ASPERSIONS ANSWERED: 
 
 AN EXPLANATORY 
 
 STATEMENT, 
 
 ADDIlliSSED 
 
 TO THE PUBLIC AT LARGE, 
 
 AND 
 
 TO EVERY READER OF 
 
 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW 
 
 IS PARTICULAR. 
 
 BY WILLIAM HONE. 
 
 Truth will ultimately prevail, even though he who tillered it shoulil 
 be destroyed. /Jr. Vicesimus Kvox. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED FOR WILLIAM HONE, 
 45, LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 1824. 
 
 One Shilling.
 
 ,1. iiini C Adliinl, Printers, 
 I'aitlioloinctv Close.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 5 
 
 OX I 
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 Tins was advertised as a shilling pamphlet, and I 
 wish I could as easily have kept down the size as the 
 price. It has been written with painful feelings, at 
 sundry times, and under unfavourable circumstances. 
 But I may say, with one of our elder writers, that 
 ' An innocent man needs no eloquence: his inno- 
 cence is instead of it ; else I had never come off 
 from these precipices whither men's malice hath 
 pursued me. It is true I have been accused, and 
 by great ones ; but it happened my accusers had 
 not thought of the accusation with themselves, and 
 so were driven, for want of crimes, to use invention, 
 which was found slander ; or, too late, being entered 
 so far, to seek starting-holes for their own rashness, 
 which were not given them. And then they may 
 think what accusation that was like to prove, when 
 they that were the engineers feared to be the authors. 
 Nor were they content to feign things against me, 
 but to urge things feigned by the ignorant ; which, 
 though, from their hired and mercenary impudence, 
 I might have passed by, yet I durst not leave myself 
 undefended, having a pair of ears unskilful to hear 
 lies, or have those things said of me, which I could 
 truly prove of them. Nay, they would offer to urge 
 mine own writings against me ; but by pieces, which 
 
 was an excellent way of malice, as if any man's 
 
 2
 
 context might not seem dangerous and offensive, if that 
 which was knit to what went before, might not seem 
 subject to calumny, which read entire would appear 
 most free." Jonson's words express my reasons, and 
 constitute my apology, for the matter and manner of 
 the tract. 
 
 A notion prevails with many that I am usually en- 
 gaged in preparing something or other for the press, 
 and few are persuadable to the contrary. 
 
 " Why am I ask'd what next shall see the light ? 
 
 Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write ?" Pope. 
 
 I now declare publicly, what I have frequently affirmed 
 in private, that, with the exception of finishing one 
 work at my entire leisure, I withhold my pen from every 
 purpose but that of cataloguing books. I am induced 
 to activity by duty to my family ; and, perhaps, I am 
 qualified for the business of a Book Auctioneer in 
 particular, by the knowledge I possess of the nature 
 and value of literary property, obtained from long 
 experience in every department of the bookselling bu- 
 siness, and intimacy with books themselves. Intend- 
 ing to devote myself to that employment exclusively, 
 I have made arrangements, and fitted-up my present 
 premises accordingly. Few, I presume, will blame me 
 for not desiring to be a rocking-stone or a " rolling 
 stone." Those who countenance me in maintaining 
 my wishes and my children, may be assured of my 
 attention, and my lasting respect. The present de- 
 viation I deem necessary and final ; and, as a final 
 request, I entreat him who reads this page that he 
 will do me the favour to peruse the remainder. 
 
 45, LUDGATE-HlLL J 
 
 12th February, 1824.
 
 ASPERSIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 IT little concerns the world to be acquainted with my 
 private opinions, but I deem it necessary to notice the 
 imputations of irreligion that have been often urg-ed 
 against me during the last seven years; and though, from 
 the silence I have hitherto preserved, I do not expect to 
 be accused of haste, yet I am only constrained to remark 
 publicly on the subject by the following circular letter, 
 addressed to gentlemen of the legal profession. 
 
 " SIR, 
 
 " We lake the liberty of transmitting to you the following statement, 
 which we have already laid before several gentlemen at the bar. 
 
 "Mr. HONE is (as you are probably aware,) a barrister of ten years' 
 standing, who pursued his profession at first on the Midland Circuit, and 
 more lately in the Court of Chancery. For several years, he obtained by 
 this means such an income as was sufficient for the support of his family 
 in comfort and independence. He is the brother of Mr. WILLIAM HONE, 
 the bookseller, who became known to the public by the parodies on the 
 Liturgy, for which he was prosecuted by the Attorney-general. As soon 
 as the relationship between Mr. Houe and the author of these publications 
 
 a
 
 G 
 
 became generally known, it produced the most calamitous effects upon 
 the professional prospects of the former. The disapprobation which had 
 been generally excited by the publication of the parodies was, by a natural 
 though a most unjust prejudice, transferred to the innocent brother of the 
 publisher. It was taken for granted that the two brothers held the same 
 religious and political opinions, and Mr. Hone was gradually deserted 
 by his clients, until he found himself deprived of his whole professional 
 income. In the hope of diverting this prejudice against his character, he 
 applied to the Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls, the Vice Chan- 
 cellor, and the twelve Judges, to subscribe to a book on Conveyancing, 
 which he proposed to publish, and he received from them the most kind 
 and condescending attention, with their permission to place their names 
 at the head of his list of subscribers. He obtained a similar permission 
 from the greater part of the gentlemen within the bar at the Court of 
 Chancery ; from some of the leaders of bis own circuit, and many other 
 members of his profession. Distress and poverty, however, have pre- 
 vented the completion of this desigiit It is painful to state that Mr. 
 Hone and his wife and children have frequently been reduced to the 
 actual want of the common necessaries of life, and he has with difficulty 
 preserved a sufficiency of raiment to appear in the situation of a gentle- 
 man. 
 
 " AH this weight of misfortune has been as unmerited as distressing. 
 So far is Mr, Hone from adopting his brother's religious or political opi- 
 nions, that he actually abandoned his society, after having repeatedly 
 made the most affectionate and earnest, though unavailing, protests against 
 his proceedings. They are the children of a religious and virtuous father, 
 to whose principles and maxims of conduct is to be ascribed the resigna- 
 tion and fortitude with which Mr. Hone has borne the heavy calamity 
 under which he has been suffering. 
 
 " An opportunity has been found for enabling Mr. Hone to emigrate 
 to one of the colonies, with a fair prospect of maintaining himself and 
 family by his profession. 
 
 " The difficulty of his availing himself of this escape from want, consists 
 in his inability to purchase the necessary outfit for himself and family, 
 and to defray the expences of the voyage. On the most moderate esti- 
 mate, seven or eight hundred pounds will be required for this purpose. 
 In the hope of raising this sum, several gentlemen at the bar have opened 
 a subscription ; and Messrs. Hoares, in Fleet-street, will receive any 
 money which may be collected. If you should feel disposed to assist in 
 this object, you will perhaps have the goodness to contribute as expedi-
 
 tiously as possible, as it is of tlic utmost importance that Mr. Hone 
 should not lose the opportunity of sailing in the present autumn. 
 " We have the honour to be, 
 
 " Sir, 
 " Your most obedient humble Servants, 
 
 " JOHN RAITHBY, 
 "JAMES STEPHEN, JUN. 
 "J. H. KOE. 
 " Lincoln's Inn; 18th August, 1823." 
 
 This statement, lithographically printed without the 
 slightest knowledge on my part that it had been in con- 
 templation, was two days in circulation among the gentlemen 
 at the bar and on the rolls of the courts before I heard of 
 it from an utter stranger. My feelings on the occasion, a 
 brother only, and a brother only so circumstanced, can 
 imagine. I had long known of my brother's embarrass- 
 ments, but by this means I first obtained information of their 
 magnitude, and that such serious allegations regarding my- 
 self were extensively promulgated. 
 
 It is not my purpose to comment; yet, as the circular 
 speaks of my brother's " protests against my proceedings," 
 
 I must remark that these protests were no more than ob- 
 jections verbally urged to my political opinions and publi- 
 cations, except a single letter during the late queen's 
 trial, remonstrating against a pamphlet I wrote on that 
 subject which he saw advertised as ready to appear, and 
 acquainting me that if it did, our intercourse must cease. 
 
 II is letter was certainly "earnest," and "affectionate; "and, 
 as certainly, a "protest" against my "proceeding." 
 Because I adopted that proceeding, which had been 
 several weeks in preparation, and for several weeks 
 publicly announced in the newspapers, " he actually 
 abandoned my society," and we never met in a room till 
 after the issue of the circular signed by Mr. Raithby, Mr. 
 Stephen, and Mr. Koe.
 
 8 
 
 The topic of that circular is to me a painful one, and I 
 Would fain avoid it; but to ray children and to my excellent 
 wife, who are dear to me as my life-blood to the public 
 to that portion of the public especially who having been my 
 especial friends, yet know of me only through evil report and 
 good report, to myself, with something of the self-respect 
 Which every one entertains who is not an exception to our 
 common nature, and not to be excepted from civilized 
 society to these, and more than these, I owe that I should 
 seem as I am, and not as I have been misconceived. 
 
 On Sunday, the 31st of August, the circular was inserted 
 in the John Bull, with recommendations of the purpose that 
 the gentlemen who signed it had in view, and with animad- 
 versions on myself by the editor of that newspaper, in the 
 course of which I am denominated an advocate of " blas- 
 phemy." The following remark was appended to the cir- 
 cular. " This measure is sanctioned by the LORD CHAN- 
 CELLOR; and THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE ABBOTT, MR. 
 JUSTICE BAYLEY, MR. JUSTICE BEST, MR. ATTORNEY 
 GENERAL, &c. &c. have subscribed." The Sun, evening 
 paper, copied the John Bull article verbatim, and it after- 
 wards appeared in certain country papers. On Sunday, 
 the 14th of September, the John Bull reverted tp the 
 subject in the following statement. 
 
 "MR. HONE THE BARRISTER." 
 
 " We have received a communication from the gentlemen who signed 
 the "circular" respecting the case of Mr. HONE, in which they request us 
 to state, that we did not receive the " circular" which we published in our 
 last Number but one, either from Mr. Hone himself, or from any of those 
 whose names are subscribed to it, 
 
 "It is most true we did not; and we are most ready to relieve Mr. Hone 
 from the suspicion that he did any act likely to attract public attention, 
 cither to bis-own circumstances, or the faults of a brother, for whom, as
 
 9 
 
 our present correspondents say, 'he cannot cease to feel a deep affection 
 and anxious interest/ 
 
 "The letter was forwarded to us by a person zealously anxious for 
 Mr. Hone's success, and we, with the best intentions, (for which we are 
 pleased to see the gentlemen who have since addressed us give us credit) 
 added our influence to its circulation. It is by no means unsatisfactory to 
 hear, from the same source, that ' the subscription has materially increased 
 in consequence of our publication ;' but our correspondent adds ' that 
 Mr. Hone, having suffered much in his health and spirits, was painfully 
 affected by seeing his name in a public newspaper, and feels still more dis- 
 tressed at being supposed accessary to the publication of a letter which 
 seems to make him the author of a public censure upon the conduct of so 
 near a relation. 
 
 " We are extremely sorry to have wounded Mr. Hone's feelings, or to 
 have given to the world that which it appears was intended exclusively 
 for the profession ; we most willingly here bear testimony to the fact, that 
 the letter was not sent to us by Mr. Hone, nor with his knowledge. We 
 must be allowed to add, however, that, considering the vast number of 
 gentlemen now engaged in the law, (supposing the letter originally to 
 have been written under the sanction of Mr. Hone,) the communication 
 of his sentiments and opinions upon his brother's public conduct to so largo 
 a body of persons seems to us to differ very litlle, at least in spirit, to a 
 general publication of them to the world at large." 
 
 One fact was certain from the circular, the critical si- 
 tuation of my brother's affairs; another was equally certain, 
 that the letter itself was a strenuous effort by his friends 
 to relieve him ; and, under these circumstances, after calm 
 consideration it appeared to me that there was only one 
 point on which I ought to claim explanation. 
 
 From the time of my trials, it suited that portion of the 
 public press which advocates the political opinions espoused 
 by my brother, to connect my name with anti-Christian 
 writers and publishers. Now, if I had purposed serious 
 notice of daily calumnies, I should unhesitatingly have 
 referred to my brother, not doubting his power, or his 
 willingness, had the necessity been apparent, to have given 
 conclusive testimony in rebuttal of the charges of irre- 
 ligion. But the representation in the circular, that he did
 
 10 
 
 not adopt my " religious opinions," purported, to public ap- 
 prehension, that these were in fact the irreligious opinions 
 publicly imputed to me. It purported an antithesis, a con- 
 tradistinction; it was a clear line of separation, with Joseph 
 on the one side religious William on the other irreligious; 
 and hence the representation in my brother's behalf became 
 presumptive proof against me of a previously-unattested 
 charge, which I should have confidently relied on disproving 
 by my brother himself. 
 
 That my brother, in consequence of his being my brother, 
 " was gradually deserted by his clients until he found him- 
 self deprived of his whole professional income," is an ex-parte 
 statement. I neither deny nor admit it. It is a point that 
 there is no necessity for us ever to moot: in private we 
 ought not, and in public we cannot. This is the matured 
 determination of my judgment upon that statement which 
 dropped a sudden and heavy blow upon my heart. It may 
 be information to some, that I have a heart. 
 
 Deciding thus, and confining myself to the religious 
 ground, I required explanation upon that alone. For ob- 
 vious reasons, arising from the best feelings towards my 
 brother, I did not seek it of the gentlemen who signed the 
 circular, but, at the beginning of September, addressed 
 myself to him, and his answer is subjoined verbatim. 
 
 "40, Chancery Lane ; 
 23d October, 1823. 
 "Mv DEAK WILLIAM, 
 
 " You have called my attention to the following pas- 
 sage iu the circular, which to my great regret has lately appeared in 
 some public newspapers, namely, " So far is Mr. Hone from adopting 
 his brother's religious or political opinions, that he actually abandoned 
 his society after having made the most affectionate and earnest, though 
 unavailing protests against his proceedings.' You consider that this 
 passage is open to the construction, that I abandoned your society in 
 consequence of irreligious opinions, or conduct on your part, during the 
 time we were associated : you ask me to explain that part of the circular'
 
 11 
 
 which I do the more readily on account of the anxiety you express con- 
 cerning it. 
 
 " In our former familiar conversations, you have sometimes questioned 
 parts of the text of the Old and New Testament, and controverted cer- 
 tain doctrines ; this led to the differences which usually arise on discus- 
 sions between persons of opposite theological principles: however, I did 
 not understand you to reject Christianity, or to deny or impugn the 
 genuineness or authenticity of the Old or New Testament as a whole. 
 Since your Trials, numerous imputations of irrcligion have, as you are 
 aware, been publicly urged against you ; but, if it be inferred that, as 
 your brother, and from my private knowledge of your sentiments on 
 religious subjects, during our intercourse within that period, I knew 
 those imputations to be true, the inference is erroneous; yet your silence 
 under them for the last three years or more, induced me, in common with 
 many other persons, to conclude that you admitted the charge, and hence, 
 <luring the latter period, I have abstained from having any further inter- 
 course with you, although my brotherly regards were far, very far, from 
 being extinguished. 
 
 " I have thus made a short point of my explanation, instead of going 
 into the subject or minutiae. 
 
 " I would now add a few words to this, which is, probably, nearly the 
 last letter which I shall have occasion to write to you before I leave 
 England, preparing, as I am, to depart ere long for a very distant part 
 of the world j I anticipate with, I assure you, the keenest sensations, 
 <he moment when I shall have to say farewell to you for, at least, some 
 years: as future events are wisely kept from ovar knowledge, it may, 
 possibly, prove a final parting in reference to this', world j and at such a 
 time it is my hcarf's desire that we, who are the children of the same 
 parents, should take leave as brethren, each, as he hopes for forgiveness 
 from the Father of Mercies, frankly forgiving the ofaher every wrong that 
 he may consider his brother to have done him in any way whatever. This 
 will afford peace of mind to both, and, though personally far apart, we 
 may yet remain one in heart and affection, and if preserved to meet 
 again in this life, which I earnestly pray may be the oase, I trust that 
 each may learn that the other has been walking in the path of rectitude, 
 and reaped the full reward of honourable conduct. The immense distance 
 at which, in a few months, we shall be placed from each either, will pre- 
 vent cither of us from practically ministering to the necessities, if any, 
 mental or pecuniary, of the other; nevertheless, one thing may be lone, 
 we may entreat him who has been our Protector from our infai,*y to
 
 12 
 
 manhood, to further us with his continual help, and thus be assured of 
 weathering every storm. 
 
 "Before I close my letter, I would remark, that it has hitherto been 
 my most studious endeavour to avoid every thing that might have the 
 semblance of an attack upon your character or reputation, and I much 
 regret that the diction of the circular should be liable to have such a 
 construction upon it, or be considered in that light by yourself or your 
 friends, as I can truly affirm that it was never so intended. Of course I 
 have had my own opinion of the nature and tendency of your public 
 acts, nor have I concealed that opinion at such times as it became 
 necessary for me to avow it, though even then I did not forget our near 
 relationship, nor could it possibly have escaped attention, that, on these 
 occasions a brother's feelings were creating a painful conflict in my 
 mind. 
 
 " Numerous arrangements for my departure have unavoidably prevented 
 me from writing to you ere this ; and, in conclusion, I would express 
 a hope, that nothing 1 have said will be deemed by you as recrimina- 
 tion : that is far from my intention. Neither have I ventured to offer 
 any thing in the shape of advice, as it might be deemed surplusage and 
 obtrusive : you know my heart and views, and I think that I know 
 your's; each may therefore conclude what would be the counsel of the 
 other ; and, if there be a reciprocal determination to continue to act with 
 truth and integrity, we and our families must ultimately be benefited, 
 and our happiness and tbeir's will be promoted and secured. 
 "Believe me, 
 
 " My dear William, 
 
 " Your ever affectionate Brother, 
 
 "JOSEPH HONE." 
 
 Religion is a subject on which, more than on any other, 
 the best men differ verbally, and agree practically. My 
 brother had never fallen in with the gross imputations of 
 irreligion urged against me, after our intercourse ceased 
 in July 1820, if a little Biblical inquiry had enabled him 
 fully to comprehend the objects and limits of mine, when I 
 incidentally alluded to topics connected with it during our 
 previous intimacy. Nor, if he had studied my character, 
 could he have been induced to conclude that my silence
 
 J3 
 
 imported admission of the imputations. Separated in boy- 
 hood, our intercourse throughout life has only been 
 occasional, and seldom lasting- for more than a few months, 
 after lapses of years. Varying in temper, opinion, and con- 
 struction of mind, there are few points of contact between 
 us. He has seen me " bear the proud man's contumely, 
 the insult of rude ignorance, the sarcasm of malice, the 
 hired censure of the sycophantic critic, whose preferment 
 depends on the prostitution both of knowledge and con- 
 science, and the virulence of the venal newspaper* ;" he 
 mistook my patience for weakness, and my forbearance 
 for inanity. 
 
 In our recent conversations I gather that a main reason 
 for his supposing, as he affirms in his explanatory letter, that 
 I admitted the charge of irreligion was, that I had not 
 answered an article on the Apocryphal New Testament, in 
 the Quarterly Re-clew for October 1821. Certainly I had 
 contemplated, and as I have recently stated, had commen- 
 ced an answer ; " when, abridgment of my leisure, but 
 above all, the subsidence of my resentment into profound 
 contempt for the flagitious frauds of the reverend reviewer, 
 and a conviction that those who were qualified to judge 
 of his article would see its mendacity, determined me not to 
 engage in polemics."i I underrated that article, by assuming 
 thatit would not be overrated; and Inow do somewhat, not 
 as a stepping-stone to controversy, for which I have un- 
 conquerable dislike, but to convince unprejudiced minds 
 that the Quarterly reviewer is indebted to my silence for 
 the success of his labors. 
 
 As I purpose not to write another word on any topic 
 Connected with this pamphlet, it becomes me to state, that 
 
 * Dr. Vicesimus Knox, Spirit of Despotism, Prcf- p. xi. 
 
 f Ancient Mysteries described. Pref. p. iii. 
 
 C
 
 14 
 
 though the publicity given by the circular to the difference 
 between my brother and myself was to me a source of 
 sorrow and misery, my brotherly affection was undiminished, 
 and is unextinguishable. The period approaches for his 
 proceeding to a distant colony, and we shall part, not 
 merely in semblance, but in reality, as brethren. We, and 
 our families, mutually participate in deep regret at a dis- 
 junction that, as regards this world, may be for ever ; and 
 our best feelings and most ardent affections go forth for each 
 other's happiness and prosperity. 
 
 My sole aim in the remaining pages is "A Refutation of 
 the Quarterly Review of the Apocryphal New Testa- 
 ment," and they will contain a few remarks upon the 
 strictures of the Rev. Dr. Butler, Archdeacon of Derby, 
 and the Rev. Thomas Rennell, Rector of Kensington. 
 
 I am informed that the readers of the article in the 
 Quarterly Review, consider it an attack that admits of no 
 defence. The reviewer advances in apparently great 
 strength, takes up his positions in a regular way, places 
 the canon in front very orderly, and persons of little 
 inquiry deem it impossible that I can resist such a force. 
 But it is not force : had they reconnoitred, they would 
 have found it trick. If they will follow me beyond his 
 lines and hitherto they have not taken the trouble to go 
 further they will see that he is a mere showman throwing 
 shadows, which not being examined pass for realities. I 
 pledge myself to prove that every not the greater part of 
 the charges, but that every charge urged against me by the 
 reviewer is a wilful falsehood ; and that every statement in 
 support of each charge is a deliberately-manufactured 
 fraud. I shall take them in the order most convenient to 
 myself, but I shall take them all.* 
 
 * The whole of the reviewer's charges are answered in the following 
 pages, or in the notes below them.
 
 15 
 
 The Quarterly reviewer is one of that stamp whose 
 motto is "We murder to dissect," and who first slay the 
 author in order to cut up his book with impunity. Pur- 
 suing this convenient process, the reviewer, in his first 
 paragraph, calls me " a wretch, as contemptible as he is 
 \vicked:" he informs his readers that I am " a poor illite- 
 rate creature, far too ignorant to have any share in the 
 composition" of the work ; and, in the final words of the 
 same paragraph, he denominates it a " nefarious publica- 
 tion." Jn this way he sets out to do " the state some 
 service."* 
 
 Speaking of me as the editor of the Apocryphal New 
 Testament, the reviewer says : "In page vi. of his preface, 
 (and afterwards in the work itself,) he affords ample proof 
 of his ignorance of even the commonest matters, by the 
 triumph with which he announces to his readers his fancied 
 discoveries that the Apostles' Creed was not written by the 
 Apostles ! and that it did not originally contain the article 
 of Christ's descent into hell !" The reviewer puts two notes 
 of admiration to indicate astonishment at my twofold igno- 
 rance. But he was not astonished; hecouldnotbe astonished; 
 for neither " in p. vi. of the preface," nor " afterwards in the 
 work itself," have I "fancied" that the facts as to the creed 
 and the descent were my "discoveries;" nor have I expressed 
 a syllable of " triumph," or feeling, from which previous 
 " ignorance" of those facts could be inferred. In short, I 
 have not made a single observation upon them of any kind 
 
 * " Illiterate creature," as the reviewer describes me, I am in what he 
 would call good company. "The i I literature of the Grand Monarque, 
 Louis XIV. went so far, that, to the last, he could hardly write his 
 name. He formed it out of six strait strokes, and a line of beauty, 
 which first stood thus I I I 1 1 I S : these he afterwards perfected, as 
 well as he was able, and the result was LOUIS." This autographic 
 fact is in Peggc's Anecdotes, 8vo. 1803, p. 48.
 
 16 
 
 whatever. His notes of admiration are strokes of false- 
 hood. 
 
 Again : the reviewer charges me with "disingenuousness," 
 because I have saicl in a note to my preface, " For large 
 particulars of Christ's descent into hell see the gospel of 
 Nicodemus, chap. xiii. to xx.'' He remarks, that, as in 
 that gospel " hell" is represented as the place of torments, 
 I assuredly "knew that this was not the sense in which the 
 word is used in the creed." Here the " disingenuousness" 
 is not in me, but in him. My reference to the apocryphal 
 gospel was for apocryphal particulars. The reference, which 
 stands in a note on a wholly different subject, occupying the 
 whole of five pages of the preface, has nothing to do with 
 the sense of the creed, regarding the descent, one way or 
 the other. The reviewer's misconstruction of it is a jug- 
 gling and violent perversion of its obvious meaning.* 
 
 The commencement of my introduction to the Gospel 
 of 'Mary r , in the Apocryphal New Testament, being selected 
 by the Reviewer for his most violent attack, 1 subjoin it. 
 
 * " Hell, as a place of torments, was not the sense in which the word is 
 used in the Creed." So says the reviewer, who I decline to take as autho- 
 rity upon that or any other point. The Church of England would be an 
 authority, if, as a Church, she had declared the sense in which the word 
 is to be taken; however she has not, and therefore she is no authority. It 
 is true that " hell, as a place of torments," is now usually disclaimed by 
 Church of England expositors on the Creed : but what was the sense in 
 which it was taken by those who drew up the forty-two Articles of the 
 Church of England ? or by those who reduced the forty-two to thirty-nine 
 Articles, and cut off a part of the old Article on the Descent into Hell ? 
 Has not hell, as it stands in the Creed, been taken as a place of torments 
 by protestant prelates and clergy of the Church of England since that 
 time? Finally, in what sense is the word taken at this very hour by those 
 persons who repeat the Creed, and who never hear or conceive of hell 
 than as a place of torment ? In Ancient Mysteries Described, v. I have 
 cited several old instances of this belief, and described engravings that 
 illustrate it.
 
 IT 
 
 "THE GOSPEL OF THE BIRTH OF MARY. 
 
 "lu the primitive nges there was a Gospel extant bearing this name, 
 attributed to St. Matthew, and received as genuine and authentic by 
 several of the ancient Christian sects. It is to be found in the works of 
 Jerome, a father of the Church who flourished in the fourth century, 
 from whence the present translation is made. His contemporaries, 
 Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, and Austin, also mention a Gospel 
 under this title. The ancient copies differed from Jerome's, for, from 
 one of them, the learned Faustus, a native of Britain, who became 
 Bishop of Riez, in Provence, endeavoured to prove that Christ was 
 not the Son of God till after his baptism ; and that he was not of the 
 house of David, and tribe of Judah, because, according to the Gospel 
 he cited, the virgin herself was not of this tribe, but of the tribe of 
 Levi; her father being a priest of the name of Joachim. Epiphanius 
 likewise cites a passage concerning the death of Zacharias, which is 
 not in Jerome's copy." 
 
 It is essentially necessary that each part of this introduc- 
 tion should be remembered, because upon its statements the 
 reviewer grounds his heaviest charge ; and I entreat the 
 reader to observe particularly that the introduction merely 
 shows that Epiphanius and Austin mention the Gospel of 
 Mary ; that Epiphanius quotes a passage from it ; that 
 Faustus deduces a doctrine from it ; that neither the fact 
 nor the doctrine is derivable from Jerome's copy; and that, 
 therefore, " the ancient copies differed from Jerome's." 
 
 It is obvious that my introduction is so drawn as to leave 
 its reader in doubt; and, on that very account, a candid 
 antagonist would incline to respect, and disdain to misre- 
 present me. Not, however, to anticipate, the reviewer's 
 charge shall be set forth in his own words. He says : 
 
 " To each of the assertions, namely, that the Gospel which the Editor 
 presents to his readers was received by several ancient sects that it is to 
 be found in St. Jerome, and that it is quoted by Epiphanius and 
 Austin, we now proceed to give a direct denial, accompanied by proof 
 that the Editor was aware of the falsehood of them all !" 
 
 This, with his covetous note of admiration, reads well ; 
 it is easy and bold, and has an air of sincerity mightily
 
 18 
 
 imposing. Permit me to introduce him more particularly. 
 He maintains his spirit in the following amplification. 
 
 "First, then, we assert that the Gospel before us was not received by any 
 of the ancient Christian sects. Here, as in many other cases, the original 
 spurious Gospel has disappeared, and the present is a miserable forgery 
 of a later age, which has taken its place and name. Of this, the editor 
 could not possibly be ignorant, as the fact is positively stated even in the 
 title to that very chapter of Jones's work* from which he has taken and 
 perverted the facts in his Preface. Jones there asserts that ' the present 
 Gospel is different from the old one,' and in proof brings forward two 
 fragments of the original Gospel preserved by Epiphanius and Austin, 
 the first of which does not occur in the present work, and the other 
 directly contradicts one of its most remarkable statements. 
 
 " Secondly, we assert that this Gospel is not contained in the works 
 of Jerome, and that when the Editor maintained the contrary, he was 
 fnlly aware of the falsehood of his statement. In the printed editions, 
 indeed, of Jerome's works, from the carelessness or the scrupulousness of 
 his editors, there have been inserted three letters, one purporting to be 
 addressed by two Bishops, Chromatius and Heliodorus, to Jerome, 
 requesting him to undertake a translation of this Gospel ; the others, pre- 
 tending to be his answers, accompanied by the required translation. No 
 one, we should imagine, could read these letters, and observe the palpa- 
 ble contradictions which they contain, the excessive folly of their argu- 
 ments, and the barbarisms of the style in which they are written, without 
 at once pronouncing them clumsy and senseless forgeries. If the editor, 
 however, should profess his inability to detect the imposture, it would 
 certainly be inconsistent with the rules of fair argument to limit an adver- 
 sary's talent for misapprehension, in order to convict him of dishonesty^ 
 We must, therefore, admit his plea; but the admission will avail him 
 nothing, for the fact is stated for him in the most decided and intelligible 
 manner. Fabricius calls this Gospel ' Evangel ium de Nativitate S. Mariae 
 jactatum olim sub falsis nominibus Scriptoris S. Matthaei et interpretis S. 
 Hieronymi,' and without hesitation calls the letters to which we have al- 
 luded the works of Pseudo-Chromatius, Pseudo-Heliodorus, and Pseudo- 
 Jerome. Dupin says, that these Epistles are certainly spurious; and in 
 this declaration all the learned men whose opinions Fabricius subjoins to 
 
 * "Jones's Work" will be often referred to in the ensuing pages ; it 
 is entitled "A New and full Method of settling the Canonical Authority 
 of the New Testament. By the Rev. Jeremiah Jones. Oxford, I798. rv 
 3 vols. 8ve.
 
 19 
 
 his 'own, Potavius, Vossius, Cave, and many others, wholly coincide. 
 Casaubon, indeed, says, that there is not a single sentence in the Latin 
 Gospel which does not argue the folly of those who are unable to distin- 
 guish between its ' dirty puddle' and Jerome's golden stream. Last of all, 
 Jones liimself, whose book was never out of the Editor's hands, subscribes 
 to (lie expressions of these eminent writers. We conclude, therefore, as 
 we began, with affirming that he could not possibly be ignorant of the 
 falsehood of the assertion which he has deliberately made." 
 
 According to this ingenious reticulation of taunt and 
 objection, it appears that the Gospel of Mary was not 
 translated by Jerome ; that the letters of the two bishops to 
 Jerome, and his answers, are forgeries ; and that " the fact 
 is stated for me in the most decided and intelligible manner 
 by Fabricius." Stated for me I why, in a few lines after- 
 wards, he writes that Jones's book was never out of my 
 hands, and that I had not consulted one original source of 
 information. Really such reviewers as mine should have 
 good memories. Fabricius stated the fact for me ! Not 
 upon the reviewer's showing, but upon my own declara- 
 tion, I hope it will be believed that I had not read that 
 author : Fabricius is in Latin, and I am not ashamed to 
 own that I cannot read him. If the reviewer exult 
 upon this declaration, it will be the unsanctified triumph 
 of malignity over misfortune : for a great misfortune it 
 was in my childhood, a terrible misfortune, which, during 
 many years of manhood, I have not ceased to deplore, 
 without power to remedy, that scholastic education was 
 closed against me by the straitened circumstances of 
 my honest and excellent parents. Not for w?e, then, 
 has Fabricius declared his opinion that these letters 
 are spurious. But, suppose 1 had read Fabricius; was I 
 bound to attach implicit credit to his opinion because 
 " Petavius, Vossius, Cave, and many others, wholly co- 
 incide" with him? Yes, says the Reviewer, "Jones himself, 
 whose book was never out of the Editor's hands, subscribes 
 to the expressions of these eminent writers." It is impos-
 
 20 
 
 sible to describe my contempt for the writer of this daring 
 falsehood. Jones does not subscribe to their expres- 
 sions. Jones says, " perhaps those Epistles may be suppo- 
 sititious ;" but, for the opinion that they are, he instantly 
 declares, tc I am not able yet to see that clear evidence 
 which the writers last mentioned pretend."* Is this sub- 
 scribing to their expressions ? If Fabricius's rejection of 
 the present Gospel of Mary, and the correspondence be- 
 tween Jerome and the bishops, was not stated for me, it 
 must be recollected that it was stated for Jones ; that 
 Jones does not acquiesce in Fabricius's determination ; and 
 that Jones does not deny that the " dirty puddle" of the Latin 
 Gospel might have flowed from the " golden stream" of the 
 Latin father. They who are acquainted with Jones's book, 
 know his unsparing hate to imposture ; and that, if conscien- 
 tiously he could, he gladly would have called the Epistles 
 and the Gospel gross forgeries. He must have had good rea- 
 son for not subscribing to the opinions of those who did call 
 them so, and for expressing his dissent in words so marked 
 and unequivocal, that the reviewer could not mistake it for 
 subscription ; but, subscription suiting the reviewer's pur- 
 pose better than dissent, he preferred the fraud to the 
 truth. 
 
 " The original spurious Gospel has disappeared, and 
 the present is a miserable forgery of a later age, which has 
 taken its place" Is it ? In what page of Jones's volumes 
 is this stated ? for I beg to repeat that Jones was my only 
 authority. My Introduction affirms, in Jones's own words, 
 that " the ancient copies differed from Jerome's." But 
 this, it seems, was not enough ; for my accuser says it is 
 cc a careless expression of Jones, of which I have cautiously 
 avoided Jones's explanation.'* Avoided Jones's explana- 
 tion ! The Reviewer knows that Jones gives no explana- 
 
 * Jones on the Canon, vol. ii. p. 143.
 
 21 
 
 ison ; he knows that all that Jones does is to show that the 
 ancient copies did differ from Jerome's; he knows that Ido 
 the very'same; and the reader himself sees it. I give it with 
 only this difference, that what Jones spreads over several 
 pages, I abbreviate in as many lines. Jones, so far from 
 using such a bold unmistakable expression as that " the 
 original spurious Gospel has disappeared," says, not 
 " carelessly," but carefully, " the ancient copies differed 
 from Jerome's." Differed from Jerome's what ? Why from 
 Jerome's copy. Jones, after inserting the Gospel, care- 
 fully observes, " The book of the Nativity of Mary suffered 
 many alterations, and the ancient copies of it were very 
 different from the present copy, which I have above pub- 
 lished, out of Jerome's works."* Jones is a decided writer; 
 he never minces an opinion or an expression, and, had 
 he thought the Gospel of Mary in Jerome's works a forgery, 
 he would have used the very word. My adherence to what 
 I conceived was his sense, is so faithful that I express it in 
 his own words; and my conception of that sense is corrobo- 
 rated by Dr. Lardner, who, speaking of this Gospel, says, 
 " our present copies are very much altered from the ancient 
 ones."t 
 
 " We assert that this Gospel is not contained in the 
 works of Jerome, and that when the Editor maintained the 
 contrary, he was fully aware of the falsehood of his state- 
 ment." This is the Reviewer's assertion. .Let it be observed 
 that I "maintained" nothing: I merely said that the Gospel 
 was " in the works of Jerome ;" I did not even say that 
 Jerome translated it, or that he was applied to by two 
 bishops for that purpose. Referring to Jeremiah Jones, 
 let us see what he asserts. He divides his work on the 
 Canon into parts; the first two parts treat of lost Apocry- 
 
 * Jones, vol. ii. p. 131. f Lardncr's Works, 4to, vol. iv. p. 631. 
 
 D
 
 22 
 
 f> 
 
 phal Books, and the third part of extant Apocryphal Books. 
 In the first part he confines himself to " a complete enu- 
 meration of all the lost Apocryphal Books of the New 
 Testament ;" and by way of preliminary, he gives " A 
 Catalogue of Books not extant now, formerly published 
 under the names of our Saviour, his Apostles, their Com- 
 panions, &c."* At the end of the catalogue, he says, 
 " These are all the Apocryphal Books not extant, which I 
 have been able to find any mention of in the writings of the 
 four first centuries after our Saviour. I proposed, 
 indeed, to have annexed here the catalogue of the 
 books still extant in like manner as the not extant; but 
 this catalogue will be so necessary in the third ."part 
 of this work, that I shall defer the producing it in 
 full, or at large, till then." Jones does not insert the 
 Gospel of Mary in this Catalogue of Books not extant. 
 In the second part, wholly confining himself to " a par- 
 ticular and critical inquiry into each of the lost Apocry- 
 phal Books," he makes not the least inquiry concerning 
 the Gospel of Mary; but, on the contrary, most care- 
 fully assigns as a reason for not doing it, that " the 
 Protevangelion of James, and the Gospel of the Birth of 
 Mary, are two Apocryphal Books now extant, and will be 
 produced in the third part."t Accordingly, in the third 
 part, which enumerates and considers none but extant 
 Apocryphal Books of the first four centuries, he inserts the 
 Gospel of Mary in Latin, with a translation into English. 
 He entitles it, li The Gospel of the Birth of Mary, published 
 out of Jerome's works /"J and then, by way of introduc- 
 tion, states the following reasons for publishing this 
 Gospel 
 
 " 1. Because there was certainly a Gospel extant under 
 this name in the primitive ages of Christianity. 
 
 * 
 
 .Jones, vol. i. p. 29. f Ibid. p. 464. J Ibid. vol. ii. p. 77.
 
 23 
 
 " 2. Because it was received by several of the ancient 
 Christian hereticks. 
 
 " 3. Because it passed formerly under the name of St. 
 Matthew. 
 
 t( 4. Because many of its relations were credited by the 
 ancient Catholick Christians in different countries. 
 
 " 5. Because it contains the same things as the Protc- 
 vangelion of St. James. 
 
 " The ONLY place of the ancient writings in which it ts 
 EXTANT is among JEROME'S WORKS (Epist. ad 
 Chromatium et Heliodorum.) The occasion of its being 
 found there was the desire of Chromatius and Helio- 
 dorus, two Bishops, to JEROME, that he would translate 
 it out of Hebrew, and give them his judgment upon 
 it. Their Letter to him, with his Answer to them, 
 and another Letter of his concerning this Gospel, I 
 have published after this Gospel." 
 
 On Jones's reasons for inserting this Gospel being com- 
 pared with my Introduction to the Gospel, it will be seen 
 how very cautiously I kept to his language ; and that he 
 alone is my authority for asserting that the Gospel of Mary 
 is to be found in the works of Jerome.* The opinion that 
 it is foisted into Jerome's works, it is evident that Jones 
 declines; and it is equally evident that the reviewer, with 
 that fact before his eyes, deliberately ^fabricated the con- 
 
 * " Saynt Jhcrome reherceth in his prologue, whan he was a chyldc lie 
 had a lytell boke of thystory of the natyuitc of the virgyn Maryc, but, 
 as he remembered a long tyme after, ho translated it by the prayer of 
 some persones." Golden Legend. 
 
 "There are, who hunt out antiquated lore: 
 And never but on musty authors pore." 
 
 Mr. Giffbrd's Persius, Sat. i. ver. 138. 
 The extract from the Golden Legend is for amusement, not authority.
 
 24 
 
 irary, for the purpose of asserting- that the Gospel is not 
 contained in the works of Jerome, and that when I stated 
 it was, I was fully aware of the falsehood of the state- 
 ment. 
 
 It being proved that Jones does not assent to the notion 
 that the Epistles of the two Bishops and Jerome are forge- 
 ries, and that he inserts the Gospel of Mary " out of Je- 
 rome's works" as a book of the first four centuries still 
 extant, he must have had strong reasons for not falling in 
 with the opinions of Fabricius and other critics. I presume 
 that he may have derived his reasons from Jerome himself. 
 " Never," observes Beausobre, " did Constantino VI. 
 whom the miserable monks scandalized with the contempt- 
 ible name of Copronymus, discover more wisdom and pru- 
 dence than when he forbad the title saint to be given to any 
 except the apostles." In the spirit of these " miserable 
 monks," the reverend reviewer dignifies his favorite father 
 by the appellation of " St. Jerome." It was of better men 
 than the reviewer that Beausobre says, " What provokes 
 beyond all patience, is to see that, in order to defend 
 opinions evidently false, a sentence is quoted from an 
 ancient writer, and puffed off with the title of a 
 saintj and a great saint. People on hearing this superb 
 title are seduced into an imagination that they hear 
 an oracle, and sincerely believe that justness of thought, 
 accuracy of expression, solidity of reasoning, and demon- 
 strative evidence, are necessarily connected with saintship 
 and great saintship ; they even fancy that such men were 
 under the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit. 
 Such as these pretend to shackle what is most at liberty in 
 us reason and faith ; and this, under pretence of a religious 
 reverence for the fathers, while the true design is to main- 
 tain the credit of errors and manifest abuses, and to domi- 
 neer over the consciences of mankind."* The reviewer's 
 
 * Beausobre Hisl.dnManicheism. Sec Robinson's Eccles. Res. p. 184.
 
 25 
 
 " St. Jerome" was the foster-father of the Apocryphal Gos- 
 pel of the Nazarenes. Jerome's own account of the affair 
 is, that Matthew was the first who composed a Gospel of 
 Christ in the Hebrew language ; that this Hebrew Gospel 
 was preserved in the library of Cesaeria ; that the Naza- 
 reans of Beraea in Syria, made use of it ; that they granted 
 him the favor of writing it out ; that he translated it into 
 Greek ; and that he also translated it into Latin. Jerome 
 calls it " the Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites 
 use, which I lately translated out of Hebrew into Greek, 
 and is by most esteemed the authentic Gospel of Matthew."* 
 He elsewhere speaks of it as the Gospel " which I have 
 lately translated into Greek and Latin, and which Origen 
 often used.t" Jones says that there is not the least intima- 
 tion of any version having been made of it till Jerome 
 made his translations, which, as well as the original 
 Hebrew Gospel, are lost. Beda, who wrote in the seven- 
 teenth century, observes of this Gospel of the Nazarenes, 
 that it " is not to be esteemed among the Apocryphal (or 
 spurious) but Ecclesiastical Histories, because Jerome 
 himself, who translated the sacred Scripture, has taken 
 many testimonies out of it, and translated it into Greek and 
 Latin. " After all this, Jones says, that Jerome affirms 
 of this Gospel, that it was the same as the Gospel according 
 to the Twelve Apostles, which Jerome " expressly rejects 
 as Apocryphal ! as a book of the heretics ! as written by 
 men destitute of the spirit and grace of God ! without a 
 due regard to truth !" 
 
 The Gospel of the Nazarenes is variously estimated; 
 but Jones calls it a spurious and infamous forgery. The 
 clearest account and largest quotations from it now extant, 
 arc to be found in Jerome's works ; and from these, which are 
 
 * Jones i. p. 280. f Ibid. p. 276. 
 
 I Jones on the Canon, vol. i. p. 283. Ibid, p. 299.
 
 26 
 
 translated by Jones, I select one as a specimen. Jerome 
 says, "Whoever reads the Book of Canticles, and. will under- 
 stand by the spouse of the soul the Word of God (Christ), 
 and will believe the Gospel which is intitled, The Gospel 
 according to the Hebrews, which I lately translated, in 
 which our Saviour is introduced, saying-, 'Just now my 
 mother, the Holy Ghost, laid hold on me by one of my 
 hairs,' will not scruple to say, the Word^of God was born of 
 the Spirit, and the soul, which is the spouse of the Word, 
 has the Holy Ghost for its mother in law." By Jones's ci- 
 tations, it appears that this Gospel contained ludicrous and 
 fabulous things ; such as that when Christ bade the rich 
 man sell all, and give to the poor, " The rich man here- 
 upon began to scratch his head :" it represents Christ as 
 unwilling to be baptized by John ; as intimating that he 
 was not baptized at all ; and questioning whether he was 
 not a sinner : it makes Christ say, " The Holy Ghost my 
 mother lately took me by one of my hairs, and led me to 
 the great mountain Thabor ;" and this part Jerome refers 
 to, in his illustration of the Canticles just quoted. 
 
 To Jerome, therefore, the Greek and Latin Christians 
 were indebted for their acquaintance with the Apocryphal 
 Gospel of the Nazarenes, which had been concealed from 
 their view by the Hebrew language till he unlocked the 
 " gate" to gratify their curiosity. If Jerome could trans- 
 late u a book of the heretics ! written by men destitute of 
 the spirit and grace of God ! without a due regard to truth !" 
 was he disqualified for translating the Apocryphal Gospel 
 of Mary? and if the ancient copies of the Gospel of 
 Mary differed from Jerome's, may we not be indebted ta 
 Jerome for that difference? Baillet says, " It is agreed that 
 St. Jerome may be the greatest saint of all translators, but 
 that he is not the most exact: he hath taken liberties which 
 the laws of translation will not admit."* He translated, and 
 * Jortin's Remarks, vol. ii. p. 149.
 
 27 
 
 did every thing at full speed. He says that he allotted him- 
 self but three days for translating the three books of 
 Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Solomon's Song. This is his 
 own incredible affirmation ;* and he was obliged to confess, 
 that, in translating Origen, when he found any thing not 
 consonant to the common judgment and opinions of his 
 time, and which might give offence to the " simple people," 
 he omitted it. Daille says, that it was his constant prac- 
 tice to suppress what he pleased in his translations. t 
 Was such a man unlikely to have omitted passages from 
 the Gospel of Mary, and otherwise accommodate it to 
 " simple people ?'' 
 
 I think it probable that the " dirty puddle" of trans- 
 lation in the Gospel of Mary, which the reviewer says could 
 not have proceeded from Jerome's " golden stream,'' 
 really was an oozing from that " golden stream," and 
 purposely bewrayed by Jerome himself. He was a great 
 dissembler"; and believing that others dissembled like 
 himself, he says that the apostle Paul counterfeited igno- 
 rance to the Galatians, because he knew they were a dull 
 heavy people. A father who could so affirm of an apostle 
 could readily adopt the same conduct, and affect low and 
 mean language to serve a turn. He affirms, too, that the 
 quarrel between Peter and Paul was only feigned ; that 
 they understood each other very well, and only pretended 
 to have a difference.^: Who does not so see that the saint's 
 mind was fraudulent ? Dean Milner says, that learned as 
 Jerome undoubtedly was, he was still more distinguished 
 for vain glory than for learning ; that he seems to have 
 known too little of that sincere love of truth which is con- 
 nected with humility ; that his knowledge of theology was 
 
 * Daille's Right Use, partii. p. 44. 
 
 t Ibid, part i. p. 40. 
 
 t Du Pin's Eccl. Hist. (Dublin,) vol. i. p. 352.
 
 28 
 
 contracted and low ; that the reputation of his knowledge 
 and abilities has been much overrated ; that he contributed 
 in a greater degree than any other writer of antiquity to 
 the growth of superstition ; and th at his learned ignorance 
 availed more than any other cause to darken the light of 
 the gospel.* Whatever were Jerome's virtues, he was 
 ambitious and wily, of irascible and violent temper, cre- 
 dulous of error, weak in principle, rancorous in resentment, 
 and so dishonest in controversy, that he would argue any 
 way. At one time he stoutly contended against the apos- 
 tolical succession of bishops ; but afterwards getting em- 
 broiled with the bishop of Jerusalem, he then contended 
 as strongly for it.t Whether right or wrong he fought 
 for victory, and rejected no means, however illicit, to 
 ensure it.' Employing his eloquence to restrain all females 
 to a state of perpetual virginity, his c; golden stream" 
 would have washed away the marriage ceremony, and the 
 whole human race might have perished in the deluge. 
 Jerome was a miracle-monger, a bigot, and a persecutor ; 
 and Jones being well acquainted with his failings and 
 labors, was therefore very likely to think that he did trans- 
 late the apocryphal Gospel of Mary ; that the correspon- 
 dence between him and the two bishops was genuine; and 
 that these Epistles and the Gospel itself were properly- 
 inserted amongst his works. At any rate, Jones does not 
 subscribe to the opinions of preceding critics, who presumed 
 the correspondence spurious ; nor does he say that the 
 apocryphal Gospel of Mary is a forgery of the gospel 
 under that name ; but he affirms that " the only place of 
 the ANCIENT writings in which IT is extant is among JE- 
 ROME'S WORKS :" he calls it " Jerome's translation;" 
 
 * Nelson's Fasts, Art. Ember-days. 
 
 f Milner's Church History, 8vo. 1812, vol. ii. p. 470, ct seq.
 
 29 
 
 and he inserts it, with his own English translation, " among 
 other such pieces now extant.^ It is clear that the reviewer 
 palters with the Gospel of Mary in a double sense ; that 
 he perverts Jones's expressions ; and that he fabricates 
 Jones to have said what he never did say. His assertion 
 that " this gospel is not contained in the works of Jerome, 
 and that when I asserted it was, I was fully aware of the 
 falsehood of the statement," is a foul malversation ; and 
 the most scrupulous mind must be convinced of the wilful 
 falsehood of the charge by which he seeks to dishonour 
 me.* 
 
 * However little (he reviewer may be suspected of veracity, he assumes 
 a particular veneration for that essential virtue, and thinks me a "dis- 
 creditable" person, because I suppressed " the number and names of the 
 * several ancient Christian sects'" who I affirm received the Gospel of Mary. 1 ' 
 He says, " On examination it will be found that they dwindle down to 
 two the Gnostics and Manicheans !" This note of self-admiration at the 
 end might have been spared. He actually docs not know that Mosheitn 
 ( Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. 134, 139,) endeavours to account for the " diver- 
 sity of sects" among the Gnostics. There were upwards of fifty different 
 sects of Gnostics. How miserably as a reviewer, how scandalously 
 as a divine, this critical character lacks information that in cither capa- 
 city' should be at his fingers' ends. 
 
 The reviewer is welcome to all he can gain by having detected an 
 error I fell into concerning- Faustus. On transcribing that name from 
 Jones's work, I looked into the edition before the last of Watkins's 
 very useful Biographical Dictionary, and finding that " Faustus, a 
 learned prelate of the fifth century, was a native of Britain, and in 455 
 became Bishop of Riez, in Provence," &c. I wrote of the Gospel of 
 Mary that " the ancient copies differed from Jerome's, for from one of 
 Ihem the learned Faustus, a native of Britain, who became Bishop of 
 Riez in Provence, endeavoured to prove," &c. This was a mistake; 
 and the reviewer gravely inquires, " Is there a single reader of divinity 
 so utterly ignorant of the commonest facts, as not to be aware that 
 Faustus was an African, a teacher of theManichasan heresy at Carthage?" 
 I answer Yes, thousands of readers of ' divinity ;' for this is not a 
 fact in divinity, but a fact in ecclesiastical history, which I take permis- 
 sion to believe is as different from divinity as Faustus the Manich;i;an is 
 different from Faustus the bishop. Let me instance that Jerome 
 confounds Simon the Just who met Alexander the Great when he came 
 to Jerusalem, with Simon the High Priest, in the days of Herod (Jones, 
 vol. ii, p. 151.) ; yet Jerorne will not therefore be condemned to oblivion : 
 nor will Cornelius Nepos be banished our schools, because, in treating 
 professedly of the Life of Miltiadcs the son of Cypsilas, he ascribes to him 
 the actions of another Miltiades the son of Cimon. (Lempriere's Classical 
 Pict. art. Miltiades.) 
 
 JJesides the " divinity" blunder committed by the reviewer, in his 
 
 E
 
 30 
 
 The Introduction to the Protetwngelion of James, which 
 stands in the Apocryphal New Testament next after the 
 Gospel of Mary, affirms, that " the allusions to this apocry- 
 phalGospel in the ancient Fathers are frequent, andtheirex- 
 pressions indicate that it had obtained a very general credit 
 in the Christian world." I was led into this statement by 
 Jones. 1st. The contents at the head of one of his chap- 
 ters state that " several of the relations of the Gospel 
 of Mary and the Protevangelion have been credited by the 
 ancients."* 2dly. He says, " Several of the accounts or 
 relations have been credited by some ancient Christian 
 writers, "t Sdly. He says, " This fact is mentioned and 
 credited by Tertullian, Petrus Alexandrinus, Origen, 
 Epiphanius, Theophylact, and others."^: 'Ithly. He says, 
 " This story, which is in the Protevangelion, was very much 
 known and credited by the ancients. " 5thly. He says, 
 " From all which it is very evident, that the account of 
 Joseph's age and family, which is in the Gospel of the Birth 
 of Mary and the Protevangelion of James, met with a very 
 
 denunciation of mine concerning Faustus, he at the same time commits 
 another, which brings us in juxta-position. He says that Toland's 
 " Amyntor, published in 1698," a book relating to the New Testament, 
 " gave rise to the Codex PsetidepigraptiBs of Fabricius." This latter 
 work regards the Old Testament, as its title purports, " Codex 
 Pseudcpigraphus Fetem Testament!." It was not published until 1710, 
 fifteen years after Toland's book, nor was it the work by Fabricius 
 to which Toland's Amyntor gave rise ; but the work of Fabricius 
 to which it did give rise, was on the Niw Testament, anil < ntith d 
 "Codex Apocryphtis Novi Testaments ;" this was published in 1703, 
 oidy five >ears after the Amyntor. 1 mistook the later Faustus for the 
 farlicr Faustus: the reviewer mistakes the later Codex for the earlier 
 Codex. He charges me with Faustus : 1 dibit him, per contra, wilh 
 Codex. How stands the balance ? 
 
 " Dul ness is sacred in a sound divine ;" in the reverend reviewer it is 
 personified. To climax his absurdity, he should have used her exclama- 
 tion 
 
 " Faustus is our friend !" Z)HCJrf, b. iii. I. 308. 
 
 * Jones, vol.ii. c, xvii. p. 133. t Ibid. p. 134. 
 
 } Ibid. p. 135. Ibid. p. 135.
 
 31 
 
 general credit among the ancient Christians ;" and he 
 says, " Haronius cites many of the Fathers, as having given 
 credit to its accounts."* 6thly. He says, " Besides the 
 former places cited out of Epiphanius, there are two more 
 in his works which seem to have plain reference, the one to 
 the Protevangelion, the other to the Gospel of Mary and 
 the Protevangelion. "t I did not perceive that, at a 
 distance of several pages from these passages, he observes, 
 " It is true, indeed, some parts of the history have 
 been credited, yet it does not appear that they were the 
 more credited because contained in either of these Gos- 
 pels."^: He has other remarks to the same effect; which 
 wholly escaped me, as they might have escaped any one 
 who was not reading his book thoroughly. 
 
 Jones says, and I have said after him, that " Postellus 
 brought the manuscript of the Protevangelion from the 
 Levant;" and that he" asserts it was publicly read as cano- 
 nical in the Eastern churches, they not doubting that James 
 was the author of it. "|| Whether the Eastern churches did 
 or did not receive the Protevangelion is of no consequence; 
 for, if they even did receive it, there is not a man one 
 degree removed from an idiot, who would therefore 
 suppose that it is in the least degree worthy of our 
 canon. The drift of the reviewer is to represent me as 
 claiming that authority for it. If I did, the reader 
 shall juclj^e. In the very page of Jones, from whence 
 I take the above words in my introduction to the 
 Protevangelion in this very page Jones commences 
 
 * Jones, p. 137. t Ibid- P- 138. J Ibid. p. 146. 
 
 In Ancient Mysteries described, 1 have shown that the whole of the 
 (lospcl of Mary, and portions of Iho Protevatiyelion, were performed at 
 Coventry as plays. The volume also describes numerous ancient en- 
 gravings, and refers to monkish legends, founded on subjects in there 
 apocryphal Gospels. 
 
 || Jones, p. 158.
 
 32 
 
 a long citation from Postellus and Bibliander, in whose 
 very language I might have stated, that the Protevan- 
 gelion " is to be looked upon, as a jewel among the 
 books of divinity; as the basis and foundation of all the 
 gospel history ; as the beginning of the present Gospel of 
 Mark ; that James, the brother of our Lord, was the 
 author of it ; that it is never reckoned among the apocry- 
 phal and spurious writings; that there is nothing in it 
 repugnanMo the sacred history, &c."* Not a word of this 
 have I penned, till I now cite it for the purpose of ena- 
 bling honest minds to determine whether, if I had designed 
 to impose on my readers, I would have rejected represen- 
 tations so favourable t to such a purpose. No. In no 
 introduction to any one book of the Apocryphal New Tes- 
 tament, have I, by comment, gloss, or insinuation, propi- 
 tiated the mind in its behalf, t 
 
 Except a sentence or two on other pieces, that I have 
 observed on before, and a quotation from the Gospel of 
 Infancy, the reviewer confines himself to the Gospel of 
 Mary and the Protevangelion. Mark his reason : " To 
 press any further inquiry into the system pursued in this 
 publication, and to penetrate deeper into the dark recesses 
 of its falsehoods, is a task which we cannot inflict on our- 
 selves." What an amiable deficiency of moral courage ! 
 What a delicate sensibility to come over him just at the 
 moment when he ought to have acquainted his readers that 
 
 * Jones, vol. ii. p. 158. 
 
 f- The Gospel of the Infancy, the only other work in the Apocryphal 
 New Testament that the reviewer notices, appears to have been a popular 
 book. Robert Robinson (Eccles. Res. p. 427,) relates, on the authority of 
 Muratori, that three copies of this Gospel were contained in a catalogue, 
 assigned to the tenth century, of the MSS. in the splendid conventual 
 library of Bobbin, in the Appcnnincs. Jones assigns great antiquity 
 to this apocryphal Gospel. He says, (vol. ii. p. 259,) that " the first 
 book of Christ's Infancy, and the stories thereof, were forged by the 
 Gnostics in the beginning of the second century. This is plain, from 
 Irenacus, 1. i. c. 17, who expressly stales that these heretics were the au- 
 thors or inventors of these idle stories/'
 
 33 
 
 these' "dark recesses" are the parts of the Apocryphal 
 New Testament that contain the Epistles of Clement, 
 Barnabas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, and the Shepherd of 
 Hernias. Under the pretence that, to " penetrate deeper" 
 would be an infliction that he ought in mercy to be 
 spared, the reviewer artfully conceals that two-thirds of 
 the Apocryphal New Testament are occupied by these 
 pieces ; all of them translated and published by Wake, 
 archbishop of Canterbury, under the title of " The Ge- 
 nuine Epistles of the Apostolical Fathers," in order to 
 show the accommodation of the church of England to 
 early worship.* The reviewer presumed, that, by an 
 affectation of horror, he could shock the ignorant into 
 a belief that these " dark recesses," containing the Arch- 
 bishop's translations, were filled by 
 
 " things horrible and awfu', 
 
 Which e'en to name would be unlawfuV Burns. 
 
 Johnson explains Cant to be " a corrupt dialect used by 
 beggars and vagabonds ; a whining pretension to good- 
 ness in affected terms." What sturdy knave, or oily 
 hypocrite, ever canted more subtilly than my reverend 
 slanderer ?t 
 
 * William Wake, born at Blandford in Dorsetshire, in 1657, and 
 admitted of Christ- Church College, Oxford, in 1672; was successively 
 doctor in divinity, cation of Christ-Church, chaplain to King William 
 and Queen Mary, preacher to Gray's Inn, rector of St. James's, 
 Westminster, dean of Exeter, and bishop of Lincoln. On the death of 
 Archbishop Tenison, he was translated to the metropolitan see, and be- 
 came Lord Primate of all England, in 1716. In 1693, Archbishop Wake 
 iirst published his " Genuine Epistles of the Apostolical Fathers;" he 
 died in 1737, just as his fourth edition of that work appeared. 
 
 f- It is affirmed by the reviewer, that Jones " was never out of my 
 hands ; that my notes, my tables, and my catalogues, are all copied from 
 Jones." Very well: I admit that some of them were from Jones; and 
 that those respecting the Epistles were from Wake. Had my name been 
 on the title-page of the Apocryphal New Testament as the editor, then, 
 indeed, I should have assumed a semblance of learning personally, that 
 
 3
 
 34 
 
 Notwithstanding so much of the Quarterly machinery is 
 dislocated, one part, and the most mischievous part, re- 
 mains to be destroyed. 
 
 My preface to the Apocryphal New Testament com- 
 mences with this question: " After the writings contained 
 in the New Testament were selected from the numerous 
 Gospels and Epistles then in existence, what became of the 
 books that were rejected by the compilers ?" Upon this 
 question a very natural one, as I then considered, by way 
 of introduction to the apocryphal books now in existence 
 the reviewer observes, that " one object of this question 
 is to bespeak a favourable hearing for these writings, whose 
 authenticity, it is insinuated, was deemed worthy of consi-. 
 deration, at least, by the compilers of the New Testament." 
 
 would have been li.iicnlous. The volume is anonymous; and, though I 
 never concealed fiom any one who inquired concerning the compiler, that 
 J compiled it 1113 self, f always mentioned the English sources of the Gospels 
 and Epistles; and that I drew up the introductory notices, and stated the 
 authorities from thence. But it is remarkable that my accuser's obliga- 
 tions to Jones are more serious than mine, and equally unacknowledged. 
 With barely " edging or trimming of a scholar, a welt or so," he 
 does not quote one author in a dead language, who was not pointed otit 
 to him by Jones ; and what he says concerning English writers, 
 any one who takes the trouble to look at the work on the Canon, 
 (vol. i. pages 17, 28, 43, 65, &c.) will see is also filched from 
 Jones's volume, and that from the same source he furnishes out his 
 six pages of rote about the canon, and about Dod well's mistaken 
 notion that " the books comprising the present canon were con- 
 cealed in the coffers of particular churches till the time of Trajan." 
 Throughout the whole of his article, the only original scrap is a note, 
 which he pompously announces to have taken from " a MS. book 
 of an old and respectable clergyman, now before us." It might as 
 well have been "behind us;" for it is a story how Toland arid Lc 
 Clerc differed about a passage in Josephus; how Le Clerc handed the 
 book to Toland ; how Toland "owned that he did not know Greek;" 
 and how " Le Clerc immediately broke oft" all connexion with him." 
 The 3110113 mous author of this MS. tale, sets out with "Mr. Welby 
 (another clergyman) told me" the story, and ends with " Gale, the famous 
 anabaptist, was present, and gave me this account." The "old clergy- 
 man" forgot, when he linishcd with " Gale" as his authority, that he had 
 began on the authority of " Mr. Wclhy ;" and the reviewer could not 
 discover that " the old and respectable clergyman" was fibbing.
 
 35 
 
 My answer to this is plain and short. The question 
 itself is founded on the following extract from Mosheim : 
 
 " The opinions, or rather the conjectures of the learned, concerning 
 ilie time when the hooks of the New Testament were collected into one 
 volume, as also about the authors of that collection, are extremely dif- 
 ferent. This important question is attended with great, and almost insu- 
 perable, diiliculties to us in those later times. It is, however, sufficient 
 for us to know that, before the middle of the second century, the greatest 
 part of the books of the New Testament were read in every Christian 
 society throughout the world, and received as a divine rule of faith and 
 manners. Hence it appears, that these sacred writings wete CARE- 
 FULLY SEPARATED from several human compositions upon the same subject, 
 either by some of the apostles themselves, who lived so long, or by their 
 disciples and successors, who were spread abroad through all nations."* 
 
 When I read Mosheim's statement, that " these sacred 
 writings were carefully separated from several human 
 compositions," I took their having been " carefully 
 separated" to mean that they -had been " selected," and 
 used that word. However, the reviewer affirms that an- 
 other object of the question was " to inspire suspicion of 
 the canonical writings, which, according to this account, 
 rest for their credit on the authority of compilers of a late 
 age, who, as fallible men, might easily mistake between 
 canonical and spurious writings." According to what 
 " account ?" Not to any '' account" of mine, for I gave 
 no "account; 1 ' the word is wholly unwarranted: all that 
 I did was to frame a question, almost in the very language 
 ofMosheim, before quoted. Indeed, the question itself 
 was suggested by Mosheim's use of the word " question." 
 He says, "This important question is attended with al- 
 most insuperable difficulties." Still, so far was I from 
 uttering or citing a syllable to " inspire suspicion of the 
 canonical writings." that, while usinff the sentence in which 
 
 ZJ * 7 O 
 
 * Mo.shcim's Kix-hs. Hisl. vol. i. p. 108.
 
 86 
 
 Mosheim speaks of " insuperable difficulties," I wholly 
 abstained from mentioning: or hinting at difficulties. To 
 negative the reviewer's charge, I quote the following re- 
 markable passage, of a directly opposite tendency, from 
 my preface: 
 
 " Although it is uncertain whether the books of the New Testament 
 were declared canonical by the Nicenc Council, or by some other, or 
 when or by whom they were collected into a volume, it is certain (sec 
 Table II. at the end of this work,) that they were considered genuine and 
 authentic, with a few variations of opinion as to some of them, by tho 
 most early Christian writers ; and that they were selected from various 
 other Gospels and Epistles, the titles of which are mentioned in the 
 works of the Fathers and the early historians of the Church. (See Table> 
 I. at end.)" 
 
 This passage, affirming that the books of the New Tes- 
 tament were received as genuine and authentic by the most 
 early Christian writers, would have been a stumbling-block 
 to the reviewer's purpose of shoAving that I denied the New 
 Testament writings ; and therefore, with consistent disho- 
 nesty, he carefully suppresses it. 
 
 But this suppression is venial, compared with an offence 
 that the reviewer deliberately perpetrates in the subjoined 
 paragraph. He says, 
 
 " It may be right to notice a preliminary objection which has always 
 been a favourite one with the infidel, and which is revived in the preface 
 to the work before us, namely, that they who admit the body of Cano- 
 nical Scripture, as exhibited in the New Testament, are unable to name 
 the precise period at which it was received as such by the Christian 
 church, or to produce the decree of any council, in the first two centuries, 
 which affixes its sanction either to the present or any other Canon of 
 Scripture. As this is conceived to be a sufficient proof of the total un- 
 certainty of the Canon, many triumphant inferences are of course deduced 
 from it. ' The whole story,' it is insinuated, ' may be an imposture; at 
 all events, we may not have received the true and genuine history of it; 
 we can have no certain accounts of the doctrines promulgated by Hie first 
 teacher; and, indeed, the simple fact that no formal recognition of the 
 official llpcaments took place, is of itself a very suspicious circumstance,
 
 87 
 
 aid quite oiiou;;!i to cast an air ol doubt over the whole transaction.' 
 What may l>c tlic justice of these inferences, a very few remarks will 
 suffice (o demonstrate, &c." 
 
 This is a master stroke. In the above paragraph, the 
 reviewer places a sentence between inverted commas. The 
 sentence begins on the tenth line from the top of the para- 
 graph, with the words * The whole story,' and ends the 
 third line from the bottom, with the words ' the whole 
 transaction.' The inverted commas that he puts before 
 the first and after the last words of this sentence, denote it 
 to be a quotation from my preface, which he is discussing. 
 Compare this quoted sentence with the suppressed passage, 
 and there is a palpable discrepancy. The contradiction 
 arises thus : This quoted sentence, which every one who 
 has read the Quarterly article, without referring to the 
 Apocryphal New Testament, must infallibly believe to 
 have been quoted by the reviewer from "my preface, is not 
 in my preface ; it is not in any part of the work ; it is not 
 in any piece that I ever wrote or published, or sold, or read : 
 it is an impudent forgery by the reviewer himself. 
 
 By such a man, who I have shown to have wilfully per- 
 verted the plainest facts, and to have deliberately fabricated 
 the most palpable falsehoods; whose article, from begin- 
 ing to end, is a laboriously devised fraud; who stands 
 stripped of all pretensions to honesty, and convicted of the 
 foulest forgery; by such a man I am accused of " sottish and 
 hopeless ignorance," "a systematic disregard of truth," " a 
 deep and desperate malignity," and " notorious infidelity." 
 By such a man I am called " a poor illiterate creature," 
 and " a wretch !" He is in orders, and perhaps took orders 
 for abuse. He is a Divine he may become a Christian. 
 Like the preparer of a deadly poison, who muffles and wears 
 a vizard, lest the subtilty of the concoction he designs for 
 another should destroy himself, this audacious defamer, to 
 conceal his identity and cloak his crime, uses the Quarterly 
 
 F
 
 38 
 
 for a mask, and converts religion into a wrap-rascal. 
 But I know him. At present he performs the prescribed 
 formalities, in the living he was presented to upon the 
 consummation of his crime, with the semblance of confer- 
 ring on his parishioners the benefit of clergy ; and, when a 
 splendid monument shall be reared to his pious memory, 
 the reader who approaches it 
 
 " will find his virtues 
 
 Trimly set forth in lapidary lines; 
 
 Truth with her torch beside, and little Cupids 
 
 Dropping upon his tomb their marble tears." Soutliey. 
 
 I now come to a work that appeared in May, 1822, 
 entitled " Proofs of Inspiration, or the Ground of Distinc- 
 tion between the New Testament and the Apocryphal 
 Volume ; occasioned by the recent publication of the 
 Apocryphal New Testament by Hone : by the Rev. 
 Thomas Rennell, B.D. F.R.S. Vicar of Kensington." There 
 is something here not quite in good taste, not quite gen- 
 tlemanly. If Mr. Rennell so departed from the usual 
 course, as to introduce my name on his title-page, he might 
 have prefixed to it the only Christian name that some, who 
 think themselves Christians, allow me, To me, however, 
 the omission is no discredit; nor, to me, is it of any conse- 
 quence that in his preface he calls the criticism of the 
 Quarterly Review u an able article." It seems that Mr. 
 Rennell delayed his work in the expectation of an answer 
 e ' long since threatened by the Editors of the Apocryphal 
 Volume to the article above mentioned ;" I presume he may 
 be almost persuaded that, though I advertised " a Refu- 
 tation of the Quarterly Review of the Apocryphal New 
 Testament," my abstinence from the press arose from 
 other feelings than those of fear. T confess that I smiled 
 
 2
 
 39 
 
 at Mr. Rennell's praise of an adversary, whose reputation 
 for ability has lasted exactly two years and a quarter, 
 merely because I maintained a sovereign contempt for his 
 dishonesty during that period. 
 
 Mr. Rennell supposes that the Apocryphal New Testa- 
 ment is "an insidious attempt to place its writings upon 
 the same foundation with the Scriptures themselves." 
 Upon that, as a general allegation, I shall observe when 
 I come to set forth the circumstances that occasioned the 
 work, and my design in publishing it. 
 
 Mr. Rennell's animadversions on the apocryphal Gos- 
 pels are so mingled with animadversions on me, that from 
 thence it must be presumed that I designed to palm these 
 Gospels for genuine, and to represent their contents as 
 true. His strictures altogether tend to impute to me 
 motives and conduct that he misconceives, and misrepre- 
 sents. To illustrate, by an instance or two. He remarks on 
 the Gospel ofNicodemus, that, " In the latter part of it there 
 is a poetical description of the descent into hell, and the victory 
 of our Lord over the power of darkness, uniting, as in Mil- 
 ton, the imagery of a classical imagination with the basis of 
 scriptural truth." By this, and by quoting an entire 
 chapter from the Gospel, as it stands in the Apocryphal 
 New Testament, Mr. Rennell only does justice to it as a 
 composition ; but he says " It would be a waste of time to 
 enlarge upon an imposture that no one has had the hardi- 
 hood to defend. It was probably a forgery of some Chris- 
 tian at the conclusion of the third or the beginning of the 
 fourth century*." This infallibly persuades every reader 
 that I contended for this gospel ; while the fact stands 
 thus :- that in the introduction to it, I have distinctly stated 
 the opinion that it was a forgery; that Jones affirms it 
 was a forgery ; and that he mentions the frequency of such 
 
 * Mr. Rennell's Proofs of Inspiration, p. 129.
 
 40 
 
 forgeries. Mr. Rennell, by a single line, might have 
 spared his readers from error, and done me justice. 
 
 Mr. Rennell, although I have mentioned my reason in the 
 Preface, finds it difficult to account for my insertion of the 
 Apostles' Creed. He says, " no Christian of the present 
 day, in the Church of England at least, can believe that 
 the very words of this creed were actually dictated by 
 the apostles themselves." Mr. Rennell mistakes. His 
 own Common Prayer-book, both in the morning and 
 evening service, directs that " there shall be said or sung 
 the Apostles 1 Creed by the minister and the people;" and 
 because the Common Prayer-book calls it " the Apostles' 
 Creed," many Christians of the Church of England not 
 only " can," but do believe that it is the Apostles' Creed.* 
 I included it in the Apocryphal New Testament, because 
 it is so denominated, and because Jones himself expressly 
 inserts it in his " List of the Apocryphal Books now 
 extant."t 
 
 * For positive proof of this belief in our own times, sec " EASTER; a 
 Manual explanatory of terms of the Church Service in the Book of Common 
 Prayer ;" a dialogue between a parishioner and a clergyman, " for the 
 use of the beads of families, and all who are immediately under their 
 protection." The parishioner is taught by the clergyman, concerning 
 the Apostles' Creed, as follows: 
 
 " Parishioner. Pray inform me why the Belief which I am taught is 
 
 called the Apostles* Creed, 
 
 " Clergyman. It was thought requisite for the preservation of the light 
 which had been communicated to men to draw up a short form of 
 words which should comprise the principal points of Christian failh : 
 and there is a tradition generally received, that as many of the Apos- 
 tles as had escaped persecution assembled together for that purpose; 
 and, by each of them contributing his part, they composed a collec- 
 tion of the chief heads of faith, relating to what Christ bad taught 
 them. It was called the Apostles'" Creed, or (agreeably to the same 
 tradition) the Creed taught by the Apostles, because the original 
 profession of faith, drawn up by the Apostles themselves, formed 
 the principal portion of it." 
 
 This is a cheap tract, " price 9d. or 7s. 6d. per dozon ; published by 
 1\ C. imd J. Rivington, St. Paul's Church-yard, and Waterloo-place." 
 These are Mr. RennelPs own publishers, and the tract lies on their coun- 
 ler by the side of qjs own Proofs of Inspiration. 
 
 t Jones, vol. i. p. 37.
 
 41 
 
 Though my introduction to the Epistles of Paul and 
 Seneca might have been longer, it could not have been 
 more fair ; and yet, from the tenor of Mr. Rennell's stric- 
 tures, it is to be gathered that I advocated these pieces. 
 Had I been inclined to do so I might have elevated Seneca 
 to a saint in the very words of another saint ; for Jerome 
 says " Seneca I should not have ranked in my catalogue of 
 saints, but that I was determined to it by those Epistles,*" 
 This passage from Jerome is in the same page of Jones 
 from whence I have adopted Jones's moderated language, 
 and merely observed, in Jones's words, that "Jerome 
 places Seneca, on account of these Epistles, among the ec- 
 clesiastical and holy writers of the Christian Church." If 
 Mr. Rennell had made the slightest representation of my 
 impartiality, he would have found me sensible of kindness. 
 
 To Mr. Rennell's remarks concerning the Acts of Paul 
 and Thecla in the Apocryphal New Testament, I most se- 
 riously object. My introduction to that book commences 
 thus : " Tertullian says that this piece was forged by a 
 Presbyter of Asia, who being convicted, confessed that he 
 did it out of respect to Paul." Mr. Rennell takes no 
 more notice of this sentence than if it had not existed, 
 but acquaints his readers that " Thecla was often spoken 
 of as a martyr by the early Fathers and historians; and 
 her history was so celebrated as to tempt a proselyte of 
 Asia to forge the original of the present work. For this 
 we have the primitive testimony of Tertullian." On this 
 fact, on the very fact repeated by him after me, Mr. 
 Rennell immediately observes, "After this testimony on 
 the part of Tertullian, no one will be hardy enough to 
 contend for the authenticity of the Acts of Paul and Thecla. " 
 His observation clearly purports that 1 was " hardy 
 enough'to contend for its authenticity" ; nay, he follows it 
 
 * Jones, vol. ii. page 61.
 
 42 
 
 up with language still stronger. He says, " We have 
 every reason, however, to believe that many parts of the 
 book before us were interpolated. So that the piece, as 
 we read it in the apocryphal volume, is an example of a 
 double imposition." It is quite clear that, by Mr. Rennell 
 stating from Tertullian that the piece is a forgery ; by his 
 concealing that I had made the same statement ; and by 
 his affirming that " the piece, as we read it in the apocry- 
 phal volume, is an example of a double imposition," 
 conveys the idea that I had practised " imposition" by 
 inserting it in the Apocryphal New Testament. If Mr. 
 Rennell did not read my introduction to the Acts of Paul 
 and Thecla, surely so to write concerning that piece as 
 a portion of the apocryphal volume was not ingenuous; 
 if he did read my introduction, the obliquity is increased. 
 
 In the introduction to the Shepherd of Hermas^m the Apo- 
 cryphal New Testament I observe that " Origen thought 
 it a most useful writing,and that it was divinely inspired." 
 Upon this, Mr. Rennell inquires " What book of the New 
 Testament would we receive as divinely inspired upon the 
 testimony of a single witness ?" I would answer the ques- 
 tion, if I had asserted that the Shepherd of Hermas, or any 
 other book of the Apocryphal New Testament, was inspired. 
 All that I did with regard to Hermas was to mention, on 
 Archbishop Wake's authority, what a few early writers af- 
 firmed of the book; and what I have alleged to have been said 
 by Origen is in the archbishop's own words. Mr. Rennell, 
 however, extracts from other parts of Origen, where that 
 father moderates his opinion concerning this book, and 
 adds that " these expressions are carefully kept out of sight 
 by the editor." Can Mr. Rennell guess no other motive 
 for my omission than an unfair one ? He quotes from the 
 very page wherein the archbishop not merely states these 
 moderated expressions of Origen, but actually declares that 
 they <c were put forth by that father on account of some who
 
 43 
 
 it seems did not pay the same respect" to the Shepherd of 
 Hermas that Origen himself did. The archbishop's disre- 
 gard of Origen's moderated expressions was the ground of 
 my disregard ; and, strange to say, the archbishop's dis- 
 regard of those moderated expressions is " carefully kept 
 out of sight" by Mr. Rennell. The archbishop may have 
 been no authority to Mr. Rennell, but surely Mr. Rennell 
 knew that he was my sole authority. 
 
 The antiquity of the Shepherd of Hermas Mr. Rennell 
 admits to be unquestionable : he thinks that " the various 
 moral allegories with which it abounds are highly edifying 
 and instructive ;" and, as a specimen of the book, he 
 quotes a whole chapter of it from the Apoc. New Test. 
 " Let us," says Mr. Rennell, " take the following vision, 
 which describes the trials and tribulations to come as an 
 example ; and, to give it every possible advantage, it shall 
 be printed in the same style with the holy scriptures, and 
 with the same division into verses which has been effected 
 by the pious labors of thejeditors of the apocryphal volume."* 
 I understand the sneer; and, though Mr. Rennell is so 
 candid as to state that " the various pieces which the 
 Apocryphal New Testament contains have been often print- 
 ed, both in their original language and in translations, "t 
 I imagine it may be information to him, that a translation 
 of the Shepherd of Hermas, made a hundred and sixty 
 years ago, by John Pringle, is divided into verses ; the 
 book is in my hand, and I place the title of it in a note 
 below. 
 
 * Mr. Rennell's Proofs; p. 77. t Ibid. P- Introd. 
 
 I The title of Pringle's Shepherd of Elcrmas runs thus : 
 "The Three Eooks of Hennas the Disciple of Paul the Apostle, \iz. 
 
 I. The Church. II. The Shepherd. III. The Similitudes. 
 
 Englished by John Pi-ingle. London : Printed for John White, 
 
 in Threadneedle Street, behinde the Old Exchange, 1661," small 
 
 8vo. pp. 190. 
 
 The following are titles of other apocryphal pieces in my possession: 
 1. " The First Hook of the Gospel of Nicodemus ; translated from the
 
 44 
 
 That the division of apocryphal pieces into verses is 
 not an invention of mine, must be well known to Mr. 
 Rennell, for he expressly mentions the " Apocrypha to the 
 Old Testament," which is also " printed in the same style 
 with the holy scripture, and with the same division of 
 verses."* 
 
 original Hebrew. Printed and sold in London," without date, 
 but apparently about Queen Anne's time ; on coarse paper, one 
 sheet, 12mo. on the title a woodcut portrait. On comparing this 
 witli a MS. copy, that I have, of the early translation of ' Nicho- 
 dcmus his Gospel," printed by John Causterier, without date, it 
 appears to be the first seven chapters of that translation, witli 
 slight alterations modernising the phraseology. This common 
 hawker's edition of Nicodcmus, which probably sold for a half- 
 penny, is divided into eight chapters, and subdivided into verses. 
 
 2. " Nicodemus's Gospel. Containing an extraordinary and minute 
 
 Account of our blessed Saviour's Trial and Accusation; his Death 
 and Passion; his Descent into the Invisible World; and what 
 happened there during that period : with his Ascension into Hea- 
 ven. Which curious relation will be found agreeable to Scripture. 
 By Joseph Wilson. London : Printed for the Author; and sold at 
 his House in Lancaster Court, in the Strand, 1767." 8vo. with a 
 Preface, pp.78. This edition, also after Causterier's, is, like his, 
 divided into thirteen chapters, and Wilson subdivides it into 
 verses. 
 
 3. The Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans, a Translation into Welch, 
 
 (at the end of the " Testament y dcuddeg Patriarch, scf Meibion 
 Jacob. A Gyfieithwyd allan or Groeg gan Robert Groslhead 
 Esgob Lincoln. Argraphwyd yn y Mwythig, 1719," 12mo.) is 
 divided iuto verses, with this addition, after the last verse 
 "Epistl Paul at y Laodiceaid a garfwyd yn y Bibl hynafary 
 Brcintwyd yn Worms," The Epistle to the Laodiceans in Jones 
 on the Canon is also divided into verses; but Jones's work was 
 not published until seven years after the Epistle in the Welsh 
 Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. 
 
 * In 1820, and before the Apocryphal New Testament appeared in that 
 year, the Rev. Richard Laurence, LL.D. Regius Professor of Hebrew, 
 Canon of Christ Church, See. and now Archbishop of Casliel, published 
 the Apocryphal First Book of Ezra in Ethiopic, with a Latin and English 
 translation. The archbishop had published in 1819 the Apocryphal Book 
 of The Ascension of Isaiah the Prophet, also in Ethiopic, witli similar 
 translations. In 1821, alter the publication of the second edition of the 
 Apocryphal New Testament, the archbishop produced an English trans- 
 lation of the Apocryphal Book of Enoch tlie Prophet. These three apo- 
 cryphal books were printed at the Oxford university press, and are divided 
 into cliaptcrs and verses.
 
 45 
 
 I have remarked else where* that "The Gospels included 
 in the Apocryphal New Testament, rank with such pieces 
 in the Old Testament Apocrypha as the book of Tobit . 
 wherein it is related that his son married the widow of seven 
 husbands, all of whom were slain on the nuptial night by 
 a devil that was in love with her; but who was himself 
 finally discomfited by the eighth bridegroom fumigating the 
 wedding chamber with the burning heart and liver of a fish; 
 the which smell when the evil spirit had smelted, he jled into the 
 utmost parts of Egypt. "f "The angel so conspicuous in 
 Tobit is guilty of a gross lie, saying, first, that he was 
 Azarias the son of Ananias,^ and afterwards^ that he was 
 Raphael, one of the seven angels. "|| This, and the won- 
 derful history of Bel and the Dragon, with the delectable 
 and instructive story of Susannah and the Elders, so often 
 
 * At the end of Ancient Mysteries Described. 
 f Tobit, viii. 3. \ Ibid. V. 12. Ibid. xii. 15. 
 
 || Jones, vol. i. p. 10. 
 
 Tobit has been a great favorite with the multitude. There is in the 
 British Museum a biaek-ietter garland .bearing this title: "A Pleasant 
 Ballad of Tobias, wherein is shewed what wonderful things chanced to 
 him in his Youth ; and how he wedded a young Damoscll that had 
 Seven Husbands, but never enjoyed their Company, being all Slain by 
 an Evil Spirit. To a pleasant new Tune." A sheet with woodcuts. 
 
 How the dog in Tobit came to be popular is not easily explained. The 
 animal is only mentioned once on the departure of the Angel and Tobias 
 for their journey to Media. The host in St. Paul's Church-yard, who, 
 by having Tobifs Dog for a sign, outrivals the fame of him of the Goose 
 and Gridiron, should thankfully receive the information that the apocry- 
 phal dog was Tobias's. So they both went forth, and lite young mail's dog 
 with them. (Tobil, v. 10.) This going forth was ju.->t alter the angel 
 had cheated Toliit with a lie. 
 
 The Hi/story ofThobye, in the Golden Legend, states that after the fish 
 was caught and roasted. They " tokc it with them for to ete by the 
 waye, and the remenaut they salted, that it might suflysc them tyl they 
 came in to the ey tc of Rages." 
 
 A good specimen of Count Goudl's peculiar style of execution is his 
 print after Elsheimer of the Journeying with the i'isli across a stream. 
 Bat the most sumptuous illustration of this apocryphal book is Raphael's 
 picture of Our Lady of the Fish, in which are theVirgin, the Infant Jesus, 
 St. Jerome, the Archangel, and Tobias with his Fish. These were 
 insisted on by the nuns for whom it was painted, and render this splendid 
 production a remarkable instance of anachronism.
 
 46 
 
 illustrated by prurient painters, are appointed as morning 
 and evening lessons, which, according to the thirty-nine 
 articles, with the other apocryphal "books, as Jerome 
 saith, the church doth read for example of life and instruc- 
 tion of manners :" Mr. Rennell terms these pieces " useful 
 and pious books ;" I must be excused for dissenting from 
 his denomination, and for wondering, with others, " that 
 such stories as Bel and the Dragon should be read in 
 the church."* Jones terms the " useful and pious books" of 
 Mr. Rennell " idle fables of the Apocrypha of the Old 
 Testament ;"t and yet I am called to account for adopting 
 " the same division into verses which has been effected by 
 the pious labours of the editors of" that Apocrypha. For the 
 double-lined rule enclosing the title to the Apocryphal New 
 Testament, a precedent may be found in Archbishop Wake's 
 title-page to his own editions of " the Genuine Epistles 
 of the Apostolical Fathers," which being so distinguished 
 suggested to me the idea. The Epistles in the archbishop's 
 volume, and the form of his title-page, I adopted together, t 
 
 Other strictures of Mr. Rennell have been answered by 
 preceding remarks on the Quarterly reviewer, or will 
 be by what follows. This observation equally applies to 
 several of the objections in another publication, which 
 appeared soon after Mr. Rennell's, viz. 
 
 fi The Genuine and Apocryphal Gospels compared. A 
 Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of 
 Derby, at the Visitations at Derby and Chesterfield, June 6 
 and 7, 1822, and published at their request. By Samuel 
 Butler, D.D. F.R.S. and S.A. &c. Archdeacon of Derby, 
 and Head-master of Shrewsbury School." I think that 
 
 "KaUerfcIto, with Iiis hair on end, 
 
 At his own wonders, wond'ring for his bread," 
 
 * Bishop Cosin on Ihc Canon, p. 197. 
 f Jones, vol. ii. p. lo'l.
 
 47 
 
 could not have looked more wohderstruck than I did when 
 I saw, for the first time, on Messrs. Rivington's counter, 
 a Visitation Charge from the Venerable the Archdeacon of 
 Derby to his Clergy, entirely devoted to an expression of 
 this gentleman's views concerning the books in the Apo- 
 cryphal New Testament; nor was my astonishment dimi- 
 nished after I had perused it.* 
 
 Mr. Archdeacon Butler objects to the " placing before 
 the common people spurious gospels, as like in form and 
 phraseology as they can be made to the originals." But 
 if, by the "common people," he means the ignorant and 
 iminquiring among hard-working men, (and there are no 
 other " common people" among them,) he forgets that, 
 however attractive a six-shilling volume, of two hundred 
 and seventy pages may be, it is not within their purchase. 
 The Archdeacon also objects to the " language of the trans- 
 lations." He says, this " is an English improvement 
 upon a French invention ;" and proceeds thus: "1 have 
 in my possession a French translation of these very writ- 
 ings, but not in scriptural phraseology, published evidently 
 with the same insidious intention, professedly at London, 
 but, in fact, at Paris in 1769: the work, I believe, is not 
 common." Not very common, certainly; but the Arch- 
 deacon is probably aware by this time that I have in my 
 possession a work in English, from whence I took the 
 
 * The Archdeacon objects that by using the word " records," which 
 means "authentic memorials," I attempt to place the Apocryphal New 
 Testament on a fool ing with the New Testament. To explain upon this 
 point 1 beg it to he remembered that Archbishop Wake's volume bears 
 the title of " The Genuine. Epistles of t/ie Apostolical Fathers ; being, toge- 
 ther with the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, a compleat Collection, 
 of the most primitive Antiquity." Wake says that " the authors of these 
 Genuine Epistles had not only the advantage of hearing the Apostles, and 
 conversing with them," but " JBarnabas, the author of one of these Epis* 
 ties was himself an Apostle." If these Epistles are genuine, they aro 
 " authentic memorials" or " records" relative to the doctrine of Christ 
 luid his Apostles ; and 1 have allirmed truly that the volume contains 
 " historical records relative to Christ and his Apostles."
 
 48 
 
 translations he'animadverts upon. This book, certainly, live 
 Archdeacon had not seen when he gave his Visitation 
 Charge; for, whatever exceptions he takes to the language 
 or phraseology of these translations are exceptions against 
 Jeremiah Jones, who made the translations, and not against 
 me. I simply transferred them from his work on the Canon 
 into the Apocryphal New Testament, without adding, 
 subtracting, transposing, or altering, a single word. 
 
 Speaking of me, the archdeacon says, " That ostensible 
 editor is a man whose name is but too well known to the 
 ranks of disaffection and infidelity ; who appears to possess 
 talents above the ordinary class, and effrontery much above 
 those talents." I comprehend the archdeacon's meaning 
 by this reprobation; but, at this moment, "disaffection" to 
 offence restrains me to the remark, that there are no 
 " ranks" to which I am not " well known," from the pen 
 I now wield as a weapon of defence ; that to no 
 " ranks" a man so " well known" publicly, from such a 
 circumstance, is so little " known" personally, as 1 am ; and 
 that no " ranks" are so well known to me as those that 
 surround me on the shelves of the room I now sit in. 
 From thence, as from " a lodge in some vast wilderness," I 
 sometimes ventured into the " wilderness of this world." 
 Though I communed with few, yet I felt that I belonged 
 to the commonwealth. Hence I was not indifferent to 
 questions that have agitated and induced expressions of 
 opinion ; and hence my voice sometimes arose in conjunc- 
 tion with the honest and the honourable, to inquire 
 
 " Who call'd of old so many seats his own?"* 
 
 Nor can I claim to be excepted from exemplifying Jortin's 
 remark, that, t( if great men will do what they please, they 
 must expect that little men will say what they please, and 
 
 * Mr. Gilford's Juvenal, Sat. i. v. 153.
 
 49 
 
 a cat, a cat."* When I so wrote, I had the "effron- 
 tery" to think I did right ; and I am neither proud nor 
 ashamed of my productions. i My " disaffection" extended 
 to departures from unchangeable principles ; for it was 
 
 * Jortin's Tracts, vol. ii. p. 535. 
 
 f Dr. Duller seems to coincide with the reckless declaration of tlio 
 Quarterly reviewer, that, " beyond doubt or contradiction, Hone has a 
 set of writers in his pay, with whom truth is an idle name, and honesty 
 a by- word and a jest." I rebut this redoubted assertion, by point-blank 
 denial. Except a hundred pounds for a volume, which appeared with its 
 author's name on the title-page, the extent of my payment for authorship, 
 during the last six years, has not been twelve pounds altogether ; and the 
 whole of the gratuitous assistance I received during that period would 
 not make three pages. The pieces I brought out, with which the public 
 are best acquainted, were the products of my own pen. ]>c their merits 
 or demerits what they may, one real service has resulted from them. 15y 
 showing what engraving on wood could ettect in a popular way, and ex- 
 citing a taste for art in the more humble ranks of life, they created a new 
 era iu the history of publication. They arc the parents of the present 
 cheap literature, which extends to as;ileof at least four hundred thousand 
 copies every week, and gives large and cons'ant employment to talent 
 in that particular branch of engraving which I selected as the best 
 adapted to enforce, and give circulation to my own thoughts. 
 
 Besides this, I have the high satisfaction of knowing that my little 
 pieces acquainted every rank of society, in the most remote corner 
 of the British dominions, with the powcis of Mr. George Cruikshnnk, 
 whose genius had been wasted on mere caricature till it embodied my 
 ideas and feelings. When his brother artists, and every one who had the- 
 least judgment, praised the multiform fertility of the freest pencil that 
 ever drew a line on a block, it began to be appreciated by publishers. 
 His recent designs in that way, though some have been cruelly cut up by 
 unskilful or careless wood-engravers, and his own excellent etchings, 
 with the currency they give the works they appear in, incontcstibly 
 that prove his abilities have forced themselves into demand. His con- 
 ception of original fancy seems intuitive, and yet his elaboration of a 
 fac-similc would glisten the 'peering eye of a bibliomaniac. I barely 
 do justice to his talents by this remark ; and I have more satisfactory 
 evidence of its truth than a certificate "with five justices' hands to it, 
 and witnesses more than a page would hold." Robert Burns had not 
 more kindly feelings when be wrote A aid lung St/ne, than I have to- 
 wards my friend George Cruikshank. " We twa ha' puddled ;" and 
 though, as regards me, his occupation's gone, our mutual esteem is 
 undirninished. Those who require his assistance may consider this as 
 T note of introduction to him, at his house, No. *25, Middletou Terrace, 
 Pcntonvillei 
 
 Every tract that I have written of the description ailuded to, with tho 
 whole of the cuts, will shortly appear collected together, with a preface, 
 &c. in one volume, entitled "POLITICAL FACETI.IC, by William ffonc:'' 
 that collection will end the use of my pen in that way. 
 
 1
 
 50 
 
 grounded on the belief that politics are morals, and that 
 " it is not men's free will that they have government or na 
 government, because it is not in their free will to obey, or 
 not to obey, the acts of the court of nature, which is God's 
 court; and this court enacteth, that societies suffer not 
 mankind to perish, which must necessarily follow if they 
 appoint no government."* 
 
 I hope I may be pardoned for the preceding digression 
 on a point no other way connected with the subject, than 
 by Dr. Butler's strong expressions concerning me as the 
 " ostensible editor" of the Apocryphal New Testament. 
 Regarding me in that character, he proceeds to say 
 
 *' The book under our consideration undoubtedly is not, and in fact docs 
 not assume to be, his own production. I grieve to say that the real 
 editor is a man of talents and attainments, which qualify him for under- 
 taking better things, and is therefore entitled to no quarter for wilful and 
 deliberate perversion of truth." 
 
 In love of truth Archdeacon Butler is not my superior; 
 and therefore I will frankly admit, that the absence of 
 Jones's work from the archdeacon's well-enriched library r 
 and his absence of information regarding me personally, 
 may have led him to conceive that the editor and publisher 
 were two persons. Yet, if he had instituted an easy in- 
 quiry before he ventured so far as to affirm that the 
 " ostensible editor" of the Apocryphal New Testament 
 " undoubtedly" was not the " real editor," the presumed 
 inability of the one, and the fancied (t attainments" of the 
 other, would have disappeared before the fact, of which he 
 would have had instant proof, that the " ostensible" and 
 " real" editor were " undoubtedly" myself alone; and the 
 charge of " wilful and deliberate perversion of the truth" 
 could not have been made. The archdeacon has been too 
 hasty; so very hasty, as to hazard a similar charge against 
 
 * Rutherford's Lex Rex, 4to. 1C44, p. 8.
 
 himself, by animadverting on me in the following lan- 
 guage. Dr. Butler says 
 
 " He has subjoined the Apostle's Creed in its ancient state, copied, 
 from a note in Mr. Justice Bailey's edition of tlic Common Prayer, and 
 contrasted with tlic same creed in the usual editions of our Common 
 Prayer-book. The reader is thus naturally induced to suppose that the 
 learned Judge lias disapproved of the Apostle's Creed in its usual form ; 
 whereas, the note merely states, what no one questions, that ' it is not to 
 be understood that the Apostle's Creed was framed by the apostles, or 
 existed as a creed in their time.' It is then given in its earliest form, as 
 it existed prior to the year 600. The authorities for this are quoted, and 
 there is subjoined the following important observation, which any fair 
 and well-meaning editor ought to have produced, and which the editor 
 of the Apocryphal Gospels, finding that he could not insert it without 
 wholly destroying the insinuation he meant to convey, has wilfully, I may 
 add, fraudulently, omitted. The words are these : 'The additions were 
 probably made in opposition to particular heresies and opinions.' I have 
 printed the latter part of this sentence in italics," &c. 
 
 So far the archdeacon; and now for the fact: and for 
 proof of the fact I beg ray readers, and the archdeacon 
 himself, to open the Apocryphal New Testament. At 
 page 72, will be found a paragraph of only six lines. It 
 is from this paragraph that the archdeacon charges me to 
 have " wilfully and fraudulently omitted" the "important 
 observation" of Mr. Justice Bailey. The paragraph stands 
 thus: 
 
 " Mr. Justice Bailey says, ' It is not to be understood that this creed was 
 vamed by the apostles, or indeed that it existed as a creed in their time; 1 
 and, after giving the creed as it existed before the year600,and which is here 
 copied from his Common Prayer Book, he says, ' how long this form had ex- 
 isted before the year fiOO, is not exactly known. The additions were pro- 
 bably made in opposition to particular heresies and errors.'" 
 
 As the sentence from Mr. Justice Bailey, which the 
 Archdeacon alleges I " wilfully and fraudulently omitted," 
 ends my paragraph, it ends his accusation. But what an 
 accusation to bring! Dr. Butler refers to the first two 
 lines of a paragraph of six lines, as proof, that, in order to
 
 52 
 
 convey an improper insinuation, I had quoted a sentence 
 from Mr. Justice Bailey; and then be charges that, because 
 I "could not insert another sentence from Mr. Justice 
 Bailey, without wholly destroying that insinuation," 1 had 
 " wilfully and fraudulently omitted it:" whereas, at the 
 next line but one, that is, in the last three lines of my 
 paragraph, I had fairly and honestly inserted it. Had 
 the archdeacon passed the single line that separates Mr- 
 Justice Bailey's two sentences, he would have been safe 
 from the possibility of having it said that he is " entitled 
 to no quarter for wilful and deliberate perversion of the 
 truth/ But I forbear, and desire to be understood as not 
 meaning that retort upon Dr. Butler in his own language, 
 because I think him incapable of the crime it imputes. 
 He has been too cursory, and expressed himself too 
 hardly. His Visitation Charge bears decided marks of 
 haste, and would not have been alluded to at all, but Dr. 
 Butler's rank and character constrain me not to contemn 
 his censure of me personally, without endeavouring to ob- 
 viate his misrepresentations. 
 
 Although much has been done in tlie preceding pages, yet 
 further explanation seems requisite. To that end, and 
 for the purpose of stating what appears to me to be points 
 of objection, I will endeavour to review my two prefaces 
 to the Apocryphal New Testament, without favour or 
 affection. I imagine, then, that they may be spoken of by 
 an impartial reviewer somewhat in this way : 
 
 In the preface to the first edition of the Apocryphal New Testament, 
 the editor says, " It has been supposed by many that the New Testa- 
 ment was compiled by the first Council of Nice, which was held early 
 in the fourth century ;" and he gives an account, by no means in favour 
 of that Council, from Jortin. He affirms, on the authority of Moshcim, 
 that neither the precise time or place in which it was held is known, 
 and that its accounts have not been committed to writing. From this 
 it appears he has very little respect for that Council ; but he affirms 
 that, " whether the books of the New Testament were declared cuiiu-
 
 53 
 
 nical by the Niccne Council or some other, or when or by whom they 
 were collected into a volume, it is certain that they were considered 
 genuine and authentic, with a few variations of opinion as to some of 
 them, by the most early Christian writers." These books 'he thinks 
 were selected from other books; and, as most of what he calls the reject- 
 ed books are lost, he includes those that are extant in the present volume. 
 These, he presumes, will be " acceptable to the theological student 
 and the ecclesiastical antiquary," because they were the origin of many 
 remarkable legends and stories, and sources from whence the old 
 monkish dramatists obtained fables for many of their mysteries, or 
 religious plays. In this latter view, the work is interesting to persons 
 who are in that way inquisitive ; and it is certainly useful to artists and 
 collectors, because it elucidates the subjects of many pictures and 
 prints by early printers and engravers. Of such affairs the editor 
 may probably know more than of the canon of the New Testament, 
 concerning which he expresses himself confusedly, and evidently is not 
 well informed. His notions on that point are erroneous; yet he can 
 hardly intend to attack or undermine it, for he admits the testimonies 
 to the genuineness and authenticity of the books; and in proof of it he 
 refers, by a note in his preface, to a table of testimonies, which table he 
 subjoins to the volume. His division of the books into chapters and 
 \erses confers no sanctity upon them; for, if the Apocrypha to 
 the Old Testament be so divided, there can be no valid objection to the 
 Apocrypha to the New Testament receiving the same division. In his 
 second edition, he retains the first preface, and writes a second, which 
 reiterates the use of the volume to print and picture-fanciers, and cites 
 other strictures from Jortin and Socrates Scholasticus, on the Council of 
 Nice. This second preface concludes with remarks indicating tho 
 editor's admiration of the primitive simplicity of Christianity, his sense 
 of some unfair attacks upon him as editor of the work, and his deter- 
 mination to receive them with complacency. This patience it is easier 
 for the editor to imagine than to realize ; for he is sure to receive further 
 and heavier assaults, and for this reason, that his name stands on the 
 title as the publisher. But, as any other editor or publisher might have 
 produced such a volume without reprobation, it is illiberal and un- 
 just to insinuate improper motives to this editor and publisher. His 
 notions concerning the collection, which he calls a selection of the ca- 
 nonical books, may not be clear, but it is too much to say that he is an 
 enemy to Christianity. A writer of that character would have written 
 differently, and would scarcely have inserted the table of the New 
 
 H
 
 54 
 
 Testament books, before referred to ; nor have superadded, as he docs 
 in the second edition, a table of the times when, according to diflcrent 
 authorities, the canonical books were written. 
 
 It will hardly be conceded that I can review my prefaces 
 impartially; yet, I think, if they are deliberately examined 
 and candidly considered, the result will be similar to the 
 preceding statement. At any rate, that statement is a true 
 representation of facts, and these facts can be easily ac- 
 counted for. 
 
 Prone to inquiry from my childhood, and knowledge in 
 other languages being to me as a " fountain sealed," I 
 could only obtain it from my own. I had no one to direct or 
 regulate me : all books that fell in my way, no matter on 
 \vhat subject, I read voraciously, and appetite increased 
 with indulgence. For want of object, 1 neither extracted 
 nor common- placed, but I got through a vast deal, with 
 this disadvantage, that my recollections as to facts were 
 general rather than particular. Modern works, a few 
 excepted, I have known only as acquaintances, without 
 desire to cultivate an insipid intimacy into the affection 1 
 entertain for their betters. Old books are sometimes rough 
 in language, but they are pregnant of thought; and a few 
 of them have been my daily companions and friends through 
 life. Though in theology and religious controversy, I went 
 310 small way, yet of ecclesiastical history I knew nothing, 
 or next to nothing, save from Jortin's Remarks, and 
 dipping now and then into Eusebius, and the Lives of the 
 Saints. Since the article in the Quarterly, I have better 
 informed myself: before then, in Biblical criticism I had 
 only perused books of moderate estimation and small 
 value ; but neither Michaelis nor Lardner. My resort 
 was to meagre sources, and I confess I was not acquainted 
 with better when I compiled the Apocryphal New Testa- 
 ment. The history of that work I shall now relate. 
 
 It was in the spring of 1S20, that residing, as I do still,
 
 55 
 
 on Ludgate-hill, I was exposed to a series of interrup- 
 tions unfavourable to the accomplishment of any object 
 requiring seclusion. 1 then had such an object very ear- 
 nestly in view, the completion of a Report of my Trials, 
 illustrated by parodical collections. To effect it I left my 
 family, and removed with my books and papers to lodgings 
 at Camden Town ; from thence I went daily to the British 
 Museum, chiefly for the purpose of consulting the king's 
 collection of pamphlets. One morning, while engaged in 
 the reading room, with the Cotton MS. of the Coventry 
 Mysteries, 1 glanced on an observation in Casley's preface 
 to the catalogue of the King's MSS. concerning the text 
 of the three heavenly witnesses, (1 John, V. 7.) Though 
 acquainted with the controversy, yet by way of relief to 
 the wearisomeness of transcribing, 1 examined some tracts 
 on the passage, and one of them mentioning Jones on 
 the Canon, on reference to that work, I for the first time 
 saw the Apocryphal Gospels, which most appositely 
 were the foundation of several of the Mysteries in the 
 MS. at that moment before me. The incident was ad- 
 ditionally interesting, because I not only found that 
 these gospels were the ground-work of many catholic 
 legends that I had formed an acquaintance with, but that 
 they also were the subjects of several prints by Albert 
 Durer, the Wierexes, and different old masters which I had 
 collected as specimens of engraving. I instantly deter- 
 mined to print these gospels for the use of the curious in 
 old literature, the drama, and the arts. Copy was ready 
 for the printer, when I called upon a respectable bookseller 
 for the purpose of securing Campbell's History of Scottish 
 Poetry, a work of some rarity, which I had long desired 
 to see, and had just been informed he had lately purchased. 
 I obtained my prize, and afterwards, loitering to look over 
 the woodcuts of an early Dutch History of the Bible, and 
 incidentally inquiring concerning apocryphal pieces. Arch-*
 
 56 
 
 bishop Wake's " Genuine Epistles of the Apostolical 
 Fathers" were produced, with this observation, that some 
 were of opinion, that, if the Epistle of Barnabas was ge- 
 nuine, the piece ought to have been included in the New 
 Testament. Wake's book, as well as Jones's, had passed 
 through my hands as a bookseller, when either I had no 
 curiosity to look into them, or was schooling myself into 
 the salutary persuasion that a reader of old books is more 
 likely to be a bookkeeper than a bookseller ; but, however 
 that may be, neither had before impressed me. If, as 
 Abp. Wake says in his title-page, these epistles, "together 
 with the books of the New Testament, formed a complete 
 Collection of the most primitive antiquity for about a hun- 
 dred and fifty years after Christ," I saw that they were con- 
 nected with the work I meditated. In short, the three 
 volumes of Jeremiah Jones and the volume of the arch- 
 bishop contained every apocryphal writing of the first ages. 
 This new view of the subject induced me to pause; for, 
 as Jones says that one object of his work was " the enter- 
 tainment of the curious in Christian antiquities," so I 
 conceived thai, by adding the Epistles to the Gospels, 
 I should increase the interest of the publication ; and, 
 imagining that such a compilation would bear the same 
 relation to the New Testament that the Church Apocrypha 
 does to the Old Testament, I divided the books into 
 chapters, and the chapters into verses ; putting contents 
 to each chapter, and running head-lines on each page. 
 Then drawing up short notices, from Jones and Wake, of 
 ancient and modern authors who had mentioned the pieces, 
 I prefixed these to the different books, without a single 
 observation of my own. 
 
 All this was most hastily done; for I was so intensely 
 engaged on the subject that originally carried me to the 
 British Museum, that I attended there every day as soon as 
 the doors were open, nor left the reading or print room
 
 57 
 
 till they closed. After that hour, I was rummaging at 
 booksellers, turning over portfolios of engravings at print- 
 sellers, or extracting in private libraries ; carrying each 
 day's labour to Camden Town, and there arranging and 
 writing till bed-time. What I did to the Apoc. N. Test, 
 was at hours stolen from sleep, and when fatigued by the 
 avocations I have alluded to. Upon these the idea of the 
 apocryphal volume was altogether an interpolation, and I 
 trifled with it mechanically, as an impertinence.* When 
 it was somewhat more than half through the press, I was 
 obliged to leave London for Brighton at a few hours' 
 notice, and there, while engaged on a far different subject 
 from either that, or the undertaking which occasioned my 
 visit to the British Museum, |I corrected the remaining 
 proofs as they were sent to me from town by the printer. 
 It was necessary to say something by way of preface, and 
 this, which every one knows is that part of a work 
 usually left till the last, I at the last moment hurried 
 together. Having heard and read that the books of the 
 New Testament were collected into a volume, and settled 
 at the council of Nice, I stated that it was so affirmed ; 
 and, viewing the circumstances under which that council 
 proceeded to its deliberations, and the deliberations them- 
 selves, with little respect, I spoke accordingly. The 
 opinions of biblical critics concerning Jude and one or two 
 other books in the New Testament, persuaded me that the 
 council might have erred by including them. Archbishop 
 Wake's preliminary discourse further persuaded me that, 
 
 * The haste with which the Apocr3pha! New Testament was put 
 together, is evident. In the first edition, " the Order of all the Books" 
 omits to mention the Gospel of Nicodemus. At the end of the volume, 
 in Table II. (Art. ix. column 3,) the words " as hereafter will appear" 
 have obviously no relation to the work, and are a gross blunder. In the 
 i. Corinthians, two chapters are numbered alike as chap. vii. In'ii. Corin- 
 thians, chap. 1, an exposition of Clemens Alexaudriuus is incorporated 
 as part of the Epistle of Clemens Koniauus, &c. 
 
 3
 
 58 
 
 if the Epistle of Barnabas wore genuine, the council 
 might have erred by omitting it ; and, in truth, 1 was erring 
 myself, from presuming, on a general impression, that the 
 council of Nice had any thing to do with the canon. It is 
 reasonable to imagine that, as I had Jones's work, I had read 
 it, and that of course such notions must have been corrected, 
 but to this I oppose the simple fact that I did not read it. 
 From the time that I tore out the Gospels for the printer, 
 and rushed through the pages relating to them, for the 
 purpose of extracting matter for the introductions, I never 
 looked at the mutilated volumes of Jones again. At 
 Brighton, remote from all books, with only a transcript 
 or two from Jortin, Mosheim, and Porson, that I thrust 
 into my pocket on leaving town, I put together the 
 preface, and did not arrive in London till more than 
 a week after the volume thus concluded had been pub- 
 lished. Perusal of the book will show, what I beg to re- 
 peat, that, so far from its conferring the least consequence 
 on any one of the Gospels, the praise which Jones quotes 
 from certain authors in order to refute, and which a fautor 
 of fraud would have extracted, is not given in a single 
 instance. I confined myself entirely to the naming of some 
 early writers who mentioned the books, for the mere pur- 
 pose of shewing that they were of early origin. That is 
 the highest aim of my introductions, which were drawn 
 up so rapidly, and with so much indifference, that the 
 omissions of early authorities for their antiquity are by no 
 means few. The whole of these introductions, had I 
 commenced them as a summer-day's task, I could have exe- 
 cuted with ease between sunrise and sunset. In short the 
 volume was edited, if this can be called editing, by me, and 
 me alone, without concert, aid, or communication with 
 any one ; and, under the disadvantages I have stated, it was 
 in the hands of the public within six weeks from the time I
 
 began it. This is the real history of the Apocryphal New 
 Testament. 
 
 Concerning the books themselves, " whoever," says 
 Archdeacon Butler, " is at the pains of examining these 
 apocryphal writings, cannot but be struck with their 
 amazing inferiority to the canonical books." This was my 
 opinion when I compiled the volume ; nor did I imagine, 
 nor do I now think, that any person can possibly en- 
 tertain the least favourable notion of the apocryphal 
 Gospels in comparison with the genuine Gospels. Be- 
 cause I cannot express my own unequivocal meaning 
 better, I adopt the language of the Archdeacon to affirm 
 my sincere belief, that, " as to the internal evidence 
 for the truth of these gospels, they are in themselves so 
 childish and absurd^ so contradictory to all our ideas of the 
 divine attributes, so derogatory to the majesty of the 
 Deity, so totally unedifying for any purposes of religious, 
 or moral, or social life, so undoctrinal and unconsolatory, 
 that they carry their own confutation with them; and can 
 never gain credit with any person of sober sense or judg- 
 ment. " I have explained pretty fully why I published 
 them, and I may add that my inclination to " subjects of 
 learned curiosity, without any other end than the pleasure 
 of reflecting on ancient customs, or on the industry with 
 which studious men have endeavoured to recover them," 
 blinded me to the liers-in-wait who have since assailed me. 
 As justly may Mr. Archdeacon Butler be charged with 
 jacobinism and popery, because he translated Lucien Buo- 
 naparte's Epic Poem, with a dedication by the author 
 to " His Holiness Pope Pius VII.," as "notorious infide- 
 lity" be charged on me because I edited the Apocryphal 
 New Testament. 
 
 " Notorious infidelity !'* Yes ; the Quarterly reviewer 
 endeavours finally to affix on me that stigma. In his very 
 first paragraph he adverts to what he chooses to call my
 
 60 
 
 " escape 1 ' from the prosecutions against me for the paro- 
 dies ; and, by affirming that he "should not be justified in 
 expressing a suspicion that the jury had previously resolved 
 to acquit this man," he, in fact, expresses it. I cannot, 
 from the event, presume that my juries had previously 
 resolved to convict ; but, if ever efforts were made to 
 prejudice a man under accusation before the issue was to 
 be tried, those efforts were made throughout the country 
 against me. Previous to the informations being filed, the 
 case was prejudged by theatrical exhibitions and violent 
 speeches in parliament. From that time until they were 
 determined, during an interval of nine months, I was held 
 up to general execration. The mighty hunters for trans- 
 lation, and the meanest poachers for preferment, all such 
 orders of holy orders, furnished forth vessels of wrath. If 
 the clergy in general could have been converted to such a 
 use, the parish pulpits of England might have become 
 
 " ten thousand casks 
 
 For ever dribbling out their base contents, "Cowper; 
 
 and then, indeed, the vehement inflammation of the public 
 mind, from a general distribution of unrectified spirit, 
 might have rendered my " escape" impossible. At St. 
 Paul's cathedral the official preacher of an official sermon, 
 denounced me from the pulpit as an object of condemnation 
 to my future judges, who, with the corporation of London, 
 and its officers, were officially present. Is it not to be 
 wondered that juries could be found in the metropolis 
 uninfluenced by feelings to my prejudice? Yet these were 
 the methods resorted to, while the Attorney-General was 
 proceeding against me at the crown office ; and when I was 
 destitute of means to employ either solicitor or counsel. 
 Within a week after I was charged with the three ex 
 officio informations, I wrote concerning the prosecutions 
 thus: " I despise the aspersion, and will refute it. This
 
 61 
 
 I pledge myself to do, and to do it triumphantly, to the 
 confusion and dismay of my enemies."* A fortnight after- 
 wards I renewed the pledge with this observation : u I 
 must be allowed to choose my time and place for doing 
 it ; but I will do it, and, I repeat it, to the confusion and 
 dismay of my enemies, "t Five months elapsed, and then 
 I thought it necessary to say "The Parodies formerly 
 published by me, I may, perhaps, be allowed to repeat, I 
 always considered as mere political squibs, and nothing 
 else. It is now (October, 1817,) two years and a half since 
 I commenced to publish ; in the course of which time I 
 have issued upwards of one hundred and thirty pieces, 
 chiefly of my own production. Not a week has elapsed 
 during that period, without my having compiled or written 
 something ; but whether it were prose or verse, or 
 
 ' grave, or gay, or lively, or severe,' 
 
 I console myself with the reflection that, amidst all I 
 have put on paper, there is 
 
 ' Not one immoral, one indecent thought., 
 One line which, dying, I would wish to blot.' 
 
 Nor can there be found a single paragraph, or even sen- 
 tence, of a profane or irreligious tendency in any of my 
 publications. With a lively conception of wit, and an 
 irresistible propensity to humour, I have likewise so pro- 
 found a regard for the well-being of society, and so great 
 a reverence for public morals, that I know of no tempta- 
 tion capable of inducing me to pen a line injurious to social 
 happiness, or offensive to private virtue. "J I pray that 
 
 * Reformists' Register, (8th May, 1817,) vol. i. page 500. 
 
 f Ibid. (24th May,) p. 558. 
 
 \ Reformists' Register, (25th Oct. 1817,) vol.ii. p. 430.
 
 62 
 
 this may be taken as part of my present answer ; and I 
 add, with added solemnity, if it be possible, that, for the 
 suppression of anything I ever wrote or contemplated, or 
 for the commission of any aet at variance with the senti- 
 ments I have just re-affirmed, the world is not rich enough 
 to present to me 
 
 ' a bribe, sufficient to requite 
 
 The loss of peace by day, of sleep by night.' 
 
 The time came for the redemption of my pledge to the 
 public. On the morning of the 18th December, 1817, 
 the first of three remarkable days that will never be 
 blotted from my calendar, I rushed from my wife and 
 children in bitter agony, leaving them sorrowing and 
 hopeless of seeing me repass the threshold of their home 
 a home no more to them, if I could not defeat the powers 
 then gathering themselves in Guildhall for my destruction. 
 At that moment, or at any time before, I might have fled. 
 I was in no custody, and no one was under recognizances 
 that I should appear ; but the charges were untrue, 
 and I loved truth too well to fly from falsehood. The 
 advocates against me were able and eloquent, and the 
 judgment-seat was occupied by talent and experience. 
 The archers shot at me, but I climbed beyond their reach. 
 I stood upon truth as a rock of sure defence ; and from that 
 vantage ground I refused to be forced or enticed. 
 
 Early in my first day's defence, I referred to the nume- 
 rous pieces I had published, the greater part written by 
 myself; and, addressing the attorney-general, assured him 
 that if. in any one of those pieces, he could lay his finger 
 on a single sentence of a profane or irreligious nature, or 
 tending to degrade or bring religion into contempt, I would 
 refrain from uttering another word in my defence. I 
 appealed to my jury whether either of them had ever read 
 a line of such a tendency in, any of my publications. Ad-
 
 C3 
 
 dressing the assembled hearers in court, I solicited and 
 defied any individual present who knew a fact of the kind, 
 or even anything that I had said or done that could be so 
 interpreted, to stand forth instantly and testify it. Impressed 
 by the most solemn feelings, "You will not," I observed 
 to the jury, " hear me say one word that I do not utter 
 from my heart and from perfect conviction. It is of little 
 consequence whether I am a member of the established 
 church or dissent from it : it is enough that I am a Chris- 
 tian, and I make the declaration with a reverence for 
 Christianity not to be exceeded by any person in this 
 court." In my third day's defence, referring to the extreme 
 depression under \vhich I had laboured at the commence- 
 ment from illness and debility, produced by the two former 
 days' exertions and long previous anxiety, I could not 
 forbear from thus expressing astonishment at the resusci- 
 tation of my faculties: "If Providence ever interfered for 
 the protection of the weak and the defenceless, that inter- 
 ference is most surely manifested in my case. It has inter- 
 posed to protect me, a destitute and helpless man, from 
 the rage and malice of my enemies. I can attribute my 
 defence to no other agency, for 1 am weak and incapable, 
 and at this moment I am a wonder unto myself." So im- 
 pressed, 1 proceeded to observe, " There is nothing can 
 crush me but my own sense of doing wrong ; the moment I 
 feel it, I fall down in self-abasement before my accusers : 
 but when I have done no wrong, when I know I am right) 
 I am as a strong man armed, and in this spirit I now wage 
 battle with the attorney-general." During the three days 
 that I contended against what was wrongfully urged by my 
 prosecutors, or interposed to my disadvantage by the pre- 
 siding judges, 1 used no arts, no feints, no devices. I was 
 no orator; I was nothing but an innocent man. Had I 
 known myself otherwise, I must have been speechless. 
 
 The three successive verdicts of three different juries were 
 
 i
 
 not obtained by me; but, through me, right detained a 
 victory over wrong. 
 
 Never from that hour has a word escaped my pen or lips, 
 either publicly or privately, in dishonour or dispraise of 
 any individual opposed to me. I buried my resentments 
 in the grave of the prosecutions ; I even hallowed the ashes 
 of the slain, by not exulting in the conquest. But the for- 
 giveness of enemies was a principle not comprehended by 
 mine. While laid at my feet by the blows they had sus- 
 tained from my single hand, they charged me with weak- 
 ness and incapacity, because I did not spittle on them. 
 They now impugn the integrity of my juries, whom I knew 
 not, nor saw till they were in the jury-box, and in whom I 
 so little confided, that, a week before, I had moved the 
 court to set them aside. They call my success an " escape :" 
 I call it an instance of the power of truth upon the human 
 heart and understanding; an exemplification of a golden 
 rule taught to me in my childhood, that " Honesty is the 
 best policy." They suggest that the declarations which, 
 under the most awful persuasion, and in the sincerity of 
 my heart, I made on my trials, were untrue. The impu- 
 tation of irreligion has been revived upon me through 
 every channel that would convey calumny. I have been 
 
 " traduced by men 
 
 Who neither knew my faculties or person," 
 
 till undersized minds, sitting in judgment upon a bare 
 allegation, without proof, pronounce falsehood to be fact; 
 and " Ignorance itself is a plummet o'er ir.e." 
 
 From the day that I publicly solicited and challenged 
 my prosecutors, my jurymen, and every ; *>dividual in court, 
 to adduce a single line or saying of mine, tending in the 
 least degree to degrade religion ; from that hour to this, 
 neither did or could any one, not even the most vindictive 
 of my enemies, in their fiercest heats, bring a fact of the
 
 65 
 
 sort against me. Until within the last eighteen^months, 1 
 have carried on the business of a publisher and bookseller 
 in the house I still occupy, in the heart of London, and in 
 the most public thoroughfare; and, during that period, 
 when the press was teeming with such productions, I ask 
 whether any of the nature I allude to came from me ? I 
 dare and defy the proof of a sentiment of that kind, 
 cither penned or published by me, or of any article of such 
 a tendency having been sold or issued by any person in my 
 employment. My conduct has been the -reverse. In the 
 beginning of 1821, I put forth the " Spirit of Despotism" 
 the most able political work, upon Christian principles, in 
 existence. I selected it as best calculated to counteract 
 the erroneous representations of religion, contained in va- 
 rious cheap political publications, that were circulating 
 throughout the country; and I printed fifteen thousand 
 copies at the first stroke, as an eighteen-penny pamphlet.* 
 Few have been able to render so important a service to 
 society as the rescue of the " Spirit of Despotism" from the 
 oblivion it was doomed to by its excellent author. For 
 this act alone, it may be affirmed of me that I have not 
 lived in vain ; and I refer it to the consideration of the 
 reader, whether a publication, better adapted than any other 
 in the English language to diffuse Christian principles with 
 political information, would be printed at the lowest pos- 
 sible price, for the most extensive circulation, by a person 
 opposed to the extension of those principles. If it be ob- 
 jected that it was the speculation of a bookseller, I answer, 
 first, that, had my object been profit, I should have printed 
 
 * The eighleen-.penny edition oftlie Spirit of Despotism 'I sold to Mr. 
 Walling, 409, Strand, (next the Adclphi Theatre,) of whom it may 
 still lie had. 
 
 Before the publication of the Spirit of Despotism, I was not aware that 
 it was written by Dr. Vicesirnus Knox, with whom I afterwards had an 
 interview on the subject. His reasons for suppressing the book originally 
 are related in my preface to a superior edition, which I recently published, 
 in an octavo volume, that it might take its place among; our standard 
 literature.
 
 66 
 
 it in an imposing volume; secondly, tlmtjl never specu- 
 lated in any thing opposed to my own sentiments ; thirdly, 
 that I view those who oppose Christianity as opposed to 
 an indestructible scheme of happiness, which in its benefi- 
 cent progress embraces individuals, and in its final ac- 
 complishment will include the whole human race; and, 
 fourthly, that I regard Christianity, not as a patent of pri- 
 vilege to a few, but a grant to all as the Great Charter 
 of mankind, defining all rights; prescribing all duties; pro- 
 hibiting all wrong; proscribing all violence. Upon it every 
 thing that is beneficial or permanent in society is founded : 
 without it, the advocates and supporters of public liberty 
 can'neither at tahmiore nor maintain what they have. 
 
 I was brought up in religious habits, but these are sur- 
 faces, not principles. They were worn off by circumstances 
 in early youth, when " chewing the cud of sweet and bitter 
 fancy" I wondered at the world and at myself, and 
 theory after theory arose as the waves, weltering and dis- 
 appearing. Ardently seeking for truth, I conversed with 
 books rather than men, and hewed out principles as I could, 
 " here a little and there a little." It is said, that " many 
 persons commence religious at first, they don't know why, 
 and with a blind zeal persist in a religion which is they 
 know not what."* I am not among that number ; for it 
 was by patient research and painful process" that I ar- 
 rived at that clear evidence for the truth of Christianity, 
 which, if sincerely and diligently sought, is found to be 
 irresistible. My religion is the religion of the New Tes- 
 tament. As taught and exemplified by Christ himself, it is 
 the perfection of all knowledge, " which is, and which 
 was, and which is to come." It is infinite wisdom. It is 
 a pure principle, a mental illumination, which, however 
 dimmed by the cares and conflicts of the world, shines out 
 
 * Jones on the Canon, vol. i. p. 14.
 
 67 
 
 in the solitude of the closet, when the eye turns imvard. 
 As regards conduct in life, it is the being held in a bond to 
 do justice, love mercy, and practise universal charity. There 
 is no release from this obligation, though the disregard 
 of it is a stumbling-block to thousands, whose conceptions 
 of Christianity, being derived from the uncharitableness of 
 nominal Christians, disincline them to explore the springs 
 from whence vindictiveness and persecution seem to flow. 
 Jn the words of Erasmus, " Christian charity extends itself 
 to all ; and he that does no hurt to any body though he be 
 bad, and would rejoice if he would grow better, in my opi- 
 nion, loves all as becomes a Christian to do." 
 
 But it is time to conclude. My wish to be understood 
 has occasioned some of my statements to seem long, yet, 
 from desire to be brief, much of reflection has been with- 
 held. I have been as temperate as I could, but, whether 
 as temperate as I ought, others must determine. The re- 
 marks concerning Mr. Archdeacon Butler and Mr. Rennell 
 are in correction of their misconceptions, not in viol ation 
 of their feelings. I by no means class these gentlemen 
 with the Quarterly reviewer; concerning whom, " if what 
 has been strongly felt has been strongly expressed, and if, 
 before the occasional warmth of my language be chal- 
 lenged, the violence and injustice which I have to repel be 
 examined, I shall not, in this instance at least, be alarmed 
 at the result."* To have forborne from writing altoge- 
 ther, would have been agreeable to me ; but when a sort 
 of exultation is manifested, as though I had nothing to say, 
 I am not willing that a false and insolent triumph should 
 be accorded to the Quarterly reviewer at my expence. If 
 his arts succeeded in deceiving the credulous, they are 
 now exposed; and they who will blame me for not having 
 done this sooner, may perhaps regret, that they had not 
 exercised a little discrimination before they so readily pro- 
 
 * Mr. Gilford's Life ot Jonsoii, p. ccxlv.
 
 68 
 
 nouncetl against me. Believing that part of his fraud* 
 would be as apparent to others as all of them M'ere to me, 
 I little suspected that his loud summons to surrender 
 would frighten men out of the use of their faculties. On 
 sitting down to the volume on Mysteries, I relinquished 
 the purpose I have here resumed and executed, and de- 
 stroyed the memoranda I originally made relating to it. 
 Yet I am persuaded that there is enough on these pages to 
 accomplish my object ; and that, when the whereabout of 
 my existence shall be inquired of ? not one act I have done 
 will be alleged, nor will a person who knew me be able to 
 testify, in behalf of the representations I have here sought 
 to refute. Then some will stand forth as witnesses to my 
 having possessed qualities that they denied me while I 
 lived, and others be forced to confess their ignorance of my 
 character when they wantonly aspersed it. 
 
 THE END.
 
 45, Ludgate Hill. 
 
 PUBLISHED 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HONE. 
 
 i. 
 
 FINE EDITION. 
 
 Price Nine Shillings, in extra boards, 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF DESPOTISM 
 
 BY VICES1MUS KNOX, D. D. 
 
 AN Explanatory Introduction by the Editor, authenticating the 
 genuineness of the Work, is contained exclusively in this Edition, 
 which is a large octavo volume of 310 pages, handsomely printed, 
 expressly for the Library. 
 
 *#* As there is only a limited number of this superior Edition, and it will 
 not be re-printed, Orders for it should be immediately given, and the price 
 be particularly mentioned. 
 
 II. 
 
 In One Volume Octavo, Price Six Shillings, in boards, 
 
 THE APOCRYPHAL NEW TESTAMENT; 
 
 Containing Translations of all the Apocryphal Gospels that remain 
 extant; the Epistles of the Apostolical Fathers; and other pieces 
 of the first four centuries. Now first collected into one volume 
 with Prefaces, Tables, Notes, and References. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 , No. of 
 
 BoollS. Chapters. 
 
 Gospel of the Birth of Mary 
 Protcvangelion of James - 16 
 1st Gospel of the Infancy 22 
 
 2cl r 4 
 
 Epistles of Christ and Abgarus 2 
 Gospel of Nicodemus - 22 
 Apostles'Creed, in its ancient state 1 
 
 . present state 1 
 
 Epistle of Paul to the Laodiccans 1 
 Epistles of Paul and Seneca - 14 
 Acts of Paul and Thecla - 11 
 1st Epistle of Clement to the 
 
 Corinthians - 23 
 
 2d .Corinthians 5 
 
 No of 
 Chapters. 
 15 
 
 Books. 
 
 General Epistle of Barnabas 
 Epistle of Ignatius to the 
 
 Ephcsians 4 
 
 1 Magnesians 4 
 
 Trallians 3 
 
 ' Romans 3 
 
 Philadelphians 3 
 
 ' Smyrnaeans 3 
 
 Polycarp 3 
 
 Polycarp to the Philippi ans 4 
 
 Shepherd of Hernias, 1 Visions 4 
 
 1 2 Commandsl2 
 
 3 Similitudes 10
 
 III. 
 
 In One Volume, St>o. with 4 Engravings on Copper and 9 on Wood, 
 Price Ten Shillings and Six-pence, in boards, 
 
 ANCIENT MYSTERIES DESCRIBED; 
 
 especially the English Miracle Plays, founded on Apocryphal New 
 Testament Story, extant among the unpublished MSS. in the British 
 Museum ; including Notices of ECCLESIASTICAL SHOWS -the 
 Festivals of Fools and Asses the English Boy Bishop the Descent 
 into Hell Pageants the Lord Mayor's Show the Guildhall Giants 
 Christmas Carols, &c. With a Preface, Glossary, Index, &c. 
 
 By WILLIAM HONE. 
 
 OPINIONS ON THE WORK. 
 
 " We really little thought, when we were defending Mr. Hone, so far aS 
 we might interfere in such a case, from the oppression of a most unjust pro- 
 secution, that our exertions were making in support of a man, w hose in- 
 dustrious researches were afterwards to throw light upon the most obscure 
 parts of our national antiquities, and lay open to present view the scenes 
 that were acted in ' the olden time.' Yet such a man is Mr. Hone. He 
 has produced a most remarkable book, the learning of which hurls un- 
 intended reproaches upon those on whom there has been bestowed, by the 
 accident of their station, more time and less distraction than could possibly 
 fall to the lot of such an individual." The Times, 15th May, 1823. 
 
 " Mr. Hone has just published a work highly interesting to the antiquary 
 in particular and to the public in general. To those who arc fond of 
 black-letter lore, this book must prove an invaluable treasure." The 
 News, 18th May, 1823. 
 
 " We have here an extraordinary production from a very extraordinary 
 man. We are glad to find this intrepid individual pursuing * the noiseless 
 tenor of his way' in the paths of antiquarian research, and lying before us 
 the gems, ' rich and rare,' which his industry has elicited from the black- 
 letter lore of our old English writers on a subject so interesting as that to 
 which his labours have been devoted. He has brought together materials 
 which more than any other illustrate the construction and the progress of 
 the human mind. Tho curious plates introduced into this work from the 
 engravings of our earlier artists, serve to show that what is at one timfc 
 considered as the height of sublimity, is at another regarded as the height 
 of absurdity." British Pres,2lst May, 1823. 
 
 \ "We 1 are not displeased to discover in this print of Ancient Mysteries 
 and account of Ecclesiastical Shows and other Festivals, rather a curious 
 antiquarian compilation, than an objectionable essay towards bringing 
 sacred things into contempt." Literary Gazette, 24th May, 1823. 
 
 " Looking atthis volume as antiquarians and in no other point of view 
 would we wish to consider it there is much, very much to praise, anil 
 nothing to censure. The volume is no less profitable than amusing, and 
 one that we would particularly recommend to the notice of our readers. 
 The first 72 pages arc occupied with a detail of eight Mysteries, valuable 
 in themselves as antiquarian remnants. Then follow ' Illustrations and 
 Additions,' full of curious matter that cannot fail to please all parties, 
 learned and unlearned. At page 138, we have, an impression from the 
 original copper-plate of Hearne's Descent into Hell, which gives occasion 
 to)Mr. Hone to attack Johnson and Steevens, on the score of the contested 
 passages in Macbeth, ' Aroint thee, Witch, aroint thee,' &c." Museum, 
 84 th May, 1823.
 
 OPINIONS ON ANCIENT MVSTERIES DESCRIBED. 
 
 " It is evidently the result of a vast deal of reading among both old and 
 modern books; and if in one or two chapters the author, as he himself 
 modestly confesses, has ' ridden his hobby without a rein,' the general 
 execution of the work is highly creditable to his talent, and shews a 
 remarkable tact for extracting the really curious and instructive things 
 in antiquarian research, and placing them before the uninitiated reader in 
 a piquant and palatable form. This was a desideratum in English litera- 
 ture which Mr. Hone has very cleverly supplied. The style is light and 
 easy, and the occasional speculation upon derivation of customs, &c., so 
 ingeniously managed as to give an interest even where the particular sub- 
 ject wants it. The vein of humour which is naturally identified with 
 Mr. Hone's publications, often discovers itself, to the great entertainment 
 of the reader ; and the author has judiciously availed himself of the pencil 
 of Mr. Cruikshank and other artists, sometimes to heighten the droll 
 effect, sometimes to assist the illustration. We congratulate Mr. Hone 
 on the production of a work that will live, as a popular record, equally 
 faithful and curious, of the customs and notions, and first literary efforts 
 of an age which must always be regarded as highly interesting."- 
 Examiner, 25th May, 1823. 
 
 "Among the great events traced to little causes, may perhaps someday 
 be added, that of Mr. Hone writing a volume of 300 pages, because Lord 
 Ellenborougb, six years ago, said, that ' the first scenic performances were 
 Mysteries, or representations of incidents in sacred writ.' On this hint 
 Mr. Hone spake, or rather has written ; and a curious volume has been 
 the result. In the account of the pageants, he has brought together many 
 tacts not generally known. In his Christmas Carols, he has also collected 
 much information, which had escaped previous writers on the subject. 
 The history of the Lord Mayor's Show is very curious ; and we have an 
 excellent chapter on the Giants in Guildhall, which Mr. Hone very satis- 
 factorily proves to be little more than a century old. We thank him for 
 a volume which does credit to his ingenuity and research." Literary 
 C/tronicle,3lstMay, 1823. 
 
 " This volume is a great treat to all those who delight in tracing the 
 progress of Literature and Civilization from the first rude but hearty at- 
 tempts of the middle ages. Mr. Hone has brought together much that is 
 curious, instructive, and amusing in the highest degree. He has deemed 
 it necessary to commence with an apology for black-letter men. An 
 apology for those who are not black-letter men would be more neces- 
 sary, &c. But we are detaining our readers from Mr. Hone's work. Here, 
 however, we arc at a loss, in the abundance of curious matter, how to make 
 our selection, Sec. We shall merely give an extract from his account of 
 Mystery VIII, by way of enabling our readers to form some idea of those 
 singular productions, &c. We wish our limits would allow us to tran- 
 scribe the humourous account, furnished to Mr. Hone by a correspondent, 
 of a Mystery that he saw when a boy, at Bamberg in Germany, about 
 the year 1783. The ludicrous entertainments performed by the Clergy 
 for the simple peasantry of Catholic Germany only thirty years ago would 
 hardly be believed." Morning Chronicle, 31st May, 1823. 
 
 " Hone's Ancient Mysteries Described is a curious volume. Before the 
 Reformation, the plays acted for the amusement of the people were reli- 
 gious stories in a dramatic form. MSS. of the Coventry Mysteries are 
 still preserved in the British Museum, and Mr. Hone has given an abridg- 
 ment of eight of those Mysteries which refer to particular passages in the 
 Apocryphal New Testament. To these Mysteries, Mr. Hone has added 
 ' Additions and Illustrations,' which he has procured from various sources, 
 with much industry of research and ingenuity of choice. Among these we
 
 OPINIONS ON ANCIENT MYSTERIES DESCRIBED. 
 
 have an Essay on the Christmas Carols, that amused our childhood, 
 and a very particular account of the Feast of the Ass, the Feast of 
 Fools, &c. There are several very appropriate copper-plate and wood 
 engravings, among which we have the Boy Bishop in his canonicals, and 
 the Giants in Guildhall in their gorgeous costume. It has been said 
 that this volume is only fitted for the antiquarian ; but this is certainly an 
 error, for it will be found extremely amusing to general readers, and in- 
 structive to those who never before heard of these amusements of our 
 ancestors." Monthly Magazine, June, 1 823. 
 
 "Determined and zealous in support of the religious institutions of the 
 country, we took up the volume with some little of expectation that its 
 contents might be of a sceptical nature, and were therefore determined to 
 criticise its contents; but finding our expectations groundless, we gave 
 way to the admiration which its erudition and general merits arecalculated 
 to excite in every reader of sound judgment. We cannot but confess that 
 Mr. Hone is deserving of a high degree of praise for having selected a 
 fund of curious matter from black-letter and other sources. Persons the 
 most sensitively alive to the security of orthodox doctrines may, without fear 
 of danger or offence, peruse and draw from its pages a copious stream of 
 amusement. It is calculated to afford both knowledge and entertainment 
 to the learned as well as to the desultory reader; and we have derived 
 more than ordinary satisfaction in its perusal." European Magazine, 
 August, 1823. 
 
 " It is certainly a curious book and one which ought to have the same 
 effect upon the readers as the exhibition of the drunken Helotes upon the 
 Spartans. We antiquaries feel from this volume only horror at the crimi- 
 nality of the Ecclesiasticks who permitted such trash to be exhibited, and 
 pity for our own innocent ancestors who seriously believed that they were 
 doing good by such profanations. This nonsense was entirely owing to 
 the wickedness of the Priests of the aera, who purposely kept the people 
 in darkness; for, says Mr. Hone, very justly, (Preface, p. ix.) ' until the 
 time of Luther, religion, which in principle is a pure science, was regarded 
 as an art ; it was the occupation of the clergy, who taught it as a mystery, 
 and practised it as a trade/ These mummeries were the actual methods 
 hy which religious matters were taught, in lieu of a Catechism, because 
 the majority could not read. In short a better anti-papistical book was 
 never published than this." Gentleman"s Magazine, September, 1823. 
 
 A HISTORY OF PARODY, 
 
 With enlarged Reports of my THREE TRIALS, is deferred, 
 but not abandoned. 
 
 Large accessions to my Collection of materials will enable me to 
 increase the interest of the work, and, in that way, remunerate my friends 
 for their indulgent patience. It will be a volume in large royal 8vo. 
 containing upwards of 600 pages, illustrated by numerous Engravings on 
 copper and wood, plain and coloured ; price Two Guineas in extra boards. 
 The favour of additional uamcs to my list of Subscribers will regulate the 
 number of copies to be printed, and greatly oblige me ; but no money will 
 be required, or received, till the delivery of the book. 
 
 Printed by J. and C. Adlard, 
 Bartholomew Close.
 
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