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Mr. T. has somewhere said, that Pope Leo H0th, might have inserted the celebrated passage. But he could have no motive to do it. Nobody doubted of Jesus's existence, so as to make it worth his while.

Mr. T. has said, that the passage crept from the margin into the work. But if there was only one copy left, or the Pope's copy, there could not of course be another produced with the passage in the margin; therefore, Mr. T.'s supposition is without proof, and the presumption is against it. Mr. T. has no right to choose which passage shall be held to be forged. No opponent can be required to consent to that.

If Mr. T. shall choose to advance even the bare possibility of the forgery, a full proof will be required; and even that stage of the forgery will be contested; for, by examination, hereafter, of the real forgeries of the Jesuans, we shall perceive, that the forger does not always know where to stop.

We come secondly to the alleged forgery of Paul's Epistles.

In feeble proc of this, Mr. T. refers to the edicts of Roman emperors, (see Syntagma, p. 2.) to alter the Jesuan scriptures according to their caprice.

But he has not shown that Constantine, Theodosius, and Anastasius acted according to their caprice, or that they did any thing more than correct the mistakes of copyists. That it was practicable to totally alter them is not explained. Many copies were in private hands, which must unavoidably lead to detection. And there are large quotations of them in the writings of the Jesuan Fathers, which opposed insurmountable diffi culties to the supposed total alteration. We do not know, that it was in the power of these emperors to get at all the dispersed copies of these works; and Mr. T. has not told us when they ever made the extravagant attempt.

The various readings affect the books of the New Testament, only in minor matters, such as could only concern the professors of Jesuism, and are of no importance to disbelievers.

The" immoral, vicious, and wicked tendency of many passages," (Synt. p. 3.) are no proof against, but rather in favour of the genuineness of these Jesuan writings. See the character, that Barnabas, in his epistle, gives to Jesus's apostles, that "they were infamous, and exceedingly profligate, and lawless beyond all lawlessnes." What kind of passages would Mr. T. expect from such raff?

Mr. T. says (Synt. p. 3.) that "the scriptures of N. T. did not appear in the times to which they refer."

Paul's Epistles, which alone I am now attempting to defend, might not be all collected at first, and read in all the Catholic churches; but that is not a proof that they were not genuine.

1 Tim. 3. 16, may have crept into the text containing a doctrine not held by Paul; but such a trifle is not fatal to the genuineness of these epistles. The same may be said of 1 Cor. 15. 32.

1 Cor. c. 15. v. 7, may have been written by Paul. By "the twelve" v. 5. he may mean Jesus's original gang; and by "all the apostles' in V. 7. he may mean certain missionaries under the training of James.

I hold, that Jesus was taken down from the cross and settled in Arabia, He might come once or twice to visit his party in Palestine. In the Acts, it is said, that Jesus appeared to Paul; just the reverse: Paul appeared to Jesus; he visited him in Arabia. Gal. c. 1. v. 17.

We

With respect to the "absence of all historical reference," (Synt. p. 4.) to Paul's Epistles, such as quotations from them in the first century. may suppose that these epistles were not collected and read in all churches

before the second century; so that the credit of their genuineness is not impaired by the want of quotations. The "incongruity of their figments" affects only their truth, not their genuineness.

Mr. T. says, that the figments respecting Jesus, were copied from mythologies of the Roman Gods and the Indian Chrishna.-(Syntagma, p. 4.)

These figments do not establish the non-existence of Jesus, they might be only added to his true history.

The imagined similarity of the names Chrishna and Christus, seems to have had some influence in leading some to think that the fables of Jesus were copied from the story of the Indian God.

But we do not perhaps know how these names were pronounced, so as to decide upon their resemblance.

They might be very different. The Latin ch seems by the German use of them, and from other reasons, to have had the force of the s in measure, leisure, treasure, so that Christus seems to have been pronounced Zhristhooss. How Chrishna should be pronounced, I cannot pretend to say. The apparent likeness, in our deplorable orthography, cannot be depended upon.

The English had traded many years to the East Indies before Sir William Jones discovered the history of Chrishna They knew nothing about him, notwithstanding the advantage of printing and other improvements. Now the Romans were so ignorant of India, that their geographers described the island of Ceylon as larger than the whole peninsula on this side of the Ganges. And, if the best informed Romans knew so little of India, what could the ignorant professors of Jesuism be supposed to know about Chrishna?

A resemblance between mythologies might happen without intercourse between the religionists, because, as they all deal in superlatives, they must draw near to mutual resemblance.

The fabled birth of Jesus from a virgin was to hide something quite the contrary. The persecution of him, by King Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee, for the date of the taxing shows it was not Herod the Great, his father, was to account for the undeniable residence of Jesus in Egypt, without admitting what Celsus affirms, that Joseph repudiated Mary.

The Jesuan preachers were besides desirous to explain away the residence of Jesus in Egypt, till he was grown up, and to make it thought by the Jesuan noodles, their flocks, that Jesus was only in Egypt while an infant, though, from his frequent quotations of the Greek or Septuagint version of the Old Testament, and his gross mistakes in regard to the Hebrew version, see Matthew, c. 22, v. 31, 32, and v. 42-45, and elsewhere, he must have been brought up in Egypt, where the Greek version was in use, and Celsus says the same. The reason for this concealment was, because conjuring was taught and exhibited in Egypt, and they did not like that Jesus should be called a conjuror. The Jesuan preachers and pastors did not like to have it said, that Jesus opened the eyes of the blind, by gumming small scales of fish upon the eyes of seeing men, then bidding them go before him two or three days, and beg their bread in a town, so as to become known to the inhabitants as blind, and that Jesus came, and in public bid them rub off the fish-scales agan.

Nor did the teachers of Jesuism like to have it said, that Jesus cured women of the dropsy by means of a pad inserted under their clothes, and slipped away again in the synogogue.

Neither did they relish that it should be said, that Jesus formed

fictitious leprosies with drugs, and so healed the lepers, and fictitious sore arms and sore legs.

They were afraid also, lest it should be said, that Jesus's demoniacs were only persons hired to counterfeit raving madness.

Thus it was quite unnecessary for the Jesuan preachers, swindlers, or pastors, to copy from the fable of Chrishna. The real, untoward circumstances of Jesus's real life, would suggest fables to hide and explain away ill-looking events.

Again, with regard to the genuineness of Paul's Epistles. It is not easy to counterfeit a real correspondence. We have no example extant of a forgery of epistles so successful as that of Paul's would be.

A novelist's letters are not in the least like them, for the novelist writes for the general reader, and, therefore, to keep up the thread of the history, he tells the reader a great deal more than a real correspondent does. See how many things Paul omits, which would interest the reader to know; witness, his shipwrecks, his stonings, his journies into Cilicia, his voyage to Crete; whether he travelled into the Peloponesus he has not said, nor whether he attempted to plant churches southward of Corinth. He does not inform us by what eloquence he persuaded Onesimus to return back to his master Philemon; all these omissions are the manner of the real correspondent,

Somebody, whether Mr. T. or not, has said, that the more any writing has the looks of genuineness, the more likely to be forged, for that it is the object of the forger to imitate truth as much as possible.

Here is one link wanting in the argument, for, to make it conclusive, it ought to be shown, that men always attain all their objects, and always succeed in all their endeavours.

Besides, another link is so fractured, as to be nearly useless. For, look at the real forgeries of the Jesuaus, such as the passage in Josephus, and the epistles of Pilate to Tiberius, and it will be seen, that it is not always the careful endeavour of the forger to make his forgery resemble truth. So that this argument, whosever it is, for want of one, or more than one link, falls to the ground.

If it is so easy to forge thirteen Epistles of Paul, as Mr. T. maintains, I wish he would favour us with three counterfeits of his composition, that we might, by comparison, form a judgment of the facility of the attempt, and that he would let them be of as marked a character, as any of the eight following: 1 and 2 Corinth., 1 and 2 Tim., Gal., Philip, Titus and Philemon; for a mere vague declaration that it could be done, is not satisfactory.

Besides, that the thirteen Epistles were actually forged, cannot be proved any way by Mr. Taylor, for he cannot tell who forged them; and they must, whether forged or not, have been penned by somebody, and if Mr. T. cuts off all those epistles and the acts as spurious, he leaves himself no means to know enough of Paul's character, talents and circumstances, to determine that there is any thing inconsistent in the supposition, that Paul wrote them or any thing of the kind. It is impossible, therefore, for Mr. T. to prove them forged, and as tradition has allotted them to Paul, they must, in the total absence of proof to the contrary, be confined to him as his genuine letters.

The testimony of Victor Tununensis is of no weight or importance whatever in the present question.

For, that the Emperor Anastasius should publicly declare and avow his intention to corrupt the books of the New Testament, is out of the question, it is too absurd a supposition to deserve even attention. And the Emperor

could not alter those writings so as to please every body; the only course he could take to excite the least clamour, must be to make the altered copies as correct as possible, and to employ the oldest and best authorities as his guides. Those whose opinions and tenets were thwarted by this alteration, would murmur, and Victor Tununensis may be presumed to have been of that number; and as his complaint is not corroborated by other and better testimony, we may conclude that it was ill-founded.

Archbishop Lanfranc's alteration of the New Testament must be confined to England and Normandy, and no doubt the alteration was a mere rectification of the errors of copyists, or else there would have been a complaint against this meddling of his, and all would have been set right again.

As to the story of the rocket-maker, we may conclude that the best editions that could be procured, were employed for the received printed edition; and after the New Testament had come out in print, the manuscripts might be thought of little use, and taken small care of, and might fall into the hands of a rocket-maker; but when we consider how much more care is taken to make an impression faithful than a manuscript, there is no reason to think, that the edition suffered materially in point of correctness. And the errors, if any, could only be such as would affect the professors of Jesuism, and might favour one sect of Jesuans more than another, but must be too unimportant to interest disbelievers. The same may be said with regard to the liberties taken by Erasmus with the books of the New Testament.

Having established the genuineness of the Epistles attributed to Paul of Tarsus, we will now proceed to consider, since we have discovered Paul to be the author of them, whether those epistles furnish any arguments to prove the Jesuan religion to be false.

In the first place, we collect that Jesus was crucified. I Cor. c. v. 23, "we preach Christ crucified;" again, "for though he was crucified through weakness," 2 Cor. c. 12. v. 4. See also, Gal. c. 3, v. 1.

We will next examine on what account Jesus was crucified.

Now there are only four causes supposeable for his being crucified : 1. On account of religion.

2. As being a slave.

3. For giving umbrage to the Roman government; and

4. For robbery.

First, he could not have been crucified on account of religion, for the Roman civil authorities never interfered with the religious questions and disagreements among the Jews, they tolerated their culte, but never inquired into particulars. They only required that their harangues or arguments should be conducted within doors, or that they would not raise too large a concourse in the open air. John the Baptist was not beheaded for setting up a new sect of religion; but because he drew a concourse into the wilderness. This, the Romans would not suffer, because it might be the means of raising an insurrection; and the disturbance caused by Judas of Galilee, and Theudas, made them the more strict and jealous in that particular.

Secondly.-He could not have been crucified as a slave, for he was not a slave; if he had been, we should have heard of Jesus's master.

Thirdly.-Jesus could not have been crucified for giving umbrage to the Roman government, such as, by setting up for a king, or raising a rebellion; for we read in 1 Cor. c. 15, v. 4, that Jesus "was buried." Now, the sentence of crucifixion implies, that the condemned shall hang on the eross until the flesh is picked off from his bones by the birds, and

till the skeleton dropped off for want of support. But as Jesus was buried, he must have been taken down by the favour of the governor; yet the governor dared not have shown him that favour, if Jesus had been crucified on a political account, for then he might have been taken down alive, and have renewed his attempts.

Fourthly. There now remains but one supposition, and that must be the true one, and there is no possibility to avoid it; that is, that Jesus was charged at least with a robbery. That crime of the robbery of a freebooter, was punishable by the Roman law by crucifixion, as we have it in Horace

Non fur es ne pascas in cruce corvos.

"You are not a robber, that you may not be food for ravens on the cross."

We will now proceed to enquire whether Jesus was innocent or guilty of the robbery of a freebooter, with which he was charged before the procurator Pontius Pilate.

Now we read in 1 Cor. c. 11. v. 23, that "Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread."

Mind, reader, the word "betrayed." He can betray no trust, who is not trusted. Jesus's residence at night, was a secret, and that secret was entrusted to some one, who betrayed him. Now, it is manifest, that Jesus was endeavouring to elude the ministers and officers of the law; he needed not otherwise have strove to keep his residence at night a secret. If he did not positively go and surrender himself up to take his trial, he need not have skulked away into secrecy, unless he had been conscious that he was guilty.

We find, moreover, that Jesus made but a very indifferent defence at his trial; for we have in 1 Tim. c. 6. v. 13, "Christ Jesus, who, before Pontius Pilate, witnessed a good confession;" or a good profession as it ought to have been translated; for we are not obliged to suppose that he actually confessed the robbery. Mind, reader, a good profession is a very different thing from a justification or clearing of himself. Goodness is a term of indeterminate signification; it is elastic, it can expand, and contract, and take all shapes; but justice is rigid, and preserves its forms and dimensions unaltered. Observe, that it is Jesus's party who speak here, the other side is not heard; who would have explained goodness to mean evil, for goodness is thus convertible. The right and reasonable interpretation of Jesus's good profession is, that he wandered from the subject, that he did not keep to the point, that he did not repel the charges, that his answer was unsatisfactory, and he was cast for death. This tallies with, and explains the reason of his keeping his residence at night, a secret, only known to real or supposed friends.

We pass on now to consider the miracle of Jesus's resurrection.

But, if Jesus had the governor Pilate for his friend, which he had, as has been already shown, then he did not die of crucifixion, for there was nothing to cause his death. He had received no wound in any vital part of his body, only his hands and feet were hurt, of this injury he might soon be healed. Jesus's was only a sham death; he was taken down alive from the cross at night, by direction or permission from Pilate, his friends only gave out that he had been buried, to prevent farther enquiry about him, while his wounds were healing; so that he might without anything wonderful, be seen alive by Peter and the rest of the eleven, because he had not been dead; thus, from the indulgence of Pilate, or his accessibleness to bribery, was trumped up the nonsensical story of Jesus's resurrection from the dead.

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