unequivocally in the sense intended, the utmost extent of learning which the university propounds, will never reach to the rendering any of its members competent to conflict with the learning of the enemies of the Christian faith; to produce either orators who dare attempt to vie on equal grounds with their orators; readers, who dare trust their conscious inferiority of understanding to read, or writers that shall have ability or disposition to answer their writings. The old barbarous policy of Goth and Vandal ignorance, to suppress and commit to the flames the writings of Infidels, to decry their virtues, and to imprison their persons; to shelter conscious weakness under airs of affected contempt; to crush the man when they can no longer cope with his argument, to destroy the reasoner, when they dare not encounter his reasoning, is still the dernier resource of a system, that cannot be defended by other means, but must needs be left in the dust from whence it sprang, whenever the mind of man shall be allowed to get a fair start, without being clogged with it. "In consequence of the conquests of the Romans, there arose imperceptibly, but entirely by the operation of natural and most obvious causes, a new kind of religion, formed by the mixture of the ancient rites of the conquered nations with those of the Romans. Those nations, who before their subjection, had their own gods, and their own particular religious institutions, were persuaded by degrees, to admit into their worship, a great number of the sacred rites and customs of their conquerors. ""* And from this conjunction, helped on or retarded from time to time, by those exacerbations and paroxysms, which ever attend the fever of religion, as it afflicts the sincerely religious, and the policy of those wicked tacticians, who have always known how to raise or lower the spiritual temperament to their purpose, arose that heterogeneous compound of all that was good and all that was bad in all religions, which, after having existed under various names and modifications, and gained by gradual usurpations a considerable ascendancy over any or all the idolatrous forms from which it had been collected, began to be called Christianity. "The wiser part of mankind, however, (says Mosheim) about the time of Christ's birth, looked upon the whole system of religion, as a just object of contempt and ridicule."t * Mosheim, Cent. 1. + Mosheim, Cent. I. Ch. 1. "About the time of Christ's appearance upon_earth,* there were two kinds of philosophy which prevailed among the civilized nations. One was the philosophy of the Greeks, adopted also by the Romans; and the other, that of the Orientals, which had a great number of votaries in Persia, Syria, Chaldea, Egypt, and even among the Jews." The Greek and Roman mode of thought and reasoning, was designated by the simple title of PHILOSOPHY.† That of the eastern nations, as opposed to it, was called GNOSTICISM.. The Philosophy, signified only the love and pursuit of wisdom. The Gnosis, signified the perfection and full attainment of wisdom itself. The followers of both these systems, as we might naturally suppose, split and subdivided into innumerable sects and parties. It must be observed, however, that while the Philosophers, or those of the Grecian and Roman school, were infinitely divided, and held no common principle of union among themselves, some of them being opposed to all religion whatever; the Gnostics, or adherents of the oriental system, deduced all their various tenets from one fundamental principle, that of their common deism, and universally professed themselves to be the restorers of the knowledge of God, which was lost in the world. St. Paul mentions and condemns both these modes of thought and reasoning; that of the Greeks, in his Epistle to the Colossians, and that of the Orientals, in his first to Timothy.§ The GNOSIS, or Gnosticism, comprehends the doctrine of the Magi, the philosophy of the Persians, Chaldeans, and Arabians, and the wisdom of the Indians and Egyptians. It is distinctly to be traced in the text and doctrines of the New Testament. It was from the bosom of this pretended oriental wisdom, that the chiefs of those sects, which, in the three first centuries, perplexed the Christian church, originally issued. The name itself signified, that its professors taught the way to the true knowledge of the * Our author means any time about or near the era of Augustus. § Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.-Coloss. ii. 8. Avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called.-1 Tim. vi. 20, The Magi, or wise men of the east, (Matthew ii. 1,) i. e. the Brahmins, who first got up the allegorical story of Chrishna. Deity. Their most distinguished sect inculcated the notion of a triumvirate of beings, in which the Supreme Deity was distinguished both from the material evil prin ciple, and from the creator of this sublunary world. The PHILOSOPHY, comprehended the Epicureans, the most virtuous and rational of men, who maintained that wisely consulted pleasure, was the ultimate end of man; the Academics, who placed the height of wisdom in doubt and scepticism; the Stoics, who maintained a fortitude indifferent to all events; the Aristotelians, who, after their master, Aristotle, held the most subtle disputations concerning God, religion, and the social duties, maintaining that the nature of God resembles the principle that gives motion to a machine, that it is happy in the contemplation of itself, and entirely regardless of human affairs; the Platonists, from their master, Plato, who taught the immortality of the soul, the doctrine of the trinity, of the manifestation of a divine man, who should be crucified, and the eternal rewards and punishments of a future life; and from all these resulting, the Eclectics, who, as their name signifies, elected and chose what they held to be wise and rational, out of the tenets of all sects, and rejected whatever was considered futile and pernicious. Eclectics held Plato in the highest reverence. college or chief establishment was at Alexandria in Egypt. Their founder was supposed to have been one Potamon. The most indubitable testimonies prove, that this Philosophy was in a flourishing state, at the period assigned to the birth of Christ. The Eclectics are the same whom we find described as the Therapeuts or Essenes of Philo, and whose sacred writings are, by Eusebius, shown to be the same as our gospels. Nought, but the supposed expediency of deceiving the vulgar, and of perpetuating ignorance, hinders the historian to whom I am, for the substance of this chapter, so much indebted, from acknowledging the fact, that in every rational sense that can be attached to the word, they were the authors and real founders of Christianity. The Their CHAPTER VI. ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS. IN studying the writings of the early advocates of Christianity, and fathers of the Christian church; where we should naturally look for the language that would indicate the real occurrence of the facts of the gospel, if real occurrences they had ever been; not only do we find no such sort of language, but every where, find we, any sort of sophistical ambages, ramblings from the subject, and evasions of the very business before them, as if of purpose to balk our research, and insult our scepticism. If we travel to the very sepulchre of Christ, we have only to discover that he was never there: history seeks evidence of his existence as a man, but finds no more trace of it, than of the shadow that flitted across the wall. The star of Bethlehem shone not upon her path, and the order of the universe was suspended without her observance. She asks with the Magi of the east, "where is he that is born King of the Jews," and like them, finds no solution of her inquiry, but the guidance that guides as well to one place as another; descriptions that apply to Esculapius, as well as to Jesus; prophecies, without evidence that they were ever prophesied; miracles, which those who are said to have seen, are said also to have denied that they saw; narratives without authorities, facts without dates, and records without names. Where we should naturally look for the evidence of recentness, and a mode of expression suitable to the character of witnesses, or of those who had conversed with witnesses, we not only find no such modes of expression; but both the recorded language and actions of the parties, are found to be entirely incongruous, and out of keeping with the supposition of such a character. We find the discourses of the very first preachers and martyrs of this religion, outraging all chronology, by claiming the honours of an even then remote antiquity, for the doctrines they taught. 1. We find St. Stephen,* the very first martyr of Christianity, in the very city where its stupendous events are supposed to have happened, and, as our Bible chronologies inform us, within the very year in which they happened; and on the very occasion on which above all others that could be imagined, he must, and would have borne testimony to them, as constituting the evidences of his faith, the justification of his conduct, and the grounds of his martyrdom; nevertheless, bearing no such testimony; yea! not so much as glancing at those events, but found *STEPHEN, a name of the same order as Nicodemus, Philip, Andrew, Alexander, &c., entirely of Grecian origin, ascribed to Jews, who never had such names, nor any like them. ing his whole argument on the ancient legends of the Jewish superstition. What a falling off is there! 2. We find St. Paul, the very first Apostle of the Gentiles, expressly avowing that "he was made a minister of the gospel, which had already been preached to every creature under heaven;" (Col. i. 23,) preaching a god manifest in the flesh, who had been "believed on in the world,” (1 Tim. iii. 16,) before the commencement of his ministry; and who therefore could have been no such person as the man of Nazareth, who had certainly not been preached at that time, nor generally believed on in the world, till ages after that time. 3. We find him, moreover, out of all character and consistency of circumstance, assuming the most intolerant airs of arrogance, and snubbing Peter at Antioch, as if he were nobody, or had absolutely been preaching a false doctrine, of which Paul were the more proper judge, and the higher authority. A circumstance absolutely demonstrative that the Peter of the Acts was no such person as the Peter of the Gospels, who would certainly not have suffered himself to be called over the coals, by one who was but a new setter up in the business, but would in all probability have cut his ear off, rapt out a good oath or two, or knock him down with his keys, for such audacious presumption. 4. It is most essentially remarkable, that as these Acts of the Apostles bear internal evidence of being a much later production than the epistles and gospels, and are evidently mixed up with the journals of real adventures of some travelling missionaries; they are not mentioned with the epistles and gospels which had constituted the ancient writings of the Therapeutæ. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, (A. D. 393,) informs us, that at that time, “this book was unknown to many, and by others it was despised." 5. MILL, one of the very highest authorities in biblical literature, tells us, "that the gospels were soon spread abroad, and came into all men's hands; but the case was somewhat different with the other books of the New Testament, particularly the Acts of the Apostles, which were not thought to be so important, and had few transcribers." 6. And BEAUSOBRE acknowledges, that the book of the Acts, had not at the beginning in the eastern churches, the same authority with the gospels and the epistles. |