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transacting business and holding dialogues with the Saladins, King Richards, Henrys, and Edwards of real history. Nor are there wanting instances of plagiarism in the department of fiction. A shrewd novelist will often avail himself of an old story, will change the scene of action from one country to another, throw it further back, or bring it lower down, in the order of time; and make the heroes of the original conceit, contemporaries and comrades of either an earlier or a later race of real personages.

"Josephus, and heathen authors have made mention of Herod, Archelaus, Pontius Pilate, and other persons of note, whose names we meet with in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, and have delivered nothing material concerning their characters, posts, and honours, that is different from what the writers of the New Testament have said of them."

Such is the first of Dr. Lardner's arguments for the credibility of the gospel history, the sophism of which will in an instant start into observance, upon putting the simple questions-What is material? And is it no fatal deficiency, that they should have omitted to mention what they by no possibility could have omitted to mention, had the personages so spoken of been so concerned in the gospel history, as they are therein represented to have been?

One of the most striking coincidences of the scriptural and profane history, is the reference to the death of Herod, in Acts xii. 21. 23, as compared with the account given by Josephus, whose words are, "Having now reigned three whole years over all Judea, Herod went to the city Cæsarea. Here he celebrated shows in honour of Cæsar. On the second day he came into the theatre dressed in a robe of silver of most curious workmanship. The rays of the sun, then just rising, reflected from so splendid a garb, gave him a majestic and awful appearance. In a short time they began in several parts of the theatre flattering acclamations, which proved pernicious to him. They called him a god, and entreated him to be propitious to them, saying, Hitherto we have respected you as a man, but now we acknowledge you to be more than mortal.' The King neither reproved those persons, nor rejected the impious flattery. Soon after this,* casting

* Ανακύψας δ' εν τον βυβωνα της εαυτε κεφαλης υπερκαθεζόμενον είδεν επι σχοινε τινος αγγελον τε τέτον ευθυς ενόησεν κακών είναι τον και ποτε των αγαθών Yevoμevov kai diakapdiov eσxev oduvny.-Antiq. lib. 19. c. 8. sect. 2.

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his eyes upwards, he saw an owl sitting upon a rope over his head. He perceived it to be a messenger of evil to him, as it had been before of his prosperity, and was grieved at heart. Immediately after this he was affected with extremely violent pains in his bowels, and turning to his friends, in anguish said, I, your God, am required to leave this world; fate instantly confuting the false applauses you have bestowed on me; I, who have been called immortal, am hurried away to death; but God's appointment must be submitted to.'. These pains in his bowels continually tormenting him, he died on the fifth day, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and of his reign the seventh."

There is a curious ambiguity in the Greek word for messenger (angelos), of which Eusebius availing himself, says nothing about the owl, but gives as the text of Josephus, that he beheld an angel hanging over his head upon a rope, and this he knew immediately to be an omen of evil.* Lardner justly reproves this fault in Eusebius, but has no reproof for the author of the Acts of the Apostles, who was privileged to improve the story still farther by adding that the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the clary, (i. e. the spangles and gaudery of his silver dress.) This Herod was a deputy king holding his power under the appointment of Caius Caligula.

The PHARISEES were a sect of self-righteous and sanctimonious hypocrites, ready to play into and keep up any religious farce that might serve to invest them with an imaginary sanctity of character, and increase their influence over the minds of the majority, whose good nature and ignorance in all ages and countries, is but ever too ready to subscribe the claims thus made upon it.

They were the Quakers of their day, a set of commercial, speculating thieves, who expressed their religion in the eccentricity of their garb; and, under professions of extraordinary punctiliousness and humanity, were the most over-reaching, oppressive, and inexorable of the human race. Of this sort was the apostolic chief of sinners, and this character he discovers through all accounts of his life and writings, that have entailed the curse of his example on mankind.

The SADDUCEES were a set of materialists, who, as they were too sensible to be imposed on themselves, were

* Ανακύψας δε της εαυτό κεφαλης υπερκαθεζόμενον είδεν άγγελον επι σχοινιά τινος. TETOV ENDUS EVONσE KAKWY EIVAL AITION.-Euseb. Eccl. Hist. lib. 2. c. 9. B.

the less disposed to cajole others. They were the most respectable part of the Jewish community, and by the influence of their more rational tenets and more moral example, served to infuse that leaven of reason and virtue, without which, the frame of society could hardly be held together.

It is enough to know, in addition to the more than enough that every body may know, of the Mosaic institutions, that the pretensions of the Jews, as a nation, to philosophy, never exceeded that of the dark and hidden science which they called the Cabbala, which, like their hidden theology, was nothing more than the Oriental philosophy, plagiarized and modelled to their own conceit, and a crude jumble of the various melancholy notions, which had forced themselves upon their minds in the course of their ramblings into the adjacent countries of Egypt and Phoenicia, and the little that ignorance itself could not help learning, in the course of their traffic with the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians.

Their sacred scriptures of the Old Testament contain no reference to the Platonic doctrine of a future state.* Though the metaphysical notion of the immortality of the soul, had been inculcated and embraced in India, in Assyria, in Egypt, and in Gaul, and was believed with so influential and practical a faith, that its votaries would lend their money to be returned them again in the other world,+ (a proof of sincerity less equivocal than martyrdom itself.) Yet this doctrine appears to have been wholly unknown to the Jewish legislator, and is but darkly insinuated in any part of the prophetical writings. Hence the Sadducees, who, according to Josephus, respected only the authority of the Pentateuch (or five books of Moses), had no belief in a resurrection, angels or spirits, or any such chimerical hypostases. Nor does the Christ of the New Testament seem to have had the least idea of the possible existence of the soul, in a state

The only reward proposed for obedience to the law of God, was, that attached to the fifth, which is called by the Apostle, the first commandment with promise—" that thy days may be long in the land."

+ Vetus ille mos Gallorum occurrit, (says Valerius Maximus, 1.2. c. 6. p. 10.) quos memoria proditum est, pecunias mutuas dare solitos quæ his, apud inferos redderentur.

It is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell. It is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.-Mark ix. 45.47. Here was no idea of heaven, or the state of the blessed, above a hospital of incurables.

of separation from the body, All his attempts to alarm the cowardice and weakness of his hearers, are founded on the assumption, that the body must accompany the soul in its anabasis to heaven, or its descent to hell, and indeed that there was no virtual distinction between them. It must, however, be admitted to be a good and valid apology for the omission-that none of his followers have been able to supply the deficiency.

CHAPTER V.

STATE OF PHILOSOPHY.

THERE is nothing that can be known of past ages, known with more unquestionable certainty, than that in, about, and immediately after the epocha of time ascribed to the dawning of divine light, the human mind seems generally to have suffered an eclipse. The arts and sciences, intelligence and virtue, were smitten with an unaccountable palsy. The mind of man lost all its energies, and sunk under a generally prevailing imbecility. We look in vain among the successors of Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Horace, and Virgil, the statesmen, orators, and poets of the golden age of literature, for a continuation of the series of such ornaments of human nature. A blight had smitten the growth of men's understandings; not only no more such clever men rose up, but with very few exceptions, no more such men as could have appreciated the talents of their predecessors, or possessing so much as the relative degree of capacity, necessary to be sensible of the superiority that had preceded them. After reasonings so just, and eloquence so powerful, that even so late after the revival of literature as the present day, mankind have not yet learned to reason more justly, or to declaim more powerfully; a race of barbarous idiots possessed themselves of the seat of science and the muses; and all distinction and renown was sought and obtained by absurdities disgraceful to reason, and mortifications revolting to nature. "The groves of the academy, the gardens of Epicurus, and even the porticoes of the Stoics, were deserted as so many different schools of scepticism or impiety, and many among the Romans were desirous that

the writings of Cicero should be condemned and suppressed by the authority of the senate."*

The reasoning of which all men see the absurdity, when applied by the victorious Caliph to justify the destruction of the library of Alexandria,+ appeared unanswerable when adduced on the side of the true faith.

Omar issued his commands for the destruction of that celebrated library, to his general, Amrus, in these words: "As to the books of which you have made mention, if there be contained in them what accords with the book of God (meaning the Koran of Mahomet), there is without them, in the book of God, all that is sufficient. But if there be any thing in them repugnant to that book, we in no respect want them. Order them, therefore, to be all destroyed."Harris.

Precisely similar in spirit, and almost in form, are the respective decrees of the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, which generally ran in the words, "that all writings adverse to the claims of the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they should be found, should be committed to the fire," as the pious Emperors would not that those things which they took upon themselves to assume, tended to provoke God to wrath, should be allowed to offend the minds of the pious. Mr. Gibbon, in his usual strain of caustic sarcasm, mentions the elaborate treatises which the philosophers, more especially the prevailing sect of the new Platonicians, who endeavoured to extract allegorical wisdom from the fictions of the Greek poets, composed; and the many elaborate treatises against the faith of the Gospel, which have since been committed to the flames, by the prudence of orthodox emperors. The large treatise of Porphyry against the Christians, consisted of thirty books, and was composed in Sicily about the year 270. It was against the writings of this great man especially, who had acquired the honourable addition to his name, of THE VIRTUOUS, that the exterminatory decree of Theodosius was more immediately directed. There is little doubt, that had the discoveries his writings would have made, been permitted to come to general knowledge, all the pretended external evidence of Christianity must have been

* Gibbon, ch. 16.

The destruction of this celebrated library gave safety to the evidences of the Christian religion.

See the decrees quoted in my Syntagina, p. 35.

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