Adroitly handled as the passage has been by the ingenuity of theologians, it has been made rather to subserve the cause of the evidences of the Christian religion, than to injure it. Since though it be admitted, that the Christian world has "all along been under a delusion" in this respect, and has held these writings to be of higher authority than they really are; yet the writings themselves and their authors, are innocent of having contributed to that delusion, and never bore on them, nor in them, any challenge to so high authority as the mistaken piety of Christians has ascribed to them, but did all along profess no more than to have been written, as Faustus testifies, not BY, but ACCORDING to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and by persons of whom indeed it is not known who nor what they were, nor was it of any consequence that it should be, after the general acquiescence of the church had established the sufficient correctness of the compilations they had made.

And here the longo post tempore, (the great while after,) is a favourable presumption of the sufficient opportunity that all persons* had, of knowing and being satisfied, that the gospels which the church received, were indeed all that they purported to be; that is, faithful narrations of the life and doctrines of Christ, according to what could be collected from the verbal accounts which his apostles had given, or by tradition been supposed to have given, and as such, "worthy of all acceptation.'

While the objection of Faustus, becomes from its own nature the most indubitable and inexceptionable evidence, carrying us up to the very early age, the fourth century, in which he wrote, with a demonstration, that the gospels were then universally known and received, under the precise designation, and none other, than that with which they have come down to us, even as the gospels respectively, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Of course there can be no occasion to pursue the inquiry into the authenticity of the Christian scriptures, lower down than the fourth century.

1. Though, in that age, there was no established canon or authoritative declaration, that such and none other,

By all persons, understanding strictly all parsons, for the common people were nobody, and never at any time had any voice, judgment, or option, in the business of religion, but always believed, that which their godfathers and godmothers did promise and vow that they should believe. God or devil, and any scriptures their masters pleased, were always all one to them.

than those which have come down to us, were the books which contained the Christian rule of faith.

2. And though "no manuscript of these writings now in existence is prior to the sixth century, and various readings which, as appears from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the Greek Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are at present remaining."-Michaelis, vol. 2, p. 160.

3. And though many passages which are now found in these scriptures were not contained in any ancient copies whatever;

4. And though "in our common editions of the Greek Testament, are MANY readings, which exist not in a single manuscript, but are founded on MERE CONJECTURE.”. Marsh's Michaelis, vol. 2, p. 496.

5. And though "it is notorious, that the orthodox charge the heretics with corrupting the text, and that the heretics recriminate upon the orthodox."-Unitarian New Version, p. 121.

6. And though "it is an undoubted fact, that the heretics were in the right in many points of criticism, where the Fathers accused them of wilful corruption."-Bp. Marsh, vol. 2, p. 362.

7. And though "it is notorious, that forged writings under the names of the Apostles were in circulation almost from the apostolic age."-See 2 Thess. ii. 2, quoted in Unitarian New Version.*

8. And though "not long after Christ's ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance."-Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 109.

9. And though, says the great Scaliger, "They put into their scriptures whatever they thought would serve their purpose."+

10. And though "notwithstanding those twelve known infallible and faithful judges of controversy (the twelve Apostles), there were as many and as damnable heresies crept in, even in the apostolic age, as in any other age,

*Almost from the apostolic age!" Why the text itself, if it prove any thing, proves that such forged writings were in existence absolutely in the apostolic age, and among the apostles themselves.

+ Omnia quæ Christianismo conducere putabant bibliis suis interseruerunt. -Tindalio citante.

perhaps, during the same space of time."-Reeve's Preliminary Discourse to the Commonitory of Vincentius Lirinensis, p. 190.

11. And though there were in the manuscripts of the New Testament, at the time of editing the last printed copies of the Greek text, upwards of ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND various readings."-Unitarian New Version, p. 22.

12. And though "the confusion unavoidable in these versions (the ancient Latin, from which all our European versions are derived), had arisen to such a height, that St. Jerome, in his Preface to the Gospels, complains that no one copy resembled another.”—Michaelis, vol. 2, p. 1.19.

13. And though the gospels fatally contradict each other; that is, in several important particulars, they do so to such an extent, as no ingenuity of supposition has yet been able to reconcile: only the most stupid and ignorant of Methodist parsons, and canting, arrogant fanatics, any longer attempting to reconcile them, after Marsh, Michaelis, and the most learned critics, have struck, and owned the conquest.*

14. And though the difference of character between the three first gospels, and that ascribed to St. John, is so flagrantly egregious, that the most learned Christian divines, and profoundest scholars, have frankly avowed that the Jesus Christ of St. John, is a wholly different character from the Jesus Christ of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and that their account and his should both be true, is flatly impossible.+

15. And though such was the idolatrous adulation paid to the authority of Origen, that emendations of the text which were but suggested by him, were taken in as part of the New Testament; though he himself acknowledged that they were supported by the authority of no manuscript whatever.-Marsh, in loco.

16. And though, even so late as the period of the Reformation, we have whole passages which have been thrust into the text, and thrust out, just as it served the turn which the Protestant tricksters had to serve.

*See Bishop Marsh's Surrender, quoted in chapter 17.

+ Si forte accidisset, ut Johannis Evangelium per octodecim secula priora prorsus ignotum jacuisset, et nostris demum temporibus, in medium productum esset, omnes haud dubie uno ore confiterentur Jesum a Johanne descriptum longe alium esse ac illum Matthæi, Marci et Lucæ, nec utramque descriptionem simul veram esse posse. Carol. Theoph. Bretschneider Probab. Lipsiæ, 4820.

17. And though we have on record the most indubitably historical evidence, of a general censure and correction of the Gospels having been made at Constantinople, in the year 506, by order of the emperor Anastasius.*

18. And though we have like unquestionable historical evidence, of measureless and inappreciable alterations of the same, having been made by our own Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the avowed purpose of accommodating them to the faith of the orthodox.+

19. And though there are other passages retained and circulated as part of the word of God, which are known and admitted by all parties to be wilful interpolations, and downright forgery and falsehood.

20. And though we see with our own eyes, and witness in our own experience-as per example, in the Athanasian Creed-that nothing could be so absurd, so false, so wicked, but that it would be retained and supported by our Christian clergy, on the selfsame principle as that on which they support all the rest on't,-even because it supports them!

Yet, after all, we shall find thousands of interested and aspiring pedants, pretending to reconcile what cannot be reconciled, to prove what cannot be proved, and to show that to be true, which every sense and faculty of man attests and demonstrates to be false. It is, however, on the ground of inspiration, that they ultimately rest their pretensions: it was on that ground that the Tower of Babel was built; that we leave them; but on the ground of history, criticism, reason, and natural evidence, they have no rest for the sole of their foot. I recommend them to treat us with contempt, and to send us to Coventry, and not to Oakham.

Here it is. Messala V. C. consule, Constantinopoli, jubente Anastasio Imperatore, sancta evangelia, tanquam ab idiotis evangelistis composita, reprehenduntur et emendantur.”—Victor Tununensis, Cave's Historia Literaria, vol. 1, p. 415-i. e. “The illustrious Messala being Consul; by the command of the Emperor Anastasius, the holy Gospels, as having been written by idiot evangelists, are censured and corrected."-Victor, Bishop of Tunis, in Africa.

+ See Beausobre, quoted in the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society; and this, and the preceding extract vindicated, in the author's Syntagma, against the vituperations of the evangelical Dr. John Pye Smith, in locis.

CHAPTER XVI.

ON THE ORIGIN OF OUR THREE FIRST CANONICAL

GOSPELS.

THAT our three first canonical gospels have a remarkable similarity to each other; and that the three first evangelists (sc. Matthew, Mark, and Luke) frequently agree, not only in relating the same things in the same manner, but likewise in the same words, is a fact of which every one must be convinced who has read a Greek Harmony of the Gospels. In some cases, all the Evangelists agree word for word, as thus:

MATTHEW, Xxiv. 33.

Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; when his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise, ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

MARK, Xiii. 20.

Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; when her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: so ye, in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily, I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

LUKE, XXI. 31. Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your ownselves, that summer is now nigh at hand: so likewise, ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

These phænomena are inexplicable on any other than one of the two following suppositions, either that St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, copied from each other, or that all three drew from a common source.

In Mark xiii. 13 to 32, there is such a close verbal agreement, for twenty verses together, with the parallel passage in St. Matthew's gospel, that the texts of St. Matthew and St. Mark might pass for one and the same text.

"The most eminent critics are at present decidedly of opinion that one of the two suppositions must necessarily be adopted-either that the three evangelists copied from each other, or that all the three drew from a common source, and that the notion of an absolute independence, in respect to the composition of our three first gospels, is no longer tenable. Yet the question, which of these two