iWfilfSKS i:Lfc 5^ o^ o^ ^^^ o^ "^^ OF THK • AT PRINCETON, N. J. x> o rv _'vr T o ::v^ c> i*- SAMUEL AGNE\V, OK PHILADELPHIA, PA. 9 r % ShvJj\ / ^ AN AN S WER TO A PRINTED PAPKR liNTITt.EO " MANIFESTO OF THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY ;" TO WHICH IS ANNEXED, A REJOINDER TO A PAMPHLET BY THE SAME AUTHOR, THE REV. ROBERT TAYLOR, A.B. " SYNTAGMA OF THE EVIDENCES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION." BY JOHN PYE SMITH, D.D. Faith is an act of Reason." Baxter's Life of Faith; Pt. ii. cli. i. " The Christian Faith, Unlike the timorous creeds of pagan priests. Is frank, stands forth to view, inviting all To prove, examine, search, investigate : And gave herself a light to see her by." Pollok's CoiRSE OF Ti.ME; Book IV.. PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION. LONDON; SOLD BY R. DAVIS, 5, PATERNOSTER ROW; HOLDSWORTH AND BALL, ST. PAUL's CHURCH YARD; SIMPKIN AND MARSHALL, AND WESTLEY AND DAVIS, STATIONERS* COURT; HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. PATERNOSTER ROW; FISHER, SON, AND JACKSON, NEWGATE STREET; AND J. NISBET, BERNERS STREET, OXFORD STREET. 1829. Price Eighteen-pence. CONTENTS. Section Pate I, On the General Evidence of the Genuineness of the Cliristian Scriptures .......... 3 II. Pretence of Acts and Edicts for the Alteration of the Scriptures . 4 III. On the Allegation of an Alteration of the Gospels in the Reign of Anastasius ib, IV. On the Assertion, that Archbishop Lanfranc effected an Alteration of the Scriptures . . . . . ' . . . . » V. On the Nature of Various Readings, and the Inferences to be drawn from them .......... 9 VI. On the Story of the Rocket-Maker 15 VII. The Apocalypse ascribed to Erasmus 18 VIII. The Origin and Character of the Text, in the Common Editions of the Greek Testament ib. IX. The Charge of an Immoral Tendency brought against the Scriptures 20 X. On the Ancient Forgeries under the Name of Gospel Histories . 22 XI. Proofs of the real Existence of Jesus and the Authenticity of ihe Gospel History 24 XII. On the Allegation, that the Gospel Narratives are derived from tlie Idolatrous Fictions of Greece and India 31 Supplementary Note, upon passages in which any material alteration is produced by the Various Readings 33 REJOINDER. Mr. Taylor's character as a Controversialist 36 The Author's disavowal of persecuting principles . . . . .37 Sources of information, upon the Public Notoriety which evinces tlie genuineness of tiie Christian Scriptures — Citations fron> Mr. Isaac Taylor, jun., on the nature of this proof 38 Mr. Taylor's evasions, upon the imperial authority— His appeal to Mosheim — His dishonest mode of quotation — The real facts of the cast alluded to — The just inferences from them 40 Mr. Taylor's disgraceful ignorance— His misrepresentations of Bishop Marsh— and of Sir J. D. Michaelis— Citations from Miclunjlis, on the invincible evidence of the authenticity of the New Testament . . 43 On the statement with regard to Lanfranc— The passage from Ucausobrc illustrated 4G On Cardinal Ximenes's Polyglott— The most recent information, shewing that the manuscripts were not destroyed— Mr. Taylor's deceptive mode of arguing, and perfect disregard of truth ^7 iv CONTENTS. Pnge His rage at the mention of the honest martyr, and the probable motive of it 51 Instances of his extreme ignorance, or of dishonesty, in his interpretations of Scripture passages — and in his reference to Chillingworth and other writers ............ 52 His ignorance and presumption vvidi respect to some modern German critics and divines — Controversy relative to the Gospel of John — Account of the Rationalists, with citations from one of tlieir ablest writers . . 57 His misrepresentations relative to the Spurious Gospels — Passages from Jones, De Beausobre, and Mosheim — Mr. Taylor's habitual fraudu- lence in citing authors ......... 65 The results of Olshausen's Researches into the Genuineness of the Four Gospels 69 Further misrepresentations of Mr. Taylor, relative to passages in Mosheim and Jones ........... 72 His persisting misrepresentations with respect to the Grecian and Roman Mythology, and the Hindoo Crishna . . . . . .73 Answers to his Twenty-One Queries . . . . t . .76 His misrepresentations of Justin Martyr — Tertullian — Augustine — Origen —Irenseus — Cicero 79,81,84,85,89,90 His misrepresentations of the Christian Eucharist .... 81,85 His misrepresentation of the fable of Prometheus — and the Sibylline Verses 90 A single consideration, addressed to Deists 91 PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE rescued from Mr. Taylor's Misrepresentations. Matt. vi. 7. . 56 1 Cor. i. 23. . 78 14. . 33 iv. 1. . 53 xi. 12. . 55 xvi. 22. . 78 xvi. 18. . . ib. 2 Cor. iii. 6. . 52 xviii. 17. . . ib. xi. 13. . 78 xix. 12. . . ib. Gal. i. 6. . . 82 Mark i. 1. . . . . 77 iii. 15. . 53 John v. 4. . 33 V. 12. . 79 vi. 51,&c. . 81 Phil. iii. 2. . 78 viii. 1, &c. . 33 1 Tim. iii. 16. . 34 xii. 28. . 84 2 Tim. ii. 8. . 82 xiv. 2 . 55 Heb. i. 3. . 79 Acts iv. 27, 30. . 83 ix. 16, 17. . 53 vii. 52. . 79 2 Pet. ii. 2. . 50 XV. 36—41 . 77 1 John iv. 2. . 80 XX. 28. . 34 V. 7, 8. . 34 Rom. iii. 7. . . 83 ANSWER TO A PAPER ENTITLED - MANIFESTO OF THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY." It is scarcely possible to imagine a more flagrant instance of the utterance of audacious falsehood, than is in the case before us. In most instances of even extreme and deplorable error, it is apparent that ig-norance, inattention, a refusal to go to the proper sources of information, or some other prt\judice, lies at the root ; and that, therefore, blameable as sucii a state of mind cannot but be, it is possible to entertain some hope that the person who is its subject may be sincere in the declarations which he makes. But when a man comes forward with a parade of learning- and authority, and with an ostentatious reference to the titles of books, to chapters, pages, and passages marked as quotations ; and when, after all, the fact is that this display is fallacious, that the books and passages referred to say no such thing as is imputed to them, but indeed the very contrary, and that the professed quotations are grossly falsified; what con- clusion can the most lenient mind arrive at, but that the person so acting is a dishonest man, a false witness, a wilful deceiver ? The case thus supposed is realized, in a very awful manner, in a paper lately circulated in London, intituled " Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society." The unhappy writer of that paper adirms certain Propositions, and subjoins what he wishes to be accepted as proof of them. These we shall examine in detail. " Puop. I. That the Scriptures of the New Testament were not written by the persons whose names they bear. " Proofs. Because it cannot be shewn, by any evidence, lluU lliey wore written by tlie persons whose names they bear; and because it can be shewn, by evidence both external and internal, tliat they were written by other persons. By evidence external : in the forn)al acts and edicts of Christian Kmperors, Bishops, and Councils, issued from time to time, for the general alteration, or total renovation, of these Scriptures, according to their own caprice. [INotf.. Such were those of the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, and tins ot the Emperor Anastasius : ' Wlien iMessaia was Consul (that is, m the year oi K Christ 50(3) at Constantinople, by order of the Emperor Anastasius, the Holy Gospels, as being written by illiterate Evangelists, are censured and corrected,' Victor Tununensis, an African Bishop, quoted by Lardncr, Vol. III. p. 67. See also an account of a general alteration of these Scriptures, ^to accominodute them to the faUh of the orthodox,' by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, as recorded by Beausobre, Histoire de Manich^e, Vol. I. p. 343.] And in the admissions of the most learned critics and divines, as to the alterations which these Scriptures have from time to time undergone. [Note, (1st.) 'There were, in the MSS. of the N. T. one hundred and thirty thousand various readings.' Unitar. New Version, p. 22. (2d.) ' The manuscripts from which the received text was taken, were stolen by the librarian, and sold to a sky- rocket maker, in the year 1749.' Herbert Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough, Vol. n. p. 441. (3d.) For the Book of Revelation there was no original Greek at all, but 'Erasmus wrote it himself in Switzerland, in the year 1516.' Bishop Marsh, Vol. I. p. 320.] By evidence internal : in the immoral, vicious, and wicked tendency of many passages therein remaining; and by the insertion of others, whose anly drift is to enhance the power of kings and priests, [Note. See Rom. iii. 7; 1 John ii. 10; Heb. xii. 29; Rom. xiii ; 1 Pet. ii. 13; Lukexiv. 26; &c.J" "Prop. II. That they [llie Scriptures of the New Testament] did not appear in the times to which they refer, is demonstrable. By evidence ex- ternal, in the express admissions of Ecclesiastical historians, of their utter inability to shew when, or where, or bi/ whom this collection of writings was first made. [See Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. — Jones on the Canon, &c., passim.] And in the admissions of the most learned critics, as to the infinitely suspicious origination of the present Received Text. ['The Received Text rests upon the authority of no more than twenty or thirty manuscripts, most of which are of little note.' Unitar, Vers. Introd. p. 10. ' It was completed by the Elzevir edition of 1624.' ib. Mark well ! the retaining therein and circulating as the word of God, with consent or connivance of all parties, several passages known and admitted by all to be forgeries and lies. 1 John v. 7; 1 Tim, iii. ig. Excellent morality this ! !]" It is no small trial of patience to an npright mind to see printed and circulated these most shameful misrepresentations, these unblushing falsehoods, uttered with a front of such dog- matical assurance. But we shall reply to them all in order. SECTION I. ON THE GENERAL EVIDENCE OF THE GENUINENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES. Our summary reply to the assertion with which this writer sets out, is this. We have the most saiisfactoi-y evidence that the Books of the New Testament were written at the time which they intimate, and by the persons to whom the}' are attributed.* Several of them do not " bear" any name in the beg-inning or body of the composition itself: but for these, as well as the others, the evidence of genuineness is very satis- factory. The intelligent reader scarcely needs to be told that the titles, at the head of each book, were prefixed, not by the authors, but by the early transcribers. That circumstance, however, in itself involves a proof of the general belief and notoriety that those books were the genuine productions of the writers whose names were familiarly attached to them. There are well-known heathen books, some belonging nearly to the period of the New Testament, and others to times long before ; and no rational man doubts that they were the real productions of the persons to whom they are attributed. But what is our evidence of this ? How do we know the genuineness of the works of Thucydides, Xenophon, and Demosthenes, among the Greeks ; or of Cicero, Caesar, and Livy, among the Romans ? I answer, by the only evidence applicable to such cases, and with which the common sense of mankind is universally satisfied ; PUBLIC NOTORIETY, transmitted to the successive generations of men by their predecessors, up to the epoch in etich case referred to, and this transmitted knowledge often attested by the allusions or quotations of subsequent authors. Thus the whole of literary history is continued down to our own days. Upon such evidence rs this it is, that we regard the books composing the New Testament as genuine and authentic. The)- stand upon the ground of Public Notoriety, reaching back to the times to which they belong : they have been referred to. quoted, and commented upon, by a succession of autliors from those times downwards : and they were translated, at very early periods, into the princii)al languages of the civilized world. The challenge may be fearlessly made, to produce any writings approaching to the same professed antiquity, whose genuine- ness is supported by evidence equally abundant and unex- ceptionable, r. • 1 r- The assertions so pompously blazoned as "Evidence Ex- ternal" are a mass partly of shameful misrepresentations and partly of downright falsehoods. We must take them oiu; by one. * The parliculnrs of tliis evidence are too extensive to be defaileJ here, and they are accessible in the works of numerous and well known authors, from Grotius down to Lardner, Porteus, and Paloy. B 2 SECTION II. PRETENCE OF ACTS AND EDICTS FOR THE ALTERATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. This writer speaks, with the utmost confidence, of " Acts and Edicts for the general alteration or total renovation of these Scriptures." It is scarcely possible to imagine a gTosser un- truth than this assertion. Nothing of the kind is to be found in history. With respect to Constantine and Theodosius, the writer of the Manife-;to has dishonourably omitted any mention of the year when it is pretended that such an Act occurred, or of the book in which any record of it may be found. Let him point them out, and we will impartially examine them. In the raean time, if the reader chooses to refer to the Life of Con- stantine by his intimate friend Eusebius, (book iv. chap. 36, 37,) he will find some clear and positive evidence upon the care and diligence which were exercised in making copies of the Scrip- tures. If any kind of alterations had been made, or even thought of, by the Emperor or the persons in civil or eccle- siastical authority, some allusion to them could hardly have failed to occur in that passage. SECTION III. ON THE ALLEGATION OF AN ALTERATION OF THE GOSPELS IN THE REIGN OF ANASTASIUS. The passage from Victor,* an obscure author who wrote a Chronicle of about twelve pages, of which this sentence is an article, is indeed fairly transcribed from Dr. Lardner's trans- lation of it, in his great and never answered work. The Cre- dibility of the Gospel History. But mark the honesty of this Manifesto-writer. He copies the passage which makes for his purpose, and which he would, in all reasonable probability, never have known of, had not that Christian Advocate furnished him with it : but he says not a syllable of the evidence, which was before him in the very same page, of the total falsehood of the statement, as it is professed to be understood by some modern infidels. The facts of the case are these. Anastasius I. ascended the throne of the Eastern Empire in the year 491, and reigned twenty-eight years. During the greater part of his reign he was exceedingly unpopular, and was involved in the most dis- tressing tumults and sanguinary civil wars. His enemies, both on political and on religious accounts, were very numerous, active, and powerful. On the supposition that he, or any other * " Messala V. C. consule, Constantinopoli jubente imperatore sancta evangelia, tanquam ab idiotis evangelistis composita, reprehenduntur et emendantur." person, had attempted an alteration of the received text of the Gospels, or any part of the Scriptures whatever, the following considerations present themselves. 1. Anastasius would have brought upon himself the outcry of censure and indignation, from all parties and classes of men professing Christianity. Those parties were considerable in both numbers and influence, and they were full of jealousy and vigilance towards each other. If the partizans, on any one side, had been dishonest and daring enough to make altera- tions in the public copies of the sacred books, or any parts of them, they would have been immediately detected by their opponents, and- ignominy would have followed the exposure. A circumstance quite in point occurred to this very Emperor. He directed what he looked upon as an amendment to be made, by the omission of only a little clause of four words, in an anthem which was used in public worship. The innovation was resisted with so much violence by the people of Constanti- nople, that many lives were lost, Anastasius was obliged to take refuge on board a ship, and it was with extreme difiiculty and the most humiliating concessions that he escaped dethronement. Who can believe that he could have succeeded in an enter- prise, infinitely more hazardous, and which all parties would have regarded as most criminal, that of altering the text of the Holy Gospels ? 2. It is fair and proper to inquire by what conceivable means any mortal could have made such an att< mpt. The art of printing not being invented till nearly a thousand years after, books were at that time multiplied only by Innid-writing. Anastasius might, therefore, have employed transcribers to write a certain number of copies of the Four Gospels, with his alterations ; and then he might have given them away, or sold them, or ordered them to be read in the churches. But how could he prevail upon all persons and families, all com- munities, sects, and parties, to destroy their own old copies, and sit down quietly with adulterated ones ? Was it possible that the man, who could not obtain the alteration of a hymn in his own metropolis, would be able to effect this astonishing enterprise, not only there, but through every other city and every province? The original language of the New Testament was the vernacular speech of the country. We know, from abundant historical evidence, that copies of the Gospels and the other parts of the New Testament existed in great abundance and in wide diffusion. Imagine the most peremptory orders to have them all delivered up, the most rigorous execution ol" those orders, and the severest punishments on refusal : all history and all experience prove the perfect impossibility of the most power- ful and despotic government ever succeeding in any similar measure. The tyrannv of all such attemi)ts makes men indig- nant ; and, when the enVctual concealment of a thing so small as a few rolls or leaves oi' parchmt ut was so very easy, tiiey 6 would not tcimely part with a valuable possession, in many cases a family inheritance, or the property of a society. Could an unpopular sovereign, with a discontented people, and tottering on a precarious throne, ever have been foolish enough to venture upon such a thing ? Let iis even admit the incredible suppo- sition that he could have succeeded, in this act of domiciliary plunder and oppression, over his own subjects : they formed only a small part of the Christian world. Nearly the whole of Europe, and the entire north coast of Africa (which was then filled with Christian communities), belonged to other govern- ments, which were, probably without exception, hostile to Anas- tasius. The people of those countries possessed their copies of the New Testament, both in private hands and as the property of communities, and that in the original as well as in various translations. Would they have tamely yielded their dearest possession to be burned and destroyed, at the bidding of an enemy, a foreign tyrant, a man held in universal execration I — Let your own good sense, my countrymen, give the answer. 3. There had lived, from the first century down to the time of Anastasius, numerous writers, in both Greek and Latin, the two great languages at that time of the civilized world, who quote very copiously from the New Testament. Of these au- thors many are now extant ; and so ample are their citations that, by merely extracting and arranging them, all the principal parts of the apostolic writings might be made out. This fact has always presented an insuperable barrier against every at- tempt to make alterations in the sacred books. 4. The historian Evagrius, who was born soon after the death of Anastasius, and who writes much at length concerning the events of his reign, gives not the most distant hint of any charge of this nature upon the character of that Emperor. Other authors, also, who lived in the very times, and who are not sparing in representing his vices and tyranny, are silent as to any accusation on this head. It is, therefore, to the last degree, inconsistent with the rules of historical credibility, that such an action, which, had it really occurred, must not only have been of public notoriety, but would have provoked universal oppo- sition, should be received upon the single statement of an African writer, so obscure as to be almost unknown, who lived far from the scene of action, and who might so easily be the subject of misunderstanding or misinformation. 5. A probable reason can be assigned for the origin of the whole story, and the mistakes of Victor. Dr. Richard Bent LEY, the glory of English scholars, has adduced a passage from Liberatus, another ancient but little-known author, affirm- ing that Anastasius accused Macedonius, the Patriarch of Con- stantinople, to whom he was a mortal enemy, of having made alterations in some copies of the Gospels which he had given out to be transcribed. Also Peter Wesseling, a Dutch critic and historical antiquary of great eminence, has shewn that, in the reign and among the subjects of Anastasius, there was a warm dispute concerning the reading of a chiuse in the Gospel of Matthew, chap, xxvii. 49 ; which, either way, was of no real importance. If the accusation brought against Macedonius were well founded, it would follow, as a natural consequence, that the Emperor would order the alterations (whether they were unintentional mistakes or changes made designedly) to be cor- rected in the copies referred to. If the accusation were a false one, it might still be widely circulated. On either supposition, a magnified and distorted rumour might easily come to Victor of Tunna (or Tennona, or Tonnona ; for so obscure is the place that its name cannot be determined); " tiie true fact," says Bentley, " being no more than this, that Anastasius ordered the copies to be amended (tanquam ab idiotis librariis conscripta) as written hy ignorant scribes: the story grew in the telling, when it was got as far as Africa, on purpose to blacken him, that he ordered the originals to be amended (tanquam ab idiotis evangelistis composita) as made hy ignorant evangelists." Dr. Bentley's Phileleut/ierus Lipsiensis, p. 125 ; Wesselingii Dia- tribe, &c. p. 14G, Utrecht, 1738. SECTION IV. ON THE ASSERTION THAT ARCHBISHOP LANFRANC EF- FECTED AN ALTERATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. M. de Beausobre was a French Protestant of distinguished learning and profound research into ecclesiastical antiquity, and whose writings were in a very great measure devoted to the elucidation of the evidence, and the enforcement of the au- thority, of the Christian Scriptures. How would he, as well as Dr. Lardner, have revolted, with indignation and horror, from a writer who can so dishonestly niuLe u&e of their names for purposes the very opposite of those conclusions which they have invincibly demonstrated ! The passage in Beausobre con- tains no such thing as " an account of a general alteration of the Scriptures," a thing utterly impracticable for Lanfranc or any other person, unless he could have got into his possession all the copies in the world. The paragraph is a citation from a small book by Richard Simon, a French Roman Catholic Priest;* and its evident meaning is, that Lanfranc directed a * Nous lisons, dans la Vie de Lanfranc, moine Btnedictin, et ensuite Archevfjqne de Cantorberi, qui a ete publi^e par les Bon^dictins de la Con- gregation de S. Maur, avcc les Ouvrages de cet Archevt^que, qu'ayant trouv^ les livres de rEcritiire beaucoup corrompus par ceux qui les avoienl copies, il setoit applique k les corriger, aussi bien que les livres des Saints Vhtes, selon la foi orlliodoxe." Simon, Dissert, eonire Amuud, p. 31, "We read, in the Life of Lanfranc, a Benedictine Monk, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, published by the Benedictines of the Congregation of St. iMaur, along with the Works of that Archbishop, tliat, having found the books of the Scriplures much corrupled by those vvlio liad transcribed them, he had applied himself to the correcting of them, as also the books of the holy I'athers, accord- ing to the orthodox faith." revisal and correction to be made of certain copies that were in his possession, or to which his agents could have access, under tlie supposition of their having been corrupted by the copyists. There are several questions connected with this state- ment, which ought to be fairly investigated before we can form any decided opinion in the case. The Italian priest, Lanfranc, though a man of good personal character, was the instrument of William the Conqueror in rivetting the chains of ecclesiastical slavery on the English nation ; which he bowed to a servility of subjection to the Pope much greater than had before existed among our ancestors. It is, first of all, reasonable to ask. What evidence have we of the truth of the fact asserted ? The docu- ments of history, for that period and some centuries after, are very obscure. In the time of Simon and the learned Bene- dictines of St. Maur, very great and numerous errors with respect to the persons and transactions of those dark ages, were commonly received ; and those errors have been dissipated only very lately by the laudable and laborious researches of Mr. Sharon Turner, Mr. Hallam, and other eminent men of the present day.* It is highly probable that the facts of the case are fallaciously represented. But, even admitting the truth of the statement, what does it amount to? That a foreign Arch- bishop of Canterbury, whom a ruthless tyrant had set up, and who was ardently zealous in enforcing the spiritual despotism of the See of Rome, found fault with certain copies of the Scriptures and of other ancient Christian writings, as having been incorrectly written or even designedly altered, and there- fore had them corrected according to his own notions of what was the genuine reading ! These copies were probably some which had been confiscated or ])lundered from the deposed English clergy. It is likely enough that it would be an object with the new government to represent these as " corrupted'* copies, only to cast reproach upon their owners or the persons who had transcribed them. It is possible, however, that they really might be incorrect books, written by ignorant or careless copyists. Every printer and bookseller perfectly well knows, and many readers of books know to their vexation, that, even in the present day, when the art of printing renders accuracy so much more easy to be attained, many editions of good books are sent out shamefully incorrect. As for the reference to " the orthodox faith," by which Lanfranc and his historians under- stood the assumed infallible dictates of the Church of Rome, it is not at all improbable that it was brought in for the purpose of running down the Anglo-Saxon Church and the old English Clergy. But, had any real corruptions been chargeable upon them, or had Lanfranc's party made alterations of the smallest importance, it is morally impossible but that the facts would have been placed in a clear light, and the evideace of them * In iheir well known and valuable w■o^k^ on the English History, and the affairs of the Middle ^^ges geneialiy. 9 would have come down to posterity. It is worthy of observaf icii that Lanf rauc, whose Commentaries upon several books of Scrip- ture are extant, is remarked by Dr. Cave (Historia Literaria, Vol. II. p. 148,) to have been addicted to the making of arbi- trary alterations in the text, which he conceived to be amend- ments. But his authority could never procure the reception of his alterations by the Christian world: they remain in his own writings, and are disowned by all others. And smiilar has always been, and ever must be, the fate of any other rash critic, however favourably he may think of his own specu- lations. Let us grant, however, contrary to all evidence and proba- bility, the very utmost that can be made of the statement; it could only aflect a few Latin copies of some parts of the Bible, and possibly, but not probably, a still fewer number of Anglo- Saxon Gospels. The numerous manuscripts scattered throughout France, Spain, Italy, and other parts of Continental Europe, could not be affected by it. Above all, the copies of the Greek ORIGINAL of the New Testament, which were nearly, without exception, at that time, confined to the countries under the Eastern Empire, were far out of the reach of Saxons or Nor- mans, or of any other persons in the West of Europe. The Hebrew original, also, of the Old Testament had become, long before the feudal times, unknown (we might almost say totally) to the nations called Christian ; but it was preserved by the Jews, with a reverence and care in transcription so wonderfully exact as to extend not only to the words and the sentences, but to every letter, stroke, and point, with a minuteness the most anxious and even superstitious. Hence no class of ancient manuscripts have so few errors of transcription (usually called Various Readings) as the Hebrew Bibles. I now appeal to any man of sense, whether it is not most unfair and absurd to represent this obscure and dubious cir- cumstance, and which is at most of no real importance, as in the smallest degree impugning the genuineness of the Scriptures, or of any other ancient writings which might have been so treated, as in fact many have been. SECTION V. ON THE NATURE OF VARIOUS READINGS, AND THE INFERENCES TO BE DRAWN FROM THEM. The pretended reference to the " Unitarian New Version," is another instance of most disgraceful ignorance, or shameless perversion. This will be manifest from the perusal of the whole passage in the Introduction to that Version of the New Testa- ment : biit, before I transcribe it, I must request the attention of those readers who have not been conversant in such matters, to a few explanatory remarks. 10 Previously to the invention of the inestimable art of printing, about the year 1440, books could be multiplied only by the tedious and laborious process of taking copies in hand-writing. The method of publishing, in the classical ages, consisted in an author's having his work read among his friends, and sometimes in large assemblies of people ; and, if it met with general ap- probation, persons were permitted or procured to write out copies for distribution or sale. From each of these, other transcripts were made ; and so on, from one generation of men to another. In this way have been preserved the works of Homer, Herodotus, Hippocrates, Euclid, and an illustrious host of Greek writers besides, the eldest of whom belongs to the ninth century at least before the Christian era ; and those of Cicero, Caesar, Virgil, Tacitus, and the rest of the Roman classics. Now, whoever has any experience of the toil and liableness to mistake which attend the transcribing of even a short pamphlet, will easily understand the difficulties necessarily accruing, when this was the only way of multiplying the hun- dreds and thousands of books that existed in the world ; when persons fond of knowledge were obliged to spend a large part of their lives in copying books which they had borrowed (often by pledging their most valuable possessions as a security for the loan), unless they were immensely rich so as to hire transcribers ;. when a moderate library was, in pecuniary value, worth a barony or a duchy ; and when the possessors of these costly treasures had not the means, nor perhaps were expert in the method, of comparing two or more copies together, in order to ascertain the correctness of each. In the transcribers themselves, many of whom got their livelihood by this labour, obvious causes must have been in continual operation to produce variations from the original copy ; generally in a manner involuntary and purely accidental, but sometimes from design. Haste, carelessness, wandering of the attention, weak eye-sight, bad light and feeble lamps, difficulty of making out the handwriting of the copy before him, and sometimes the idea of correcting a hastily- supposed mistake in that copy ; were among the numerous circumstances which were likely to betray a transcriber into errors in letters, syllables, and words. These differences would be detected, when two or more copies were carefully compared : they were called by the very proper term. Various Readings; they became, in due time, an object of anxious study ; and the art, acquired by long practice united with extensive learning and solid judgment, of determining the True Reading out of several variations, in a manner impartial and satisfactory, formed a most important branch in the Art of Criticism. From this collection of circumstances the following facts natu- rally and necessarily ensued. 1. That, of those books which were the most frequently copied, in all periods of time and in diiferent countries, the number of Various Readings is the greatest ; and yet the settle- 11 ment of the true or genuine Reading in each instance is the easiest, on account of the multitude of copies, each one being a kind of check upon the others. For example ; tlie writings of Terence, those of Horace, and some of Cicero's, are in the best- evidenced state of purity, because the number of old manuscript copies, and consequently of Various Readings, is greater than in the case of most of the other ancient authors. 2. That, on the other hand, when very few manuscripts of a work are known to exist, the Variations are indeed few ; but obscurities and difficulties attach to the text which Criticism cannot remove, except, in some instances, by the adventurous hand of Conjecture. This is the case with the writings that have come down to us of Paterculus, Hesychius, and some others. 3. That, if, in addition to manuscript copies of any ancient work, quotations from it are found in other writings of great antiquity, and ancient translations of it exist in any other lan- guage, these two are new sources of evidence, and may be, in some respects, equal and even superior to that of manuscripts. Thus the late Mr. PoRSON very happily, in several instances, confirmed or corrected the Greek text of Euripides by adducing translations of passages from Latin authors who lived two or three hundred years later. 4. That, in proportion to the multitude of Various Readings, their individual importance becomes less and less ; for they are found to refer almost entirely to very little matters, many of which could not be made apparent in a translation, and, of the rest, very few produce any alteration in the meaning of a sen- tence, still less in the purport of a whole paragraph. The reason of this is, that the greater multiplicity of copies, though it occasions a greater number of trifling mistakes, furnishes at the same time a strong barrier against such as would aflfect the meaning, and especially such as might proceed from design. Now let any man of sense apply these facts to the history and state of the text of our Holy Scriptures. They travelled down almost fourteen centuries, in the form of written books, before they were taken up by the art of Printing. But no ancient books have enjoyed equal means of safe preservation; because no ancient books were so early and widely spread abroad among different nations, none have .been so constantly and publicly read, none have been so multiplied by transcripts, none have been translated into so many languages at very early periods, from the third century to the ninth, none have been so often quoted and commented upon by both Greek and Latin authors, from the very age of their composition through all following time ; and of no ancient books have the Various Readings been sought for with so much labour and anxiety, and published with so much miinite care ; even to a degree which would be censured as needless and trifiiiig, if exercised upon 13 any classic author. The consequence is, tliat of no ancient books whatsoever do we possess a text so critically correct, so satisfactorily perfect, as that which exists in the best editions of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Judge then for yourselves, my worthy countrymen, what must be the ignorance or the dishonesty of the man who wishes to make you believe that the multitude of Various Readings, the very circumstance which is, in so high a degree, a (juarantee for the integrity of the sacred text, forms an objection to its genuineness ! I now cite the passage, fairly and fully, from the Introduction to the Unitarian Improved Version, which the writer of the Manifesto has falsely pretended to quote, and the tendency and application of which he has so grossly perverted. " The number of Various Readings collected by Dr. Mill is computed at thirty thousand. And it is reasonable to believe that, since the publication of his celebrated edition [in 1707] a hundred thousand at least have been added to the list, by the indefatigable industry of those learned critics who have suc- ceeded to his labours, and by the great extension of the field of their operations, in consequence of the additional number of manuscripts and versions which have been since discovered and collated. " These Various Readings, though very numerous, do not in any degree atfect the general credit and integrity of the text : the general uniformity of which, in so many copies, scattered through almost all countries in the knoM'n world, and in so great a variety of languages, is truly astonishing, and demonstrates both the veneration in which the Scriptures were held, and the great care which was taken in transcribing them. Of the hun- dred and fifty thousand Various Readings which have been discovered by the sagacity and diligence of collators, not one tenth, nor one hundredth part, make any perceptible, or at least any material, variation in the sense. This will appear credible, if we consider that every the minutest deviation from the re- ceived text has been carefully noted ; so that the insertion or omission of an article, the substitution of a word for its equi- valent, the transposition of a word or two in a sentence, and even variations in orthography, have been added to the catalogue of Various Readings. " In those variations which in some measure affect the sense, the True Reading often shines forth with a lustre of evidence which is perfectly satisfactory to the judicious inquirer. In other cases, where the true reading cannot be exactly ascer- tained, it is of little or no consequence which of the readings is adopted ; for instance, whether we read Paul the servant, or Paid the prisoner, of Jesus Christ. (Philemon, ver. 1.) Also, where the Various Readings are of considerable importance, consisting, for example, in omission or addition of sentences or 13 [jurugraphs,* the authenticity of the rest of the book remains wholly unaffected, whatever decision may be passed upon the passages in question. Thus the genuineness of the Gospel of John continues uninipeached, whatever may become of the account of the pool of Bethesda, or of the narrative of the woman taken in adultery. "The Various Readings which affect the doctrines of Chris- tianity are very few : yet some of these are of great importance, viz. Acts XX. 28 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16 ; 1 John v. 7. Of those pas- sages which can be justly regarded as wilful interpolations, the number is very small indeed : and of these, the last-mentioned text, 1 John v. 7, is by far the most notorious, and most uni- versally acknowledged and reprobated. f " Upon the whole, we may remark, that the number and antiquity of the manuscripts which contain the whole or different parts of the New Testament, the variety of Ancient Versions, and the multitude of quotations from these sacred books in the early Christian writers from the second century downwards, constitute a body of evidence in favour of the genuineness and authenticity of the Christian Scriptures far beyond that of any other book of equal antiquity." Impr. Vers, of the New Test. Tntrod. pp. xxii. xxiii. Before quitting this subject of the Various Readings, I must remark, that the well-informed Christian is so far from deprecating the study of them, or wishing to hide the fact of their existence with regard to the Scriptures as well as all other ancient books, that he would rejoice in the further dis- covery of good and ancient manuscripts or versions, though they might add hundreds or even thousands to the list : for he knows that they could only have the effect of still more establishing the text of the best editions, or of putting an end to the few diffi- culties which still exist. I also beg the reader's attention to a passage from the prince of classical critics, Richard Bentley. " The result of the whole is, that either, a postetHori, ALL ancient books, as well as the sacred, must now be laid aside as * uncertain and precarious' " [the terms used by Collins, on whom he is animadverting] ; " or else, say, a jyriori, that all the transcripts of sacred books should have been privileged against the common fate, and exempted from all slips and errors whatever. Which (if these our writer and his new sect will close with, I cannot foresee. There is in each of them such a gust of the paradox and the perverse, that they equally suit with a modern Free-thinker's palate ; and, therefore, I shall bestow a short reflection on both. " If all the old authors are abandoned by him, there is one compendious answer to this ' Discourse of Free-thinking.' For what becomes of his boasted passages out of Cicero, Plutarch, * Of which there are scarcely half a dozen in the whole New Testament, and still fewer in the Old Testament. t See Note A. 14 and his long list of ancient Free-thinkers, if the text of each is precarious i Those passages, as they came from the authors' hands, might he for superstition, which are now cited against it. Thus our writer will be found felo cle se ; unless the coroner, to save his effects, favours him with his oivn titles of fool and madman. " But I have too much value for the ancients, to play booty about their works and monuments, for the sake of a short answer to * a fool according to his folly.' All those passages, and all the rest of their remains, are sufficiently pure and genuine to make us sure of the writers' design. If a corrupt line or dubious reading chances to intervene, it does not darken the whole context, nor make an author's opinion or his purpose precarious. Terence, for instance, has as many variations as any book whatever, in proportion to its bulk : and yet, with all its interpolations, omissions, additions, or glosses, (choose the worst of them on purpose,) you cannot deface the contrivance and plot of one play ; no, not of one single scene ; but its sense, design, and subserviency to the last issue and conclusion, shall be visible and plain through all the mist of Various Lections. And so it is with the Sac RED Text. Make your thirty thousand as many more, if numbers of copies can ever reach that sum. All the better to a knowing and serious readet, who is thereby more richly furnished to select what he sees genuine. But even put them into the hands of a knave or a fool : and yet, with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extin- guish the light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity but that every feature of it will still be the same. " And this has already prevented the last shift and objection, that Sacred Books, at least books imposed upon the world as divine laws and revelations, should have been exempted from the injuries of time, and secured from the least change. For what need of that perpetual miracle, if, with all the present changes, the whole Scripture is perfect, and sufficient to all the great ends and purposes of its first writing ? What a scheme would these men make ! What worthy rules would they pre- scribe to Providence ! That, in millions of copies, transcribed in so many ages and nations, all the notaries and writers, who made it their trade and livelihood, should be infallible and impeccable ! That their pens should spontaneously write true, or be supernaturally guided ; though the scribes were nodding or dreaming ! Would not this exceed all the miracles of both Old and New Testament? And, pray, to what great use or design ? To give satisfaction to a few obstinate and untractable wretches ; to those who are not convinced by * Moses and the prophets,' but want * one from the dead' to come 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 15 silence every doubt and whim that impiety and folly can su^o-est. And yet all this would have no effect upon such spirit's^and dispositions. If they now believe not Christ and his apostles, 'neither would they believe' if their own schemes were com- plied with." Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, pp. Ill — 114. SECTION VI. ON THE STORY OF THE ROCKET-MAKER. • *• The manuscripts from which the received text was taken, were stolen by the librarian, and sold to a sky-rocket maker, in the year 1749." If we had not already seen such disgusting instances of the falsehood and audacity of this Manifesto- writer, one could scarcely have thought it possible that any man would make and publish such base misrepresentations, and hold them forth too as quotations from eminent authors. The facts which he has thus dishonestly garbled are briefly as follows. The first printed edition of the whole New Testament in its original language was at Alcala de Henares in Spain, under the direction of Cardinal Ximenes, in 1513 or 1514. The editors gave no information as to what manuscripts they derived their text from, except an acknowledgment for the loan of some by the reigning Pope, Leo X. The terms of this acknowledgment are such as imply that they had no manuscripts besides those thus borrowed, and which must undoubtedly have been returned to Rome as soon as they were done with. Neither is there any historical evidence that those editors had any other Greek manuscripts, except the assertions of one of them, Lopez de Stunica, in a subsequent controversy which he carried on with Erasmus. He repeatedly refers to one manuscript, containing only the Epistles : but no one knows what has become of it, and consequently its age and other characteristics cannot be ascertained. Learned men, however, have conjectured that the editors must have had some other manuscripts besides those lent by the Pope, and this nondescript one which rests upon the authority of Stunica; and they have further conjectured that such manuscripts, if they ever existed, were deposited in the library of the University of Alcala. If, however, these two ci)njectures were well-founded, it is very certain, from a critical examination of this edition, (called the Complutensian, from Complutum, the ancient name of Alcala,) that none of them were manuscripts of great antiquity or extraordinary value ; and it is also probable that they were exceedingly few. The low state of literature in Spain, the terrors of the Inquisition, and the influence of a bigoted despotism, prevented any proper endeavours to find out these or any other manuscripts of the Greek Testament, till the year 1784, when the mortifying dis- covery was made, which I will relate in the words of the late Professor John David Michaelis, of Gottingen ; premising that IG it is the very passage which the Manifesto-writer refers to, but in a way which shews either extreme ignorance or wilful dishonesty. " It was natural for every friend to criticism to wish that the manuscripts used in this edition, which might be supposed to have been preserved at Alcala, should be collated anew. But the inconceivable ignorance and stupidity of a librarian at Alcala, about the year 1749, has rendered it impossible that these wishes should ever be gratified. Professor Moldenhauer, who was in Spain in 1784, went to Alcala for the very purpose of discovering those manuscripts : and, being able to find none, he suspected that they were designedly kept secret from him, though contrary to the generous treatment which he had at other times experienced in that country. At last he discovered that a very illiterate librarian, about thirty-five years before, who wanted room for some new books, sold the ancient vellum manuscripts to one Toryo, who dealt in fire- works, as materials for making rockets. O, that I had it in my power to immor- talize both librarian and rocket-maker! This prodigy of bar- barism I would not venture to relate, till Professor Tychsen, who accompanied Moldenhauer, had given me fresh assurances of its truth. I will not lay it to the charge of the Spanish nation in general, in which there are men of real learning; but the author of this inexcusable act was the greatest barbarian of the present century, and happy only in being unknown." Professor Tychsen's account is the following : " As the Uni- versity of Alcala has a very considerable library, and has existed many centuries, it was reasonable to suppose that it contained many manuscripts. Gomez declares that they cost 4000 gold ))istoles, and that among them were seven of the Hebrew Bible. In this library it is highly probable that the Greek manuscripts were deposited, which were used for the Complutensian edition, and of which the German literati have so long wished to have some intelligence. But all these manuscripts were sold in a lump, about thirty-five years ago, to a rocket-maker of the name of Toryo, and were put down in the librarian's account (' como membranas inutiles') as useless j>m'chments. Martinez, a man of learning and particularly skilled in the Greek language, heard of it soon after they were sold, and hastened to save these treasures from destruction : but it was too late, for they were already destroyed, except a few scattered leaves which are now preserved in the library. That the number of manuscripts was very considerable, appears from the following circumstance. One Rodan assured Bayer that he had seen the receipt which was given to the purchaser, from which it appeared that the money was paid at two different payments." The two preceding quotations are taken from Dr. Marsh's (the present Bishop of Peterborough) Translation of Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. II. p. 441, ed. 1793 : and it is no small relief to add the learned Bishop's own obser- 17 vation on the purpose for which the manuscripts were so vil- lainously purloined. " This very circumstance may console us for their loss ; for, as rockets are not made of vellum, it is a certain proof that the manuscripts were written on paper, and therefore of no great antiquity. It is true that our author calls them vellum manuscripts, on account of the words ' como mem- branas iuutiles' quoted in his note. But the word co)no makes this expression too indeterminate to lead to any certain con- clusion." lb. p. 844- Yet it may not be unreasonable to appre- hend that the rocket-maker might buy the whole lot,- both paper and vellum, as the wretched librarian's object was to get rid of them; and that the vellum or parchment might be cut up for children's drums and battledores, as it is not unlikely that the firework-maker kept a toy-shop. But what must we think of the state of a country and a university, in which it was possible for a librarian to commit such a deed I — I beg to add, that the reasoning of Professor Tychsen does not prove the manuscripts to have been very numerous ; for, in a poor and small town, as Alcala now is, and in a country so impoverished by tyrannical folly and superstition as Spain has been for three hundred years, it is exceedingly probable that the firework- maker might not be able to pay even the value of twenty shillings in any other way than by instalments. And, after all, how likely it is that there was not a single fragment of the New Testament in the whole parcel so shamefully destroyed ! Now, I appeal to the ingenuous reader, and ask, how dis- honourable, base, and wicked must be that man's soul, who can, from this transaction, tell the public that " the manuscripts from which the received text" of the New Testament were taken, were thus made away with ? If he really believed what he wrote, how miserably incompetent is he to take in hand such a subject ; and how dishonest to pretend to an acquaintance with it ! If he did know better, how much more aggravated is his fraudulent wickedness ! — Every child in these studies knows that in the public literary repositories of Europe, there are numerous manuscripts of the whole or parts of the Holy Scrip- tures, of all ages, from the time of the invention of printing back to about the fifth century. Those of the Greek New Tes- tament alone, either in the whole or in the ancient customary divisions, amount to nearly five hundred: and (to say nothing of other ancient Versions, Syriac, ^thiopie, Coptic, Armenian, Slavonic, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, &c.) the manuscripts of the Latin Version called the Vulgate, made at the close of the fourth century, must far exceed that number. And besides all these, as was before mentioned, we have innimierable quota- tions from the New Testament, in the works of Christian writers, reaching back to the very age of the apostles. 18 SECTION VIT. THE APOCALYPSE ASCRIBED TO ERASMUS. " For the book of Revelation there was no original Greek at all, but ' Erasmus wrote it himself in Switzerland, in the year 1516.' Bishop Marsh, Vol, I. p. 320." After what we have already seen, the reader will not be surprised at being^ assured that this also is a g-ross falsehood, and that the pretended reference to the learned Bishop, as to its intention and bearing, is another impudent forgery. The facts which are thus mis- represented are as follows. Though the edition of Alcala was printed in 1513 or 1514, the publication of it was kept back, by the influence of the papal court and other causes, for about eight years. In the mean time, a learned and excellent printer at Basle, Jerome Frobenius, determined to confer upon the world the benefit of a complete printed Greek Testament. He engaged the celebrated Erasmus to conduct it through the press ; and it was published in 1516. But, though these distinguished men had incomparably more learning and industry than the Spanish editors, they could not command the resources of kings and cardinals. They had only, so far as can now be ascertained, five or six Greek manuscripts, no single one of which contained the whole of the New Testa- ment : but, in general, what was wanting in one copy was sup- plied by another. Yet from none of them could the last five verses in the last chapter of the book of Revelation be furnished. No man can wonder at leaves and large portions being torn away and destroyed from ancient manuscripts : the wonder is, that so many and so much have been preserved, through the barbarous and ignorant middle ages. In this difficulty, Erasmus translated the five verses into Greek, from the ancient Latin Vulgate, which was abundantly enough known to the learned, and had been often printed before that time. Afterwards, when the Alcala edition became accessible, and more complete manu- scripts of the Revelation were brought to light, it was found that, though Erasmus had not hit the very words of the original throughout, (it would have been a miracle if he had done so,) he had faithfully expressed the sense and meaning of every sentence and every word. SECTION VIII. THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE TEXT, IN THE COMMON EDITIONS OF THE GREEK TESTAMENT. From the facts already stated, the impartial reader will be at no loss to judge concerning what this dishonourable Mani- festo-writer chooses to call " the infinitely suspicious origination of the present Received Text." His parade of referring to the 19 Introduction to the Unitarian Improved Version, is in the same spirit of deception. If, instead of presenting to those who are credulous enough to trust him, two garbled parts of sentences, he had been at all willing to support justice and truth, he would have quoted from the same page the following declaration: *' The books of the New Testament having been more highly valued, more generally circulated, more attentively studied, more accurately transcribed, and more frequently cited than the works of any other ancient author ; the Text is consequently less corrupted, and the means of correcting and restoring it are far more abundant, than of any other work of equal antiquity." Inirod. to hnpr. Vers. p. x. The Received Text, as it is gene- rally called, (that is, the text which has been commonly pub- lished by one prhiter's copying from the work of another, and of which the well-known basis is a beautiful pocket edition printed by the Elzevirs, at Leyden, in 1624,) was not indeed formed with all the means and aids for perfection which were desirable ; and for a very good reason: they were not then attainable. The principles and rules of editorial criticism were not then thoroughly understood ; and many of the materials, which have brought it to its present maturity, were not discovered. But two great facts demand attention, and they are sufficient for the perfect confutation of this unprincipled slanderer and deceiver. 1. The same kind of imperfection attached to the text of Homer, the Greek Tragedians, Herodotus, and every other author of antiquity. Their first editions, and many subsequent ones, were published from very imperfect collations of manu- scripts : and it has not been till very recently that editions existed, in which a student could felicitate himself that he was reading a text in the closest accordance with the original pro- duction as it came from the hand of the ancient author. The very same is the case with the Holy Scriptures. The invaluable services which Bentley, Hemsterhuys, Wesseling, Brunck, Wyttenbach, Reiske, Heyne, Person, Blomfield, and others have performed for the Greek and Roman classics, have been done for the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, by Capell, Kennicott, De Rossi, and Jahn ; and for the Greek text of the New Testament, by Mill, Wetstein, Griesbach, Middleton, Knapp, and Vater. The scholars of the present day sit down to the reading of their Homer and Virgil, their ^schylus and Horace, with an illumination and a delight exceeding that of their fathers; and so likewise do they enjoy the superior ad- vantages provided for them in the critical study and interpre- tation of their Bibles. 2. But let me not be misunderstood. The difference between the widest extremes, between even the worst and the best editions that have ever bec^n published of either a classic or any book of the Bible, is by no means so great as those persons may imagine who are not conversant with these subjects. Every thing great and essential, all facts, doctrhies, precepts, promises, c 2 :20 and threatenings, shine forth with the broad light of truth, almost, if not quite, as clearly in the most careless and blunder- ing copies as in the most correct. The great author quoted before describes justly the character of the most successful col- lections and comparisons of Various Readings, in saying that they "without question render the text more beautiful, just, and exact, though of no consequence to the main of religion ; nay, perhaps wholly synonymous in the view of common readers, aud quite insensible in any modern version." In another place, he says, " The real text of the sacred writers — is competently exact, indeed, even in the worst manuscript now extant : nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them ; choose as awkwardly as you can, choose the worst by design, out of the whole lump of readings. But the lesser matters of diction, and (among several synonymous expressions) the very words of the writer, must be found out by the same industry and sagacity that is used in other books." Phileleii- therus Lipsiensis,^]). 106, 101. See also the citations above, p. 25. SECTION IX. THE CHARGE OF AN IMMORAL TENDENCY BROUGHT AGAINST THE SCRIPTURES. This man pretends also to reject the Scriptures from what he calls " Evidence internal, in the immoral, wicked, and vicious tendency of many passages therein remaining, and by the insertion of others whose only drift is to enhance the power of kings and priests. See Rom iii. 7 ; 2 John 10; Ileb. xii. 'i9, xiii. 17; Rom. xiii. ; 1 Pet, ii. 13; Luke xiv. 2C ; &c. &c. Innumerable texts therein contained, betraying a comparatively rnodern cha- racter, referring to circumstances which did not exist till later- ages, and quoting- vther scriptures which had previously formed the faith of the first Cliristian churches, but which, without any assignable reason or alleged authority, have since been rejected — See'2John9; lTim.iii.3; James v. 14; Matt, xviii. 17 ; 1 Cor. XV. 7, 32 ; 1 Pet. iv. 6." Here is indeed the highest pitch of daring ! Here is the first- born of calumny! Christianity condemned for having a wicked tendency ! A man whose paper demonstrates that he defies all truth and justice, affecting to be offended with the Scriptures as favouring immorality ! — But, my intelligent countrymen, you are not to be thus cheated and insulted. Open your eyes: read, examine, judge for yourselves. Study the passages to which he refers in their respective connexion, and in their relation to the other parts of the New Testament ; and you will own that they form no exception to the spotless purity, the holy BEAUTY, which animates the whole of those divine compositions. That there are difficulties in the Bible, every Christian well knows and readily acknowledges : but they are no more and no greater than must reasonably be expected in works of such 21 antiquity, and referring to customs, opinions, and idioms of Uinguiige so widely different from those of modern times and European countries. Analogous difficulties occur, according to their respective subjects, in all very uncient writings, Latin or Greek, Arabic, Persian, or Sanscrit. The rational method of resolving them is by acquiring the information necessary to go to the bottom of each instance ; and those who cannot do so, possess, in an enlightened Protestant country, the inestimable advantage of consulting learned and judicious commentators. With respect to the passages enumerated by this writer, a man must have little understanding indeed whose careful examination cannot dissipate whatever of difficulty is pretended. For ex- ample ; Romans iii. 7, is the language of an objector, whom the apostle supposes as arguing against tlie Christian doctrine, and whom he proceeds to refute. 2 John 10, forbids the aiding and encouraging of corrupt and wicked teachers, but it does not forbid any acts of humanity or civility towards them as our fellow-creatures. To persecution, in every form and degree, the whole spirit of the gospel is entirely opposed, Heb. xii. "29, is figurative language, borrowed from the sublime diction of the Old Testament, and expressing in the most impressive manner the rectitude and justice of the Unchangeable Deity. A^ith regard to the word hafc, in Luke xiv. 26, every school-boy v.ho has but a tincture of the knowledge of ancient forms of language, is aware that it denotes no malevolent disposition, but only that holy heroism of virtue which enables a man to relinquish his deaiest interests and enjoyments upon earth, and even his own life, if he cannot retain them without infringing upon the obli- gations of truth and conscience. It was finely illustrated in the conduct of the Bavarian martyr, who, when urged to save his life by recanting his principles, and the endeariiienis of his family were pressed upon his feelings, exclaimed, " My wife and chil- dren ! My dear wife and children ! I love them more than ail Bavaria ; but, for the sake of Christ I know them not." Of the other passages, which are falsely said to " betray a comparatively modern character," the greater part present no difficulty to an intelligent and reflecting reader: of the rest a rational solution may be found by referring to any good com- mentator, such as Whitby, Doddridge, Scott, D'Oyley and Mant, Clarke, Williams's Cottage Bible, and others who have employed their knowledge of anticjuity for the elucidation of the difficulties which cannot but occasionally occur in these, as in other, ancient writings. If there were no such passages, one great argument in favour of the genuhieness of the Scriptures would be wanting : namely, their unaffected comporting with the facts, usages, and idioms of the place and period to which they refer ; particularly such facts, usages, and other circuiu- stances as do not lie upon tiu^ surface of history, but require considerable learning and research to lind them out. On this part of the subject, 1 request your serious attention 22 to the avowal of a very celebrated foreigner, who was unhappily an infidel, and whose immoralities accorded with his principles ; but who had not extinguished in his bosom every spark of truth and justice. By the term " the Gospel," according to the idiom of his country, he intends the whole narrative of the actions and discourses of Jesus, as comprised in the writings of the Four Evangelists. " The Gospel, that divine book, the only one necessary to a Christian, and the most useful of all to the man who may not be one, only requires reflection upon it, to impress the mind with love for its Author and resolution to fulfil his precepts. Virtue never spoke in gentler terms : the profoundest wisdom was never uttered with greater energy or more simplicity. It is impossible to rise from the reading of it, without a feeling of moral im- provement. Look at the books of the philosophers, with all their pomp : how little they are, compared with this ! — Shall we say that the history of the gospel is a pure fiction ? This is not the style of fiction ; and the history of Socrates, which nobody doubts, rests upon less evidence than that of Jesus Christ. And after all, this is but shifting the difficulty ; not answering it. The supposition, that several persons had united to fabricate this book, is more inconceivable than that one person should have supplied the subject of it. The spirit which it breathes, the morality which it inculcates, could never have been the in- vention of Jewish authors : and the gospel possesses characters of truth so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing object than the hero." J. /. Rousseau, in his Works, Vol. XXXVI. pp. 36, 39, ed. Paris, 1788—1793.* SECTION X. ON THE ANCIENT FORGERIES UNDER THE NAME OF GOSPEL HISTORIES. The Manifesto-writer, with his usual despite of truth and knowledge, speaks of " the true and genuine Gospels of the * "L'evangile, ce divin livre, le seul necessaire a un chretien, et le plus utile de tous a quiconque ne le serait pas, n'a besoin que d'etre m^ditc' pour porter dans Tame I'amour de son auteur et la volonte d'accomplir ses preceptes. Jamais la vertu n'a parie un si doux langago ; jamais la plus profonde sagesse ne s'est exprimee avec tant d'energie et de simplicity. On n'en quitte point la lecture sans se sentir meilleur qu'auparavant. Voyez les livres des pliilosophes avec toute leur pompe : qu'ils sent petits aupres de celui-la ! Dirons nous que I'histoire de l'evangile est inventee a plaisir? Ce n'est pas ainsi qu'on invente ; et les fails de Socrate, dont personne ne doute, sont moins attestes que ceux de Jesus Christ. Au fond, c'est reculer la ditficulte sans la detruire. II seroit plus inconcevable que plusieurs honimes d'accord eussent fabrique ce livre, qu'd ne Test qu'un seul en ait fourni le sujet. Jamais les auteurs Juifs n'eussent trouv^ ni ce ton ni cette morale ; et l'evangile a des caractcres de verite si frappans, si parfaiteraent inimitable?, que Tinventeur en seroit plus ^tonnant que le heros." 23 most primitive Christians," and which, he says, " have been rejected, without any assignable reason or alleged authority." Upon this subject I repeat my former alternative : either this man has picked up some knowledge of what he writes about, and then he is one of the most unprincipled and impudent liars that ever opened a mouth or set pen to paper; or he is quite unin- formed on this subject, and, on that supposition, his dishonesty- is not the less gross. It is well enough known that, in the early ages of Christianity, many silly and fraudulent persons composed fictitious narratives of the life and actions of Jesus Christ and his apostles, and gave them out as the writings of Peter, Nicodemus, Thomas, Bar- nabas, and even Judas Iscariot. By far the larger part of these spurious compositions have long ago dropped into deserved oblivion. That-they ever existed, is known only from the records of the early Christian writers usually called the Fathers ; and they were ahvays rejected by the general body of Christians. A few of them are still extant. These were industriously col- lected, and published in Greek and Latin, by a most dis- tinguished scholar and zealous Christian, jiphn Albert Fabricius, at Hamburg, in 1703, accompanied by sufficient proofs of their base origin. They were also translated into English, and most satisfactorily illustrated, by a learned dissenting minister, Mr, Jeremiah Jones. His work was published in 1726, after the author's lamented death at the age of thirty-one ; again at the Clarendon Press, in 1798, in three volumes ; a third time also at the Clarendon, in the present year, 1827. The title is, " A New and Full Method of settling the Canonical Authority of the New Testament ; wherein all the Ancient Testimonies concerning this Argument are produced ; the several Apocryphal Books, which have been thought Catiunieal by any Writers, collected, with an English Translation of each of them ; together with a particular proof that none of them were ever admitted into the Canon ; and a full Answer to those who have endea- voured to recommend them as such," This valuable work sup- plies such a refutation of any shallow pretences of authority on behalf of those spurious productions, as were sufficient to put all question about them at rest for ever. These translations Mere reprinted in London, in 1820, without the least acknowledgment of their being taken from Mr. Jones's volumes, omitting his remarks and arguments which ])roved their contemptible and spurious character, and with equally dishonest artifice endea- vouring to represent them as entitled to the same credit as the Four ancient, tried, and well-proved Authentic Gospels ! An exposure of this shameful transaction is well worthy of bein^ read, in the Quarterly Review, Vol. XXV. pp. 348—368, and Vol. XXX. pp. 472—481.* * In his Syntagma, p. 71, Mr. Taylor says that I have " fnlliered" him with this " disingenuousness." Let the reader judge whetlier such an inference covdd be honestly drawn from ra^ word^j, i did nut mention the editor's name, 24 SECTION XI. PROOIS'S OF THE REAL EXISTENCE OF JESUS AND THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. This writer proceeds to what he calls his Third and Fourth Propositions. " Prop. III. That the persons of whom they [the Scriptures of the New Testament] treat, never existed : Because demoniacs, devils, ghosts, angels, hobgoblins [see Acts xix. 15], persons who had once been dead, who could walk on water, ride in the air, &c., such as Satan and Jesus Christ, are the persons of whom these Scriptures treat: and that such persons never existed is demonstrable; 1st. From the utter incongruity of such figments with the established laws of sound reason. 2dly. From the total absence of all historical reference to their existence. And 3dly. From innumerable passages of these Scriptures themselves, which fully admit the merely visionary hypostasis of their fabulous hero. [See Luke ix. 29 ; Mark ix. 2; Luke xxiv. 31 ; 1 John V. 6 ; and innumerable other passages, in perfect accordance with the true and genuine gospels of the most primitive Christians, which taught that he was ninety-eight miles tall and twenty-four miles broad, that he was not crucified at all, that he was never boxn at all, that by faith only are we saved, &c, &c., all equally indicative that-'Oiristianity had no evidence at all, but was a matter of mere conceit, fancy, or superstition, from first to last.] *' Prop. IV. That the events which they relate never happened, is demon- strable (further than as a consequence of the preceding proposition) from the fact that some, many, or all of these events had been previously related of the gods and goddesses of Greece and Ptome, and more especially of the Indian idol Chrishna, whose religion, with less alteration than time and translations liave made in the Jewish Scriptures, may be traced in every dogma and eveiy ceremony of the evangelical mythology." This mass of impudence and misrepresentation, so aggravated that language has no name strong enough to designate it, has been already, in a great measure, answered. Upon the rest I offer the following brief remarks. 1. That the miraculous facts recorded in the gospel history, and which this miserable scribbler so shamefully misrepresents, did REALLY OCCUR, and that the occasions of their being wrought were worthy of such an interposition of Divine Omnipotence, has been shewn, with an abundance of evidence, by numerous and well-known authors, to whom access is easy.* because, I tmst, that he regrets the action. Mr. T. shews how deeply read he is in literary history, by adding, that the editor referred to " might have availed himself of Archbishop Wake's Translation." That excellent prelate published , a translation of the ancient authors, called "The Apostolic Fathers;" and this the vaunting writer confounds with the Apocryphal pieces under con- sideration 1 * I did not think it necessary, in the former editions, to mention any names of authors: but as Mr. Taylor, in his Syntagma, makes a mighty vaunting of this omission, I shall specify a few. Grotius, Leland, Paley, and Chalmers, in their works on the general evidence of Christianity; the Second Part of Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest, and his Reasons of tlie Christian Religion ; Ditton, Sherlock, West, and Michaelis, on the Resurrection of Jesus; Douglas's Criteiion of Miracles. To this list many other impaitial and judicious treatises might be added, but surely these are enough. I must, 25 Within the narrow limits of these pages, it is impossihie to do justice to the argument : and surely it may be expected that every person, who feels the infinite importance of the subject, will take the little pains necessary to obtain the requisite information. 2. It is a perfect insult to common sense, that this man pre- tends to adduce Scripture-evidence, that the Blessed Jesus never existed ! The passages which he has pointed out only demon- strate the unspeakable folly and wickedness of his mind. A mere child, who can read the New Testament, might' easily confute his absurd conclusion. 3. What he calls " the true and genuine gospels of the most primitive Christians" are spurious writings, which have been proved by ample evidence to have been forged in the second century or later. Mosheim, in his Vindication of Priynitive Christianity, against Toland ; and Jones, in his work on the Canon, have placed this subject in a very clear light. Further notice is taken of it in the following Rejoinder. 4. It is not an extravagant assertion that if the New Testa- ment, and all other Christian wi'itings, could be blotted out of existence, we have, in the unquestionably authentic writings of ancient Heathens and Jews, decided enemies to the Christian religion, documents sufficient to establish ALL THE primary FACTS on which that religion rests : namely, the life and death of Jesus at the precise period which the Gospels assert, the extensive propagation of his religion at the time and in the countries which are stated in the New Testament, its reception by immense multitudes of persons who had the complete means of ascertaining whether the sensible facts on which it was founded had actually taken place or not, the moral excellence of their characters, and the sacrifices of property, liberty, earthly happiness, and life itself, by which they proved the sincerity of their belief in those, not ojJinions and ideas, but broad facts of which men's eyes and ears were the witnesses. From the however, mention one work, which is by no means known as its merits deserve, having been published in a remote country town : this is " A Jitfulation of every Argumtnt broug/it against the Truth of Christianittj and Revealctl Religion, by Thomas Faine, in the First Fart of his Work called the Age of Reason. B>/ W. Griscnthwaite. Wells in Norfolk, 1822." From this interesting volume I beg to present two extracts. •'I was, for many years, a Deist; a Deist, as many are, from principle. Religion appeared to me to be a fraud, contrived to govern man ; and, as it is most admirably adapted to that end, I jumped at the conclusion witliout enquiry. I neither demanded proofs, nor sought for objections. I am now a sincere believer in the truths of Revealed Religion. iNly former creed was the offspring of ignorance; my present, of conviction." I'ref. p. vi. "Too many, 1 fear, have surrendered their judgments into the hands of Mr. Paine. I once did so, and fancied myself secure. I then wanted, what I have now undertaken to supply, a confutation of every passage in that publication which impugns the authenticity 'of the Christian Religion. Wiiilsl one bulwark remains, the region of infidelity is unsubdued. Thither will the ignorant, the wanton, and the profligate lake refuge; and boast that what is not de- stroyed is invulnerable." p. 4. 26 same sources, also, we deduce the fullest evidence that the earliest enemies to Christianity, with power, money, learning-, influence, and every other advantage except truth, on their side, never attempted to deny the existence of Jesus, or the leading circumstances of his history ; and they even admitted the reality of his miracles. I now request you, my countrymen, to exercise your own reflections upon the testimony of the Roman historian Tacitus, so highly celebrated for his love of civil liberty and his philosophical sagacity ; and upon that of Pliny, the Propraetor of Bithynia, the confidential friend of the Emperor Trajan. Both these illustrious men lived in the very time of the apostles, when Christianity was beginning to attract the attention of the Roman government : but, swayed by the prejudices of Hea- thenism and the pride of their rank, they evidently treated the new religion with contempt, regarding it as a modification of Jewish superstition, and taking no sufficient pains to obtain correct information concerning its doctrines and its practical influence. After describing the conflagration which, in the tenth year of Nero (A. D. 64), destroyed a large part of the city of Rome, the historian says : " But no human efforts, not the liberal donations made to the sufferers by the Emperor, nor the cere- monies performed to propitiate the gods, could suppress the public opinion that the fire had been produced by his orders. To get rid, therefore, of this report, Nero laid the charge upon a set of people, commonly called Christians, who were objects of general dislike on account of their offences ; and upon them he inflicted the most dreadful tortures. Their name was derived from Christ, who was put to death by the Procurator Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius. But though, by that measure, the pernicious superstition was checked for a little time, it soon broke out again ; and it spread, not only over Judaea, where the mischief had its origin, but also into the city of Rome itself, the common resort and haunt from all quarters of whatever is upstart and base. Those, therefore, who confessed were first apprehended ; and afterwards, upon their information, a vast multitude. Yet they were convicted, not so much of the crime of setting the city on fire, as of hatred to the human race. Mockery was added to their dying sufferings : some, being sewed up in the skins of wild beasts, were destroyed by the teeth of dogs : others were crucified ; others were rolled in pitch and set on fire, to serve as lamps for the amusements of the night. Nero gave his gardens for this show, and he presented the people with games in the amphitheatre [by exposing the Christians to savage animals, and other murderous exhibitions], in which he mixed with the mob, sometimes driving his chariot and sometimes sitting in it. Hence, not- withstanding the guilt of the Christians and their desert of the severest punishment, compassion was excited in their favour, as persons who were destroyed, not from any motive 27 of public benefit, but to gratify the cruelty of one man." Tacitus's Annals, book xv. sect. 44.* As for the " offences" and the " hatred of mankind" which he charges upon these primitive Christians, it is well known that they consisted in nothing but their inflexible refusal to flatter the vices of the Emperors and the nobles, or to join in the established idolatry and the reigning licentiousness of the Roman people. "Caius Pliny to the Emperor Trajan, with saluta- tions. I make it a constant practice, my Sovereign, to apply to you in all cases of doubt : for who can better direct me when I hesitate, or inform me when I am ignorant ? I have never been present Tit the trials of the Christians : I am therefore unacquainted with both the reasons and the extent upon which it has been the practice either to punish them or to have them sought for. I have hesitated not a little on these points : whether any difference should be made with respect to age, or whether those who are never so young and delicate should be treated precisely as the elder and more robust : whether a prisoner should be set at liberty if he renounced Christianity, or whether the fact of having been once a Christian should be punished without mercy, though the party have abandoned it: whether the object of punishment is the mere name, though connected with no charge of criminal acts ; or whether it is the assumption of such acts as inseparable from the name. In the mean time, I have adopted the following course of proceeding with respect to those who have been brought before me as Christians. I have first asked them whether they Mere Christians : if they acknowledged it, I put the same ques- tion a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment ; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be led off instantly to execution : for, be the thing which they confessed whatever it might, I had no doubt that their stiffness and inflexible obstinacy certainly ought to be punished. Some, who were guilty of this folly, I have registered to be sent prisoners to Rome, they being citizens. In the course * " Sed non ope humana, non largitionibus principis, aut Deuni placa- mentis, decedeV)at infamia, quin jussum incendium crederetur. Ergo abolendo rumori Nero suhdidit reos, et qua'sitissimis prenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianas appellabat. Auctor nominis ejus Cmusrus, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem Pontium I'ilatum supplicio adfectus erat. He- pressaque in praesens exitiabilis superslitio rursus erumpebat, non niodo per Judffiam, originem ejus mali, sed per urbcm otiarn, quo cuncta undique atrocia, aut pudenda, confluunt celebranturque. Igitur prinio corrtpti qui fatebantur; deinde indicio eoruin multiludo inyens, baud perinde in crimine incendii, quam odio humani generis, convicti sunt. Ft pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti, lanialu canum interirent, aut crucibus affixi, aut Hammandi, atque ubi det'ecisset dies, in usurn nocturni luininis urerentur. Hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat, et Circense iudicrum edebat, liabitu aurigae permixtus piebi, vel curriculo insistens. I'nde quamquam adversiis sontes et novissima exempla merijps, miseratio oriebatur, tamquam non uliiitate publica, sed in saevitiara uuius absumerentur." 28 of these proceedings, the charges being multiplied, as com- monly happens> several kinds of the offence turned up. An anonymous paper was conveyed to me, containing the names of many persons : but these, on being brought before me, denied that they were or ever had been Christians ; and, at my direc- tion, they invoked the gods and paid the accustomed adoration with incense and libations to your statue, which for this purpose I ordered to be brought in along with the images of the gods : which acts it is understood that those who are Christians in reality, can never be induced to perform : I therefore, thought that these persons were entitled to be set at liberty. Others whose names were in the information, said that they were Christians, but afterwards denied it : and some, acknowledging that they had been, declared that they had relinquished the profession, some above three years ago, some a longer time, and several more than twenty years. All these paid the accustomed divine honours both to your statue and to- tJie images oY the gods : and they also reviled Christ. They moreover declared that the whole of what was laid to their charge, whether it were a ci-ime or a mere error, cons-isted in this ; that they made it a practice, on a stated day, to meet together before day-light, to sing hymns with responses to Christ as a god, and to bind themselves bj a solemn institution, not to any wrong act, but that they would not commit any thefts, ol" robberies, or acts of unchastity, that they would never break their word, that they would never violate a trust ; that, when these observances were finished, they separated, and afterwards came together again to a common and innocent repast ; but that they had given over this last pi'actice after my edict, in which, according to your orders, I forbad social meetings. Upon these declara- tions, I thought it requisite to get at the entire truth by putting to the torture tv/o women who were called deaconesses : but I discovered nothing beyond an austere and excessive superstition. Upon the whole, therefore, I determined to adjourn the trials, in order to consult you : for the case appears to me to demand my so doing, particularly on account of the great number of the persons who are brought into peril. Many, of all ages, of every rank in life, and of both sexes, are and will be thus endangered ; for the contagion of this superstition has spread, not only in the towns, but through the villages and country- places. At the same time it seems that the evil is capable of being stopped, and matters set right again. It is now sufficiently proved that the temples, which were almost desolate, begin again to be frequented ; that animals for sacrifice are occasionally sold, whereas before a single buyer was very rarely found. From the whole, it is reasonable to conclude, what a number of persons might be recovered, if encouragement were given to recantation." The Emperor's reply. "Traja^ to Pliny, with saluta- tions. You have done exactly as you ought, my dear friend, 29 in adjourning the trials of those who have been brought before you as Christians. No invariable rule can be laid down for every case. Let them not be searched for. If they be brought ^ip and convicted, let them be punished. Yet, if any one shall deny that he is a Christian, and substantiate his declaration by the proper act, that is, paying due honours to our gods, let him be set at liberty, though he may have been before suspected. But anonymous informatious, for any offence whatsoever, must not be allowed; for they are of most pernicious example, and quite un- suitable for our times." Pliny's Epistles, book x. ep. 97 & 98.* • " Solenne est mihi, domine, omnia de quibus dubito, ad te referre: quis enim potest melius vel cunctationem meam legere, vel ignorantiam instrueie ? Cognitionibus de Christianis inteit'ui nunquam : ideo nescio quid et quatenus aut puniri soleat, aut quaeri. Nee mediocriler haesitavi, sitne aliquod discrimen aetatum, an quamlibet teneri nihil a robustioribus differant; deluine pcenilentiaj venia, an ei qui omnino Clnistianus fuit, desisse non prosit : nomen ipsum, etiamsi flagitiis careaf, an flagilia coliaerentia nomini puniantur. Interim, in iis qui ad me tanquam Christiani deferebantur, hunc sum sequutus modum. Interrogavi ipsos, an essent Christiani : confitentes iterum ac tertio interrogavi, supplicio minatus : perseverantes duci jussi. Neque enim dubitabam, quale- cunque esset quod faterentur, pervicaciam certfe, et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri. Fuerunt alii similis amentiae : quos, quia cives llomani erant, annotavi in urbem remitlendos. Mox ipso tractu, ut fieri solet, diifundente se crimine, plures species inciderunt. Propositus est libellus, sine auctore, multorum nomina continens, qui negarent se esse Christianos, aut fuisse ; quum, praeeunte me, deos appellarent, et imagini tuae, quam propter hoc jusseram cum simulacris numinum afferri, thure ac vino supplicarent; praeterea maledicerent Chrisio: quorum nihil cogi posse dicuntur, qui sunt revera Christiani. Ergo dimittendos pulavi. Alii ab indice nominati, esse se Chrislianos dixerunt, et mox negaverunt: fuisse quidem, sed desisse, quidam ant^ triennium, quidam ante plures aiinos, non nemo etiam antfe viginti quoque. Omnes et imaginem tuam, deorumque simulacra venerati sunt ; ii et Christo maledixerunt. Affirmabant autem, banc fuisse summam vel culpae sua; vel erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire ; carmenque Christo, quasi Deo, dicere secum invicem ; seque sacraaiento non in scelus aliquod obstringere, sed ne furla, ne latrocinia, ne adulteiia committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent : quibus peractis morem sibi discedendi fuisse, rursusque coeundi ad capiendum cibum, promiscuum tameii, et innoxium : quod ipsum facere desisse post edictum meum, quo secundiim mandata tua hetaerias esse vetueram. Quo magis necessanum credidi, ex duabus ancillis, quae ministrce dicebantur, quid esset veri- et per tormenta quaerere. Sed niiiil aliud inveni, quam superslitionem pravam et immodicam. Ideoque, dilata cognitione, ad consulendum te decurri. Visa est enim mihi res digna consultatione, maxime propter periclilantium numerum. Multi enim omnis eetatis, oninis ordiuis, utriusque sexus eliam, vocanjur in periculuni, et vocabuntur. Neque enim civitates tantum, sed vicos etiam atque agros super- stitionis istius contagio pervagata est; qua videtur sisti'et corrigi posse. Certfe satis constat, prope jam desolata templa ccepisse celebrari, et sacra solennia diu intermissa repeti : passimque venire viciimas, quarum adhuc rarissimus emptor inveniebatur. Ex quo facile est opinari, qua; turba hominum emendan possit, si sit pcenitentia; locus." . ■ t>\ ■ " Actum quern debuisti, mi Secunde, in excutiendis causis eorum qui Chris- tiani ad te delali fueiant, secutus es, Neque enim in universum aliquid, quod quasi certam formam habeat constitui potest. Conquircndi non sunt : si defe- rantur et arguantur, puniendi sunt : ita tamen ut ([ui negaverit se Christianum esse, idque re ipsa manifestum fecerit, id est, supplicando diis noslns, quamvis suspectus in prajteritum fuerit, veniam ex pccnitenti.^ impetret. Sine auctore vero propositi libelli, nuUo cnmine, locum habere debent. Nam et pessimi exempli, nee nostri seculi est." 30 These memorials of antiquity will furnish to the reader ample matter for useful reflection. 1 beg to suggest two objects. First; What violations of reason, humanity, and justice, were practised towards the innocent Christians, by these philosophical j[ elegant, and self-complacent Romans ! Secondly ; What a commanding testimony to the integrity of the early Christians, and consequently to the validity of their declarations, arises from the depositions of those who renounced Christianity under the dread of torture or death ! If any of them could have divulged a secret injurious to the cause which they had renounced, would they not have done so ? Did not the strongest motives urge them to it I Are not deserters and apostates from any cause, always most eager to justify themselves, by raising some re- proach against the party which they have left ? There is also another body of evidence, of a kind similar to this. We have remaining some writings, of skilful, learned, inveterate, and powerful adversaries to Christianity, who lived near enough to the times, and who possessed every motive to urge them and every means to enable them, had it been possible, to deny the genuineness of the Christian Scriptures, or the existence of the persons concerning whom those Scriptures treat. These were Celsus in the second century, Porphyry and Hierocles in the third, and the Emperor Julian in the fourth. All these speak of Jesus and his apostles as persons who were as well known to have existed as any other men of a prior period ; they refer, and often by name, to the writers of the Four Gospels and to other authors of the New Testament ; they mention many of the facts in the history of our Lord, without venturing to dispute them ; they even allow not a few of his miracles, and their only way of endeavouring to escape the natural conclusion from them is, by disparaging their mag- nitude and by ascribing the performance of them to magical arts. To those who are so weak as to allow themselves to be per- suaded that there is any historical uncertainty whether Jesus and his original disciples ever lived, I submit another obvious and undeniable fact. The Jews, as a separate community, marked with unequalled peculiarities, have existed before the face of all nations, from the time of their dispersion, not forty years after the affirmed crucifixion of Jesus, down to the present day : and they, with only individual exceptions, obstinately persist in rejecting Jesus as a Teacher or a Saviour. But do they say that such a person never existed I It would be an immense advantage to their cause, if they could say so : it would redeem them from the heaviest opprobrium, and it would place them in a new and honourable situation in the eyes of the world. Yet they unanimously maintain, because they know it impossible to resist the evidence of the fact, that Jesus did live at the time which we assign, that their national ruin took place soon after, and that the followers of Jesus, from that time down- wards, have attributed the unexampled caUimities of the Jewish nation to their having- rejected him. And, more than this ; an anonymous Jewish book,* written in the middle ages for the very purpose of heaping- the foulest infamy upon Jesus and his followers, expressly admits that he healed the sick, raised the dead, and wrought other works above the power '^^.man: but it pretends to account for those miracles by saying that he effected them by the arts of magic. Here, then, is a body of evidence, derived from different and unconnected sources, but ali from persons most unfriendly to the cause of Christianity, but which is far more than sufficient to prove that "the Persons of whom the Scriptures of the New Testament treat, really did exist," an.l that " ths EVENTS which they relate," really did take place. SECTION XII. ON THE allegation that the gospel narratives ARE derived from THE IDOLATROUS FICTIONS OP GREECE AND INDIA. If any thing could surprise us, from a man who seems deter- mined to post himself as the most false of all that have ever disgraced the use of language, it would be his assertion that " some, many, or all of these events, had been previously related of the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome, and more espe- cially of the Indian idol Chrisna, whose religion, with less alteration than time and translations have made in the Jewish Scriptures, may be traced in every dogma and every ceremony of the Evangelical Mythology." With regard to the crowd of false deities which were objects of the ancient Greek and Roman idolatry, the numerous and well-known school-books entitled Pantheons, Mythological Dictionaries, and the like, by their statements of the o})inions and relations which had been taught by priests and poets, supply a plain and ample refutation of this impudent falsehood. If any can receive it, they must be in- capable of reasoning, and immoveable by evidence ; or, more awfully still, they must have sacrificed both reason and con- science to the darkest depravity of soul. The mythological stories of the Hindoos concerning their god Krishna or Krishnu (for the Manifesto-Avriter has altered the spelling of the word, apparently with the base design of giving it a closer resemblance to the sacred name of our Divine Lord) are extremely numerous, and, as usual, most absurd and mon- strous. Some portions of them are such as led Sir William Jones into the supposition that the fabulous statements in the spurious gospels had been circulated among the Hindoo Brah- * Toldoth Jesu ; pp. 7, 8, 11, 18, 19, 22 : ed. \yagenseil. >Altdorf, 1G81. 32 mlns, and that their wildest parts were grafted on the fable of Kesava, whose story bears some resemblance to that of the Grecian Apollo. From some few and distant resemblances, in the midst of a chaos of acts and qualities the most opposite, it would be highly unreasonable to draw the conclusion that there was any real conformity in history or character ; still less could any man lU his senses believe the identity affirmed by this out- rageous and insulting writer. Krishna is described by the Hindoos as an incarnation of Vishnu. Among many extra- vagant stories, his principal exploits are those of licentiousness and destruction ; he had several wives and sixteen thousand concubines ; he destroyed his own numerous progeny ; and he was at last killed by an arrow. Ample details of these silly and disgusting narratives may be read in Sir William Jones's Works, 8vo. ed. Vol. III. pp. 374—395; Moors Hindu Pan- theon ; Rees's Cyclopadia, and, as the most authentic of all. Wards Vietv of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos, Vol. I. pp. 193—202. Now, my countrymen and friends, I have laid before you, in as brief a statement as I have been able, facts and evidence. It is your part to exercise your judgment upon them. If you have been in danger of giving credit to the assertions of the boastful Manifesto, of being seduced by its artfulness or subdued by its effrontery, you have in your hands the means of detecting the imposture. The dreadful and unblushing falsehoods, the outrages on truth and reason, the perfect disregard of argu- mentative equity, which are thus dealt out to the credulous by its pitiable writer, you cannot but perceive. You must be aware of his trne character. You cannot submit your under- standing and your moral sense to his unprincipled rant, without being conscious that you are sacrificing your reason, violating your duty, and making yourselves willing dupes. Do not crouch to be so cheated and insulted. Think for yourselves, seriously, uprightly, and devoutly ; for the greatness of the occasion demands your prayers to the Supreme Author of TRUTH. Examine fully, reason fairly, and conclude honestly. The subject is of importance beyond the power of words to express. No wise man will think that it can be disposed of by a jest, a sarcasm, or a shameless lie. You have an infinite interest at stake. Suffer no man to deceive you ; and beware that you deceive not yourselves. J. P. S. London, Jan. 8, 1827. NOTE A. ItEtERRED TO AT PAGL 13. Some fuither information upon these particulars may be desirc-d by those readers who are not conversant in subjects of criticism. In the Hebrew text of tlie Old Testament, from which all the Protestant Versions have been made, there are no passages which can, with a shadow of reason, be regarded as in- terpolations ; except a few little clauses in the Historical Books,' which would be termed, in a modern pul^lication, Geugruphicul and Genealogical Notes, ori- ginally written in the margin, and afterwards inadvertently taken into the text. There are also mistakes of numbers, in many places ; arising from this circum- stance, that, in the most ancient manuscripts, numbers were expressed, not in figures nor in words at length, but by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, some of which are extremely like each other; and the same letters stand for units, tens, hundreds, and tliousands, by altering a little stroke above or below thera. Hence er'ors were almost unavoidable, in the lapse of so many ages. But they are, in general, capable of being corrected by the help of a little arithmetic and common sense; and it is plain tliat errata of this kind have no effect whatever ' on the religious design of the Bible. Notwithstanding the great number of Various Readings in the New Testa- ment, those which produce any material difference in the sense are extremely few indeed ; as any one, without a knowledge of the original, may be convinced by running his eye along the under margin of tlie Unitarian Improved Version. Of interpolations (by which term writers of criticism mean unauthorized addi- tions) the four following are ail of the smallest consequence that occur in the Received Text of the New Testament: and it would be assuming too much, to call any of them iviljhl interpolations. The probability is, that they were at first brought into the text, with honest intentions, but from mistaken sources of information. Matt, vi, 14. " Tor thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever. Amen." This sentence is wanting in the best authorities, though the less in point of number. It is believed to have got insertion, in or after the fourth century, from the custom of annexing it, as a doxology, in public prayer. No fact, doctrine, or duty of religion is affected by either its presence or its absence. John V. 4. " Waiting for the moving of the water : for an angel went down, at a certain season, into the pool, and troubled the water ; whosoever then first, after the troubling of the water, stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had." This passage is absent from the best authorities. It probably derived its origin from Jewish tradition, was then written by some person, as a remark, in the margin of his copy, and finally was added to tlie text by a transcriber from that copy, who mistook it for a clause of the original. John vii. 53 to viii. 11. The critical judgment concerning this large portion is extremely difficult. Weighty authorities are on each side of the question, but the detail of them could not be given intelligibly in a little room. Its authenti- city was either denied or giently doubted by Erasmus, Calvin, Beza, Grotius, Leclerc, Wetstein, Semler, Morus, Griesbach, and others ; but maintained by Hammond, Mill, Whitby, Lardner, Doddridge, Michaelis, and Dr. Slaudlin in D 34 two able dissertations published at Gottingen in 1806. The writer of this note conceives the preponderance of evidence to be in favour of the passage, and that the suggestion of Augustine (who lived in the fourth century) probably assigns the true cause of its omission in some copies; namely, a very needless appre- hension that our Lord might be thought too lenient in liis treatment of tlie accused person. 1 John V. 7, 8, — "in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bearrecord on earth" — . The evidence in favour of the genuineness of these words is so inferior to that on the opposite side, that the majority of persons who have gone through the whole case, (which is no trifling labour,) are satisfied of their spuriousness. The probability is, that the passage was oiiginally a marginal comment on " the Spirit, the water, and the tflood ;" and was introduced by the ignorance or the predilec- tion of transcribers, into the text of the Vulgate Latin Version. There is no authority for it whatsoever in any manuscripts of the Greek original, except one, which is too modern to be of much value. This and the two following compose the three passages to which the author of the Introduction to the Improved Version attributes "great importance." But it should be recollected, that critical disquisition upon the authenticity of any document ought to be carried on with the most rigorous impartiality, and without either favour or disfavour to particular doctrines which the document might affect; that many who have denied the doctrines of the Trinity and the Divine Nature of the Saviour, have admitted the common reading of these three texts ; and that many other persons, who reject the passage in 1 John v. and approve of the proposed emendations of the other two, are fully convinced of the truth of those doctrines, because they believe the general tenor of Scripture, and the declaration of particular passages, both numerous and forcible, to be decidedly in their favour. Acts XX. 28. In one clause of this verse there are six varieties of reading. 1. " Church of God." A small number of Greek manuscripts: the modern text of the Vulgate, but it is contested with regard to the most ancient copies : the Syriac of Pliiloxenus, made in the beginning of the sixth century, but it has Loul m the margin: Epiphanius and Ambrose, in the fourth century, and some of the later fathers. 2. " Church of Christ." 'No existing manuscripts: but this reading is found in the Peshito Syriac, which certainly existed in the fourth century, and may not improbably be ascribed to tlie third or even the second: thence it was ap- parently derived hy an Arabic version not higher than the seventh century: it appears also, but not perfectly free from ambiguity, in citations occurring in the works of Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and Theodoret. 3. " Church of the Lord." All the manuscripts which are the most ancient, the most valuable, and derived from different sources : the Coptic, Armenian, and old Latin Versions: many of the Greek and Latin fathers. 4. " Church of the Lord and God." One manuscript of the ninth century, and forty-six more, amounting to the majority in mere number, but none of them are very ancient: the Sclavonic Version, made in the ninth century: none of the fathers. 5. " Church of God and the Lord." One manuscript, and that very recent. G. " Church of the Lord God." One manuscript of the twelfth century; an Arabic Version, not probably earlier than the thirteenth century. After a laborious consideration of the numerous branches of evidence, which are here but briefly pointed out, it appears to my humble opinion that the third reading, " Church of the Loud," is shewn, by preponderance of proofs, to be the genuine text. 1 Tim. iii 16. The question is, whether the true reading be "God was manifested in the flesh," or " Who was manifested in the flesh." The evidence on each side is too long and intricate to be here detailed. Thedifiiculty is very great, either way. To the writer of this pamphlet it appears that impartial criticism most favours the latter reading. If the English reader should wonder 35 how two words, which to his eye and ear seem so different from each other, could ever come to be confounded, he may not dislike to be informed that, as they appear in the most ancient Greek manuscripts, they are so much alike that, under various conceivable and very probable circumstances, OC xvlw, might easily be mistaken for 0C (jod. The difference lies only in two small strokes; and those strokes might shew through the parchment from the writing on the other side, or the writing at that part might be accidentally faint, or the parchment thin or discoloured. After a careful consideration of the words, the connexion, the apparent train of thought, and the characteristic style of the apostle Paul, I am led to think that the following arrangement (of which the principal idea is derived from Dr. Cramer, of Kiel, in Holstein) and para- phrastic translation most faithfully represent the sense of the original. " These precepts I write unto thee (hoping to come to thee very soon; but if I should be longer than I expect), that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to conduct thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the Living God ( — the pillar and foundation of the truth, and confessedly great is this mystery of religion !—) who was manifested in human nature, was attested by divine proofs, was beheld by angels, was proclaimed among the nations, was believed upon through the world, was received back to heaven in majestic glory." I now renew my appeal to any man of common sense and honesty. What must he think of the head and heart of the Manifesto- writer, who, in reference to two of these passages, could pen the following words; " Maj-kwell! the retaining therein [the Received Text] and circulating as the Word of God, with consent or connivance of all parties, several passages known and admitted bi/ all to ha forgeries and lies: 1 John v. 7 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16. Excellent morality this ! !" Whether folly or knavery abounds the most in the composition of this unhappy man's character, I presume not to say ; but it would not be easy to find a more enormous instance of either, Is it for him to talk of morality^ who is conscious to himself that he is constantly contriving and publishing the basest falsehoods ? Christian pity would adoi)t for him the generous prayer of the Saviour whom he reviles. " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do !" — But alas ! miserable man ! too well he knoxcs what he does. It is not ignorance, it is not error, that prompts his horrid course. d2 REJOINDER Mil. TAYLOR'S REPLY TO THE PRECEDING PAGES. Th E author of the paper wluch occasioned the preceding tract, Mr. Robert Taylor, formerly a clergyman of the Church of Eng- land, has published a pamphlet, intitled, " Syntagma of the Evidences of the Christian Religion: being a Vindication of the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, against the As- saults of the Christian Instruction Society, through their De- puty, J. P. S. commonly reported to be Dr. John Pye Smith, of Homerton :" 117 pages in octavo. This writer shews himself to be possessed of considerable ability and adroitness in the management of his cause, extensive but desultory and superficir.l reading, and some shallow learning, enough to ansv»'er his pur- pose of vain ostentation, and of deceiving the ignorant or cre- dulous: but, if we expect ingenuousness, candour, and an honest regard to truth, we shall be grievously disappointed. Contro- versy is a painful and revolting employment, when our an- tagonists are held by no bonds of honour or veracity. This is the case here. Mr. Taylor is stung to the quick, at the unmasking of his pretensions and the exposure of his real character. He has, therefore, recourse to two methods of proceeding, which form the basis of his production; the first, to represent me as a violent, intolerant, abusive, enraged man; and the other, to repeat and aggravate his former misrepresentations and false- hoods, adding the strongest asseverations of their truth, and casting upon me the charge of being the liar and wilful deceiver. This does not surprise me ; and I shall be happy if it have the effect of leading any to investigate the subject for themselves, fairly and fully. Let no one believe in either Mr. Taylor or me ; but let every man go to the fountain-heads of intelligence, so far as he can, by consulting the books quoted, and by such other modes of tJiorough examination as the different questions may require. If I could have complimented Mr. Taylor, as a gentleman of good sense, learning, and probity, who had the misfortune to differ from other worthy persons upon some points of speculative opinion, probably he would have been well contented, and he might even have repaid me with correspondent flattery. But I cannot do so. I must call things by their right names. False- hood and effrontery are his chosen weapons for the defence of 37 his revolting impiety : and I should be like him, I slionld merit the rancour which he breathes ag-ainst me, if I could retract the charges of deceptive and fraudful arg-uing which I have brought against him, and with which / cujain impucfn hhn before the trihunal of all honest men. I now, therefore, soleinnlij repeat those charges; and again, before God and man, I declare him to be the most false and unprincipled writer that it has ever been my misfortune to meet with! Let him say of me, that I have written in " a style that no gentleman could have used, and no scholar would have needed:" (p. 65.) I am unmoved. Of his good word I am not ambitious. I would abhor to be called a fjentlevian or a scholar, upon his terms. No : I am a plain- speaking man of the people. Let me be numbered with them, with honest and trut'.i-telling Englishmen ! Let me never stoop to see a man use the basest and most dishonourable artifices, under the name of reason, and be so cowardly as not to call those tricks by their right name ! That he has been prosecuted and punished by the civil power, I exceedingly disapprove and lament; though he is pleased to represent me as ready to be a persecutor, if my " voice or wish could affect the legislation of England." (Si/n- tarjma, p. 83.) I belie-ve that the Author of Christianity has warranted no coercive or vindictive measures, at the hand of man, for its support. The religion of Jesus rests upon sound reason and honest conviction ; and all employment, in its defence, of temporal allurements, or infliction of civil penalties, appears to me inconsistent with its essential principles, and entirely con- trary to the word and will of him whom I rejoice to acknowledge as my Saviour and Lord. Lest my adversary should say that these sentiments are taken up for the occasion, I not only appeal to all who have known my whole lii'e, but T ask the reader's attention to an extract from a Discour-se which I published more than five years ago. *' Here may I pause, to give utterance to deep and bitter lamentation, that the propagation and defence of divine truth has not been always carried oji in the S'lirit of its legitimate dis- covery! Gloomy ages past have siiewn us kings and emperors, pope.-!, bishops, and presbyters, councils and synods, dictating what tliey called religion, and enforcing their often ignorant and profane decisions, as the standanls of unhesitating belief. Reason is shocked, and the heart of humanity is broken, in looking back upon the miseries which those imjtioas usuri)ations have inflicted on mankind. Infatuated oppressors! Could they not understand that there is no connexion !)etween the threaten- ings of human ])Ower, ccmfiscations, tortures, and executions, and the proof of propositions which respect the thoughts and inward feelings of men, their accouutableness to God, and their condition in the eternal world? Could they not discern that such means were equally applicable, and far more congenial, tu the aid of imposlu.re, than \o the supporl of benigiiaut and 38 lovely truth J Could they not see that error and impiety, when persecuted, have their evil varnished over, and stand forth as objects of pity and tenderness ? Alas, alas ! That even in our age and country, the truths of Heaven should be vindicated — no, not vindicated, — outraged, degraded, insulted ; — by means abhorrent from the character and the word of Christ, the genius of the gospel, and even the dictates of common sense ! That the doctrine whose OWN energies will vanquish the world, should be held forth as crying for help to indictments and con- demnations, fines and dungeons ! Measures which go near to place the martyr's crown on the loathsome hydra of infidelity!"* If the reader will take the advice above given, if he will search, examine, and compare, with a sincere mind, T have no anxiety for the result ; for I am sure that result will be an en- lightened conviction that Christianity is the work, not of men, but of God ; that it is the actual revelation of his wisdom and goodness ; that it bears all the characters of truth and excel- lency; and that it is the grand instrument of Divine Mercy for conferring the greatest benefits, intellectual and moral, personal and social, temporal and eternal, upon the human race. It is in full correspondence with the deceptive character of Mr. Taylor and his writings, that he calls this pamphlet of his a " Syntagma," that is a Collection, " of the Evidences of the Christian Religion." Why does he thus stamp a falsehood upon the forehead of his book ? Is it not plain that his object is to mislead and deceive ? Would an honest man, would a sincere friend of mankind, would any faithful inquirer after truth, would any one that loved and practised virtue, thus hang out false colours to ensnare the ignorant or unw ary ? I shall now follow him through his desultory course of misre- presentation in respect of facts, and fraudulence in his use, or more justly speaking, misuse of reasoning. Upon my first Section, " On the general Evidence of THE Genuineness of the Christian Scriptures," Mr. T. pours out a stream of quibbling sophistry, with artful perversion of citations, and loud vauntings of victory. All the reply that I need to make is this. The Piihlic Notoriety, to which I have appealed, was that which grew out of the very nature of the case ; and it Avas such as presented circumstances so peculiar, as at once to render impossible the successful intru- sion of forged writings, and to secure the recognition of those which were genuine. For the proof of this assertion, I refer to * " Sermon on the Means of o1)taining Satisfaction with Regard to the Truth of Religious Sentiments ;" publislied in November, 1822. I regret that the limits of these sheets forbid my introducing striking quotations, avowing ttiese sentiments, from Dr. Doddridge's " Sermon on the Absurdity and Iniquity of Persecution for Conscience' Sake, in all its Kinds and Degrees," and from my valued friends, Dr. Winter, Dr. Wardlaw, and Mr. .foseph Fletcher, in the " Lectures on some of the Principal Evidences of Revelation,' by an Association of the LondoD Dissenting Ministers ; 1827. pp. 334—336. 39 the details and minute sifting-.s in Lardners great work, T/ie Genuineness and Credihilitij of the Gospel History ; or to the abstracts of the evidence in Doddridge's Lectures or Pcdeifs Evidences; or to the discussions in the Introduction to the New Testament of Michaelis, Jahn, Hug, or Mr. Hartwjll Home ; or to the Horce Paulince of Dr. Paley ; or to u recent work con- vStructed upon the same impregnable principle of argument, The Veracity of the Gospels and Acts, argued from undesigned Coincidences ; by the Rev. J. J. Blunt. I must also say that, if my reader has a soul that can appreciate the value of learning without pedantry, knowledge united with penetrating judginent, a fine taste, and a faculty of reasoning at once profound and luminous and original, he will thank me for directing his atten- tion to two works, which are also of recent publication, by Mr. Isaac Taylor ; The History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modern Times; and The Process of Historical Proof, exemplified and explained. Did the economical limits of this pamphlet admit of copious extracts, I should gladly enrich it by citing many passages ; but I must deny myself the giving that pleasure to my readers, and venture to insert only two or three paragraphs. — " As an historical question, Christianity is distinguished from others of a like nature by nothing, unless it be the multi- plicity and the force of the evidence it presents. To ask, there- fore, for proof of the facts recorded in the Gospels, and to leave the events of the same times unquestioned and unexamined, is an impertinence which the advocates of Christianity should never submit to, much less encourage, by a tacit acknowledgment that the evidence in the one case needs some sort of candour, or of easiness, or of willingness to be persuaded, which is not asked by the other. The Gospels demand a Verdict according to the Evidence, in a firmer tone than any other ancient histories that can be put to the bar of common sense. From tliose who are convinced of its truth, Christianity does indeed ask the surrender of assent to whatever it reveals of the mysteries of the unseen world ; but, to its impugners, it speaks only of things obvious and palpable as the objects and occupations of common life ; and, in relation to matters so simple, it demands what cannot be withheld, the same assent ivhich ive yield to the same proof in all other cases. If evidence dilFering not at all from that which is accepted in similar cases, and which, in amount and validity, would be thought ten times more than enough, if the books in question related to merely political events, is not to be admitted; if a verdict is to be returned openly affronting every principle by which the course of human aftairs is regulated, and the judg- ments of men directed, the true occasion of so great a violence should be placed in the light. And no other account of the strange anomaly can be given than this, namely, that the suppo- sition of the resurrection of the dead, whicli is the centre fact affirmed in these books, and which must bear all the burden of 40 the argument, oflers a greater outrage to reason than tlie rejec- tion of the clearest and fullest evidence that history has ever accumulated. Unless then it be thought by us ' a thing incredi- ble that God should raise the dead/ there remains not even a pretext for questioning the authenticity of the Gospels and Epistles, the proof of which, in every separate part of it, far EXCELS that of the best authenticated historical record of an- tiquity." History of Transmission, p. 236 — 238. — '* Even this hasty review of the series of the Christian Evi- dences is sufficient to prove that it comprises every species of written testimony which history knows of And we have seen that this body of evidence is especially abundant in that very kind of composition, which ranks highest among the means of ascer- taining the truth of remote facts. And, if the light of testimony shines thus clearly and fully, within the enclosure of the Christian history, so likewise is there a broad day-light of evidence on all sides of this series of events. Few persons, perhaps, give due attention to the relative position of the Christian history, which stands upon the very point of intersection where three distinct lines of history meet ; namely, the Jewish, the Grecian, and the Roman. Thesfe three bodies of ancient literature, alone, have descended, by an uninterrupted channel of transmission, to modern times ; and these three, by a most extraordinary combi- nation of circumstances, were brought together to elucidate the Origination of Christianity. If upon the broad field of history there rests the common light of day, upon that spot where anew religion was given to man there shines the intensity of a concen- trated brightness. Well might the first teachers make the chal- lenge, ' We are not of the night, but of the day ! ' Well might the Founder himself, in bringing his doctrine to the earth, af- firm, '* He that doeth truth cometh to the light." — Historical Proof, p. 200- In Section II. I challenged Mr. T. to point out an instance of any "Act or Edict for the general Alteration or TOTAL Renovation of the Scriptures." He replies, by a strong statement of the cruelty and tyranny of Constantino, and of the partiality and courtly flatteries of Eusebius ; and by blustering and vapouring, as if he were actually about to bring- some instance or evidence of what he had alleged, and he ends without adducing any ! He affirms that " the proofs are so abundant, that their abundance only stands in the way of enumeration." Surely then he could have given us, at least, one instance ! But he has adduced none, he has referred to none. He quotes a sentence from Mosheim's justly indignant repro- bation of the disregard to veracity which, with innumerable other corruptions, attached to the characters of some Christian bishops and teachers, in the fourth century. But, fully admitting this dis- graceful charge, I not only deny the inference which Mr. T. 4J draws from it, but conceive that the direct contrary is the fair conclusion. For, in the great controversies of that age, particu- larly the Arian, that noxious principle must have strongly pre- disposed the partizans on each side to have tampered with the scriptures, by omitting, inserting, or altering, as might suit their immediate purpose; if they could have done so. But their mu- tual animosity and jealous vigilance put it out of the power of any party to corrupt those sacred writings, to which all made their appeal as the standard of truth. Mr. T. also quotes another passage of the same learned and impartial author : — " The proofs of the supreme pow^r of the emperors in religious matters, appear so incontestable in this controversy, that it is amazing it should ever have been called in question." * And upon this he grounds the assertion : — " Of the power of the Roman emperors, and of all Christian kings, princes, and governors, to alter the text of scripture to any ex- tent they pleased ; the proofs are so abundant, that their abun- dance only stood in the way of enumeration." (p. 2-1.) But if Mr. T. had stated the truth concerning the subject upon which Mosheim is treating, and had cited the whole pas- sage, of which he has given a garbled representation, the reader would have seen its perfect irrelevance to the matter in hand ; and that, in fact, it contains a striking proof of the inability of the most powerful emperor to effect any such purposes as he as- cribes to them. A contest had arisen, A. D. 311., between two parties, the one affirming and the other denying the validity of a popular election, by which Caicilian had been made bishop of Carthage. After long litigation, the complaining party appealed to the Emperor Constantino. He referred to the bishop of Rome and three Gaulish bishops, the examination and decision of the cause. With their determination, however, the appellants were still dissatisfied. In condescension to their reiterated complaints, Constantine convened a numerous council of Italian, Gaulish, Spanish, and German bishops, at Aries: and they determined as the former authorities had done. Upon this, the dissidents, who, from the name of one of their principal leaders, had acquired the denomination of Donatists, again appealed to the judgment of the Emperor. With remarkable patience he assented to their desire; and held a tribunal at Milan, in 310, where, after both the par- ties had finished their pleadings, he delivered a confirmation of the previous judgment. Then the Donatists broke out into vio- lent outrages; and, hi both their speeches and their writings, they accused Constantine of injustice, and loaded him with irritating reproaches. By these provocations, his lenity was exhausted, and he inflicted severe punislinKuts upon many of the leaders in the affair. After Mosheim has recited these circumstances, he adds ; " On this account great com- motions and tumults were raised in Africa ; for the party of * P. 24, quoted from Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. 42 the Donatists was both numerous and very powerful: and in vain did the Emperor endeavour, by sending a special commission, to allay these violent movements of the people." It is upon the section relating these affairs, that the Note occurs, the first sen- tence of which Mr. T. has copied from Maclaine's not very ac- curate translation. I here adduce the whole : " Nothing can be clearer, in this whole dispute, than the evidences of the Emperor's supreme power in matters relating to religion. At that time certainly, no person thought of a supreme judge of the whole church, appointed by Christ himself. The assemblies convened at Rome and Aries, are commonly called councils : but whoever impartially considers the affair will perceive, that they were not councils properly speaking, but only meetings of persons deputed by the Emperor to judge in the case ; or, what in the present day we should call commissioners."* Now I entreat the reader to observe three things. 1. That this dispute had nothing to do with any doctrines of religion, still less with any question about the text or authority of the scriptures ; but that it referred solely to matters of fact and law, and which were to be determined by an appeal to the legal tribunals. 2. That, though the suit seems to have been no very difficult one, yet, so little did the power of the Emperor avail, that he could not even save himself from public reproach and insult, though he had acted with such exemplary fairness and modera- tion. 3. That, from this fact, we may form an opinion what formi- dable agitations, and even open rebellion, would have been raised throughout the Roman empire, if Constautine, or any of his suc- cessors, had attempted the smallest corruption of those writings which all sects and parties called Christians, however opposed to each other on various grovmds of opinion, agreed to hold in the highest reverence. 4. That the chief object of the histoi'ian, in the note which he appends, is to give his readers the intimation, how unfounded in the precedents of antiquity are the claims which, in after ages, the Popes of Rome set up, of being the supreme judges in causes of ecclesiastical law. Here then is an instance, (and it is but one out of many,) from which the reader may judge of the integrity and trust-worthiness of Mr. Taylor. This developement has been occasioned by three * I do not derive my materials, as Mr. Taylor (who falsely charges me with consulting an English translation of Eusebius) takes liis, from Maclaine's English version of Mosheim ; but faithfully from the liistorian's own original. " Tain clara sunt in tola hac controversia suprema- potestatis imperatorise, in caussis ad religionem pertinentibus, signa, ut clariora fieri nequeant. C'erte, his tempori- bus nemo cogitabat de supremo totius ecclesia; judice ab ipso Ciiristo constituto. Conventus llomanus el Arelatensis coiiciiiu vulgu nominantur: sed qui rem acquis considerare oculis volet, intelliget eos proprie non esse coticiliii, sed consilia delegatoruin ab imperatore judicum, sive coinmissarioruni, utnoshodie loquinmr." Aluniioiiu Hist. Ecc^. See. IV. p. ii. cao. v. 5s iv. nota. 43 or four of his lines : to what tedious length, then, should I be com- pelled to carry quotations and explanations, if I were to under- take the toil of exposing and rectifying- his unremitting mis-state- ments I In a similar way he declaims, with his usual violence, through eight large pages, upon the alleged " Alteration of the Gospels in the Tleign of Anastasius," which, in Section III,, I had dis- entangled from his former misrepresentation : but he brings no evidence in the least degree affecting the facts and arguments which I had adduced, and which totally destroy his conclu- sions. Mr. T. has, however, given us some striking illustrations of the extent of his information and the profoundness of his learn- ing. It might have been presumed that any collegian, or a mere school-boy, who had but touched his lips with classical literature, would have known that Bentley is, by universal consent, re- vered as the patriarch and almost the founder of the purest cri- ticism: but, in Mr. T.'s ideas, that wondrous scholar, that man of mighty mind, is a " crony,'' and to be treated with contempt ! (p. 31.) It might also have been thought, that no person of the most ordinary acquaintance with English literature, could be a stranger to the principal avithors of our own time, who have ex- plored the fountains of our national history with signal assiduity and success;* yet these eminent historians and antiquaries are represented by the writer of the Syntagma, as " the preachers, it may be, in some canting gospel-shop," — " no better than Metho- dist parsons, and owe all their eminence to their conformity to the opinions of Dr. John Pye Smith, or to the exhibition of their * human faces divine' in the Evangelical Magazine." (pp. 31. 36.) Further to answer his purpose of misleading the unwary and betraying the credulous, Mr. T. (p. 31.) puts together two dis- tant passages from Bishop Marsh's Michaelis, as if they referred to the same time and to a connected series of facts : while the former of them refers to a tyrannous act of the Portuguese Arch- bishop of Goa, in A. D. 1599 ; and the other to the inscription which, according to a very general custom, the transcriber of an ancient copy of the Peshito Syriac Version of the New Testament, annexed to the manuscript, giving his own name and the date of finishing his work. The former fact Mr.T. represents as if it attached to " The Syriac Version of the N. T." generally, either to all the copies of it, or to its original constitution: whereas it refers only to those, probably very few, copies which the Roman Catholic prelate could get into his power, little more than 200 years ago, in a small district of Hindostan. The appa- * Sharon Turner, '^.sq. the author of tlie " History of the Anglo Saxons," 3 vols. ; the " History of England during llie Middle Ages," 5 vols; and the " Hislorv of the Kcign of Henry VIII " And }Jemj/ Ilullam, Esij , tiie author of the" History of Europe during the Middle Ages," 3 vols ; and the "Con- stitutional History of England," 2 vols. See the Edinburgh Review, Sept. 1828. 44 rent design of the latter citation is, to induce the reader to be- lieve it to be a memorial, not of the copying- of a sing-le manu- script, but of the original authorship of the Four Gospels ! As a short way of shewing- the bad faith and the flagrant defiance of justice in argument, with which Mr. T. puffs off" him- self by garbled quotations from the distinguished author just mentioned, Sir John David Michaelis, the late celebrated Pro- fessor of Philosophy in the University of Gottingen ; I shall adduce a few passages from that free inquirer and independent thinker. " Credulous as the Christians have been in later ages, and even so early as the third century, no less severe were they in their inquiries, and guarded against deception at the introduction of Christianity." Michaeliss Introd. to N. T. transl. hy Bishop Marsh, vol. i. p. 8. After adducing a series of objections which, upon the prin- ciples and in the manner of those who reject Christianity, might be adduced against the genuineness of Ctesar's Commentaries, he goes on to say : " Objections like these to the authenticity of Caesar would be answered by every critic in classical literature, not with a serious reply, but with a smile of contempt. Yet, weak and trivial as these arguments may appear, they are stronger than such as can with justice be applied to the writings of the New Testament." — " The adversaries of the Christian religion have advanced all that zeal, penetration, and learning can afford, to prove the New Testament spurious ; without being able to pro- duce a solid argument in its disfavour." ih. p. 26, 27. " It appears, from what has hitherto been said, that there is not the smallest reason to doubt of the authenticity of these writ- ings, and that they are as certainly genuine as the most indisput- able works of the Greeks and Romans. One might suppose that this were sufficiently satisfactory, for every man who had not an uncommon inclination to sceptisism.- — But, — not satisfied with refuting the arguments in its disfavour, we seek likewise the positive grounds of its authenticity. These — may be arranged under the three following heads. (1.) The impossibility of a for- gery, arising from the nature of the thing itself. (2.) "^Ihe ancient Christian, Jewish, and Heathen testimonies in its favour. (3.) Its own internal evidence." p. 30. Michaelis investigates each of these topics. " The evidence to be derived from the heretical writers of the first centuries, is still more important, in proving the New Tes- tament to be genuine, than even that of the orthodox fathers. It was the practice of the former, not only to falsify or wrongly explain particular passages, but to erase such as were not to be reconciled with their own private tenets. Now this very circum- stance is a positive proof, that they considered the New Testa- ment, with exception to these single passages, to be a genuine work of the apostles. They might deny an apostle to be an infal- lible teacher, and banish therefore his writings from the sacred 45 canon; but they no where contend that the apostle is not the author. This confession, from the mouth of an adversary, is tlie clearest evidence that can be given : and, as it was made in a period, and under circumstances when, had objections been possible, they would infallibly have been produced, it serves as an irresistible argument that the New Testament is a genuine work of the apostles." p. 35. "The Jewish and Heathen testimonies to the authenticitv of the New Testament, are equally important with those which have been last mentioned ; and Lardner has made a very large collec- tion of them in a book v/ritten for this purpose. Very early Heathen writers can be produced, who considered it as a work of the apostles and evangelists ; and Chrysostom remarks very justly (in his sixth Homily on the first Ep. to the Corinthians) that Celsus and Porphyry, two enemies of the Christian religion, are powerful witnesses for the antiquity of the New Testament ; since they could not have argued against the tenets of the Gospel, had it not existed in that early period." p. 39. " Whoever undertakes ,to forge a set of writings, and ascribe them to persons who lived in a former period, exposes himself to the utmost danger of a discordancy with the history and manners of the age to which his accounts are referred : and this danger increases, in proportion as they relate to points not mentioned in general history, but to such as belong only to a single city, sect, religion, or school. And, of all books that ever were written, there is none, if the New Testament be a forgery, so liable to de- tection. The scene of action is not confined to a single country, but is displayed in the greatest cities of the Roman empire. Al- lusions are made to the various manners and principles of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews ; which are carried so far, with respect to this last nation, as to extend even to the trifles and follies of their schools. A Greek or Roman Christian who lived in the second or third century, though as well versed in the writings of the ancients as Eustathius or Asconius, would have been still wanting in Jewish literature : and a Jewish, convert in those ages, even the most learned Rabbi, would have been equally deficient in the knowledge of Greece and Rome. If then the New Testament, thus exposed to detection had it been an imposture, is found, after the severest researches, to harmonize with the his- tory, the manners, and the opinions of the first century ; and since, the more minutely we inquire, the more perfect we find the coincidence ; we must conclude that it was beyond the reach of human abilities to effectuate so wonderful a deception." p. 49. Michaelis then goes on to adduce examples for the illustration and proof of the preceding statements ; and he concludes this branch of his argument with these words : " Whoever attentively reads the New Testament, will continually find examples of this nature," [supposing him to be possessed of the requisite know- ledge of antiquity and history :] " and it is sufiicient, in answer to the question, Is the New Testament ancient and (jenuine ? to 46 reply, Compare it with the history of the times, and you cannot doubt of its authenticity." p. 54. Upon Section IV. The Assertions respecting Lan- FRANC, and Section V. On Various Readings, Mr. Taylor writhes, and evades, and pours out the most desperate assertions, with a contempt of veracity which may well excite astonishment and pity, that a human being can be found capable of such moral degradation. The dishonesty whicli I had charged him with (in af- firming " a general alteration of these Scriptures ' to accommodate them to the faith of the orthodox,' by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, as recorded by Beausobre;") he retorts upon me; (p. 56,) and to prove that, not himself, but I am the fraudulent man who perverts the sense of authors, he cites, but without trans- lating it, this passage of the learned Frenchman : " If the here- tics take away a word from the sacred text, or add one to it, they are sacrilegious violators of the sanctity of Scripture; but if the Catholics do it, it is called retouching the first copies, amending them to make them more intelligible." I rejoin, that this passage does not, in the smallest degree mi- litate against my positions, and that all whicli I wrote is perfect- ly true, viz. that the passage in Beausobre contains no such thing as "an account of a general alteration of the Scriptures." Neither this passage, nor its connexion, nor any other passage in the two volumes of Beausobre, contains, admits, implies, or au- thorizes any such thing as the Manifesto-writer asserts. In the connexion, M. de Beausobre is exposing the fraud of certain Jesuits in making pretended allegations of Scripture. He cites the accusation of Pope Leo I. against the Manichaeans, of cor- rupting the Scriptures ; and he maintains that they were innocent, but that the party calling itself Catholic and Orthodox had really been guilty of the very crime which it charged upon others. In proof of this, he adduces. (1.) A passage of Epiphanius, who lived in the 4th century, blaming some of his own party for attempting to suppress the €K\av(T€ {he wept) in Luke xix. 41 ; because they thought it be- neath the dignity of Jesus. (2.) The assertion of Ambrose, that the clause, ovU 6 'Twg (nor the Son), in Mark xiii. 32, was absent from ancient Greek manuscripts : an assertion at variance with all evidence. (3.) The absence of Mark xvi. 9 — 20, from the Vatican manu- script ; and the declaration of some of the Fathers, that those clauses were wanting in numerous manuscripts in their time. (4.) That the Emperor Anastasius I. banished the Patriarch Macedonius, for attempting to intrude the reading 0C God, in- stead of OC who, in 1 Tim. iii. 16. (5.) The proposal to substitute the Genealogy in Matt. i. in the text of Luke iii. for the sake of avoiding the difficulties arising from their discrepancy ; which is supposed to have been by somebody purposely attempted, at a very early period, because we find, in 47 the Manuscript called Beza's, preserved at Cambridge, seven verses of Luke's Genealogy altered into a conformity with Matthew's. Now upon these statements I beg to remark : — [1.] They involve not the smallest charge or suspicion u])on the general body of Christians, of having ever attempted to alter the text of the Scriptures. That the unknoion persons whom Epi- phanius calls orthodox, were only individuals possessing no efficient influence, is manifest from the fact that no manuscript or other authority exhibits a various reading of the word. [2.] They shew the impossibility of any designed corruption obtaining acceptance with the general body of Christians. Great as was the authority of Ambrose in the Western Church, and desirous as many weak-minded men undoubtedly were to wrest out of the hands of the Arians a text which was supposed to be so advantageous to them, not a single manuscript or version, or even citation, has been warped by the attempt. The same inference follows from the two remarkable circum- stances mentioned of the Vatican and the Cambridge Manu- scripts. However high their estimation has been, they have had no influence where there was reason to apprehend that they had suffered a dishonourable alteration. It is, therefore, with justice that M. deBeausobre annexes this remark: " In vain may infidels wish to avail themselves of these alterations : for, though they prove the temerity of some mistaken zealots, the restoration of the passage is an authentic testimony to the fidelity of the Christian Church. It had no share in the fraud, and it corrected it as soon as it was discovered." Histoire de Manichee, &c. vol. i. p. 342. With respect to Section VI. on the Coaiplutensian Poly- GLOTT, and the manuscripts from which it was published, Mr. T. continues his former course of evasion and perversion. The following phrases occur in the Introduction to the Unitarian Im- proved Version ; — " Robert Stephens, published a splendid edition of the New Testament in Greek, in which he availed him- self of the Complutensian Polyglott ;" — " The received text stands upon the authority of the unknown editor of the Elzevir edition, who copied the text of Robert Stephens, introducing a few variations from that of Beza." These expressions Mr. T. represents as if they conveyed the idea that the Received Text (that is, what is printed in the conmion editions,) of the Greek New Testament was derived solely from the Complutensian edi- tion; — as if the world had been ignorant even that the New Testament, or at least the Greek original of it, existed, till it was printed at Alcala ; — or as if there had been no other manu- scripts from which Erasmus, Stephens, Beza, and others, succes- sively published the Greek Testament, comparing them, of course, with the Complutensian ; — or as if those manuscripts, (though a few have been lost) and many which have been discovered siiu;e, were not still in existtmce, repeatedly collated, and preserved in well known })laces with the greatest care. I do not say that he 48 actually affirms tliese positions ; he does, indeed in a note, (p. 47.) imply the contrary : but the bearing' and evident design of his re- presentations is to produce these, or some equivalent impressions upon the mind of his readers. Without this, his whole argument would have no correspondent object; and that this was his inten- tion is evinced by the terms in his Manifesto, " The infinitely suspicious origination of the present Received Text." Now, if the reader does not happen to be acquainted with Bibliography, let me request him to converse upon the following- positions, with any intelligent printer or bookseller. — That the first editions of the most ancient books were generally, indeed as a matter of necessity, printed from fev/, and those often inaccurate, manuscripts : — that, in subsequent times, better and more ancient manuscripts were usually brought to light :^ — that the editors of new editions " availed themselves" of all those discoveries of manuscripts, in order to correct mistakes, and restore the text of the author to a state of accuracy : — that, in doing so, they commonly took a copy of an earlier and less perfect edition, and on its lines and margin made their corrections, with a pen : — and that thus the best editions that ever the world has seen, might be said to rest upon the basis of others which were very faulty and defective. In this way all the most excellent editions of the classical authors have been gradually, slowly, and laboriously brought to perfection. — Where, then, would be the justice of representing such a progression as this, as if it ihrew a shade of " suspicion" upon the authenticity of the work? Is not the ra- tional conclusion, the very contrary ? Mr. T. quotes the Bishop of Peterborough's third edition of his translation of Michaelis, to shew that the learned Bishop has changed his opinion, and now believes the manuscripts from which the Complutensian text was taken, to have been more an- cient and valuable than, agreeably to the general opinion, he had before supposed. This is, however, a matter which does not at all affect our argument. Undoubtedly, for reasons of critical curiosity and satisfaction, we should be gratified by knowing the character and history of the Alcala manuscripts ; yet there is the highest moral certainty that this knowledge would do nothing more than confirm what is already well enough known. In fact, the matter is established : for there is good reason to believe that the learned Germans, Moldenhauer and Tychsen, were the sub- jects of an imposition practised upon them by some people in the Spanish university, who were not disposed to permit their ma- nuscript treasures to be scrutinized by Protestants. A gentleman with whom I have the honour of acquaintance, well known as a friend of rational freedom and a sufferer in its cause, and whose extraordinary talents as a linguist and a poet have eminently enriched our literature, John Bowring, Esq., has spent much time in Spain, and was the intimate friend of the most enlight- ened, learned, and patriotic men in that country, during its enjoyment of the blessing, (of which it has been so basely and 49 cruelly robbed !) of a constitutional government. He bad the opportunity of carefully examining the manuscripts at Alcala; he has published reasons amounting to a demonstration that no sale or destruction of tnanuscrijHs ever took place ; by his per- sonal examination he found the same Scripture manuscripts which had been described as being in the library, by Alvaro Gomez, who died in 1580; and he adds, "That the manuscripts referred to are modern and valueless, there can be no longer any question." * To Mr. Bowring I am also indebted for the infor- mation (which, had it been known to Michaelis, or to his learned translator, would have been to them most welcome intelligence, and would have saved them a world of trouble,) that Gomez, in his Life of Cardinal Xitnenes, states that " Leo X. lent to Ximenes those [Greek manuscripts which] he required, from the Vatican ; which were returned as soon as the Polyglott was com- pleted." But, though all this is interesting as a matter of literary history, the reader may well ask, What has Mr. Taylor to do with it? What benefit does he imagine, or pretend, that his infidel cause derives from the editorship of Cardinal Ximenes, or those whom he employed I — Truly nothing. But observe, reader, his dis- honest artifice. His original design was to make men believe that the Text of the Christian Scriptures rested on no solid basis of genuineness : to support this position, he aflSrmed that " the manuscripts from which the Received Text was taken, were stolen by the librarian and sold to a sky-rocket maker, in the year 1749:" and it is indubitably manifest that his object was to betray those who might be so unfortunate as to trust him, into the idea that all the original authority from which the printed text of the Greek Testament is derived, lay in the Complutensian edition. When, therefore, I had exposed the false and fraudu- lent character of this argument, he adroitly lays hold of the cir- cumstance that the Bishop of Peterborough has adopted a better opinion of the antiquity or goodness of the manuscripts which had been supposed to be used by the Spanish editors : upon this he launches out into a ridiculous boast of his own superior accuracy; and then he artfully glides into a repetition of his former sophistry, with the assumption that all his assertions remain still unshaken. With such a double dealer, it is useless to reason on his own ac- count : but let the good sense of any honest man determine be- twe(m us. In Section VII. I have brought the charge of Falsehood and Forgery against Mr. T. and he now endeavours to excuse himself by saying that his Manifesto was intended to be merely " an Index, — abbreviating its terms, — which would be supplied * Mr. Bowring's LeUers, in the Monthly Repository, April 1821, p. 203, of Vol xvi. and Aug. 1827, p. 572, of Vol. I. New Series. K 50 the moment the authority referred to was consulted." (p. 48, 49.) I rejoin : 1. The Manifesto does not call itself an Index ; it has no ap- pearance of being- an Index ; and the passage which I copied from it is a complete sentence, without the smallest intimation that there is any " ellipsis to be filled up" or supplement to be made by the reader. 2. Mr. T. must have been perfectly aware, that the few refe- rences which he had given, wear the aspect of being authorities substantiating his assertions, and not that of text-books in which the subject of inquiry was to be further treated ; and that very few of his readers and hearers would possess either the disposition or the means to consult the authors of whose name he makes a fraudulent parade : and he also knows further that, if they were so to hunt down his references, and examine the passages with their own eyes, they would discover the unprincipled deception which he has practised upon them. 3. Can any man be found who will believe that the first of the following clauses is only an elliptical, or Index-style, form of the second ; which is what Mr. T. now says was intended by him to be expressed ? " For the book of Revelation there was no original Greek at all, but Erasmus," &c. " For the most essential passage in the book op Revelation, there was no original Greek at all." — 4. If, contrary to all common sense, we were to admit this ex post facto evasion, I further charge him with a sophistical inten- tion in bringing in the phrase " the most essential passage." His intention evidently is to lead his reader into the belief, that Erasmus "audaciously interpolated" this particular passage, on account of the judicial threatening in verse 18 ; whereas the plain fact, which any man of ordinary reflection might suppose, was that these few sentences, being on the last and outside leaf of the manuscripts, had been obliterated or torn away by the inju- ries of time. It is evidently with a similar injurious design, that this artful writer declaims about a reading in 2 Pet. ii. 2. " which," he says, " Erasmus has foisted in, which no one has been able to discover in any manviscript whatsoever. That word happens to be one of the most frightful significancy of the whole evangelical can- nonade, the war-whoop of the Gospel, aTrwXftac." (p. 50.) What would a candid reader imagine, could have provoked this assault? In the editions of Erasmus and the majority of the common edi- tions since, the clause is read thus, " And many shall follow their pernicious wai/s,^' cnnoXelaic, a word denoting ruin or de- struction, and here put in the plural number to denote the different kinds of ruinous conduct which men may pursue : and this reading is found in two manuscripts of about the twelfth century, collated by Professor Alter of Vienna, and a few more, 51 as Griesbacli informs us. We have, therefore, no reason at all to impute Erasmus's adoption of this readiuff-, to any other than an upright motive: thougli the decisive preponderance of manu- script and other authority, ascertained long- after the death of Erasmus, is in favour of the reading aa-eKyeiaic, impurities, immodest j^^actices. Upon what I have advanced in Section VIII. exposing his fidse statements and deceptive arguings relative to the Re- ceived Text of the New Testament, Mr. Taylor raves in his own way of hardihood and affectation. Against my charge of such unfair quotation as is, in design and effect, equal to abso- lute falsification, he sets up this defence, that he " quoted what served his own purpose!" — He ought to have added, with a perfect disregard to the truth of facts and to the known meaning of the writers. As for his long parade of what he calls " Ad- missions of the most learned Critics," by which he pretends to justify his previous false allegations, I will not engage in the miserable labour of slaying the slain. I say, once for all, that his assertions, in relation to the conclusions and inferences which he icishes to establish, are all deceptive: and I appeal to the verdict of any upright man who will take the trouble of going to the fountain heads, and examining the authors fairly and completely. In Section IX. this unhappy man reiterates his blasphemous imputations of an " Immoral, vicious, and wicked Tendency of many Passages" in the Scriptures. To all this ribaldry, and much of the same nature scattered throughout the 117 pages of his pamphlet, it would be useless to attempt any reply, for those who will not examine for themselves, or who can submit to follow the dictates of such a man as Mr. Taylor. I only ask a fair and honest investigation; I only beg the in- quirer to conduct his researches as becomes a rational being ; — and I have no fear, but that he will sufficiently detect the per- verse interpretations and dishonourable sophistry which are attempted to be palmed upon the ignorant and credulous. My casual mention of the Bavarian, whose noble integrity would not allow him to purchase life by falsehood, throws Mr. T. into a paroxysm of fury, which defies description, but which I will not disgust the reader by copying. But it may well be asked, What can have provoked this burst of violence I Surely, in the estimation of even a Deist, an honest man deserves respect; a man who will not descend to the meanness of hypo- crisy, though it be to redeem his own body from the flarnes. If his principles be thought erroneous and his fiiith a delusion, his integrity must command admiration and esteem. But it is not so with Mr. Taylor. His rage is unbridled; and he asperses the noble-minded man as a foul monster, a rebel ar/ainst nature, a wretch, a fiend! There is a reason for this, which ought not to E 2 52 sink into oblivion. In the Times Newspaper of Dec. 11, 1818, Mr. Taylor published a Latin advertisement, stating in the most solemn terms his extreme grief and penitence that he had uttered certain horrid and mad effusions ['* infanda qusedam deliramentaeffutiebat,"] and imploring the charitable forgiveness of all Christians. Some years afterwards, when he had made himself still more notorious as a blaspheming infidel, the same newspaper revived the recollection of the preceding fact. Upon this, Mr. T. inserted a letter in the Times, acknowledging the truth of the statement, and not blushing to affirm that the whole was done to appease the distressed feelings of his pious mother : and this avowal of deceit and hypocrisy he made without the least expression of regret or shame! Very shortly after, another letter appeared in the Times, purporting to be from Mr. Taylor's own brother, contradicting his assertion, and declaring that he had made that solemn recantation of infidelity in the hope of obtaining a curacy ! Mr. T. then closed the correspondence by saying that the communication just mentioned was not from his brother, but was a forgery. But who can give credit to such a witness ; a man who, by his own unblushing confession, was guilty of the most deliberate insincerity and hypocrisy, in an act, implying an appeal to the Deity, an act the most solemn and awful of which a human being is capable I — Reader, are you now surprised at his fury, when he saw himself in contrast with an HONEST man? Are you surprised at the perversions, con- cealments, misrepresentations, and daring falsifications which characterize his discourses and writings? Can you repose a moment's confidence insuch a person, with all his art and plausi- bility, though to his most earnest asseverations he add protesta- tions and oaths? This poor man vaunts himself as possessing great skill in criticism; and he thinks, or professes to think, that he has dis- covered " upwards of a hundred and eighty" denominations, titles, or descriptions of books, which he maintains to have been the original materials, out of which the Histories and Epistles which compose the larger part of the New Testament were compiled. Of his scholarship, and his ability to form a judgment on questions of this nature, he has supplied us with some marvel- lous specimens. I shall adduce a few examples. To shew what he calls " the modernism of some of the pas- sages in the Epistles," he adduces 2 Cor. iii. 6. where the common translation has improperly rendered KaivriQ EuiBrjKrjc, " of the New Testament." Here this sapient scholar imagines that he has detected the usual title of the collected Christian Scrip- tures ; and, since that title was not given to the collection till about a century after the alleged composition of its component parts, he concludes that this is an anachronism, utterly irrecon- cileable with " any supposable circumstances or condition of a first preacher of the gospel, ere yet any part of the New Testa- 53 ment was put iuto letter." (p. 63.) Now the proper meaning of the word }ia^})Kr] is covenant, agreement, appointment, or con- stitution. In the heathen Greek authors it sometimes denotes a testament or ivill; but it never occurs in that sense in the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures, made before the Christian era, and usually called the Septuagint ; nor in any part of the Christian Scriptures, as many able critics believe. The only passages which have been thought to require that sense are Gal. iii. 15. and Heb. ix. 16, 17. But that, in both those places, the proper and usual sense of the word, namely cove- nant, should be retained, is, in my opinion, capable of being satisfactorily evinced.* Hence, the just translation of 2 Cor. iii. 6. is this ; " Who hath also qualified us to be dispensers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit; for the letter slayeth, but the spirit maketh alive." By " the new covenant" the apo-tle clearly means the dispensation or declara- tion of the gospel, the glad tidings of heavenly mercy to man- kind, properly called a covenant because it promises the bles- sings of pardon, holiness, and happiness, to those only who truly repent, rely upon the Saviour, and obey his moral authority. It is also called " the spirit, which maketh alive," because of the pure, intellectual, and moral nature of its blessings: audit is thus placed in contrast with " the old covenant" contained in the Mosaic Law, and which is described as " the letter which slayeth," because it required an external obedience to many precepts of a ceremonial and burdensome kind, because it threatened the most awful punishments, (see Deut. xxvii. Ezek. xviii. xxxiii. Heb. x. 28.) and because it made no direct pro- vision of grace and mercy. This is evident to any one who will study the connexion. Upon another passage, Mr. Taylor says, " Stewards of the * See Mr. Ewing's excellent Greek Lexicon, upon the word.— As Mr. Taylor makes a parade of his acquaintance with the Bishop of Peterborough's English Translation of Michaeliss Introduction to the New 'Vestument, I shall here give a close version of Michaelis's German I'ruiistation and Paraphrases upon these two passages. Gal. iii. 15. Transition: "The contract of a man, when completed, no person invalidates, or adds new conditions to it." Paraphrase: ' When men have made and publicly ratified a covenant, neither of the two parties can unsettle the covenant, or annex to it new conditions." Heb. ix. 16, 17. Translation: " For where a covenant is, there the death of the sacrifice, with which the covenant is made, must follow: for it is only by means of death that a covenant becomes firm, and it is not legally valid so long as the covenant-sacrifice is yet alive." Paraphrase: "For, where a covenant is made, it is requisite, according to the customs of the nations, that the covenant-sacrifice suffer death. Only by the corpses of animals, and their bodies deprived of life, does a covenant become legally valid : buf, so long as the mediating sacrifice of consecration is not slain, it is not yet valid, and either of the two parties who make the covenant, may change his mind and retract. Annotation: " 1 translate SiaSjji^r) covenant; for it is the allusion of the dis- course, that, in ancient times, solemn covenants were made by the blood of animal sacrifices." 54 mysteries of God (1 Cor. iv. 1.) is the title which Paul arro- gates to himself and his colleagues in imposture; the very iden- tical and unaltered title of the Pagan Hierophants, privy coun- sellors of God !" p. 72. With regard to the kitter part of this assertion, I cannot discover the smallest evidence that this phrase of the apostle, or any one resembling it, was ever given to the heathen priests or hierophants. Yet, if it had l>een, no blame would have been involved : lor it is the sense of a term or clause that we are to consider, and the sense here is clearly the reverse of any pretence to privileged secrecy, or any other artful contrivance. In every place of the New Testament, in which the word mystery occurs, it has a meaning perfectly opposite to that which belonged to the heathen mysteries. They were .secret communications, made in the deep recesses of caverns and interior cells of temples, accompanied with terrifying ceremo- nies ; and the initiated person was bound by the most dreadful oaths never to divulge them. Paul and his colleagues had no secrets of either doctrine or action. Their whole system of religion was open to universal examination. They " walked not in craftiness, nor handled the word of God deceitfully; but, by the MANIFESTATION OF THE TRUTH, commended themselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." They never use the term mystery in any other sense than to denote a fact or doctrine, which had been before unknown or imperfectly appre- hended, but which was now disclosed or explained. The word translated steward signifies an agent for a superior, an admi- nistrator of domestic or other business ; and the sense of the passage under consideration, as given by the best German scholars in Biblical Criticism, is this; " Let no person attribute to us a higher authority or rank than that of faithful servants, acting under the commands of Christ our only Master and Lord, for the purpose of communicating those truths which men could never have known, had not God condescended to reveal them." (Deduced from Michaelis, Rosenmiiller, Schleusner, and Pott.) I have taken this interpretation from German critics, because Mr. T. affects to have a peculiar regard for that description of writers ; of whom, however, it is evident that he knows very little. In the same spirit of defiance to rational evidence, he adverts to many other passages, putting upon them a construction which tramples upon all the principles of critical interpretation; and then triumphing in his own wrong. Some of these he avowedly derives from the late Mr. Evanson's " Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists ;" though they had been answered by Dr. Priestley in his " Letters to a Young Man, Part IL," not to urge that their assumptions had been sufficiently pre- cluded by many previous writers. One of his artifices is to take figurative terms literally, in violation of all reason and common sense; that he may put a meaning ridiculous or palpably false upon selected passages. In opposition to his distortions, I shall merely hint at the principle of just interpretation, in the chief of 55 the passages which he has abused ; appealing to the reader's impartial judgment upon the reasonableness and evidence of their application : for the limits of this pamphlet do not allow me to enter into the full explications. Matt. xi. 12. The distinguished German critics Schleusner and Kiihnol have shewn, from Hesychius, Philo, Josephus, and other authors, that jjidi^efrBai and dpizdl^eiv are used in the sense of earnestly desiring and seeking : so that the literal sense is, " From the time that John explained the nature of the gospel dispensation and invited men to accept its blessings, this delara- tion of truth and grace is eagerly received, and vast multitudes are, as it were, pressing forwards to the enjoyment of these benefits." Matt. xvi. 18. The word church (eiacXijala) denotes the whole class or body of persons who should, in any period of time, believe and obey the religion that should be taught by the Messiah: a sense of the word which, so far from indicating an origin later than the epoch to which we ascribe the writing of the gospels, was employed by the Greek translators (tjie Sep- tuagint) of the Old Testament, long before the Christian era. See Psalm xxii. (LXX. xxi.) 22. Matt, xviii. 17. Here the same word occurs in its more simple and usual meaning, an assembly, a company of persons who could meet in one place for conversation and deliberation. This acceptation also was familiar to the Grecian Jews long before the time of Christ, It is found in the Septuagint: Deut. xviii. IG. xxiii. 1. 1 Sam. xix. 20. Matt. xix. 12. The misunderstanding of this text was a part of the errors of the Encratites: but it is absurd to suppose that they or their errors produced the text. The sense and design of the passage is well expressed in Dr. Priestley's Paraphrase: *' What you propose in order to avoid the inconveniencies attend- ing the married state, when there happens not to be a thorough good liking between the parties, (namely, not to marry at all,) is more than can be expected of all persons, though it \s so with respect to some. For some have little or no inclination to mar- riage, and therefore may be said, in a figurative sense, to be eunuchs from their mother's womb; as others are actually eunuchs by the wanton cruelty of men ; while others, like my- self, will devote themselves to a single life, in order to be free from worldly encumbrances, and to devote 'themselves more entirely to the service of religion ; which, though not generally advisable, may be expedient in time of persecution. In this case, let every person act as he shall find himself able to do, and as he shall judge to be best upon the whole." Luke ii. 1. iii. 1. The historical accuracy of these dates has been shewn by many critical and chronological writers, among whom Dr. Lardner is preeminent. John xiv. 2. Because in the Byzantine Greek, /^ Mr. T. omits the paragraph, though immediately before his eyes, being included between two parts of his citations (§ 29.) in which Justin protests against the absurdity and the immoral tendency of those heathen fables, and contrasts them with the holy and virtuous influence of Christianity; and ano- ther, immediately following his last citation, in which he declares the fulfilment of prophecy in Christ's becoming man. Could Mr. T. fail to see other places, in which Justin speaks so abun- dantly of the personal history of Jesus? For example: " — our Teacher, — born for this purpose, Jesus Christ, who was cru- cified under Pontius Pilate, the Procurator of Judaea in the times of Tiberius Caesar;" (§ 16.) and innumerable other pas- sages of the same plain and historical character. The same abandoned defiance of truth appears in another page, where Mr. T. writes, " A. regular succession of the most learned and intelligent of the Christian Fathers, from and in the apostolic age, steadily maintained that Christ never had any real existence as a man ; that he was merely a phantom, or hobgoblin, and that all the business of his crucifixion and miracles took place only in a vision." (p. 114). Really, it is a severe trial of patience, to read or hear such atrocious insults upon all truth, honour, and integrity ! Let this man say next, that the ocean does not flow round Great Britain, or that the sun never shines upon it : and this proposition will be quite as true, as that which I have transcribed. He writes about the Docetaj, and the Ebionites. — Poor creature ! — And he would have his dupes believe that his "regular succession" consisted of " Do- cetian Fathers !" When the fact is, that ALL the extant Christian Fathers, from the earliest to the latest, without a single dissentient voice, maintained the real existence of Jesus Christ; and, notwithstanding minor differences, held essentially the same doctrines concerning his person and the designs of his mission. Of Docetfe, not a single writer, if indeed there ever were any, is known to exist. We are informed of them and their doctrine, only by the writings of those who refuted them, and who, in fact, represented the general body of Christians. 17. Believing a pre-e:;istent and truly divine nature in Jesus Christ, we do not the less believe " his real existence as a man." 18. On l^John iv. 2, 3. The usual meaning Tof the term " the flesh," in the apostolic writings, particularly those of Paul and John, is the nature of man as subject to sorrow, pain, and death. Hence to come in the flesh signifies to be a par- 81 ticipant of human nature. The evident sense, therefore, of this passage is ; " Every religious teacher who acknowledgeth Jesus to be the Christ [i. e. the Messiah] come in human nature, is authorized and approved by God." 19. The sacrament called the Lord's Supper is no " cannibal ceremony," as this man insultingly calls it: but it is the most simple, innocent, and artless observance that could well have been devised ; eating bread and drinking wine, as a grateful commemoration of the grand facts in the Christian system. John vi. 51 — 58. has not, in the opinion of the most judicious commentators, any reference to this commemorative institution ; but is a declaration, in figurative yet very intelligible terms, of the necessity of our believing and relying upon the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, as a divine propitiation, or the method appointed by infinite wisdom and benevolence for our obtaining the greatest blessings. 20. Christianity is not concerned to defend the foolish and monstrous hyperbole of Tertullian. Such language, and the principle of abdicating human reason which it involves, are totally contrary to the doctrines and the spirit of the New Testament. Yet, after all, let justice be done to this ardent but honest writer. He is discussing the objection to Chris- tianity (a very formidable one in the earliest times) that its Founder had been crucified, dead, and buried, and that the resurrection to immortal life of a person so contemptible, is utterly incredible. He repels this objection by a diffuse, ex- travagant, and extremely injudicious use of what rhetoricians call epitrope, or the argument from concession. The opponent represented the Christian doctrine of salvation by Him that was crucified, as stupid, silly, ridiculous, and impossible. Well then, rejoins the Christian advocate, let it be so ; I am willing to be deemed foolish, and even hardened against shame ; I readily take up this reproach, and I even glory in being de- spised. " That which is [deemed] unworthy of God, is to my benefit. Salvation is mine, if I am not ashamed of my Lord. He hath said. Whosoever is ashavied of me, of him also tvill I be ashamed. I find no grounds of being thus ashamed [of him] except those which, by my contemning them as a reason for blushing, prove me shameless to my good, and to my happiness a fool. The Son of God was born [in human nature]: I am not ashamed of it, for the very reason that [in the estimation of the adversary] it is a thing to be ashamed of. The Son of God also died ; this is entirely credible, even for those very rea- sons [of such an infinite condescension in the Deity as the Gentile philosophers deemed incredible] for which it is [reckoned] ab- surd. And, after being buried, he rose again : it is certain, even because [in their estimation] it is impossible. But how could those things have taken place in him, if he had not been a real person ; if he had not really a body which could be nailed to a cross, which could die, which could be buried and could 6 82 rise again? Even this flesh, through which hlood is poured, whose structure is built on bones, interwoven with nerves, intwined with veins, capable of birth and death, doubtless then human, being born of a human person."* This appears to me to be the real sense of this extraordinary passage ; a passage which has been brought forwards as a butt of ridicule, times without number, by persons who never had the candour to examine it. The reader who understands the genius of the Latin language, and who has paid a moderate attention to the peculiarly harsh, abrupt, and often paradoxical style of Ter- tuUian, will bear witness that the clauses which I have supplied in brackets are not more than necessary to convey the just meaning of the original. 21. Neither has Christianity any thing to do with the fiction of the " real and corporal presence" of the body and blood of Christ, in or with the bread and wine ; whether this notion be combined or not with the antichristian absurdity of transubstan- tiation. From 2 Tim. ii. 8. Mr, T. affects to conclude " that there were some other Gospels in being at that time, which told the story in a different way." (p. 114.) In other parts also of his pamphlet, (particularly p. 71.) he employs a similar ignorance or perverseness in treating the term Gospel, as if its proper mean- ing were a Narrative of the Actions and Discourses of Jesus. Any tolerably instructed child might tell him that the original and usual meaning of the word is the (/lad tidings, the doctrine of Christianity ; while the other acceptation, that of a desciip- tive title to one of the historical relations, was a remoter mean- ing, of which there is no example in the writings of the New Testament, but which came into use in a subsequent period. I will give him the annotation of a distinguished German Rationalist, Dr. Heinrichs of Burgdorf in Hanover, upon the passage which he makes the ground of cavil; "That which is in other passages denominated the gosjjel of God, or of the Lord, or nf Christ, the apostles sometimes call our gospel, (I Thess. i. 5.) or my gospel [see also Rom. ii. 16.] but each phrase signifying the same thing, namely, the genuine doctrine concerning Jesus the Messiah, which we the ajwstles announce to you. It is that which stands opposed to the ' other gospel,' in Gal. i. 6." An impartial examination of the New Testament * " Quodcunque Deo indignnm est, mihi expedit. Salvus sum, si non con- fundar de Domino meo. Qui me, inquit, conj'usus fue7'it, confmula?' et ego ejus. Alias non invenio materias confusionis, quae me, per contemptum ruboris, probent bene impudentem et feliciter stultum. Natus est Dei filius : non pudet, quia pudendum est. Et mortuus est Dei filius : prorsus credibile est, quia incptum est. Et sepultus, resurrexit : cerium est, quia impossibile. Sed liaec, quomodo in illo vera erunt, si ipse non fuit verus; si non vere habuit in se quod figeretur, quod moreretur, quod sepeliretur et resuscitaretur ? Carnem scilicet banc, sanguine suifusam, ossibus substructam, nervis intextam, venis itriplexam, quse nasci et mori novit, humanam sine dubio ut natam de homine." Tertullian, de Came Chiisti ; cap. v. 83 will shew that Paul, Peter, James, John, Jude, and the other apostles, all taught the same system of religion, in both faith and obedience ; the same gospel : and it is equally manifest that the " oif/ter g-ospel" adverted to was taught not by the apostles of Christ, but by pretenders and enemies. At p. 115, Mr. T. shews his ignorance, or something much worse, in translating 7ra7c (Acts iv. 27, 30.) by " boy ;" only for the sake of throwing a scurrilous insult upon the name of Jesus. Had he but a moderate share of the learning to which he pretends, he would know that this word is far from bearino- any degrading or ludicrous sense, and that it is used by classical authors, as well as in the sacred writings, to denote a son, with the associated idea of peculiar parental tenderness. At the close of a blasphemous prayer (p. 108.) he introduces the woi'ds of the Apostle Paul (Rom. iii. 7.) as if our religion implied ajjprobation of tellimj lies for the glonj of God. JSTow let a sincere and upright reader of the New Testament say, whether its whole spirit, principles, and injunctions do not, in the most perfect manner, contradict such an interpretation as this ! Let him also examine rigorously this passage : and he will perceive that from ver. 1st, to the 9th, is a dialogism, or the introduction of an adversary, whose interrogations and objec- tions are stated as in his own person, and are then answered by the apostle, I offer the following as a faithful translation of the passage, though a little paraphrastic, which the difference of idioms renders necessary. Ohj. " What then is the advantage of the Jew I Or, what the benefit of the circumcision I Reply. " Much, in every respect : but principally in that the oracles of God have been intrusted [to the Jewish nation.] Ohj. " Yet still ; since some have acted unfaithfully, does not their unfaithfulness abolish the credibility of God I Reply. " Far be the thought ! But let God be acknowledged sincere, if even every man should be proved false : as it is written, [&c. see Psalm li. 5.] Ohj. " But, v/hat shall we say if our disobedience set in an advantageous position the justice of God? Would not God be unjust in inflicting punishment [upon us '.'[ " (I am speaking as probably some men would do.) Reply. " Far be the thought ! In that case how could God judge the world I Ohj. " Yet, if, by my violation of faithfulness, the sincerity of God has been displayed in a more glorious manner, why am I still condemned as an ofl'ender ? And why should not the maxim be admitted. Parenthesis interjected hy the apostle in his own person. " (as we are calumniated, and some affirm that we say,) " that we may do bad actions, that good results may come [of them n ■ , 1 • , Rejjly. " Whose condemnation is [peculiarly] just . G 2 84 Ohj. " How then I Have we the preference [over the sinl'iil heathen workl J] Reply. " In no respect." A similar abandonment of every thing- like trnth or liononr, appears in Mr. T.'s pretended translation (p. 114.) of John xii. 28. turning " glorify" into clarify, because the old Latin Version has used the verb clarificare ; though, in writing this and similar abusive representations, he could not but know that he was infamously cheating those who might rely upon him. It is impossible that he could be ignorant that the original word {lola'Ceii') is properly translated by ylorify ; and that clarificare, though not a word of the purest Latinity, signifies nothing but to make or display as illustrious, and has not the most distant affinity in meaning with the English words on which he so malignantly dwells. Many of the early Christian writers, called the Fathers, were extremely injudicious and worse than injudicious. By the help of Dr. Conyers Middleton and some otlier authors, Mr. T. has collected a few of the most extravagant and offensive passages ; and a very easy thing it is to hold them up to ridicule and con- tempt. But a man of upright mind would acknoAvledge that their sins and weaknesses are not, without the most manifest injustice, to be charged upon Christianity : and a more extensive acquaintance with their writings would convince any candid reader, that they have numerous excellencies, and that even the most harsh and paradoxical of them all, Tertullian, has many grand and noble pages, solid in reason, and eloquent in expres- sion, which ought to be set against occasional extravagance. In order to represent Augustine as a wilful deceiver (a cha- racter of which Mr. T. has so abundant an experimental con- sciousness) he adduces a passage in which that father is made to say that, in ^Ethiopia, he " saw many men and women with- out heads, who had two gi'eat eyes in their breasts ; and, in countries still more southerly, — a people who had but one eye in their foreheads." (p. 33.) The reference which he gives for this citation is so vague that, after throwing away much valuable time in the search, I have been unable to find it. This mode of giving inaccurate or defective references is very common with Mr. Taylor. It is likely enough that Augustine, in common with other people of his time, and for many centuries after, believed in the existence of Acephali, Blemmyes, and other monsters. Such was the current belief of the Romans, ages before Augustine ; as appears from the classical authors, Pliny the elder and Pomponius Mela : and it continued down to the revival of letters, as is seen in the voyages and travels of Sir John Mandeville. Very probably these stories originated in imperfect glimpses, obtained by ignorant and terrified persons, of troops of various tribes, wandering inhabitants of the interior regions of Africa, whose tents, clothing, defences from the sun, and armour, particularly monstrous helmets, supplied the mate- 85 rials to timorous credulity and vague rumour. It is possible that Augustine might liimself liave transiently seen some of those occupants of the unexplored districts, wearing their skin and hair helmets, of such forms as would give them, especially if riding- on horses or camels, the appearance which he is represented as describing. But Mr. T. may have misunder- stood the passage which he gives as a quotation from him. This appears not improbable from a place in which Augustine re- capitulates several of the current opinions on the existence of such tribes of monstrous men ; and, after reciting them in a way which most plainly shews that he had no actual knowledge of such men, and that he distrusted the stories about them, he adds, " But we are not bound to believe that there are all these kinds of men, which report thus describes."* With the intention of giving' a colour to his most vile and base abuse of the Lord's Supper as a "cannibal ceremony," (p. lOG.) Mr. T. has picked up a sentence of disgusting- meta- phors, from Cyprian, in the margin of Bishop Jeremy Taylor s Rule of Holy Liviny, chap. iv. § 10. par. 10. The good bishop has referred to the passage so vag-uely, as to be of no assistance, and I have searched in vain for it in the editions of Fell and Baluze. But, however weak the judgment and bad the taste which could delight in such extravagances of rhetoric, none but a man of dishonest and wicked heart could pervert it to the purpose which Mr. T. has aimed at. Nothing- can be plainer to an upright reader than this, that both the African Father and the Irish Bishop intended nothing more than to represent the religious benefits arising to the true believer and worthy com- municant, from a devout meditating upon the sufferings of our blessed Redeemer. O what must be the horrid condition of that human mind, which can turn sucli a topic into insult and ribaldry ! As a further example of truth and accuracy, let us look at a passage of Mr. Taylor, relative to another of the Fathers ; "Would Mr. Beard^only turn to the 27th chapter of Origen's Answer to Celsus, he would find that Origen has described the crucifixion as a scene in a trayedy,— — to his 7th chapter, he would find that he acknowledged that the name lESUS was only a sacred spell, in chapter 10th, that Christianity would never bear examining." (p. 115.) Now let it be observed that here is a mode of reference not very likely to lead to a successful " turning to" the passages in this large Greek volume. The work consists of Eight long Books. In the' most generally at- tainable edition, (that by Spencer, Cambridge, 1077,) each Book is printed in one continued flow of uniform lines, without any break or subdivision whatsoever. How can the possessor of this edition know in which of the Eight Books ho must search J And no edition is divided into Chapters. The best edition, that of Delarue (Paris, 1733.) has each Book distri- * " Scd omnia genera hominum quic dicunt esse, esse credere non est necesse." J> Cir. Dei, lib. xvi. cap. 8. 86 buted into a great number of Sections ; no one having* fewer than sixty-five, some considerably more, and making a total of 622. However, I have carefully examined the 7th and the 27th Sections, in each of the Eight Books ; without finding a single paragraph, sentence, or word, containing the j^ositions which this man alleges ; while there is what I might call an infinity of matter, in every part of the Eight Books, declaring the re- verse of those allegations. I have also taken pains to discover passages in any other parts of Origen's great work, which might resemble, or give a colour for, the representations of Mr. Taylor. To his first assertion, that " Origen has described the cruci- fixion of Jesus as a scene in a tragedy," I can find nothing that wears the slightest resemblance; but passages occur without number, in which he maintains, and by various evidence es- tablishes, the real facts of the death and resurrection of Jesus, in opposition to all notions of fiction, allegorical meaning, visionary appearance, or collusive management. In Book IT. Section 56, (in Spencer's edition, p. 95.) he contrasts the death and resurrection of Jesus, as certain facts, with " the heroic histories of those who were said to have descended into the invisible world and to have returned thence ; such as Orpheus, Protesilaus, Hercules, and Theseus." I know not whether to suppose it possible, that Mr. T. may have stumbled upon this passage, and from it have caught up the hint of his representa- tion ; for, false as the allegation would be, erected upon such a basis, it would really have more shadow of triith than belongs to many of his pretended conformities and identities. Though there is nothing that justifies, or even palliates, the second assertion, that Origen " acknowledged that the name Jesus was only a sacred spell ;" yet there are five passages from which a disingennous mind might draw the statement, though it would be evidently most unjust. I therefore translate them all, and commit them, without any comment, to the reader's re- flection. " I know not what could have excited Celsus to say, that Christians aftect to exercise power by means of certain djemons and by charms ; obscurely referring, as I suppose, to what is said of persons singing enchantments to daemons, and so expell- ing them. It is clearly manifest that what he advances is a calumnious accusation. For they" [the Christians] " do not affect to have power by charms, but by the name of Jesus, united with the declaration of the narratives concerning him. These things thus spoken have many times made daemons to depart from men ; and this especially when they who speak them do it sincerely, from an honest and faithful disposition. Such power has the name of Jesus against dsemons, so as some- times to accomplish the purpose even when uttered by bad men ; which indeed Jesus himself declared, when he said. Many shall say unto me in that day. In thy name we have cast out 87 daemons, and have done mighty works." Book I. Section G. In Spencer's ed. p. 7. " We dechire, therefore, that the whole world of mankind possesses the work of Jesus, wherever dwell the churches of God through Jesus, consisting of those who have turned from their sins, however numberless. And even now the name of Jesus removes disordered impressions from the mind, and daemons and bodily distempers. It also works internally so as to produce an admirable meekness, and propriety of manners, and philanthropy, and kindness, and tenderness, in persons who, not putting on the appearance" [of being Christians] " from worldly motives or to gain human advantages, but who have received sincerely the doctrine concerning God and Christ, and the judgment to come." Book I. Section G7. Spencer, p. 53. " But, when we relate the actions of Jesus, we adduce no mean reason why they should have taken place, even the purpose of God to establish, by means of Jesus, the doctrine which should bring salvation to men ; which was further established upon the apostles as the foundations of the thus firmly laid edifice of Christianity, and which is making its progress through the subsequent times, in which are accomplished not a few healings of diseases in the name of Jesus, and some other manifestations which are not to be disregarded." Book III. Section 28. Spen- cer, p. 127. After describing some Egyptian impostures, he goes on to say; " How very far from these, were the miracles of Jesus ! For it was not a few juggling impostors, combining to ourry favour with some king who had given them such commands, or some governor who had so enjoined them, who thought fit to make him up into a god ; but it was the Creator of all things himself, according to his" [Jesus's] " miraculously persuasive power in delivering his doctrines, who displayed him as worthy of honour, not only to the persons who were well disposed towards him, but also to daemons and other invisible powers ; who, down to the present time, manifest that they are either afraid of the name of Jesus as their superior, or reverentially admit him to be their lawful sovereign. For, unless this appointment had been conferred upon him from God, the daemons would not, in submission to the simple announcement of his name, have departed from those who had been the objects of their cruelty." Book III. Section 30. Spencer, p. 133. With respect to his third assertion, there is a passage which may have furnished the pretext for it, in Book I. Section 10; (Spencer, p. 9.) but still the representation which he gives is not the less, in purport and effect, a perfect falsehood. The passage is a part of an argument, pursued through Sections 9, 10, and 11, brought as a reply to the objection of Celsus to the Christian Religion, that " some of them," [the Christians,] " are unwilling either to give or to receive a reason for what they believe ; and that they use the expressions. Do not examine, but 68 believe ,• and, tht/ faith vnll save thee. He aiso cliaroes them with saying', The wisdom which is in this life is bad, but the fol/i/ [i. e. in this lite] is good." To these words of the shrewd hea- then, Origen replies thus : " If it were possible for all men to relinquish the business of life, and enjoy leisure {fiXocrocpe'a') to pursue abstract studies, no person ought to pursue any course but that. For in Christianity (without speaking assumingly) there is not a less examination of the things believed" [than in other branches of knowledge.] " But, since this is im- practicable, partly because of the necessary engagements of life, and partly because of the want of capacity in persons, so that very few can rise to the processes of reasoning ; what better method can be found for conferring benefit upon the generality of mankind, than that which has been given by Jesus to the nations?" — He then appeals to the fact that, by simply believing the Christian doctrine on the punishments of sin and the rewards of good actions, multitudes had been brought to forsake their vices and to lead virtuous lives : and he argues that a doctrine which has such excellent practical effects could not have had any other than a divine origin. Then we come to the 10th Section, of which the commencement is as follows ; " With regard, there- fore, to this boasted objection concerning our faith, we have to say, that, taking into account the usefulness of this to the gene- rality, we acknowledge that we do indeed teach those persons who cannot relinquish all their affairs and pursue (e^er^ffei \6yov) a course of argumentative investigation, that they should (iriffTevEiv Kai nXi^ywc) believe even without such a process of argument." He proceeds to vindicate this way of relying upon the credible knowledge and fidelity of others, by saying that the very persons who adduce the objection do the same thing them- selves, with respect to their own intellectual pursuits : that a young man who begins the study of philosophy, does not, in the first instance, wait to hear the arguments of all philosophers and sects, the refutation of some and the confirmation of others ; but, upon some general ground of preference, arising from the known character and moral effect of each sect, he chooses to which he shall attach himself; and so becomes, at the outset, a Stoic, or a Platonic, or a Peripatetic, or an Epicurwan, or a disciple of any other sect of philosophers. He further observes, that men act upon this principle of probable expectation in forming their domestic establishments, in making voyages, in agriculture ; all human affairs indeed being (Tr/'orewc '/prj/jutrw)') "suspended upon faith." From these premises he argues, that it is most proper and rational to repose confidence in the supreme God, and in him who teaches that God only is to be worshipped. Thus I have laid before the reader a translation of those paragraphs to which this acccusatiou attaches, and have faithfully epitomized the rest. I am not defending Origen's positions; their pro])riety or impropriety is not our present consideration. My sole object is, bv l)ringing the truth to light, to demonstrate 89 the style of unpriiicipiod misrepresentation ^vliich Mr. T. per- petuaHy employs. The impartial reader will observe another fact, of no small importance when one is dragged into a controversy with a person who is held by no bonds of truth and integrity : that such a man possesses this advantage over any rational and honest opponent, that he can utter in a single line the bold falsehood, or the more disguised but equally inunoral misrepre- sentation ; but the respondent party, in order to place the truth in a fair and just point of view, is doomed to the necessity of tediously minute explanations, which some may not have the patience to read, or will not take the pains to understand. He borrows from Dr. Lardner a passage of Irenaeus ; adding-, " Thus translated from the Latin of the Greek by Lardner ; — I have collated the original text, which Lardner seems to have wanted for this passage." (p. 109.) Empty pedantry and mean falsehood ! The " original text," the Greek, of Irenaeus is not extant for this and a very large part besides of his works ; and these portions remain to us ojtlj/ in a very ancient Latin transla- tion. The purport of the passage in Irenaeus is, an argument in favour of the genuineness of our Four commonly received Gos- pels, from the circumstance that they were severally received by one or other of the sects of erroneous Christians, called Heretics. Hence, Mr. T. argues that, because Irenaeus lived so near the time of the apostles, those Gospels could not have been Chris- tian compositions, but must have been " really Pagan in their origin :" and he endeavours to fortify this conclusion, by appeal- ing to the authority of the Sibylline Verses, insinuating that those Verses were recited to Tarquinius Priscus, the Roman king-, seven hundred years before Christ. Hence, he brings out his grand conclusion, to account at once for the antiquity and yet the spuriousness of the Christian Scriptures ; afiirming, " It is absolutely certain that the Pagans were in possession of the whole Gospel story many ages before its Jewish origin was pre- tended." (p. 117.) To this I reply : 1. That the jiositive evidence of evei'y part of the case, much of which has been briefly indicated in these pages, and the full statements are .easily accessible in well-known works on the respective subjects, DEMONSTRATES the mithenticiiy, cre- dibility, and certainty of the Four received Gospels, and the truth of the Christian System built upon them. 2. The position, that the Heathen mythology is fundamen- tally and substantially the same as the system of Christianity, is not only vitterly devoid of evidence, but is so plainly contrary to the clearest facts of the case, that it may well appear useless to argue with any man who can affirm it. To any person who can read Hesiod, Apollodorus, or Ovid, or who has been de- lighted with the nobler productions of the Grecian and the Roman muse, and who will also seriously peruse the Christian Scriptures, 1 make my solemn ai'teal. The materials 90 of the investigation lie upon the surface. They are readily enoug-h accessible to a mere English reader. On the one hand are the monstrous fables of heathen antiquity; the polytheism, the gods stained with every vice, the cruelty, the licentiousness, tiie falsehoods avowed and gloried in : and on the other, the facts and doctrines, the precepts and spirit of Bible Christianity ! To the man who does not see, or will not acknowledge the per- fect and irreconcileable contradiction of these two, it is in vain for me to address a single word. I must leave him to the judg- ment of REASON and CONSCIENCE and the righteous GOD. Mr. T. attempts to bolster up his ridiculous falsehoods, by ad- ducing the story of Prometheus, having formed the first man and woman, offending the gods, and being chained to a rock (which he dishonestly calls " Prometheus in the agonies of crucifixion") as possessing " innumerable coincidences with the Christian tragedy." (p. 98.) That there are two or three points of general resemblance, is readily admitted ; but these are such resem- blances as are very often found, in comparing the lives and ac- tions of different individuals among mankind : for example, Plu- tarch's parallel characters, and the principal events in the lives of Pisistratus, Caesar, Cromwell, and Buonaparte. But every thing else is so contradictory and uncongenial, in the character and history of the fabled Prometheus and of Jesus the Christ, that to imagine their identity appears to me utterly impossible ; excejyt for the slaves of one princijyle, which un- happily exists in our world, the CREDULITY of an infidel. In the same dishonest manner, Mr. T. quotes half a sentence from Cicero, (concealing, if indeed he knew, the place, but it is in the De Naturd Deorum, lib. iii. cap. 16.) affirming that in it " he ridicules the doctrine of transubstantiation." (p. ill.) The design of this assertion is to support his vain absurdity, that Christianity, a part of which he pleases to reckon that Popish notion, existed in the superstitions of Greece and Rome. Quite as true and correct would it be to affirm, that Cicero spoke an oration against the American war, or that he wrote a Dialogue on British parliamentary eloquence. 3. The Sibylline Verses, from which Mr. T. quotes a line, and calls it a " Pagan hexameter," he well knows to be no genuine heathen production, but to have been the forgeries of some able but fraudulent person, in the second century after Christ. The apparent intention of that forgery was to promote the interests of Christianity : but such means of aiming at a good end are in direct opposition to both the spirit and the express precepts of our religion. Mr. T. does not fail often to pour out his vimilence against the Christian religion, on account of those pious frauds, as they have been called, but which should rather be marked by the strongest terms of reprobation, as exceedingly wicked in their whole character, and infinitely insulting and offensive to the Author of Christianity. Mr. T. exults over the folly and bad principle of those Christian Fathers, who committed, or ap- 91 proved, or connived at, such detestable measures : though he, of all men, ought sensitively to shrink from censuring false and fraudulent dealing, in assertions and arguments. He perhaps fancies that he wounds the religion of Jesus and his apostles : but let him know that his weapons fall infinitely below their mark, and recoil on his own wretched cause. I now close the ungracious toil of reviewing Mr. Taylor's dis- reputable pages, so filled with falsehood in statement and so- phistry in argument. Amidst the mass of his misrepresenta- tions, and obliged as I am to keep within narrow limits, many particulars have been passed by. But I have brought forward enough to satisfy any candid inquirer, as to the value of his pretensions and the character of his declamations. Whatever he may further say, or write, or publish, I shall sacrifice no more time and trouble in noticing. But, if there be any whose wish to escape from the obligations of religion, and to stifle the cries of a violated conscience, in- cline them to lend a willing ear to the disingenuous statements and irrational scoffs which this unhappy deluder has scattered abroad ; I beg their attention to a single consideration. You cannot say, that you have demonstrated Christianity to be a scheme of fiction and imposture. You must admit that, after all, it may turn out to be the System of Truth, and the Authoritative Declaration of the Supreme Being. You cannot be sure that there is not a future state, or that it will not be a state of righteous retribution. The awful experiment you must soon make ; and it will be irretrievable. It cannot be denied that many Deists, in the near prospect of death and the eternal world, have silently indicated, or have in loud agonies proclaimed, a total change in their opinions. In the utterance of their dreadful feelings, they have paid homage to the Truth which before they had scorned. Now, let me ask you, Did you ever know or hear of a man regretting on his death-bed that he had been a Christian ; recanting his faith, repenting of his obedience, and lamenting that he had not joined the band of infidels, applauded their gaudy orators, and eagerly drank in their bold blasphemies I THE END. J. DliNNEn, Le.iUi«i Lane, Loadou. \ #' BS480 .5655 An answer to a printed paper entitled Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00053 6369