances more diligent?—Why! Because as we have said, there really was a wonderful diversity in the copies which contained those MEMOIRS OF THE APOSTLES and, secondly, because it was optionable for those who composed their gospels, out of those commentaries, to add whatever they knew of the matter from other sources, and to cut off whatever they considered to be of equivocal credibility, or less useful to readers and aliene from their object in writing."

In 1793, the theological faculty at Gottingen, proposed for the prize dissertation the question;—What was the origin of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? From what fountains did the authors of those gospels draw? For what readers in particular, and with what aim did they each write, and how, and at what time came it to pass, that those four gospels acquired a greater authority, than that of the gospels which are called apocryphal; and became canonical." The prize was adjudged to Mr. Halfeld, who maintained that the Evangelists extracted their gospels from different documents. For proposing a similar question in London, in the year 1828, the author of this DIEGESIS obtained the prize, of a year’s imprisonment, in Oakham Gaol, in the County of Rutland.

In his dissertation, On the Origin of our Three First Gospels, printed in 1794, in the fifth volume of his Universal Library, of Biblical Literature,¹⁷¹ by far the most important of all the Essays which have appeared on this subject, Dr. Eichhorn, supposes that only one document was used, by all three Evangelists, but he supposes that various additions, had been made in various copies of it, and that three different copies, thus variously enriched, were respectively used by our three first Evangelists, independently [p.125] of each other. According to Eichhorn’ s hypothesis, the proprietors of different copies of this document, added in the margin, those circumstances, which had come to their knowledge, but which were unnoticed by the author or authors of the documents; and these marginal additions were taken by subsequent transcribers into the text.

Eichhorn is decidedly of opinion, that the original document, of which the Evangelists used various copies, was written, not in Greek, but in Hebrew, or Chaldee: which alone accounts for the phænomenon of their sometimes using different, but synonymous Greek expressions, in relating the same thing. "We possess, (says he,) in our three first gospels, three translations of the above-mentioned short Life of Christ, which were made independently of each other. Examples, (he states,) may be produced, which betray even an inaccuracy of translation.

The phænomena, in the verbal agreement of our three first gospels, are, however, of such a particular description, as to be wholly incompatible with the notion of three independent translations of the same original. They are of such a particular description, that it lay not within the power of transcribers to have produced them. They afford so severe a test, that no other assignable cause, than that by which the effects were really produced, can be expected to account for them."

Eichhorn expressly declares that he leaves the question, undecided, whether our three first Evangelists made use of the Hebrew document, or whether they had only translations of it.

¹⁷² "At the head of the first class [of Scriptures] are to be placed two gospels, [that, according to the Hebrews, and THAT ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIANS.] In my opinion, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, is the most ancient of all.

[p.126] This, the Nazarenes pretended, was the original from which that of St. Matthew was taken. It began with these words—"It happened in the days of Herod."

"It appears from the fragments of it which have been preserved to us, that it contained no heresy, and that with the exception of some circumstances, the history of our Lord, was therein faithfully related. It is in this Gospel that we read the history of the woman taken in adultery, which is told in the 8th chapter of St. John; and since this was not contained in many copies of this latter gospel, some persons have conjectured that it was taken out of the Gospel of the Nazarenes, and inserted in that of St. John. If this be true, it is a testimony which the ancients have rendered to the Gospel of the Nazarenes: and if this history was originally contained in St. John’s Gospel, it is another proof of the truth of their gospel.

"That which has been called THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIANS, is of the same antiquity. Origen has mentioned it; Clemens Alexandrinus had previously quoted it in several places; and if the second epistle of Clemens Romanus be authentic, this Gospel would have a testimony even yet more ancient than that of those two doctors. There is also, in the Library of the Fathers, a commentary on St. Luke, attributed to Titus of Bostra, in which this [p.127] bishop seems to place the Gospel according to the Egyptians in the rank of those which St. Luke had investigated, and which consequently were anterior to his. Since the Encratites (abstemious monks, Therapeuts) quoted it to defend their error concerning marriage, the priests have not altogether rejected its testimonies. They have endeavoured to explain it in an orthodox sense; which shows that this book had a sort of authority, and that they never even suspected that it had been foisted in by heretics. Upon considering (the unquestionable fact) that it was received by the Christians of Egypt, I have not been able to hinder myself from thinking, that it was written by the Essenes, who had believed in Jesus Christ. The religion of this people contained a great deal of the Christian religion. The Gospel according to the EGYPTIANS was full of mysticism, parables, enigmas, and allegories: this has been attributed to the spirit of the nation; for my part, I impute it rather to the Essenian cast of character. There may be found therein sentences which seemed to favour Encratism (Monkery.) Now, the Essenians lived in continence and abstinence; it is, then, very probable, that persons of this Jewish sect, the only one which Jesus Christ never found fault with, attached themselves to the Son of God, followed him, and upon retiring into Egypt after his death, there, composed a history of his. life and doctrine, which appeared first in Egypt, and which on that account was called the Gospel according to the EGYPTIANS."

Thus far the most eminent, ingenuous and learned of French divines, Beausobre.¹⁷³ Let the reader take with him the light of this great critic’s admission, quoted page 58, and of his knowledge of the Essenes and Therapeuts, established in our seventh chapter, thereupon following; and cast up the results. He will find that the history of ages so "long ago betid," never gave to any fact whatever a higher degree of certainty, --- than the certainty, that this Egyptian Gospel was the DIEGESIS, or first type, from which our four Gospels are mere plagiarisms; and that it contained the whole story of Jesus Christ, and the general rule of faith professed by a set of Egyptian monks, (from whatever sources those monks themselves had derived it, [p.128] which we shall hereafter enquire,) many years, probably ages, before the period assigned to the birth of Christ. Consequently, the fallacy of the pretence of the real existence of such a personage in Palestine, and in or about the age of the emperor Augustus, is absolutely demonstrated.

Bishop Marsh, however, demonstrates that the hypothesis of a common Hebrew document, is incapable, in any shape whatever, of explaining the phænomena; and labours, as it became a bishop to do, to save the credit of divine inspiration, upon the perplexed hypothesis, which his indefatigable ingenuity has excogitated, and than which perhaps there is none more probable, that, "St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, all three used different copies of some common document, which before any of our canonical Greek gospels existed, was known as the GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS, or the GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE TWELVE APOSTLES; a gospel, of which the ancients speak with great respect; or the GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE NAZARENES, or the GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. The materials of which, OUR St. Matthew, who wrote in Hebrew, retained, in the language in which he found them, Hebrew, Chaldee or Syriac: but St. Mark and St. Luke, beside their copies of that original Hebrew, Chaldee, or Syriac document, used a Greek translation of it, which had been made before any of the additions, which OUR St. Matthew found in his Hebrew copy, had been inserted. Lastly, the person who translated St. Matthew’s Hebrew copy of that original document into Greek, frequently derived assistance from the Greek Translation of St. Mark, where St. Mark had matter in common with St. Matthew; that is, to save his own trouble, he copied the Greek of St. Mark, instead of continuing his own translation, de novo, from Matthew’s Hebrew transcript: and in those places, but in those places only, where St. Mark had no matter in common with St. Matthew, he frequently had recourse, with the same view, to the ready-made Greek of St. Luke’s Gospel. But though the person who translated St. Matthew’s particular Hebrew copy of the common Hebrew document into Greek, did compare and collate those two other gospels with his own, yet Matthew, Mark and Luke, had no knowledge of each other’s gospels.

This first or earlier draught of the life and history of Christ, is acknowledged by St. Luke, as the basis of the gospel story, and called the DIEGESIS, or Declaration,¹⁷⁴ that is, narrative of those things which are most surely believed among us. In the undistinguished manner of representing, his sense in our English text, it escapes observation, that, what is rendered A DECLARATION, &c. really is the title of the work, of which this gospel professes no more than to be "a setting forth in order," or more methodical arrangement.

But besides this DIEGESIS, the common basis of the three first gospels, as of many others which many had taken in hand, to reduce and arrange into more consistent order, there existed also a GNOMOLOGUE,¹⁷⁵ or collection of precepts, parables, and discourses, which were supposed to have been delivered by Christ, at different times, and on different occasions; and this, in addition to the Diegesis, was a common authority to St. Matthew and St. Luke, though it seems to have been unknown to St. Mark.

Proceeding steadily upon our principle avowed in the motto of this work, which binds us to view all pretences to any thing out of nature, as a surrender of all the stress that is laid on so weak an argument; the reader will know at once in what sense he is to understand the bishop’s struggle to bar off the conclusions to which he has thus marshalled our way. Every step which is here supposed, he tells us, is perfectly consistent with the doctrine of inspiration, not indeed of verbal inspiration, but with that sort of inspiration, in which the Holy Ghost watched over the sacred compilers with so suspended a hand, as left them to the guidance of their own faculties, while they kept clear of error; and only interposed, when without this divine assistance, they would have been in danger of falling. "With such an inspiration, (continues this Right Reverend expositor of the divine mysteries,) [p.130] the opinion that the Evangelists drew a great part of their materials from a written document, is perfectly consistent; for if that document contained any thing erroneous, they had the power of detecting and correcting it."

Such is a succinct but accurate view of Bishop Marsh’s Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of the Three First Canonical Gospels, of 249 pages, appended to the third volume of his translation of Michaelis’s Introduction, Edit. 2, London 1802.

ALL ecclesiastical writers seem to have agreed in representing the gospel according to St. John, as written at some considerable length of time after the publication of the three other gospels, and generally with a view to confute the heresies of the Cerinthians, Sabians, and Gnostics, which had either previously existed, or had risen into a mischievous notoriety, since the publication of those gospels. He had read the three first gospels before he composed his own, and appears, says Bishop Marsh, to have corrected, though in a very delicate manner, the accounts given by his predecessors; which, if his predecessors were under such an inspiration of the holy spirit, as was sufficient to keep them clear of error, must indeed have required the greatest delicacy. The Bishop, however, has merited our forgiveness of this absurdity, by the frankness of his confession, that after all his attempts to reconcile the contradiction of St. John’s account of the resurrection of Christ with that of Mark and Luke, "he has not been able to do it, in a manner satisfactory either to himself, or to any other impartial inquirer into truth." He concludes with even more than necessary caution, that "if it be true that there are passages in St. John’s Gospel, which are at variance with the accounts given by the other Evangelists, we cannot hesitate to give the preference to St. John, who wrote last, and appears to have had an excellent memory."¹⁷⁶ Some persons have need of excellent memories.

Dr. Semler contends, that St. John wrote before the other three Evangelists, and the weight of his authority, which alone would give respectability to his criticism, seems to be seconded by the historical evidence of the existence of the heretical sects which St. John wrote to refute, long anterior to any date which Christians have ascribed to the three first gospels. An evangelist, who had seen the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and wished to second and support their authority, would hardly have committed himself in the egregious and irreconcileable contradictions which this gospel presents, when compared with those: and surely, no one can be ignorant that the Platonic and Pythagorean doctrines, which distinguish and characterize this gospel, existed several ages before the birth of Christ. Nor ought the strong arguments which the learned have adduced, in proof that Plato and. Pythagoras themselves were both members of the Therapeutan society, or had derived their doctrines from the sacred writings of this sect, to be of little weight with us. The universal delusion of ecclesiastical history consists in ascribing a later date to earlier institutions, in representing that which was the origination, as the corruption of Christianity, and in bringing down the monkish and monastic epocha to any period below the second or third century, in order to keep the clue of the whole labyrinth out of sight, and to evade the clear solution of all the difficulties of the inquiry, which presents itself in the fact that Eusebius has attested, that the Therapeutan monks were Christians, many ages before the period assigned to the birth of Christ; and that the Diegesis and Gnomologue, from which the Evangelists compiled their gospels, were writings which had for ages constituted the sacred scriptures of those Egyptian visionaries.

The learned Evanson, who, though a Unitarian divine, professes himself to be a firm believer in revelation, and a disciple of Jesus Christ,¹⁷⁷ marks with triple notes of admiration his astonishment that the orthodox should [p.132] receive gospels which so flatly contradict each other, as each equally true. And of the adorable miracle of turning water into wine, he observes, that coming in so very exceptionable a form, upon the testimony of so very exceptionable an historian, it is altogether as unworthy of belief as the fabulous Roman Catholic legend of St. Nicholas’s chickens.

Since Christian tolerance has endured these pregnant admissions against the claims of divine revelation, the sceptical world has been enriched by the Probabilia of Bretschneider, published at Leipsic 1820, in which that illustrious divine, compatibly with an equally sincere profession of faith in Christianity; and what is in some views a much more important consideration, compatibly with keeping his divinity professorship, and presidency of a Protestant university; has shown that the Jesus depicted in the fourth gospel is wholly out of keeping, and entirely a different sort of character from the Jesus of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and that it is utterly impossible that both descriptions could be true; that this gospel contains no testimony of an independent historian, or of a witness to the things therein related, but is derived solely from some written or unwritten tradition; and that its author was neither an inhabitant of Palestine, nor a Jew.¹⁷⁸

This, however, is not more than may, from internal evidence, be argued against the other evangelists, or at least Matthew and Mark, whose writings betray so great an ignorance of the geography, statistics, and even language of Judea, as the most illiterate inhabitants of that country could by no possibility have fallen into—exempli gratia.

1. "He came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis," (Mark vii. 31): when there were no coasts of Decapolis, nor was the name so much as known before the reign of the emperor Nero.

2. "He departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of [p.133] Judea, beyond Jordan," (Matt. xix. 1): when the Jordan itself was the eastern boundary of Judea, and there were no coasts of Judea beyond it.¹⁷⁹

3. "But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea, in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither notwithstanding being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee, and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene," (Matt. ii. 22): when—1. It was a son of Herod who reigned in his stead, in Galilee as well as in Judea, so that he could not be securer in one province than in the other; and when—2. It was impossible for him to have gone from Egypt to Nazareth, without travelling through the whole extent of Archelaus’s kingdom, or making a peregrination through the deserts on the north and east of the Lake Asphaltites, and the country of Moab; and then, either crossing the Jordan into Samaria or the Lake of Gennesareth into Galilee, and from thence going to the city of Nazareth; which is no better geography, than if one should describe a person as turning aside from Cheapside into the parts of Yorkshire; and when—3. There were no prophets whatever, or certainly none that either Jew or Christian would allow to be prophets, who had prophesied that Jesus "should be called a Nazarene;" and when—4. It is not true (according to the subsequent history) that Jesus was ever called a Nazarene; and when—5. Nazarene was not a name derived from any place whatever, but from a sect of Egyptian monks, and was none other than of the same significancy as Essene or Therapeut—a fact which throws further light on this monkish legend; and when—6. Had Jesus been a Jew, and derived his epitheton according to Jewish customs from the place of his birth, he would have been called, not Jesus of Nazareth, but Jesus of Bethlehem.

4. After Christ and the Devil had ended their forty days’ familiarity in the wilderness, "He departed into Galilee, leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea-coast in the borders of Zabulon, and Nephthalim, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, "The land of Zabulon and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles," &c. (Matt. iv. 12, 13); when, to Esaias, or any inhabitant of Judea, the country beyond must be the [p.134] country east of the Jordan, (as Gaulonitis, or Galilee of the Gentiles, is well known to have been); whereas Capernaum was a city on the western side of the Lake of Gennesareth, through which the Jordan flows.

5. "He departed into Galilee, and leaving Nazareth, came and dwelt at Capernaum," (Matt. iv. 13): as if he imagined that the city Nazareth was not as properly in Galilee as Capernaum was; which is much such geographical accuracy, as if one should relate the travels of a hero, who departed into Middlesex, and leaving London, came and dwelt in Lombard-street.

1st. That there is no mention in any ancient Roman or Greek historian, of any general taxing of people all over the world, or the whole Roman empire, in the time of Augustus, nor of any decree of the emperor for that purpose: and this is an event of such character and magnitude, as to exclude even the possibility of the Greek and Roman historians omitting to have mentioned it, had it ever really happened.

2dly. That in those days; that is, "when Jesus was born, in the days of Herod the king," Judea was not at that time a Roman province; and it is therefore absolutely impossible that there could have been any such taxing there, by any such decree, of any such Cæsar Augustus.

3dly. That Cyrenius was not Governor of Syria, till ten or twelve years after the time assigned as that of the birth of Christ.

4thly. That the whole passage is taken from one of those apochryphal gospels which were in full vogue long before this of St. Luke was written; some of which, by leaving the times and seasons entirely in the hand of God, represented that this taxing was first made when King Solomon was reigning in all his glory, so that Pontius Pilate and he were contemporary, which did well enough before the [p.135] wicked and sceptical art of criticism began to undermine the pillars of faith.

2. "There were present at that season, some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices."—Luke xiii. 1.

No historian, Jewish, Greek or Roman, has made the least allusion to this bloody work; which it is next to impossible that they could have failed to do, had it really happened.

Such an act was entirely out of character; for Pilate was a Pagan and a sacrificer himself, and would never have considered idolatry as a crime in any body. We have the solution of the difficulty at once, by admitting the probability, that as the name of King Herod was substituted in the later or more orderly and methodical transcripts of the Diegesis, for that of King Solomon, so the act of good King Josiah (2 Kings xxiii.) has here been fathered upon Pontius Pilate.

1. Annas and Caiaphas being the high-priests (Luke iii. 2); when any person acquainted with the history and polity of the Jews, must have known that there never was but one high-priest at a time, any more than among ourselves there is never but one Archbishop of Canterbury.

2. Caiaphas, which was the high-priest that same year, (John viii. 13,) being high-priest that year, he prophesied (John xi. 50); when no Jew could have been ignorant that the high-priest’s office was not annual, but for life, and that prophesying was no privilege nor part of that office.

3. "Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet," (John vii. 52); when the most distinguished of the Jewish prophets, Nahum and Jonah, were both Galileans.

"They brought the ass and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and set him thereon," (Matt. xxi. 7); i. e. like Mr. Ducrow, at Astley’s Theatre, a-straddle across them both. This translator of Matthew’s supposed original Hebrew copy of the Diegesis, being so grossly ignorant of the common pleonasm of the Hebrew language, as to mistake [p.136] its ordinary, emphatic way of indicating a particular object by a repetition of the word; as, an ass, "even that which was the son," or foal, or had been born of an ass; for two of the species.¹⁸⁰

2. "And he said unto them, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is by interpretation Sent," (John xix. 7),¹⁸¹ which happens to be an interpretation which no Jewish writer could possibly have given: SILOAM signifying not Sent, but the place of the sending forth of waters, that is, the sluice: to say nothing of the absurdity of representing the pool as sent to the man, instead of the man being sent to the pool: or of the absurdity of supposing that one who was blind, could see his way thither. Sure, here seems to have been a greater chance of the poor man’s getting his baptism than his conversion. This text has so puzzled the commentators, that they have endeavoured to get the words "which is by interpretation, Sent," considered as a mere marginal note; but the authority of the Codices attests them to be a part of the text itself. Whatever, then, be the credit due to the three first evangelists, the fourth may well be considered as neither better nor worse, and must stand or fall with them.

Such errors as we have exemplified, and innumerable other such there are, in every one of the four gospels, can be accounted for on no suppositions congruous with the idea of their having been written by any such persons, [p.137] at any such time, or under any such circumstances, as have been generally assumed for them. But we may challenge the whole world’s history to furnish, from a period of such remote antiquity, a coincidence of circumstantial evidence to prove any fact whatever, so strong, so concatenated, and so entirely responsive to all the claims of the phenomena, as the evidence here adduced, that the first types of the Gospel-story sprang from the Egyptian monks, and constituted the substance of the mystical romance, which they had modified from the Pagan mythology, in conformity to their professed and acknowledged Eclectic Philosophy, and imposed for antecedent ages on the ecclesiastical colonies, which had migrated from the mother church of Alexandria.

Thus, after Europe and all Christian communities have been for so many ages led to believe that in the four gospels they possessed the best translations that could be derived, in their several languages, from the original inspired text of immediate disciples and contemporaries of Christ; it is at length admitted, that mankind have been and are egregiously deceived. 1. It is admitted, that these gospels were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed; 2. That Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were only translators or copyists of previously existing documents; 3. Composed by we know not whom; 4. We know not how; 5. We know not where; 6. We know not when; 7. And containing we know not what. The very first assertion in the title-page of our New Testament, in stating that it is translated from the original Greek, involves a fallacy; since it is absolutely certain that the Greek, from which our translations were made, was well nigh as far from being original, as the translations themselves, and it is absolutely uncertain what the original was.

Irenæus indeed, the disciple of Polycarp, which Polycarp is said to have conversed with St. John, and who himself lived and wrote in the middle of the second century, is the first of all the Fathers who mentions the four evangelists by name. But if this testimony were as certainly unexceptionable, as it certainly is not—the being able to trace these scriptures so high or even higher than the second century, would be no relief to the difficulties of the evidence; since the same testimony attests the antecedent prevalence of the heresies of the Marcionites, [p.138] Ebionites and Valentinians, which were to be refuted out of these gospels, and which, as they were undoubtedly heresies from Christian doctrine, carry us as much too far beyond the mark, as it might have been feared that we should fall short of it; and go to prove, that as those heresies, so these gospels which refuted them, existed before the time ascribed to the birth of Christ. All the indications of date contained in those gospels themselves, are manifestly erroneous. It is universally known and admitted, that we have no history, nor Christian writing whatever besides, that so much as purports to come within the limits of the first century. At any rate, the predicament of being too soon on the stage, is as fatal to the congruities of the story, as being too late.

What could he mean by difficulties, but appearances of not being true? What could he mean by many difficulties, but that such appearances are not one, two, or a dozen, but meet us in every page? And what means the labour of his cumbrous volumes, but so much labour of so great a man, laid out on the sophistical business of making what he virtually admits appears to be falsehood, appear to be truth.

All these geographical, chronological, political, and philological perplexities, are such as never could have crossed the path of straight-forward narrative; but are such exactly as would occur to Eclectic plagiaries, engaged in the business of setting forth in order a tale of the then olden time; fitting new names and new scenery to the characters and catastrophes of an antiquated plot; and endeavouring to put an appearance of history and reality upon the creations of fictions and romance.

That this Eclectic philosophy of the Alexandrine monks is the true parent of their Diegesis, of which the gospels that have come down to us, are the legitimate issue, is the demonstration that will meet us now at every stage of that comparison of the Pagan and Christian theology, which our investigation challenges from us.

RESEMBLANCES OF THE PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
—AUGURY AND BISHOPS—ÆSCULAPIUS, JESUS CHRIST—
HERCULES, JESUS CHRIST—ADONIS, JESUS CHRIST

No conviction of our reason could be conceived to be more absolute and conclusive, than that which assures us of the utter impossibility of there being any common features of resemblance between divine truth and human imposture. We are not conscious of our own existence with a greater degree of certainty, than that by which we know, that a religion which hath "God for its author, happiness for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter," could have no likeness to the foolish and impotent devices of weak and wicked men. The existence of such a likeness or resemblance between any two religions whatever, however superior the one might be to the other, would itself constitute the surest possible demonstration that both of them were false. In a religion, then, which purports to be from God, we have a right to expect internal evidences of its divinity, and a character as infinitely superior to any devices of men—as infinite wisdom must be superior to human ignorance.

Having, then, obtained the consent of all parties, that the Christian Saviour, if any such person ever lived at all, must have lived and conversed with men in the era of Augustus, that is, eighteen hundred years ago, and that all the facts and doctrines of his religion are contained in the book called the New Testament;¹⁸² this great and important question becomes capable of being put to the test—from which, nothing that is honest would shrink—from which nothing that is true, can have any thing to fear.—Nothing which can be shown to have been in existence before the alleged time of the birth of Christ, nothing which came into existence long after "his glorious resurrection and ascension," can have any claim to be taken for Christianity. If before the date assigned to Christianity, and in regions and countries where a religion under that name was not known, we shall find all the ideas which that religion involves, pre-existent, and already familiar to the apprehensions of men; there is no alternative but that [p.140] the conclusion must be endured. To attempt to resist that conclusion, is to resist truth itself; to be afraid to do justice to the arguments that may lead to that conclusion, is to surrender it, without resistance.

THE PAGANS	THE CHRISTIANS
1. Apologised for all the apparent absurdities of their system, by pleading that nothing in it was to be understood according To the gross and revolting sense of the letter, but that the whole was to Be explained conformably to a mystical allegorical meaning which conveyed the most sublime truths	1. Use precisely the same argument in defence of their system only denying the benefit of it, to their Pagan adversaries.
2. "For those who preside over the holy Scriptures, philosophise over them, and expound their literal sense by allegory."—Eusebius, concerning the Therapeutan priests.	2. God also hath made us able ministers, of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit. (2 Corinth. 3, 6.)— Which things are an allegory. (4 Gal. 24.) --- St. Paul, concerning the Christian priests.
CICERO.	THE NEW TESTAMENT.
Concerning the Pagan Augurs.	Concerning the Christian Bishops.
3. "No order of true religion passes over the law concerning the description of priests.	3. And God hath set some in the church—first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers. —1 Corinth. xii. 28.
4. "For some have been instituted for the business of pacifying the Gods.	4. O Lord spare thy people, and be not angry with us forever. —Liturgy.¹⁸³
5. "To preside at sacred ceremonies.	5. Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the others judge. —1 Corinth. xiv. 29
6. "Others to interpret the predictions of the prophet.	6. And let one interpret. —1 Corinth. xiv. 27.
7. "Not of the many, lest the number should be infinite, course.	7. Let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by —1 Corinth. xiv. 27
8. "But that none beside the College should understand those predictions which had been publicly recognized.	8. Because it is given unto you (the College of Apostles) to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.—Matt. xiii. 11.
[p.141]
CICERO	NEW TESTAMENT.
9. "For augury, or the power of foretelling future events, is the greatest and most excellent thing in the republic, and naturally allied to authority.	9. For greater is he that prophesieth, than he that speaketh with tongues. Desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophecy. He that prophesieth, speaketh unto men to edification and exhortation, and comfort.—Corinth. xiv. 3.
10. "N’or do I thus think, because I am an augur myself; but because it is absolutely necessary for us to think so.	10. Neither have I written these things, that it should be so done unto me.—1 Corinth. ix. 15. —Inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office.—Rom. xi. 13.
11. "For if the question be of legal right, what is greater than the power to put away from the highest governments, their right of holding counsels, and issuing decrees: or to abolish them when holden? What more awful, than for any thing undertaken, to be done away, if but one augur hath said otherwise.	11. Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints. Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life?—l Corinth vi. 3. If he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man, and a publican. —Matt. xviii. 17.
12. " What more magnificent than to be able to decree, that the supreme governors should resign their magistracy ? What more religious than to give or not to give the right of treating or transacting business with the people? What than to annul a law if it hath not been duly passed,—and for nothing that hath been done by the government, either at home or abroad, to be approved by any one, without their authority?¹⁸⁴—De Legibus, lib. ii. 12."	12. Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven. —Matt, xvii. 18.
[p.142]
PHILO.	NEW TESTAMENT.
13. "In addition to these circumstances, Philo describes the order of preferment among those who aspire to ecclesiastical ministrations, and the offices of the deacons, and the pre-eminency above all of the bishop." —See chap. 10.	13. To all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons.—1 Philip. i. For they that have used the office of a deacon well, purchase to themselves a good degree. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. —1 Timothy iii. 13.

Among the ancient Greeks, the dignity of the priesthood was esteemed so great m most of their cities; and especially at Athens, as to be joined with that of the civil magistrate. Thus Anius, in Virgil, was king of Delos, and priest of Apollo.¹⁸⁵ In Egypt, the kings were all priests; and if any one who was not of the royal family, usurped the kingdom, he was obliged to be consecrated to the priesthood, before he could ascend the throne. At Sparta, the kings, immediately upon their promotion, took upon them the two priesthoods of the heavenly, and the Lace-demonian Jupiter; and all the sacrifices for the safety of the commonwealth, were offered by them only.

Besides these royal priests, there were others taken from the body of the people, and consecrated to the service of religion. These were all accounted the ministers of the gods, and by them commissioned to dispense their favour to mankind. Whoever was admitted to this holy office, was obliged to be of the most exemplary and virtuous character. They were required to be upright in mind and pure in heart and life, as well as perfect ([Greek]) in body: they were to live chastely and temperately, abstaining from those pleasures which were considered innocent in other men. After their admission into holy orders, though marriage was not altogether forbidden, they were obliged and expected to preserve the most rigid chastity.

[p.143] They endeavoured to weaken or overcome "all the sinful lusts of the flesh," by drinking the juice of hemlock, and by strewing the herb agnus castus, or chaste lamb under their bed clothes, which was believed to possess refrigerating qualities.

Who held the dignity of Theotokos, Deipara, or Mother of God, which has since been transferred to the Virgin Mary, so conscientiously cut themselves off from the faculty of sinful sensations, as to deserve the commendation of Christ himself—Matt. xix, 12; and to be imitated in so unequivocal a proof of sincere devotion, by the most learned and distinguished of Christian bishops, Origen, Melito, &c.

Another holy order of priests, was that of the Parasiti, or Parasites, whose office was to gather from the husbandmen, the corn that was to be set aside for the services of the ministry. It was at last an office of great honour; the Parasites being by the ancient laws reckoned among the chief magistrates. In every village of the Athenians, they maintained these priests at the public expense; but afterwards, to ease the commonwealth of this burden, the wealthier sort were obliged to entertain them at their own tables, whence the word parasite, in later times, has been put for a flatterer, who, for the sake of a dinner, conforms to every one’s humour. This holy order of Parasites, is continued in our Christian Church, in precisely the same character and function, under the less invidious name of domestic chaplains, who, hanging about the establishment of princes and nobles, generally contrive to worm themselves into the most lucrative ecclesiastical benefices upon the well-known economy.

CONVERSION FROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY,
BROUGHT ABOUT ENTIRELY BY A TRANSFER OF PROPERTY

Notwithstanding the conversion of Constantine to the Christian faith, title, the ensigns, and the [p.144] prerogatives of sovereign pontiff were accepted without hesitation, by seven successive Christian emperors. Gratian was the first who refused the pontifical robe¹⁸⁷, and threw off the badges of Paganism; for though he retained the title of Sovereign Pontiff, he performed no part of its functions.¹⁸⁸ From motives no doubt of the most disinterested piety, "this emperor seized the lands and endowments which had been allotted to maintain the priests and sacrifices of the ancient Paganism, and appropriated them to his own use."¹⁸⁹ A.D. 382.

We have yet extant, and happily I have here on my table, the celebrated oration delivered by Julius Firmicius Maternus, to the Emperors Constantius and Constans, the sons and successors of Constantine the Great; calling on those holy Emperors, to seize all the remaining property of the professors of Paganism, which his father had spared, and thus by reducing them to beggary, to starve them into salvation.

"Take away, take away, in perfect security, (exclaims this disinterested Christian orator.) O! most holy emperors, take away all the ornaments of their temples. Let the fire of the mint, or the flames of the mines, melt down their gods. Seize upon all their wealthy endowments, and turn them to your own use and property.¹⁹⁰ And O! most sacred emperors, it is absolutely necessary for you to revenge and punish this evil. You are commanded by the law of the Most High God, to persecute all sorts of idolatry with the utmost severity: hear and commend to your own sacred understandings, what God himself commands. He commands you not to spare your son, or your brother; he bids you plunge the avenging knife even into the heart of your wife that sleeps in your [p.145] bosom; to persecute your dearest friend with a sublime severity, and to arm your whole people against these sacrilegious Pagans, and tear them limb from limb. Yea! even whole cities, if you should find this guilt in them, must be cut off. O! most holy emperors! God promises you the rewards of his mercy, upon condition of your thus acting. Do therefore what he commands—complete what he prescribes."

Nothing can be more orthodox and truly Christian than this oration. It presents us a faithful picture of the genius and character of primitive Christianity. The reader will perhaps think he has enough of it. The Orator of the Areopagus, however he might have transgressed the laws of his country, transgressed not the fair sense of historic fact and license of oratorical figuration, when he said, "Astonished Paganism grew pale, when she saw the bloodstained banner of the cross, and from her innocent hand, the flowery chaplets of the chaste Diana, and of the hospitable Jupiter, down dropt, and bloody treason triumphed over them!"

We have, of the same age, a beautiful contrast to this spiritual oration of Firmicius, in an epistle of the Pagan orator, LIBANIUS, in which he discovers at the same time, what the tempers and dispositions of a Pagan were, towards those who left the faith of their ancestors, and embraced the new-fangled doctrines of Christianity. "ORION, (writes he), was my friend, when he was in prosperity, and now he is in affliction, I have the same disposition towards him. If he thinks differently from us, concerning the deity, he hurts himself, being deceived; but it is not fit that his friends should therefore look upon him as an enemy."¹⁹¹ Alas! since one who had once been a minister of the gospel, but is now prisoner for his conscientious opposition to it, fell into affliction and difference of opinion, concerning the deity, it was not only forgotten that he had once been a friend, but that he had ever been a fellow creature, a brother, or a son.¹⁹²

We have also still extant, the petition of SYMMACHUS, the high priest of Paganism, which he presented to the Emperors Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius, and for having delivered which, the Emperor Theodosius commanded the reverend orator to descend from the pulpit, and go immediately into exile—Oakham!)

[p.146] But impious and unreasonable as it was held to be in Christian ears, it was not worse than of a piece with the extract which I here subjoin:—

The Holy Father and Bishop St. Ambrose, strenuously opposed this petition, and ingeniously argued from a text of scripture, which served to carry the point in his days, but which since has become apocryphal, and consequently is no longer to be found; but this it was, "all the earth belongeth unto the righteous,¹⁹⁴ but to the infidels not one penny," (obelus).

Lardner is anxious to vindicate the disinterestedness of St. Ambrose, who opposed himself to this unreasonable remonstrance of "these poor blind benighted Pagans;" and puts in proof, the letter written to the Emperor Eugenius in the year 392, in which St. Ambrose declares, that "those revenues had not been taken away by his advice, only he had advised that when once they were taken away, they should not be given back again." That’s Christian all over! as much as to say, "I’ll have nothing to do with thieving, but I’ll go your halves!"

[p.147] The reader has only to turn his eye to our table of the Ecclesiastical Revenues at this day, and he may solve as he shall please, the important question— whether, if these revenues were taken away from the church, and transferred to the professors of as false a religion as ever was on earth, our churchmen would not run after the revenues, and leave Christianity to the fate of Paganism. It is a remarkable fact, that in the Corpus juris, or whole body of Roman law, notwithstanding all the dreadful stories of persecutions and martyrdom, which Christians relate that they have endured from the Pagan magistrates, there never was on record any law whatever, that had been enacted against Christians—while there were and have been the most sanguinary laws enacted for the prosecution and eternal persecution of unbelievers.

By a law of the Emperors Valentinius and Theodosius, whoever had been known to have apostatised from the Christian religion, was debarred from the right of bequeathing property by will—nor was the Pagan religion effectually suppressed, till the profession of it was prohibited under the penalty of death. Thousands suffered that penalty, whom we are not allowed to consider as martyrs. It is well known, that the most holy and truly Christian Emperor Theodosius, put in practice the advice of Julius Firmicius, upon the heterodox citizens of Thessalonica, to the letter. He put the whole city to the sword, and "utterly destroyed every thing that breathed, even as the Lord God of Israel commanded."—An example which was followed in like manner, on the ever memorable day of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, when seventy thousand Protestants, subjects of the most Christian Charles IX., were butchered throughout France, at the instigation of his pious mother, Catherine de Medicis. Mr. Higgins, a sincere believer, thus concludes his beautiful work:—"Look at Ireland, look at Spain, in short, look every where, and you will see the priests reeking with gore. They have converted, and are converting, populous and happy nations into deserts, and have made our beautiful world into a slaughter-house, drenched with blood and tears."—Celtic Druids, p. 299.

The worship of Æsculapius was first established in Egypt, the fruitful parent of all varieties of superstition. The name is derived from the Oriental languages. Eusebius speaks of an Asclepios, or Æsculapius, an Egyptian, and a famous physician. He is well known as the God of the art of healing, and his Egyptian or Phoenician origin, leads us irresistibly to associate his name and character with that of the ancient Therapeuts, or Society of Healers, established in the vicinity of Alexandria, whose sacred writings Eusebius has ventured to acknowledge, were the first types of our four gospels. The miracles of healing and of raising the dead, recorded in those scriptures, are exactly such as these superstitious quacks would be likely to ascribe to the founder of their fraternity.

Among the Greeks, it was believed that the god Apollo himself had represented Æsculapius as his son by a voice from the oracle (Ibid.): and it is a striking coincidence of fact, if it be no more than a coincidence, that we find the Christian Father, Eusebius, attempting to prove the divinity of Jesus Christ, from an answer given by the same oracle;¹⁹⁷ while the text of the Gospel of St. Matthew iii. 17, written certainly much later than those answers, runs, "Lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." By the mother side, Æsculapius was the son of Coronis, who had received the embraces of God, but for whom, unfortunately, the worshippers of her son have forgotten to claim the honour of perpetual virginity. To conceal her pregnancy from her parents, she went to Epidaurus, and was there delivered of a son, whom she exposed upon the Mount of Myrtles;¹⁹⁸ when Aristhenes,¹⁹⁹ the goatherd,²⁰⁰ in search of a goat and a dog missing from his fold, discovered the child, whom he would have carried to his home, had he not, in approaching to lift him up, perceived his head encircled with fiery rays,²⁰¹ which made him to believe the child to be divine. The voice of fame soon published the birth of a miraculous infant; upon which the people flocked from all quarters to behold this heaven-born child.²⁰²

It was believed that "Æsculapius was so expert in medicine, as not only to cure the sick, but even to raise the dead." Ovid says he did this by Hyppolitus (and Julius says the same of Tyndarus); that Pluto cited him before the tribunal of Jupiter, and complained that his [p.151] empire was considerably diminished, and in danger of becoming desolate, from the cures performed by Æsculapius; So that Jupiter, in wrath, slew him with a thunderbolt. Within a short time after his death, he was deified, and received divine honours. His worship was first established at Epidaurus, and soon after propagated throughout all Greece. The cock²⁰³ and serpent were especially consecrated to him, and his divinity was recognized and honoured m the last words of the dying Socrates, "Remember that we owe a cock to Æsculapius." At a time when the Romans were infested with the plague, having consulted their sacred books, they learned that, in order to be delivered from it, they were to go in quest of Æsculapius at Epidaurus; accordingly, an embassy was appointed of ten senators, at the head of whom was Quintus Ogulnius; and the worship of Æsculapius was established at Rome A.U.C. 462, that is, Before Christ, 288. But the most remarkable coincidence is, that the worship of this god continued with scarcely diminished splendour, even for several hundred years after the establishment of Christianity. We have the best and most rationally attested account of a cure brought about by the influence of imagination in connection with his name, as late as the year 485 A.D.

Marinus, a scholar of the philosopher Proclus, A.D. 485, in his life of his master, says, "I might relate very many theurgic operations of this blessed man: one, out of innumerable, I shall mention; and it is wonderful to hear.—Asclipigenia, daughter of Archiades and Plutarcha, and wife of Theagenes, to whom we are much indebted, when she was yet but a young maiden, and lived with her parents, was seized with a grievous distemper, incurable by the physicians. All help from the physicians failing, as in other cases, so now in this also; her father applied to the sheet-anchor, that is, to the philosopher, as his good Saviour,²⁰⁴ earnestly entreating him to pray for his daughter, whose condition was not unknown to him. He therefore, [p.152] taking with him Pericles of Lydia, who was also a philosopher and worthy of that name,²⁰⁵ went to the temple of Æsculapius, intending to pray for the sick young woman to the god; for the city (Athens) was at that time blessed in him, and still enjoyed the undemolished temple of THE SAVIOUR. But while he was praying according to the ancient form,²⁰⁶ a sudden change appeared in the damsel, and she immediately became convalescent; for THE SAVIOUR, as being God, easily healed her.

With respect to the miracles ascribed to Æsculapius, and continuing to be performed for so many ages by the efficacy of faith in his name, and in answer to prayers offered up in his temple; the power and influence of imagination, in producing changes in the animal economy to an indefinite extent, is well known to physicians; and, without intending any injurious imposture, the most benevolent and intelligent medical men at this day avail themselves of the patient’s superstition, to aid and second the operations of medicine. A strongly excited expectation of relief will often produce such an improved tone of muscular action, and such a more vigorous flow of the animal spirits, as will be sufficient to throw off the obstructions in which the disease originated, and thus effect many extraordinary and otherwise unaccountable cures. A medical friend once succeeded in curing a poor man of chronic rheumatism, after he had followed the prescriptions of the ablest physicians without receiving the least benefit, by working upon his imagination to make sure of receiving a cure, by taking seven teaspoonfuls of the decoction of a brickbat that should be found in a churchyard, the brickbat to be boiled for seven hours, in seven quarts of water; the essential conditions of the miracle being that its efficacy was not to be doubted; and the whole process to be kept an inviolable secret. This prescription he affected to translate out of the spider-leg text of a Greek folio. The cure was perfect. The primitive Christians were content never to call in question the miracles pretended by their Pagan [p.153] adversaries, so they could get their own similar pretensions recognised. Their argument was one that was well contrived to evade all possibility of being determined: the Pagan miracles were wrought by the power of demons, while their’s were to be ascribed to the True God.

Justin Martyr, in his Apology for the Christian Religion, addressed to the emperor Hadrian, seems to seek rather an excuse for the Christian miracles, than to consider them as resting on any grounds of evidence:—"As to our Jesus curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were cripples from their birth, this is little more than what you say of your Æsculapius."²⁰⁷

In the performance of their miracles," says Dr. Convers Middleton, "the primitive Christians were always charged with fraud and imposture by their adversaries. Lucian tells us, that whenever any crafty juggler, expert in his trade, and who knew how to make a right use of things, went over to the Christians, he was sure to grow rich immediately, by making a prey of their simplicity; and Celsus represents all the Christian wonder-workers as mere vagabonds and common cheats, who rambled about to play their tricks at fairs and markets, not in the circles of the wiser and better sort, (for among such they never ventured to appear), but whenever they observed a set of raw young fellows, slaves or fools, there they took care to intrude themselves, and to display their arts,"—Free Inquiry, p. 144.

The reader has only to consult the 1st and 2d chapters of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, and he will see that this principle of playing off upon the credulity of the weakest and most ignorant of mankind, is expressly avowed by the great Apostle of the Gentiles—"Christ crucified," to the Jews, "a stumbling block," as contrary to all evidence of fact; "and to the Greeks, foolishness," as revolting to reason. The principal result, however, of this resemblance is, the evidence it affords that the terms or epithets of "OUR SAVIOUR"—the Saviour being God, were the usual designations of the god Æsculapius;²⁰⁸ and that miracles of healing, and resurrection from the dead, [p.154] were the evidence of his divinity, for ages before similar pretences were advanced for Jesus of Nazareth. "Strabo informs us, that the temples of Æsculapius were constantly filled with the sick, imploring the help of GOD; and that they had tables hanging around them, in which all the miraculous cures were described. There is a remarkable fragment of one of these tables still extant, and exhibited by Gruter in his collection, as it was found in the ruins of Æsculapius’s temple, in the island of the Tyber in Rome; which gives an account of two blind men restored to sight by Æsculapius, in the open view, and with the loud acclamations of the people acknowledging the manifest power of the god."—Middleton’s Free lnquiry, p. 78. Could such a document be produced to authenticate any one of the miracles ascribed to Jesus, what would become of the cause of infidelity?

OR Alcides, was the son of God by Alcmena, wife of Amphytrion, king of Thebes, and is said to have been born in that city, 1280 years before the Christian era. HERCULES was pointed out by the ancients as their great exemplar of virtue. It was affirmed by some, that he voluntarily engaged in his great labours. The whole of his life appears to have been devoted to the good of man kind. "The writers who treat of his adventures, and of the antiquities relating to them," says Mr. Spence, "have generally fallen into a great deal of confusion, so far, that I scarcely know any one of them that has perfectly well settled which were his twelve labours. To avoid falling into the same confusion, one may divide all his adventures into three classes. In the first class, I should place such as are previous to his twelve celebrated labours;

"In the second, those twelve labours themselves, which he was obliged to do by the fatality of his birth;

"His first exploit was that of strangling two serpents sent to destroy him in his cradle. This he seems to have performed, according to some accounts of it, when he was not above half an hour old. But what is still more extraordinary is, that there are exploits supposed to have been performed by Hercules, even before Alcmena brought him into the world."

[p.155] Thus far Spence, in his Polymetis, dial. 9, p. 116. Adding in a note, "This, perhaps, is one of the most mysterious points in all the mythology of the ancients. Though Hercules was born not long before the Trojan war, they make him assist the gods in conquering the rebel giants (Virgil’s Æneid, 8, line 298); and some of them talk of an oracle or tradition in heaven, that the gods could never conquer them, without the assistance of a man."

Upon which, the orthodox Parkhurst, in his Hebrew Lexicon,²⁰⁹ asks, with indignation, "Can any man seriously believe, that so excellent a scholar as Mr. Spence was, could not easily have accounted for what he represents as being so very mysterious? Will not 1 Pet. i. 20,²¹⁰ compared with Hag. ii. 7,²¹¹ clear the whole difficulty, only recollecting that Hercules might be the name of several mere men, as well as the title of the future Saviour? And did not the truth here glare so strongly on our author’s eyes, that he was afraid to trust his reader with it in the text, and so put it into a note for fear it should spoil his jests."

"It is well known," continues Parkhurst, "that by Hercules, in the physical mythology of the heathens, was meant the Sun, or solar light, and his twelve famous labours have been referred to the sun’s passing through the twelve zodiacal signs; and this, perhaps, not without some foundation. But the labours of Hercules seem to have had a still higher view, and to have been originally designed as emblematic memorials of what the real Son of God and Saviour of the world was to do and suffer for our sakes—[Greek]—"Bringing all lenitives of our diseases," as the Orphic Hymn speaks of Hercules."²¹²

Thus we see that Christian divines, according to their cue or drift, either endeavour to conceal or else boast of the resemblance between the Christian and Pagan mythology. At one time, or with one set of Christian-evidence writers, the very idea of naming Christ and Hercules together is held as the most frightful impiety; heaven and hell are [p.156] not further asunder: with another set, equally orthodox, but driving at a different tact of argument, it is Satan himself who hath blinded our eyes, to prevent the light of truth shining upon us, if we cannot see that Hercules and Jesus Christ are one and the same identical personage; that the labours of the one were the miracles of the other; and that the most mysterious and abstruse doctrines of the New Testament were but the realization of the emblematical types of the ancient Paganism. SON OF GOD, and SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD, were forms of expression with which the ear of heathenism was familiar, for ages before it was pretended that the son of Jehovah and Mary had a better claim to be addressed by those titles, than the son of Jupiter and Alcmene.

There was, however, a consistency in the conduct of the worshippers of the earlier claimant, and a conformity of their practice to their profession, which we shall look for in vain among the adorers of the later aspirant. Hercules was expressly and professedly worshipped by the ancient Latins, under the name of DIVUS FIDIUS; that is, the guarantee or protector of faith promised or sworn. They had a custom of calling this deity to witness, by a sort of oath conceived in these terms—"Me Dius Fidius!" that is, So help me the god Fidius! or Hercules. But with all due respect to the high authority I quote, rather than incur the censure of the divines of the Hutchinsonian school, of resisting the light that glares upon me, I should take the original form of the ancient oath to have been "Me Deus Filius!" the filling up of which formulary, with the words ita adjuvet, make the sense complete, So help me God the Son!" The form of oath used in our universities at this day is, "Ita me Deus adjuvet et sancta ejus evangelia!"—So help me God and his holy Gospels! The turning the word filius into Fidius, and inventing a god, or an epitheton of that name, seems like a struggle to evade the evident sense, especially since we know that, in the hurried and gabbling way in which the ancient oath was administered, the whole sentence was pronounced but as two words, Medius Fidius; and certainly it would be ridiculous to make a God, or the epithet of a God, of the word Medius: and why might not Hercules be honoured with the title of God the son, to distinguish him from Jupiter, or God the Father, as by his human nature standing in a nearer relation to mankind than the paternal deity, and the fitter to be appealed to as a mediator in human transactions; [p.157] especially seeing that he was known and recognized under the exactly similar designation of the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world?

It is, indeed, one of the most curious extravagancies of all that is extravagant in Christian faith and practice, that the custom of administering oaths should be retained in Christian courts of judicature, in spite of the express and reiterated prohibitions of swearing contained by luckless oversight in the very book on which the oath is taken. Our Judge Blackstone, well aware how ill the Christian text would serve his purpose, passes over the words of Jesus Christ, "I say unto you, swear not at all," (Matt. v. 34); and those of his holy Apostle St. James, "But above all things, my brethren, swear not," (James v. 12); and quotes the text of the Pagan, Cicero:—

"It has indeed been remarked by the most eminent writers of the Roman history, that the superstition of that people had a great influence in keeping them in subordination and allegiance. It is more particularly observed, that in no other nation was the solemn obligation of an oath treated with such respect, and fulfilled with such a religious circumspection, and such an inviolable fidelity." Such is the substance of a note of a Christian translator of Mosheim, in opposition to a remark of his text, that the Roman superstition was defective in this point.—(Cent. 4, part 1.)

A note to similar effect occurs in the Christian Evanson’s work on the Dissonance of the four Gospels, p. 81. "I was many years ago assured by an intimate friend, and an intelligent worthy man, who had traded largely both in the northern parts of Africa and in many different countries of Europe, that he was never once deceived in confiding in the honour and integrity of a Mahomedan; but that through the perfidy and dishonesty of some of [p.158] those he dealt with, he had been defrauded and injured in every nation of professed Christians."²¹⁴

The gaoler of the prison in which I am at the time of writing this, in the seventh month of an unjust, captivity incurred by the conscientious and honourable maintenance of my sincere convictions, informs me, that during his own long residence in Malta, and constant course of commercial transactions with the professors of the Mohamedan creed, he never heard of an unpaid debt, or a violated obligation; and that it is an usual mode of traffic in the market-towns throughout Turkey, for the farmers and huxters to leave their fowls, eggs and butter, &c. in baskets, with the prices affixed, and to return in the evening in perfect security of finding the article as they left it, or the exact price deposited in the place of just so much of it as had found a purchaser.

"Were a wise man," says Bishop Kidder, "to choose his religion by the lives of those who profess it, perhaps Christianity would be the last religion he would choose." Christianity, then, has no pretence to evidence on the score of any moral effects it has produced in the world.

THE Jews had a superstition of not uttering the incommunicable name of God, [Hebrew]—that is, Yahou, or Jackhou; or, as it frequently occurs, in one syllable, [Hebrew]—Jao, or Jack;²¹⁵ which, with more reverence than reason, is pronounced Yah! as the tetragrammaton, or word of four letters, which at this day adorns our Christian temples is called Jehovah.

From this divine name [Hebrew], says Parkhurst, the ancient Greeks had their [Greek] in their invocations of the gods, more [p.159] particularly of the god Apollo, i.e. The Light. And hence these two letters, forming the name Jah, written after the Oriental manner, from right to left, were inscribed over the great door of the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

[Hebrew] is several times joined with the name [Hebrew], which seems to indicate that they are distinct names for the same deity, and not the one the mere abbreviation of the other. The rays of light or glory within a circle or ring of which the tetragrammaton, or four-lettered word, is exhibited in our Christian temples, are a demonstration that the same deity is intended by the Christian Jehovah as by the Pagan Jah (that is, Apollo), whose name of two letters was in like manner encircled with rays of glory.

The Pagans, indeed, seem more rigidly to have adhered to the text or injunctions of those Syrio-Phoenician odes which have been consecrated by Christian piety, under the name of the Psalms of David, and which formed a material part of their idolatrous liturgies, than their Christian plagiarists who have retained the use of them in a never-interrupted succession from their times.

We read in the original, the hundred times repeated commands, [Hebrew]—Ellell-lu-jah! Praise ye Jack! [Hebrew]—Behold! bless ye Jack!

Sing ye to the gods! Chant ye his name! Exalt him who rideth in the heavens, by his name Jack, and leap for joy before his face! For the Lord hath a long nose, and his mercy endureth for ever!

It is admitted, however, on all hands, that the proper pronunciation of the tetragrammaton which we call Jehovah, and its synonyme Jah, is entirely lost. Nor can it be denied, that the Hebrew points ordinarily annexed to the consonants of those words, are not the natural points belonging thereto, nor indicative of pronunciation; but are the vowel points belonging to the words ADONAI and Elohim,—to warn the reader, that instead of the word JEHOVAH, which the Jews were forbidden to pronounce, and the pronunciation of which had been long unknown to them, they are always to read Adonai, or Adonis.²¹⁶

[p.160] Hence we find, that frequently where the common printed copies read [Hebrew], many Dr. Kennicott’s codices have [Hebrew]. And hence, says Dr. Parkhurst, whose orthodoxy of Christian faith admits not a suspicion—hence the idol Adonis had his name.²¹⁷

The reader will, I hope, do himself the justice to observe, that throughout this DIEGESIS, no merely fanciful or conjectural interpretations are admitted, and no new lights struck out from ingenious etymologies: he is here presented with the calm dispassionate evidence of fact, and when those facts are most pregnant of conclusions adverse to Christianity, they are invariably adduced in the words and on the authority of Christians themselves, whose disinterestedness, at least, in yielding admissions of this character, is no more to be questioned, than their learning and piety to be surpassed.

The great source of difficulty and mistake in tracing the identity of the parent figment through the multifarious forms of the ancient idolatry, seems to arise from the change of epithets and names, while yet it is but one and the same deity and demi-god who is meant under a hundred designations. Thus, the names under which the Sun has been the real and only intended object of divine worship, have been as various and as many as the nations of the earth on which his light has shone. And as various are the allegories and fictions of his passing through the zodiacal sign of the Virgin, which, of course, would remain a virgin still; his descending into the lower parts of the earth; his rising again from the dead; his ascending into heaven, his opening the kingdom of heaven to all believers; his casting his bright beams of light through twelve months, or Apostles, one of whom (February—Judas) lost a day, and by transgression (or skipping over) "fell, that he might go to his own place," (Acts i. 25); "his preaching the acceptable year of the Lord," (Luke iv. 9). By all which metaphorical personifications, were typified the natural history or circumstances observable in the Sun’s progress through the twelve months which constitute the natural year.

The Jews in vain endeavour to disguise the fact, that they also were Sun worshippers. We find, from their own sacred books, that their Solomon, after having built a [p.161] temple to Jehovah, "did build also an high place for [Hebrew] Chemosh (that is, the SUN), the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem," (1 Kings, xi. 7); and so late as to the reign of Josiah, successive kings of Judah "had dedicated horses to the Sun; and the chariots of the Sun were at the entering in of the house of the Lord."--2 Kings, xxiii. 1l.

The prophet Malachi expressly speaks of Christ, under the same unaltered name of Chemosh, the abomination of the Moabites—[Hebrew]—Chapter iii, verse 4, or iv. 2. Which being, by our evangelical reformers, very conveniently translated the Sun of Righteousness,²¹⁸ of course could refer to nothing else than Jesus Christ, and so conceals the idolatry, while it conveys the piety.

The same deity, however, under his name ADONIS, without any change but that of the various pronouns, suffices to indicate my Adon, our Adon, &c. is the undisguised idol who is addressed innumerable times throughout the book of Psalms, under that name, and to whose honour, in common with that of Jehovah, they were composed and dedicated. The 110th Psalm, of which the first verse rendered into English, is, "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool,"²¹⁹ should have been rendered, "Yahou said unto Adonis." The two idols were worshipped in the same house of the Lord, which was at Jerusalem: Yahou, or Jack, sat on the lid of a box, ridiculously called the ilasterion, or mercy-seat; while Adonis seems to have occupied the vestibule, or entering-in of the house of the Lord. The rest of the Psalm is a dialogue, in which Jao, or Jack, proposes terms of alliance between himself and Adonis, and engages to join him in the slaughter of their enemies. The preference of the Jews for Adonis, who was distinguished for his personal beauty, above the cloven footed and long-nosed Jehovah²²⁰ has induced them to this day, not only to read the name Adon, wherever it occurs, but entirely to banish the recollection of Jao altogether. They substitute the name Adon in every instance where our translators have put Jehovah, or the Lord; so that in the reading of those to whom these lively oracles were [p.162] committed, it is not Jehovah, but the Phoenician deity Adonis, who is the God of the Old Testament.

Jehovah then, had more than cause enough for jealousy against the encroachments of Adonis, and in one most striking instance, the worship of this idol, under his name TAMMUZ, is denounced as an atrocious abomination. Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house, which was towards the north, and behold there sat women weeping for Tammuz—(Ezekiel viii. 14.)

Here Jerome interprets [Hebrew] Tammuz, by Adonis, who he observes, is in Hebrew and Syriac, called Adonis.

"I find myself obliged, (says the pious author of the Greek and Hebrew Lexicons,) to refer Tammuz, as well as the Greek and Roman Hercules, to that class of idols, which was originally designed to represent the promised Saviour, the Desire of all nations His other name, Adonis, is almost the very Hebrew [Hebrew] or our Lord, a well-known title of Christ."

Such are the words of the ingenuous, most learned, and orthodox Parkhurst, who proceeds to exhibit this resemblance of Adonis and Christ, by subjoining, with acknowledgements to his authorities Spearman and Godwyn, a passage from Julius Firmicius, which in my earlier writings I was content to quote, as he had done, at second-hand. The retirement and leisure however which my Christian persecutors have forced upon me, and the attentions of my unbelieving friends, have enabled me to study the very rare and curious original itself. It is an oration or address of Julius Firmicius delivered to the Emperors Constans and Constantius; the object of which was to induce those pious princes to seize the property of their Pagan subjects, and apply it to Christian uses—than which, of course, nothing could have been more orthodox. After forty-five pages of abuse heaped on the ancient Pagans for their egregious forms of idolatry, in which by a most curious mystical interpretation of their ceremonies, he discovers Christ to have been represented by them all,—he adds, "²²¹Let us propose another symbol, that by an effort of cogitation, their wickedness may be revealed, of which we must relate the whole process in order that it may be manifest to all, that the law of the divine appointment [p.163] hath been corrupted by the devil’s perverse imitation. On a certain night (while the ceremony of the Adonia, or religious rites in honour of Adonis lasted) an image was laid out upon a bed, and bewailed in doleful ditties. After they had satiated themselves with fictitious lamentations, light was brought in; then the mouths of all the mourners were anointed by the priest, upon which the priest, with a gentle murmur, whispered—

"Upon which their sorrow was turned into joy, and the image was taken, as it were out of its sepulchre." These latter words, though their sense is evidently implied, have no direct authority in the original, but seem to be a scholium of Mr. Spearman. Firmicius, in his tide of eloquence, leaves his conclusion elliptical; and breaks away into indignant objurgation of the priest who officiated in those heathen mysteries, which, he admitted, resembled the Christian sacrament in honour of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, so closely, that there was really no difference between them, except²²² that no sufficient proof had been given to the world of the resurrection of Adonis, and no divine oracle had borne witness to his resurrection, nor had he shown himself alive after his death to those who were concerned to have assurance of the fact, that they might believe. The divine oracle (be it observed,) which had borne witness to the resurrection of Christ, but which it seems had vouchsafed no such honourable testimony to the resurrection of Adonis, was none other than the answer of the God Apollo, at Delphos; which this author derives from Porphyry’s books on the Philosophy of Oracles; and which Eusebius has condescended to quote, as furnishing one of the most convincing [p.164] proofs that could be adduced from the admission of an adversary of the resurrection of Christ.²²³

"But thou at least," says Eusebius, "listen to thine own Gods, to thy oracular deities themselves, who have borne witness, and ascribed to our Saviour, not imposture, but piety and wisdom, and ascent into heaven." Quoted in the author’s Syntagma, p. 116. This was vastly obliging and liberal of the God Apollo; only, it happens awkwardly enough, that the whole work, (consisting of several books) ascribed to Porphyry, in which this and other admissions equally honourable to the evidences of the Christian religion, are made, was not written by Porphyry, but is altogether the pious forgery of Christian hands; who have kindly fathered the great philosopher with admissions, which as he would certainly never have made them himself, they have very charitably made for him.

But not alone the very name Adon, or Adonai, nor the particular manner in which that God was worshipped, occurring as frequently as the name Jehovah, and by the Jews themselves constantly maintained to be the sense of that name and proper to be used rather than, and instead of it; but the distinctive attributes of Adonis, the peculiarly characteristical epithets and designations by which that idol was identified from all others, prove the possibility of doubt, that the Jews were worshippers of the self-same Adonis, adored by their Phoenician neighbours. Adonis was distinguished for his personal beauty. We find entire odes or psalms in praise of his beauty,²²⁴ and his characteristic epithet of THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS used interchangeably, instead of his name. "He appointed singers unto the Lord, and that should praise THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS."—2 Chron. xx. 21.

"The Devil," says Firmicius, "has his Christs,"²²⁵ of which he affects not to deny that this Adonis was one. But one of the strongest sensible proofs of the difference between the false Christs and the true one, which this [p.165] author could adduce, was, that the ointment with which the Pagan priests anointed the lips of the mystics, or initiated in the Adonia, or sacrament of our Lord Adonis, was wholly different from the unguentum immortale, which God the Father gave to his only Son,²²⁶ and which the Son bestows on all those who believe in the divine majesty of his name: for Christ’s ointment, he would have us to know, is "of an immortal composition, and mixed up with the spiritual scents of paints, of myrrh, aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces;" whereas the Pagan ointment was, I dare say, little better than cart-grease.—Nobody need know anymore about Vir. Clarus Julius Firmicius Maternus.

The ADONIA were solemn feasts in honour of Venus, and in memory of her beloved son, Adonis. Venus, as sprung from the sea, Mare, could not be more honourably distinguished than by her epithet Maria; Adonai is literally Our Lord: so that these solemn feasts, without any change or substitution of names, were unquestionably celebrated to the honour of MARY and her son, OUR LORD; to whomsoever else those names may have in later ages been applied. They were observed by the Greeks, Phoenicians, Lycians, Syrians, Egyptians, and indeed by almost all the nations of the then known world. It is universally agreed, that it is to these ceremonies that the Jewish God refers in the 8th chapter of Ezekiel, where they are denounced as an abomination; we find by inference, an honourable apology for the Jewish nation, who, as a people, have through so many ages, refused to embrace a religion, which in so many particulars, and even in the continuance of the same names, has lost all possibility of being distinguished in their apprehension from "the abomination of the Sidonians." The festival of the Adonia was still observed at Alexandria, the cradle of the Christian religion, in the time of St. Cyril; and at that Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, (Acts xi. 26,) even as late as the time of the emperor Julian, commonly called the Apostate; "whose arrival there during the solemnity was taken for an ill omen."—Bell’s Pantheon. This is surely a curious admission of our Christian mythologists. Let the reader ask himself, and answer as he may the questions [p.166] emergent from this state of the Christian evidences—1. What argument can be drawn from the wonderful propagation of the Gospel, when in the city where it was at first most successfully preached, and where the disciples were first called Christians, it had not, even in the fourth century, abolished the Pagan and idolatrous festival of the Adonia?—2. And wherefore should the arrival of the emperor Julian (a known apostate from the Christian religion, and a zealous patron of Paganism), during the celebration of the Adonia, have been considered as an ill omen, but that the Adonia had come to be considered as entirely a Christian festival?—3. And at what time, or whether ever, the festival of the Adonia was distinctly abolished, and that of the Christian Easter established upon its overthrow?

For the solution of these most important inquiries, we hold up the light of the admissions of ecclesiastical historians. It must ever be borne in mind, that the Christians of the second, third, and fourth centuries industriously laboured to give their religion the nearest possible resemblance to the ancient Paganism; and confessedly adopted the liturgies, rites, ceremonies, and terms of heathenism; making it their boast that the Pagan religion, properly explained, really was nothing else than Christianity; that the best and wisest of its professors in all ages had been Christians all along; that Christianity was but a name more recently acquired to a religion which had previously existed, and had been known to the Greek philosophers, to Plato, Socrates, and Heraclitus; and that "if the writings of Cicero had been read as they ought to have been, there would have been no occasion for the Christian Scriptures." Nor did some of them, who maintained that Jesus Christ had a real existence, hesitate to ascribe to him a work in which "he himself expressly declared that he was in no way opposed to the worship of the gods and goddesses;²²⁷ while our most orthodox Christian divines, the best learned in ecclesiastical antiquity, and most entirely persuaded of the truth of the Christian religion, unable to resist or to conflict with the constraining demonstration of the data that prove the absolute sameness and identity of Paganism and Christianity; and unable to point out so much as one single idea or notion, of which they could show that it was peculiar to Christianity, or [p.167] that Christianity had it, and Paganism had it not; have invented the apology of an hypothesis; that the religion, like the Jewish dispensation, was typical; and that Hercules, Adonis, &c. were all of them types and forerunners of the true and real Hercules, Adonis, &c. our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Nothing is more easily conceivable, than that the priests and devotees of any one of the innumerable forms of absurdity which superstition might from time to time assume, should decry all others, and pretend that their’s alone was divine: nothing is so hard to be conceived, as that a God of infinite wisdom and truth should be the author of a religion so little superior, and so closely resembling the devices of juggling priests and self-interested impostors, that it should not be in the power of any man on earth, who would judge impartially, to discover in what the superiority consists; or that there was really any difference at all between them.

"IT was an established custom among the ancient Phoenicians, on any calamitous or dangerous emergency, for the ruler of the state to offer up, in prevention of the general ruin, the most dearly-beloved of his children, as a ransom to divert the divine vengeance. They who were devoted for this purpose, were offered mystically, in consequence of an example which had been set this people by the God Kronus, who, in a time of distress, offered up his only son to his father Ouranus. The mystical sacrifice of the Phoenicians had these requisites: 1st. That a prince was to offer it; 2nd. That his only son was to be the victim; 3rd. That he was to make this grand sacrifice invested with the emblems of royalty."—Bryant’s Observations on Ancient history, quoted in Archbishop Magee’s Work on the Atonement, vol. 1, p. 388. This is the Archbishop of Dublin, whose spirit, temper, and conduct are so strikingly in harmony with those he ascribes to a God delighting in blood and bloody sacrifices, famous for his inexorable severity in the government of his diocese, and his cruel treatment of the inferior clergy; nor less distinguished for [p.168] the convenient flexibility of his own orthodoxy. He is known in private to laugh at the folly of his own doctrines, as in public he ventured to declare, that though he believed in the Articles of the Church of England collectively, he did not believe in them separately.

Here is, in fact, a first draft of the whole Christian scheme, existing in a country neighbouring on Judea, many hundreds of years before it became moulded into its present shape.

Jesus Christ, the son of a king, is offered by God to himself, to avert his own vengeance, and this is repeatedly called the mystery of the Gospel, (Col. i. 26). Had the Gospel been matter of fact, there could have been no mystery in it.

Such a mockery of a dying malefactor, never, in any other instance, disgraced the judicial administration of a Roman magistrate.

The addition of the important words, Jesus of Nazareth, in the later Gospel of St. John, strongly indicates the intention of making the circumstances of a previously existing Gospel apply to a newly-invented name for the old hero.

"THAT the name of CHRISHNA, and the general outline of his story," says the pious and learned Sir William Jones, "were long anterior to the birth of our Saviour, and [p.169] probably to the time of Homer, we know very certainly."—Asiatic Researches, vol. 1, p. 259.

"In the Sanscrit Dictionary, compiled more than two thousand years ago, we have the whole story of the incarnate deity born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping in his infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country."—Ibid. pp. 259, 260. 267. 272, 273.

"I am persuaded," continues this great author, than whom higher authority cannot be adduced, "I am persuaded, that a connection existed between the old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, Greece, and Italy, long before the time of Moses."—Ibid. p. 259.

"Very respectable natives have assured me, that one or two missionaries have been absurd enough in their zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles, to urge, that the Hindus were even now almost Christians; because their Brahma, Vishnou and Mahesa, were no other than the Christian Trinity: a sentence, in which we can only doubt whether folly, ignorance, or impiety, predominates. The Indian triad, and that of Plato, which he calls the Supreme Good, the Reason, and the Soul, are infinitely removed from the holiness and sublimity of the doctrine which pious Christians have deduced from the texts in the Gospel"—Ibid. p. 272.

The celebrated poem Bhagavat, contains a prolix account of the life of Chrishna:—"Chrishna, the incarnate deity of the Sanscrit romance, continues to this hour the darling god of the Indian women. The sect of Hindus, who adore him with enthusiastic and almost exclusive devotion, have broached a doctrine which they maintain with eagerness, that he was distinct from all the avatars (or prophets), who had only a portion of his divinity, whereas Chrishna was the person of Vishnou (God) himself in a human form."²²⁸—Ibid. p. 260.

Chrishna was believed to have been born from the left intercostal rib of a virgin of the royal line of Devaci. "He passed a life of a most extraordinary and incomprehensible nature. His birth was concealed, through tear of the tyrant Cansa, to whom it had been predicted that one born at that time, in that family, would destroy him."—Ibid. p. 259.

"He was fostered, therefore, in Mat’hura, by an honest [p.170] herdsman, surnamed Ananda, or the Happy, and his amiable wife, Yasoda."—Asiatic Researches, vol. 1, p. 260.

"Chrishna, when a boy, slew the terrible serpent Caliya, with a number of serpents and monsters. He passed his youth in playing with a party of milk-maids; and at the age of seven years, he held up a mountain on the tip of his little finger. He saved multitudes, partly by his arms, and partly by his miraculous powers. He raised the dead, by descending for that purpose to the lowest regions. He was the meekest and best-tempered of beings. He washed the feet of the Brahmins, and preached very nobly indeed, and sublimely, but always in their favour. He was pure and chaste in reality, but exhibited an appearance of excessive libertinism; and had wives or mistresses too numerous to be counted. Lastly, he was benevolent and tender, yet fermented and conducted a terrible war."—Ibid. p. 273.

"The adamantine pillars of our faith cannot be shaken by an investigation of heathen mythology. I, who cannot help believing the divinity of the Messiah, from the undisputed antiquity, and manifest completion of many prophecies, &c. am obliged, of course, to believe the sanctity of the venerable books to which that SACRED PERSON refers."—Ibid. p. 233.

The above extracts are taken literally from the 1st volume of the Asiatic Researches, chapter 9th, on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India, written in 1784, and since revised by the president, Sir William Jones.

I have thought it supremely important to present the text of this great author, and leave the reader to draw his own conclusion. Higher authority could not be quoted. One better acquainted with the Hindostanee language, and with the documents and evidence from which such information could be acquired, could hardly be conceived to exist; and certainly, never was any man further from the intention of supplying arms to infidelity. The unquestionable orthodoxy of Sir William Jones must, therefore, give to admissions surrendered by him, the utmost degree of cogency; while his unequalled and unrivalled learning stands as a tower of strength, to render our position impregnable, upon the lines to which he has authorized our advance, and recognized our right.

Nothing in the whole compass of ecclesiastical history has so perplexed and distressed the modern advocates of Christianity, as these surrenders made by their own best [p.171] and ablest champion, to the cause of infidelity, Our evangelical polemics, indeed, lose all temper upon hearing but an allusion to this most unluckily discovered prototype of their Jewish deity. No language of insolence against those who point out the resemblance, is too outrageous---no shift or sophistication to evade or conceal it, too pitiful.

The sun is not more dissimilar to the moon, say our Unitarian divines, than is Chrishna to Christ.²²⁹ No man in his senses, say our evangelicals, could believe that the two personages were identical. Our Methodists²³⁰ meanly and pitifully alter the spelling of the name from the original orthography, which rests on the high authority of Sir William Jones, and invariably print it as Krishnu, or Krishna, to screen the resemblance from the eye’s observance; while they accuse their opponents of spelling it as they do (correctly), for the contrary purpose of making the resemblance more striking.

Dr. Bentley, as a dernier resource, flies to astrology—source inexhaustible of all that is wild in conjecture, and delusive in argumentation, to supply his drowning hypothesis with a straw to swim on. "My attention," says he, ‘was first drawn to this subject, by finding that a great many Hindu festivals marked in the calendar, had every appearance of being modern; for they agreed with the modern astronomy only, and not with the ancient. I observed also several passages in the Geeta having a reference to the new order of things. I was, therefore, induced to make²³¹ particular inquiries about the time of Krishna, who, I was satisfied, was not near so ancient as pretended. In these inquiries, I was told the usual story, that Krishna lived a great many ages ago; that he was contemporary with Yudheshthira; that Garga, the astronomer, was his priest; and that Garga was present at his birth, and [p.172] determined the position of the planets at that moment; which position was still preserved in some books to be found among the astronomers: besides which, there was mention made of his birth in the Harivansa, and other Puranas. These I examined, but found they were insufficient to point out the time;²³² I therefore directed my attention towards obtaining the JANAMPATRA of Krishna, containing the positions of the planets at his birth, which at length I was fortunate to meet with;²³³ from which it appears that Chrishna was born on the 23d of the moon Sravana." The writer then gives the position of the planets at the birth of Krishna, and states that "they place the time of the fiction in the year A.D. 600, on the 7th of August, at midnight."—Bentley on Ancient and Modern Hindu Astronomy, quoted by Mr. Beard, in his 3rd Letter to the Author, p. 90.

Dr. Bentley is indeed a name of first-rate honour among Christian theologues, and is frequently appealed to as one of their highest authorities, "the learned Bentley," "the prince of critics," &c. The reader, however, cannot be better led to judge how he should appreciate this great man’s decision, than by consulting the temper and spirit which appears in the annexed specimen of his manner of answering the objections of unbelievers, and which I find quoted by his zealous admirer—"What a scheme would these men make? What worthy rules would they prescribe to Providence? And pray, to what great use or design? To give satisfaction to a few obstinate, untractable wretches; to those who are not convinced by Moses and the prophets, but want one to come from the dead and convert them! Such men mistake the methods of Providence, and the very fundamentals of religion, which draws its votaries by the cords of a man; by rational, ingenuous, and moral motives; not by conviction mathematical, not by new evidence miraculous, to silence every doubt and whim that impiety and folly can suggest. And yet all this would have no effect upon such spirits and dispositions. If they now believe not Christ and his Apostles, neither would they believe if their own schemes were complied with."—Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, p. 114.

The reader is here in full possession of the Christian argument. He must bear in mind, however, that the argument, as thus far stated, is entirely in Christian hands.

[p.173] Had we ventured to supply to these admissions, the further discoveries which unbelieving historians have made, we might have enriched our matter with the still more striking coincidence of the facts; that the reputed father of Chrishna was a carpenter, and that be was put to death at last between two thieves; after which, he arose from the dead, and returned again to his heavenly seat in Vaicontha; leaving the instructions contained in the Geeta to be preached through the continent of India by his disconsolate son, and disciple Arjun."

Tractable indeed, and easy of faith, must the adopters of Dr. Bentley’s explanation of the matter be, who can suffer evidence of this character, yielded and supplied as it is, by authority as great as any they can pretend, and that authority too, entirely adverse to our deductions, to be swept away by psalmistry, by a calculation of the position of the planets; or defeated by a sagacious discovery of some chronological discrepancy, which Dr. Bentley, who was satisfied that it was there before he looked for it, found in the Janampatra.

The exquisite accuracy of the astrological demonstration, that Krishna was born on the 7th of August, A.D. 600, at midnight; can only be put on the same footing with the chronology of Julius Africanus, who has in like manner demonstrated that the world was made on the 1st of September, and was exactly five thousand five hundred and eight years, three months, and twenty-five days old at the birth of Christ.

The argument against the antiquity of the Hindu mythology, from the discovery that "a great many of its festivals, as now observed, agree with the modern astronomy only, and not with the ancient," is of no more validity, than if it were objected (as with equal truth it might be) that the time of celebrating our Christian festivals has in like manner been accommodated to more modern arrangements of our calendar, and agrees not with the ancient astronomy. When the Hindu astronomers at any time found it convenient to alter their calendar, it was surely as competent in them to make the times of celebrating their ancient festivals agree with their improved knowledge of astronomy; as it was for our Christian astronomers to alter the style, and to fix the celebration. of Easter and Whitsuntide to different seasons of the year from those in which they had been: observed for previous ages.

[p.174] As for all the uncertainty with respect to the alleged time of the birth of Chrishna, there is but little ground for the advantage of Christians, who have never yet been able to fix the date of the day, or month, or even of the year of the birth of Christ.

"The year in which it happened," says Mosheim,²³⁴ "has not hitherto been fixed with certainty, notwithstanding the deep and laborious researches of the learned." The learned John Albert Fabricius has collected all the opinions of the learned on the subject:²³⁵ that which appears most probable is, that it happened about a year and six months before the death of Herod, in the year of Rome 748 or 749. "The uncertainty, however, of this point," continues our great ecclesiastical historian, "is of no great consequence. We know that the Sun of Righteousness has shone upon the world; and although we cannot fix the precise period in which he arose, this will not preclude us from enjoying the direction and influence of his vital and salutary beams."

This is the most unfortunate figure of speech (if it be no more than a figure of speech) that Christians could possibly resort to; since, instead of raising and exalting our ideas of the divine Saviour above all associations with the wild conceits of the heliolatry and idolatry of the heathen world, it brings us at once to the irresistible apprehension, that the Christian Saviour, after all, is no more than what the Æsculapius, Hercules, Adonis, Bacchus, Apollo, and Chrishna were; that is, an emblematical personification of the SUN.

The taking of the name of a thing in any unknown language for the name of a person, would naturally render these personifications infinite; and cause the natural history of things without life to be related or understood as if they had been real adventures of actually existing personages. Hence, have we actions and sufferings, sentiments and affections, and all that could be predicated of rational beings—predicated not only of animals, but of vegetables and inanimate substances, of the works of men’s hands, and even of the abstractions of their thoughts. The ship Argo, in which Jason and his companions sailed for the [p.175] golden fleece, had its imaginary moral qualities; it fought the waves, it suffered, it conquered, it was translated into heaven. The disposition of mind called charity, is described by St. Paul, under all the circumstances that could be imagined of a most accomplished and lovely woman: "She suffereth long, and is kind; she doth not behave herself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked," &c. (I Cor. xiii.); though nothing could be farther from his intention, than that we should take charity to be a person who had a real existence, and fall to the folly of endeavouring to find out when she was born, under what king’s reign, and in what country, &c.; as it may be conjectured some have done with respect to other personifications, whose existence, actions and sufferings, were of an equally metaphorical and figurative origination. But if the identity of the mythological personages, Christ and Christina, and the absolute derivation of the Christian from the Hindu or Brahminical religion, might yet seem matter rather of curious excogitation, than of satisfactory proof; the matter receives the utmost corroboration which any historical fact of such remote antiquity, could be conceived to have, from the entire discomfiture and overthrow of all attempts to evade the conclusion, which we achieve in the strength of further researches, later discoveries, and ampler concessions won from the conviction of the most intelligent of Christians themselves, who have dared to trust themselves with the important investigation.

We have become better acquainted with the evidences of the Christian religion than it was possible for the Lardners, Watsons, or Paleys to have been.—We have means of information which they had not.—We are in possession of intelligence, the result of more extensive research, of more impartial enquiry, and of more recent discoveries, of which they were absolutely ignorant.

No work whatever, of the divines of the now antiquated school of Christian-evidence writers, can be fairly adduced either as authority or argument, against the thousand-fold more formidable array of objections, which have emerged even within the last ten years, from the further concessions made by divines themselves, from the improved powers of reasoning, advanced science, extended knowledge, and greater moral courage of unbelievers, to bring up that science and knowledge to the conflict.

To pretend any longer that infidels insist only on [p.176] arguments that have already been answered, or refuted, is to discover the grossest ignorance of what their arguments really are, and in that ignorance to find the only excuse for what such a pretence really is,—the grossest falsehood.

To pretend to refer the anxious mind for the solution or its doubts to any defence of the Christian religion written earlier than the present century, is but parallel in absurdity to the setting a medical student of the present day to acquire his knowledge of chymistry and physic from the cumbrous folios of Paracelsus, Bombastus, or the Commentaries of Van Sweeten, Hippocrates, and Galen.

After the unmeasured abuse, and bitter vituperations which I have incurred for the prominence which I have given to this most pregnant argument, I find Godfrey Higgins, Esq. of Skellow Grange, Yorkshire, himself a very learned, ingenious²³⁶ and sincere Christian, in his superb work on the Celtic Druids, published by R. Hunter, 1827, thus laying at our feet, the keys of the fortress, in the assault of which, I have taken such hard words, hard usage, and every thing that was hard, except hard arguments:—

"After Baillie, and some other learned astronomers had turned their attention to the ancient astronomical instruments, calculations and observations, of India, it was discovered that they proved the antiquity of the world to be so great, that what was called by our priests, the Mosaic system of chronology, could not be supported. Immediately upon this, they set every engine at work to counteract the effects of the recorded observations of the Hindus, by representing that they are, in fact, merely pretended observations founded on back-reckonings.

"Professor Playfair of Edinburgh, has given the most decisive proofs in the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions,²³⁷ that the Brahmins, to have made the back-reckonings, must have been well acquainted with the most refined of the theoretical improvements of modern astronomy. Instead of having forgot the principles of their formulæ, [p.177] they must have been much more learned than we know they were, and in fact than their ancestors; indeed more learned than our modem astronomers were, until the astronomical theories of Newton were completed very lately, by the discoveries of some of the French philosophers."

"Near the city of Benares, in India, are the astronomical instruments cut out of the solid rock of a mountain, which in former times, were used for making the observations, which Sir William Jones and the priests say, were only back-reckonings. The Bramins of the present day, it is said, do not know the use of them; they are of great size, and tradition states them to be of the most remote antiquity. If the astronomical facts stated in the works of the Bramins, be the effects of the back-reckonings, the Bramins of the present day are as ignorant of the formulæ on which they are grounded, as they are of the nature of the astronomical instruments. If they have become acquainted with them, it is by the instruction of Europeans."

"A gentleman, in the Asiatic Researches, has lately, by means of the most deeply learned and laborious calculations,²³⁸ discovered that the history of Krishna, one of the most celebrated Gods of the Hindoos, was invented in the year of Christ six hundred; and that the story was laid about the beginning of the Christian æra. This goes directly to overthrow all the Hindoo calculations. He has proved this as clear as the sun at noon! He has absolutely demonstrated it! but it is unfortunate for this demonstration, that the statue of this God is to be found in the very oldest caves and temples throughout all India,—temples, the inscriptions on which are in a language used previously to the Sanscrit, and now totally unknown to all mankind, any day to be seen amongst other places, in the city of Seringham, and the temple at Malvalipuram."

It has been moreover satisfactorialy proved, on the authority of a passage of Adrian, that the worship of Krishna was practised in the time of Alexander the Great (330 years before Christ), at what still remains one of the most famous temples of India, the temple of Mathura, on the Jumna, the Matura Deorum of Ptolemy. So much for this astronomical demonstration."—Celtic Druids, pp. 154, 155, 156, 157.

[p.178] It seems the miraculously and stupendously learned Bentley, who was to put all the enemies of the Lord to silence, has reckoned without his host; and in discovering by help of the Janampatra, that, from a certain relative location of the planets, it would appear that Chrishna was born on the 7th of August, A.D. 600, at midnight; it happened most unfortunately for his learned wiseacreship, not to occur to him, that all these facts of the locations of the planets, are PERIODICAL—so that if he be right, that the time of the birth of Chrishna can be inferred from such a location and the circumstances attending it, (a thing in itself very doubtful); all that he will prove, will be, that the pretended birth of this God must have taken place, at a similar part of a period, some time before the war of Alexander the Great. And thus, if we know the length of the period or cycle referred to, we shall know the latest time at which this God was feigned to be born before the birth of Alexander." Mr. Higgins informs us, that when our army, of Indian Seapoys arrived at Thebes in Egypt in the course of the French war, they discovered their favourite God Chrishna, and instantly fell to worshipping, (no doubt the cunning rogues of Bramins²³⁹ came to Egypt in the year 600, and placed his statue amongst the ruins!")

"I made every attempt my time would permit," says Col. Fitzclarence, "to discover the celebrated figure which caused the Hindoos with the Indian contingent, to find fault with the natives of this country, for allowing a temple of Vishnou to fall to ruins; but did not succeed.²⁴⁰

I could say MUCH more," says Mr. Higgins, "on the subject of this temple at Mathura, for it is very curious—but I much prefer letting it alone!!!"— Celtic Druids, p. 157.

In the name of God, what means this letting it alone? Christians have to thank their persecuting City Aldermen, their prompt recourse to the arguments of stone and iron, their Dorchester and Oakham; that when really learned and intelligent men tread on the threshhold of the most important discoveries, they much prefer "letting it alone," and leaving us to guess, where we might certainly have known.

In this dilemma, we may guess with a conviction little short of certainty—that it was never a little that priests would boggle at—1. That the celebrated figure which Col. Fitzclarence was hindered from seeing, would have established [p.179] the absolute identity of the Indian Chrishna and the Egyptian Christ:

In confirmation of this guess (if it be no more), we have the further light of an admission from the Rev. Mr. Maurice, of the curious fact, that "the two principal pagodas of India, viz., those of Benares and Mathura, are built in the form of crosses."²⁴¹

2. That the grounds on which the Hindoos found fault with the British government for allowing a temple of Vishnou to fall to ruins, was, that the Christian religion was absolutely one and the same with the ancient Hindoo idolatry:

3. That the travelling Egyptian Therapeuts brought the whole story from India to their monasteries in Egypt, where, some time about the commencement of the Roman monarchy, it was transmuted into Christianity. The tales that had been previously told of the idol of the Ganges, were transferred to the twice-living demon of the Jordan, precisely as we see the histories of the Grecian heroes, plagiarized and told over again of Romans. Thus the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii, had been related under different names, but with the same circumstances, by Democrates, apud Stobæum. The action of Mutius Scævola was told before of Agesilaus, and that of. Curtius precipitating himself into the gulf, has been ascribed also to a son of King Midas. See also Pagan heroes turned into Christian saints, out of number: indeed, half the saints of the Roman calendar are heathen gods and goddesses, and like the Jewish Jesus, a false creation proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.

4. And lastly, that the Missionaries engaged by the East India Company, and otherwise sent to India for the ostensible purpose of propagating the gospel, are employed really in the diametrically opposite work, of doing their utmost to suppress it; and to carry on the counsel which we see guiding their machinations at home, suppressing evidence, perverting facts, destroying or hindering the monuments of antiquity from coming to the knowledge of the community, persecuting, and railing at infidels, and keeping up that state of general ignorance and consequent devotion, that best disposes enslaved and degraded millions to bow to the yoke of tyranny, and "to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters."

CICERO mentions four of this name. Pausanias and Herodotus, rank Apollo among the Egyptian deities. Diodorus Siculus expressly states, that Isis, after having invented the practice of medicine, taught this art to her son Orus, named also Apollo, who was the last of the Gods that reigned in Egypt. It is easy to trace almost all the Grecian fables and mythologies from Egypt. If the Apollo of the Greeks, was said to be the son of Jupiter, it was because Orus, the Apollo of the Egyptians, had Osiris for his father, whom the Greeks confounded with Jupiter. If the Greek Apollo were reckoned the God of eloquence, music, medicine, and poetry, the reason was, that Osiris, who was the symbol of the sun among the Egyptians, as well as his son Orus, had there taught those liberal arts. If the Greek Apollo were the God and conductor of the muses, it was because Osiris carried with him in his expedition to the Indies, singing women and musicians. This parallel might be carried still further, but enough has been said to prove that the true Apollo was probably of Egypt. Plutarch, however, has decisively shown, that the Egyptians worshipped the SUN under the name of Osiris; and as Osiris was believed to have travelled into India, and there established civilization and religion, we see at once enough to account for the same God coming to be worshipped in India under a designation in the language of that country expressive of the same sense as Chrishna, that is, the Sun. Many have doubted whether Apollo were a real personage, or only the great luminary. Vossius has taken pains to prove this God to be only an ideal being., and that there never was any Apollo but the sun. All the ceremonies performed to his honour, had a manifest relation to the great source of light which he represented; whence, this learned writer concludes it to be in vain to seek for any other divinity than the sun, adored under the name Apollo.

Without any wish to overthrow or to conflict against a conclusion founded upon such just and incontrovertible premises, one yet cannot restrain one’s wish to have known whether so sincere a Christian, in considering the language ascribed to the God Apollo, and the manifest relation to the great source of light in all [p.181] the ceremonies performed to his honour, as constituting a complete demonstration, that such a personage as Apollo never had any real existence, and that it was the sun, and the sun only that was worshipped under that designation; whether he had found any clearer references to the source of light in that language and those ceremonies, than—

1. That God should be believed to have said of himself, "I am the light of the world."—John ix. 5. "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness."—John xii. 46.

2. "He hath sent me to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."—Luke iv. 19.

3. That his sacred legends should abound only with such expressions as can have no possible or conceivable. application, but to the God of day: "A light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory (or brightness) of his people."—Luke ii. 32.

4. That this should be the express message which his apostles, or months, were to declare concerning him, that, "God is light, and in him, is no darkness at all."—1 John i. 5.

5. That his sincerest worshippers should usually have addressed him in such phrases as "Phosphore redde diem"—

6. "Lighten our darkness we beseech thee Adonai, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."—Collect, in Evening Service.

8. "Merciful Adonai, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy church."—Collect of St. John.

9. "O God, who, by the leading of a star, didst manifest thy only begotten Son to the nations."—Collect of the Epiphany.²⁴²

14. "When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou passest through the constellation, or zodiacal sign—the Virgin."

15. "When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of winter, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven,—i.e. bring on the reign of the summer months, to all believers" And why is it that there should not be one single phrase or form of speech either in the New Testament or in our best Catholic or Protestant liturgies, but in the most strict and literal sense is predicable of the SUN, but cannot without an inflected and considerably strained use of speech, and still more strained effort of the understanding, apply to the person of a man. Resurgere, to rise again; and ascendere in cælum, to ascend into heaven, are expressions so plain and obvious, as that we could hardly find any to express the literal sense, nearer, of what we witness of the rising and setting sun every day of our lives; whereas ‘tis only by a most awkward and violent catachresis in language, that they can be made to convey their theological significancy.

16. "All are agreed," says Cicero, "that Apollo is none other than the Sun, because the attributes which are commonly ascribed to Apollo do so wonderfully agree thereto."²⁴³

We are not allowed, however, to assume, that reasoning so incontrovertibly just and conclusive with respect to the Pagan deity, would hold in any parity of application to Jesus Christ, whom his holy Apostle so emphatically distinguishes as being "the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."—John i. 9.

There can be no doubt but that Apollo was more generally received in the Pagan world than any other deity, his worship being so universal, that in almost every region he had temples, oracles, and festivals, as innumerable as his various names and attributes. Among the most conspicuous of his oracles were those of Phocis, at Claros in Ionia, at Delos, Delphi, and Didyma,²⁴⁴ on Mount Ismenus, in Bœotia, at Larissa among the Argives, and at Heliopolis in Egypt.

[p.183] The Egyptians sometimes symbolized him by a radiated circle, and at others by a sceptre with an eye above it—a symbol which we see at. this day consecrated to the representation of the Christian Providence. Nor should we forget the claims of his ministers to a peculiar character of sanctity and holiness, which we may well wonder how they should ever come to surrender to the pretensions of preachers of Christianity: unless, indeed, we should venture to imagine that there was never any real difference between them, and that the priests of Apollo and of Jesus were ministers of the same religion, and of one and the same deity, under different names. ‘Tis certain, that Apollo, had a celebrated shrine at Mount Soracte in Italy, where his priests were so remarkable for sanctity, and holiness, of heart, and life, that they could walk on burning coals unhurt."—Bell’s Panth. in loco.

Parkhurst, in his "Hebrew Lexicon, under the word [Hebrew] 4, informs us, that "the [Hebrew]—‘Praise ye Jah!’ or ‘Hallelujah!’ which the Septuagint have left untranslated, [Greek], which begins and ends so many of the Psalms, ascribed to David, was a solemn form of praise to God, which, no doubt, was far prior to the time of David; since the ancient Greeks had their similar acclamation, [Greek]—‘Hallelujee!’ with which they both began and ended their pæans, or hymns, in honour of Apollo."

THIS god calls for no further notice in our inquiry, than from the circumstance of his having been distinguished in the Pagan world by the evangelical title of the Logos, or the WORD—"The Word that in the beginning was with God, and that also was a God."

Our Christian writers, from whose partial pens we are now obliged to gather all they will permit us to know of the ancient forms of piety, discover considerable apprehension, and a jealous caution in their language, where the resemblance between Paganism and Christianity might be apt to strike the mind too cogently. Where Horace gives us a very extraordinary account of [p.184] Mercury’s descent into hell,²⁴⁵ and his causing a cessation of the sufferings there,²⁴⁶ our Christian mythologist checks our curiosity, by the sudden break off—"As this perhaps may be a mystical part of his character, we had better let. it alone."—Bell’s Panth. vol. 2. p. 72. But the further back we trace the evidences of the Christian religion, the less concerned we find its advocates to maintain, or even to pretend that there was any difference at all between the essential doctrines of Christianity and Paganism.

AMMONIUS SACCUS, a learned Christian Father, towards the end of the second century, had taught with the highest applause in the Alexandrian school, that "all the Gentile religions, and even the Christian, were to be illustrated and explained by the principles of an universal philosophy; but that, in order to this, the fables of the priests were to be removed from Paganism, and the comments and interpretations of the disciples of Jesus from Christianity;²⁴⁷ while Justin Martyr, the first and most distinguished apologist for the Christian religion, who wrote within fifty years of the time of the Evangelist St. John, boldly challenges the respect of the emperor Adrian and his son, as due to the Christian religion, just exactly on the score of its sameness and identity with the ancient Paganism.

"For by declaring the Logos, the first begotten of God, our Master, Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin without any human mixture, to be crucified and dead, and to have risen again into heaven; we say no more in this, than what you say of those whom you style the sons of Jove, &c. As to the son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of the Son of God is very justifiable upon the account of his wisdom, considering that you have your MERCURY in worship under the title of THE WORD, and Messenger of God."—Reeve’s Apologies of the Fathers, vol. 1, London, 1716.

Justin might, if he had pleased, have been still more particular, and have shown, that "among the Gauls, more than a hundred years before the Christian era, in the district of Chartres, a festival was annually celebrated to the honour of the Virgo Paritura, the virgin that should bring forth."—Dupuis, tom. 3, p. 51, 4to edit.

[p.185] Gonzales also writes, that among the Indians he found a temple Parituræ Virginis, of the virgin about to bring forth.

The good Christian Father Epiphanias glories in the fact, that the prophecy, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son," had been revealed to the Egyptians.—Celtic Druids, p. 163. This prophecy, however, should rather have been revealed to the Irish, as it’s literal accomplishment is so strikingly of a piece with the equally authentic miracles of their patron saint, who sailed across the ocean upon a mill-stone, and contrived to heat an oven red-hot with nothing but ice.—"Life of the glorious Bishop St. Patrick, by Fr. B. B., St. Omers, 1625, by licence of the Censors of Louvaine, of the Bishop of St. Omers, and of the Commissary and Definitor-general of the Seraphic Order."

The celebrated passage, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," &c. (John i. 1.) is a fragment of some Pagan treatise on the Platonic philosophy, and as such is quoted by Amelius, a Pagan philosopher, as strictly applicable to the Logos, or Mercury, the WORD, as early as the year 263; and is quoted appropriately as an honourable testimony borne to the Pagan deity, by a barbarian.

With no intention further off, than that of recognizing the claims of any human being to that title, Amelius has the words, "And this plainly was the WORD, by whom all things were made, he being himself eternal, as Heraclitus also would say; and by Jove, the same whom the barbarian affirms to have been in the place and dignity of a principal, and to be with God, and to be God, by whom all things were made, and in whom every thing that was made, has its life and being; who, descending into body, and putting on flesh, took the appearance of a man, though even then he gave proof of the majesty of his nature; nay, and after his dissolution, he was deified again."²⁴⁸

This is the language of one, of whom there is not the least pretence to show that he was a believer of the [p.186] Gospel, or even if he had ever heard of it, that he did not reject it; it was the language of clear, undisguised, and unmingled Paganism. The Logos then, or Word, was a designation purely and exclusively appropriate to the Pagan mythology.

The Valentinians, a sect of Christian heretics of the first century, approximated so closely to Paganism, as to respect and believe a regular theogony, holding, according to Cyrill, that Depth produced Silence, and upon Silence begat the Logos.²⁴⁹

Was the god of good-cheer, wine, and hilarity; and as such, the poets have been eloquent in his praises. On all occasions of mirth and jollity, they constantly invoked his presence,²⁵⁰ and as constantly thanked him for the blessings he bestowed. To him they ascribed the greatest happiness of which humanity is capable,—the forgetfulness of cares, and the delights of social intercourse. It has been usual for Christians invariably to represent this God as a sensual encourager of inebriation and excess; and reason enough it must be admitted that they have, for giving such a colouring to the matter; since, only by so doing, could they conceal the resemblance which an impartial observance would immediately discover between the Phoenician YESUS,²⁵¹ who taught mankind the culture of the vine, and so without a miracle changed their drink from mere water into wine, "which cheereth God and man," (Judges, ix. 13), and the Egyptian Jesus, who, by a manoeuvre upon half a dozen water-pots, was believed to have persuaded a company of intoxicated guests, that he had turned water into wine; of which the narrator of the story, with a striking tone of sarcasm, remarks, "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory ; and his disciples believed on him," (John ii. 11). As much as to say, that his disciples only would be the advocates of so egregious an imposture. "He manifested forth his glory;" that is, his [p.187] peculiar mythological character, as THE GOD OF WINE, which was in like manner the peculiar characteristic of Bacchus.

The real origin of the mystical three letters I H S, surrounded with rays of glory, to this day retained even in our Protestant churches, and falsely supposed to stand for Jesus Hominum Salvator, is none other than the identical name of Bacchus—YES, exhibited in Greek letters, [Greek].—See Hesychius on the word [Greek], i.e. YES, Bacchus, Sol, the Sun.

The well-paid apologists of this and all other absurdities that have obtained their translation from Pagan into Christian legends, in vain endeavour to blink the obscenity betrayed in their Greek text. This miracle was not performed till all the witnesses of it were in the last stage of intoxication. "Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now," is the remark of the Architriclinus, or ruler of the feast, the only individual, perhaps, except those who contributed to the juggle, who could speak at all. "Hast kept the good wine until now;" that is to say, "Till now, that it is all over with them, and you see them sprawling under the table, or scarce knowing whether their heads or heels are uppermost." The original text supports this sense, as the same will be found in the drunken odes of Anacreon: "To arms! But I shall drink. Boy, bring me the goblet! for I had rather lie dead drunk, than dead."²⁵²

Nothing short of a debility of intellect produced by religious enthusiasm, similar to the sedative effects of frequently-repeated intoxication, could have hindered Christians from seeing the deep and pungent sarcasm on their religion involved in this drunken miracle, which a moment’s rational reflection would expose. In any sense but that of an imposition practised upon men’s senses, the miracle involves a physical impossibility, and a moral contradiction. In no idea that a rational mind can form of the power of God himself, can we conceive that he could make a thing to be and not to be, and at the same time; or so operate on the past, as to cause that to have been, which really had not been. That fluid, therefore, [p.188] whatever it was, which had not been pressed out of the grape,—which had not been generated, concocted, matured and exuded through the secretory ducts of the vine, drawn up by its roots out of the earth, circulated through its capillary tubes, and effunded into its fruit, could not be wine, nor could God himself make it to be so.

The more shrewd and political among those who profess and call themselves Christians, have avowed themselves not a little ashamed of this miracle, have seen and recognized its palpably Pæan character, and sighed, and wished that it were peacefully apocryphized out of its place in the sacred volume.

Our only moral use of these Christian admissions shall be to remind our readers, for the advantage of some further stage of our argument, that we have here, in the very volume which has so long been pretended to contain "truth without any mixture of error," an affair not only decidedly and unequivocally fabulous, but physically impossible; and this re-edited under an apparatus of Christian names, and told with circumstances of time, place and character—stet exempli gratia!

The Egyptian Bacchus was brought up at Nysa, and is famous as having been the conqueror of India. In Egypt he was called Osiris, in India Dionysius, and not improbably Chrishna, as he was called Adoneus, which signifies the Lord of Heaven, or the LORD AND GIVER OF LIGHT, in Arabia; and Liber; throughout the Roman dominions, from whence is derived our term liberal, for every thing that is generous, frank, and amiable.

Though egregiously scandalized by the moderns, as all the Pagan divinities are, where Christians are the carvers, he was far otherwise understood by the ancients. The intention of his imagined presence at the festive board was to restrain and prevent, and, not to authorize excess. His discipline prescribed the most strict sobriety, and the most rational and guarded temperance in the use of his best gift to man, which wisely used, exalts as much our moral as it does our physical energies, endears man to man, gives vigour to his understanding, life to his wit, and inspiration to his discourse. Bacchus was, in the strictest and fairest sense of the word, a pure and holy [p.189] god; he was deity rendered amiable. He is called by Horace in general the modest God, the decent God. The finest moral of his allegorical existence is, that he was never to be seen in company with Mars; so that he had juster claims than any other to be designated "the Prince of Peace." Orpheus,²⁵³ however, directly states that Bacchus was a lawgiver, calls him MOSES, and attributes to him the two tables of the law.²⁵⁴ It is well known, however, that his characteristic attribute was immortal boyhood; and since it is admitted that no real Bacchus ever existed, but that he was only a mask or figure of some concealed truth, (see Horace’s inimitable ode to this deity,) there can be no danger of our dropping the clue of his allegorical identification, in winding it through all the mazes of his vocabulary of names, and all the multifarious personifications of the same primordial idea.

But the most striking circumstance of this particular emblem of the SUN is, that in all the ancient forms of invocation to the SUPREME BEING, we find the very identical expressions appropriated to the worship of Bacchus; such as, Io Terombe!—Let us cry unto the Lord! Io! or Io Baccoth!—God, see our tears! Jehovah Evan! Hevoe! and Eloah!—The Author of our existence, the mighty God! Hu Esh!—Thou art the fire! and Elta Esh!—Thou art the life ! and Io Nissi!—O Lord, direct us! which last is the literal English of the Latin motto in the arms of the City of London retained to this day, "Domine dirige nos." The Romans, out of all these terms, preferred the name of BACCOTH, of which they composed Bacchus. The more delicate ear of the Greeks was be

Gospels.	Places.	A. D.
St. Matthew’s.	Judea, or near it.	About 64
St. Mark’s.	Rome.	About 64
St. Luke’s.	Greece.	About 63 or 64
St. John’s.	Ephesus.	About 68
The Acts of the Apostles.	Greece.	About 63 or 64

Epistles.	Places.	A. D.
1 Thessalonians.	Corinth.	About 52
2 Thessalonians.	Corinth.	About 52
Galatians.	Corinth or Ephesus.	{Near the end of 52
		{or the beginning of 53
1 Corinthians.	Ephesus.	The beginning of 56
1 Timothy.	Macedonia.	56
Titus.	Macedonia, or near it.	Before the end of 56
2 Corinthians.	Macedonia.	About October 57
Romans.	Corinth.	About February 58
Ephesians.	Rome.	About April 61
2 Timothy.	Rome.	About May 61
Philippians.	Rome.	Before the end of 62
Colossians.	Rome.	Before the end of 62
Philemon.	Rome.	Before the end of 62
Hebrews.	Rome or Italy.	In the spring of 63

Epistles. &c.	Places.	A. D.
The Epistles of St. James.	Judea.	61, or the beginning of 62
The two Epistles of St. Peter.	Rome.	64
St. John’s first Epistle.	Ephesus.	About 80
His second and third Epistles.	Ephesus.	Between 89 and 90
The Epistle of St. Jude.	Unknown.	64 or 65
The Revelation of St. John.	Patmos or Ephesus	95 or 96

ÆSCULAPIUS	JESUS CHRIST
MR. ADDISON’S versification of the prophecies which foretold the life and actions of Æsculapius, from the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Once, as the sacred infant she surveyed The god was kindled in the raving maid;¹⁹⁵ And thus she uttered her prophetic tale, "Hail, great physician of the world! All hail. Hail mighty infant, who in years to come, Shalt heal the nations, and defraud the tomb! Swift be thy growth, thy triumphs unconfined, Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind. Thy daring art shall animate the dead, And draw the thunder on thy guilty head; Then shalt thou die, but from the dark abode Shalt rise victorious, and be twice a god."	MR. POPE’S versification of the prophecies which foretold the life and actions of Jesus Christ, from the prophecies of Isaiah. Ye nymphs of Solyma begin the song! O thou my voice inspire, That touched Isaiah’s hallowed lips with fire, Rapt into future times the bard begun— A virgin shall conceive, a virgin bear a son. Swift fly the years, and rise th’ expected morn— O spring to light, auspicious babe be born. He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, And on the sightless eyeball pour the day: ‘Tis he, th’ obstructed paths of sound shall clear And bid new music charm th’ unfolding ear; The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego And leap exulting like the bounding roe.
Reason at once rejects all ideas of prophecy as being the most childish and foolish conceit that could possibly cross the mind; a knowledge of future events being no more possible to the human mind, than to fly in the air is to the body. We may be told sometimes of an extraordinary guess, as we may of a wonderful jump; but neither flight nor [p.149] prophecy are attributes of man—and no rational man will consider the pretence to such a faculty, in any other light, than as a certain evidence of imposture, by whomsoever or in what cause soever, advanced.¹⁹⁶	"And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser. She was of a great age, and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity. And she was a widow of about four-score and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in at that instant, gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Israel, Luke ii. 36." This is one of the many passages which the Unitarian editors of the improved version wish to have rejected, assigning as one among their several reasons against it, that "though found in all manuscripts and versions extant, it was introduced with a view to elevate the crucified Jesus to the dignity of the heroes and demigod of the heathen mythology."—p. 121.

THE DIEGESIS;

By the Rev. Robert Taylor A.B. & M.R.C.S.

THE
DIEGESIS;