The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old Part 13

The young man, with his father?s letter in his hand, tells the pretended tutor, that he certainly cannot be the person he has been told to expect. The man persists, and appeals to certain ?wonderful works? he performs in order to convince the young man, that he is acquainted with the sciences aforesaid, and that he is also six feet high; of a dark complexion; and talks like an Emperor! The young man replies. ?Friend, you are either an enthusiast, a mad man, or something worse. As to your ? signs and wonders,? I have been warned in my father?s letter to pay no regard to any such things in this case. Besides, you ought to be sensible, that your ident.i.ty with the person I am taught by my father?s letter to expect, can be only determined by comparing you with the description of him given therein. Whether your ?wonderful works? are real miracles or not, I neither know, nor care. At any rate, they cannot, in the nature of things, be any thing to the purpose in; this case. For you to pretend, that they prove what you offer them to prove, is quite absurd; you might as well, and as reasonably, pretend, that they could prove Aristotle to have been Alexander; or the Methodist George Whitfield to be the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte!?

To conclude, if any person should feel inclined to attempt to refute this book, let him do it like a man; without evading the question, or equivocating, or caviling about little things. Let him consider the princ.i.p.al question, and the main arguments on which he perceives that the author relies, and not pa.s.s over these silently, and hold up a few petty mistakes and subsidiary arguments as specimens of the whole book. Such a mode of defence would be very disengenuous, and with a discerning reader, perfectly futile and insufficient. It would be as if a man prostrate, and bleeding under a lion whose teeth and claws were infixed in his throat, should tear a handful of hairs out of the animal?s mane, and hold them up as proofs of victory.

In fine, let him, before his undertaking, carefully consider these pungent words of Bishop Beveridge, ?Opposite answers, and downright arguments advantage a cause; but when a disputant leaves many things untouched, as if they were too hot for his fingers; and declines the weight of other things, and alters the true state of the question: it is a shrewd sign, either that he has not weighed things maturely, or else (which is more probable,) that he maintains a desperate cause.?

FINIS.

APPENDIX A.#

As reasons for this a.s.sertion, (that ?the account of the resurrection given by the evangelists is no better, nay, worse, than conjecture, as it is a mere forgery of the second century.--Vide page 86) take the following facts, which are now ascertained, and can be proved:--1. Several sects of Christians in the first century, in the apostolic era, denied that Jesus was crucified, as the Basildeans, &c. The author of the epistle ascribed to Barnabas, I think, denied it, and the author of the gospel of Thomas certainly did. 2. The Jewish Christians, the disciples of the twelve apostles, never received, but rejected every individual book of the present New Testament. They held in especial abomination the writings of Paul, whom they called ?an apostate;? and there is extant, in ?

Cotelerius? Patres Apostolici,? a letter ascribed to Peter, written to James at Jerusalem wherein he complains bitterly of Paul, styling him ?a lawless man,? and a crafty misrepresenter of him (Peter,) and his doctrine, in that Paul represented, every where, Peter as being secretly of the same opinions with himself; against this he enters his protest, and declares that he reprobates the doctrine of Paul. (See Appendix B.) 3. It is certain, that from the beginning, the Christians were never agreed as to points of faith; and that the apostles themselves, so far from being considered as inspired, and infallible, were frequently contradicted, thwarted, and set at naught by their own converts: and there were as many sects, heresies, and quarrels, in the first century, as in the second or third. 4. Jesus and his apostles were no sooner off the stage, than forgeries of all kinds broke in with irresistible force: Gospels, Epistles, Acts, Revelations without number, published in the names, and under the feigned authority, of Jesus and his apostles, abounded in the Christian church; and as some of these were as early in time as any of the writings in the present canon of the New Testament, so they were received promiscuously with them, and held in equal credit and veneration, and read in the public a.s.semblies as of equal authority with those now received. 5. The very learned and pious Dodwell, in his Dissertations on Iraeneus avows, that he cannot find in ecclesiastical antiquities, (which he understood better than any man of his age,) any evidence at all, that the four Gospels were known or heard of, before the time of Trajan, and Adrian, i.e.

before the middle of the second century, i. e. nearly a hundred years after the apostles were dead. (See Appendix C.) Long before this time, we know that there were extant numbers of spurious gospels, forged, and ascribed to the apostles; and we have not the least evidence to be depended on, that those now received were not also apocryphal. For they were written n.o.body certainly knows by whom, or where, or when. They first appeared in an age of credulity, when forgeries of this kind abounded and were received with avidity by those whose opinions they favoured, while they were rejected as spurious by many sects of Christians, who a.s.serted that they were possessed of the genuine apostles, which, however, those who received ?the four,? denied. 6. All the different sects of Christians, without a known exception, altered, interpolated, and without scruple garbled, their different copies of their various and discordant gospels, in order to adapt them to their jarring and whimsical philosophical notions, Celsus accuses them of this, and they accuse each other. And that they were continually tampering with their copies of the books of the New Testament, is evident from the immense number of various readings, and from some whole phrases, and even verses, which for knavish purposes were foisted into the text, but have been detected, and exposed by Griesbach, and others. They also forged certain rhapsodies under the name of ?Sybbiline Oracles,? and then adduce them as prophetic proofs of the truth of their religion. They also interpolated certain clumsy forgeries as prophecies of Jesus into their copies of their Greek version of the Old Testament. 7. The present canon of the New Testament has never been sanctioned by the general consent of Christians. The Syrian church rejects some of its books;--some of its books were not admitted until after long opposition, and not until several hundred years after Jesus. The lists of what were considered as canonical books, differ in different ages, and some books now acknowledged by all Christians to be forgeries, were in the second and third centuries considered as equally apostolic as those now received, and as such, were publicly read in the churches. 8. The reason why we have not now extant gospels, different and contradictory to those now received, is, because that the sect or party which finally got the better of its adversaries, and styled itself Catholic, or orthodox, took care to burn and destroy the heretics, and their gospels with them. They likewise took care to hunt up and burn the books of the pagan adversaries of Christianity, ?because they were shockingly offensive to pious ears.? 9. Semler considered the New Testament as a collection of pious frauds, written for pious purposes, in the latter part of the second century, (the very time a.s.signed for their first appearance by Dodwell.) Evanson adopts, and gives good reasons for a similar opinion with regard to most of the books which go to compose it. Lastly. The reason why the New Testament canon has been so long respected, seems to have been purely owing to the credulity of the ignorant, and the laziness, indifference, or fears of the learned.

Douglas, in his famous ?Criterion,? gives us, as infallible tests, by which we may distinguish when written accounts of miracles are fabulous, the following marks:--

1. ?We have reason to suspect (he says) the accounts to be false, when they are not published to the world till after the time when they are said to have been performed.?

2. ?We have reason to suspect them to be false, when they are not published in the place where it is pretended the facts were wrought, but are propagated only at a great distance from the supposed scene of action.?

3. ?Supposing the accounts to have the two fore-mentioned qualifications, we still have reason to suspect them to be false, if in the time when, and at the place where, they took their rise, they might be suffered to pa.s.s without examination.?

These are the marks he gives us as infallible tests by which we may distinguish the accounts of miracles in the New Testament to be true; and accounts of miracles in other books (though supported by more testimony than the former,) to be false; with how much justice, may be evident from the following observations:--

1. If ?we have reason to suspect the accounts to be false, when they are not published to the world till long after the time when they are said to have been performed,? then we have reasons to suspect the accounts given in the four gospels; for we have no proof in the world, that any of them were written till nearly one hundred years after the supposed writers of them were all dead.

2. If ?we have reason to suspect them to be false, when they are not published in the place where it is pretended the facts were wrought, but are propagated only at a great distance from the supposed scene of action,? then it is still further evident that the accounts in question are not true. For they were apparently none of them published in Judea, the scene of the events recorded in them.

But it is pretty clear that they were written in countries at a distance from Palestine. And the facts recorded in them were-no where so little believed as in Judea, among the people in whose sight they are said to have been wrought, where they ought, if true, to have met with most credit. It is, however, evident from the histories themselves, that these stories were laughed at, by the learned and intelligent of the Jewish nation, and disbelieved by the great body of the people. In truth the first Christians were merely one hundred and twenty Galilaeans, who a.s.serted to their co-religionists, that Jesus of Nazareth was the ejected Messiah. It was a mere national quarrel between the great body of the Jews, and a few schismatics. This is evident from the Acts, where we find that for several years they confined their preaching to Jews only. Till the conversion of Cornelius, they do not appear to have thought the Gentiles any way interested in their dispute with their countrymen.

So that it is not improbable, (as the Jewish Christians dwindled very rapidly,) that had it not been for the Gentile proselytes to Judaism, Christianity would have perished in its cradle. These people were very numerous, and formed the connecting link between the Jews and the Gentiles. And it was through the medium of these people, that Christianity became known to the heathens.

For we find that after the apostles could make nothing of the stubborn Jews ?they shook their garments, and told them that from henceforth we go to the Gentiles.?--Accordingly, when the apostles preached in the synagogues, and the Jews contradicted, and blasphemed,? and made fun of their mode of proving from the prophets, ?that Jesus was the Christ; yet the ?proselytes and devout women? listened, and believed.

3. If ?supposing the accounts to have the two foregoing qualifications, we still may suspect them to be false; if, in the time when, and in the place where, they took their rise, they might be suffered to pa.s.s without examination,? we have still less reason to believe the gospels. For one reason why they might be suffered to pa.s.s without examination is, where the miracles proposed coincided with the notions and superst.i.tious prejudices of those whom they were reported, and who, on that account, might be p.r.o.ne to receive them unexamined. Now, we have doc.u.ments in plenty, which abundantly prove, along with the virtues, the extreme credulity and simplicity of the Primitive Christians, whose maxim was, ?believe, but do not examine, and thy faith shall save thee.? Another very good reason why they might be suffered to pa.s.s without, examination is, that the miracles of the gospels were entirely unknown to, or at least acknowledged by, any heathen or Jew of the age in which they are recorded to have happened.

n.o.body seems to have known a syllable about them but the apostles and their converts. Even the books of the New Testament were not generally known to the heathens until some hundred years after the birth of Jesus; and it seems from the few fragments of their works come down to us, that the only notice they did take of them, was to accuse them of telling lies and old wives fables. And as for the Jews, the origin and early propagation of Christianity was so very obscure, that those who lived nearest the times of the apostles, do not seem to have known any thing about them, or their doctrines.

Though a little out of place, yet I will here adduce a fact which ill.u.s.trates and exemplifies the power of enthusiasm, to make people believe they saw what they did not see. Lucian gives an account of one Peregrinus, a philosophist very famous in his time, who had a great number of disciples. He ended his life by throwing himself, in the presence of a.s.sembled thousands, into a burning pile. Yet such was the enthusiastic veneration of his followers, that some of his disciples did solemnly aver, that they had seen him after his death, clothed in white, and crowned; and they were believed, insomuch that altars and statues were erected to Peregrinus as to a demi-G.o.d. See Lucian?s account.

APPENDIX B.

See Cotelerius ?Patres Apostolic,? Tom. 1, p. 602.

Extract of a letter from Peter to James, prefixed to the Clementines.

?For, if this be not done, (says Peter, after entreating James not to communicate his preachings to any Gentile without previous examination,) our speech of truth will be divided into many opinions, nor do I know this thing as being a prophet, but as seeing even now the beginning of this evil. For some from among the Gentiles have rejected my legal preaching, embracing the trifling, and lawless doctrine of a man who is an enemy; and these things, some have endeavoured to do now in my own lifetime, transforming my words by various interpretations, to the destruction of the Laws: as if I had been of the same mind, but dared not openly profess it, (see Galatians ii. 11, 12, &c.,) which be far from me! For this were to act against the law of G.o.d, spoken by Moses, and which has the testimony of our Lord for its perpetual duration; since he thus has said, ?Heaven and earth shall pa.s.s away, yet one jot, or one t.i.ttle, shall not pa.s.s from the law.?

But these, I know not how, promising to deliver my opinion, (see Galatians as above) take upon them to explain the words they heard from me, better than I that spoke them; telling their disciples, my sense was that of which I had not so much as thought. Now, if in my own life time, they dare feign such things, how much more will those that come after, do the same.?

APPENDIX C.

Extract from Dodwell?s Dissertations on Irenaeus, Diss. 1, p.p. 38, 39.

?The Canonical writings (i. e. of the New Testament), lay concealed in the coffers of private churches, or persons, till the latter times of Trajan, or rather perhaps of Adrian; so that they could not come to the knowledge of the church. For if they had been published, they would have been overwhelmed under such a mult.i.tude as were then of apocryphal and suppositious books, that a new examination and a new testimony would be necessary to distinguish them from these false ones. And it is from this new testimony (whereby the genuine writings of the apostles were distinguished from the spurious pieces which went under their names,) that depends all the authority which the truly apostolic writings have formerly obtained, or which they have at present in the Catholic Church. But this fresh attestation of the canon is subject to the same inconveniences with those traditions of the ancient persons that I defend, and whom Irenaeus both heard and saw; for it is equally distant from the original, and could not be made except by such only as had reached those remote times. But it is very certain that before the period I mentioned of Trajan?s time, the canon of the sacred books, was not yet fixed, nor any certain number of books received in the Catholic Church, whose authority must ever after serve to determine matters of faith; neither were the spurious pieces of heretics yet rejected, nor were the faithful admonished to beware of them for the future. Likewise, the true writings of the apostles used to be so bound up in one volume with the apocryphal, that it was not manifest by any mark of public censure which of them should be preferred to the other.

We have at this day, certain authentic writings of ecclesiastical authors of those times, as Clemens Roma.n.u.s, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, who wrote in the same order wherein I have named them, and after all the other writers of the New Testament, except Jude, and the two Johns. But in Hermas you shall not meet with one pa.s.sage, or any mention of the New Testament; nor in all the rest is any one of the evangelists called by his own name. And if sometimes they cite any pa.s.sages like those we read in our gospels; yet, you will find them so much changed, and for the most part so interpolated, that it cannot be known, whether they produced them out of ours, or some apocryphal gospels; nay, they sometimes cite pa.s.sages which it is most certain are not in the present gospels. From hence, therefore, it is evident that no difference was yet put between the apocryphal and canonical books of the New Testament, especially if it be considered, that they pa.s.s no censure on the apocryphal, nor leave any mark whereby the reader might discern whether they attributed less authority to the spurious than to the genuine gospels; from whence it may reasonably be suspected, that if they cite sometimes any pa.s.sages conformable to ours, it was not done through any certain design, as if dubious things were to be confirmed only by the canonical books, so as it is very possible that both those and the like pa.s.sages may have been borrowed from other gospels besides these we now have. But what need I mention books that are not canonical, when indeed it does not appear from those of our canonical books which were last written, that the church knew any thing of the gospels, or that the clergy made a common use of them. The writers of these times do not chequer their works with texts of the New Testament, which yet is the custom of the moderns, and was also theirs in such books as they acknowledge for scripture; for they most frequently cite the books of the Old Testament, and would, doubtless, have done so by those of the New, if they had then been received as canonical.?

So far Mr. Dodwell, and (excepting the genuineness of the writings of Barnabas and the rest, for they are incontestably ancient,) it is certain that the matters of fact with regard to the New Testament are all true. Whoever has an inclination to write on this subject, is furnished from this pa.s.sage with a great many curious disquisitions wherein to show his penetration and his judgment, as--how the immediate successors and disciples of the apostles could so grossly confound the genuine writings of their masters with such as were falsely attributed to them; or since they were in the dark about these matters so early, how come such as followed them, by a better light; why all those books which are cited by the earliest fathers with the same respect as those now received, should not be accounted equally authentic by them; and what stress should be laid on the testimony of those fathers, who not only contradict one another, but are often inconsistent with themselves, in relating the very same facts; with a great many other difficulties, which deserve a clear solution from any capable person.

I have said the ancient heretics a.s.serted that the present gospels were forgeries. As an example of this, take the following, from the works of Faustus, quoted by Augustine, contra Faustum Lib. 32, c.

2. ?You think, (says Faustus to his adversaries,) that of all the books in the world the Testament of the Son only, could not be corrupted; that it alone contains nothing which ought to be disallowed; especially when it appears, that it was not written by the apostles, but a long time after them, by certain obscure persons, who, lest no credit should be given to the stories they told of what they could not know, did prefix, to their writings, the names of the apostles, and partly of those who succeeded the apostles, affirming, that what they wrote themselves, was written by these. Wherein they seem to me to have been the more heinously injurious to the disciples of Christ, by attributing to them what they wrote themselves so dissonant and repugnant; and that they pretended to write those gospels under their names, which are so full of mistakes, of contradictory relations and opinions, that they are neither coherent with themselves, nor consistent with one another.

What is this, therefore, but to throw a calumny on good men, and to fix the accusation of discord on the unanimous society of Christ?s disciples.?

ADDENDA.

There is, in the Gospel ascribed to John, a pa.s.sage, quoted as a prophecy, which, as it has been looked on as a proof text, ought to have been mentioned in the 7th chapter. It is this. The evangelist (John xix.

23) says, ?Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat--now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said, therefore, among themselves, ? Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it?; that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, ?They parted my raiment among them and for my vesture they did cast lots.?

?Now, however plausible this prophesy may appear, it is one of the most impudent applications of pa.s.sages from the Old Testament that occurs in the New. It is taken from the 18th verse of the 22d Psalm, which Psalm was probably made by David, in reference to his humiliating and wretched expulsion from Jerusalem by his son Absalom, and what was done in consequence, viz., that he was hunted by ferocious enemies, whom he compares to furious bulls, and roaring lions, gaping upon him to devour him; that his palace was plundered, and that they divided his treasured garments, (in the East, where the fashions never change, every great man has constantly presses full of hundreds and thousands of garments, many of them very costly: they are considered as a valuable part of his riches), and cast lots for his robes. This is the real meaning of this pa.s.sage quoted as a prophecy. In the same Psalm, there is another verse, which has been from time immemorial quoted as a prophecy of the crucifixion, (v. 16,) ?They pierced my hands and my feet.? In the original, there seems to have been a word dropped importing ?they tear,? or something like it, for it is literally, ?Like a lion--my hands and my feet,? and there is there no word answering to ?pierced.? The meaning, however, of the verse is not difficult to be discerned, ?dogs have compa.s.sed me; the a.s.sembly of wicked men have enclosed me; like a lion--(they tear) my hands and my feet.? The meaning may be discovered from the context, where David represents himself as in the utmost distress, helpless, and abandoned amidst his enemies, raging like wild beasts around him; then, by a strong, but striking Oriental figure, he represents himself like a carca.s.s surrounded by dogs, who are busied in tearing the flesh from his bones; their teeth fixed in his hands and feet, and pulling him asunder. This is the import of the place, and this interpretation is at last adopted, for the first time, I believe, by Christians, in the new version of the Psalms used by the Unitarian Church in London.

There is not a more palpable instance of the facility with which good natured and voracious piety is made to swallow the most flimsy arguments, if only agreeable to its wishes and wants, than the case under consideration. This Psalm, containing these pa.s.sages, ?they parted my raiment among them;? and ?they pierced my hands and my feet,?

is read, and for ages has been read, in the name of G.o.d, to the good people of the Church of England, on every Good Friday, as undoubtedly a prophesy of the Crucifixion; when yet the learned divines of the Church of England (and of these it can boast a n.o.ble Catalogue indeed) certainly know, and are conscious that the Psalm, which contains these pa.s.sages, has no more relation to Jesus, than it has to Nebuchadnezzar.

A reference ought to have been subjoined at the end of the 10th chapter to the dialogue, called ?Philopatris? in Lucian?s Works, for an account of the customs, habits, and personal appearance of the early Christians, corroborative of what is said in the 17th and 18th chapters of this work. Lest, however, Lucian?s testimony in this matter should be objected to, because he was a satirist, and, of course, may have been guilty of giving an overcharged picture of the subjects of his ridicule, I request the reader to peruse, if he can obtain it, ?Lami?s Account of the domestic habits and personal appearance and practices of the primitive Christians.? Lami was a very learned and sincere Christian, and of course his testimony cannot be objected to, and the reader will find, on a perusal of his work, that what I have a.s.serted in the 17th and 18th chapters is altogether true, and not the whole truth neither.

Indeed, that the statements in those chapters, as to the effects of the peculiar maxims of the New Testament upon the heart and understanding, are substantially correct, will, I believe, be discovered by asking any honest individual among the Methodists, who is an enthusiast, i. e sincere, and thorough-going in his religion. I have no doubt that he or she will avow, without hesitation, to the enquirer, and glory in it, that chast.i.ty is more honourable than marriage; that faith is every thing; that doubt is d.a.m.nable, and a proof of ?an unregenerated mind;?

that all the goods and pleasures of this world are ?trash;? that human inst.i.tutions are mere ?carnal ordinances;? and that human science and learning is a snare to faith and an abomination to a true disciple of the cross.

Published 1785.

* In the present day, various-attempts, insidious and powerful, have been made, even here, to coerce in matters of conscience, and to overthrow those wise barriers to the destructive effects of sectarian fanaticism and intolerance, which the great founders of the Republic, to their everlasting glory, erected.--D.

* Do you know (says Rousseau) of many Christians who have taken the pains to examine, with care, what the Jews have to say against them? If some persons have seen any thing of the kind, it is in the books of Christians, A fine way, truly, to get instructed in the arguments of their adversaries! But what can they do? If any one should dare to publish among us, books, in which be openly favours their opinions, we punish the author, the editor, the bookseller. This policy is convenient, and sure always to be in the right. There is a pleasure in refuting people who dare not open their lips"--(Emilius.) In the same work he says that ?he will never be convinced that the Jews have not something strong to say, till they shall be permitted to speak for themselves without fear, and without restraint." It was this hint of Rousseau which first excited the author's curiosity with regard to the subject of this book.--E.

* There are a great many persons who conceive that Christianity is sufficiently proved to be true, if the miracles of Jesus are true, even without any regard to the prophecies, so often appealed to by him. But supposing the miracles to be true; yet no miracles can prove that which is false in itself to be true. If therefore Jesus be not foretold as the Messiah in the Old Testament, no miracles can prove Jesus to be the Messiah foretold. Nay, it would be a stronger argument to prove Jesus to be a false pretender, that he appealed to prophecies as relating to him, when in fact they had no relation whatever to him; and by that means imposed upon the ignorant people; than it would be that he came from G.o.d, merely because he worked miracles; for ?False Christs and false prophets may arise, and may show such great signs and wonders as to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect.? Matt. xxiv. 24. Yet no Christian would allow it to be argued from thence, that those false Christs were true ones: nor would any one conclude; that a man came from G.o.d, (notwithstanding any miracle he might do) if he appealed to Scripture for that which is no where in it. In fine, if miracles would prove the Messiahship of Jesus, so also they would prove the Messiahship of the false Christs, and false prophets spoken of above. Nay more, they would demonstrate the Divine mission of Antichrist himself; who, according to the epistle to the Thessalonians, (2 Thes. ch. ii. 8, 9,10) and the Revelations, ch. xiii. 13, 14, was to perform "great signs and wonders," equal to any wrought by Jesus, for the same Greek words are used to express the wonderful works or ?great signs and wonders? of Antichrist, which are elsewhere used to express the miracles, or ?great signs and wonders? of Jesus himself.

It is a striking circ.u.mstance, that the earliest apologists for Christianity laid little stress upon the miracles of its founder.

Justin Martyr, in his Apology, is very shy of appealing to the miracles of Jesus in confirmation of his pretentions; he lays no stress upon them, but relies entirely upon the prophecies he quotes as in his favor.

Jerome, in his comment on the eighty-first Psalm, a.s.sures us, ?that the performance of miracles was no extraordinary thing: and that it was no more than what Appollonius, and Apulias, and innumerable impostors had done before.?

Lactantius saw so little force in the miracles of Christ, exclusive of the prophecies, that he does not hesitate to affirm their utter inability to support the Christian religion by themselves. [Lactan. Div.

Inst. L. v. c. 3.]

Celsus, observing upon the words of Jesus, that ?false prophets and false Christs shall arise, and show grant signs and wonders," sneeringly observes, "A fine thing truly! that miracles done by him should prove him to be a G.o.d, and when done by others should demonstrate them to be false prophets and impostors.?

Tertullian, on the words of Jesus, here referred to by Celsus, says as follows;

?Christ, foretelling that many imposters should come and perform many wonders, shews, that our faith cannot without great temerity be founded on miracles, since they were so early wrought, by false Christians themselves.? [Tertul. in Marc. L. ii. c. 3.]