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SYNTAGMA. 
 
 
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SYNTAGMA 
 
 OF THE 
 
 EVIDENCES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 A VINDICATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MANIFESTO 
 
 OF 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY, 
 
 AGAINST THE ASSAULTS OF 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION SOCIETY 
 
 THROUGH THEIR DEPUTY, 
 
 J. P. S. 
 
 COMMONLY REPORTED TO BE DR. JOHN PYE SMITH, OF HOMERTON, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. ROBERT TAYLOR, A.B. and M.R.C.S, 
 
 M 
 
 ORATOR OF THE AREOPAGUS, 
 
 PRISONER IN OAKHAM GAOL, FOR THE CONSCIENTIOUS MAINTENANCE 
 OF THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN THAT MANIFESTO. 
 
 " Erroris convincite ! nam intercipere scripta, et publicatam velle submergere 
 lectionem, non est Deum defendere, sed veritatis testificationem timere." 
 
 Arnobius. 
 
 ilon&on : 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, 
 
 AND PUBLISHED BY RICHARD CARLILE, 
 
 62, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1828. 
 
3^" 
 
 .T3-* 
 
 l« ? " 
 
THE 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE READER. 
 
 Thou hast, in this Pamphlet, all the sufficient 
 evidence, that can be adduced for any piece of 
 history a thousand years old, or to prove an error 
 of a thousand years standing, that such a person 
 as Jesus Christ never existed ; but that the earliest 
 christians meant the words to be nothing more 
 than a personification of the principle of reason, of 
 goodness, or that principle, be it what it may, 
 which may most benefit mankind in the passage 
 through life. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 The Manifesto. 1 
 
 Prolegomena > 7 
 
 Section 1. — On the general Evidence of the pretended 
 
 genuineness of the Christian Scriptures. . . 15 
 
 Section 2. — Of Acts and Edicts for the alteration of the 
 
 Scriptures 24 
 
 Section 3. — Alteration of the Gospels in the reign of 
 
 Anastasius 27 
 
 Section 4. — On the assertion that Archbishop Lanfranc 
 
 effected an alteration of the Scriptures. ... 35 
 
 Section 5. — Of the nature of various readings, and the 
 
 Inferences to be drawn from them 38 
 
 Section 6. — On the story of the Rocket Maker 44 
 
 Section 7- — Liberties taken with the Scriptures by 
 
 Erasmus 48 
 
 Section 8. — The Origin and Character of the Text in 
 the common editions of the Greek Testa- 
 ment * 52 
 
 Section 9. — Immoral tendency of the Scriptures 58 
 
 Section 10. — On the Prototypes, or first specimens and 
 
 originals of the Gospels , 65 
 
 Section 11. — Proofs that no such person as Jesus Christ 
 ever existed, and of the imposture of the 
 Gospel History , . • J 7<5 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Section 12.— That the Gospel Narratives are derived 
 from the Idolatrous Fictions of India, 
 
 Egypt, Greece, and Italy 85 
 
 Section 13. — The Indian Jesus Christ ib. 
 
 Section 14. — The Egyptian Jesus Christ 95 
 
 Section 15. — The Phenician Jesus Christ 96 
 
 Section 16. — The Athenian Jesus Christ 97 
 
 Section 17. — Histories of the Demon Jesus, antecedent to 
 
 the Received Gospels 101 
 
 Appendix 109 
 
MANIFESTO 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY. 
 
 Established, November- 12th, 1824. 
 
 TO ALL PROTESTANTS AND MEMBERS OF PROTESTANT 
 CONGREGATIONS, 
 
 Men and Brethren, 
 
 You are hereby invited to attend the Discussions of 
 the Evidences of the Christian Religion, which are held 
 «very Tuesday evening, in the Society's Areopagus, 86, 
 Cannon-street, City, to which all respectable persons, 
 upon observance of the necessary regulations, are admis- 
 sible : and where all competent persons, upon a previous 
 notification of their intentions, are allowed to deliver their 
 sentiments upon the topic of discussion. 
 
 This Society aims only to promote the love of Truth, 
 the practice of Virtue, and the influence of Universal 
 Benevolence, as opposed to foolish and contradictory 
 systems of religious faith — derived from the ignorance of 
 barbarous ages, and craftily imposed upon the many, for 
 the aggrandisement of the power and influence of a few, 
 who, aware of the suspicious origination of their pretended 
 Divine Revelation, have shown themselves afraid and 
 ashamed to maintain the same, where they might be 
 answered by learned and able men, and might have their 
 accuracy established, or their errors corrected. 
 
 Our Reverend Orator, a regular and canonically 
 ordained Clergyman of the Established Church, hath 
 
li MANIFESTO. 
 
 publicly challenged all Ministers and Preachers (and 
 hereby repeats the challenge) — to come forward and show, 
 if they can, the contrary of the Four Grand Proposi- 
 tions, which, in the Society's Manifesto, " To all Clergy- 
 men, Ministers, and Preachers of the Gospel," are 
 declared to have been, as far as to us appeared, fully and 
 unanswerably demonstrated. 
 
 The Propositions are, 
 I. That the Scriptures, of the New Testament, 
 
 WERE NOT WRITTEN, BY THE PERSONS, WHOSE 
 NAMES THEY BEAR. 
 
 II. That they did not appear, in the times to 
 
 WHICH THEY REFER. 
 
 III. That the persons, of whom they treat, never 
 
 EXISTED. 
 
 IV. That the events, which they relate, never hap- 
 
 pened. Of these Propositions, 
 
 The Proofs are, 
 
 I. That the Scriptures of the N. T. were 
 not, &c. — Because, it cannot be shown, by any evidence, 
 that they were " written by the persons whose names they 
 bear ;" and because it can be shown by evidence, both 
 external and internal, that they were written by other 
 persons. — By evidence external, In the formal acts and 
 edicts of Christian Emperors, Bishops, and Councils, 
 issued from time to time, for the general alteration, or 
 total renovation of these Scriptures, according to their 
 own caprice (a). And in the* admissions of the most 
 learned Critics and Divines, as to the alterations which 
 
 (a) Such were those of the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, and 
 this of the Emperor Anastasius. " When Messala was consul (that is, in the 
 year of Christ, 506) 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 Lardner, 
 vol. 3, p. 67. See also an account of a general alteration of these Scrip- 
 tures, " to accommodate them to the faith of the orthodox,'' by Lanfranc, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, as recorded by Beausobre. Histoire de Manichee, 
 vol. 1, p. 343. 
 
MANIFESTO. Ill 
 
 these Scriptures have, from time to time, undergone (&).— 
 By evidence internal, In the immoral, vicious, and wicked 
 tendency of many passages therein remaining, and by the 
 insertion of others, whose only drift is to enhance the 
 power of Kings and Priests (c). 
 
 II. That they did not appear, in the times to 
 which they refer; is demonstrable, — By evidence 
 external. In the express admissions of Ecclesiastical 
 Historians, of their utter inability to show when, or 
 where, or by whom, this collection of writings was 
 first made (e?). And in the admissions of the most 
 learned critics, as to the infinitely suspicious origination 
 of the present Received Text (e). — By evidence internal, 
 In innumerable texts therein contained, betraying a com- 
 paratively modern character, referring to circumstances, 
 which did not exist till later ages, and quoting other 
 Scriptures, which had previously formed the faith of the 
 first Christian Churches, but which, without any assign- 
 able reason, or alleged authority, have since been re- 
 jected (/). 
 
 (6) Admissions of the most learned critics — 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 Peter- 
 borough, vol. 2, p. 441. — 3d. For the most important passage in 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. 1, p. 320. 
 
 (c) Immoral, &c. See Romans, iii. 7. ; Epist. John, ii. 10. ; Heb. xii. 
 29. ; Heb. xiii. 17. ; Romans, xiii.; 1 Peter, ii. 13 ; Luke, xiv. 26. &c &c. 
 
 (d) See Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. ; Jones on the Canon, &c. passim. 
 
 (e) Received text, &c. " The Received Text rests on the authority of 
 no more than twenty or thirty manuscripts, most of which are of little note.'' 
 Unitar. Version, lntrod. 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. I John, v. 7. ; 1 Tim. iii. 
 16. — Excellent Morality this ! ! 
 
 (/) Comparatively modern, &c. See 2 Epist. John, 9. ; 1 Tim. iii. 
 3. ; James, v. 14. ; Matth. xviii. 17. ; 1 Corinth, xv. 7. 32. ; 1 Peter, iv. 6. 
 
 B 2 
 
iv MANIFESTO. 
 
 III. That the persons, of whom they treat, 
 never existed; Because demoniacs, devils, ghosts, 
 angels, hobgoblins (g), 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 immutable laws of sound reason. — 2ndly. 
 From the total absence of all historical reference to their 
 existence. — And 3rdly. From innumerable passages of 
 these Scriptures themselves, which fully admit the merely 
 visionary Hypostasis of their fabulous hero (/*). 
 
 IV. That the events, which they relate, never 
 happened, is demonstrable (further than as a conse- 
 quence 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 Rome, 
 and more especially of the Indian idol Chrishna, 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. 
 
 Men and Brethren, 
 If these things can be denied or disproved — your Minis- 
 ters and Preachers are earnestly called on to do so. — 
 Your Missionaries, who boast their readiness to carry 
 their Gospel to the remotest shores of the earth, are again 
 and again entreated to become its advocates before assem- 
 
 (g) Hobgoblins. See Acts, xix. 15. 
 
 (h) Visionary hypostasis. See Luke, ix. 29. ; Mark, ix. 2. ; Luke 
 xxiv. 31. ; 1 John, v. 6, and innumerable other passages, in perfect accord- 
 ance 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 born at all ; that 
 by faith only are we saved, &c. &c. ; all equally indicative that Christianity 
 had no evidence at all ; but was a matter of mere conceit, fancy, or super- 
 stition, from first to last. 
 
MANIFESTO. V 
 
 blies c intelligent and learned men, here, in their native 
 land ; where, upon due notice of their intentions, and 
 upon the condition of allowing themselves to be respect- 
 fully questioned, and learnedly replied to, they will be 
 received with honor, and heard with attention. 
 
 By the assembled Society, 
 
 ROBERT TAYLOR, A.B. and M.R.C.S. 
 
 Orator of the Areopagus, and Chaplain of the Society 
 of Universal Benevolence. 
 
 Areopagus of the Christian Evidence Society, 
 London, February, 1827. 
 
VI 
 1. 
 
PROLEG^ 
 
 To the Readers of the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence 
 Society, being, as I hope they are, readers also of the 
 Answer to that Manifesto. 
 
 Readers, 
 
 Observe ye, I call }'e not " my readers," f? my friends," " my 
 intelligent countrymen," " my worthy countrymen," " my 
 intelligent and reflecting readers," " judicious inquirers, &c." 
 Neither do I appeal to you " as men of sense," " as upright men," 
 nor by any of those coaxing and wheedling epithets, which the 
 Rev. Dr. John Pye Smith, the learned and reverend author of the 
 Answer to the Manifesto, gives, with such a prodigal liberality, 
 to any body, that will have the goodness to see things just as 
 he does, and come to the conclusions which he prescribes. 
 — Because, I have ever thought, that, when men appeal to the 
 judgment of the public, it is but fair, that they should allow 
 the public to be none the less judicious, intelligent, and upright, 
 even should the verdict of public opinion be decidedly against 
 them. — Neither do I take upon myself to tell you, as the Reve- 
 rend Doctor John Pye Smith does, that, if his arguments seem 
 more convincing to your minds than mine — " you must be in- 
 capable of reasoning', and immoveable by evidence ; or more 
 awfully still, you must have sacrificed both reason and conscience 
 to the darkest depravity of soul," (page 54,) or be no better, than 
 lie quotes the authority of the prince of classical critics, Dr. 
 Bentley, for calling you," obstinate and untractable wretches :" 
 (page 27.) — Because, such language, quite proper and evangeli- 
 cal as it may seem to be, when used by doctors of divinity, would, 
 in my use of the like, seem to be blustering, and perhaps, justify 
 the doctor in charging me, with putting forth my opinions, '• with 
 a front of unblushing assurance," which, indeed, I should be sorry 
 to do. — For, if my opinions, will not stand upon their own merits, 
 nor get possession of the conviction of those, to whom they are 
 submitted, by their own intrinsic demonstration, I have nothing 
 more to say for them, I can neither coax nor frighten the reader, 
 to make him shew them any sort of favour. — I do, indeed, most 
 cheerfully, come to the ground of fair and legitimate controversy, 
 and I call on the readers of both sides, as heartily and sincerely 
 as my reverend opponent can, — to " think for themselves, to 
 examine fully, reason fairly, and conclude honestly." — Only, I 
 cannot go, with the doctor, to the length of requesting them to 
 do so Devoutly ; because, the greatness of the' occasion 
 
o ! no ! He's welcome to, <> If 
 prayers can give to / hi.? side 
 „r own that mine is 1 ir a God 
 .iiat I mean to blame the doctor for 
 brings ~<irth together to make the best of his 
 
 argument — nor do I think it at all discreditable, to any man's 
 moral character, who believes in the efficacy of prayer, — that 
 he should turn his thoughts thereto, — and— feel it to be high 
 time, to seek his peace with God, upon arriving at the last para- 
 graph of a treatise, in every page of which he had abused God's 
 creature and violated every precept of meekness, forbearance 
 and charity, which he professes to believe, that God's authority 
 had bound him to obey. 
 
 Now, let the reader, christian or unchristian, partial or im- 
 partial, judicious or injudicious, take the Reply to a Paper 
 entitled, Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, into his 
 hand, — and before one single argument or objection is advanced 
 against the Manifesto, — he finds the reverend answerer almost 
 apoplectic, with rage, and choaking in the eructations of his own 
 bile. He is in the ridiculous plight of one, who, in the intensity 
 of his passion, forgets his reason and exposes himself to the suf- 
 ficient refutation of all he has to say, in a Hey day ! What's 
 the matter now ! what is it all about ! 
 
 This, I hold to be as good an answer, and as complete a re- 
 proof for the abusive language of this treatise, as the reader 
 will require from me. But to save trouble and to clear the way 
 for genuine and rational argument, in which anger should have 
 no authority, and abuse no weight, 1 separate the mere epithets 
 of anger and abuse, to stand in a vocabulary by themselves, that 
 the reader may see a fair specimen of the christian spirit, and 
 lay it on, or take it off, as he pleases. He will only recollect 
 that — he will find nothing of the kind retorted upon the learned, 
 pious and excellent divine, whose disposition prompted, as 
 (perhaps we shall see) his argument required them. 
 
 Vocabulary of epithets applied by the Rev. John Pye 
 Smith, d.d. in vindication of the Christian Instruction Society, 
 versus the Christian Evidence Society. 
 
 Page 
 
 5 — 1. Flagrant instance. 
 
 2. Audacious falsehood. 
 
 3. Not possible to entertain a hope that the person is 
 
 sincere. 
 
 4. A dishonest man. 
 
 5. A false witness. 
 
 6. A wilful deceiver. 
 6—7. Unhappy writer. 
 
 7—8. Most shameful misrepresentations. 
 
PROLEGOMENA. «* 
 
 Page 
 7 — 9. Unblushing' falsehoods. 
 
 10. A front of dogmatical assurance.* 
 9 — Partly of shameful misrepresentations. 
 Partly of downright falsehoods. 
 Gross untruth. 
 Dishonourably omitted. 
 IS— Unfair. 
 Absurd. 
 19 — Disgraceful ignorance. 
 Shameless perversion. 
 22 — Ignorance. 
 
 Dishonesty. y 
 
 23 — Falsely pretended to quote. 
 
 Grossly perverted. 
 27 — Disgusting. 
 Falsehood. 
 Audacity. 
 
 This Manifesto writer. 
 Base misrepresentations. 
 28 — Dishonestly garbled. 
 31 — Dishonourable. 
 Base. 
 
 Wicked in soul. 
 How miserably incompetent. 
 How dishonest. 
 How aggravated. 
 Fraudulent, wicked man. 
 32 — Gross falsehood. 
 
 Impudent forgery. 
 34 — Unprincipled slanderer and deceiver. 
 
 Dishonourable Manifesto writer. 
 36 — Highest pitch of daring. 
 First born of calumny. 
 Defying all truth and justice. 
 37 — This contemptible writer. 
 
 40 — The Manifesto writer, with despite of truth and knowledge. 
 One of the most unprincipled and impudent liars, that ever 
 opened a mouth, or set pen to paper. 
 43. Mass of impudence and misrepresentation, so aggravated, 
 that language has no name strong enough. 
 Unspeakable folly and wickedness of his mind. 
 The pretence of reference to the learned christian advo- 
 cates Mosheim and Jones, is a most infamous piece of 
 forgery.^ 
 
 * All these epithets are expended on the first three pages of the answer, 
 before one single exception is taken to the Manifesto. 
 
 t The good doctor's rage seems to have driven him blind, the reader 
 has only to look at the 3rd and 4th propositions of the Manifesto, and he will 
 see, that no reference is there made or pretended to be made to Mosheim or 
 Jones. 
 
10 PROLEGOMENA. 
 
 Page 
 53 — The most false of all that have ever disgraced the use of 
 
 language. 
 54 — Impudent falsehood. 
 
 This outrageous and insulting writer. 
 55— The boastful Manifesto. 
 
 Its artfulness. 
 
 Its effrontery. 
 
 The imposture. 
 
 The dreadful and unblushing falsehoods. 
 
 The outrages on truth and reason. 
 
 Perfect disregard of argumentative equity. 
 
 Its pitiable writer. 
 
 Unprincipled rant. 
 
 A shameless lie. 
 60 — Folly or knavery. 
 
 This unhappy man. 
 
 Enormous instance. 
 
 Conscious to himself, that he is constantly contriving and 
 publishing the basest falsehoods. 
 
 Alas ! miserable man. 
 
 It is not ignorance, it is not error, that prompts his horrid 
 course. 
 
 END OF THE VOCABULARY OF ABUSIVE EPITHETS. 
 
 " There is some soul of good, in things evil, 
 Would men discerningly but sift it out." 
 
 So the reader, who has a mind to entertain his imagination, by 
 gathering' all that may be gathered, even from this unsightly ac- 
 cumulation of abuse, will pick up a much greater quantity of 
 admission, than the doctor's argument intended to spare. 
 
 When a disputant throws off so violently, as well nigh to 
 throw himself and all, and dashes upon accusations so unmea- 
 sured, as, ere they can be looked upon, he himself seems obliged 
 to recall them — (as here, in the doctor's very first paragraph, — 
 where he says, " the books and passages referred to say no such 
 thing as is imputed to them," and ere he finishes the period, 
 turns it off with the poor mitigation, that the professed quota- 
 tions are grossly falsified, — whereby, the reader who can draw 
 an inference, must see, that, the books and passages referred 
 to, do say some such thing as is imputed to them ;) — he only 
 shows, that his disposition, to bring a railing accusation, is of 
 full stature, while his ability, to stand by that accusation, is in 
 its infancy. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the man, who would offer that to the public as 
 a professed quotation, for which there really was no original 
 and no such thing in the author, must make a very frightful 
 
PROLEGOMENA. II 
 
 compromise of his own moral character: and if no probable 
 plea, of error, mistake, misprint, or variation of copies could be 
 put in, in arrest of censure, might deserve some one, (but one 
 would do) of those sentences of condemnation, that flow so 
 copiously from the doctor's pen. But if it really turns out, that 
 the professed quotations are bond fide quotations, and the pas- 
 sages referred to, are really there, in the books and places 
 referred to, I hope a man may be accounted as far from being a 
 " dishonest man, a false witness, or a wilful deceiver," as Dr. 
 Smith himself, even though he may not have seen the passage 
 with Dr. Smith's eyes, nor understood it with his understanding. 
 When charges brought against an adversary are utterly incom- 
 patible with each other, their juxta-position is their sufficient 
 refutation ; and like similar terms on the opposite sides of an 
 equation, they may be both effaced, and leave the accuracy of 
 our conclusion unendangered. Thus ; when the doctor charges 
 the writer of the Manifesto with " falsely pretending to quote," 
 and immediately subjoins " the tendency and application of 
 which he has so grossly perverted," (p. 23) ; the two charges 
 involve a negation of each other, and constitute an instance of 
 that over-hurling rage, which has to recall its own bolt. — 
 " Falsely pretending to quote" (the reader will observe), is the 
 doctor's first fling — but conscious, that 'tis an overfling, he 
 shrinks immediately from the defence-direct, by which such 
 a charge might be met, with — the demonstrative. There the 
 
 BOOK IS ! THERE IS THE PLACE REFERRED TO, — THE PAGE, 
 THE CHAPTER, THE VERSE, THE LINE, THE VERY WORDS; 
 
 is it not so ? and you have, instead, the doctor's mere opinion, 
 that, the quoter " has grossly perverted the tendency and ap- 
 plication of it:" — upon which tendency and application the 
 doctor may quibble, as long as he lists, but his very doing so, is 
 an admission, that, the quoter really has quoted, and has not 
 " falsely pretended to quote" but has been falsely charged 
 with having done so. For which, I hope, the doctor 
 will see, that " the greatness of the occasion demands his 
 PRA.YERS," (p. 55.) 
 
 When, in the very torrent of abuse, and in the deluge of scornful 
 and contemptuous invective, we discover indications of fear, and that 
 our man of mettle, amidst all his blustering, is only " whistling 
 aloud to keep his courage up," and crying Who's afraid ? 
 while his heart is in his shoes ; we learn, that it is not in what is 
 said, that we are to look for what is meant : and that the con- 
 tempt, that a man expresses for his adversary, is not the gage of 
 his adversary's strength ; but of his own weakness. There is no 
 common-place in the world perhaps, more common than that 
 from the Ars Poetica of Horace, — 
 
 " Nee deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus 
 Incident," 
 
12 PROLEGOMENA. 
 
 i. e, A man should not disturb the order of nature to help 
 him to look for the cat. Had this learned and truly Chris- 
 tian Divine really felt that the Manifesto writer was that 
 pitiable writer, that contemptible writer, that miserable, 
 incompetent, that disgracefully ignorant writer, that it was only 
 necessary to refer to the books he h&dfalsely pretended to quote, 
 to convict him of impudent forgeries, and downright lies: and 
 that his own Christian friends, his intelligent countrymen, his 
 " Judicious Readers," would inevitably think as ill of the Mani- 
 festo and its author, as himself: what occasion for this excess of 
 bitterness — this forestalling- denunciation, and anticipative threat, 
 to those dear and impartial readers themselves — that if they shall 
 not decide, as he has decided for them, they shall come in for their 
 share of his maledictions — they also shall be accused of "the darkest 
 depravity of soul," (p. 54.) they also shall be held to have sacrificed 
 their reason, violated their duty, and made themselves willing 
 dupes : (p. 55.) and above all, what occasion for doing the thing 
 Devoutly ? for calling in the Supreme Being — Divine assistance, 
 Almighty aid, and Infinite wisdom, to answer the arguments of 
 the Manifesto ? and thus, after all his railing, to pay me a com- 
 pliment, o'erfeasting the appetite of vanity itself, and virtually 
 telling his readers all that I could have wished to tell them ; and 
 that is, that if they exercise only their own natural sense and 
 shrewdness, they will see, that there is a greater weight of argu- 
 ment in the Manifesto, than Dr. Pye Smith intended that they 
 should see, and that while his sixty pages abound in the language 
 of divine inspiration, g-race, holiness, and barbarity : our one — has 
 Reason in it. 
 
 Another advantage to be sifted out, from the characteristic style 
 of this reverend Divine, is the unintended, but not less effectual, 
 support, that it supplies, to a position which I have steadily main- 
 tained, the irresistible conviction of which, first induced me to 
 renounce the Christian faith, the impregnable strength of which, 
 still fortifies my mind in that renunciation ; and which, when it 
 can, by evidence of history, fact, or reason, be conquered from me, 
 I will, as when the capitol is captured, no longer contend for the 
 borders,and outskirts of a conquered empire. — That position is, 
 that the influenceof Christianity, on the human mind, is altogether 
 a bad and vitiating influence, that it hardens men's hearts, stu- 
 pifies their understandings, and vandalizes their manners ; that it 
 corrupts nature's sweet juices in them, and turns the milk of human 
 kindness to gall and aconite. 
 
 Had there been, in this whole treatise, published, as it purports 
 to be, by the Society for Promoting Christian Instruction, and 
 publicly applauded by the Rev. Mr. Blackburn, minister of Clare- 
 mont Chapel, as having shown the author of the Manifesto to be 
 
 so great a that none who knew him, would any longer takl 
 
 his word in social life, — had there been, but, per accident, onf 
 
PROLEGOMENA. 13 
 
 syllable of decent courtesy, some particle of mercy, to have shown 
 itself in the choice of some other, rather than the harshest phrase ; 
 or some remembrance of justice and fairness, to have admitted 
 the possibility of error and mistake, rather than to have called, 
 what might prove to be no more than error and mistake — " un- 
 blushing-falsehoods and impudent forgeries:" — the reader might 
 be deceived, as men are, when they read here and there a few 
 scattered precepts of forbearance, meekness, and charity, in the 
 New Testament, into a mistake, as to its essentially ferocious, bar- 
 barous, and cruel character : oras children,when they see the polish 
 and the gilding on the sword blade, cease to be aware, that for all 
 the inscriptions it may bear, it is an instrument forged in medita- 
 tions of cruelty, and destined to works of destruction. But Dr. 
 John Pye Smith is an honest Christian : his, is the divinity of the 
 tomahawk and the scalping knife ; and the ferocity of his faith, in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, destroys in him the faculty of being civil. 
 No one can read his treatise, and not read what the tempers and 
 dispositions are which Christianity produces in its most evangelical 
 and distinguished professors, — " O my soul, come not thou into 
 their secret, and unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou 
 united ; their anger is fierce, and their wrath is cruel !" — Genesis 
 lxix. 6. 
 
 But another, the greatest and all-involving " Soul of Good," 
 resulting even from the redundancy of bitterness, that overflows 
 from this, the best answer to the Manifesto of the Christian Evi- 
 dence Society, that the whole challenged Christian community 
 could produce, is, its own admissions. 
 
 Take every thing that the Reverend Dr. John Pye Smith 
 has asserted, to be absolutely true ; take every thing contained in 
 the Manifesto at all contrary thereto, to be absolutely false ; take 
 all the angry epithets he applies to the author of the Manifesto, 
 to be justly due ; take all that he assumes to himself, of superior 
 character, talent, learning, ability, veracity ; all his vanity can 
 claim, or flattery can give, to be no more than due : and so, even 
 so: the mighty effect the Manifesto aimed at, is yet achieved: and 
 hundreds, who would never have renounced the Christian faith, 
 in consequence of my attack upon it; will do so, in consequence 
 of the Rev. Dr. Smith's defence of it. Our war has been that of 
 Ulysses rather than of Ajax : we have won by our stratagem that 
 which would never have been surrendered to our power. Their ad- 
 missions — their own admissions slay them : they admit so much, 
 that nothing is left to be defended, or that is worth defending : 
 the roof of the house, and the foundation of the house, and the 
 four walls, and all the doors and windows into the bargain, are 
 surrendered — the rest is Christianity — the rest, is all that remains 
 If the house that was founded upon a rock. — " Quod Thebae 
 cecidere, meum est." The Rev. Doctor has done me the good 
 service of circulating my Manifesto — he has shown his own con- 
 
14 PROLEGOMENA. 
 
 gregation, what I would have shown them too ; with this mighty 
 advantage, that the access to conviction was open to his argument's 
 entrance, that would have been barred against mine ; and with all 
 his affected contempt, and very sincere dislike, he has raised me 
 to the enviable pre-eminence of the man, who makes those, who 
 hate him, the ministers of his purpose, and the instruments of his 
 power ; who does the thing he sought to do, by means of their 
 hostility, makes their malice to effectuate his designs, and their 
 rebellion to subserve his will. 
 
 " This glory, never can his wrath or might extort from me !'■ 
 Whoever shall have read the admissions, which the Manifesto 
 of the Christian Evidence Society has wrung from its best and 
 ablest opponent, and trusted himself to see the pretended evi- 
 dences of Christianity, as being (say not so bad as I had repre- 
 sented them, but) no better than the Answer to the Manifesto 
 could make them, may be a hypocrite, and so may be a Christian 
 still ; but he can no longer be a Believer. Did I not aim at this 
 effect ? Have I not maintained that Christianity is the greatest 
 
 CURSE THAT EVER BEFEL THE HUMAN RACE? 
 
 Have I not laid out my life, and my life's energies, to deliver 
 and emancipate men's minds from the dreadful influence of that 
 curse ? 
 
 Am I not now a prisoner, — the martyr of this great and glorious 
 cause ? 
 
 Have I not made every treatise which has been written against 
 me, and every cruelty that has been inflicted on me, more detri- 
 mental to the cause of Christianity, than it could be injurious to 
 me ? Then, rail at me, all ye Doctors of Divinity — Curse me, all ye 
 Priests ; the spell, that subjugated oppressed and insulted millions 
 to your tyrannous dynasty, is broken — 
 
 Hoary headed selfishness has felt 
 
 Its death blow, and is tottering to the grave : 
 A brighter morn awaits the human day, 
 War, with its million horrors, and fierce hell, 
 Shall live but in the memory of time, 
 Who like a penitent libertine shall start, 
 Look back, and shudder at his younger years. 
 
 END OF THE PROLEGOMENA. 
 
SECTION I. 
 
 ON THE GENERAL EVIDENCE OP THE PRETENDED GENUINENESS 
 OF THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES. 
 
 I shall follow the learned and reverend Doctor, according to his 
 own method, section for section, page for page. The reader will 
 please to observe, that it is on the eighth page of the Answer to 
 the Manifesto, that he will meet with the very first sentence that 
 purports to be a reply to any part of the Manifesto. And here he 
 will observe, that, what in the Manifesto are called Propositions, 
 and which, as propositions, are accompanied by subjoined 
 proofs, and submitted in public challenge to all ministers and 
 preachers, to come forward and show, if they can, the contrary : 
 those propositions being declared to have been, as far as to us 
 appeared (i. e. to the assembled Christian Evidence Society) 
 " fully and unanswerably demonstrated." These propositions are 
 very conveniently called by the Doctor, assertions, as if they had 
 not been accompanied by any attempted proof; nor offered in 
 fair and ingenuous challenge of disproof: that so he might bring 
 these propositions down to the level of all that he can bring 
 against them — assertions, — and seem justified in saying of them, 
 what can only justly be said of assertions, that they are uttered 
 with " a front of dogmatical assurance/' 
 
 We shall find this distinction of some importance. 
 
 When Euclid published to the world his Treatise of Geo- 
 metry, he put forth what he called propositions, he accompanied 
 them with what seemed to him to be proofs, and he submitted 
 them in public challenge to all the geometricians in the world, 
 " to come forward and show, if they could, the contrary." Now, 
 just such a geometrician, as Dr. Smith is a divine, would have 
 been the man who might have chosen to call those propositions, 
 assertions, to say that they had been put forth " with a front of 
 dogmatical assurance ;" or, that they were sufficiently answered, 
 by applying to the proposer of them, any of the abusive and 
 virulent epithets of Dr. Smith's evangelical vocabulary. But 
 calling the two first propositions of the Manifesto, assertions 
 
 (to Wit, 1st, THAT THE SCRIPTURES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 WERE NOT WRITTEN BY THE PERSONS WHOSE NAMES THEY BEAR, 
 
 and 2nd., that they did not appear in the times to 
 which they refer ; and, taking the two to be but one,) the 
 doctor (whom nobody must suspect of being- dogmatical) gives 
 what his Homerton College students may consider as a complete 
 refutation of the two first propositions of the Manifesto, in the 
 words — 
 
 . " OuV fummary reply, to the first of these assertions, is this : 
 We have the most satisfactory evidence, that the books of the 
 New Testament were written at the time which they intimate, 
 and by the persons to whom they are attributed." — page 6, Sect. I. 
 
16 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 It is a summary reply indeed ! Let the reader digest the know- 
 ledge he hath gained ! and perhaps he will see, that it was a 
 good stroke of policy to call the propositions assertions, and 
 to complain of the front of dogmatical assurance, with which they 
 had been put forth ; because, by so doing, he might forestall any 
 suspicion of his own dogmatism, while he was making the best 
 of the best materials he had. Pull down the ground about you, 
 and you raise yourselves — call Propositions, accompanied by 
 proofs, and submitted in challenge of disproof, mere assertions, 
 and then ; when you can do no better, you know you may begin 
 and call ill names, and say that one assertion is as g-ood as another. 
 " We have the most satisfactory evidence," says this learned, 
 unquestionably most learned divine. Have you so ? and, by my 
 honour Pm glad of it for your sakes : but who are We ? For if, 
 in that We, /, and half a dozen whom I could answer for, be in- 
 cluded, i" must remind the doctor, that satisfactory is not quite 
 the adjective that one man has a right to predicate of another 
 man's meal : and that We have not the most satisfactory evidence. 
 I deny not, 1 dispute not the satisfactoriness, the abundance, the 
 crapula, the surfeit of evidence, for the divinity of the Christian 
 Scriptures, that must appear to the minds of those whom those 
 Scriptures are the means of seating in professorial chairs, and col- 
 lege dignities, of enabling ithem to arrogate the more than mortal 
 prerogative, of being ambassadors of Omnipotence, of swelling in 
 idle, vain-glorious, and useless pomp, and riding in triumph over 
 the insulted intelligence and ruined fortunes of the starving and 
 deluded people ; — and only starving, because they are deluded. 
 
 If, indeed, the genuineness of the Christian Scriptures, can be 
 disproved, or, which is the same thing, if the great body of society 
 shall be brought to see (what I will lose no means of showing 
 them) that those Scriptures really are not genuine ! Why the 
 Christian craft is up ! Doctors of Divinity will become — ah ! what 
 will they not become ? they will be obliged to turn honest — 
 and so — 
 
 Farewell pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious priestcraft! 
 And Oh! ye Moorfields pulpits, whose loud throats 
 Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, 
 Farewell ! The Reverend occupation's gone ! 
 Now reader be awake, and see what you see, and see this 
 reverend doctor of divinity, after having given you his own un- 
 qualified and unsupported assertion, that the evidence for the 
 genuineness of the Christian Scriptures is " most satisfactory/* 
 and challenged for that assertion, that it should, on the ground of 
 his doctorial dignity, and autocratorical we, be received as a sum- 
 mary reply to the propositions of the Manifesto : in the ^oiy next 
 sentence, receding from his bold advance, and lea ving ground 
 enough, e'en if there were no more, for the firm footing of the 
 proposition he assails. 
 
Jo. 
 
 VINDICATION OF THE MAN /o. 17 
 
 T IFEf 
 
 *' Several of them (that is, of the books of nieNew Testament) 
 do not bear any name in the beginning- or body "^f their compo- 
 sition." Say you so, Sir? then what say common sense and com- 
 mon honesty, upon turning- to your English copies of the New 
 Testament, which you are circulating by your Bible Societies, 
 and never ceasing- from your pulpits to speak of as a revelation 
 from a God of Truth : and finding that there is not one of those 
 books but what does bear a name in the beginning, the name of 
 some supposed inspired apostle, per virtue and authority of 
 which name, and of which alone, it derives all its influence on the 
 minds, all its obligation on the consciences of men. 
 
 If that terrible and heart-appalling summons on the prostration 
 of all minds — the surrender of all the faculties of man — his sub- 
 mission as unto fate — his obedience even unto death — If that 
 dread — Thus saith the Lord ! or, thus by his Holy and 
 Inspired Servant and Messenger hath he said — turns out at 
 last, that Thus he hath not said — but thus hath said — we know 
 not whom — but who had no more right to say so, than the Tutor 
 of Homerton College. What is forgery— -what is imposture, if 
 this be not ? And if this be the predicament of " several" of the 
 books, of which there are but 27 altogether, while we know not 
 which, nor how many, that several may be — what can we say 
 of the man who, with such an admission before him, that im- 
 posture has been at work ; that forgery is there ; that the names 
 of several of the books which are prefixed, were not prefixed 
 by the persons whose names they purport to be ; and that a 
 parade of authority is set forth in the translation, for which there 
 is no support in the original— what, I ask, can we say of the 
 man, who will still persist in ascribing scriptures of such infinitely 
 suspicious external evidence (to say nothing of their incongruous 
 absurd, and contradictory contents) to the immediate authority 
 of a God of infinite wisdom, goodness, and truth ? What ?— 
 But that he had better do it "devoutly" — he had better do it 
 " with prayer" (p. 54) — for he hath need of forgiveness ; and 
 perhaps a little confession, too, might help to disgorge the 
 o'er-cloyed conscience. 
 
 But never was the wily shirking traitor, that had turned 
 King's evidence against his brother thieves, beaten by cross- 
 examination into so forlorn a come-off, as that of our Divines, 
 who, after having all along arrogated for the writings of the 
 New Testament— a supernatural and superhuman authority — and 
 held it to be no more than " the words of truth and soberness," to 
 say of the whole Bible, that " it hath God for its author, hap- 
 piness for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for 
 its matter," at last turn round on us with the startling surrender 
 of every thing, by attempting to show, that these writings have 
 as good proofs of their genuineness, or perhaps, better, than the 
 works of Thucydides, Xenophon and Demosthenes, among the 
 
V 
 
 ^ICi 
 
 18 VlJg) IC ATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 Greeks; or of Cicero, Caesar, and Livy, among the Romans- 
 works which have absolutely no authority at all, which never 
 pretended to any, but which do each of them, in very many 
 places, expressly discard and disclaim all pretence to authority, 
 and in all and every part of them, offer themselves in submission 
 to the reader's judgment, not in control or direction of it. These 
 writings claim no particle or degree of our admiration on account 
 of their being respectively the works of Thucydides, Xenophon, 
 Demosthenes, Cicero, Caesar, or Livy, but are esteemed for their 
 intrinsic and indefeasible merit only, which would be and remain 
 the same, neither more nor less, though critical research should 
 discover to the world that it was not Xenophon, but Clearchus, 
 that wrote the Anabasis ; not Demosthenes, but Isocrates, that 
 delivered the Olynthiacs ; not Cicero, but Atticus, that composed 
 the De Officiis. 
 
 " The thing we call a rose would smell as sweet, 
 If it were called by any other name" — 
 but not so your Rose of Sharon — if that be not in the predica- 
 ment ye have predicated of it— if it be not, that 
 
 " Th' etherial spirit o'er its leaves doth move, 
 And on its top descends the mystic dove," 
 
 Paugh ! it's a vile stinking darnel, and hath neither colour, 
 scent, or medicine, to save it from our loathing ! 
 
 The " intelligent" reader, unless he has a mind to surrender 
 his intelligence, ought not to suffer himself to be coaxed by being 
 called " intelligent" into a peace and well -a -day sort of 
 compromise — with this no-helptng-it-now condition of divine 
 revelation. 
 
 " The titles at the head of each book were prefixed, not by 
 the authors, but by the early transcribers." 
 
 But, reader, is it of no consequence, where eternity is assumed 
 to be at stake, to ask the obvious question ? — Who were those 
 early transcribers — and how early ? And wherefore it is, that 
 supposing that those early transcribers had a delegated or vica- 
 rious right to affix titles to some of the books, there should be 
 several to which no titles are affixed — not even by those early 
 transcribers ? 
 
 Observe ye, then, the exact plight of the general evidence for 
 the genuineness of the Christian Scriptures, upon Dr. Smith's 
 own showing. 
 
 Of several of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, 
 the Doctor not showing which nor how many those several are, 
 it is admitted, that the names they bear were not affixed to them 
 by their authors — no, nor even by their early transcribers. — 
 Corollary — By whom, then, were they affixed, but by com- 
 paratively modern transcribers, who could have had no authority, 
 neither direct nor delegated, for what they did ? 
 
 But, of those books which are not included in the several, not 
 saying which they be, but which have the higher authority of 
 
VINDICATION OP THE MANIFESTO. 19 
 
 having- names prefixed to them, not by their authors, but by cer- 
 tain unknown whom and unknown when early transcribers ; that 
 circumstance which in any other, would be thought a little dis- 
 couraging-, in the Doctor's reasoning " involves a proof of the 
 general belief and notoriety, that those books were the genuine 
 productions of the writers whose names were familiarly at' 
 taehed to them" 
 
 Now, reader, as I at least wish to be innocent of " dogmatical 
 assurance," I will only ask leave, to ask you to ask yourself, 
 whether there be not two considerably important qucerenda for 
 your logic, even from this position, emergent — 
 
 1st— Whether the circumstance of titles being prefixed to cer- 
 tain books, by persons who were certainly not the authors of 
 them, does certainly involve a proof of the general belief and 
 notoriety, that those books were really the works of the persons 
 to whom they were so ascribed ? 
 
 And secondly — Whether the public notoriety and general 
 belief of those early times (supposing ourselves to have competent 
 means of knowing what that public notoriety and general belief 
 was,) would itself be sufficient ground for concluding that those 
 early transcribers, or those who paid them for transcribing (good 
 honest men), could not possibly be less trust-worthy than public no- 
 toriety and general belief held them to be — that they were no more 
 capable of intending to deceive the people, than the people were 
 of forming too high an opinion of them — that they could not put 
 the wrong name rather than the right one to the title of the 
 matter that they had transcribed — that in those ages, 17 or 18 hun- 
 dred years ago, learning was so generally diffused, and public 
 notoriety so sure to find them out, that they could have had no 
 opportunity of doing so, even if they had been so inclined — that 
 though God only knows who they were, or by what motives 
 they were actuated, yet we may be absolutely sure, that when a 
 manuscript would fetch a hundred times the price for bearing the 
 name of Jack rather than of Gill, they were too conscientious and 
 disinterested to be capable of substituting the one name for the 
 other ? 
 
 To solve these important quserenda, I could supply the reader 
 with quotations from Ecclesiastical history, Councils, Fathers, 
 &c, as extensively, perhaps, and as fairly, as the Professorial 
 Doctor, for, indeed, " it is not ignorance, it is not error, that 
 prompts my horrid course" (p. 60) — but if the reader happens 
 to be a member of the Christian Instruction Society, the 
 chance is, that he may have been instructed by the precepts as 
 well as by the example of this Christian instructor, to call such 
 quotations a parade of learning and authority, and an ostentatious 
 reference, &c. — and when he found the quotations absolutely 
 correct — and in the authors— there, as quoted, page for page, 
 line for line, word for word^ he might, like the Rev. Divine, run 
 
 c 2 
 
20 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 stark- staring- desperate — foreswear his own eyes— and call me 
 * the greatest liar that ever opened a mouth, or set pen to paper," 
 &c. &c. So, as I hope he will not apply these epithets to Dr. 
 Smith, however he may seem to contradict himself — himself 
 shall be my authority. Let quotations made by Aim, be held to be 
 fairly quoted, and these are his own materials for solving the 
 quaerenda which arise from his own positions. 
 
 " The documents of history, for that period and some centuries 
 after, are very obscure. In the time of Simon, and the learned 
 Benedictines of St. Maur, very great and numerous errors with 
 respect to the persons and transactions of those dark ages, were 
 commonly received," &c. (p. 16.) 
 
 " It is well enough known, that in the early ag'es of Chris- 
 tianity, many silly and fraudulent persons composed fictitious nar- 
 ratives of the life and actions of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, 
 and gave them out as the writings of Peter, Nicodemus, Thomas, 
 Barnabas, 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 always rejected by the general body of Christians." — 
 (p. 40.) 
 
 Reader, is this forgery ? Is it I who have said all this ? Or 
 will Dr. Smith again charge me with putting forth what I would 
 put forth, with a front of dogmatical assurance ; if I only suggest 
 the questions which arise from his own statements, and leave it 
 to himself or to any body in the world who can do so, to answer 
 them : — 
 
 1st. If the documents of history at any given period, and for 
 some centuries after that period, are very obscure, what is there 
 to render them such as a man may rest his salvation upon, prior 
 to that period ? 
 
 2. If very great and numerous errors with respect to the per- 
 sons and transactions of the eleventh century, are admitted, what 
 guarantee have we for the infallibility of the first ?* 
 
 3. Shall our knowledge that a man was infinitely mendacious 
 in his mature life, lead us to infer that his word might be 
 depended on in his infancy ? 
 
 * Adeo verbum Dei inefficax esse ccnsuerunt, ut regnum Christi sine men 
 dacio, promoveri posse diffiderunt. — Epist. ad Casaubon, p. 303. 
 
 It was a maxim of the Church, that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie, 
 when by that means the interest of the Church might be promoted. — Mosheim, 
 vol. 1, p. 382. 
 
 For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why 
 yet am I also judged as a sinner. — Romans, iii. 7. 
 
 " For, notwithstanding those twelve known infallible and faithful judges of 
 controversy(z. e. the twelve apostles), there were as many and as damnable heresies 
 crept in, even in the apostolic age, as in any after age, perhaps, during the same 
 space of time — so little will nfallibility serve the turn it is set up for."— Reeves* 
 Preliminary Discourse to the Commonilory of Vinceniius Lirinensis, p. 190. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 21 
 
 4. If eleven hundred' years (from the 3d or 4th to the 15th 
 or 16th century — from the more than barbarous ignorance., and 
 grosser than pagan superstition which prevailed over the whole 
 christian world) are justly called the dark ages — how can 
 mankind be said to have been enlightened by the Gospel ? — 
 The world surely is as forlorn of evidence to prove any beneficial 
 effect of the pretended revelation upon men's understandings, 
 as an abusive and scurrilous priest would be, if called on to show 
 that it had any influence in softening- his temper, or mitigating 
 his virulence. 
 
 5. If in the early ages of Christianity, many silly and fraudulent 
 persons composed fictitious narratives, &c, must not fictitious- 
 narrative making have been a good trade ? 
 
 6. Must they not have found the Christian community easily 
 imposed on ? 
 
 7. How, then, can Dr. Smith, or any one else, presume to 
 say, that they were always rejected by the general body of 
 Christians ? 
 
 8. Or, who the general body of Christians were ? 
 
 9. Or, that rejection by the general body of Christians, was a 
 sufficient proof that the matter ought to have been rejected ? 
 
 ^10. Or, that admission by the general body of Christians, was 
 a sufficient proof that the matter ought to have been admitted ? 
 
 11. Who were the representatives of the general body of 
 Christians, that exercised for them the stupendous arbitration ? 
 
 12. Were there no dissenters from the general body ? 
 
 13. Will the dissenterian Dr. John Pye Smith maintain that no 
 respect could possibly be due to those dissenters ? 
 
 14. If by far the larger part of those spurious compositions 
 have long ago dropped into deserved oblivion, who is to deter- 
 mine now, that, that oblivion was deserved? 
 
 15. Who is to determine that they were spurious ? 
 
 16. Who is to determine that those Scriptures which have been 
 preserved (owing their preservation as they do to those who had 
 the strongest possible interest in undervaluing and decrying 
 them), are a fair specimen of what the others were ? 
 
 17- Would not those, who wished the received Scriptures to be 
 held in honour, make the best of them ? 
 
 1 8. Would not those, who wished the rejected Scriptures to be 
 held in contempt, make the worst of them ? 
 
 19. If writings were forged in the names of Peter, Nicodemus, 
 Thomas, and Barnabas, why might not those which appear under 
 the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, have been for- 
 geries also? 
 
 20. Why should not all the rest of the disciples have written 
 gospels, as well as the two, Matthew and John ? 
 
 21. Why should not the gospels of all the rest of the disciples 
 have had as good a claim on otfr credence, as those of Matthew 
 
22 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 and John, who were no more than disciples — and a better claim 
 than those of Mark and Luke, who were no disciples at all ? 
 
 22. If the gospels which appear under the names of Matthew, 
 Mark, Luke, and John, appear infinitely more respectable than 
 those which appear under the names of Peter, Nicodemus, 
 Thomas, and Barnabas, is not that circumstance a presumption 
 in favour of the prior existence of those of Peter, Nicodemus, 
 Thomas, and Barnabas ? 
 
 23. Assuming - that there had been some real foundation for 
 the gospel story, is it not a presumption — that the more simple, 
 artless, and awkward style of telling it, would have been the 
 original one ? 
 
 24. If all accounts or narratives of Jesus Christ and his apos- 
 tles were forgeries, as 'tis admitted that all the apocryphal ones 
 were — what can the superior character of the received gospel 
 prove for them ; but that they are merely superiorly executed 
 forgeries ? 
 
 Let the reader answer these questions to his own convictions ! 
 Let him make them his own ! and if he should not answer them, 
 as he may perhaps guess that I should, he will yet, I hope, 
 observe, that with all my dogmatical assurance and unblushing 
 effrontery, I have not yet assumed the style of my reverend op- 
 ponent — nor shall I take upon myself either to say or even to 
 think that " he must have sacrificed his reason and conscience to 
 the darkest depravity of soul." 
 
 The Doctor's avowedly " fearless challenge to produce any 
 writings approaching to the same professed antiquity, whose 
 genuineness is supported by evidence equally abundant and un- 
 exceptionable," coupled with the remark which follows it, 
 partakes of his characteristic style, — it is the desperabund 
 forlorn flinging-ofF, — of a man, who when he finds he has 
 nothing reasonable to say — plays devil may care, as to what he 
 says, — and stakes his last throw upon the chance to frighten 
 you from observing the shallow weakness of his argument — 
 by the sonorous insolence of his vituperation. 
 
 " Approaching to the same professed antiquity." What ! 
 an apology for them — there is wonderful evidence for their 
 genuineness, considering how old they are. — But were his 
 challenge to such a comparison accepted — and all the advantage 
 of complete victory, (which by the bye is infinitely doubtful) 
 in his hands: What would it prove for the pretensions of 
 divine revelation, to prove that its records stood on as good 
 ground, or probably better, for the chance of being genuine, 
 than the histories, legends, romances, or poems of an equally 
 remote antiquity — which it never mattered one penny or one 
 care to any body, whether they were genuine or not ? 
 
 Should we take up Hardoin's hypothesis, and persuade our- 
 selves, that the classical writings were the compositions of no 
 
VINDICATION OF THE ML 
 
 such persons as they are ascribed to, but w< 
 up by the monks'of a much later age, than i, 
 purport to belong-— why, well done the monks ! >. 
 as well as the authors themselves, had they been genu 
 have done ! and there's the amount of the mischief. 
 
 Suppose it should one day be discovered, that the Paiw 
 Lost was written by no such person as John Milton, or that 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was no work 
 of Gibbon's — no material question is affected, no important issue 
 is at stake. But as the Doctor would find it very hard to name 
 any one celebrated work of antiquity that was ever in such a 
 predicament, that about the time of its appearance, or at any 
 time, there either were or possibly could have been rival and 
 competitive works — affecting to have been written by the same 
 author, and claiming equal merit : ■ — as bold a writer as] himself 
 might fearlessly challenge him to shew that any one of the 
 writers he has named — lias not a thousand fold better general 
 evidence, than any that can be pretended for the writings of the 
 New Testament: and might even defy imagination itself, to 
 imagine, how writings which so strong interests, craft, policy, 
 passions, and prejudices of men had concurred for so great a 
 length of time to impose upon the world as divine oracles, could 
 possibly betray stronger and clearer marks of forgery and im- 
 posture than are to be found in these. 
 
 Note. — " This opinion has always been in the world, that to settle a certain 
 and assured estimation upon that which is good and true, it is necessary to re- 
 move out of the way whatsoever may be an hindrance to it. Neither ought we 
 to wonder that even those of the honest, innocent primitive times made use of 
 these deceits ; seeing for a good end they made no scruple to forge whole 
 books." Daille on the use of the Fathers, b. 1. c. 3. Passim occurrunt patrum 
 voces de haereticis conquerentium, quod fraudum artifices, ut somniis suis au- 
 toritatem conciliarent, libros quibus ea in vulgus proseminabant, celeberrimae 
 cujusque ecclesia? Doctoris imo et Apostolorum nominibus inscribere ausi 
 essent. Johannes Dallaeus, lib. 1. c. 3. 
 
 END OF SECTION I. 
 
ON OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 EDICTS FOR THE ALTERATION OF THE SCRIP- 
 TURES. 
 
 othingof the kind is to be found in history," — says, this un- 
 assuming- and humble-minded Divine, and that, too, within the 
 echo of his own reproof of another— for having spoken with too 
 much confidence. The greatest historian that ever lived, would 
 have been restrained by the modesty that ever accompanies 
 great and substantial knowledge, from saying- more — than that 
 in his extent of historical reading-, or within his memory of what 
 he had read, he recollected nothing of the kind : a dissenterian 
 Doctor of Divinity may say any thing-. " It is scarcely possible 
 to imag-ine a greater untruth, than this assertion/ 5 — says our 
 infallible D. D. ! Yes, if being all that it purports to be, a reference 
 merely, to direct the reader to the sources where he shall find 
 matter yielding- such support as he himself may judg-e whether 
 it be competent or not to support the proposition which he is 
 called and invited to disprove — be an assertion : and if being an 
 assertion, it were an untruth ; it would yet be possible to ima- 
 gine a grosser one, because it would be possible to imagine a 
 man's attempting to make the world believe, that there could be 
 nothing in the whole compass of history, but what had come 
 under his observation, and could not escape his memory. 
 
 " With respect to Constantine* and Theodosius, the writer of 
 the Manifesto has dishonourably omitted" fyc. 
 
 * " With respect to Constantine" — if the reader chooses to refer to the 
 life of Constantine by his intimate friend Euscbius, (book 4. chap. 36, 37.) 
 The reader is to suspect no gasconade here, no ostentatious pretence of ac- 
 quaintance with the original Greek of Eusebius, no concealment of the English 
 translation which he must have found so useful — and no suppression of what 
 — if he had had any pretensions to the character of a scholar — he must have known 
 of the character of Eusebius, — and how little entitled to credit any life of his 
 intimate friend and patron must be, written by the courtly bishop — who danced 
 attendance on the tyrant's pleasure, in an age when it was an established 
 " maxim of christian piety— that it was an act of virtue to deceive "~nd lie; 
 when by such means the interests of the church might be promoted." ( 'leim's 
 Ecc. Hist. London 1811. vol. 1. p. 382), and when he himself confesses or rather 
 avows his own adoption of that pious principle, as the rule of his fidelity as an 
 historian, and takes a pride to himself in having related whatever might redound 
 to the glory, and suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of religion." 
 Gibbon vol. 2, p. 490. 
 
 Of the power of the Roman Emperors, and of all christian kings, princes, and 
 governors to alter the text of scripture to any extent they pleased— the proofs 
 are so abundant, that their abundance only stood in the way of enumeration. 
 See their innumerable decrees, acts, and edicts to this effect, in every history 
 of their reigns. " The proofs of that supreme power of the emperors in religious 
 matters, appear so incontestible in this controversy, that it is amazing it should 
 ever have been called in question." Mosheim, cent. 4. part 2. vol. 1. p. 406, note 9. 
 See the Bible itself. See also, the plenary inspiration ascribed to kings in the 
 Liturgy. " O almighty God, we are taught by thy holy word, that the hearts of 
 kings are in thy rule and governance, and that thou dost dispose and turn them 
 as seemeth best to thy godly wisdom." See also, the king's title, " of the church 
 
 ON EARTH, THE SUPREME HEAD." 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 25 
 
 Could there be no supposeable reason for an omission, where 
 the whole matter was intended bat as an index, and was to be 
 compressed on one single page ; but that it must needs be dis- 
 honourable ? 
 
 Reader, turn thine eye to page 43, and see what Dr. Smith 
 can plead in excuse for his own sins of omission — where his matter 
 occupies 60 pages. There you will see that he holds it autho- 
 rity sufficient for one of his propositions : (to wit — that the 
 occasions on which the miracles were wrought — exempli 
 gratia, the occasion of supplying more wine to fellows who 
 were half seas over already : the occasion for cursing a fig- 
 tree, the occasion for playing the devil with the pigs, were 
 occasions worthy of the interposition of divine omnipotence, 
 a proposition which surely must be as hard to prove as any 
 contained in the Manifesto) — that it " has been shown with 
 an abundance of evidence by numerous and well-known authors, 
 to whom access is easy. Within the narrow limits of these 
 pages, it is impossible 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." 
 
 Shallj these, his own words ! this, his own excuse ! be good 
 and valid for himself — and it is so : while nothing less than a 
 dishonourably intended omission is to be charged on me, for 
 not having defeated my own object — by making my Manifesto 
 too much to be contained in a Manifesto : when the names of 
 Constantine & Theodosius were sufficient to refer any 
 reader to the pages of a work so easy of access as Gibbon's 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: and when, for the name 
 and instance of the emperor Anastatius, as not being so well 
 known, nor to be found in a work so easy of access ; I had 
 supplied the reference, which in that more essential case alone 
 seemed necessary, to the author, the volume, and the page where 
 it is to be found ? 
 
 And of this, the Doctor, after having in the title of this 
 section designated it as a pretence, and in the section itself 
 characterized it — as " the grossest untruth that could be ima- 
 gined ;" in the very next section and in the very next page, 
 admits that it is indeed fairly transcribed from Dr.Lardner's 
 translation of it. In that admission however, thrusting from 
 himself the credit of fairness, which the admission might win 
 for him, by the unfair and unworthy insinuation that — I could 
 not have become acquainted with the passage, but by means of 
 a translation. 
 
 How far the piety and conscientiousness of Constantine,* 
 
 * Constantine had a father-in-law whom he impelled to hang himself: he had 
 a brother-in-law whom he ordered to be strangled : he had a nephew of twelve 
 or thirteen years only, whose throat he ordered to be cut : he had a son whom he 
 
26 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 as guaranteed by the historical veracity and impartiality of 
 his intimate friend Eusebius, is positive evidence of the care 
 and diligence which were exercised in making copies of the 
 scriptures ; or whether extraordinary " care and diligence in 
 making copies of the scriptures/' exercised by such pious and 
 conscientious christians as Constantine and Eusebius — is not 
 itself an extraordinarily suspicious circumstance against the 
 chance of their remaining uncorrupted, — (as sure no man would 
 think a treasure the more likely to remain untouched, for being 
 under the extraordinary care and diligence of a known thief) ; 
 or how far Dr. Smith can take upon himself to infer — what 
 could, or could not have been " thought of by the emperor" 
 are considerations which the reader will determine according to 
 the bent of his own reflections. 
 
 I only claim his observance, that unmeasured as are the 
 Doctor's charges against me, his amount of proofs as yet, stands at 
 nought and carry nought. 
 
 beheaded : he had a wife whom he ordered to be suffocated in a bath ; and so, 
 when he had made a clear house for himself, his mind took a serious turn. But 
 there was nothing in the religion of the ancient paganism, that could give 
 comfort to the conscience of a sinner,' — the ancient paganism had no propitiation 
 for throat-cutting, no atonement for child-killing. Its terrible language was 
 
 Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina coedis 
 Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua 
 Non bove mactato coelestia numina gaudent, 
 Sed qua? praestanda est, et sine teste fide. 
 
 Ovid (as I remember.) 
 
 O ! this would never do for Constantine — here was nothing for a sinner's hope 
 to rest on ; but the religion of the Galilean proclaimed that the blood of 
 Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin (1 John i. 7.), and Constantine became a 
 christian. Christianity consequently became the religion of the state, and — 
 " the terrors of a military force silenced the faint and unsupported murmurs of 
 the pagans." Gibbon (as I remember). The exercise of the pagan religion was 
 
 Srohibited under pain of death, by an edict of the emperors Valentinian and 
 larcian, in the year 451. See the edict of Theodosius, Gibbon, vol. 5. p. 15. 
 
 END OF SECTION II. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 27 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 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," 8?c. " But, mark the honesty of this Manifesto 
 writer." Well, o* God's name, mark his honesty ! 
 
 <c He copies the passage which makes for his purpose." Well, 
 and what would you have said of him, if he had copied a passage 
 which did not make for his purpose ? 
 
 "And which he would in all reasonable probability , never 
 have known of, had not that Christian advocate furnished him 
 with it" And how could any body know of any thing-, if nobody 
 had furnished him with the knowledge of it? or what would the 
 Doctor have said, if this bit of knowledge had been furnished for 
 me by an infidel, or if I had supplied it purely from my own 
 invention ? 
 
 " But he says not a syllable of the evidence which was before 
 him in the very same page, of the total falsehood of the state- 
 ment, as it is professed to be understood by some modern 
 infidels." But suppose what was before him, seemed to him, to 
 be no evidence at all. 
 
 I take this clause to comprehend a fair specimen of the Doctor's 
 claims to the praise of candour, fairness, and integrity. — His can- 
 dour, in charging it to a want of honesty, that being confined to 
 compress my whole quantum of matter within the border of the 
 Manifesto, I had taken no notice of what I thought did not make for 
 my purpose. — His fairness, in implying that I had rejected evi- 
 dence which was before me on the very same page of the total 
 falsehood of the passage, when he knew that there was no such 
 evidence, there to be rejected. — His integrity, in that for the dear 
 sake of gratifying feelings which I shall never envy by flinging off 
 the railing accusation of total falsehood of statement, he 
 has, ere he can take his breath, to recall his own fling, and to shuffle 
 from it with the pitiful qualification of predicating total falsehood 
 of the statement " as it is professed to be understood," of which 
 every logician knows, that total falsehood is not predicable. 
 
 An illustration will exhibit this sophism in its true light: — 
 Suppose one had said " King Charles the First was barbarously 
 murdered," and had been answered, " It is a total falsehood of 
 statement," by an opponent who instantly shrunk from this giving 
 of the lie-direct, into the come-off, — " a total falsehood of 
 statement as it is professed to be understood." What would be 
 the inference, but that such an answerer had more the manners of 
 
28 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 a doctor of divinity, than of a gentleman, a greater prurience 
 of abuse, than pregnancy of argument ? 
 
 I have not then made a false statement : I have not made a 
 misquotation, nor put forth a misrepresentation, no, nor the 
 shadow of a misrepresentation ; and he whom this good Christian 
 Divine politely calls " first-born of calumny, and greatest liar 
 that ever set pen to paper," is as far from being such, as the sun's 
 disc from darkness, or a Christian Doctor's heart from charity. 
 
 As for the error (certainly not falsehood) which may, or 
 may not attach to any man's understanding of a particular state- 
 ment, I hope I have as good a right to maintain my own under- 
 standing, as I leave to all mankind the uncontrolled exercise of 
 theirs : and could not have done so more fairly, more ingenuously, 
 and more honestly, than by putting forth, with the statement 
 which I fairly quoted, a reference to the work, volume, and page 
 where it would be found ; and that, not by itself alone, as I first 
 found it,* but accompanied by the most powerful array of objec- 
 tion and controversy that the wit of man could possibly bring 
 against it. I left these therefore to all the possible weight they 
 could have on the mind, which my reference would direct to 
 them : on my own mind, neither all their weight, with all that 
 Dr. Smith can add to their weight, could overbalance the pre- 
 ponderance of the matter in its full effect to the intent for which 
 I quoted it. 
 
 Reader, think'st thou, that one so ready to bring the coarsest 
 accusations in the coarsest language, would know what fairness, 
 ingenuousness, and honesty were, when they stood before him in 
 the enemy of his faith ? 
 
 Now, reader, see and judge, on what evidence this learned 
 Divine would bring the most frightful charge, that could 
 be alleged against any man, who was possessed of moral sensi- 
 bility, and had some claim to be considered as good a scholar and 
 as able a critic as himself. 
 
 What was the evidence before me, in the very same page, of 
 the total falsehood of the statement, as it is professed to be under- 
 stood by some modern infidels ? Why, the very next sentence, 
 after the statement itself, which I had fairly quoted, is Dr. Lard- 
 ner's admission, that " Some have hence argued, that the copies 
 of the New Testament — of the gospels at least — have not come 
 down to us, as 'they were originally written, they having been 
 altered in the time of the emperor Anastasius, who began his reign 
 in the year 491, and died in 518." Lardner, vol. 3, p. 67* 
 
 And why might not I enroll myself among those who argue 
 thus, (and among whom are names of not inferior renown to any 
 of their opponents) sincerely believing as I do, that they have 
 the best of the argument ? Or why was it incumbent on me to 
 
 * In the works of Peter Annett, where it is given very incorrectly, but not 
 falsely. 
 
VINDICATION OP THE MANIFESTO. 29 
 
 have introduced into my Manifesto the objections of my adver- 
 saries — objections which I myself did not consider of sufficient 
 validity to defeat or to alter the effect of my proposition ?* 
 
 Or why should Dr. Lardner himself, have introduced any 
 notice at all of the existence of such a passage, into his work, 
 and have employed his great powers of argumentation, beating 1 
 up for all the authorities, all the talent, learning", and ingenuity 
 he could find in the world, to come " to the help of the Lord — to 
 the help of the Lord against the mighty," if there were really 
 no matter worth a consideration in this passage, or if there were 
 sufficient evidence of its total falsehood — which is so far from 
 being- the case, that after making the best of all his apparatus 
 in conflict against it, he conquers only, in his own reckoning-, the 
 conclusion, that 
 
 " These considerations, as seems to me, are sufficient to show 
 that learned men have with g-ood reason, generally looked upon 
 this story of Victor as fabulous." (p. 68.) 
 
 A conclusion which leaves the strength of my position, un- 
 assailed. It is not evidence, but considerations, which have 
 been broug-ht against it — and considerations which, however 
 sufficient they may seem to be to those who have the strongest 
 possible interest in making the most of them, do not seem quite 
 so sufficient to those who have considerations, of which they have 
 quite as good an opinion, and which have not yet been put into 
 the scales. 
 
 * Or why should Dr. Lardner's conflicting opinion be evidence to me, when in 
 other cases, 1 had known and experienced the fallibility, not merely of his reason- 
 ing, but of his integrity 1 
 
 Where the glory of God was concerned, and an ugly fact stood bolt inthe way of 
 it, even Dr. Lardner would fight shy of letting us know its true dimensions, and 
 leave no stone unturned to contravene, to conceal, suppress, or counteract its 
 impression on our convictions. Victor Tununensis tells more than it is safe for - 
 Christian faith to know. — Of course then, " Victor is nobody," is the Christian 
 argument, — and Ave, but he has told it ! is mine ; and it's well for him that he is 
 not to be found. Thus, 
 
 Ammonius Saccus, 
 the most distinguished ornament of the second century, had taught, that all the 
 Gentile religions, and even the Christian, were to be illustrated and explained by 
 the principles of an universal philosophy, but that, in order to this, the fables of the 
 priests were to be removed from Paganism, and the comments and interpretations 
 of the disciples of Jesus from Christianity. Then Dr. Lardner could not bring 
 himself to admit that Ammonius was a Christian Father. Fabricius had been 
 equally illiberal, and indeed, I have found that learned author still less to be 
 trusted with the reputation of those who differed from him, than Lardner. Mosheim 
 had once been of the same judgment, as to the character of Ammonius; but with 
 that greatness that always characterises a master mind, he afterwards saw reason 
 to change his opinion, and did so. His reasons however, weigh little with Dr. 
 Lardner, who opposes nothing to them, but mere assertion, unsupported by the 
 smallest glimpse of evidence. *' The coalition between Platonism and Christianity 
 in the second and third centuries, is a fact too fully proved, to be rendered dubious 
 by mere affirmations." — Mosheim, vol.l.p. 170, the Note. 
 
 Alas, the ravages of the religious Pyrexia are but too discernible upon the 
 moral integrity, as well as on the physical capabilities, even of great and good 
 minds, what must be expected then from a Rev. Dr. John Pye Smith, but such an 
 answer as his is, to the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society ? 
 
30 VINDICATION OP THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 Of course, the advocates of Christianity will make the most 
 and the best of all the evidence that will seem to serve their 
 purpose ; and will depreciate, disparage, and decry the evidence 
 that makes against them — aye ! and disparage and decry it all 
 the more, the more it makes against them. But, with all their 
 disparaging, here is surely enough in the passage I have quoted, 
 and in the implied admissions of Dr. Lardner himself, to save the 
 honour, honesty, and truth of a man who might conscientiously 
 differ from him, and might hold the passage to be genuine and 
 valid, even his considerations against it, notwithstanding. 
 
 The considerations which Dr. Lardner quotes, in his note 
 from the Prolegomena of Dr. Mill, to invalidate the passage, 
 have much more effect in showing what a curse those Christian 
 Scriptures have in all ages been to mankind, and what wicked 
 dispositions they have ever engendered, and have a direct ten- 
 dency to engender, in men's bosoms, than to redeem their equi- 
 vocal claim to genuineness and authenticity. " Indeed, there is 
 no saying what tragedies, what mighty tumults — not, perhaps, 
 to have been allayed without the murder of the Emperor him- 
 self — the very name of new gospels would have excited through- 
 out the whole East, &c. &c. Nor is there that I know of, among 
 all the multitude of writers, one, except Victor, and Isidore of 
 Seville, who transcribed his words — who makes any mention of 
 this JRadiurgy."* 
 
 Has not this sword two edges ? — and if we are to take into con- 
 sideration that such was the temper and disposition of the Christian 
 community, that they would have slain their Emperor, and all 
 the rest on't ! had they but heard of an attempted alteration of 
 their gospels, how can we shut out of our consideration its in- 
 separable consequences, that truth and honesty had no fair 
 chance ; that one who had ventured to impeach the genuineness 
 of those gospels, though he had known, though he had wit- 
 nessed, the very act of their forgery, would have been in danger 
 of being torn to pieces ; and every villainous and wicked art 
 would be resorted to, to destroy his reputation, and to suppress 
 the discoveries he had made. 
 
 So that it is actually to the obscurity of the author, and to 
 the circumstance of his writings not being commonly known, 
 that we owe the happy event of their escaping the instant 
 suppression to which, 'tis well known, that the Christians 
 invariably assigned all the evidence that they found likely 
 to make against them, to betray their secret, or to expose their 
 folly. 
 
 * lpsum nomen sane novorum evangel iorum, dici haud potest, quantas per uni- 
 versum Orientem, excitaturum fuisset tragcedias, quam graves tumultus nee 
 fortasse sine lraperatoris c»de sopiendos. • ... 
 
 Neque extet quod sciam, ex omni scriptorutn turba, prater unura Victorem, 
 quique verba ejus transcripsit Isidoram Hispanensem qui paSiepytar hujus 
 aliquamfacit mentionein. — Mill. Proleg. p. 1015. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 31 
 
 Of this disposition to decry, and to disparage their opponents, 
 I shall not send the reader far to look for proofs. 
 
 Victor Tununensis, he sees, has betrayed the craft, he has 
 left a sentence on record, ttiat gravels the kidneys of orthodoxy. 
 Very well, then Dr. John Eye Smith deprives him of his 
 bishopric — and though it was ori the ^ry page before him that 
 Victor Tununensis really was an Aftican Bishop, Dr. John 
 Pye Smith degrades him into " an obscure-author, who wrote a 
 Chronicle of about twelve pages," (though thai happens to be 
 twelve pages more than many an Archbishop of, Canterbury 
 ever wrote,) and will never recognise him as a bishop/ $r apply 
 to him any decent expression of courtesy or respect, anymore 
 than he would to the Author of the Manifesto. 
 
 And after all the charges brought against the Manifesto, Vf 
 total falsehood, of quoting books, chapters, pages, and pas- 
 sages, which say no such thing as is imputed to them ; after the 
 most rude and offensive forms oiflat denial, that a spiteful heart 
 could suggest and savag'e manners direct ; the reader will, see 
 this good Christian admitting every thing that I had maintained, 
 endeavouring to make a poor excuse for how it might come to 
 be so ; and quoting his crony, Dr. Bentley, to bear off from him- 
 self the reproach of the gross and apparent garbling, which 
 every eye must see, and every mind be sensible of, in obser- 
 ving that the real words of the passag'e, " ab idiotis evance- 
 listis composita/' (composed by illiterate evangelists,) are 
 turned into " ab idiotis librariis conscripta," (written by ig- 
 norant scribes,) which makes just exactly, all the difference. 
 
 As for the charge of total want of argumentative justice, let 
 the reader look at their scale, and at ours : — 
 
 Quote they an Advocate for the Christian Argument ? Why, 
 
 He shall be in a trice "the Prince of Critics," — " the glory of 
 Scholars." Mr. Sharon Turner, and Mr. Hallam, the preachers, 
 it may be in some canting Gospel-shop, shall have " dissipated 
 the clouds that hung over the transactions of dark ages/' &c. 
 
 But quote we an author who has given tongue, or let fall but 
 a single sentence in their impediment ? Why, like poor Judas 
 Iscariot, he may go hang himself, and his bishopric shall 
 another take. 
 
 Challenge they us to shew, when, where, or by whom 
 the Books of the New Testament could have been altered or 
 corrected ? We answer even to the exactitude of time, of place, 
 of person. — They were so, when Messala was consul, i. e. in the 
 year 506, at Constantinople, by the command of the Emperor 
 Anastasius — and they might have been so, at any time, or any 
 where, or by any body.* 
 
 * Alexius Menesis Archbishop of Goa, ordered the Syriac Version of the n. t. 
 to be altered according to the Latin Vulgate, and this command was executed 
 with religious precision. At the end of the Syrian Manuscript of the four Gospels 
 
32 VINDICATION OE THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 Challenge we them to shew the infinitely mom ^sequential 
 V o™:Zel*here, or ly whom ^ t^^ New 
 Testament, m the first ^^ : ^^ x ^^ ^ 
 
 the compositions of the persons whose £ n i aoP __thPv ran 
 
 They can fix on no time, they ~* assi ^ n no P^ce-they can 
 
 give no name. fhapSj Mr Ebenezer Hallam, or our 
 
 Mr. Sharon A u r n ^ tor>mi o.ht make some discoveries; but all 
 
 desperately flmgin^ esiastical jjj storv coul( j communicate to one 
 
 that Mosheim s g^ ow no better Ecclesiastical History than that 
 
 who happen^ that 
 
 of M°srr pinions or ra ther the conjectures of the learned con- 
 ..g the time when the books of the New Testament were 
 
 ce Hbted into one volume ; as also about the authors of that 
 
 611ection, are extremely different, — this important question is 
 attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties to us in 
 these later times." Mosheim, vol. 1. part 2. chap. 2. sect. 16. 
 page 108. edit. 8vo. London. 1811. — " Not long after Christ's 
 ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and doctrine, 
 full of pious frauds, and fabulous wonders, were composed by 
 persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose 
 writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance. Nor 
 was this all ; productions appeared which were imposed upon the 
 world by fraudulent men, as the writings of the holy apostles." 
 ibid. p. 109. 
 
 Now the reader has only to compare this statement, supported 
 as it is, by internal evidence, Luke v. 1. ("Forasmuch as many 
 have taken in hand to set forth in order, &c.) with Dr. Lardner's 
 Table of the times and places when and where he conjectures 
 that the several Books of the New Testament might have been 
 written ; and he will see to a demonstration, that the " histories 
 of Christ's life and doctrines full of pious frauds and fabulous 
 wonders that were written not long after his ascension," had 
 the precedency of all the writings now contained in the New 
 Testament ; and that, therefore, those u pious frauds and fabu- 
 lous wonders" were not depravations and corruptions of the 
 Gospel narratives; but the Gospel narratives are only casti- 
 gated and improved editions of those original " pious frauds and 
 fabulous wonders." Nor was it only on vulgar aud uncultivated 
 minds that these u pious frauds and fabulous wonders," could 
 have been originally imposed, or have long' retained their credit ; 
 that part of every man's mind which is surrendered to the influ- 
 ence of religion, is always vulgar and uncultivated. Our all- 
 was the following subscription, " This sacred book was finished on Wednesday 
 the eighteenth day of the first month Conun (December) in the year 389 of the 
 Greeks, i. e. in the year of Christ 78, by the hand of Achoeus, a fellow labourer 
 of Mar Maris, and a disciple of the Apostle Maradaeus, whom we entreat to 
 pray for us, Amen." — Marsh s Michaelis, vol. 2, p. 28. 31. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 33 
 
 Accomplished Addison, the author of the Spectator, even the 
 Protestant Addison, had the bleak heath or common in his mind, 
 extensive enough to give growth to a firm faith in one of the 
 grossest of those pious frauds. In his Evidences of the Truth of 
 the Christian Religion, he adduces his own belief of the genuine- 
 ness and authenticity of the Letter which Jesus Christ wrote to 
 Abgarus, King of Edessa ; if we believe Nicephorus, I5iW 
 xegri* with his own hands. As for the arguments which 
 Dr. Smith puts forth in such a high-horse sort of style, as if to 
 carry the convictions of his hearers by storm; that any altera- 
 tion of the text of the Gospels was impracticable, impossible, 
 intolerable — not to have been attempted, or not to have been 
 endured. An' I were sure he would not open upon me a fresh 
 volley of that kind of language which I can never return, and 
 call me the first born of calumny, and swear that there was no 
 such a passage, and that it was a gross forgery, I'd venture to 
 whisper to some of his hearers, that " it is a certain fact, that 
 several readings, in our common printed text, are nothing more 
 than alterations made by Origen, whose authority was so great 
 in the Christian church, that emendations which he proposed, 
 though, as he himself acknowledged, they were supported by 
 the evidence of no manuscript, were very generally received ;" 
 and the Lord Bishop of Peterboro', in whose diocese I am now 
 a prisoner, and of whose Divinity Lectures, in the University of 
 Cambridge, I was once a pupil — told me as much — and, reader, 
 would'st thou turn to Michaelis's Introduction to the New Tes- 
 tament, translated by Bishop Marsh, vol. 2, part 1, edit. 3, 
 Lond. 1819, chap, 9, page 368, he should tell thee no less. 
 
 And could'st thou read Latin, or give me credit for 
 quoting a bit from my memory, which, in this house of bondage, 
 
 * Of this Letter of Christ, and of the Letter of Abgarus, which opened the 
 correspondence, Fabricius says, " Has Epistolas itaut ah Eusebio prolata? sunt, 
 in Archivis extitisse Edessenis, non puto esse dubitandum. Neque quicquam in 
 illis continetur kidignum Christo, neque si pro genuinis habeantur error aliquis 
 «x illis eonfirmari poterit." Codex Apocryphus .N. T. Johanne Alberto 
 Fabricio, Hamburgi, Anno 1703. Tom i. p. 339.— The folly or Addison is 
 further kept in countenance by the sympathy of Divines of high renown in the 
 Protestant Church, Montacute, Parker, Cave, and Grabe, though sufficiently 
 scouted by the (in this respect) less credulous Doctors of the Romish Commu- 
 nity, Ibid. 320. The religious affection, like every other species of insanity, lias 
 its lucid intervals. But though the belief of improbabilities, on the report of others, 
 is clearly to be ascribed to weakness of understanding, quoad hoc : yet this 
 excuse cannot extend to those who propose improbabilities to the faith of others — 
 and scepticism itself would not suppose that Saint Augustin could, with any pro- 
 priety, be suspected of being a fool, when in his 33d Sermon, addressed to iiis 
 reverend brethren, he says, l 'l was already Bishop of Hippo, when 1 went into 
 Ethiopia, with some servants of Christ, there to preach the Gospel. In this 
 country we saw many men and women without heads, who had two great eyes 
 in their breasts; and in countries still more southerly, we saw a people who had 
 but one eye in their foreheads." 
 
 This is as true as the Gospel. This same Holy Father bears an equally unques- 
 tionable testimony to several resurrections of the dead, of which he himself had 
 been an eyewitness. See Middleton's Free Inquiry, in loco. Of all travellers in 
 the world, Christian Missionaries are the most famous for seeing strange things. 
 
 D 
 
34 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 I am obliged to make my best bargain of — though I cannot give 
 thee chapter, page, and verse, thou should'st hold me worthy of 
 so much reliance as to let me persuade thee that Fell, Bishop 
 of Oxford, has somewhere said, 
 
 " Tanta fuit primis seculis fingendi licentia, tarn prona in 
 credendo facilitas ut rerum gestarum fides exinde graviter 
 laboraverit. Neque enim orbis terrarum tantum, sed et Dei 
 Ecclesia de temporibus suis mysticis merito queratur;" and not 
 having the advantage of finding it ready translated, as I did the 
 passage from Victor — I supply thee with my guess at it — " Such 
 was the license of inventing, so headlong the readiness of be- 
 lieving, in the first ages — that the credibility of transactions 
 derived from thence must have been hugely doubtful — nor has 
 the world only, but the Church of God also, has reasonably to 
 complain of its mystical times ," — and Scaliger, a scholar, and 
 a critic, well learned in these researches, though not " the 
 Glory of Scholars," nor " the Prince of Critics," somewhere says, 
 " Omnia quae putabant Christianismo conducere — bibliis suis 
 interseruerunt :" — which I, not having learned all the languages 
 that may be taught at Homerton College — take to mean little 
 more or less, than that " they put into their Bibles any thing 
 that they thought would serve the craft." i. e. that they thought 
 would conduce to Christianity ; and when they thought that any 
 particular scripture would not serve the craft, it was not the 
 name nor the authority of an Apostle, that would save either 
 it or him from being rejected. But reader ! take the Rev. 
 Dr. Smith's word for it ! that this is " a shameless lie, an impu- 
 dent falsehood, and that there is no authority, whatever, for as- 
 serting or inferring any such thing ;" and do it devoutly ! and 
 say thy prayers over it ! and when thou hast well nigh prayed 
 thine eyes out, thou wilt see nothing of the kind to be inferred 
 from the 9th and 10th verses of the only chapter of the Third 
 Epistle of St. John ; though thou hast before thee " confir- 
 mation strong as proof of holy writ;" and thou wilt leave it 
 only to such a miserable man as the Manifesto writer, to sym- 
 pathize in the wrongs of a rejected Apostle, and to say Poor 
 Johnny, Poor favourite of Christ J So they turned thee and 
 thy writings out of the church ! and who the Devil wrote the 
 rigmarole, that the rogues have passed off as the Gospel according 
 to Saint John, all the while ? 
 
 Sufficient presumption however, of the power of other 
 Emperors, as well as Anastasius, to foist whatever scriptures 
 they pleased on the easy faith of Christians, will be found in 
 still existing proofs of the fact of their suppressing the evidence 
 that might have exposed the villainy of the whole system. I 
 here present the reader with the substance of a formal decree of 
 the evangelical Emperor Theodosius, to this purport. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 35 
 
 THE DECREE. 
 
 '" We decree, therefore, that all writing's, whatever, which 
 Porphyry, or any one else hath written against the Christian 
 Religion, in the possession of whomsoever they shall be found, 
 should be committed to the fire ; for, we would not suffer any of 
 those things so much as to come to men's ears, which tend to 
 provoke God to wrath, and to offend the minds of the pious."* 
 
 A similar decree of this Emperor, for establishing the doctrine 
 of the Trinity, concludes with an admonition to all who shall 
 object to it, that, " Besides the condemnation of divine justice, 
 they must expect to suffer the severe penalties, which our autho- 
 rity, guided by heavenly wisdom, may think proper to inflict 
 upon them /'—Quoted by Gibbon, vol. 5, p. 15. 
 
 END OF SECTION III. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 ON THE ASSERTION, THAT ARCHBISHOP LANFRANC EFFECTED 
 AN ALTERATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 The Section thus headed, in the Answer to the Manifesto, would 
 almost induce a guess that our angry doctor had learned his logic 
 of Saint Patrick ; it sheathes the vinegar of intended accusation, 
 in the oil of palpable absurdity. To prove, you see, that there 
 Was no such thing, as an account of a general alteration of the 
 Scriptures, to accommodate them to the faith of the orthodox, in 
 the passage which I had referred to, as containing such an ac- 
 count: — he finds the passage, agreeably to the reference I had 
 given him, he produces it in his own note, and there to be sure 
 the account is, and as I quoted it, in full effect, and to all the 
 intent and purpose for which I quoted it, answering like the im- 
 pressed wax to the engraven seal. O wicked forger, as in his 
 account I still should be, though I were as the God of truth him- 
 self, without variableness or shadow of turning. 
 
 To perceive the absurdity of the accusations in this section, let 
 the reader but run them over with the most obvious questions 
 to himself, that a moment's pause upon them must suggest. 
 
 1. "The passage in Beausobre contains no such thing," &c. 
 Answer. And there the thing- is, subjoined in a note, by the 
 denyer of the thing himself. 
 
 2. " And its evident meaning is," &c. Answer. Paddy is going 
 to give us the evident meaning of that of which he has just told 
 us " there is no such thing." 
 
 * Sancimus igitur ut omnia qusecumque Porphyrius aut quivis alius contra 
 religiosum Christianorum cultum, conscripsit, apud quemcumque inventa fuerint, 
 igni mancipentur, omnia enim provocantia Deum ad iracundiam scripta, et pias 
 mentes offendentia, ne ad aures quidem hominum venire volumus." — Quoted by 
 Lardner, vol. 4. p. 111. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 VINDICATION OP THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 3. " Lanfranc directs a revisal and correction to be made of 
 certain copies that were in his possession, or to which his agents 
 could have access/' Answer. Does he so? And whoever accused 
 him of directing- a revisal and correction to be made of copies that 
 were not in his possession, or to which his agents could not have 
 access ? 
 
 4. " There are several questions connected with this statement, 
 which ought to be fairly investigated, before we can form any 
 decided opinion in the case." Answer, Not if there were no 
 such thing as the statement itself: and if there were such a state- 
 ment, should not the several questions have been investigated first, 
 and the decided opinion suspended ? 
 
 5. " Lanfranc, a man of good personal character, ri vetting the 
 chains of ecclesiastical slavery." Answer. What is a good per- 
 sonal character ? or would it not have been better for mankind, if 
 he had not been quite so good, and so had not rivetted the chains 
 quite so fast, — what is it to you, or me, reader, if those who chain 
 us to the earth, keep fast on Friday ? 
 
 6. " The documents of history, &c, are very obscure." Answer. 
 So, so ! ! 
 
 7. " Those errors have been dissipated only very lately, by Mr. 
 Sharon Turner, Mr. Hallam,and other eminent men of the present 
 day." Answer. Saving their eminences' dignity, I warrant ye, 
 they are no better than Methodist parsons, and owe all their emi- 
 nence to their conformity to the opinions of Dr. John Pye Smith, 
 or to the exhibition of their " human faces divine/' in the Evan- 
 gelical Magazine. 
 
 8. " 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 shame- 
 fully incorrect." Answer. Is not this every thing ? and does 
 it leave the possibility of either candour or piety, or of having any 
 rational fear of God before his eyes, to the man who will dare 
 to maintain that a God of mercy, truth, and power, would or 
 could have given to man, a written, or book-contained revelation.* 
 
 * A written, or book-contained revelation. " God is just, equal, and good, and 
 as sure as lie is so, so he cannot put the salvation and happiness of any man, upon 
 what he has not put it in the power of any man on earth to be entirely satisfied of." 
 — Bishop of Salisbury's Preservative, p. 78, as quoted by Tindal, 414. 
 
 Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in his polemical works, page 521, after enumerating the 
 vatt variety of causes of difficulty and misunderstanding in revelation, concludes 
 thus, " These, and a thousand more, have made it impossible for any man in so 
 great a variety of matter, not to be deceived." " There is scarce any church in 
 Christendom at this day, which doth not obtrude, not only plain falsehoods, but 
 such falsehood as will appear to any free spirit, pure contradictions and impossi- 
 bilities, and that, with the same gravity, authority, and importunity, as they do the 
 holy oracles of God. "—Dr. Henry More, Mystery of Godliness, 495, quoted in 
 Tindal, 314. 
 
 Take heed and beware, lest any man deceive you ; believe them not ! — Ascribed 
 to Jesus Christ % — Because that which may be known of God, is manifest.— 
 Romans i. 19 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 37 
 
 9. " Had Lanfranc's party made alterations of the smallest im- 
 portance, it is morally impossible but the facts would have been 
 placed in a clear light, and the evidence of them would have 
 come down to posterity." Answer, by Dr. Smith himself, " The 
 documents of history for that period, and some centuries after, 
 are very obscure," 
 
 10. «' It is worthy of observation, that Lanfranc is remarked by 
 Dr. Cave (Historia Literaria, vol.2, p. 148) to have been addicted 
 to the making- of alterations in the text, which he conceived to be 
 amendments." 
 
 Answer. It is indeed, worthy of observation, and I hope the 
 reader will observe it, and ask himself if his imagination could 
 conceive a droller way than this of refuting- the statement made 
 in the Manifesto. The Doctor's reckoning of refutation to the 
 Manifesto, then, as the sum of this section, stands thus — 
 
 1st. There is no such thing as an account of a general alter- 
 ation of the Scriptures to accommodate them to the faith of the 
 orthodox; because, there the account actually is, quoted by the 
 Doctor himself, from the very work in which it was stated that 
 the account was. 
 
 2ndly. It is morally impossible, that such an alteration could 
 have taken place, without more ample evidence of it coming down 
 to posterity : because, every thing that was done in those dark 
 ages, was sure to be set in the clearest light. 
 
 3rdiy. It was morally impossible that Archbishop Lanfranc 
 could have altered the Scriptures: because he was peculiarly 
 addicted to the making of alterations in the text, which he con- 
 ceived to be amendments ; and, 
 
 4thly. Even supposing that Archbishop Lanfranc had procured 
 the alteration of the Gospels, to accommodate them to the ortho- 
 dox faith in England, when England was ri vetted in the chains 
 of ecclesiastical slavery, and bowed to a servility of subjection to 
 the Pope, yet we are to infer, how impossible it was that any 
 like or other alterations could have been made in the Gospels of 
 France, Spain and Italy, which, you see, were so much further 
 removed from papal influence. 
 
 1 1 . " 1 now appeal,'* says the liberal D.D., " to any man of sense, 
 whether it is not most unfair and absurd, to represent this obscure 
 and dubious circumstance, and which is at most of no real impor- 
 tance, as in the smallest degree impugning the Scriptures/' 
 
 To which I answer, that I also appeal to any man of sense, 
 whether it was not quite as unfair in Dr. Smith, to set out with 
 denying in toto, the existence of an account, which he at last 
 admits and endeavours to explain away, to have impeached an 
 author's veracity without materiel to fortify his impeachment, and 
 to have given such hard names, as the prelude to such soft argu- 
 ments. 
 
 Kwos o/Lt ( uaT' ex vy > Kpadiriv ''d&eupoio. 
 
38 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF VARIOUS READINGS, AND THE INFER- 
 ENCES TO BE DRAWN FROM THEM. 
 
 I. " The pretended reference to the Unitarian New Version, is 
 another instance of most disgraceful ignorance, or shameless per- 
 version." So says the Rev. Dr. John Pye Smith, and one is the 
 more sorry that he should say so ; because it spoils the heading 
 of the best written section in his book, in which the reader might 
 otherwise be as pleased as I am to bear witness to Dr. John Pye 
 Smith's able writing, deep learning, and ingenious reasoning. — 
 There was all the less occasion to have introduced so clever a 
 performance with so paltry a prologue. — The reader, however, 
 will, I hope, do my adversary the justice, to brush off this un- 
 worthiness, and let the subsequent matter stand in undiminished 
 claim on the respect it merits. All that concerns the Manifesto 
 or its author in this section (which is all that is amiss in it), — 
 will be answered in the reader's observance — that the pretended 
 reference to the Unitarian New Version, cannot at any rate be 
 another instance of ignorance or perversion, — unless some one 
 instance of ignorance or porversion had preceded it — which is 
 not the case. 
 
 Neither can the reference with any propriety be called 
 u pretended, 9 ' if it be a real one — if the passage affecting to be 
 quoted is there exactly to be found, in the book and page from 
 which it purports to be made — which is the case. 
 
 And oi' which, to remove all doubt, the Doctor himself cites 
 " the passage fairly and fully" in which — by his own shewing-, is 
 all and every ching that I did quote, and to the full effect and intent 
 for which I quoted it ; and much further matter to the same 
 effect, — a droll way this, of convicting a man of " falsely pr ex- 
 tending to quote." 
 
 But as" falsely pretending to quote" — were rather strong 
 words, — and in the general meaning and acceptation of them, 
 would stand but awkwardly, applied to immediate evidence of 
 the most accurate and literal quotation that could possibly be 
 made ; the Doctor himself softens off the more revolting* point 
 of the charge, by subjoining the wholly incompatible and con- 
 tradictory meaning of his own, " the tendency and application 
 of which, he has so grossly perverted." 
 
 Upon the tendency and application of a passage, — I hope, one 
 man has as good a right to exercise his own judgment as another; 
 but sure, a man's " perverting the tendency and application 
 of a passage," is a charge, which in itself involves his acquittal 
 from the charge of falsely pretending to quote it. 
 
 2. To the Doctor's charge of the alternative of ignorance or 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO.. 39 
 
 dishonesty, of which he bids his " worthy countrymen" judge 
 against me, (page 22.) I put in his own discharge from the former 
 (page 60.) " It is not ignorance ;" and to trie latter, I put in 
 both the title and contents of this section itself : 
 
 The title, admitting— that there are " various readings, 
 and therefore I have not represented a thing — which was not : 
 
 The contents, admitting — that " the number of various readings 
 collected by Dr. Mill is computed at thirty thousand, and that 
 a hundred thousand at least have been added to the list, 
 Therefore, so surely, as thirty thousand, with a hundred thousand 
 added thereto— doth amount to one hundred and thirty 
 thousand, — which is, the thing, and is what I have represented, 
 I have not misrepresented the thing which is. 
 
 If there be arithmetic in this — there is no room for the charge 
 of dishonesty, and Dr. Smith's anger has outrun his wit. 
 
 3. But the superscription of this section will serve us — further 
 than this, in its important clause — " and of the inferences 
 
 THAT ARE TO BE DRAWN." 
 
 Reader, if thou art a true and genuine Protestant, thou wilt 
 draw what inference thou pleasest, and maintain — - not only thy 
 right — but thy ability to draw an inference for thyself, as well 
 as any man can draw it for thee ; and to be unattainted either 
 of dishonesty or of ignorance, though thy inferences should be 
 the diametrical reverse of the inferences which Dr. John Pye 
 Smith, or his holiness the Pope, — who never arrogated more 
 than this Dr. John Pye Smith, would draw for thee. 
 
 If thou art a staunch Papist or (what is not in principle, a 
 whit less papistical), a priest-worshipping dissenter, — why 
 Dr. Smith's inferences, will, of course, be infallible with thee— 
 and well may be so. 
 
 But, as for the legitimate and uncontrolled drawing of inferences, 
 it becomes a writer, who would assist and not coerce the reason 
 of his reader, to submit his views as inferences which may be 
 drawn, not as inferences which must, or as the only inferences 
 which are to be drawn, not in impediment of the equal right 
 of another to draw the most opposite inferences, — but in recog- 
 nition and deference to that right. 
 
 The main tact however, equally incumbent on the observ- 
 ance of all reasoners is, that their inferences, in any extent of 
 their divergency — keep still their hold upon the original 
 nucleus fact itself, and by no means of chicane and sophistry, 
 be slipt on to some counterfeit or mistake of the fact, which 
 must render the best spun reasoning in the world inconse- 
 quential. 
 
 Thus, it is in logic an Ignoratio Elenchi, an entire substitution 
 of a matter that was not in question, for the matter that was ; 
 when the combination of chances which is sufficient to go to 
 sleep on as a good guess, — for what might have been the 
 
40 YINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 original text of Homer, Herodotus, or Hippocrates ; (it being* of 
 no consequence what that text was), is to be held sufficient to 
 assure us of the sense of a divine revelation, in which, to be wrong 
 — may lead to our taking that which was forbidden, for that 
 which was commanded ; and in which to suppose the alterna- 
 tive indifferent, is to withdraw the matter at issue. 
 
 4. Be it, that out of the hundred and thirty thousand various 
 readings, which the doctor, after having charged me with the 
 grossest falsehood for having put forth such an assertion, himself 
 asserts, — " those which produce any material difference in the 
 sense, are extremely few indeed." (See his note, p. 56.) 
 
 Yet, " extremely few indeed," must, in any arithmetic, be more 
 than a couple out of a hundred and thirty thousand : not to say, 
 that on the 'preliminary and infinitely important question, as to 
 what constitutes a material difference, we have to rely only on 
 the judgment of those who have the strongest possible interest 
 in causing the difference to appear as immaterial as possible. 
 
 Thus, it is well known, that in one of the early editions of 
 the English Bible, the seventh commandment stood thus — 
 thou shalt commit adultery ; and many thousands of 
 good christians understood and obeyed God's holy commandment, 
 according to this, the commonly received reading. A various 
 reading has since introduced the important particle, — not, so 
 that the emended text became diametrically reversed, and stood, 
 " thou shalt not commit adultery." The advocates and ob- 
 servers of the commandment, however, according to its original 
 acceptation, would no doubt contend for their reading of it, or 
 at least that the difference was immaterial. 
 
 And there is good reason to think, and high authority to infer, 
 that the letter of the sixth commandment must originally have 
 been in a similar predicament, and have stood — thou shalt do 
 murder ; not merely because Saint Paul expressly says — " the 
 letter killeth ;" — (which to be sure he means of the letter of the 
 New Testament), yet the history of the People of God, is little 
 short of a demonstration — that they never could have understood 
 that murder was a thing which God had forbidden. The introduc- 
 tion of the negative particle no, in this passage, not only sets it 
 at variance with the known mind and will of the God of Israel, — 
 by whom the most sanguinary murders, and butcheries of " women 
 and children, infants and sucklings," were expressly commanded ; 
 but is unsupported, by any authority, or countenance of any 
 other part of those " lively oracles" — there not being another 
 passage to be found in the whole Bible, wherein, — where murder 
 cruelty and butchery of any sort is spoken of, that God says no to 
 it. And if this reading of the passage — without the negative or 
 inhibitory particle be objected to, on account of the manifest 
 absurdity of supposing a positive command to commit murder: 
 we answer, what would become of one half of God's word, if 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 4l 
 
 manifest absurdity were any valid ground of objection against it ? 
 Restore then, the primitive purity of God's word : let the texts 
 stand, thou shalt commit adultery ! thou shalt murder ! 
 
 THOU SHALT STEAL ! and THOU SHALT BEAR FALSE WITNESS! 
 
 the practice of both Jews and Christians will be found to 
 quadrate with this sense of their rule of duty, and to all the objec- 
 tions of sceptics, and the scoffings of infidels — we answer in the 
 language of the Prince of Critics, (p. 25.) " What a scheme 
 would these men make? What worthy rules would they pre- 
 scribe to providence, (p. 26.) 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!'" (p. 27.) 
 
 See, reader! how unavoidably one falls into the language of 
 keenest sarcasm, when one only attempts — I say not, (for I am 
 not Prince of Critics, that I should assume the prerogative of 
 saying,) to " ansiver a fool according to his folly,'' (p. 26,) but to 
 answer a Doctor of Divinity, in the parity of his own reasons, 
 and the application of his own language. 
 
 But, reader, contemplate the facts, — not as stated by me, an 
 avowed unbeliever, and martyr to the just and glorious cause of 
 unbelief — but by my good service, wrung, and wrenched out from 
 the conquered concessions, and unwilling admissions of those 
 who would never have made thee so wise, but for our conquest* 
 
 FACTS ADMITTED. INFERENCES WHICH MAY BE 
 
 DRAWN. 
 
 5. " The possessors of these 5. "It was much easier to in- 
 costly treasures had not the troduce interpolations when 
 means, nor, perhaps, were expert copies were few and scarce, 
 in the method of comparing two than since they have been mul- 
 or more copies together, in tiplied by means of the press, 
 order to ascertain the correct- — Unit. Version of the N. T. 
 nessofeach. (page 20.) p 121. 
 
 6. " Variations from theorigi- 6. " How often — was, some- 
 nal copy, purely accidental, but times, and to what aim and gist 
 sometimes from design, (p. 20.) did the designed variations ex- 
 tend ? 
 
 7. " The art of determining 7- "Who is master of that art ? 
 the true reading, out of several and on what principle can others 
 variations most important. — 20. rely on his ability 1 
 
 8. "Quotations maybe, in 8. "What respect could those 
 some respects, superior to ma- who thought so, have paid to 
 nuscripts. — (21.) the pretended originals ? 
 
 9. " Very few of the various 9. " How many are very few ? 
 readings produce any alteration and who is to judge of the ef- 
 
42 
 
 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 FACTS ADMITTED. 
 
 in the meaning of a sentence 
 still less {fewer) in the pur- 
 port of a whole paragraph. — 
 (21.) 
 
 Note! — But sometimes the whole pa- 
 ragraph itself, was altogether a for- 
 gery ; as, for instance, Acts ix. 5, 6, 
 which Erasmus himself foisted in with- 
 out authority of any manuscript what- 
 ever. — See Marsh, vol. 2. p. 496. 
 
 9. " The consequence is, that 
 of no ancient books whatsoever, 
 do we possess a text so criti- 
 cally correct, so satisfactorily 
 perfect as that which exists in 
 the best editions of the Hebrew 
 and Greek Scriptures, (p. 22.) 
 This consequence, is, itself, 
 only an inference — but — Val- 
 eat! 
 
 FACTS ADMITTED IN THE 
 UNITARIAN VERSION. 
 
 1. "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. — (23.) 
 
 2. " The various readings 
 which affect the doctrines of 
 Christianity are very few.— (24.) 
 
 INFERENCES WHICH MAY BE 
 
 DRAWN. 
 
 feet of the alteration upon 
 the original meaning ? It is 
 admitted, that alterations of the 
 inspired word of God have 
 been made to the full extent of 
 altering the purport of whole 
 paragraphs — whose word then 
 doth it become, having been 
 so altered ? — Produce a title- 
 deed to a forty shilling free- 
 hold, before a Court of Justice, 
 in such a predicament, and 
 what would be said to your 
 pretensions? 
 
 9. "The most critically correct ; 
 but who, being the critics ? 
 The most satisfactorily perfect ; 
 but who being satisfied ? The 
 best editions — but which being 
 the best editions ? And what 
 approach, shall being the cor- 
 rectest, the perfectest, and the 
 best type of an ancient book be, 
 to its being the word of god, 
 which he who believeth not, 
 shall be damned. The snail 
 that out-gallops all other snails, 
 is yet no race-horse. 
 
 INFERENCES WHICH MAY BE 
 DRAWN. 
 
 1. sl In some measure affect the 
 sense — is it of no consequence 
 in what measure ? The true 
 reading — which is that? Per- 
 fectly satisfactory to the judi- 
 cious inquirer; that is to say — 
 and if it is not satisfactory to 
 you, you are a fool, or as the 
 Prince of Critics would call 
 you, an obstinate untractable 
 wretch. 
 
 2. "Two? six? ten? fifty? a 
 hundred ? or only, perhaps, so 
 few as two or three thousand ? 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 43 
 
 FACTS ADMITTED IN THE 
 UNITARIAN VERSION. 
 
 3. " Yet some of these are of 
 
 great importance. 
 
 4. "Of those passages which 
 can be justly regarded as wilful 
 interpolations, the number is 
 very small indeed. 
 
 5. " 1 John v. 7, is by far the 
 most notorious, and most uni- 
 versally acknowledged and re- 
 probated. 
 
 Note ! — " In our common editions 
 of the Greek Testament, are many 
 readings, which exist not in a single 
 manuscript, but are founded on mere 
 conjecture."' — Marsh, vol. 2, p. 496. 
 
 FACTS ADMITTED IN THE 
 UNITARIAN VERSION, BUT 
 NOT REFERRED TO BY DR. 
 SMITH. 
 
 6. " It is notorious, that the or- 
 thodox charge the heretics with 
 corrupting the text, and that 
 the heretics recriminate upon 
 the orthodox.— (p. 121.) 
 
 7." It is notorious thatforg-ed 
 writings, under the names of 
 the Apostles, were in circula- 
 tion almost from the apostolic 
 age. — See 2 Thess. ii. 2. 
 
 INFERENCES WHICH MAY BE 
 DRAWN. 
 
 3. "Very orthodox this ! Some 
 of the various readings which 
 do affect the doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity, it seems are not of great 
 importance. 
 
 4. " Very small, indeed : only, 
 perhaps, half a bushel/ — Wilful 
 Interpolations I Does any iota 
 of the Manifesto now want 
 proof or demonstration ? 
 
 5. " Most notorious ! Good 
 God ! and some are skulking yet, 
 undetected, and so not quite so 
 notorious ? Yet is the whole 
 circulated as of equal authority ; 
 the whole, and as it is, known 
 to be false, and acknowledged 
 to be forged,read in our churches, 
 and invariably spoken of as the 
 faithful and unerring Word of 
 
 God God, for thy Mercy ! 
 
 But they do it devoutly ! 
 
 INFERENCES WHICH MAY BE 
 DRAWN. 
 
 6. "They do, indeed! and 
 when the orthodox have corrupt- 
 ed one half, and the heretics have 
 corrupted the other, all the 
 rest on't maybe depended on 
 as genuine. 
 
 7. " The tracing of a writing 
 up to the apostolic age, would 
 therefore, afford no presump- 
 tion of its genuineness : the name 
 of an Apostle is no proof that 
 the writing is not the compo- 
 sition of an impostor. 
 
 The reader may receive or reject these inferences, or supply 
 any other, or contrary inferences of his own; and shall 
 assuredly be safe from any imprecations, denunciations, or 
 prayers of mine: "those, let them employ, who need, or 
 when they need, not 1 '." All that I require is, his observance 
 
44 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 of the facts themselves ; and that to these facts may now be 
 added the fact, that the Reverend Dr. John Pye Smith has im- 
 peached the veracity of the Manifesto Writer, without adducing" an 
 iota of evidence to support his impeachment — a fact upon which 
 it is as unnecessary, as it would be unbecoming- of me to suggest 
 an inference. Doctor John Pye Smith is a preacher of the 
 Everlasting Gospel ; and when he impeaches the veracity of 
 others, has, no doubt, higher ends in view, than to admit of his 
 attending- to the accuracies of language himself. The truth of 
 God so entirely fills the mind of an evangelical preacher, that he 
 has no room to pay any regard to truth, in his dealings with 
 the sons of men. In their controversies with unbelievers, the 
 saints have not only acted upon the principle of stopping at 
 nothing, but avowed and justified it, even because " those who 
 reject the truth as it is in Jesus," as they say, forfeit all right to 
 have any sort of truth, either told to them, or spoken of them. 
 
 END OF SECTION V. 
 
 SECTION VL 
 
 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. 
 
 1. " 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." — (p. 27.) 
 
 This language is really frightful, and were not its barb broken 
 off, by the accompanying qualifications of the, had we not already 
 " seen such disgusting instances/' &c. where, certainly, 
 no such instance had been seen at all, 'twould take a stouter 
 heart than mine, to bear up against it. But, by this time, the 
 reader must have perceived, that Dr. Smith is more terrible in 
 accusation, than formidable in proof. He charges in thunder ; 
 he hits in smoke ; a puff of wind dissipates his caliginous arma- 
 ment, and leaves all the strong lines of our impregnable for- 
 tress, unshaken and unmoved. Indeed, it may stand as one of 
 the happiest exemplifications, of the native genius of priestcraft, 
 and the best resulting moral of this controversy, to observe, that 
 in exact proportion as his arguments grow weaker and weaker, 
 his passions become more violent; his language more intem- 
 perate ; his accusations more temerarious ; his malice — more : — 
 
 No ! no more malice ; that vessel was running over from the first. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 45 
 
 So far from the story of the rocket-maker, as glanced at in the 
 Manifesto, being- an instance of falsehood or audacity; or 
 falsely represented as resting- on the authority of eminent authors ; 
 it is an instance of the most heedful fidelity and punctilious ac- 
 curacy. The reader has only, once for all, to observe what the 
 plan of the Manifesto is, and how much matter was to be com- 
 pressed into how small a compass ; and he will see that no full, 
 or extensive account of any matter was there intended, or, 
 indeed, possible; but an index only of the fact itself, was 
 given, with a reference to the work, volume and pag-e, where the 
 full and extensive account of it would be found. And so heed- 
 fully faithful was the Author of the Manifesto, that even the so 
 many words as indicated the fact, were not without their autho- 
 rity: but taken from the eminent authors of the Unitarian 
 Version, in their Introduction, Sect. 3, entitled, Brief account of 
 the received text, &c. where the reader will see, (pag-e viii., 
 line 1.) the words — "The manuscripts from which it was pub- 
 lished, are now irrecoverably lost, having- been sold by the libra- 
 rian, to a rocket-maker, about the year 1750. And so puncti- 
 liously accurate was the Author of the Manifesto, that, not content 
 even with the authority of the Editors of the Unitarian Version, 
 when they spoke so loosely, as to say merely, that the " librarian 
 sold the manuscripts," without saying- by what rig-ht ;* and " to a 
 rocket-maker," without saying- what sort of rockets ; and "about 
 the year 1750," without naming- the year exactly. The Author 
 of the Manifesto indagated the hig-h source from which the 
 Unitarian Editors themselves had derived their information ; and 
 from that indisputable fountain of learning- and authority, giving 
 the most accurate reference to work, volume, and pag-e, he sup- 
 plied the more precise statement, by which the reader under- 
 stands, that the librarian was a thief; that the rockets were sky- 
 rockets ; and that it was in the year 1749. Nay, I have been 
 more punctilious than Dr. Smith had the means of being- ; for 
 whereas he, on the authority of this great critic, decries the 
 Complutensian Polyglot; which is the basis of the received 
 text, and endeavours to show that the manuscripts from which it 
 was formed were few, of no great antiquity, and of little value * 
 in order to make it appear that they might be very well spared, 
 and that it was of no consequence ; yet for all this (strongly as 
 it savours of the sour-grape reasoning-) he has only the authority 
 of the Bishop of Peterborough, as far as it will serve him, in the 
 edition from which he quotes, which is the edition of 1793, 
 whereas, in the later edition, which is that from which /quote, 
 (the edition of 1819) he will find that the good Bishop has 
 changed his mind on this subject, and set him an example, 
 which best becomes a wise and good man, safe enough from the 
 
 * By what right ?-~Stolen, says the Manifesto, —So villainously purloined 
 (p, 30,) says the Answerer of the Manifesto. 
 
46 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 imitation of a Dissenterian Theologue, an example of willingness 
 to acknowledge the force of superior reasoning. 
 
 " Though 1 was of a diiferent opinion/' says the candid bishop, 
 " when I published the second edition of this introduction, I am 
 thoroughly persuaded, at present, that Goeze is in the right ; 
 nor do I consider it as a disgrace to acknowledge an error into 
 which I had fallen, for want of having seen the edition itself. 
 With respect to Wetstein, though he is a declared enemy of this 
 edition, yet what has frequently excited my astonishment, the 
 readings which he has preferred to the common text, are, in most 
 cases, found in the Complutensian Greek Testament. He de- 
 grades it, therefore, in words, but honours it in fact." Michaelis's 
 Introduction to the New Testament, translated by Bishop Marsh, 
 vol. 2, part 1, chap. xii. sect. 1. page 439, line 83, the third 
 edition. London, 1819. 
 
 2. " Now I appeal to the ingenuous reader," says' Dr. Smith, 
 " and ask how dishonourable, base, and wicked must be that 
 man's soul, &c. who can, from this transaction, tell the public 
 that the manuscripts from which the received texts of the New 
 Testament were taken were thus made away with. If he really 
 believed what he wrote, how miserably incompetent— and how 
 dishonest !" 
 
 Avast ! Avast ! Here is more railing than any man who 
 had truth on his side, or who but thought he had, would have 
 had any occasion for. 
 
 The reader will only be pleased to observe, that Dr. Smith 
 gives no definition of what the received text is, and therefore re- 
 serves his opportunity of evasion from a complete demonstration 
 of the truth of the Manifesto, by his coarse and abusive flat de- 
 nials of the most palpable and apparent evidence : but as His 
 with the reader only that I have to deal, I beg leave to refer him 
 to the Introduction to the Unitarian New Version, where he will 
 find fully set forth, the facts, which I thus abridge. 
 
 1. The received text of the New Testament, is that which is in 
 general use. — Sect. 3, vii. 
 
 2. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Cardinal Ximenes 
 printed, at Alcala, in Spain, a copy of the New Testament in 
 Greek, which was made from a collation of various manuscripts 
 which were then thought to be of great authority, but which 
 are now known to be of little value ;'* this edition is called the 
 
 * But the reader must observe, that the editors of the Unitarian Version, pub- 
 lished in 1808, had not the advantage of Bishop Marsh's later and more correct 
 opinion, and of the excellent reasons which he gives for that later and more cor- 
 rect opinion, in his edition of 1819, or they would, in all probability, have altered 
 their own judgment of an edition which now holds to itself the high character of 
 a Codex Criticus. He will observe, too, with what complacent philosophy even 
 Unitarian Divines play Fox with us, and take upon themselves to give us their 
 word for it, that the manuscripts, which 'tis certain they know nothing about, 
 *' are now known to have been of little value." 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 47 
 
 Complutensian Polyglot. They were the manuscripts from 
 which this Complutensian Polyglot was formed, that were thus 
 disposed of. 
 
 3. But it was this Complutensian Polyglot (which was not li- 
 censed for publication till a.d. 1522, though it had been printed 
 many years before) of which Robert Stephens availed himself 
 for the formation of his splendid edition, published a, d. 1550. 
 
 4. And it was this edition of Robert Stephens, which became the 
 basis of the Elzevir edition, published at Leyden, a.d. 1624. 
 
 5. And this Elzevir edition constitutes the received text. There- 
 fore, if the reader hath but logic enough to connect the first and 
 last link of a Sorites, so'as to perceive, that whatever was the basis 
 of A, after B had been built upon A, and C had been built upon 
 B, would be the basis of C. also : he must see that the manu- 
 scripts from which the Complutensian Polyglot was taken, are 
 the manuscripts from which the received text was taken. And 
 it being undeniably true, that the manuscripts from which the 
 Complutensian Polyglot was taken, were sold by the librarian, 
 who had no right to sell them (to Toryo, the rocket-maker,) the 
 truth of the terms of the Manifesto are involved in that truth. 
 And it is incontrovertibly true, 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,* as stated in the 
 Manifesto. 
 
 The alternative of dishonour, baseness, and wickedness, if it 
 could not have been suspended by charity, and by that reluctance 
 which good men generally feel to draw so harsh a conclusion, is 
 superseded now, by the verdict of evidence itself. — Not Guilty ! 
 
 For the alternative of miserable incompetence, 1 leave the 
 scales of decision between the Doctor's literary pretensions and 
 mine, entirely in the hand of the reader, not caring on which 
 side the preponderance may be, nor feeling any apprehension or 
 envy of the unapparent and unknown learning, which the Doc- 
 tor may in the back-ground really possess ; but weighing what 
 
 * The Unitarian editors seem not to have a much better opinion of the received 
 text, than those who have the worst, since they say of it :— -" From the few ad- 
 vantages which were possessed, and from the little care which was taken by the 
 early editors, it may justly be concluded, not only that the received text is not a 
 perfect copy of the apostolic originals, but that," &c. (Unitar. New Version In- 
 trod. London Edit. 1808, section 3, page 9, line 39 from the top, 4 from the 
 bottom.) Let them say on I and let Dr. John Pye Smith say that they say no sach 
 thing as is imputed to them, but indeed the very contrary, that it is an impudent 
 forgery, and an unblushing falsehood. The reader has, by this time, learned how 
 Dr. Smith's accusations are to be estimated ! and his own morals will have received 
 no ill lesson from the demonstration that his treatise supplies, that the greatest 
 disposition to give the lie, is generally the concomitant of the least ability to prove 
 it. It is due however, to historical fidelity, to state, that there are much better 
 editions than that of the received text, supplied and enriched by manuseripts that 
 were not in the possession of the Complutensian editors. And that Toryo, the 
 rocket-maker, of course destroyed those manuscripts of both Testaments only, 
 which had been used for that edition. But that edition being the basis of the 
 received text, the fact could not, in an Index, which is all that the Manifesto 
 purports to be, have been more accurately stated .—It is truth itself. 
 
48 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 appears, and judging- by what can be judged, the reader will ob- 
 serve that the temple of Minerva has been as open to the Mani- 
 festo Writer as to the Doctor of Divinity, and that where the 
 Doctor quotes an eminent author, the Manifesto Writer quotes 
 that same author, after he had become more eminent than when 
 the Doctor knew him : and had revised and corrected those opi- 
 nions, for the better and more competent information of the Ma- 
 nifesto Writer ; that did well enough as they were, for the Doctor 
 of Divinity. Neither is any reader in the world the less compe- 
 tent, or likely to reap the less fruit of substantial learning from 
 his reading, for exercising his own judgment, and taking- no 
 author for infallible or entirely and in every thing to be relied 
 on ; but sifting what he reads, and finding out not merely what 
 was meant to be made known, but what was meant to be con- 
 cealed. As perhaps he would be none the more competent, nor 
 ultimately the wiser, for reading upon Dr. Smith's plan, of either 
 swallowing all he reads, without examination, or not suffering 
 himself to see in what he reads, any thing- that shall contravene 
 his own conceit : and so setting bars against improvement, 
 by calling those who know no better than himself, paragons of 
 learning, and "princes of critics;" and calling those who do 
 know better, just what he pleases to call them. 
 
 END OF SECTION VI. 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 LIBERTIES TAKEN WITH THE SCRIPTURES BY 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. 1, page 320/'— Manifesto. 
 
 1. " After what we have already seen, the reader will not be 
 surprised at being assured that this also is a gross falsehood, and 
 that the pretended reference to the learned Bishop is another im- 
 pudent forg-ery," page 32. 
 
 No, indeed, the reader will not be surprised at any intensity of 
 abuse, virulence of vituperation, and excess of triumph, which 
 this good Christian Divine would exhibit upon an unguarded po- 
 sition left to his conquest, after having exhausted the whole artil- 
 lery of accusation without reaching the outermost lines of our 
 defence. Not the shadow of a falsehood, not an iota of a forgery 
 has he yet discovered ; and if that name, and no other, must be 
 given to an Index referring to a fact, and to the authority, where 
 the fullest exposition of that fact would be found, because, from 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 49 
 
 the extreme necessity of abbreviating- its terms, it had abbreviated 
 itself of some, that were absolutely necessary to its sense, or to 
 its accuracy, but which would be supplied the moment the au- 
 thority referred to was consulted ; yet, where certainly it is the 
 only incorrectness, it cannot be called another forgery — where it 
 is the first error, it cannot be also a falsehood — but — 
 
 If in the line "for the book of the Revelation there was no 
 original Greek at all, but Erasmus" &c. had been supplied the 
 
 WOrds, u FOR THE MOST ESSENTIAL PASSAGE IN THE BOOK OF 
 
 revelation there was no original Greek at all" — this filling up 
 of the ellipsis, absolutely necessary to the understanding of an 
 Index, would have removed all ground of fair objection, while 
 it would hardly have led to any stronger impression of this monk's 
 recklessness of truth and honesty, than the passage as it stands 
 imputes to him, and his whole character in life fully confirms; 
 The passage which Erasmus thus audaciously interpolated, and 
 added of his own invented Greek, to that which he represented 
 as contained in his manuscript, contains the words, " If any man 
 shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues 
 that are written in this book," &c. This entire passage, from the 
 I8th verse (Rev. xxii.) to the end was first put forth to the world 
 under a false pretence, and rested solely on the Greek which 
 Erasmus had made from the Latin Vulgate. The reader might 
 thus have been put in possession of a more explicit, and I admit, 
 a more accurate statement ; but the Manifesto, instead of being 
 an Index, would have become a treatise ; instead of referring the 
 reader to the sources of more explicit information, it would have 
 supplied that information itself — and its language, instead of 
 being- in every instance, See there ! should have been, See here f 
 — instead of its style running, " If these things can be denied, or 
 disproved, your ministers and preachers are earnestly called 
 on to do so !" the reader would not have been surprised at being 
 assured, that it was as the Index gave him to understand, and 
 called upon to take the matter it only glanced at, as truth, upon 
 the only principle on which Dr. Smith's matter can be taken for 
 truth, namely, looking no further into it. 
 
 Had no reference been given to have enabled the reader to 
 acquaint himself more accurately with the matter referred to ; 
 or if, on referring to the works of that Bishop, no information on 
 that subject was to have been found, the Manifesto certainly 
 would have been chargeable with an air of dogmatism, and 
 would, in this instance, have failed of the fidelity to be expected 
 from every work of the character which it purports to sustain, 
 which is, that of an Index Indicatorius ; with which dogmatism 
 it is not chargeable — of which fidelity it hath not failed. 
 
 Let the reader glance his eye over the index to any great and 
 extensive work : I know of none in which he shall not frequently 
 and continually find, that when he turns to the matter which the 
 
 e 
 
50 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 index referred him to, it does not upon that fuller explication, 
 come up to the strength of the impression which the index had 
 led him to expect ; and here, after all, it is only the author's and 
 the reader's judgment as to the matter that is at issue ; and ^at 
 the worst, the author has only used an ordinary method in call- 
 ing- attention to his labours, to provoke investigation, and to sti- 
 mulate inquiry. 
 
 It is only one, who has as little respect for truth as he has for 
 the decent courtesies of life and the established allowances and 
 deferences of the commonwealth of learning, that would, for any 
 advantage that a detected error could give to his argumentation, 
 violate the echoes of the grove with the eructatations of the 
 shambles and the gospel-shop. 
 
 An error is not a falsehood — a misquotation is not a forgery. 
 But when it is for what in the very worst view, was only an 
 error— that we find that error called a gross error — when it is 
 to that which is really no forgery at all, we find the terms ap- 
 plied, that it is "an impudent forgery," what can we say, but 
 that such a charge is a downright John Pye Smith : a fair 
 example of the manners, the style, and the conscience of a mini- 
 ster of the gospel — a preacher of salvation through blood, and 
 
 — GO TO CHAPEL AND HEAR IT YOURSELVES ! 
 
 Of the accuracy and fidelity of Erasmus, on whom the main 
 chance for the accuracy and fidelity of all versions of the Greek 
 Testament subsequently derived from his, must ultimately de- 
 pend, we find, from Marsh's Michaelis, vol. 2, chap. xii. sect. 
 1, p. 444, edit. 3. Lond. 1819, (only Dr. Smith will assure the 
 reader that this is another impudent forgery, for, as in the Church 
 of Rome, so among our no less priest-ridden dissenters, a man is 
 not to believe his own eyes, nor trust his own reason, in contra- 
 diction to God's ministers.) We find that there is a reading in 
 the second Epistle of Peter (which Epistle itself is of question- 
 able authenticity) which Erasmus has foisted in, which no 
 one has been able to discover in any manuscript whatever. 
 That word happens to be one of the most frightful significancy 
 of the whole evangelical canonade — the war-whoop of the 
 gospel, airwteias. In the twenty-second chapter of the book 
 of Revelation, he has even ventured to give his own 
 translation from the Latin, because the Codex Reuchlini, 
 which was the only Greek manuscript which he had of 
 that book, was there defective. Of this, his only copy 
 for so important a part of Scripture, he boasted that it was 
 " tantae vettrstatis ut apostolorum eetate scriptum videri potest," 
 of such antiquity as to seem to have been written irr the age of 
 the apostles, though it contained internal evidence of the hand- 
 writing of Andrew of Csesarea, in the ninth century ; and he 
 himself borrowed it from Reuchlin, though it was not his pro- 
 perty ; but was borrowed by Reuchlin, from the monks of the 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 51 
 
 Monastery of Basil j and he kept it himself for thirty years, till 
 he died. Dr. Mill says, " that of a hundred alterations, which 
 Erasmus made, in his edition of 1527, ninety relate to the Reve- 
 lation only. One of his most violent opponents was the learned 
 Spaniard Lopez de Stunica, who published ' Annotationes 
 adversus Erasmus in defensione translationis N. TV Erasmus re- 
 plied in his Apologies, both to him and his other antagonists; 
 and the controversy has been so far useful, that many points of 
 criticism have been cleared up, which would otherwise have 
 remained obscure. But the character of Erasmus seems to have 
 lost by it, for he was more intent on his own defence, than the 
 investigation of truth." — Vol. 2. p. 445. 
 
 What more to the just disparagement of this great man, the 
 Expositions of Lopez might have brought forward, I have not 
 here* the means of knowing. Though to hear both sides is 
 the first maxim of reason and justice ; yet 'tis a most certain and 
 safe presumption that, if he brought forward any thing like the 
 language of Dr. John Pye Smith, Erasmus had no formidable 
 opponent. 
 
 The writer of the Manifesto has now met the shock of the 
 Doctor's furious attack — Truth, and not Victory is his aim. 
 That there should be nothing in the Manifesto, that might have 
 been worded better than it was, or that might not fairly and 
 justly be liable to censure and correction, (as I cheerfully admit 
 this part of the Manifesto, is,) — is what I never hoped ; but that a 
 sing'le sentence of it should be liable to the charge of forgery, or 
 fraud, is what I never feared. 
 
 One single argument, that had been pregnant of such an 
 inference, though couched in language of silk, and breathed in 
 tones of music, I can tell this angry Doctor, would have been 
 more terrible than all his foul, ill-mannered, and unmeasured 
 revilings ; and had he but shown in any one passage of his 
 book, a capacity to perceive a truth that made against his own 
 views, a disposition to recognize anyone claim of his antagonist, 
 on a humane or liberal consideration ; his criticism would have 
 been respectable, and his censure formidable. As it is, he perches 
 but as a gnat upon a cow's horn : and God only knows, or cares, 
 whether he intended to sting us, or to rest himself and be off 
 again. 
 
 * Here in Oakham Gaol, being a prisoner of Jesus Christ, Some apology 
 I hope for the deficiency ! 
 
 END OF SECTION VII. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE TEXT, IN THE COMMON 
 EDITIONS OF THE GREEK TESTAMENT. 
 
 1. " From the facts already stated, the impartial reader will be 
 at no loss to judge concerning" what this dishonourable Manifesto 
 writer, chooses to call the infinitely suspicious origination of the 
 present received text." I beg leave to suggest, that no impartial 
 reader would presume the Manifesto writer to be dishonourable ; 
 that no facts, already stated, support the presumption of dis- 
 honour, and that the reader has full right to retain his character 
 of impartiality, even though he should not be content to ac- 
 quiesce in the condemnation which either party may pronounce 
 against the other. 
 
 2. " His parade of referring to the introduction of the Unitarian 
 Improved Version, is in the same spirit of deception." 
 
 But there has been no deception in any part, in any iota of the 
 Manifesto. Even in the instance in which the mighty effort 
 made to compress immense extent of matter, into the smallest 
 compass of exhibition, has caused a syncopation or synechdoche, 
 which read as a detail, which it is nof— rather than as an index 
 referring to a detail, which it is — might lead to an error, there 
 is no deceit, no intention of deceiving ; the reader, referring to 
 the given authority, will find the whole matter extensively set 
 before him ; and, surely, no writer, intending to produce a false 
 impression, would have put into the hands of the reader, the 
 means of instantly correcting it. 
 
 3. " His parade of referring," &c. (p. 33.) coupled with the 
 charge in his first paragraph, of my " making an ostentatious refer- 
 ence to the titles of books, chapters, pages, and passages, marked 
 as quotations, when the books and passages, say no such thing ;" 
 are words which would surely lead the reader to understand 
 that he had, at least, some one or two palpable hits at the honour 
 of the Manifesto writer, and that he had found a passage pur- 
 porting to be in such a page of such an author, of which he 
 could say, These words are not there ! But what is de- 
 ceit? what is falsehood? and deceit and falsehood of the most 
 malicious and evangelical character ; if it be not, after such a 
 force of accusation, to be obliged to shirk off with the evasion, 
 that these words, which are there quoted, are garbled ; and that 
 the quoter, who quoted what served his own purpose, (which 
 was, certainly, all that he intended to quote,) ought to have 
 quoted something else, which would have served somebody else's 
 purpose? I freely, and once for all, confess, that after many years 
 of study and acquaintance with divines, and with their works, 
 (and I wish, I knew less of them than I do,) experience has 
 shown me that their's is bad company, and that a man can make 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 53 
 
 no better advantage of his misfortune in falling' into it, than by 
 informing- himself, as an honest man would, of the mysteries of a 
 gang of thieves, taking- their word, not for all that they say, but 
 for what they sometimes say without meaning- that it should 
 strike vulg-ar observance, when nature's honesty will, ever and 
 anon, break out or press through the policy of the craft and 
 tell us unexpected truth. 
 
 With this view, and this alone, I quote Christian authors ; and 
 as the wicked murderer, in his sleep, betrays the secret of his 
 burthened conscience, in broken sentences, and unconcatenated 
 ejaculations ; in this way also, may more than divines meant to 
 communicate, be extracted from their writing-s. And all the 
 pledge fbr the fidelity of this most important of all possible 
 exercises of critical shrewdness, is the proof that, say they what- 
 ever else they might say, contradict, recall, confuse, deny, 
 confound ; yet, this, which we present as their saying, is, what 
 they really did say ; of this, we produce the undeniable evi- 
 dence : we claim no more privilege for our inference, than we yield 
 to the most opposite inference, and let the galled jade wince ! 
 
 I did not quote the passage from the Unitarian Improved 
 Version, which my reverend opponent thinks I ought to have 
 quoted, 1st. Because I did not believe it myself. I hope that 
 may pass for one good reason ; and, 2ndly, because it would 
 have been utterly impossible to have made quotations of so great 
 a length within the compass of space assigned to my whole 
 matter ; and that, for another. But as for my being an " unprin- 
 cipled slanderer and deceiver," I throw myself on the reader's 
 justice to decide, whether 'tis my character or his own, that this 
 meek and humble minister of Christ compromises, when in the 
 very volume which he accused me of having falsely pretended 
 to quote, there, even in the same Section that he himself was 
 quoting ; there, before his eyes, were the very sentences as pur- 
 porting to be quoted by me : where he must have seen, that they 
 were not garbled, nor put in stronger light than they would have 
 appeared, if read, and conned together in the connection of the 
 whole Dissertation from beginning to end, and standing thus 
 within ten lines of the period, which the doctor would have had 
 me quoted. 
 
 " So that the received text rests upon the authority of no 
 more that twenty or thirty manuscripts, most, of which are of little 
 note/' Such reader, is the whole of the sentence, thus exhi- 
 biting in itself a succinct and complete sense ; and the only 
 variation, in the quotation, as it stands in the Manifesto, is the 
 omission of the two words, So that. The sentence, which im- 
 mediately follows, in the Unitarian Version, is, — " But since the 
 received text was completed by the Elzevir edition of 1624, up- 
 wards of three hundred manuscripts, either of the whole, or 
 of different parts of the New Testament, have been collated by 
 
54 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 learned men, with much care, industry, and skill/' — Intro- 
 duct, p. x. 
 
 From this sentence, marking- it as the matter of a distinct 
 sentence, I extracted so much of the information as I wanted, 
 adhering- to the words as closely as possible in an abbreviation of 
 them. 
 
 It (i. e. the received text,) was completed by the Elzevir 
 edition of 1624. 
 
 Reader! without appealing to thy impartiality, I ask thy 
 reason, 1 ask thine eyes, is this referring- to the Unitarian Im- 
 proved Version, in the spirit of deception ; is this garbling- ; is 
 this endeavouring to show a sense in a part of a sentence which 
 the whole sentence taken together would not imply, or which 
 the whole argument in which it stands, would be found to 
 contravene? Or is it (of all men on earth,) for him to accuse 
 another of garbling or quoting a passage deceitfully, who, at the 
 very time, and in the very argument that he offers to make it 
 seem that another has done so, does so himself, and makes what 
 the Unitarian Editors say of the books of the New Testament, 
 pass for a refutation of what the writer of the Manifesto has 
 said of the Received Text of the New Testament ; which the 
 Editors of the Unitarian Version were so far from intending to 
 contravene, that they have actually said, not only all that the 
 Manifesto says on that subject, but much more to the same 
 purpose ? 
 
 For what end, then, does the Reverend Doctor Smith apply 
 such terrible epithets to the author of the Manifesto ? why thus 
 call him an unprincipled slanderer and deceiver ? Why, but to 
 conceal his own machinations, to supply, by clamour, the total 
 want of argument ; and to set pursuit on the wrong tract, by 
 crying stop thief ! when all the while — aye ! when all the 
 while !— Oh, God ! what a wicked world it is ! — Surely, Dr. 
 Smith ought to feel, that the greatness of the occasion calls for 
 his prayers — he shall have the full benefit of mine — God for- 
 give him ! 
 
 I shall now subjoin, without note, or comment, a few of the 
 Admissions of the most learned critics as to the 
 infinitely suspicious origination of the received 
 
 TEXT — 
 
 Which the reader may, if he pleases, take Dr. John Pye 
 Smith's word, are impudent forgeries, and unblushing falsehoods, 
 but which, if he turns to the authors referred to, will be very 
 likely to stare him in the face. 
 
 1. A. D. 1624. — An edition of the Greek Testament was pub- 
 lished at Leyden, at the office of the Elzevirs, who were the 
 most eminent printers of the time. The Editor, who super- 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 55 
 
 intended the publication is unknown. — Unit. Improved Version, 
 Introduct. p. 9. 
 
 2. It does not appear that the editor was in possession of any 
 manuscript. — Ibid. 
 
 3. This edition, however, being- elegantly printed, &c, it was 
 unaccountably taken for granted, that it exhibited a 
 pure and perfect text. — Ibid. 
 
 4. This, constitutes the received text. — Ibid. 
 
 5. The early editors of the New Testament, possessed but 
 few manuscripts, and those of inferior value. — Ibid. p. x. 
 
 6. Those of the Complutensian Editors were destroyed ; but 
 they were not numerous nor of great account.* 
 
 7. Erasmus consulted only five or six. 
 
 8. Robert Stephens, only fifteen. 
 
 9. They were collated, and the various reading's noted, by 
 Henry Stephens, the son of Robert, a youth about eighteen 
 years of age. — Ibid. 8. 
 
 10. This book, being splendidly printed, with great professions 
 of accuracy, by the Editor, was long- supposed to be a correct 
 and immaculate work. — Ibid. 
 
 11. It was published, A.D. 1550.-— Ibid. 
 
 12. It differs very little from the received text. — Ibid. 
 
 13. It has been discovered to abound with errors. — Ibid. 
 
 14. Attempts have been made to correct the Received Text, 
 by critical conjecture. — Ibid. xv. 
 
 15. The Orthodox charge the heretics with corrupting- the 
 text ; and 
 
 16. The Heretics recriminate upon the Orthodox. — Notes on 
 Luke i. Unit. N. V. page 121. 
 
 17. The works of those writers who are called Heretics, such 
 as Valentinian, Marcion, and others, are as useful in ascertaining 
 the value of a reading-, as those of the Fathers who are entitled 
 Orthodox ; for the Heretics were often more learned and acute, 
 and equally honest. — Introd. p. xv. 
 
 18. For, as yet, (i. e. the fourth century,) there was no Jaw 
 enacted, which excluded the ignorant and illiterate from eccle- 
 siastical preferments and offices, and it is certain, that the greatest 
 part, both of the bishops and presbyters, were men entirely des- 
 titute of learning and education. Besides, 
 
 19. That savage and illiterate party, which looked upon all 
 sorts of erudition, particularly that of a philosophical kind, as 
 pernicious, and even destructive of true piety and religion, in- 
 creased both in number and authority. — Mosheim, vol. i. p. 346. 
 
 20. A Tegard du Nouveau Testament V Heresiarque (scil. 
 Manichee), entreprit de la corriger, sous le frivole pretexte, que 
 
 * 1 have shown, however, (though it makes against my own argument,) that 
 they were more respectable than the Unitarian Editors, or Bishop Marsh himself, 
 at first, apprehended them to be* 
 
56 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 les Evangiles n'etoient point des Apdtres, ni des hommes aposto- 
 liques dont ils portent les noms : ou que s'ils en etoient, ils 
 avoient ete falsifiez par des Chretiens, que etoient encore a 
 demi juifs. 
 
 21. L'impartialite, si essentielle a un historien, m'a obliger de 
 justifier les Manicheens de' l'accusation qui les Catholiques leur 
 ont intentee, devoir corrumpu les livres du Nouveau Testament 
 par des additions, ou des Retranchemens sacrileges. Je Pai exa- 
 minee, et l'ai trouvee sans fondement. Mais je n'aipu m'empS- 
 cher de remarquer a cette occasion, qu'il y'eut des Catholiques 
 assez temeraires pour oter quelques endroits des Evangiles. — 
 Beausobre, Histoire de Manichee, preface xi. a Amsterdam, 1 734. 
 
 22. Si les heretiques otent un mot du texte sacre, ou s'ils en 
 ajoutent un ce sont de sacrileges violateurs de la santete des ecri- 
 tures ; mais si les Catholiques le font, cela s'appelle retoucher les 
 premiers exemplaires les reformer pour les rendre plus intelligi- 
 bles.-lbid, p. 343. 
 
 The reader will be pleased to observe, that the above is the 
 passage in the text of Beausobre, upon which the statement 
 about Lanfranc, in the Manifesto, is a note illustrative, which it 
 was convenient for this Doctor of Divinity not to see, or seeing 
 which, it was convenient to his conscience to charge the Mani- 
 festo Writer with dishonesty for doing", what the Manifesto Writer 
 was not doing, but what he was doing himself. — Steal ! and cry 
 Stop thief ! is gospel all over ! 
 
 23. The Latin version is the source of almost all European 
 versions. — Marsh's Michaelis, vol. 2, page 106. 
 
 24. No manuscript now extant is prior to the sixth century ; 
 and what is to be lamented, various readings which, as appears 
 from the quotations of the fathers, were in the text of the Greek 
 Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are 
 at present remaining. — Ibid, page 160. 
 
 This is but a spicilegium which the reader may safely multi- 
 ply by a hundred, of the gross forgeries, and no such passages, 
 and no such things as are imputed to them, but which there, in 
 his face and in his teeth all the while, I might have obtruded on 
 the angry Doctor's patience, in comprobation of the position of 
 the Manifesto. 
 
 But the Manifesto is an index, not a dissertation, and enough 
 was given there, as perhaps more than enough is given here, to 
 prove, from the admissions of the most learned critics, the infi- 
 nitely suspicious origin of the received text. 
 
 The claim of the scriptures, therefore, in any existing version 
 of them, to resemblance or identity with their original, God only 
 knowing what that original may have been, seems to be in much 
 the same predicament as that of the Irishman's knife, which had 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 57 
 
 unquestionably descended from the first king of Conaught, though 
 it had had seventy thousand new blades, and fifty thousand new 
 handles. 
 
 But to evade the pregnant conclusion of the matter which 
 forces itself into his own reluctant admissions, the doctor rings 
 the changes again on his eternal sophism about the Greek trage- 
 dians and historians, as if it were proof enough for the claims of 
 a divine revelation, to prove as much for it as can be proved for 
 a pagan romance, or a barbarous melo-drame. We write better 
 poems, and more accurate histories, than any of the Hesiods or 
 Homers, the Herodotuses or Livys of antiquity— there is no Es- 
 chylus, Euripides, or Sophocles that ever produced a play that 
 would be endured in a British theatre, much less be worthy of 
 an hour's study of the man who could read Shakespear ! What 
 are Virgil or Pindar to Byron and Moore ? the man who had read 
 Horace, and the Iliad, might possibly attain the beauties of style, 
 and fervour of expression that appear in the Answer to the Ma- 
 nifesto — the man who had studied Shelley's Queen Mab would 
 become a gentleman. After all that could be urged for the co- 
 equal claims of ancient poets, and as ancient evangelists, is, all 
 that can be urged, enough ? or shall the ground which is solid 
 enough to pitch a tent on, be a sufficient foundation for a castle ? 
 But surely, to argue that it is only of late years, and since the 
 world has been blessed with the critical ingenuity and industry 
 of a Mill, Wetstein, Griesbach, Middleton, Knapp, and Voter, 
 that we are in possession of the correct, or probably correct text 
 of scripture, is little else than to transfer the authority of apostle- 
 ship from the first writers to the modern critics. By the same 
 argument it may be inferred, that subsequent critics may make 
 subsequent discoveries, which may give us as good reason to alter 
 the text from our present reading, as we have for holding the 
 present reading at present the best. We do but arrogate to our 
 own times an infallibility which we deny to others, when we 
 presume to think that the text, as we have it, can be depended on, 
 or that it may not be a thousand years to come, and after another 
 hundred and thirty thousand various readings shall have been 
 discovered, ere mankind shall have a right to felicitate them- 
 selves on reading a text in the closest accordance with the ori- 
 ginal. 
 
 But if we are to take the knock-down dictum of an insolent 
 priest, who will call us " obstinate untractable wretches" for re- 
 sisting his arguments ? If we must, on the ipse dixit of a pre- 
 tended prince of critics, believe that " that text is competently 
 exact even in the worst manuscript, nor is one article of faith or 
 moral precept either perverted or lost in it," why, there's an end 
 on't ! and what use of any other critic upon earth but he ? What 
 use of a revelation from God, when the prince of critics can brush 
 up any dirty lumber into gospel, and give it us with his " Take 
 
58 VINDICATION OP THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 that, or be damned f" (Mark, xvi. 16.) or what use of any 
 God on earth, when any canting" fanatic, in the very slavering- of 
 learned idiotcy, shall be so ready and so able to officiate in his 
 damnable capacity, to launch his curses, and denounce his 
 vengeance ? 
 
 END OF SECTION VIII. 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 IMMORAL TENDENCY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 1. " Here is, indeed, the highest pitch of daring." 
 
 " Here/' (exclaims the Doctor, in a strain that makes humanity 
 hope his constitution may have no tendency to apoplexy) — " Here 
 is the first born of calumny." 
 
 He might as well, however, have left it to his readers to deter- 
 mine, whether the Manifesto demonstrates that its writer defies 
 all truth and justice — for truth and justice will determine, that 
 however ill a man may think of his enemy, it is not his enemy's 
 guilt, that constitutes his innocence ; nor is it the devil's black- 
 ness, that makes an angel white. 
 
 2. " Study the passages to which he refers, in their respective 
 connexion, and in their relation to the other parts of the New 
 Testament," says this learned Divine. 
 
 But no ! say common sense and honesty. If a thing be appa- 
 rently right and fair ; if it be manifestly founded in reason — loyal r 
 just and pure — what occasion is there for study ? Shall palpable 
 villainy, seen, caught, and held in the very act and article of 
 crime, defeat our indignation, and bilk us into terms of peace, by 
 the sophistical evasion — " You don't know me — you don't see the 
 bearings and connections of the matter — study this part of my 
 conduct, in relation to other parts of my conduct, and you will 
 find it forms no exception to the spotless purity, the holy 
 beauty which' animates the whole of my divine composition. I 
 pick a pocket, and I cut a throat, now and then ! but how unfair 
 to suspect my general character." 
 
 Will Dr. Smith shew that there ever was, or could have been, 
 any religion on the face of the earth, so vile and wicked, that it 
 might not have been defended by precisely the same argument ? 
 Can the imposture of the Koran, the Shaster, the Vedas, the 
 Pourannas, or any other pretended Divine Revelation, be pointed 
 out, by any fairer demonstration of the cheat, than that which 
 should show, that amid all their pretended sanctities and subli- 
 mities — their spotless purity and their holy beauties — there were 
 passages enough to be found in them, to betray the craft in which 
 they originated, and the deceit which they intended? Might not 
 the institutions of Lycurgus — the laws of Draco — or the bloody 
 statute of Henry the Eighth, be vindicated upon the principle 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 59 
 
 of " studying" them in all the connections and relations that might 
 be imagined to appertain to them/' and explaining- away the 
 gross sense of the atrocities that they contain, by taking their 
 own word for the sincerity of the philanthropy they profess V r 
 Might not the language of Doctor John Pye Smith himself, be 
 supposed to be such as a gentleman and a scholar could have 
 used, if we are obliged to give him credit either for the truth of his 
 professions, or the sincerity of his motives ? 
 
 The Doctor himself admits, that there are difficulties in the 
 Bible, but seems incapable of the ingenuousness that should 
 own, that those difficulties are difficult enough to appear to have 
 an immoral, vicious and wicked tendency, in which appearance 
 all their difficulty consists. He begs off this, by the complete 
 surrender, of putting the word of God, on as good a footing as 
 the fabulous legends of antiquity, and claiming that the same 
 allowance should be made for the inspirations of infinite wisdom, 
 as for the madrigals of Drunken Barnaby. 
 
 3. " The rational method of resolving them, is by acquiring the 
 information necessary to go to the bottom of each instance/' 
 says the Doctor, (p. 37.) And so, 'tis the rational way to catch 
 sparrows, to put a little salt upon their tails. 
 
 4. " And those who cannot do so, possess, in an enlightened 
 protestant country/' 
 
 Where's that ? , 
 
 5. " The inestimable advantage of consulting learned and judi- 
 cious commentators." 
 
 But was not the advantage greater in a Catholic country, of 
 consulting- commentators, who were not merely learned and 
 judicious, but absolutely infallible, and who, when the difficulty 
 was propounded to them, would have answered it perhaps, 
 without giving you worse names than you might get from a 
 Methodist parson, for your pains ? 
 
 6. " With respect to the passages enumerated by this contemp- 
 tible writer, a man anust have little understanding indeed, whose 
 careful examination cannot dissipate whatever of difficulty is 
 pretended.'' 
 
 There, reader ! half of that is for yourself, for if your exa- 
 mination should not be careful enough, or should not lead to 
 such a complete dissipation of the difficulty, as Dr. Smith opines 
 must be its issue, he gives you hint enough that you shall be con- 
 temptible too. 
 
 7. " For, if the truth of God hath more abounded through 
 my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" 
 Rom. iii. 7. How this can be the language of an objector 
 and not the Apostle's own language, an apostle only can shew 
 us. How its most frightful and revolting sense— which is at least 
 the apparent one, is incompatible with the character of one who 
 calls himself " the chief of sinners,*' and who calls the other 
 
60 Vindication of the manifesto. 
 
 apostles, u false apostles, dog's and liars ;" or how It is relieved — • 
 by apposition with innumerable other texts of the same epistoler, 
 to the full effect of representing the God of truth and mercy, as 
 the greatest monster of iniquity — " giving up his creatures to 
 vile affections and a reprobate mind, that he might have mercy 
 on whom he would have mercy, and whom he would, might 
 harden ;" — how this can be compatible with holy beauty, or 
 reconciled to moral justice, they only can show, who can show 
 falsehood and forgery in the Manifesto, and prove that the 
 pitch of Vulcan's smithy, was whiter than the pearl on Juno's 
 coronet. 
 
 8. " If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, 
 receive him not into your house, neither bid him God-speed, for he 
 that biddeth him God-speed, is partaker of his evil deeds," 
 John ii. 10. This text, says our all-explaining Doctor," 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." — (p. 7.) 
 
 The devil it doesn't ! A word with you Doctor, if you please ! 
 How were the learners to know that the teachers were corrupt, 
 before they had learned what it was that the teachers had to 
 teach ? And if the learners themselves actually knew best, how 
 could they have any teachers at all ? or what was the depth of 
 that learning, whose nature could be fairly judged of sooner 
 than you could say How d'ye do ? Or, if these questions savour of 
 levity — imagine a more serious one if you can, than the question 
 whose emergence from your own position cannot be evaded, and 
 imagine, if you can, an answer to it. 
 
 If, before that epistle itself was written — if there and then, in 
 the Apostolic age, while the beloved John, the centre and source 
 of orthodoxy, was living and basking under the plenary il lapses 
 of inspiration, false teachers, and corrupters of the Christian 
 doctrine were so rife, that Christians had to live upon the snap, 
 to keep the gospel-preaching vagabonds out of their houses ; 
 how are we to be sure, that in the course of eighteen hundred 
 years, false teachers haven't smuggled themselves into good 
 livings, and brought in the vilest trash that was ever foisted on 
 the credulity of a choused and insulted people? Especially con- 
 sidering, that what our teachers tell us is so pure and holy, smells 
 so rank and knock-ye-down in such a many places, and costs a 
 man such a head-ache before he can dissipate the effect of the 
 first haut-gout, and swallow it all, as a lump of spotless purity 
 and holy beauty ? But, " shut your eyes and open your mouth, 
 and see what God will send you," is the divinity of the college, 
 as well as of the nursery ; the only difference being, that there is 
 an air of sportive innocence and joke in the game of the little 
 ones, while the game, as played by the grown babies, is not inno- 
 cent, and is no joke ! 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. Gl 
 
 9. " To pesecution, in every form and degree,," says the Doctor, 
 si the whole spirit of the Gospel is entirely opposed/' N.B. — Only 
 a little private assassination now and then, is recommended. 
 Acts vi. ; Corinth, i. 15.; Galat. v. 12. 
 
 10. " The words of Heb. xii. 22. ' Oar God is a consuming- fire/ 
 are figurative language, borrowed from the Sublime Diction, 
 &c, and every school-boy knows, that the word hate or hatred, 
 denotes no malevolent disposition, but only that holy heroism of 
 virtue/'* — (p. 37.) Go it, Doctor Smith ; at this rate, how easy is 
 the business of explanation ! — the Persian shall supply thee with 
 the literal text of his creed, the very words of his holy liturgy, 
 than which he could use no other to express his sincere idolatory 
 of fire — the Cannibal shall hand over to thee, all the modes of 
 expression by which he indicates and means his feast on human 
 flesh, and thou wilt explain it all, to some high sense of mystical 
 holiness. Cannibalism shall be spotlessly pure ; malevolence shall 
 be heroism, and consuming fire shall be a fit metaphor for a God 
 of mercy. 
 
 11. You offer, in illustration of the dispositions produced by 
 Christianity, the conduct of the Bavarian martyr. Here, Sir ! you 
 are not to be misunderstood ; here you stand committed, and in 
 the contemplation of this frightful instance, you are no more to 
 be dealt with by the mild censure of the critical diasurmus, and 
 the sufficient castigation of merited ridicule ; but the sense of 
 your deluded and insulted readers, must be aroused to a percep- 
 tion of the precipice of horrors, to which, in the error either 
 of your ignorance, or of your madness, you would lead them. 
 
 Persuade the babes and sucklings of the Gospel, that I am all 
 that malice could conceive me to be — feed them with the pure 
 milk of your word for it — that the Author of the Manifesto must 
 needs be all that your coarse mind could think, and all your 
 coarse language could call him — you have not yet approached 
 the showing evidence, that he had renounced the profession of 
 something moral and virtuous — you have not yet pourtrayed him 
 as that monstrous suicide — that rebel against nature — that enemy 
 of his own flesh — that unnatural father — that merciless husband — 
 that wretch, immoveable by a child's tears, unconquerable by a 
 woman's love; that — nothing that was man — that scandal of 
 humanity — that thief of man's face, 
 
 On foreign mountains bred, 
 
 Wolves gave him suck, and savage tigers fed" 
 
 Your Bavarian martyr ! Take him, crown him with your 
 laurels, cover him with your honours, exhibit him as the creature, 
 the production, the model of Christianity, and say, See here ! I 
 
 * In like manner, as every school-boy knows, that no falsehood, however 
 apparent and palpable it may be, denotes falsehood when the parson tells it. 
 
62 VINDICATION OP THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 will say, see here, too ; and when you shall have exalted your 
 paragon to a Divinity, he shall serve me too, as the very instance 
 that I would produce in exemplification of the character of a 
 fiend ; and of the mischievous, demoralizing", 1 and denaturalizing- 
 influence of that accursed superstition which alone could have 
 produced so foul a monster — alone have formed your Bavarian 
 martyr. If thou hast nature in thee, reader, bear it not ! If nature 
 be not wrong, say not that this could have been right. Imagine 
 that thou hadst been the son or daughter of such a father, the 
 wife of ,such a husband, and with all the possible sense of duty 
 and affection of the one, with all the passionate devotion of the 
 other — hadst been an infidel, (an imagination which Christians 
 never trust themselves to imagine, a case with which they have 
 no sympathies) think then, what a hell of domestic misery must 
 the disposition of such a parent have caused — what compassion 
 couldst thou have hoped to engage, from the wretch that 
 had no mercy on himself? what power of remonstrance 
 could have prevailed over one, whose inexorability of purposes 
 would not yield to the argument of fire and death. What 
 greater degree of wickedness could be conceived, than such 
 a degree of obstinacy in a creature conscious of his liability to 
 error, and compassed with infirmities. Let such a monster's 
 madness take but another cue, and he would be as eager to inflict 
 as he was obdurate to suffer. If such are the examples that Dr. 
 John Pye Smith preaches at Homerton, it cannot be safe to sleep 
 in that neighbourhood. If such are the characters he commends, 
 his foul language and his bitterest criminations are the highest 
 compliment that he can pay : consummate vice, with him, is 
 glorious virtue, and 'tis only his good word that could be inju- 
 rious to any man. 
 
 12. Of the passages which betray a comparatively modern cha- 
 racter,* of which the Manifesto gives six, out of six hundred which 
 
 * See a most ample store, illustrated with irresistible demonstrations of their 
 modernism, in Evanson's Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists, 
 which, as this divine, though of the Unitarian school, professed himself a sincere 
 believer in Divine Revelation, have that additional weight which I have inva- 
 riably brought to all my arguments — that of being concessions of the adverse 
 party. 
 
 Matt. xix. verse 12, delivers the peculiar doctrine of the Encratites, a sect 
 which appeared very early in the second century. — Evanson, p. 168. 
 
 Matt. xvi. verse 18. — Matt, xviii. verse 17. The word church is used, and its 
 papistical and infallible authority referred to as then existing, which is known 
 not to have existed till ages after. 
 
 Matt. xi. verse 12.— From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom 
 of heaven suffereth violence, &c. could not have been written till a very late period. 
 
 Luke ii. verse 1, shows, whoever the writer was, he lived long after the events 
 he related. His dates— about the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and the government 
 of Cyrenius— the only indications of time in the New Testament, are manifestlyfalse. 
 
 See references in the Epistles to saints, a religious order owing its origin to 
 the popes. References to the distinct orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, 
 and calls to a monastic life, to fasting, &c. 
 
 " In my Father's house are many monasteries"—so it should have been trans* 
 lated.— John xiv. 2. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 63 
 
 critical investigation might have adduced: the Doctor, with 
 that priestly subtlety which characterizes his performance, shirks 
 the great knot by the wheedling finesse of saying, that " the 
 greater part present no difficulty to an intelligent and reflecting 
 reader — and of the others, a rational solution may be found by 
 referring to any good commentator, such as Whitby, Doddridge, 
 Scott, &c. and, (Hear ! Reader, Hear !) "if there were no such 
 passages, one great argument in favour of the genuineness of the 
 scriptures would be wanting." (p. 38.) 
 
 By my honour as pretty a bit of logic that as ever was conned. 
 I prithee, reader, look back on it, and digest the knowledge 
 thou hast gained. 
 
 " When ye pray, don't speak like Battus," (Matt. vi. 7.) so it should have been 
 translated, Battus being a talkative and foolish poet, as modern as you please. 
 
 See the words for, legion, aprons, handkerchiefs, centurion, &c. in the original, 
 not being Greek, but Latin written in Greek characters, a practice first to be 
 found in the Historian Herodian, in the third century. — Evanson, p. 30. 
 
 The general ignorance of the four Evangelists, not merely of the geography and 
 statistics of Judea, but even of its language — their egregious blunders, which no 
 writers who had lived in that age could be conceived to have made, prove that 
 they were not only no such persons as those who have been willing to be deceived, 
 have taken them to be, but that they were not Jews— had never been in Palestine, 
 and neither lived in or at any time near to the times to which their narratives seem 
 to refer. The ablest German divines have yielded thus much; the English reader 
 will see it irrefutably proved by the Unitarian Evanson; and the Latin scholar 
 will find the argument, as far as it applies to the Gospel of St. John, in particular, 
 cautiously, but convincingly handled, in the Probabilia of Bretschneider, in which 
 he modestly attempts to show that the author of that Gospel was no party or co- 
 temporary of the events to which it relates, and neither a Jew, nor at any time an 
 inhabitant of Palestine. 
 
 " Si forte accidisset ut Johannis evangelium per octodecim secula priora pror- 
 sus ignotum jacuisset et nostris demum temporibus in oriente repertum, et in me- 
 dium productum esset, omnes haud dubie uno ore confiterentur Jesum a Joanne 
 descriptum longe alium esse ac ilium Matthaei, Marci et Lucae; nee utramque de- 
 scriptionein simul, veram esse posse." — Page 1. Modestesubjecit CarolusTheoph. 
 Bretschneider, &c. Lipsiae, 1820. 
 
 Indeed, the modernism of some of the passages in the epistles is truly ludicrous, 
 and needs but a moment's reflection to detect the absolute impossibility of its 
 having been written, or the like of such a thing having been imagined, in the 
 imaginary apostolic age. Such is the passage, for quoting which, in its evi- 
 dent and inevadeable sense, as a part of the blasphemy of which I have 
 been convicted, I am now a prisoner, 2 Cor. iii. verse 6. — " Who also hath 
 made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the 
 spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." If the reader can 
 reconcile such a passage to any supposable circumstances or condition of a Jirst 
 preacher of the Gospel, ere yet any part of the New Testament was put into 
 letter, his faith will remain unshaken. 
 
 Our English version egregiously protestantizes, whereby the really monkish 
 character of the original is concealed from vulgar suspicion. One of the ten rea- 
 sons which Chillingworth gives for turning Papist was, " Because the Protestant 
 cause is now, and hath been from the beginning, maintained with gross falsifica- 
 tions and calumnies, whereof the prime controversy writers are notoriously, and in 
 a high degree guilty."— See his Ten Reasons. 
 
 Bretschneider. — It is to be regretted, that this work has not yet appeared in 
 an English translation. The Germans seem far to have out-run us in the march of 
 general scepticism. I have not quoted this work, however, without having duly 
 weighed the answer to it, in the same language, by the learned Stein, of Bran- 
 denburgh, i. e. Authentia Evangelii Johannis Vindicata. Stein's principal ar- 
 gument for the genuineness of this Gospel, seems to be the experience of a certain 
 pious soldier, alias a Christian blood-hound, who found it particularly comforta- 
 ble to his soul in the field of battle. Socrates must be silent when Xantippe 
 
 RAVES, 
 
64 VINDICATION OP THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 Imprimis. — The position of the Manifesto, that there are in- 
 numerable passages in the New Testament which betray a com- 
 paratively modern date, is a false pretence ; nevertheless, there 
 are passages which do betray a modern date. Nevertheless, if 
 the greater part of these present any difficulty to thee, thou art 
 not an intelligent and reflecting- reader. Nevertheless, thou shalt 
 find a rational solution of the difficulty in D'Oyley and Mant, 
 Clark, Williams' Cottage Bible, and others." And to crown all 
 this vast accession to thy knowledge, thou shalt nevertheless 
 conclude, like a thorough Three-one, One-three Trinitarian, that 
 the marks of a very modern date are one of the clearest proofs of 
 very high antiquity: just as thou wouldst know a poem to have 
 been certainly written in the age of Shakespear, and probably 
 by Shakespear himself, from the allusion that it contained to the 
 battle of Waterloo, to gas-lights, and to steam-packets. Indeed 
 if there were no such allusions, one great argument in favour of 
 the genuineness of the poem would be wanting: and so, of 
 course, the more the better. And the clearer proofs there are of 
 forgery and imposture in these writings, the stronger will be the 
 faith of the Christian in their genuineness and authenticity. Go 
 it, Doctor ! but what a pity that men who have learned to argue 
 in this way, should ever have separated themselves from that 
 Holy and Apostolic Roman Church, from whom not only their 
 creed, but their logic is derived. 
 
 13. The passage from Rousseau is fairly and honourably quoted, 
 and serves effectually to the full stress for which it is quoted, and 
 valeat quantum valere potest. But surely, when these good 
 Christian divines argue, as we admit they do, very fairly, from 
 concessions and admissions that have here and there dropped from 
 the pens of infidels, and take no notice of such parts of their 
 writings as they very well know would contravene, neuteralize, 
 or entirely destroy the effect of those admissions ; they can have 
 no right to complain at having this fair card played back upon 
 themselves. We can make all that a Rousseau, a Chubb, or a 
 D'Alembert may have yielded to Christianity kick the beam, with 
 the plumb-dead weight in the other scale of the scepticism of a 
 Lardner, the deism of a Locke, and the materialism of a Til- 
 lotson. 
 
 For the proper understanding of the works of divines, even 
 from the writings of those who are entitled to be considered as 
 respectable, down to such as by the stupidity of their argumen- 
 tation, and the scurrility of their language, show that they have 
 renounced all claim to such a consideration ; the look-out of the 
 inquirer after truth should be, not for what they wished to set 
 before his observance, but for what they would fain should escape 
 it — not for what they meant to say — but for what they did not 
 mean to say. 
 
 END OF SECTION IX. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 65 
 
 SECTION X. 
 
 OF THE PROTOTYPES, OR FIRST SPECIMENS, AND ORIGINALS OF 
 THE GOSPELS. 
 
 1. " The Manifesto Writer, with his usual despite of truth and 
 knowledge, speaks of true and genuine gospels of the most pri- 
 mitive Christians, and which he says have been rejected without 
 any assignable reason, or alleged authority/' 
 
 Then follows the Rev. Doctor's characteristic virulence of 
 abuse, with which, by this time, one might hope even dissenterian 
 rancour would be satisfied. 
 
 Let Doctor Pye Smith retain his unenvied laurels, and surpass 
 all Wapping in the use of the vulgar tongue — let him stand the 
 Crichton of a style that no gentleman could have used, and no 
 scholar would have needed ; I only wish the reader to 
 give the utmost possible weight of consideration to the 
 admissions made by the Reverend gentleman himself, and 
 which his extreme ferocity of language seems purposely 
 adopted to screen from observation. There are, it seems, admis- 
 sions which must be admitted, concessions which must be con- 
 ceded ; and therefore, that observance may not arrest them, that 
 inference may not overtake them, there was no better policy than 
 giving them their chance to escape in a tumult of tempestuous 
 rage ; but should the reader preserve his coolness, and retain 
 composure of mind enough to ask, " What has he here V he will 
 not pay for another quarter's sitting in a dissenterian chapel, till 
 he can find some more satisfactory way of solving his doubts, 
 than calling the man an impudent liar who suggested them. 
 
 1. Concession.*— There were other narratives of the doctrines 
 and adventures of Christ and his Apostles, besides those which 
 have come down to us. 
 
 2. Concession. — These narratives were earlier in time than 
 those which have come down to us. 
 
 1. Inference. — And therefore could not be corruptions of the 
 Gospels which have come down to us — but, 
 
 2. Inference. — The Gospels which have come down to us 
 might be the improvements, or last castigated and enlarged edi- 
 tions of these. 
 
 3. Concession. — Those narratives of the life and actions of 
 Jesus Christ were fictitious. 
 
 Inference. — How know ye that ? 
 
 4. Concession. — They were written by many silly and frau- 
 dulent persons. / 
 
 Inference. — Who is it that gives them that character ? and 
 what better are your Evangelists ? 
 
 5 Concession. — By far the larger part of these have long 
 ago dropped into merited oblivion. 
 
 F 
 
66 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 Inference. — Then, by what right can any one now take upon 
 himself to say, that that oblivion was merited ? 
 
 6. Concession. — That they ever existed is known only from 
 the records of the early Christian writers, usually called the 
 Fathers. 
 
 Inference. — I. Such an assertion would do to be foisted on the 
 bigotted Papist, who never reads the scriptures, or on the no less 
 bigotted fanatical dunce, who reads them in faith and prayer, and 
 so is none the wiser for his reading. An intelligent and shrewd 
 noticer of what he reads, would find, that he did not want the 
 Fathers to have given him information of the existence of Gos- 
 pels and narratives of the life and doctrines of Christ, of rival 
 pretensions, and unquestionably of earlier date than any of the 
 scriptures which those good fathers have suffered to come down 
 tous. 
 
 2. He will find too, that " fictitious, silly, fraudulent, and de- 
 serving of oblivion" as those writings, now that their merits can- 
 not be investigated, are assumed to be, it was certainly those 
 writings that formed the faith of the first Christians, before any 
 of the writings which form our New Testament were in ex- 
 istence. 
 
 3. He will find that the New Testament makes over all its au- 
 thority to them — and 
 
 4. Ascribes to them the inspiration, sanctity, and sufficiency, 
 which those who know nothing about them preposterously as- 
 cribe to the New Testament. 
 
 5. He will find that they are expressly quoted in the New Tes- 
 tament, and quoted as a source of appeal and higher authority 
 recognized by the writers of the New Testament themselves. 
 
 6. He will find that the writers of the New Testament never 
 presume to put their writings on a footing of equality with those 
 earlier and more authentic narratives, but offer their composi- 
 tions only as commentaries or sermons on the already established 
 Holy Scriptures. For example, Timothy, when himself old enough 
 to be Bishop of Crete, is said to have learned from his grand- 
 mother,Lois, and his mother, Eunice, (2 Tim. i. 5.) the Scriptures 
 which were able to make him wise unto salvation, through faith, 
 in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. iii. 15.) And Luke expressly prefaces 
 what has, by a shameful perversion been called his Gospel, with 
 a disclaimer of all pretence to co-equal authority with the then 
 well-known and long-established narratives of Christ and his 
 exploits, but offers all he has to offer, as an avowed Family Ex- 
 positor, having no authority itself, but setting forth the certainty 
 of those things in which the most excellent Theophilus had al- 
 ready been instructed. 
 
 7. He will find that had the text of the New Testament been 
 fairly and ingenuously printed, so as to mark in capital letters 
 the words, which stand for the titles of books, a glance of the 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 67 
 
 eye would distinguish a catalogue, of which I myself have 
 counted upwards of a hundred and eighty, whose divinity and 
 inspiration must be admitted, if there now are, or ever were in 
 the world, any writings that had a claim to be considered as in- 
 spired and divine. 
 
 8. He will find, in like manner, that had the passages in the 
 New Testament, which really are quotations from those apocry- 
 phal writings, been printed in italics, or marked with inverted 
 commas, so as to indicate their quoted character, there are a 
 great many more of them than have been ordinarily recognized ; 
 and that far higher honour and respect were paid and intended 
 by the New Testament writers, to those (in their esteem) true 
 and genuine Gospels, upon which their compositions are but com* 
 mentaries. 
 
 9. He will find too, that the method of distinguishing titles 
 of books, names of persons, and other important matters which 
 the sense required should be so distinguished, with some differ- 
 ence in the manner of writing, and of marking quotations as 
 quotations, not having come into use till comparatively modern 
 times, is the evident cause why the original authorities of many 
 ancient books have come to be entirely lost sight of, and so sur- 
 reptitious and plagiary copies, which I hold all the books of the 
 New Testament to be, have come in time to supersede the use, 
 and run away with the honours of those which were really the 
 originals. 
 
 10. He will observe too, that added to the fact, that the method 
 of distinguishing titles of books, and quotations from those books, 
 by a difference in the manner of writing, had not come into use 
 when the books of the New Testament were compiled ; the very 
 fame, renown, and common notoriety of the unquestionable and 
 unapproachable superiority of those then received and established 
 rules of faith are sufficient to account for the writers of the New 
 Testament blending them with their own compositions as they 
 have done, without any particular indications of quotation,— and 
 nothing is more common now, even since we have adopted 
 the method of distinguishing quoted sentences, than to consider 
 the well-know r n style of a popular author as a sufficient excuse 
 for not doing' so ; and so bringing in the sentiment and expression 
 of a Shakespear or of a Pope, as if it had 
 
 i( Grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength,'* 
 
 had been the original conception of our own minds, and had oc- 
 curred as the most easy and natural way of rounding a period un- 
 mixed with baser matter. 
 
 As to the argument from the quotations of the writings of the 
 New Testament to be met With in the writings of the early 
 Fathers,and our obligations to them, for letting us know that u silly, 
 fraudulent, and fictitious narratives of the life and actions of Jesus 
 
 F 2 
 
6S VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 Christ and his Apostles ever existed," there happen to be just these 
 fifteen following difficulties standing in the way of the conclusion 
 to which Dr. Smith would marshal us, and standing too, in the 
 stubborn attitude of unyielding and unconquerable facts. 
 
 1 . The same Fathers who quote, or seem to quote the writings 
 contained in the New Testament, do also quote those silly, ficti- 
 tious, and fraudulent narratives, and that too, w T ith quite as much 
 respect and reverence, as they do the writings which are now 
 deemed canonical. 
 
 2. The earlier the Fathers are in respect of time, the more fre- 
 quent are their respectful and honourable references to the apo- 
 cryphal, and the less their notice of the canonical scriptures. 
 
 3. It is by no means ascertainable when the Fathers seem to 
 quote passages from the New Testament, that it really was the 
 New Testament which they quoted, and not those earlier and 
 original writings of which the New Testament is only a compi- 
 lation. 
 
 4. Irenceus, in the second century, is the first of the Fathers 
 who, though he has no where given us a professed catalogue of 
 the books of the New Testament, intimates that he had received 
 four gospels as authentic scriptures, the authors of which he de- 
 scribes. 
 
 5. But the same Father still retains the earlier and apocryphal 
 writings, even the most silly of them, as of equal, and even pa- 
 ramount authority to the four gospels, and gives the most silly 
 and contemptible reasons: rt Quare non sint plura nee pauciora 
 quam quatuor Evangelia." — Fabricius, Codex Apoc. page 382. 
 vol. 1. Hamburgh. > 
 
 6. Origen, in the third century, an Egyptian priest distin- 
 guished for folly beyond all names of folly, who died about the 
 year 253, is the first writer who has given us a perfect catalogue 
 of those books which Christians unanimously (or at least the 
 greater part of them) have considered as the genuine and divinely 
 inspired writings of the Apostles. — Introd. to the Critical Study 
 and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, by Thomas Hartwell 
 Home, vol. 1. p. 90.* 
 
 * Though Irenasus, in the second century, is the first who mentions the Evange- 
 lists, and Origen, in the third century, is the first who gives us a catalogue of the 
 books contained in the New Testament, Mosheim's frightful admission stands still 
 before us, in all the horrors of the inferences with which it teems. We have no 
 grounds of assurance that the mere mention of the names of the Evangelists by 
 Irenaeus, or the arbitrary drawing up of a particular catalogue by Origen, were 
 of any authority. It is still, unknown by whom, or where, or when, the canon 
 of the New Testament was settled. But in this absence of positive evidence we 
 nave abundance of negative proof. We know when it was not settled. We know 
 that it was not settled in the time of the Emperor Justinian, nor in the time of 
 Cassiodorius, that is, not at any time before the middle of the sixth century, " by 
 any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged, but Christian peo- 
 ple were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuineness of writings 
 proposed to them as apostolical." — Lardner, vol. 3. pp. 54. 61. And certain it is, 
 that the very earliest Fathers acted precisely upon the principle of our reverend 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 69 
 
 7. But Origen also quotes other and earlier writing's, as of 
 equal or paramount claims to those of the New Testament. 
 
 8. He admits, that if he should only relate those things which 
 had fallen within the compass of his own knowledge, he should 
 furnish infidels with abundant matter of laughter.— Chap. 39, ad- 
 versus Celsum — and 
 
 9. That there are some Arcana Imperii, or secrets in the 
 management, which are not fit to be communicated to the vulgar. 
 — Chap. 8, adversus Celsum. 
 
 10. It is certain, that those whom their adversaries called he- 
 retics, from the very first retained those writings which the 
 others rejected, challenged for them the higher and original au- 
 thority, and rejected the compilations that were afterwards frau- 
 dulently foisted upon the people, by the power of the bishops, 
 who happened to g*et the upper hand in the scramble — and 
 
 11. " It is an undoubted fact, that the heretics were in the 
 right in many points of criticism, where the Fathers accused them 
 of wilful corruption." — Bp. Marsh, vol. 2, p. 362.*— and 
 
 12. Were vastly more intelligent and learned — and 
 
 13. Vastly more candid, conscientious, and heedful of truth. 
 
 14. The inquirer will find, that the supreme and exclusive pre- 
 tensions to divine inspiration and authority now set up for the 
 writings contained in the canonical scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testament in particular, are a surprisingly modern trick — a new 
 shuffle in the game of priestcraft ; for, in reading the writings of 
 the Fathers, even down to the Fathers of the English church, and 
 the Homilies of the Church of England set forth in the reign of 
 Edward the Sixth, and renewed and enlarged by Elizabeth, as 
 proper u to be understanded by the people," (Article 35.) he 
 will find the works even of Socrates and Virgil, quoted as of 
 divine inspiration, and the story of Toby and the Fish, or the 
 Angel and the Dog, expressly ascribed to the Holy Ghost.t 
 
 15. He will find, that a really learned man, the very high and 
 respectable authority which the Rev. Doctor John Pye Smith has 
 
 Doctor; in the very act of charging others with forgery, which they could 
 not prove, they were doing it themselves all the while, which could be proved. 
 
 * Yet IwStj 6i{Skia, "poisonous books" and b'aipoi/iab'i} gijSAia, " devilish books" 
 were the best terms in which the orthodox could speak of writings which the he- 
 retics ascribed to Christ and his Apostles. The anger which they excited, is itself 
 a demonstration that — there was something in them. 
 
 + My copy of the Homilies is the Oxford Clarendon press 8vo. I page from that 
 edition : — 
 
 " The meaning, then, of these sayings in the scriptures, and other holy writings, 
 is, &c. (p. 330.) And St. Paul himself declareth, &c. &c. Even as Saint Mar- 
 tin said, &c. (82.) As the word of God testifieth, &c."— then followeth a pas- 
 sage, neither in the Old or New Testament. (205.) As he saith in Virgil. (251.) 
 As Seneca saith (251.) As saith Saint Bernard." 
 
 AH these authorities, taken together— the homily takes them together, with, 
 " Thus have ye heard declared unto you what God requires by -his word." And 
 again, "The same lesson doth the Holy Ghost teach in sundry places." But 
 not one of those sundry places is to be found in any part of the canonical iscrip- 
 tures. 
 
70 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 referred to on this difficult subject, instead of assuming* the tone 
 and language of Dr. Smith against those who most strenuously 
 opposed him, modestly and generously admits, that, " In order to 
 establish the canon of the New Testament, it is of absolute ne- 
 cessity that the pretences of all other books to canonical autho- 
 rity, be first carefully examined and refuted/' — Jones on the Ca- 
 non, &c. vol. 1. p. 23. 
 
 And, " for my own part, (says he) I declare, with many learned 
 men, that in the whole compass of learning, I know no question 
 involved with more intricacies and perplexing difficulties than 
 this."— Vol. l,p.2. 
 
 How much obliged would this great man have been to Dr. 
 Smith, for relieving* him of his perplexities — by telling* him that 
 the pretences of all other books to canonical authority, were shal- 
 low pretences, and that, dissatisfied as he acknowledges himself to 
 be with the result of his investigations, and apparently over- 
 whelmed with a sense of their intricacies and perplexing difficul- 
 ties, he had " put all question about them at rest for ever." (41.) 
 
 What a pity that he never thought of adopting Dr. Smith's way 
 of putting a question to rest, by at once calling those who made 
 any question of the matter, unprincipled and impudent liars. 
 
 As for the reprinting of Jones' translations, without any acknow- 
 ledgment of the authority from which they were taken, one 
 would think that the evangelical Doctor had laid his charges 
 thick enough upon me, without fathering me with a forgery and 
 disingenuousness, if such he hold it to be, which is purely and 
 entirely Christian. Hone's apocryphal New Testament, as it is 
 called, being as he declared to me, compiled with no intention of 
 discrediting the received scriptures ; and Hone himself being pro- 
 fessedly a firm believer in Divine Revelation.* 
 
 In the works of Toland, the reader will find a much longer 
 catalogue of apocryphal books than are noticed either in the 
 Latin of John Albert Fabricius, or in the English of the fair and 
 ingenuous Mr. Jeremiah Jones. To both their catalogues, as re- 
 ferring only to apocryphal scriptures of inferior claim, I here 
 subjoin a list of the apparent titles of holy books, referred to in 
 the New Testament itself, and therefore, with whatever contempt 
 they may be spoken of, now that they are irrecoverably lost, by 
 those who would not let the New Testament itself speak a lan- 
 guage that did not harmonize with their hypothesis ; they cer- 
 tainly were of higher antiquity, and of better evidence than any 
 which the New Testament contains. 
 
 * Hone, however, might have availed himself of Archbishop Wake's trans- 
 \ ation. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 71 
 
 Imprimis. — Twenty-six Gospels. 
 
 The Gospel of the Kingdom Matt. xxiv. 14. 
 
 The Gospel by Christ himself Luke, xx. 1. 
 
 The Gospel of God 1 Pet. iv. 15. 
 
 The Gospel to the Poor Luke, iv. 18. 
 
 The Gospel to the Dead * 1 Pet. iv. 6. 
 
 The Gospel of Christ 1 Gal. 7. 
 
 Another Gospel, which is not anotherf 1 Gal. 6. 
 
 The Gospel of Peace Ephes. vi. 15. 
 
 The Gospel of Salvation Ephes. i. 13. 
 
 The Gospel of Glory 2 Cor. iv. 4. 
 
 The Gospel to the Samaritans Acts viii. 25. 
 
 The Gospel to Abraham Gal. iii. 8. 
 
 The Gospel of the Blessed God 1 Tim. i. II. 
 
 The Gospel of the Circumcision Gal. ii. 7. 
 
 The Gospel of the Uncircumcision Gal. ii. 7. 
 
 The Gospel which was preached unto every 
 
 creature under heaven Col. i, 23. 
 
 The Gospel which was preached privately 
 
 to them that were of Reputation X Gal. ii. 2. 
 
 The Gospel of Paul Rom. ii. 16. 
 
 The Gospel of Paul, and Silvanus, and Ti- 
 
 motheus 
 
 The Gospel of Jesus Christ Mark, i. 1. 
 
 The Gospel of the Grace of God Acts^ xx. 24. 
 
 The Everlasting Gospel Rev. xiv. 6. 
 
 The Dispensation of the Gospel 1 Cor. ix. 17. 
 
 The Faith of the Gospel Phil. i. 27. 
 
 The Mystery of the Gospel Col. i. 26. 
 
 The Truth of the Gospel Col. i. 5. 
 
 Twelve Words, or Inspired Discourses. 
 
 The Word of the Lord John xii. 48. — Acts, xiii. 4 
 
 The Word of Christ Col. iii. 16. 
 
 The Words of the Lord Jesus. . Acts, xx. 35. 
 
 The Word of God Rom. x, 17. 
 
 The Word of Life Phil. ii. 1 6.— 1 John, i. 1. 
 
 The Word of Truth Col. i. 5. 
 
 The Word spoken by Angels. . . Heb. ii. 2. 
 
 * The gospel to the dead, or of the dead, is unquestionably that which Christ 
 was believed to hare preached to the spirits in prison, and from some legend of 
 which, is derived that most important article in the Apostles' Creed — he descended 
 into hell, the baptismal formulary of which is, that he went down into hell, 
 of which no trace is to be found in either of the four Gospels. 
 
 t Several instances of this rhetorical solecism are to be found in scripture, e.g. 
 Deut. xxviii, 68, Ye shall be sold unto your enemies, for bondmen, and no man 
 shall buy you. Luke, ix. 18. And it came to pass, that when he was all alone, 
 behold his disciples were with him. 
 
 X Query, Was there no trick in this private preaching ? 
 
72 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 The Word of Righteousness. . . . Heb. v. 13. 
 
 The Word of Faith Rom. x. 8. 
 
 The Words of Salvation Acts xiii. 26. 
 
 The Mass and Liturgy of Faith. . 2 Phil. xvii. 30. 
 
 ©wna kcu x«T87*a. Such are the original words — it was good Pro- 
 testantism to translate them into the less tell-tale form of the 
 sacrifice and service of your faith. By a similar manoeuvre 
 of good Protestantism, the English reader is put off the scent of 
 tracing the monkish origin of John xiv. 2. " In my father's house 
 
 are many monasteries, ' ep rrj oucia ts irarpos /as fiopou iroWcu eicriv, by 
 
 finding the word ju^, of which the Latin significations are, man- 
 sio,quies,desidia,mora, monasterium, translated into mansion/which 
 signifies rather a palace, or public residence, than a solitude, 
 which the root from which the word is derived indicates, and 
 which the context supports — J go to prepare a place for you. 
 
 12. The Traditions of the Apostles 2 Thess. iii. 6. 
 
 Five Testimonies. 
 
 The Testimony of God 1 Cor. ii. I. 
 
 The Testimony of Christ 1 Cor. i. 6. 
 
 The Testimony of Jesus Rev. i. 9. 
 
 The Testimony of our Lord 2 Tim. i. 8. 
 
 The Testimony of Paul, and Silvanus, and 
 
 Timotheus 2 Thess. i. 10. 
 
 The reader must not think, that because the subjects of the 
 books were the same, the books were identical. The variation 
 of a syllable, or of the singular for the plural number, in the 
 title of books, is sufficient to indicate, that they had different au- 
 thors : and when we know the fact, that different authors had 
 written on the subject or theme of Christianity, even that u many 
 had taken in hand to set forth," &c. before any one of our re- 
 ceived Gospels can be dated ; not having the names of the au- 
 thors themselves, we can only distinguish one of these from 
 another by those variations which would naturally occur in the 
 different titles, which different authors would give to their differ- 
 ent accounts of the same general story — one calling his te the 
 Testimony of or concerning Christ," another designating his 
 " the Testimony of or concerning Jesus," or a Discourse or Word 
 of the Lord Jesus, or Word or Doctrine of Jesus Christ, &c. &c. 
 
 Sixteen Mysteries.* 
 
 The Mystery of the Kingdom Mark, iv. 11. 
 
 The Mystery of the Gospel Col. i. 26. 
 
 * " Stewards of the mysteries of God," (1 Cor. iv. 1.) is the title which Paul 
 trrogates to himself and his colleagues in imposture — the very identical and una!- 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 7# 
 
 The Mystery of God Col. ii. 2. 
 
 The Mystery of Christ Ephes. iii. 4. 
 
 The Mystery of the Woman Rev. xvii. 7- 
 
 The Mystery of the Seven Stars Rev. i. 20. 
 
 The Mystery which had been hid from ages. Col. i. 26. 
 
 The Mystery of Godliness 1 Tim. iii. 16. 
 
 The Mystery of Iniquity 2 Thess. ii. 7. 
 
 The Mystery of Faith 1 Tim. iii. 9. 
 
 The Wisdom of God in a Mystery 1 Cor. ii. 7- 
 
 The Revelation of the Mystery , , Rom. xvi. 25. 
 
 The Mystery of God's Will Ephes. i. 9. 
 
 The Mystery which had been hid in God . . Ephes. iii. 9. 
 
 The Hidden Wisdom Ephes. ii. 27. 
 
 The Mystery which was kept secret Rom. xvi. 25. 
 
 Five Laws. 
 
 The Royal Law James, ii. 8. 
 
 The Law of the Spirit of Life Rom. viii. 2. 
 
 The Law ordained by Angels Gal. iii. 19. 
 
 The Law of Liberty James, ii. 12. 
 
 The Perfect. Law of Liberty James, i. 25. 
 
 Eight Doctrines. 
 
 The Doctrine of the Apostles Acts, ii. 42. 
 
 The Doctrine According to Godliness 1 Tim. vi. 3. 
 
 The Doctrine of Baptisms Heb. vi. 2. 
 
 The Doctrine of Paul Rom. vi. 17. 
 
 The Doctrine of God our Saviour Tit. ii. 10. 
 
 The sound Doctrine 1 Tim. i. 10. 
 
 The Doctrine of Christ Heb. vi. 1. 
 
 The Doctrine God -. 1 Tim. vi. 1. 
 
 Twenty-two irregular Titles. 
 
 The Record of the Word of God Rev. i. 2. 
 
 The Message 1 John, i. 5. 
 
 tered title of the Pagan Hierophants — privy counsellors of God ! Luke viii. 10. 
 44 Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God ; but to others 
 in parables, that seeing, they might not see ; and hearing, they might not under- 
 stand." Luke, vii. 22. " To the poor the Gospel is preached." 
 
 " The profound respect that was paid to the Greek and Roman mysteries, &c. 
 induced the Christians to give their religion a mystic air, in order to put it upon 
 an equal footing, in point of dignity, with that of the Pagans. — Mosheim, vol. 1, 
 p. 204. They used, in the celebration of the sacrament, several of the terms em- 
 ployed in the heathen mysteries, and adopted the rites and ceremonies of which 
 these renowned mysteries consisted.— Ibid. "He hath instituted and ordained 
 holy mysteries, as pledges of his love." &c. " Consider the dignity of that holy 
 mystery, and the great peril of the unworthy receiving thereof." — Exhortations 
 in Liturgy. If the reader cannot draw the necessary inference, his faith will re- 
 main unshaken. 
 
74 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 The Witness of God 1 John, v. 9. 
 
 The Prophecies which went before on Ti- 
 mothy I Tim. i. IS. 
 
 The Prophecy of Enoch Jude 1 . 
 
 The Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans .... Col. iv. 16. 
 
 A more sure Word of Prophecy. 2 Pet. i. 19. 
 
 The Faith which was once delivered to the 
 
 Saints* ..Jude, 13. 
 
 The Commandments of the Apostles 2 Pet. iii. 2. 
 
 The Scriptures which were able to make 
 
 Timothy wise unto Salvation 2 Tim. iii. 1 5. 
 
 The Scriptures which John wrote, and which 
 
 Diotrephes turned out of the Church. . . . Ephes. iii, 9. 
 
 The History of the Angels Jude, 
 
 The Preaching- of Paul 2 Tim. iv. 17- 
 
 The Preaching- of Jesus Rom xvi. 25. 
 
 The Traditions of the Apostles* 2 Thess. iii. 6. 
 
 The Ministry of Reconciliation. 2 Cor. v. 18. 
 
 The Word of Reconciliation 1 Cor. v. 19. 
 
 The Preaching of the Cross 1 Cor. i. 18. 
 
 The Foolishness of Preaching 1 Cor. i. 21. 
 
 The New Testament* 2 Cor. iii. 6. 
 
 The Foolishness of God 1 Cor. i. 25. 
 
 The Faith of God's Elect Rom. iii. 3. 
 
 It is not contended that all these are titles of books that really 
 existed, though we certainly recognize several of them among 
 the books ascribed to heretics, and several others that are, by the 
 orthodox themselves, admitted to be so ; while many more than 
 are thus brought into prominence, might, by a shrewd observance, 
 be culled out from their engagement in the modern fabric, having 
 even more distinct claims than these to be recognized as the pillars 
 of a ruined edifice. Fabriciusf informs us, that Simon and Cleo- 
 bius, the most ancient of heretics, had composed books, and given 
 them general circulation among Christians, under the name of 
 Christ and his Apostles, but we have no account of what they 
 contained, or what they were. His authority for this admission 
 is derived from the Apostolic Constitutions, while the probabili- 
 ties in their favour are infinitely enhanced by the fact, that such 
 
 * The Traditions of the Apostles is as evidently the title of a book, or collec- 
 tion of apothegms, as the New Testament, and neither phrase could have been 
 used at any time while an apostle was then living — they both belong to the class 
 of modernisms ; as also does Jude iii. " The faith which was once delivered unto 
 the saints." 
 
 t In Constitutionibus Apostolicis, libro 6, cap. 16, dicuntur Simon et Cleobius 
 haeretici antiquissimivenenatos libros sub Christi nomine composuisse ac vulgasse. 
 Quales vero illi fuerint, vel quid continuerint non constat. — Fabricii, torn. 1, p 303. 
 
 The learned are unanimous in ascribing the Apostolic Constitutions to some im- 
 postor, who affixed to them the name of Clemens, Bishop of Rome, in order to 
 procure to them a high degree of authority. — Mosheira. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 75 
 
 titles* as they arrogated for those works are really to be found in 
 the epistolary writings of the New Testament, while a name or 
 phrase of any sort, that would indicate the Gospel according- to 
 Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, is nowhere to be traced. Every 
 one of the communities addressed in those epistles, whether Ro- 
 mans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 
 or Thessalonians, are addressed as being already Christians, 
 "rooted and grounded in the faith, beloved of God, called of Christ 
 Jesus ; in every thing enriched, in all utterance, and in all know- 
 ledge/' &c. &c. The Galatians, in particular, were so certainly 
 possessed of the proper and " genuine gospel/' that the Apostle, 
 in the truly apostolic spirit, hesitates not to declare, that if an 
 angel from heaven should preach any other Gospel, he might be 
 cursed. (Gal. i. 8.) Yet nothing is more certain than that, ac- 
 cording to the tables of Dr. Lardner, this Epistle was written at 
 least eleven years before any one of our four Gospels ; and accord- 
 ing to the Epistle itself, the Gospel which the Galatians had 
 received, was not only not the same in substance, but not in the 
 least degree resembling the contents of any one of our Gospels, 
 So that the apostolic curse lights on the believers and preachers 
 of the Gospels that have come down to us. 
 
 Nothing, indeed, can exceed the inveteracy of the orthodox 
 against the heretics and their books, and the examples of bitter 
 cursings and revilings which the good shepherds set to the lambs 
 of the Gospel. The Presbyter, Timothy, admonishes his Chris- 
 tian flock thatt "those writers, hated by God, had new-fangled 
 to themselves devilish books," (though these happen to be the 
 books, whose titles can be traced in the Epistles of the New 
 Testament, where the orthodox Gospels cannot) and J which 
 they wrote themselves, with a design of making it appear that 
 Christ's incarnation had taken place only in a vision, but not in 
 reality : which design, as it happens, really does appear, in the 
 most general tenor and overt sense of every one of those epistles. 
 But that these are false — " § Hear the Apostolicals, take ye care, 
 that ye receive not the books which have, under our name, been 
 established among the ungodly, for you ought not to pay atten- 
 tion to the names of the apostles, but to the nature of the things 
 they treat of, and to the sense, which is not to be set aside." 
 
 * Such titles, e. g, — The Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans.— The Mystery. — 
 The Living Gospel. — The Treasury of Life. 
 
 + Oi OeoffvyeTsr Kaivorojx8(nv eaiToIs - Sai/xoviciSri 6t@\ia. 
 
 % A crvvera£av oi avroi, freXovres- 56kt](Tiv airo(pr]vai rr)V ffapKwffiv avrS kcu e'/c ev 
 a\7j,^€ia — ori 6> ravra tyevSrj gktiv, anse rwv anoTroXiKav. 'Opare to err bvofiari 
 })f.iM>v irag acre€wu Kparvv^vra f3ifi\la, firi irapadexecr^ai. Ov yap rots- ovo^acn 
 XPV vfiaT irpoffex^tp rwv airocTToKuv aWa rrj (pvffei rwv npayfiarav, Kat yvwfirj ttj 
 aSiatTTpoipcp. — Fabricius, torn. 1. p. 139. 
 
 § Which Apostolical Constitutions are an authority known and admitted on all 
 hands, to be a forgery. 
 
 END OF SECTION X. 
 
76 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 SECTION XI. 
 
 PROOFS THAT NO SUCH PERSON AS JESUS CHRIST EVER EX- 
 ISTED, AND OF THE IMPOSTURE OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Smith opens his eleventh section, with a 
 quotation, at length, of the third and fourth propositions of 
 the Manifesto, for which I thank him ; and immediately calls 
 those propositions " a mass of impudence and misrepresen- 
 tation so aggravated, that language has no name to designate 
 it;" for which I do not thank him. But as all this is no 
 answer to the arguments indicated in the Manifesto, having had 
 quite enough of what the Doctor has to say for the benefit of 
 the Manifesto Writer, let us look to what he offers for the instruc- 
 tion of his readers — " That the miraculous facts recorded in the 
 Gospel history did really occur ; and that the occasions of their 
 being wrought were worthy of such an interposition of divine 
 omnipotence, has been shown with an abundance of evidence, by 
 numerous and well known authors, to whom access is easy. 
 Within the narrow limits of these pages it is impossible to do 
 justice to the argument." (p. 43.) 
 
 Is it indeed ? but could no allowance be made for the difficulty 
 of doing justice to the contrary argument within the limits of one 
 single sentence, on a page that had to exhibit ten times that ar- 
 gument ? 
 
 But why might not the Doctor just have given the names of a 
 few of those numerous and well known authors ; for, though they 
 may be numerous and well known to him, and herein he shows 
 the greatest proof of his extent of reading and research, to be 
 found in his whole treatise : yet it happens that I, and I guess 
 some hundreds who have had as good an education in all other 
 respects as his scurrilous reverence, never heard so much as the 
 name of any one of those authors. It certainly could not have 
 been at any time within the last thousand years, that those au- 
 thors lived who were in possession of abundant evidence of what 
 had happened seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago ; and 
 what is more, it certainly could not have been on this earth that 
 any authors could have lived, competent to teach us what was 
 worthy of divine omnipotence. Those who might pretend to 
 do so may be fit tenants for Bedlam Hospital, or fit hearers of the 
 sanctified impieties of Dr. John Pye Smith. But neither Grotius, 
 Doddridge, Paley, or Lardner would have been pleased to have 
 such a pretence ascribed to them. 
 
 2. His second remark is a recurrence to abuse, without an at- 
 tempt to refute the propositions. 
 
 3. His third is of the same character, except inasmuch as his 
 assertion that " the pretence of reference to the learned Chris- 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 77 
 
 tian advocates Mosheim and Jones, is a most infamous piece 
 °ff or g er y" — would, with the abuse, convey also a most formid- 
 able argument, were the assertion not itself a most palpable — 
 Reverend John Pye Smith, Doctor of Divinity. The reader 
 has only to turn his eye to the Manifesto, and he will see, that 
 under these propositions, no reference at all is made either to 
 Mosheim or Jones. 
 
 The last reference made to Mosheim, and the only reference 
 made to Jones, is by the letter (d) in the second proposition, to 
 prove, that there are express admissions of ecclesiastical histo- 
 rians, of their utter inability to shew when, or where, or by 
 whom, this collection of writings (scil. the New Testament), 
 was first made. If these admissions shall not be found to the 
 full scope and utmost sense, spirit, letter, effect, and intention — 
 just as I have purported to refer to them — to wit, those admis- 
 sions purporting to be from Mosheim, even in the first volume of 
 his Ecclesiastical History. — Cent. l,part 2, chap. 2, sect. 16, vol. 1, 
 p. 108. London 1811, 8vo. edition. And those admissions pur- 
 porting- to be from Jones, even in his work on the Canonical 
 Authority of the New Testament, vol. 1, pp. 2, 4, 23, 41, 173. 
 Then is, Doctor John Pye Smith a scholar, whose learning* is 
 respectable, and a gentleman whose word may be depended on ; 
 and I, a guilty forger. In the other alternative, I shall only 
 claim that the reader will retain the very highest possible respect 
 for Doctor John Pye Smith, that may be compatible with a con- 
 viction, that he has said of me the thing- that was untrue — that 
 when his charity ran stark staring wild, his veracity ran after it — 
 that he has used abuse instead of argument, and invention instead 
 of truth. 
 
 4. His 4th remark, page 44, continued to the end of the section, 
 p. 53, presents us with the best piece of writing and of reasoning 
 in his whole essay. Here, for a while, suspending the operation 
 of those malignant and intolerant feelings, which throughout the 
 rest of his composition, have so evidently debilitated his under- 
 standing, destroyed his respect for truth, and obtunded his per- 
 ception of reason, — the reader is relieved, by finding that in a 
 lucid interval, the Doctor still exhibits the vestiges of mind 
 enough to fill his ministerial and academic avocations, no doubt 
 with sufficient respectability. He can copy the everlastingly ban- 
 died passages of Tacitus and Pliny, and string together the 
 thousand times repeated sophisms upon these passages, which 
 thousands have strung together before him. Let him have 
 his due praise, this is really learning at Homerton College. 
 The translation of Tacitus and Pliny — if one were sure that it 
 were the boy's own, is fair enough for a boy of the first form ; 
 and as this engagement keeps our author, at least for eight or 
 nine pages from the use of foul language, it is highly creditable 
 to him. 
 
78 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 The argument here assumes a general character, and may 
 now be met on fair and general grounds. It shall be so : every 
 concession, that historical evidence or even historical probability 
 can challenge, we will yield, grant, offer, not only with willing- 
 ness, but with alacrity, not only consenting to all such advan- 
 tages to the Christian argument, as Christians themselves may 
 choose to insist on : but lending the disinterested help of our own 
 historical researches, and throwing over to them whatever we 
 may find, and they may have overlooked, that can by any infe- 
 rence seem likely to serve their argument. We wish not an 
 easy victory : the harder they drive on us, the better they please 
 us,and the acrimony of their style, is only grievous to us, because 
 it weakens and breaks off the points of their argument. We 
 serve the cause of truth only ; and if truth be not on our side, we 
 wish to surrender, and long to be defeated. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF TACITUS. 
 
 Granted then be the genuineness of the passage, so often ad- 
 duced from the 44th section of the 15th books of the Annals of 
 Tacitus. Granted, I pray observe! not because it is whollv 
 incontestible, or that we have not good and tenable ground for 
 a brave conflict against its claims: but, because it is, after all, 
 fully and fairly probable, and may be, all and every thing that it 
 purports to be. But what is that purport? 
 
 It is the testimony of one of the wisest and best of men that 
 ever lived in all the tide of time — one of the most philosophical 
 lovers of truth — most diligent investigators of the truth he loved, 
 and most faithful historians of the truth he found. He flourished 
 in the beginning of the second century, and it may be admitted 
 wrote this famous passage, about the year which Dr. Lardner 
 assigns to it, A.D. 110. Yet being such a man, and living so near, 
 or as much nearer as you please to the source and fountain-head 
 of all that could be known, or by his diligent inquiry, found 
 out, of Christ, of Christians, and of Christianity ; he found no 
 more and has recorded no more than established his own con- 
 viction : and may establish ours, that the Christians were pro- 
 digiously wicked men " HUMANI GENERIS ODIO CONVICTI — PER 
 
 FLAGITIA INVISl" "SONTES ET NOVISSIMA EXEMPLA MERITl" 
 
 and Christianity — an " exitiabilis superstitio" — a damnable 
 superstition. If evidence in favour of a divine revelation ever 
 existed, why was it withheld from Tacitus ? If divine inspiration 
 ever guided the pen of man, why was it wanting here ? 
 
 The Letter of Pliny, (the 97th of his 10th book) referred 
 to in the index of my Dutch edition — as " Christianorum res in 
 quantum Plinio innotuere." The affairs of Christians (as far as 
 they were known to Pliny), of course is of the reign of Trajan, 
 to whom it was written, and is by Dr. Lardner supposed to have 
 been composed, about A.D. 107 — it is the only undoubted docu- 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 79 
 
 merit of Christianity in the time of that writer. That writer too, 
 is on all hands admitted to be, one of the most wise and virtuous 
 of mankind — a man of whom it would cost us the most laborious 
 effort of imagination to conceive that he would for any considera- 
 tion have dissimulated or suppressed any truth that ever came to 
 his knowledge. He had diligently inquired into what the doc- 
 trines of the Christians then were — but what was the result of 
 his inquiry ? There was the name indeed of Christ and of Chris- 
 tians, but not a precept, not a doctrine, not a circumstance, not 
 an iota of Christianity. " Nihil aliud inveni quam super- 
 stitionem pravam et immodicam" — are his words. " / have 
 found nothing else, but a wicked and excessive super- 
 stition" — This is the result of an inquiry into the evidences of 
 the Christian religion, made by the most candid, the most liberal, 
 the most learned, the most virtuous, the most able inquirer, that 
 could be conceived to have existed in all the world, and he, prose- 
 cuting- that inquiry, seventeen hundred years nearer to the original 
 sources of information than any man now in the world. 
 
 If it be objected, that being a Pagan, he had less respect for 
 truth, or needed the aid of divine revelation to sooth the asperi- 
 ties of unsanctified nature, to soften his temper, to polish his 
 manners, to control his passions, to give generosity to his senti- 
 ments and courtesy to his language ; only let the reader compare 
 the style and tone of his epistolary correspondence throughout, 
 with the specimen Dr. John Pye Smith presents of the advan- 
 tages which Christianity gives to a Doctor of Divinity. In the 
 judgment of Midas, the pipe of Pan was more melodious than 
 Apollo's lute ; and an evangelical auditory may perhaps find a 
 style more in harmony with their own feelings in the holy ruffi- 
 anism of the Christian Priest, than in the scrupulous veracity and 
 tranquil elegance of the Pagan historian. 
 
 A Pagan, for instance, (and the Writer of the Manifesto pro- 
 fesses no higher character,) would start back, not like the 
 Christian, indeed, with execrations and curses ; (for bitter revi- 
 lings really are curses;) but with surprise at the finesse, the 
 ruse, the palpable argumentative swindle, that a man who 
 had ever maintained the divinity of Christ, and taught his con- 
 gregation that that mystical being had been born without having- 
 a human father ; that he raised the dead to life ; that he, him- 
 self, survived, after having been dead, and in that body which 
 had really died ; had visibly ascended in, and through the visible 
 heavens ;" should turn round on his choused and cheated 
 hearers ; and tell them that the Jews and heathens, who never 
 once, in any way, nor in the remotest inuendo had hinted at any 
 one of those events, had told " all the primary, facts on 
 which that religion rests." 
 
 Good God ! and isn't the resurrection of Christ a primary 
 fact ? Rests not his religion upon that ? Can Christianity be true 
 
$0 "VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 or true in any part or iota of it ; if that be false % So judged 
 not the Apostles, when in their first assembly they maintained 
 that the whole sum and effect of the divine commission whicl 
 they pretended, had constituted them Apostles, for no othe 
 purpose than that they should be '*' witnesses of his resurrection/ 
 (Acts i. 22.) So judged not, so argued not the apostolic chief o 
 sinners, inhiscelebratedl5thtotheCorinthians; wherein he makes 
 the resurrection of Christ to be not merely a primary fact; but thi 
 primary fact ; and not merely the primary fact, but the totum, the 
 whole, the every-thing ; the sine qua non of Christianity. " It 
 Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also 
 vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God." (15.) 
 And turns it up at last, that a man will have the impudence to 
 call himself a Christian minister, who maintains that Jews and 
 Pagans have borne witness to all the primary facts ; and that, if 
 the New Testament and all other Christian writings were 
 blotted out of existence ; the writings of decided enemies to the 
 Christian religion, would be sufficient to establish all the primary 
 facts on which that religion rests ? 
 
 What is this, in other words, but to fight desperate for Chris- 
 tianity, to throw it over for dog's meat, and give it up entirely. 
 For who may not be as good a Christian as Dr. Smith, who shall 
 just believe as much of Christianity, and no more, than what 
 Heathens and Jews have recorded ? If the Doctor has found 
 any one, Heathen or Jew, who has recorded any one of the pri- 
 mary facts of Christianity, his researches may well be reckoned 
 to put the labours of a Lardner to the blush. 
 
 But what should you say, reader, to the logic of a reasoner, 
 who finding from various * unquestionably authentic writings" 
 of persons who had no love of the marvellous, and no intention 
 to countenance or extend the belief of improbable stories, that 
 there really was, or might have been, such a person as Baron 
 Munchausen ; " that he lived," and when his life was arrived at 
 its termination, " he died, at the precise period, which the 
 history (of his wonderful adventures) asserts ; finding the extensive 
 pre valency of his (notions;) at the time, and in the countries which 
 are stated in his (wonderful history) ,• finding also its reception, by 
 immense multitudes of people, who had the complete means of 
 ascertaining whether the sensible facts on which the (wonderful) 
 history was founded, had actually taken place or not," &c. &c. 
 &c. (p, 44) ; what should you say to the logic, that inferred, that 
 here were all the primary facts, and here the sufficient evidence to 
 establish the most true and wonderful adventures of the 
 renowned Baron Munchausen ? 
 
 Such is the reasoning that would steal an unintended testi- 
 mony to falsehood and fable, from the pens of historians and 
 philosophers. Change but the names that may be changed, 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 81 
 
 (without altering- the merits of the arguments) ; suppose it 
 urged in earnest, and not in banter; and urged with the utmost 
 rancour of malice, the deepest cunning of conscious sophistry ; 
 the most reckless disregard of truth, and the foulest virulence of 
 low-bred scurrW-sl ang ; and 'tis the reasoning of his reverence, 
 the evangelical Dr. John Pye Smith. 
 
 " 5. These memorials of antiquity, (continues our author,) will 
 furnish to the reader ample matter for useful reflection." (p. 50.) 
 
 They will, indeed ; but not, perhaps, to the conclusion which 
 the Doctor would prescribe. His slander on the characters of 
 those " philosophical, elegant, and self-complacent Romans," is 
 a complete vindication of any other object of his calumnies. If 
 reason, humanity, and justice, were, in his judgment, violated by 
 such men as Pliny and Tacitus, it must be his good word, and his 
 favourable regard, that can alone prove injurious to the character 
 of any man. Should the present age, or any other, but assign 
 to me no worse than the reputation of the most equivocal parts 
 of the characters of Tacitus and Pliny, it should leave me room 
 for more than the whole stock of Christian virtues put together. 
 Jt w r ould be a blasphemy against moral righteousness, to attempt 
 a comparison of the character of the best Christian that ever 
 breathed, with that of the Propraetor of Bithynia. 
 
 Would the Proprsetor of Bithynia, think ye, have dishonoured 
 his own conscience, by attempting to prop up the religion of Pa- 
 ganism, with so gross a ruse, as to say, that " immense multitudes 
 had the complete means of ascertaining the fact," (p. 44.) such 
 fact say, as that, of the resurrection of Christ ; knowing that no 
 one individual on the face of the earth had any means of ascer- 
 taining that fact ; and that of that pretended fact, there abso- 
 lutely was no witness at all ? 
 
 Would Pliny, think ye, have reasoned with so insolent a con- 
 tempt of reason, as to ask the question ; " If any could have 
 divulged a secret, injurious to the cause, would they not have 
 done so?" When he knew that the cause was too contemptible 
 to be injured by any thing ; and that, if there were any secret in 
 the business, that secret was always kept from the knowledge of 
 the people, Matt. xiii. 11 ; Luke viii. 10. 
 
 The reader will now see, (immaterial as the question, Whether 
 such a person as Jesus Christ ever existed, in itself may be,) how 
 far from admissions, and much further still from proofs of his 
 existence, are what Celsus, Porphyry, Bierocles, Julian, Tacitus, 
 or the Jews, might say about him ; and without saying which, 
 they could absolutely not speak of him at all. Shakespear, we 
 know, speaks of John-a-Dreams. We have all heard of Will- 
 o'the-Wisp, and Jack-a-lanthorn, Tom-Thumb, and Jack the 
 Giant-killer ; and if the day were not too far gone by for his- 
 tories of these evangelical personages to be foisted in the belief 
 of the people, and their belief to be rendered a source of enor- 
 
 G 
 
82 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 mous wealth, and the means of measureless extortion to the 
 cunning- hierarchy who were really in the guilty secret, and 
 who endeavoured to make it respectable, by associating" it with 
 all those moral proprieties which man's nature cannot but love in 
 whatever associations they are found ; so that the people might 
 be brought to believe, that it was Will-o'-the-Wisp had taught 
 them to be just, honest, and sober, to pay their debts, to tell no 
 lies, and to do as they would be done unto : How, I ask, would 
 it be possible for the Celsuses, Porphyrys, and Hierocles, the 
 good and virtuous few, to set about reclaiming the people from 
 so gross a delusion, without- soothing and conciliating their at- 
 tention, by recognizing what was good, and admitting what was 
 probable in their conceit. 
 
 As one should say to the fanatic, who would not be civil to 
 one, if one did'nt say it, " Ah, well-a-day, be as just, sober, 
 honest, and humane, as Will-o'-the-Wisp has taught you to be ; 
 and Will-o'-the-Wisp was, unquestionably, a very good fellow 
 for teaching you so." Would this be admitting his real exist- 
 ence, would this be any proof that the person who so argued, 
 was not aware that Will-o'-the-Wisp was a phantom ; and 
 like Jesus Christ had really no prototype in nature, but was 
 merely an ens of conceit, a figment of delirium, proceeding from 
 the heat-oppressed brain ! 
 
 (i The poet's eye," says a poet, who dared not have spoken 
 what he meant more plainly, 
 
 In a fine frenzy rolling, 
 Doth glance from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth. 
 And as imagination bodies forth 
 The form of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name. 
 
 There is no difficulty then, in accounting for the wildest 
 romance that ever entered into a romantic brain's invention, 
 coming to quadrate, synchronize, and dovetail into many pro- 
 bable and real circumstances of time and place. Nay, you 
 could not tell a tale, if you were to try, without premising or 
 supposing a sort of " Once upon a time," or in some such country 
 as had somewhere a real existence, and whose history would 
 furnish the scaffolding for the baseless fabric of your vision. 
 'Tis hardly more a rule, than a necessity of invention laid down 
 by Horace, 
 
 " Aut verum aut sibi convenientia finge." 
 
 (i Either stick to the truth, or feign such things as stick together 
 with themselves." The problem then is not how, or wherefore, 
 the hero of a romance should come to be supposed to have lived 
 at such a time and place, or how a thousand coincident chances, 
 events, and circumstances, which were undeniably true, should 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 83 
 
 happen to concur and fall in with the thread of his fabulous 
 history ; especially when all the learning and ingenuity of the 
 world had been for many hundred years employed in seeking 
 for, exaggerating- or fabricating- such incidental concurrences ; but 
 the difficulty is, to account for the how-it-should-have-been, and, 
 wherefore, if the hero in question had a real existence, and had 
 been any such a personage as he is assumed to be, that we should 
 not have had more than evidence of this sort ; that philosophers 
 should not have believed, that historians should not have re- 
 corded, that the whole world should not have rung with the fame 
 of his exploits ; and, as the order of nature was suspended to 
 attest his divinity, that the order of nature should not have been 
 suspended to confirm the attestation. 
 
 The admissions of the enemies of Christianity would yet have 
 weight with them, if we had but sufficient evidence that those 
 enemies had fair play, and were not constrained by the necessity 
 of the times, to temporize, and soothe down the ferocious into- 
 lerance and sanguinary impatience of Christians, as wise men are 
 sometimes obliged to do congee to madmen ; or, if we had 
 not evidence, in characters of blood, to the direct contrary. We 
 should, in all probability, have never have heard of the objections 
 of Celsus j had Celsus been allowed to go the length he would 
 have done ; or had not his writings saved themselves from the 
 flames to which others were consigned, by temporizing and con- 
 ceding some points, which Origen thought might be turned to 
 good telling on the Christian side of the argument. And is not 
 Doctor Smith himself conscious of the spirit of Origen's policy ? 
 If he can conflict with the arguments here offered to him, he may 
 endure that his congregation should hear of them ; but if nothing- 
 be conceded, if not an inch of ground be yielded, why of course, 
 and of sound discretion too, he'll do his best, that they shall 
 know nothing about them. 
 
 The whole world's history, and that of our own country most 
 especially, evinces how slowly and gradually even the outworks 
 of Christianity have been yielded — and with what a pertinacious 
 and sanguinary obstinacy not only the essentials, but the outermost 
 fringes of Christianity have been maintained. Not two hundred 
 years is it, since Dr. Leighton had his nose slit, his ears cut off, 
 and eleven years imprisonment, for only writing a book against the 
 Jure-Di vino-ship of Bishops. Not twenty years is it, that Unitarian 
 Christians have been safe from penal statutes : and God have 
 mercy on them yet, if Dr. John Pye Smith's voice or wish could 
 affect the legislation of England. And here am I the tenant of 
 a gaol, at this moment, because my writings have not made con- 
 cessions enough to Christianity to have been pleaded in mitiga- 
 tion of punishment — because my orations afforded no 'vantage 
 ground to the tact of Christian sophistry. 
 
 But, as in every individual, and most strikingly perhaps in 
 
 G 2 
 
84 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 Dr. John Pye, so in every country we find, the greater the preva- 
 lence of the Christian religion, the more rude the manners, and 
 the more cruel the dispositions of its professors. So we find that 
 it is in the foul-mouthed Irving's country, and in those pure days 
 of genuine relig-ion among" his ancestors, which he is ever so de- 
 lighted to recall ; — " In Scotland a greater refinement of cruelty 
 in inflicting* torture was adopted, than in any other country. 
 There the innocent relations of a suspected criminal were tor- 
 tured in his presence, to wring- from him, by the sight of their 
 sufferings, what no corporal pain inflicted upon himself could ex- 
 tort from him. Thus, in 1596, a woman, being* accused of witch- 
 craft, her husband, her son, and a daughter, a child of seven years 
 old, were all tortured in her presence, to make her confess." — 
 See Amott's Crim. Trials, p. 368, quoted in Ai kin's Life of King 
 James the 1st, vol. 2, p. 167. 
 
 Pretty fellows, these good Christians, to make us believe that 
 a Divine Revelation has done something for their morals, that a 
 Tacitus or a Pliny could have needed. 
 
 6. The it£V jm^Ul ^5D Seper Toldoth Jeschu, which the 
 Doctor introduces as his climax of authorities in admission of 
 the real existence of Jesus Christ, and the reality of his miracles, 
 instead of making " a more than this" (p. 53.) for his argument, 
 really makes less for it. It is an absolute deduction, and throws 
 an air of suspicion over his whole purpose ; for how can any ad- 
 mission of the real existence of Christ and of his miracles be in- 
 ferred, or avail, from a palpably furtive document, of which the 
 Doctor says, that it was written in the middle ages. 
 
 " I am of opinion," says the shrewd and cautious Lardner, 
 " that Christianity does not need such a testimony, nor such wit- 
 nesses. It is b. modern work, written in the fourteenth or fifteenth 
 century, and is throughout, from the beginning to the end, bur- 
 lesque and falsehood." — Lardner, vol. 3, p. 574. What a learned 
 wiseacre is the Rev. Dr. Smith, who quotes as his more than every 
 thing else and his crowning proof of the real existence of Jesus, 
 the admission of a writer, whose admissions were not only not 
 true, but never written with an intent to pass for truth. 
 
 7. And " here, then/' concludes the Doctor, " here is a body of 
 evidence, far more than sufficient to prove that the persons of 
 whom the scriptures of the New Testament treat, really did 
 exist, and that the events which they relate really did take 
 place (as a consequence, I suppose, of their existence) — " Give 
 him an inch!" the proverb is somewhat musty! 
 
 But why this " far more than sufficient" inopem me copia fecit ! 
 Surely sufficient would most probably be sufficient, but when 
 you give us far more than sufficient, you are palpably cram- 
 ming us. 
 
 end of section XI. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO, 85 
 
 SECTION XII. 
 
 THAT THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES ARE DERIVED FROM THE IDOLA- 
 TROUS FICTIONS OF INDIA, EGYPT, GREECE, AND ITALY. 
 
 Here the reverend Doctor's Christian indignation loses all bounds 
 — 'tis evident that there is something* in the Manifesto that stings 
 him into madness. Its writer, he says, " seems determined to 
 post himself as the most false of all that have ever disgraced the 
 use of language.'' Alas ! that the reverend Doctor should seem 
 so determined to dispute that pre-eminence ! I believe it would 
 cost a cleverer man than I am, a struggle to win the paragonship 
 of lying from the professor of Homerton College. For instance, 
 were an ordinary hatchet- thrower to do his best in this way, he 
 could only tell his lie off and off, and the first fool he met with 
 would find it out, and there's an end on't ; but the Doctor — the 
 Reverend Doctor of Divinity, beats all the Bachelors and Masters 
 of Arts in Europe ; and in the very act, and by the very means 
 of making your hair stand at end with horror at the charges he 
 brings against others, is doing* it himself all the while : his way 
 being to set Gawkey's mouth open with wonderment at the ac- 
 cusation that he alleges, and then down his throat, in a trice s 
 goes — "far more than sufficient." 
 
 For your life, you would have thought that he was honest . 
 
 END OF SECTION XII. 
 
 SECTION XIII, 
 
 THE INDIAN JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 1." Some, many, or all of these events (scil. the events related in 
 the New Testament) had been previously related of the gods and 
 goddesses of Greece and Rome, and more especially of the In- 
 dian idol, Chrishna, 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." Such are the words of the fourth proposition of the 
 Manifesto. Now, how are they answered by the Reverend D.D.? 
 Why, in the perfectly evangelical way of doing it. They are at 
 once, without any shadow of attempted disproof, rudely and d's- 
 gustingly pronounced — " an impudent falsehood ;" even in the 
 very sentence which the Doctor has cast on purpose to carry 
 down a falsehood of such transcendent impudence, as nothing but 
 the hurly-burly of ruffianly abuse could have screened from our 
 detection, and sheltered from our scorn, 
 
86 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 2. The numerous and well-known school-books, entitled Pan- 
 theons, Mythological Dictionaries, &c. do not contain refutations, 
 much less ample ones, of the proposition of the Manifesto ; nor 
 is it possible that they could have done so, they themselves being 
 of earlier date than the Manifesto. Nor do they affect to refute 
 the sense and purport of the proposition, as it may have been 
 previously maintained by other writers. Nor was it compatible 
 with any purpose of those dictionaries, that they should have 
 done so ; nor would they have been admitted into schools, or have 
 been proper for the use of schools if they had, as being rendered 
 thereby books of polemical controversy, rather than of classical 
 instruction. Moreover, being generally edited by clergymen, or 
 persons directly concerned and interested in the universal cheat 
 of " training up a child in the way he should go" — they have all 
 of them the most direct and constraining interest to oblige them 
 laboriously and vigilantly to stand off and forbear, even from the 
 outermost purlieus of such a refutation. To have refuted, would 
 have been to have suggested the resemblance. And as the modest 
 asterisks in the Delphin classics, indicating the passages which 
 are too indecent and obscene to be translated, always serve to 
 direct the boy's eye to the very passages which he is sure to un- 
 derstand better than any other part of the book, even because his 
 research is provoked by the effort made to elude it : so an at- 
 tempt in any way to have shown that there was no resemblance 
 between the Apollo of mythology and the Jesus of the New Tes- 
 tament, the Bacchus and the Moses, would have shown more 
 than the reverend editors could wish to be seen. It was to their 
 purpose to put forth so much of the Pagan mythology as 
 was necessary to enable the stupid lout to make some hold-toge- 
 ther sense of the text of Pagan authors, but nothing was further 
 from their purpose than to play at asterisks with him on such a 
 delicate subject, or to have startled him into perceptions, suspi- 
 cions, and investigations, that would have been fatal at once to 
 his loutishness and to his faith. 
 
 The Doctor's assertion then, is not only not true, as he knows 
 himself, but not within the measures of a probability of being 
 true, as any body else may know. 
 
 3. And to tell his readers, as he does, " that if they receive the 
 proposition of the Manifesto as true (which really is so) they must 
 have sacrificed reason and conscience to the darkest depravity of 
 soul," (p. 54.) only shews that he must have calculated upon 
 finding readers as patient of being insulted, as they were easy to 
 be deceived. He offers them blustering for their understandings, 
 and defiance for their feelings. His style betrays his habits, his 
 language tanks of his shop. He is used to address a congrega- 
 tion for whom any thing will do— a congregation delighted to 
 be deceived, and charmed to be abused. Go it, Doctor ! tell 'em, 
 he that believeth not may be damned — tell "em what " hell-de- 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO 87 
 
 serving- sinners" they are — tell 'em that it's of the Lord's mercy 
 only that they are not consumed — tell 'em that they are all as an 
 unclean thing", and all their righteousnesses are as filthy rag's ! 
 Give it 'em — lay it on. In one word, for every thing- that is suit- 
 able, both for them and you — gospel them. Those who will read 
 both sides of the question, will not endure to be charg-ed with 
 depravity of soul, whatever their decision may be. 
 
 4. Chrishna. So is spelt the name of the favourite g-od of the 
 Indian women, in the Manifesto ; but Krishna, or Krishnu, is the 
 wayin which the Doctor chooses to spell it; charging the Manifesto 
 Writer with " having altered the spelling of the word, apparently 
 with the base design of giving it a closer resemblance tothe sacred 
 name of our Divine Lord." (p. 54.) Oh! for the sacred name of 
 our Divine Lord ! But here again with all this cant, this severe 
 charge of " altering with a base design/' is brought against the 
 Writer of the Manifesto, like all the other charges in this scurri- 
 lous answer, to cheat and bilk the reader out of the exercise of 
 his impartiality, and to make his own falsehood slip down unper- 
 ceived in the torrent of his invective against another. For, all 
 the alteration in the spelling of the name, and consequently all 
 the baseness and design of that altered spelling, happens to be 
 his own. And his apparent design, too apparent, indeed, to be 
 concealed, was, by altering the spelling, which he has done, and 
 I have not, to suppress and keep back from observance, the close 
 resemblance of the names of the idol of the Indian, and the Di- 
 vine Lord of the European women. 
 
 The spelling of the name in the Asiatic Researches, by Sir 
 William Jones (the fountain-head, and first and highest authority, 
 from which I quoted it) will be found to be, not Krishna, nor 
 Krishnu, but as it is exhibited in the Manifesto, Chrishna. Sir 
 William Jones is, on all hands, admitted to be the most compe- 
 tently informed, and most learned investigator of this recondite 
 subject ; and in addition to his being on all hands admitted to be 
 one of the most accomplished philologers and prodigies of intel- 
 lectual acquirements that ever breathed, if not the facile prin- 
 ceps of the whole world, in these respects ; he was also a sincere 
 and ardent Christian. He expressly avows and maintains his con- 
 viction as a Christian, in so many words—" the adamantine pillars 
 of our faith cannot be shaken by any investigation of Heathen 
 Mythology." And in another passage — " I, who cannot help 
 believing the divinity of the Messiah, from the undisputed anti- 
 quity, and manifest completion of many prophecies, &c. am obliged, 
 of course, to believe the sanctity of the venerable books to which 
 that sacred person refers." — Vol. 1, p. 233. 
 
 Yet the words of Sir William Jones, this unquestionably first, 
 highest and best authority on the subject, are — and I pray the 
 readers observance, that I give even his spelling of the words ; 
 
88 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 " That the name of Chrishna, and the general outline of his 
 story, were long- anterior to the birth of our Saviour, and probably 
 to the time of Homer, we know very certainly." — Asiatic 
 researches, Vol. I. p. 259. I ask the reader then to direct his re- 
 searches to those researches ! I ask the Christian to say, whether 
 he can suspect, that this Christian writer would have spelt the 
 name Chrishna rather than Krishna, or Krishna, with a base 
 design of producing' an apparent resemblance where there was 
 none in reality ? I ask his candour to decide, whether this un- 
 questionably sincere Christian would have spelt the name as he 
 has done, without the most constraining evidence to determine 
 his mind, that that was the essentially correct spelling? and 
 whether, after his long residence in India, and laborious studies 
 into the Asiatic Mythologies, he would have spoken so positively, 
 without having* grounds and reasons for doing so, that are not to 
 be yielded to the arbitrary conjectures or impudent denials of 
 subsequent critics, of interested, crafty quibblers, who want to 
 get out of it now at any rate, and who smarting under the irre- 
 sistible inferences which we have drawn ; wish their own man at 
 the devil, for having given us such good ground for our inferences; 
 and now forsooth, that the spell tells against them, they won't 
 give their prodigy of learning credit for knowing how to spell. 
 Mr. Beard, the Unitarian opponent of my forty-fourth oration, in 
 which I first put forth this important argument, had consulted the 
 authority. He presumed not to deny that the original name of the 
 Indian idol was indeed spelt Chrishna, but denies the resem- 
 blance. It was too bold a stroke, with the text of Sir William 
 Jones before him, to let down his sledge hammer upon Chrishna 
 — so he claps the Latin termination us, to Christ, making it 
 Christus, and thus gets a syllable further off from the sus- 
 picious resemblance. " In the names Chrishna and Christus, 
 there are four letters similar, and six dissimilar" says he, " and 
 therefore the two words are not identical/' See his 3d Letter to 
 the Rev. Robert Taylor, p. 85. Reader ! see what Latin can do ! 
 though by the bye it seems to spoil a man's arithmetic. Six and 
 four used to be ten, but an* if a man had not more learning than 
 wit, he could count but eight in Christus, even with its Latin 
 termination. But, take away the Asiatic termination na from 
 Chrishna, and let Christ stand in plain English, and Chrish and 
 Christ are like enough to pass, the one for the ghost of the 
 other. But, Oh no 3 is the cry-out of the Evangelical mystics, 
 " Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves should never 
 tremble." 
 
 " 5. From a few and distant resemblances," says our author, 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." 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 89 
 
 This is admitting- something-. The Rev. Mr. Beard, an infinitely 
 more formidable opponent, and it would be no compliment to any 
 man to say a more respectable one than Dr. Smith, admits the re- 
 semblance of four g-ood points out of the round dozen for which 
 I had, in my Clerical Review — a work which I published in Ire- 
 land — stoutly contended. He admits that 
 
 I. Chrishna was in danger of being put to death in his infancy, 
 a tyrant at the time of his birth having ordered all new-born 
 males to be slain. 
 
 II. Chrishna performed miracles. 
 
 III. Chrishna preached. 
 
 IV. Chrishna washes the feet of the Brahmins. 
 
 Now the reader has only to recollect the fable of the Lion and 
 the Statuary, and its moral will admonish him, that as the man 
 would certainly not have been uppermost, if the beast had been 
 the carver ; so in this exhibition of the rival claims of Christ and 
 Chrishna, he is to be on the qui-vive, for the opposite motives and 
 interests of the opposing parties, and so make the corresponding- 
 deductions for the colouring-s they will severally lay on their 
 respective pictures, according as they wish to conceal or to expose 
 the resemblance in question. Not only will the Christian artists 
 lay on the vermilion upon the cheek of their God, but they'll 
 lose no sly opportunity of throwing- me over a patch of lamp- 
 black upon mine. I shall have hard work to get an eye for an 
 eye, and a tooth for a tooth from them: the very same line which 
 they shall say is crooked upon my canvass, shall pass for straight 
 on theirs. Exempli gratia— Does my Chrish wash the feet 
 of the Brahmins his disciples ? Why to be sure it was an obscene, 
 disgraceful, and contemptible action, and none but a slave or a 
 fool would have done it, and I cannot deny it. But, catch we 
 their Chrish in the self same act, — Oh, then it was infinite con- 
 descension and divine humility. 
 
 Does my Chrish spend a little of his leisure time with the milk- 
 maids and rustic damsels in dancing-, sporting-, and playing- on the 
 flute ? why the very worst construction is put on it, and they 
 declare that notwithstanding his own preaching to the contrary, 
 he exhibited an appearance of excessive libertinism. 
 
 But their Chrish may have his sweethearts, Mary and Martha : 
 his Magdalene, (none of the most reserved of ladies) his Joan and 
 Susan* and many others, who whatever other attentions they may 
 have paid him " did also minister to him of their substance ;" and 
 scandal must not hint what it mustn't hint. — Luke viii. 3. 
 
 Does my Chrish breathe a vein occasionally, or cut a throat or 
 
 * Nobody knows much about this Susan, but Joan was certainly another man 's 
 wife. A good example this, for our itinerant preachers to set before the ladies of 
 their congregations, to rob their husbands to support a vagabond; would'nt it 
 have been more honourable of Jesus, to have made a few loaves and fishes fur ni 
 own use? 
 
90 VINDICATION OF THE: MANIFESTO. 
 
 two, and encourage his disciples to do the like? why 'twas bad 
 enough, and God knows he was a scoundrel for doing so. 
 
 But does their Chrish order his " enemies that would not have 
 him to reign over them to be brought forth and slain before him V 
 (Luke xix. 27.) Why, that you know was only in the figurative 
 language of a parable. 
 
 Does he give it in charge to his disciples that — " if any of them 
 had not a sword he should sell his garment and buy one." — 
 (Luke xxii. 36.) Why those swords, you know, were not meant 
 to commit murder with. 
 
 Has the prevalence of his religion in all countries and ages of 
 the world, proved to be the greatest curse that ever befell the 
 human race? and are the banners and trophies of bloody mas- 
 sacres and wholesale villainies, the worst and most horrible that 
 imagination could conceive, still hanging, still to be seen among 
 the ornaments of the most magnificent temples consecrated to his 
 grim-Godhead? Why you must call him the Prince of Peace and 
 the Lamb of God ; and his religion must be considered as the 
 source of civilization, morals, and virtue among men ; and should 
 an honest man venture to speak his mind freely, or say but half 
 of what they would say of Chrishna, if they had but half as much 
 reason for saying it ; it isn't long ago since they'd have killed 
 him on the spot. It is mercy, and humanity, and all that sort of 
 stuff, that has let me off with my life, and only deprived me of 
 my liberty, for laughing where I could not help laughing, and 
 throwing out a hint, that in my conceit, it was not " worthy of 
 an interposition of divine omnipotence" (p. 43.) to steal asses, 
 to destroy young trees, to upset market-stalls, and to persecute 
 pigs: and that if the Son of God had a mind to show off his 
 heir apparentship, heshould'nt have exhibited in the most obscure 
 and contemptible village in all his father's dominions, among the 
 very scum and scamps of the whole human race, where indeed 
 he was not likely to meet with better treatment than that, which 
 I suppose has cured him of keeping low company, (93d Oration.) 
 
 " In the Sanscrit Dictionary, compiled more than two thousand 
 years ago, (says Sir William Jones,) we have the whole story of 
 the incarnate Deity born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping 
 in his infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country/' &c. See 
 his Asiatic Researches, Vol. I. pp. 259, 260,267,272, 273. And for 
 further coincidences in the two fabulous histories of the two fa- 
 bulous deities; call in the illustrations to be derived from the 
 Apocryphal Gospels, in which it will be found, that those earlier 
 narratives retained features of coincidence, which, since the art of 
 gospelling has been better understood, have been judiciously 
 pruned away. 
 
 The Unitarian editors of the New Testament, strain every nerve 
 to get the whole account of Herod seeking the young child to 
 destroy him, and slaying all the children that were in Bethlehem. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 91 
 
 and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, 
 (Matt. ii. 16,) whom " God made to glorify him by their deaths,'' 
 (Church of England Collect,) ejected from the canonical scrip- 
 tures. It betrays too much of its real origin. And if the art of 
 printing, and the vigilant observance of infidels, did not make 
 Christians stick to their text, even when it gravels them, this 
 pretty story would be apocryphized, and, in a few years, the 
 possibility of tracing its Indian origin would be lost. 
 
 But observe now, the retrogressive stages of imposture. When 
 grosser materials and huger absurdities, suited the brute appetite 
 of miracles and wonderment, that ever characterises ignorant 
 minds, the Apocryphal Gospels, the Gospels as they were, did 
 well enough : when awakening intelligence, or exhausted gulli- 
 bility, called for something more within the limits of a conceiv- 
 able possibility ; universal acquiescence, hailed the improved 
 Version, and the Gospels as revised, castigated, and accom- 
 modated to the improved notions and better information of man- 
 kind, according to the learned Bishops, Mathew, Mark, Luke, 
 and John ; who, (whoever they were,) would long retain the 
 gratitude of Christians, and be considered, as the very highest 
 authority for the able and judicious abridgements they had 
 made. 
 
 Increasing shrewdness, however, calls again for a revision of 
 the evangelical compilations; more pruning and cutting-off Js 
 needed. What served for the dolts and savages some hundred years 
 ago, will serve no longer. The Unitarian editors offer themselves 
 to do for a more enlightened age, what the Anti-Nicene Bishops 
 had done for earlier times. Subsequent editors will Unitarianize 
 upon Unitarianism itself, and the Gospel according to Richard — and 
 the Gospel according to Robert, shall beat even the Unitarian 
 Version into acknowledged apocrypha. * 
 
 Example 1. In the great prototype and earliest pattern of 
 gospel making, we read, that Chrishna when an infant, was 
 accused by certain nymphs of having drank their curds and milk, 
 his mother reproves him for this act of theft, which he stoutly 
 denied, and in vindication of his innocence requested her to exa- 
 mine his mouth — when, behold, she beheld the whole universe, 
 in all its plenitude and magnificence. — Vol. 1. Asiatic Researches. 
 Well, such a story was out-Heroding Herod, and, therefore, 
 must be apocryphised ,• but, as 'twas a pity to lose the conceit 
 entirely ; you shall find it in another shape, in the canonical 
 Gospel of Matthew, (chap, iv, 8,) where the Devil taketh 
 Christ up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all 
 the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. Here the 
 
 * The fact as stated in the Manifesto, really solves all the phenomena : Our 
 received Gospels were never offered to the world as originals, their authors never 
 pretended that they were any thing more than compilers of previously existing 
 histories. 
 
92 VINDCIATION OP THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 judicious Bishop Matthew, by bringing- in the condition, that the 
 mountain was exceeding high, forestalls any objection to the 
 improbability of the story, since it could be easily demonstrated, 
 that, if the mountain was high enough, any body might see far 
 enough ; and, though " the whole universe in all its plenitude 
 and magnificence," must have been rather too large a mouthful 
 for a little boy ; yet, by the help of the devil, a man's eye might 
 be brought to take in an exceeding wide range of prospect. Here, 
 you see, is evident new working upon an old material, the ground 
 is the same, the building re-constructed. 
 
 Example 2. In the original history of Chrishna, we read, that 
 he held up a mountain on the tip of his little finger — well ! this 
 would not do for the Western world ; but the hint would do to 
 supply the modern Jesus with a good metaphor, when increasing 
 credulity would take it for nothing better. So he tells/us Brahmins 
 that if they, had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, they should re- 
 move a mountain, (Matt, xxi, 21 ;) and certain 'tis, that the good 
 Bishop, who compiled the story, was aware, that in the way of 
 believing, a great deal could be removed. 
 
 Example 3. " And when Jesus went in, the standards bowed 
 themselves and worshipped him." * So ran the original text of the 
 Gospel, from which Luke has introduced his account of the two 
 thieves ; of the Gospel, from which alone, the Apostles' Creed 
 introduces the article, " He descended into hell," and, which is 
 evidently referred to, in 1 Peter, iv. 6. But this was become too 
 gross ; it was overdoing it. Avast! cries Bishop John, they won't 
 stand that, but let us keep the pith of the story, let us have it, that 
 the men who held the standards bowed down ; so the castigated 
 text became, " As soon then, as he had said unto them, I am he, 
 they went backward and fell to the ground, (John xvi. 6.) 
 Which is still a miracle, but not quite such an overflingat it. 
 
 Our conquest then, (and in the struggle to conquer so much, 
 have taken much harder words, than arguments, from my oppo- 
 nents,) amounts to this: f — 
 
 I. My Chrishna is the elder, and the first-born, and 
 
 * Nicodemi Evangeliumin Fabricii Codice Apocrypho, torn. 1. p. 241. 
 
 t 1. " Very respectable natives have assured me, that one or two Missionaries 
 have been absurd enough, in their zeal for the conversion of the Gentiles, to urge 
 that the Hindus, were even now almost Christians, because their Brahma, Vishnou, 
 and Mahesa, were no other than the Christian Trinity." — Asiatic Researches, 
 vol.1, p. 272. 
 
 2. " I am persuaded, that a connection existed between the old idolatrous nations 
 of Egypt, India, Greece, and Italy, long before the birth of Moses."— Ibid. p. 271. 
 
 3. ** The second great divinity, Chrishna, the incarnate Deity of the Sanscrit 
 romance, was cradled, as it informs us, among herdsmen ; a tyrant at the time of 
 his birth, ordered all new-born males to be slain." — Ibid. p. 259. 
 
 4. " His birth, was concealed through fear of the tyrant Cansa, to whom it had 
 been predicted, that one born at that time, in that family, would destroy him."— 
 Ibid. p. 259. 
 
 5. " He was born from the left intercostal rib of a Virgin, of the royal line of 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 93 
 
 2. That by a certainly " long- anterior," probably more than 
 nine hundred years priority to their Christ, and 
 
 3. That upon the positive knowledge, the " We know very 
 certainly," of Sir William Jones. 
 
 4. That, their own very highest authority. 
 
 5. That an authority, against which they can with no modesty 
 attempt to pit a counter authority — and 
 
 6. That an authority, avowedly hostile to our inferences. 
 . 7- And Chrishna, not Krishna or Krishnu, is his name. 
 
 8. And He was a God incarnate. 
 
 9. And He was by his human mother descended from a royal 
 race. 
 
 10. And He it was, whom the tyrant of his country sought to 
 kill in his infancy. 
 
 11. And He it was, on whose account, the tyrant slew all the 
 children, "that glorified God by their deaths." 
 
 12. And He it was, who slew a terrible serpent, " bruised the 
 serpent's head." 
 
 13. And He it was, who was miraculously born. 
 
 14. And He it was, whose whole life was spent in working 
 miracles. 
 
 15. And in preaching mysteries. 
 
 16. And in washing other people's feet. 
 
 17. And He it was, who descended into hell. 
 
 18. And He it was, who rose again from the dead. 
 
 19. And He it was, who ascended into heaven, after his 
 death. 
 
 20. And He it was, who left his doctrines to be preached by 
 his disciples, but committed nothing* of his own to writing. 
 
 21. And He it was, who had been the object of prophecy. 
 Here is " the General outline" and broad facts of a religious 
 
 romance or Spell, which, relating the life and adventures of a 
 God manifest in the flesh, would naturally be called a Spell of 
 God or a God's Spell or a Gospel, admitted to have formed the 
 
 Devaci and after his manifestation on earth, returned again to his heavenly 
 seat in Vaicontha." — Ibid. 
 
 6. " He was fostered, therefore, in Mat'hura, by an honest herdsman, sum amed 
 Ananda, or Happy, and his amiable wife Yasoda. The sect of the Hindus, who 
 adore him with an enthusiastic, and almost exclusive devotion — maintain, that 
 Chrishna, was superior to all the prophets, who had only a portion of his divinity, 
 whereas, Chrishna, was the person of Vishnu himself, in a human form."— 
 Ibid. p. 260. 
 
 For in him clwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead, bodily. — 2 Colossians, 9. 
 
 7. " At the age of seven years, he held up a mountain on the top of his little 
 finger."— Asiatic Researches, Vol. I. p. 273. 
 
 8. " He slew the terrible serpent Caliya." 9. " He passed a life of a most extra- 
 ordinary and incomprehensible nature." — Ibid. p. 259. 
 
 10. " He saved multitudes, partly by his arms, and partly by his miraculous 
 powers." 11. " He raised the dead, by descending for that purpose, to the lowest 
 regions." 12. " He was the meekest and best tempered of beings, yet he fomented, 
 and conducted a terrible war." 13. u He was pure and chaste in reality, but 
 exhibited an appearance of excessive libertinism. "—Ibid. Chap. 9. 
 
94 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 substance of the secret mysteries of the Brahmins " long- anterior 
 to the birth of our Saviour, and probably long anterior to the 
 time of Homer, which was nine hundred years anterior to that 
 time." Now reader " search the Scriptures" produce but one 
 text out of the fourteen Epistles of Paul, that seems to speak of 
 the events of the Evangelical narrative, as being then recent, 
 against the 20, the 50, or the hundred which refer to the 
 whole gospel scheme, as being even in his day altogether of a 
 remote antiquity, which in short are perfectly compatible and 
 entirely congruous with an understanding that it was this general 
 outline of Chrishna and the Hindoo-mythology that he was en- 
 deavouring' to modernize, and I will yield thee thy more than 
 twentieth part of the probabilities on the opposite supposition. 
 
 Why should it have been, that when the Apostolic Chief of 
 Sinners made the best of his Christian tale at Athens, the Philoso- 
 phers, Epicureans, and Stoics should have been disgusted at him, 
 because, while he was attempting to impose that Therapeutan* 
 romance, on the ignorant and foolish part of the community, he 
 brought to their knowledge no new thing (Acts xvii.)t 
 
 Why should he have played off his villainous wheedling arti- 
 fices upon the illiterate and ignorant rabble, telling them that 
 they were especial favourites of God ; that the greater fools, 
 dunces and idiots they were, the fitter vessels of divine election : 
 that God had chosen the foolish things, the weak things and the 
 base things. — (1 Corinth. 1.) to be rich in faith, that is, to be as 
 they were likely to be, the most easily imposed on. 
 
 Why should he have made it a matter of high crime against 
 the Greeks that they sought after wisdom, that is in other words, 
 they wanted something like rational evidence, proof, argument, 
 or grounds of common sense and rational probability for his 
 matter? But, he had nothing of that sort to give them, it was 
 too far off, it was too long ago: he could give no clue, produce 
 no document, make no reference, put them into no train of in- 
 quiry : not a vestige, not an iota: not a glimpse or a shadow of 
 any one, even the most broad and necessary fact that must have 
 existed, and must have been at that time in hand to have pro- 
 duced, if such a person as Jesus had existed in any shape what- 
 ever. Only, they were to believe ! Children and fools may do 
 so ! was probably the sentiment of the philosophers — " but, Sir, 
 it is too much to call upon our assent, to the most stupendous 
 events that imagination could conceive, upon, absolutely, no evi- 
 dence at all !" This was the real condition of the argument, 
 when, Mr. Beard would persuade us, that the historical evidences 
 
 * The TherapeutcB were an ancient Jewish sect of itinerant quack doctors 
 who professed the art of healing ; from whence their name is derived : they were 
 mighty travellers, dealt in charms and spells: and from their plagiarism, the 
 Indian Chrishna, got at last, his Jewish physiognomy. 
 
 t Paul of Tarsus is unquestionably a real character, and much or his actual 
 history has been tacked on'to the fabulous A«ts of the Apostles. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 95 
 
 of Christianity were unassailable ; while the Apostle, forlorn of 
 all evidence, desperate of all argument ; with an impiety desperate 
 as his cause — and forlorn as his hopes, ascribed the whole Gospel 
 dispensation, to its origination in the foolishness of God. — 
 1 Corinth, i. 25. 
 
 It is admitted, that of Chrishna's history, we have only the 
 outlines.* But, had we the fillings-up, a still closer resemblance 
 might be traced. What might be wanting in the Indian mytho- 
 logy, is abundantly to be supplied, from the idolatrous mythology 
 of Phenician, Druidical, Greek, and Roman superstition. 
 
 It is impossible, that within the compass of these pages, I should 
 trust myself in an expatiation on this subject, to which I have 
 for many years, devoted my studies, and intend, should my prison 
 hours be extended, to revise and enlarge the works I have already 
 produced. 
 
 The Adonis of the Phoenicians, is an undeniable Jesus Christ. 
 — See Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon. 
 
 The Eastre, from which our English word Easter, is derived, 
 is the Druidical type of Jesus. 
 
 The Prometheus of the Greeks, is the crucified God. 
 
 The Mercury, the Word or Messenger of the Covenant,is the 
 same visionary conceit. 
 
 The Apollo. 
 
 The Bacchus, and all the idolatrous family, are but the varied 
 embodyings of the same parent, and universally diffused halu- 
 ci nation. 
 
 END OF SECTION XIII. 
 
 SECTION XIV. 
 
 THE EGYPTIAN JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 In the hierogTyphical representations, on the Pyramids of Egypt, 
 Plato, t 348 years before the Christian era, traced the significant 
 symbols of a religion, which the priests informed him, had then 
 existed, upwards of ten thousand years. The cross with the man 
 upon it, was the object of Pagan worship, and the significant 
 emblem of the doctrines of the Pagan faith, for countless ages ; 
 
 * 14. " He washed the feet of the Brahmins, and preached very nobly indeed, and 
 sublimely, but always in their favour." Sir William Jones in Asiatic Researches, 
 Vol. 1, Chap. 9. 
 
 t Plato Broadshoulders died 348 before our Epocha. The beginning of 
 John's gospel is evidently Platonic. This philosopher was himself believed to 
 have been born of a pure virgin; and in his writings had drawn up the imaginary 
 character of a divine man, whose ideal picture he completed by the supposition 
 that such a man would be crucified : 
 
 " Virtue confessed in human shape he draws, 
 What Plato thought, and Godlike Cato was." 
 
 See Madame Dacier's Trans, and Clarke's Evidences. 
 
96 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 ere that faith took up its Jewish features, and Minutius Felix, one 
 of the earliest Fathers, taunts them for their adoration of that 
 symbol. * I myself have seen, and many gentlemen at this day 
 possess, lamps brought from the bases of the pyramids, of an 
 antiquity, that makes a yesterday of the era of Augustus, and yet 
 shaped so as to present the light that issued from them, before 
 the symbols of the Cross, Eternity, and the Trinity. Nay, the 
 religious honours paid to the Nile, from the time when the 
 ourang outang ancestors of mankind became sensible of the 
 benefit of its inundations, were necessarily addressed to the up- 
 right post with a transverse beam, indicating the height to which 
 its waters w r ould reach, and the extent to which they would 
 carry the blessings of fertilization. The demon of famine was 
 happily expressed, by the naked and emaciated being, nailed 
 upon it: the reed in his hand was gathered from the marshy 
 margin of the river : the Nile had smote him with that reed. 
 His crown of thorns, emblemized the sterility of the provinces over 
 which he reigned, and his infamous title indicated that he was the 
 king of vagrants and beggars. — Meagher on the Popish Mass. 
 
 END OF SECTION XIV. 
 
 SECTION XV. 
 
 THE PHENICIAN JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 A very learned sect or party among divines and critics maintain, 
 that the Hebrew points ordinarily annexed to the consonants of 
 the word nTPft Jehovah, are not the. natural points belonging 
 to that word, nor express the true pronunciation of it, but are the 
 vowal points belonging to the words Adonai and Elohim, applied 
 to the consonants of the ineffable name Jehovah, to warn the 
 readers, that instead of the word Jehovah, the pronunciation of 
 which is now entirely lost, they were to say Adonai. I have 
 sifted this matter out, by inquiring among the Rabbis and more 
 intelligent Jews, and find, that without any other reason but 
 their religion, they invariably pronounce the mystical tetra- 
 grammaton, which we see inscribed even over our Christian 
 altars, A don: gnaw: ye! as a Scotchman would say " I 
 don't know ye. The word literally signifies. Our Lord. It is 
 the real Adonis of the Phoenicians, and the Jesus Christ of those 
 who ought to know better. Not only the names, but the aUri- 
 
 * " You it is ye Pagans who worship wooden Gods, that are the most likely 
 people to adore wooden crosses. Your victorious trophies not only represent a 
 simple cross, but a cross with a man upon it; and whereas ye tax our religion 
 with the worship of a criminal and his cross; you are strangely out of the way 
 of truth to imagine either that a criminal can deserve to be taken for a Deity, or 
 that a mere man can possibly be a God," p. 134, Reeve's Translation. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 9/ 
 
 butes, the legendary history, and the religious rites of these 
 mystical hypostases are the same. Under the designation of 
 Tammuz, and as a personification of the Sun, this idol was wor- 
 shipped, and had his altar even in the temple of the Lord which 
 was at Jerusalem. Several of the Psalms of David were parts of 
 the liturgical service employed in his worship, the 110th in par- 
 ticular — tho' utterly without any meaning, as gabbled over in our 
 Church service — is an account of a friendly alliance between the 
 two idols nim \ and \TJN I Jehovah and Adonis, in which . 
 Jehovah ordains Adonis for his priest as sitting at his right hand, 
 and promises to fight for him against his enemies, and to break 
 their skulls fGr them. This idol was worshipped at Byblis in 
 Phoenicia, with precisely the same ceremonies : the same articles 
 of faith as to his mystical incarnation, his precious death and 
 burial, and his glorious resurrection and ascension, and even in the 
 very same words of religious adoration and homage which are now, 
 with the slightest degree of newfangledness that could well be 
 conceived addressed to the idol of the Gospel. On a certain night 
 during the passion week, an image representing the suffering' 
 God, was laid upon abed; excessive wailings and lamentations 
 constituted an essential part of the mystical solemnities. The 
 attachment of the women to the beautiful deity provoked the 
 jealous Jehovah : and in Ezekiel, Chap, viii, verse 14, we find 
 that this mode of idolatry was denounced as a most wicked abo- 
 mination — " He brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's 
 house, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz." After 
 the lamentations had continued to exhaustion, lights* were brought 
 in, the image was lifted up from its shrine, and the priest anointed 
 the lips of the assistants in those hoiy mysteries. It was an- 
 nounced, that the god had risen from the dead, and the priest 
 addressed the admiring and grateful worshippers in words, whose 
 exact sense is retained in our Easter hymn : 
 
 But the pains, which he endured 
 Our salvation have procured — 
 
 In sober prose — Trust ye in God, for out of his pains we receive 
 salvation.f — See Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon. 
 
 END OF SECTION XV. 
 
 SECTION XVI. 
 
 THE ATHENIAN JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 *% The Prometheus Bound, of iEschylus, was acted as a tragedy 
 in Athens, 500 years before the Christian era. The plot, or fable 
 
 * Hence those expressions in the idolatrous Psalmography of the Sidonians and 
 Phoenicians— "There is sprung up a light for the righteous, and joyful gladness 
 for such as are true-hearted." " Full of grace are thy lips, because God hath 
 anointed thee." 
 
 t Qapeire rw 0eo> effri yap i)\iiv e/c ttovwv ^wri/jpia. 
 
 X My very able and respected opponent the Rev. Mr. Beard, of Manchester, 
 labours as hard to defeat this resemblance of the Grecian tragedy to the Chris- 
 
 H 
 
9S VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 of the drama, being- then confessedly derived from the universally 
 recognized type of an infinitely remote antiquity ; yet presenting 
 not one or two, but innumerable coincidences with the Christian 
 tragedy ; not only the more prominent situations, but the very 
 sentiments, and often the words of the two heroes are precisely 
 the same. So that there can be no doubt, that as the original 
 was unquestionably a poetical figment, the version was of the same 
 imaginary creation. It has only been since ignorance has happily 
 given way to the inroads of science and philosophy, and men have 
 found the pleasure of being rational, that the priests have found 
 it necessary to pretend the existence of a real personage, and a 
 substantial substratum for their system. In the pure primitive 
 days, it was'nt wanted, there was no call for evidence; but now, 
 must the priests go to work, the people want to believe, and to 
 have a reason for it too ! and some time, someplace, some proba- 
 bilities, must be invented for them. Well ! What was to be done? 
 Why ! " Get as far out of sight — and as long- ago with your 
 story, as they will patiently endure — say it was in Judea: they had 
 no historians there — say it was in the light of the Augustan era, 
 
 tian romance, as I confess I have done to establish it. But as I labour only for 
 truth, and have no right to impute any other aim to him|; I am sorry when I find 
 him condescending to take an advantage in the argument unworthy of his great 
 powers and highly cultivated intelligence. He defies me to point out a line in the 
 tragedy, in which the God Oceanus is called Petreus, (p. 55.) I had never implied 
 that there was such a line ; but any good classical dictionary would have borne 
 out the strict and literal truth of what I both said and meant — " Oceanus, one oi 
 whose names was Petreiis." The conduct of this personage in the process of the 
 drama, is in as close resemblance to that of the fisherman of Galilee as his name 
 Petreus is to Peter. He forsook his friend, when the wrath of God had made him 
 a victim for the sins of the human race. The difference between being crucified 
 on a beam of timber, and nailed exactly in the same manner upon a rock is not 
 enough to redeem the palpable plagiarism. Let Mr. Beard however, in welcome, 
 deny all those points of coincidence that I have maintained : his own admissions, 
 when he admits the least, will, I say not to every impartial mind, but surely to 
 every excursive imagination, vindicate the Athenians, for rejecting the doctrine 
 of the Apostle Paul, as being no new thing to them. Prometheus made the first 
 man and woman out of clay. Prometheus was a God. Prometheus exposed him- 
 self to the wrath of God, incurred by him in his zeal to save mankind. Prome- 
 theus, in the agonies of crucifixion had exclaimed — 
 
 See what, a God, I suffer from the Gods ; 
 
 For mercy to mankind, I am not deemed 
 
 Worthy of mercy— but in this uncouth 
 
 Appointment am fixed here, 
 
 A spectacle dishonourable to Jove. 
 
 On the throne of Heaven scarce was he seated, 
 
 On the powers of heaven 
 
 He showered his various benefits, thereby 
 
 Confirming his sovereignty : But for unhappy mortals 
 
 Had no regard, but all the present race 
 
 Willed to extirpate and to form a new : 
 
 None, save myself, opposed his will. — I dared, 
 
 And boldly pleading saved them from destruction, 
 
 Saved them from sinking to the realms of night ; 
 
 For which offence I bow beneath these pains, 
 
 Dreadful to suffer, piteous to behold ! 
 
 Potter's Translation, quoted from memory. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. yy 
 
 when every body might have seen all about it: for eleven or 
 twelve hundred years of dark ages have transpired since then ; 
 and we're all safe, for now the candle has gone out." — Such is 
 the history of Christianity. 
 
 The close resemblances, the almost exact conformities of the 
 Christian and Pagan mythologies, were so far from shaking the 
 faith of the first Fathers of the Church, that in a sense perhaps 
 which I shall not be allowed to put on the words of Sir William 
 Jones, they also would have said — " the adamantine pillars of 
 our faith cannot be shaken by any investigation of Heathen 
 mythology." Certainly not ! for it was the Heathen mythology 
 itself, that constituted the pillars of that faith ; and the resem- 
 blance of the one to the other was urged by the first preachers, 
 as their most powerful argument to recommend Christianity, and 
 to induce the Pagans to be converted, seeing that the transition 
 was almost imperceptible,, the difference was so very immaterial. 
 Paganism and Christianity were as like as two peas to each 
 other — and in fact, the better and shrewder sort of Pagans, had 
 been Christians without knowing it. 
 
 To one passage only in the Doctor's Treatise will I turn back, 
 as leading most naturally to the conclusion of this whole argu- 
 ment. I follow a rambling writer, and must be excused for fetch- 
 ing him up to the arrangement he ought to have observed. His 
 objection to the very last position of the Manifesto, occurs 16 or 
 17 pages before his objections to subsequent positions: — 1 take 
 him here, then — 
 
 " It is a perfect insult to common sense, that this man pretends 
 to adduce scripture evidence, that the blessed Jesus never ex- 
 isted."' (I pass over his ruffian scurrility) and he adds — "a mere 
 child who can read the New Testament might easily confute, &c." 
 Now this was as easily said, as was the egregious untruth that 
 follows it. But easy, as he may choose to say, it would be to a 
 child to confute that conclusion. He himself is not man enough 
 to do it : and Pll undertake to write myself by any one of the 
 vile opprobrious epithets which he has applied to me, if he can 
 find any other child to help him do it, e'en an' let it be forty or 
 fifty years since that child cut his teeth. 
 
 Observe but the canon of critical evidence, which the convic- 
 tion of all men places on the same basis of certainty as the 
 theorems of the multiplication table — to wit 
 
 An abstraction or phantasy of the imagination, may 
 be spoken of in terms strictly and literally appli- 
 cable only to a substantial and corporeal being — 
 
 BUT A SUBSTANTIAL AND CORPOREAL BEING, CANNOT HAVE 
 ONE SINGLE ATTRIBUTE PREDICATED OF IT THAT WOULD 
 EXCLUDE THE NOTION OF CORPOREITY, AND BELONG ONLY 
 
 to an abstraction. You may draw out an allegory to any 
 extent of invention. You may say for instance that " Wisdom 
 
 h2 
 
100 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 dwelt with the sons of men, that she lifted up her voice in the 
 streets, and that she said — whatever any wise or foolish person 
 might say for her :" yet none of these predictions would imply 
 that wisdom was a real and corporeal existence. But say only 
 but once in the course of the longest history — that its hero " va- 
 nished away" — that he walked on water, rode in the air, or that 
 he appeared alive after being- once dead, and we perceive at 
 once, that it is an abstraction that has been set before us ; and 
 His not the author's dissimulation, but our own stupidity, if we 
 take that to be a reality which he gives so sufficient a clue to 
 show us, was nothing more than a figment. 
 
 1 have on my table the beautiful poem of Queen Mab. She 
 rides, she alights from her chariot, she walks, she waves her 
 wand, she speaks, and certainly never spake human being to 
 better effect of excellent good sense, exalted knowledge, and 
 consummate virtue. Was it necessary for its author to warn his 
 readers in so many words, that Queen Mab was only a poetical 
 extacy, that no such person as Queen Mab, ever had any real 
 existence ? Was it not enough to connect her history with cir- 
 cumstances incompatible with the laws of animal existence? 
 That, Bysshe Shelley has done for the Fairy — that, the evan- 
 gelical poetasters have done for the less pleasing demon of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 Some of the passages in which they have done so, out of very 
 many to the like effect, are specified in the Manifesto. But 
 " these passages," themselves, says the learned Answerer, " de- 
 monstrates the unspeakable folly and wickedness of my mind." 
 How so ? or why should the Doctor have said so, if there had 
 been nothing in those passages, that he could wish had not been 
 there ? See reader ! your Dissenterian priest is as unwilling, that 
 you should have your own use of the Scriptures, as ever was the 
 Jesuit or the Pope. The only difference between the two into- 
 lerants, is, that the one kept the stable-door locked, and there 
 was no horse to be ridden ; the other indeed, lets you have the 
 horse, but only upon condition that you shall ride after his 
 fashion, sit with your face to the crupper, and travel to no other 
 conclusions than he prescribes for you. 
 
 The passages referred to in the Manifesto, are 
 
 Luke ix, 29.— And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance 
 was altered, &c. 
 
 Mark ix, 2. — He was transfigured, (the Greek signifies meta- 
 morphosed, entirely and wholly changed, and his apparel is 
 described as undergoing the same metamorphosis.) " And his 
 raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller 
 on earth can white them." 
 
 Luke xxiv, 31. — And their eyes were opened, and they knew 
 him, and he vanished out of their sight. 
 
 1 John, v. 6.— This is he that came by water and blood. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 101 
 
 His habiliments seem to have shared in his various metamor- 
 phoses, to have travelled with him, or to have grown upon him. 
 For, as he certainly left his night-shirt in the sepulchre, when he 
 afterwards appeared in the costume of a gardener to Mary Mag- 
 dalene ; and, no doubt, in a decent and becoming manner, to the 
 eleven disciples : unless he had waited on his tailor first, to suit 
 him for such an appearance ; a thought, which it is impiety to 
 think, he must have possessed the faculty of producing his own 
 clothing, or have been supplied by fairies and genii. All which 
 circumstances, his miracles, his miraculous birth, his resurrection 
 after death, his visible ascent into Heaven, the various and con- 
 tradictory manner of telling the story by the different Evangelists, 
 &c. &c. are incompatible, not only with any idea of his existence 
 as a man, but with any just grounds for accusing the Bishops 
 who compiled the story, of having expected that any rational 
 being would ever come to think, that they had intended to 
 represent him as a man. 
 
 The reader has only to bear in mind, the certain and unques- 
 tionable priority of the Apocryphal Gospels, and the universally 
 admitted superiority, both in intelligence and virtue of those 
 parties in the early Church, who, not having been so violent 
 and sanguinary as the orthodox, or not so fortunate, were put 
 undermost, and made the Dissenters of their day ; and therefore, 
 and only therefore, were called Heretics ; and then, he will .see 
 the convincing light of evidence from their writings, flash on 
 those that have come down to us — bringing up the dark points, and 
 throwingthe unaccountable lines into order, method, and purpose, 
 
 END OF SECTION XVI. 
 
 SECTION XVII. 
 
 HISTORIES OF THE DEMON JESUS, ANTECEDENT TO THE 
 RECEIVED GOSPELS. 
 
 1. " Within the immediate year of the pretended crucifixion of 
 Christ, (I cannot bring myself to use the stronger expressions of 
 Gibbon,) sooner than any other account of the matter could have 
 been made known, it was publicly taught, that, instead of having 
 been miraculously born, and having passed through the impo- 
 tence of infancy, boyhood, and adolescence, he had descended on 
 the banks of the Jordan in the form of perfect manhood, that he 
 had imposed on the senses of his enemies, and of his disciples ; 
 and that the ministers of Pilate had wasted their impotent rage 
 on an airy phantom, who seemed to expire on the cross, and after 
 
102 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 three days to rise from the dead."* — Gibbon, vol. 3, chap. 21, 
 page 320. 
 
 2. — "Basilides, a man so ancient that he boasted to follow 
 Glaucias as his master, who was the disciple of St. Peter, taught 
 that Christ was not crucified ; but that a metamorphosis took 
 place between him and Simon, the Cyrenian, who was crucified 
 in his stead, while Jesus stood by and mocked at the mistake of 
 the Jews." — Pearson on the Creed, vol. 2, p. 249. 
 
 3. — " Those who receive the book called the Acts, or Journeys 
 of the Apostles Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas, and Paul,t 
 must believe that Christ was not really, but only appeared as a 
 man, and was seen by his disciples in various forms, sometimes 
 as a young man, sometimes as an old man ; sometimes great, some- 
 times small ; sometimes so tall that his head would reach the 
 clouds ; that he was not really crucified himself, but another in 
 his stead, while he laughed at those who imagined that they cru- 
 cified him.*' — Jones on the Canon, vol. I, p. 12. 
 
 4. — " The Gospel of the Helkesaites, who derived their name 
 from Elxai or Elxseus, who lived in the time of Trajan, about 
 A.D. 114 ; who joined himself with the Ebionites or Nazarenes, 
 taught that Christ was a certain power, whose height was 24 
 schema, or Egyptian leagues, (66 miles) and his breadth 24 
 miles,andhis thickness proportionably wonderful." — Jones, vol.1, 
 page 226. 
 
 Now, reader, turn to the Koran of Mahomet, the genuineness 
 of which, no Christians have yet called into question. That, is a 
 work unquestionably of the Seventh Century, (Mahomet died, 
 June 7th, 632 ;) yet, without any disparaging, decrying, or ridi- 
 culing the Christian doctrine, what it then was, and how it was 
 understood by the writer of that holy book, appears in terms not 
 to be mistaken. 
 
 "And the Jews devised a stratagem against him— but God 
 devised a stratagem against them, and God is the best deviser of 
 stratagems/' 
 
 With these lights in thy hand, answer to thyself, and as thou 
 wilt — I care not, I have given thee means of answering 
 
 1, — Why — Bishop Mark should begin his Gospel with the 
 account of Christ appearing on the banks of the Jordan, and taking 
 no notice at all of his birth or infancy ; should expressly state, 
 that that was the beginning- of the Gospel ? 
 
 2. — Why — In the reading of the three Bishops, Matthew, 
 Mark, and Luke, the insignificant, useless, and never again or any 
 where else mentioned personage, Simon the Cyrenian, should 
 be lugged in, with no character to sustain, like a fool too many in 
 
 * Apostolis adhuc in sasculo superstitibus apud Judaeam Christi sanguine re- 
 cente, et Phantasma corpus Domini asserebatur. — Cotelerius Patres Apostol. 
 torn. 2. p. 24. F 
 
 f And why should they not be received ? 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 103 
 
 a pantomime, having- nothing to do or say in relevancy to the 
 business of the scene ? 
 
 3.- — Why — In the plain and grammatical construction of the 
 text of those Bishops, as that text would be read upon a trial for 
 murder, it should really appear that it was Simon the Cyrenian, 
 who was crucified ? 
 
 4. — Why — That there was a real mistake or substitution of 
 Simon, (as he is called the father of Alexander and Rufus) should 
 be so evidently implied by Jesus himself, in those words addressed 
 to Simon — <s Father, (subaudi, Father Simon!) forgive them for 
 they know not what they do, (Luke xxiii, 34.) These words, 
 addressed by Jesus to Simon, are compatible with the character 
 of a good demon, which seems to be such as the Evangelists 
 meant to pourtray ; they were respectful, in consideration of 
 Simon's venerable age — they were moral, as calculated to pre- 
 vent or subdue the anger he mig'ht have felt against his perse- 
 cutors, and they were true in respect of the circumstances assumed. 
 But applied to God, they were impious, in the indecency of so 
 familiar a style, as merely saying', Father: they were absurd, as 
 attempting to suggest a reason to infinite wisdom : and they were 
 false, in saying that the Jewslknew not what they were doing ; 
 when, unless they had really got hold of the wrong person, there 
 was no room for the possibility of a mistake in the matter ? 
 
 5. Why, if Barnabas and Paul preached the same story, they 
 should have quarreled so bitterly, and like all other good Chris- 
 tians, never have been reconciled ? 
 
 6. Why Paul should so emphatically say, that when he and his 
 party preached Jesus Christ, they preached him crucified: if 
 there were none, who at the same time were preaching a 
 directly contrary doctrine — namely, Jesus Christ not crucified? 
 1 Corinth, i. 23. 
 
 7. Why he should call the other Apostles, false Apostles and 
 dogs ?— Philip, iii. 2.-2 Corinth, xi. 13. 
 
 8. Why he should say that they preached Christ out of envy 
 and strife ?— Philip, i. 5. 
 
 9. Why he should curse them with the most bitter execra- 
 tions ?— 1 Corinth xvi. 22. 
 
 10. Why he should recommend (in a sufficient hint,) that they 
 should be privately assassinated ? — Gal. v. 12. 
 
 11. Why, never once in any part of the Epistles should there 
 be such a manner of referring to the story, as to make it seem to 
 have been a narrative of facts ? 
 
 12. Why, on every occasion that would have called for an 
 explicit statement, or reference to facts, should the Apostles 
 have made the most pitiful ambages, to avoid giving them ? 
 
 13. Why, even the admitted first Martyr Stephen, upon the 
 immediate freshness and then most recent occurrence of the 
 most stupendous events that ever happened (if they ever hap- 
 
304 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 pened) when called upon to give the grounds and reasons of his 
 faith, should not have even glanced at the resurrection of Christ, 
 as being any part of the grounds and reasons of his faith ; nay, 
 should not so much as have once mentioned his names, either 
 Jesus or Christ, or led his hearers to an idea that referred to him, 
 save in one single conundrum that might be riddled out with 
 equal application to himself, or any just person that had been so 
 unjustly treated ? 
 
 14. Why in every passage where such language as would de- 
 signate a real being, seems to be such as could hardly have been 
 avoided, find we instead, the language only of mystery, trope, 
 allegory and fiction ? 
 
 15. Why, in such language as approaches nearest to a descrip- 
 tion of a real and corporeal being, should the strict and literal 
 sense, be such as cannot without impiety, absurdity and palpable 
 contradiction be admitted — exempli gratia— the Son of God, the 
 heir of all things ?" 
 
 16. Why should the only line of general uniformity, in the 
 writings of the earliest Fathers, be their concurrence in repre- 
 senting Jesus as a visionary hypostasis,* that had no real existence ? 
 
 * JUSTIN MARTYR'S APOLOGY TO THE EMPEROR ADRIAN, &C. 
 
 "In saying that all things were made in this beautiful order by God, what do 
 we seem to say more than Plato. When we teach a general conflagration, what 
 do we teach more than the Stoicks. By opposing the worship of the works of 
 men's hands, we concur with Menander, the comedian ; and by declaring the 
 Logos, the first begotten of God, our master Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, 
 without any human mixture, to be crucified and dead, and to have rose again, and 
 asceaded into heaven : we say no more in this, than what you say of those whom 
 you style the Sons of Jove. For you need not be told what a parcel of sons, the 
 writers most in vogue among you, assign to Jove ; there's Mercury, Jove's inter- 
 preter, in imitation of the Logos, in worship among you. There's iEsculapius, 
 the physician, smitten by a thunder-bolt, and after that, ascending into heaven. 
 There's Bacchus, torn to pieces ; and Hercules burnt to get rid of his pains. 
 There's Pollux and Castor, the sons of Jove by Leda, and Perseus by Danae ; 
 and not to mention others, I would fain know why you always deify the departed 
 Emperors, and have a fellow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Caesar mount 
 to heaven from the funeral pile. 
 
 " As to the Son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more 
 than man, yet the title of the Son of God is very justifiable, upon the account of 
 his wisdom, considering that you have your Mercury in worship, under the title 
 of the The Word and Messenger of God. 
 
 " As to the objection of our Jesus's being crucified, I say, that suffering was 
 common to all the fore-mentioned sons of Jove, but only they suffered another 
 kind of death. As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance 
 that. As to his curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were cripples from 
 their birth ; this is little more than what you say of your iEsculapius." — P. 76. 
 Chr. 40. 
 
 Such were the evidences of the Christian Religion, as they were presented to 
 the En ; peror Titus Julius Adrianus Pius Augustus Caesar, and to his son Veris- 
 simus, and to Lucius the philosopher, by St. Justin, among the first, if not 
 himself the very first of the Apostolic Fathers. There is hardly the difference of 
 fifty years between this apology and St. John's Revelation. "And if the Christian 
 faith (says his learned translator) lived not to these years in its original purity, it 
 came up. and was cut down like a flower." — Reeve's Apologies of the Fathers, 
 vol. 1, Lond, 1716. 
 
 It was a Catholic opinion among the philosophers, that pious frauds were good: 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 105 
 
 17. Why should his divinity have ever been dreamed of, if 
 his real existence, as a man, could ever have been ascertained ? 
 
 18. Whyshould the greater difficulty, and consequently, higher 
 merit of faith, be made to consist in believing", that he had real 
 flesh and blood,* which no individual on earth could have 
 doubted, had there ever existed, the least shadow of a proba- 
 bility, that such a man had ever existed at all ? 
 
 19. Why, when his divinity, as an imaginary being", (as all 
 divinities were imaginary,) could be very well conceived ; when, 
 as a supposed personification of an abstract principle, as the Logos, 
 or the Word, as the Genius of virtue, as Christ the power of 
 God, or Christ the wisdom of God, poetry would allow, and 
 philosophy would understand, the evangelical fiction : should 
 
 things, and that the people ought to be imposed on in matters of religion."— 
 Ibid. p. 99. 
 
 " It was held as a maxim that it was not only lawful, but even praiseworthy to 
 deceive, and even to use the expedient of a lie, in order to advance the cause of 
 truth and piety." — Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 198. 
 
 Some of the ancienlest writers of the church, have not scrupled to call Socrates, 
 and some others of the best of the heathen moralists Christians. — Clarke, p. 284. 
 
 2. origen's defence of the christian religion against celsus. 
 
 " Then Celsus, speaking of idolatry, does himself advance an argument that 
 tends to justify and commend our practice ; therefore endeavouring to shew in the 
 sequel of his discourse, that our notion of image- worship was not a discovery 
 that was owing to the Scriptures, but that we have it in common with the 
 heathens; he quotes a passage in Heraclitus to this effect. To this 1 answer, that 
 some common notions of good and evil, are originally implanted in the minds of 
 all men ; we need not wonder that Heraclitus and others, whether Greeks or 
 Barbarians, have publicly acknowledged to the world that they hold the very same 
 notions that we maintain. — Chap. 5. 
 
 Chap. 10.— "And since our adversaries are continually making such a stir about 
 our taking things on trust, I answer, that we who see plainly, and have found the 
 vast advantage that the common people do manifestly and frequently reap thereby; 
 who make up by far the greater number ; I say we, who are so well advised of 
 these things, do professedly teach them to believe without examination," 
 
 Such were the evidences of the Christian Religion, as they appeared to this, 
 the very first author of a catalogue of the books contained in the New Testament. 
 "That God should, in some extraordinary manner, visit and dwell with 
 man, is an idea which, as we read the writings of the ancient heathens, meets us 
 in a thousand different forms." — Bishop Home's Discourses, vol. 3, p. 353. 
 
 * 1 John, iv. 2. — " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the 
 flesh, is of God." 
 
 2 John, vii. — " For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not 
 that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." 
 
 1 John iv. 3. — " And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come 
 in the flesh, is not of God." This is language that could not have been used, if 
 the reality of Christ's existence as a man could not have been denied, or if the 
 Apostle himself had been able to give any evidence whatever of the fact pre- 
 tended. 
 
 " Cruci heremus, sanguinem sugimus, et inter ipsa redemptoris nostri vulnera 
 figimus linguam," are the words of the holy Father Saint Cyprian, as quoted by 
 Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in his Holy Living, page 280. " We stick to the cress, we 
 suck the blood, and loll our tongues in the very wounds of our Redeemer." It is 
 nevertheless, an atrocious and unfounded slander of the Mohammedans, when 
 they call those who use this sublime and figurative language— Christian Dogs ! it 
 is evident they don't understand it. 
 
106 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 the cannibal ceremonies of Eucharists and Sacraments,* have 
 been devised, to subdue not merely the imaginations and the 
 thoughts of the heart, but the perception of the senses to the 
 obedience of faith? 
 
 20. Why,Tertullian, the first of all the Latin Fathers, Presbyter 
 of Carthage, should reason thus on the evidences of Christianity ? 
 " I find no other means to prove myself to be impudent with 
 success, and happily a fool, than by my contempt of shame ; as 
 for instance, I maintain that the Son of God was born ; why am 
 I not ashamed of maintaining such a thing- ? Why ! but because 
 it is itself, a shameful thing-. — I maintain that the Son of God died ; 
 well, that is wholly credible, because it is monstrously absurd. — 
 I maintain, that after having- been buried, he rose again ; and that 
 I take to be absolutely true, because it was manifestly impos- 
 sible." Excellent faith ! as the Doctor will not give me credit 
 even for ability to give a literal translation, 1 offer the above 
 only as a bold guess ;t below is the text itself, and he may get 
 his Grammar and Dictionary and mend it. 
 
 21. And why, there is no power of language— no use of words 
 — no modes of expression andsignificancy, that could possibly have 
 been used to express and signify a real and corporeal presence, 
 that are not, and have not, from the earliest ages of the church, 
 been used in shameless prostitution to the maintenance of that 
 as true, which every sense and faculty of man did at the same 
 time show to be false. 
 
 The divinity of Christ was comprehensible by men's imagina- 
 tions — his humanity, the flesh and blood, stuck in their teeth. 
 
 Innumerable other passages there are, in these mystical and 
 mischievous writings, in confirmation of the irrefutable truth of 
 the Manifesto, and in abundant supply of scripture-evidence, 
 that the " blessed Jesus*' never existed. 
 
 Of these there are so many, that they may be safely left to the 
 reader's own observance ; and if he should say that he really 
 cannot find them out ; all I have to say is, no more can I ! I could 
 
 * Cannibal Ceremony of the Sacrament — " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son 
 of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. (John vi. 53.) He that eateth 
 my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me. and I in him ; for my flesh is 
 meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." (56.) There can be no difficulty in 
 admitting this to be merely figurative language; but the difficulty is, upon such an 
 admission, to show what sort of language it would be, that was not figurative. It 
 is not to be wondered at, that when our Christian Missionaries preach this sort of 
 mysticism to the Anthropophagies, Caffrees, Carribees, and Catabanks, they should 
 be listened to with the profoundest attention ; their hearers would whet their 
 knives; the Chickesaws, the Choctaws, and the Cherokees, would squeal with 
 rapture. 
 
 t Alias non invenio materias confusionis, quse 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 credible est, quia ineptum 
 est. Et sepultus, resurrexit, certum est quia impossibile." — De Carne Cbristi, 
 Semler's Edition Hala? Magdeburgicee, 1770. Vol.3, p. 352. 
 
VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 107 
 
 not show St. Paul's cathedral to the man who stood on Ludgate- 
 hill, and had bound himself by a vow to look only towards Tem- 
 ple-bar. 
 
 Nor do I pretend to have offered any thing" in the shape of an 
 argument, or in the least degree to have refuted the Answer to 
 the Manifesto, in the judgment of any reader who shall think for 
 himself, — provided only that he shall do so seriously and de- 
 voutly, and above all, with prayers — with prayers to the 
 supreme author of truth, upon the truly modest and humble 
 assumption, that the Supreme Author of Truth must be just ex- 
 actly of the same way of thinking as himself. The reader must 
 only give heed to the admonitions laid before him so pastorally, 
 so ministerially, and so judiciously, by the learned and pious Doc- 
 tor ; he must take care not to violate his duty as a Christian, and 
 not to be wise above what Dr. John Pye Smith has written for 
 the strengthening of his faith, and for the building up, not only 
 of his understanding, but also of his disposition and temper, into 
 a holy conformity to that mind which was also in Christ Jesus ; 
 and then, he will not only see that all the passages purporting to 
 be quotations in the Manifesto, and in this Vindication of it, are 
 u impudent forgeries, and that the passages referred to say no such 
 thing as is imputed to them ■" but he will also feel that " the Ma- 
 nifesto Writer is the first-born of calumny — the greatest liar that 
 ever set pen to paper/' &c. &c. &c. and that the wisdom and justice 
 of our laws cannot be too much applauded, for having- cut off such 
 a pest from society, and assigned him to the highly merited hor- 
 rors of solitary confinement. 
 
 But as the Doctor, though he so earnestly recommends the use 
 of prayer, has not drawn up a form proper and suitable for the 
 imploring of such a right understanding, and such a heavenly 
 frame of mind, I take the liberty, as having" myself, for many 
 years, been a labourer in the vineyard, to supply bis lack of 
 service. 
 
 Prayer, 
 
 To be said by the Readers of Dr. John Pye Smith's Answer to 
 the Manifesto, first having thrown this Vindication into the 
 fire, and then devoutly kneeling, for the greater self-abase- 
 ment and humbling of their proud reason before God : — 
 
 O Lord God ! Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Supreme 
 Author of truth ! thou knowest that the carnal mind is enmity 
 itself, against thee, and against thy dearly beloved son — thou 
 knowest that man, in his natural estate, and exercising- only his 
 rational faculties, perceiveth not the things that belong- to the 
 Spirit, and that they are foolishness to him ; as I confess, O Lord, 
 that when I use my reason, they also appear to be to me ; where- 
 fore, I beseech thee, watch and guard over that dang-erous and 
 betraying faculty, and grant, that whenever my reason says one 
 
108 VINDICATION OF THE MANIFESTO. 
 
 thing-, my faith may be ready to say another. Save me, O Lord ! 
 above all things, I beseech thee, from the craft and subtlety of the 
 devil, who at this time has, by thy allowance, been permitted to 
 assail thy church with sore and grievous temptations, and who 
 has raised up and inspired such a devilish minister of sin, who 
 was once seemingly a minister of grace, and so endowed him 
 with his hellish and infernal gifts, that by his means he not only 
 denies the Lord Jesus Christ, but even denies ! — O Lord ! O Lord ! 
 he denies every thing. — Forgive me, O God ! for ever having 
 looked into his book, or trusted my weak faith to look on one of 
 his accursed arguments. " Persecute him, O Lord ! with thy tem- 
 pests, and vex him with thy storms ; pour out thine indignation 
 upon him, and let thy wrathful displeasure take hold of him. 
 Let death come hastily upon him, and let him go down quick into 
 hell/' {Psalm, Psalm, Psalm.) And, O Lord ! 1 beseech thee, 
 take away from me the understanding that would understand any 
 thing that is not in harmony with thy word. Make me to see 
 that which I see not, and to understand that which I cannot un- 
 derstand. Make me to feel assured that that is certainly false 
 which my reason, without thy especial interference, would as 
 certainly pronounce to be true. Make the things to be, which 
 are not : and enable me, after the example of thy holy servant, 
 John Pye Smith, to call every thing forgery and falsehood, that 
 tends to bring thy holy word into doubt and uncertainty — like 
 him, may I have courage to deny myself — to forswear the use of 
 my own eyes — to see not what I do see, and to see what I do not. 
 Like him, O God ! may I always, when by thy help I have gained 
 a victory over my carnal convictions, refused the evidence of my 
 own senses, and set my own reason at defiance; then may I attack 
 infidels in thy strength, O Lord ! and be exceeding bold in thy 
 salvation — then may 1 apply to them those names of scorn and 
 infamy which would be due to myself, were I not thy servant, 
 and did not my lies abound to thy glory, through Jesus Christ, 
 our Lord. Amen. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE GREAT DIFFICULTY FAIRLY STATED. 
 
 We have shown the main story, and all the leading- doctrines of 
 Christianity, to have existed in the world many ages before the 
 period which Christianity assigns as that of their first promulga- 
 tion. Yet we charge the writings of the New Testament, in 
 which that story, and those doctrines are exhibited, as betraying 
 internal marks of an origin, modern, even in relation to that as- 
 signed period. 
 
 Here is indeed a great difficulty. No candid Christian can 
 deny that the New Testament contains innumerable passages, 
 which can by no possibility be conceived to have been written, 
 either in, or any thing like to near, the times to which they refer. 
 No candid unbeliever can deny that it also contains innumerable 
 passages, and a general sketch, most clearly to be recognized, 
 entirely up to the times, and in and at the times supposed. 
 
 The passage which I here subjoin, from IrenjEus, the first of 
 all the Fathers who has mentioned the names of the four Evan- 
 gelists, is, I sincerely believe, the very strongest testimony in fa- 
 vour of the Christian Evidences that I have ever met with. If 
 the Christians, who seem generally to have held dexterity in 
 forging, the highest Christian accomplishment, have not forged 
 this, or perhaps substituted the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
 and John, for those which they found in the passage itself. 
 
 " Such is the certain truth of our Gospels, that the heretics 
 themselves bear testimony to them, every one of them endeavour- 
 ing to prove his particular doctrines from thence. But the Ebi- 
 onites may be refuted from the Gospel of Matthew, which 
 alone they receive. Marcion useth only the Gospel of Luke, and 
 that mutilated ; nevertheless, from what he retains, it may be 
 shown, that he blasphemes the one only God. They who divide 
 Jesus from Christ, and say that Christ always remained impassi- 
 ble, whilst Jesus suffered ; prefer the Gospel of Mark. However, 
 if they read with a love of truth, they may thence be convinced 
 of their error. The Valentinians receive the Gospel of John, 
 entire, in order to prove their pairs of JEons ; and by that Gospel 
 they may be confuted. Since, therefore, persons of different per- 
 suasions agree w T ith us in making use of this testimony, our evi- 
 dence for the authority of these Gospels is certain and unques- 
 tionable." Thus translated from the Latin of the Greek, by 
 Lardner, vol.4, p. 521. In the excellent theological library of a 
 gentleman, whom 'tis the proudest and happiest feeling of my 
 
110 APPENDIX. 
 
 heart to call my friend, I have collated the original text, which 
 Lar.dner seems to have wanted for this passage. 
 
 THE SOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTY. 
 
 This driving up to the mark, drives beyond it. If we believe 
 the Fathers, we must believe them throughout. The very high 
 antiquity of Irenaeus, as the disciple of Papias the disciple of St. 
 John, proves the still higher antiquity of the various orders of 
 heretics, wiiom he undertakes to refute : they must have been 
 established — their tenets must have been extensively diffused. 
 The Gospels, therefore, on which they founded their various 
 systems, had obtained authority and prevalence, long, very long, 
 before the time which should suit with them ; and however mo- 
 dified, castigated, and ascribed toother authorities, were really 
 pagan in their origin, and were brought in by the Gnostics, Va- 
 lentinians,Essenes,Therapeut£e, and various other itinerant adven- 
 turers and travelling philosophers, from the sacred legends of the 
 Hindoo, Phaenician, and Grecian mythologies. 
 
 If we believe the testimony of the Fathers, we must abide the 
 conclusions to which they conduct us ; yet one and all, from Ter- 
 tullian in the second, to Lactantius in the fourth century, quote 
 as genuine, those Sibylline verses which related the whole story 
 of Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection, and miracles to Tar- 
 quinius Prisons, 717 years before Christ, almost in the very words 
 of the Gospels. These verses, according to Bishop Pearson, 
 actually exhibited an anagram of the whole Christian Mythology, 
 in the mystical word ix©T2> a fish, the letters of which stand for 
 irjo-ss Xgiaros ©ee Ytos 2wttj£. Jesus C hrist, the Son of God — the Saviour ; 
 and the Christian Sozomen was strengthened in his faith by the 
 authority of that Pagan Hexameter, 
 
 u> ^vKov, u> fxaKagicrrou e<£ a ®eos t^ravvcr^r). 
 O wood, most blessed ! upon which God was stretched I* 
 There can be no doubt, that had the objections of Porphyry, 
 Hierocles, Celsus, and other enemies of the Christian faith been 
 permitted to come down to us, the plagiarism of the Christian 
 scriptures, from previously existing Pagan documents, is the spe- 
 cific charge that would have been brought against them. But 
 these, as we have seen, were ordered to be burned, by the pru- 
 dent piety of the Christian emperors. In writings which, like 
 those of Victor, (see page 31.) have, by happy accident, escaped 
 the expunging policy of Christians, or in incidental passages 
 whose significancy has eluded their observance, in those which 
 they have suffered to come down to us, will be found the nucleus 
 of truth, e. g. There is a passage in Cicero, written forty years 
 before the birth of Christ, in which he ridicules the doctrine of 
 
 * See also how the Christian Father Minucius Felix, taunts the Pagans—" You 
 it is, ye Pagans, who worship a cross with a man upon it !" What desperate fools 
 those Pagans must have been to worship a crucified thief! 
 
APPENDIX. Ill 
 
 transubstantiation, and asks how a man can be so stupid as to 
 imagine that which he eats to be a God ? " Ut illud quo vesca- 
 tur Deum esse putet." Never should it be forgotten, that we 
 have only been allowed to know what the objections of Celsus 
 were, per favour of such extracts from his writings as his oppo- 
 nent, Orig-en, found it convenient to answer ; and if Origen were 
 the author of the objections, as well as of the answers to them, 
 he would not have been the first Christian Jack-o'both-sides. 
 
 It wouldn't have done to have suffered Celsus to ask him to 
 show proof of the existence of Christ as a man, to have called on 
 him to produce a copy of the register of his crucifixion, or to 
 refer to any extraneous and independent evidence. 
 
 The dissimulations practised by Ebionite Christians, in order 
 to fabricate evidence for the existence of Christ, as a man,ag*ainst 
 the Nazarene, Docetian, and Phantasmiastic Christians, who uni- 
 versally maintained that he was a ghost, and that every thing 
 related of him occurred only in vision, are absolutely immea- 
 surable. Every testimony of this kind, hitherto produced, has 
 turned out, upon a thorough investigation, to be a most flagrant 
 forgery. Addison was deceitful, or deceived enough to profess a 
 belief in the letter of Christ to Abg'arus ; and Macknight and 
 Doddridge have been gulled, or have attempted to gull others 
 into a belief, that the gods and daemons had borne testimony to 
 their blessed Saviour : upon the authority of the admissions of 
 Porphyry, in his " Philosophy of Oracles/' which admissions "of 
 Porphyry, Porphyry never made — but the whole work was the 
 forgery of Christian hands, for the purpose of making him seem 
 to have made such admissions. — Lardner, in loco. 
 
 Even Lardner himself was not honest, where he found that ho- 
 nesty and the pretence of evidence for Christianity were incom- 
 patible. He could represent the Emperor Julian as a persecutor, 
 in direct despite of historical fact, merely because Julian was not 
 a Christian ; yet tells us of Constantine, after he had murdered — 
 1. Maximian, his wife's father ; 2. Bassianus, husband of his sis- 
 ter Anastasia ; 3. Licinius, husband of his sister Constantia ; 4. 
 Licinianus, his nephew ; 5. Fausta, his wife, and 6. Crispus, his 
 son — that " he was a sincere Christian, and neither a cruel prince, 
 nor a bad man." Zosimus had given the most rational account of 
 his conversion,* and Sozomen, in refutation, admits the report 
 that Constantine, having put to death some of his relations, and 
 particularly his son Crispus, and being sorry for what he had 
 done, applied to Sopater the philosopher ; and he answering 
 that there were no expiations for such offences : the Emperor then 
 had recourse to the Christian bishops, who told him, that by re- 
 pentance and baptism he might be cleansed from all sin ; with 
 which doctrine he was mightily pleased. Whereupon he became 
 
 * See page 25. 
 
112 APPENDIX. 
 
 a Christian himself, and required his subjects to be so likewise.* 
 — Quoted by Lardner, vol. 4, p. 400. 
 
 It is well known, that the whole of Ecclesiastical History must 
 Stand or fall with the character of its great pillar, Eusebius. 
 Well, Lardner, after making- admissions with respect to this great 
 Father of Christianity, little calculated to strengthen any man's 
 faith, stumbles at last upon the very door that would let out every 
 thing — but bangs it in our faces, and is gone — 'tis the blue cham- 
 ber — the truth is there ! ! But here's a peep through the key- 
 hole. 
 
 " It is wonderful, that Eusebius should think Philo's Thera- 
 peut.se were Christians, and that their ancient writings 
 WERE OUR GOSPELS AND EPISTLES ! ! !" — Vol. 2, p. 361. No ! 
 it is not wonderful that he should think so — the wonder is that he 
 should have said so. A hundred thousand volumes are contained 
 in that saying's sense ! 
 
 It should be steadily borne in remembrance, that the terms 
 Christ; Christ our Saviour: our Lord: our blessed 
 Lord and Saviour: are epithets that have no identification in 
 them. They were of familiar application, and in continual 
 recurrence as applied to the Sun, to Jupiter, to Bacchus, Apollo, 
 Adonis, &c. ; in the multifarious systems of Heliolatry and Idolatry, 
 that had for antecedent ages of ages, subjugated the abused 
 reason of mankind. 
 
 By application of this essential canon of criticism, some of the 
 earliest pretended testimonies to our Lord, and to our Sa- 
 viour, will be found to have more probably referred to some one 
 or other of those Pagan Deities. Thus, the very earliest, that of 
 the Apology of Quadratus, pretended to have been presented 
 to Adrian, in the year 126, in which he tells the Emperor, that 
 " the works of our Saviour were always conspicuous, for they 
 were real ; both they that were healed, and they that were 
 raised from the dead, who were seen not only when they were 
 healed, or raised, but for a long time afterwards, not only whilst 
 he dwelled on this earth, but also after his departure, and for a 
 good while after it, insomuch that some of them have reached to 
 our times ;"t has no distinctiveness of Christian significancy. 
 
 * Tain a aw eiricrTa/ieuos eaurco, icai Trpotreriye optcwv naTa&povrjo'eis, Trpovrjei 
 rois icpevs-L Kc&apffia airwv. Kai tsto exeiv eirayycKfxa ro res acrefieis fMeraXafx- 
 fiavovTas ctvrris iracrys a/xaprias e|a> TrapaKprjixa Ka&KTTacrfrcu. So far, Lardner gives 
 us the text of Zosimus. 
 
 Adrj/JLoi/si/ra derov BatnAea €ttl ttj aTrayopevaei, irepirvxewEirKricoTrois, 01 fieravoia 
 /ecu BaiTTKTfiaTi inrecrxovTO, ira<ri]s avrov afxaprias Kc&aipeiy. Sozomen in loco 
 eodera. This is not the language of ridicule, their own most sacred compositions 
 will furnish stronger satire. 
 
 t I subjoin the whole of this precious fragment ; it is impossible that it could 
 have been presented in this state to the Emperor. It is but a broken sentence; 
 and no reason can be conceived why, having thus much of it, we should not 
 have had more, but that the crafty Eusebius, on whose fidelity it rests, was aware 
 that its context and connection would have betrayed its pagan origination: — 
 
 Te 5e Hwrripos rjfxuv to epya, aet vapT)v, oArj^rj yag r)V 01 Oepaiffv&evTes , ot 
 
APPENDIX. 113 
 
 Such a testimony, coming from a priest of iEsculapius, as for all 
 that appears, this Quadratus may have been, contains nothing" 
 but what such a priest would have said of such a deity. It hath 
 no more indication of reference to a Jesus of Nazareth in parti- 
 cular, than to a Guy of Warwick. 
 
 The idolatrous epithet, Christ ; in one of the Pagan Gospels 
 of the ancient sect of the Therapeutje, which Gospels, as we 
 have seen, Eusebius thinks were the same as ours,* gave great 
 offence to the Therapeutan Thaumaturg, who, when one of his 
 satellites had called him " the Christ of God, straitly charged and 
 commanded them to tell no man that thing," Luke ix. 21. 
 
 The complimentary epithet, Chrest (from which, by what is 
 called the Iotacism, or change of the long E into I, a term of 
 respect grew into one of worship,) signified nothing more than a 
 good man. Clemens Alexandrinus, in the second century, founds 
 a serious argument on this paronomasia, that t all who believed 
 in Chrest, (i. e. in a good man,) both are, and are called Chres- 
 tians, that is, good men/' — Strommata, b. 2. 
 
 It has been the universal trick of the Christian evangelizers, 
 to plagiarize and adopt pagan documents, and christen them 
 into Gospels ; and to give a Christian turn of the matter, to an 
 unquestionably idolatrous phraseology. I wish I never found 
 the important additament, Jesus Christ, in Lardner's English 
 text, where I could read no further than Kvpios Km o-wrrig wop— 
 our Lord and Saviour, in his Greek originals ; a formulary 
 as idiomatically heathenish, as 
 
 Zeus fxeyiarre fcvSiffre KeXatuecpes a&epi vamv \ — In Homer's Iliad. 
 
 So hungry, however, was this great Christian-Evidence 
 manufacturer, to find testimonies to Christ and Christianity, or 
 any thing that could be strained, no matter with how much 
 straining, into a possible reference to it, that he actually quotes 
 the Metamorphoses of Apuleiu's, of Madaura, an avowed work of 
 imagination, and brings in a Jack Ass, as bearing testimony to 
 Christ, where the dumb beast is representing the character of a 
 baker's wife, to whom he had been sold, and of whom he says, 
 thatj " she so abused her husband, that even he (the Ass), could 
 
 avaffTavres en veicpcw oi sk wcpfr-qeav fxovov frepaireuofjievot koli avaffranevoiy aWa, 
 ko.1 aei irapovns, sSe eKi^tniBVTOS fxovov ts awr^pos, aWa tcai airaKKayemos, T)<rav 
 
 €7Tt XP 0V0V IKCWOV, Wffre KCU eiS TBS TJfJLeTepBS TlVeS OLVTUiV OKpUCOVTO. 
 
 Thus, with no address, no connection, no purport, no conclusion ; what can we 
 infer from the existence of such a fragment and no more, but that there might 
 not have been another sentence in the document, but what would have shown its 
 pagan character, and so have defeated the use for which it had been stolen. 
 
 * Aurt/co oi eis xptCTOJ/ ireiricrTevKOTes xpV (rroi T€ €lcrt Kat teyovras. — Strom. 
 
 + Lib. 3, c. 17, p. 53, et circa.— Psal. 55, D. 
 
 J "Ut, Hercules! ego, ejus vicem quoque tacitus frequenter ingemiscerem : 
 nee ulium vitium nequissimse illi feminae deerat. Scseva, Sseva, vitiosa, ebriosa, 
 pervicax, pertinax, in rapinis turpibus avara, in sumptibus turpis profusa, 
 inimica fidei, shostis pudicitiae, fallens omnes homines, et miserum maritum 
 
 I 
 
114 APPENDIX. 
 
 not but lament his unhappy condition ; she had every vice with- 
 out any thing- that was agreeable. She was perverse, ill-natured, 
 obstinate, given to drink, she robbed her husband, was profuse in 
 her expences ; deceiving all men, especially her miserable hus- 
 band, and devoting herself to drinking, and from morning 
 
 to night/' And upon this description, and a little more of it, to 
 the like effect. Lardner concludes with the words, "there can 
 be no doubt that Apuleius here designs to represent a Christian 
 woman !" — Vol. 4, p. 107. 
 
 It is something worse than this compliment to the ladies ; 
 when in order to make the Platonic philosopher Amelius, (A. D. 
 263,) seem to recognize Christ's real existence as a man ; he 
 gives an Ebionitish rendering to his Docetian Original, and so 
 makes Amelius seem to say, that Christ took the form of a man, 
 (vol. 4, p. 200.) instead of saying, (which is all his sense implies,) 
 that he was the Phantasmagoria* of a man. 
 
 A regular succession of the most learned and intelligent of the 
 Christian Fathers, from and in the apostolic age, steadily main- 
 tained, 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. 
 These, from the Greek word, which expresses their sentiment, 
 are called the Docetae, or Docetian Fathers, as opposed to the 
 Ebionite, or Beggar Heretics, who maintained the contrary hypo- 
 thesis, that Jesus had a real existence. The previous prevalence 
 of these conflicting opinions may be discerned even in the pre- 
 sent garbled and transmuted text of our New Testament. 
 
 " Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised 
 from the dead according to my Gospel" 2 Timothy, ii. 8. A 
 memorandum that can hardly be conceived to have been sent to 
 a Christian bishop, unless there were some other Gospels in being 
 at that time, which told the story in a different way. The three 
 Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, distinctly relate one of 
 Christ's Metamorphoses, and the words of John xii. 28, 6t Father, 
 clarify thy name ! then came there a voice from heaven, 
 saying, I have both clarified it, and I will clarify it again ;"t are 
 words that could not possibly have been written by one who 
 wished to be understood otherwise than as romancing. Would 
 any sensible man look another in the face, and say he believed it ? 
 
 dccipiens, matutino mero, et continuo stupro corpus maniciparat — Spretis atque 
 calcatis divinis numinibus, in vicem certae religionis mentita sacrilega, praesump- 
 tione Dei, quern praedicaret unicum." — Apuleius, A. D. 164, more rally than 
 above. 
 
 * H£iwce T-r\v juep^iji' av&pwire \a€eiv were the words which Amelius would 
 have used, had he meant as Dr. Lardner renders him ; but (pavrafei'&ou, av&pooirov 
 is the text ; which is rather awkward. 
 
 t Clarify is the real original word in our native tongue, which has had both 
 its sound and sense, spouted away in the more sonorous but insignificant mouthing 
 of it into glorify. The oldest Latin copies in existence, enriched our language 
 with this word, John xxi. 19, stood, "Hoc autem dixit significans qua morte 
 clarificaturus esset Deum,"— by what death he should clarify God ." 
 
APPENDIX. 115 
 
 The doctrine of Leucius or Lucian, (A. D. 143,) who by argu- 
 ments more and more cogent than my limits would allow me to 
 touch on, may be shown to be the author of the Received 
 Gospel, according- to Saint Luke, and of the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles, was,* " that Christ was not truly a man, but in appearance 
 only, and that he appeared to his disciples in different forms, at 
 different times, sometimes young, and then as an old man, and 
 then again a boy, sometimes greater, then less, then greater than 
 ever, so that his head would reach the midst of heaven, and that 
 Christ was not crucified but another in his stead." 
 
 His boyish character, however, seems on all hands, to be ad- 
 mitted as that " on which wise," he made his last appearance, 
 as we find the Apostles speaking of him, as of that fashion, 
 after his Apotheosis; "thy holy boy Jesus," (Acts iv. 27) 
 11 That signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy 
 boy Jesus." ("Acts iv. 30.) To be sure, those words savour some- 
 what of the ancient Liturgy of the jolly God Bacchus, ever 
 fair and young; but the smaller compass his body could be re- 
 duced into, the more convenient it would be for ascending into 
 u the clouds of heaven, with power and great clary. '' 
 
 It should however, never be forgotten, that those who opposed 
 the Docetian doctrines, and maintained the extraordinary notion 
 of an historical foundation of the Gospel-Theophany, and that 
 Jesus Christ was really a man, have failed in every attempt that 
 they have made to adduce independent testimony. In order to be 
 able to pretend that the adversaries of Christianity had admitted 
 the real existence of Jesus Christ as a man, they actually wrote 
 books themselves for those adversaries, forging upon them, and 
 so fathering them with admissions that they never did, and never 
 would have admitted. 
 
 Celsus, in all probability, never so much as saw the work 
 which the mendacious Origen has won immortal fame by affecting 
 to refute. He never would have made so foolish an admission 
 as (i that Christ wrought real miracles by the power of magic," 
 which Origen could so easily answer : nor would he have failed 
 of asking a question or two which Origen would have found to be 
 answered not quite so easily. t 
 
 * Ae7et 5e ju^S' av^rpooirnffai atoi&ws rov xpwrov a\\a do^ai, k<xi iroWa iroWaKis 
 <pavr}ucu tois juoStjtcus, veov kcu irpecrfivTrjV iraKiv, /ecu ira\iv 7rcu5a, k«j, fietgova, kcu 
 eAaTTova, xai fieyicrrov wffre ttjv Kopv(pT)v StriK^iv ecrSt' on fiexp 1 spaua : kcu rov 
 Xpurrou firj ffTcivpw&Tivcu aAA.' erepov avr' avre. 
 
 + Even at this day, we find the advocates of Christianity relying on the real 
 cruelty and affected contempt with which they can treat their adversaries— "Did 
 Origen represent Jesus Christ as the hero of a fable V asks Mr. Beard, "You are 
 challenged to the proof of it," (Letter 1. to Mr. Carlile.) 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.tragedy, — to his 7th Chapter, he would 
 find that he acknowledged, that the name 1ESUS, was only a sacred spell, — in 
 Chapter 10th, that Christianity would never bear examining. For an Unitarian 
 to quote Origen, is downright bravoism ! 
 
J 16 APPENDIX. 
 
 In the three books of the Philosophy of Oracles,* so fraudu~ 
 lently ascribed to Porphyry, the most virtuous and formidable 
 enemy of the Christian craft, even the god Apollo is represented 
 as having- recognized the existence of Jesus Christ as a virtuous 
 and religious man. This egregious cheat was not too gross to be 
 held out by Eusebius in challenge to the Pag'ans. The great 
 pillar of Ecclesiastical history and of priestcraft, could thus con- 
 ceal the consciousness of imposture under pomp and parade of 
 declamations. 
 
 " But thou," (as if addressing Porphyry, or some one who had 
 made the admissions ascribed to Porphyry)t " But thou, at least, 
 listen to thine own gods, to thy oracular deities themselves, who 
 have borne witness and ascribed to our Saviour not imposture, as 
 thou dost, but piety and wisdom, and ascension into heaven." 
 
 The orthodox Ignatius, never alludes to the actions and suffer- 
 ing's of Christ without sufficient intimation that his whole history 
 had in it enough of " the stuff that dreams are made of." " His 
 incarnation, death, and resurrection, three of the mysteries most 
 spoken of in the world, were hidden from human observance, 
 and done in secret by God. v J Every attempt to bolster them into 
 credibility as facts, has failed. — 
 
 The pretended letter of Pilate to Tiberius ; 
 
 The Correspondence of Christ and Abgarus ; 
 
 The once famous Sibylline Verses ; 
 
 The testimony of Phlegon ; 
 
 The Admissions of Porphyry ; 
 
 The celebrated passage of Josephus, — 
 once constituting the redoubtable array of the evidences of the 
 Christian Religion, have one by one been beaten off the ground, 
 or surrendered by Christians themselves as no longer tenable. 
 Not one single document is there of the existence of Christ as a 
 man, within the first hundred years. What can we say of a 
 religion that hath no better evidence than this, but that it hath 
 every mark of imposture upon it, that imposture could possibly 
 be conceived to have. Chronology puts out all her lights to 
 hide the blushes of history at the mention of it. 
 
 conclusion. 
 As we see Protestantism to be a mere modification or reform of 
 Popery, so Popery was nothing more than a similar modification 
 or reform of Paganism.§ It is absolutely certain that the Pagans 
 
 * Uepi T7}$ €K \oyu»v <pi\o(ro<pias. 
 
 t AA\o ffvye, ko,v twv couth Saifiouuu, ax/row S77 rav xpV (J 'f JLC i>^ (av &*w ewcee, rep 
 ffarrTjpi i\\uav ex' ao"ireg crv yoriretav oAAa EucejSeiaj', kcii cotptav, /cot cts epaves 
 avoZov fiaprvpsvrwu. — Dem. Ev. 1. 3. cap. 6. 
 
 % Quoted, as I remember. 
 
 § The Fathers make no scruple of admitting this, with respect to all the dis- 
 senting forms of Christianity — " «k yap eWrjviKwv iw&a>v ncurai at oipecrets," say* 
 Epiphanias— " All the heresies were derired from the Greek febles," that is, in 
 other words, there's cheating in every trade but ours. 
 
APPENDIX. 117 
 
 were in possession of the whole Gospel story many ages before 
 its Jewish origin was pretended ; and it was not till the first error 
 had been committed, of suffering- the people to become acquainted 
 too intimately with the contents of the sacred books, that it be- 
 came necessary to invent a chronology, and to " give to airy no- 
 thing a local habitation, and a name." The advance of the 
 human mind has beaten away even these last refuges of impos- 
 ture, and in the absence of all hope of ever being able to set up 
 grounds of rational evidence again, Christianity rests her dying 
 struggle on the fanaticism of the vulgar, and the craft of the in- 
 formed — the willingness to be deceived on the part of the many, 
 and the power to punish those who would undeceive them, in the 
 hands of the mighty. 
 
 When " honour, wealth, and power unlimited," incite and re- 
 ward the machinations of hypocrisy, and penalties and pains are 
 the meed of honesty and truth, the balance of chances is some- 
 what too much against the hope of struggling virtue. It is 
 hardly to be expected, but that when danger and disgrace attend 
 the avowal of their better knowledge, the better knowing will 
 keep that knowledge to themselves. Thus audacious ignorance 
 tramples on modest truth — craft makes sure of the neutrality of 
 prudence — the multitude believe, and impostors triumph. The 
 voice of boisterous fanaticism rings in her gorgeous temples — the 
 remonstrance of persecuted reason is put forth from the cells of 
 captivity. 
 
 Oakham Gaol, 
 May, 1828. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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