HERETICS WHO DENIED CHRIST'S DIVINITY. Down the whole stream of time, to the present day, there has been a long succession of heretics, whose tenets were the diametrical reverse of these of the more early Christians. From Artemon, Theodotus, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Marcellus, Photinus, &c. we inherit the curse of the Unitarian schism, which denies the divinity, as strenuously, as the earlier Fathers had denied the humanity of Christ. The orthodox have devised a scheme that seems to have been intended to bring both parties together, or to enable them to turn their arms either against the one faction or the other, as political interests might prompt, or need require; and the union of the two natures-perfect God and perfect man-is now the orthodox divinity. It is, I suppose, upon inference from these difficulties, which never could have been started with respect to any being who had ever really existed; or which being started, could have been settled at once and for ever, by the production of any one municipal certificate, or independent historical testimony, that Mr. Volney, Mr. Carlile, and other persons who do not exactly deserve to be considered as idiots, have ventured to deny that any such person as Jesus ever existed. It is of essential consequence to be borne in view, that in order of time, Those who denied the humanity of Christ were the first class of professing Christians, and not only first in order of time, but in dignity of character, in intelligence, and in moral influence. Those who denied the divinity, were the second, and in every sense a less philosophical and less important body. The junction of the two in the mongrel scheme of modern orthodoxy, seems to have been completed in the articles of peace drawn up for the Council of Nice, a. D. 325. The deniers of the humanity of Christ, or, in a word, professing Christians, who denied that any such a man as Jesus Christ ever existed at all, but who took the name Jesus Christ to signify only an abstraction, or prosopopæia, the principle of Reason personified; and who understood the whole gospel story to be a sublime allegory, or emblematical exhibition of the sufferings and persecutions which the divine principle of reason, may be supposed to undergo, ere it could establish its heavenly kingdom over the under standings and affections of men ;-these were the first, and (it is no dishonour to Christianity to pronounce them) the best and most rational Christians. Many such fell victims to the sincerity of their faith, not, indeed, as is monstrously pretended by the persecuting genius of Paganism, but by the remorseless savageness of the infatuated idiots, who, having once been interested in the allegorical fiction, like our country louts or Unitarian stolids of the present day, would needs have it that it must all be true, and were ready to tear any one to pieces who attempted to deprive them of the agreeable delusion. The allegorical sense may, by any unsophisticated mind, be still traced; and, by changing the name Jesus throughout for that of Reason, the New Testament will acquire a character of comparative dignity and consistency, which without that clue to the interpretation of it, would be sought for in vain. HERETICS WHO DENIED CHRIST'S CRUCIFIXION. Not only among the Apostles, but by those who were called Apostles themselves, was the reality of the crucifixion steadily denied. In the gospel of the Apostle Barnabas, of which there is extant an Italian translation written in 1470, or in 1480, which Toland* himself saw, and which was sold by Cramer to Prince Eugene, it is explicitly asserted, that "Jesus Christ was not crucified, but that he was taken up into the third heavens by the ministry of four angels, Gabriel; Michael, Raphael, and Uriel; that he should not die till the very end of the world, and that it was Judas Iscariot, who was crucified in his stead." This account of the matter entirely squares with the account which we have of the bitter and unappeaseable quarrel which took place between Paul and Barnabas, in the Acts of the Apostles,+ without any satisfactory account of the ground of that quarrel; as well as with the fact that Paul seems always to have preferred imposing his gospel on the ignorant and credulous vulgar, and lays such a significant emphasis on the distinction that he preached "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," as if in marked op * Toland's Nazarenus, Letter I. Chap. 5, p. 17. + Acts xv. 39. "And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder me from the other." We never hear of their being reconciled again--but that is not extraordinary-no beast in nature is so implacable as an offended saint! position to his former patron, Barnabas, who preached Jesus Christ, but not crucified. The Basilidians, in the very beginning of Christianity, in like manner denied that Christ was crucified, and asserted that it was Simon of Cyrene, who was crucified in his place: which account of the matter stood its ground from the first to the seventh century, and was the form in which Christianity presented itself to the mind of Mahomet, who, after instructing us how the Virgin Mary conceived by smelling a rose, tells us, that "the Jews devised a stratagem against him, but God devised a stratagem against them, and God is the best deviser of stratagems." "The malice of his enemies aspersed his reputation, and conspired against his life, but their intention only was guilty, a phantom or a criminal was substituted on the cross, and the innocent Jesus was translated into the seventh heaven.*" So much for the evidence of the Crucifixion of Christ! HERETICS WHO DENIED CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. In like manner, we have a long list of sincerelyprofessing Christians down from the earliest times, who denied the resurrection of Christ. Theodoret informs us of Cerinthus, who was contemporary with the Apostle John and his followers and that he held and taught that Christ+ suffered and was crucified, but that he did not rise from the tomb: but that he will rise when there shall be a general resurrection. Philaster says of him that he taught that men should be circumcised, and observe the Sabbath, and that Christ was not yet risen from the dead, only he announces that he will rise. Had the Christ of the Gospels been really the founder of the Christian religion, certainly it would be incumbent on all Christians to be circumcised as he was, and to observe that Jewish law only, which he observed, and which he was so far from abrogating, that he declared that "heaven and earth should pass away ere one jot or one tittle of that law," should be dispensed with.-Matt. v. 18. Our modern religionists are Paulites: The Jews alone are the followers of the example and religion of JESUS. * See the Koran, C. iii. v. 53, and C. iv. v. 156, of Maracci's edition. + Χριστον πεπονθέναι και εσταυρώσθαι: μηπω διεγηγερθαι : μελλειν δε ανίστασθαι οταν η καθολου γενηται νεκρών αναστασις. Docet autem circumcidi et sabbatizare et Christum nondum resurrexisse a mortuis sed, resurrecturum annunciat.-Lardner, vol. 4, p. 368. The Cerinthians, The Valentinians, The Markosians, The Manichees, Stand in the long and never interrupted succession of Christians who denied the Resurrection of Christ. I have heard of one of the most popular and distinguished preachers among the Unitarians, who, upon being homely pressed with the question as to where he believed the body of Jesus Christ might at this moment be, pointed with his finger to the turf, and looked vastly droll, in intimation of his concurrence in that orthodox belief, so sublimely expressed in the epitaphs we stumble on in Deptford churchyard against which, I believe there never was an infidel yet, who could bring a rational objection. "Go home, dear friends, dry up your tears, And when he comes we hope to have As the whole amount of the internal evidence for the alleged fact of the Gospel, it may then be fairly stated, that in contravention of the clear understanding of the mystical nature of the whole Mythos, which those who bear the brand of heresy have given us-while a thousand expressions in the writings of the orthodox themselves confirm that understanding: not so much as any two continuous sentences can be adduced from any pen that wrote within a hundred years of the supposed death and resurrection of Christ, which are such as any writer whatever would have written, had he himself believed that such events had really occurred. CHAPTER XLV. THE WHOLE OF THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. PALEY, in his Hora Paulinæ, with that consummate ingenuity which might be expected from a clergyman who could not afford to have a conscience, has contrived to substitute a very plausible and indeed convincing evidence of the existence and character of Paul of Tarsus, for a presumptive evidence of the truth of Christianity. The instances of evidently-undesigned coincidence between the Epistles of Paul, and the history of him contained in the Acts of the Apostles, are indeed irrefragible: and make out the conclusion to the satisfaction of every fair inquirer, that neither those epistles, nor that part of the Acts of the Apostles are supposititious. The hero of the one is unquestionably the epistoler of the other; both writings are therefore genuine to the full extent of every thing that they purport to be, neither are the Epistles forged, nor is the history, as far as it relates to St. Paul, other than a faithful and a fair account of a person who really existed, and acted the part therein ascribed to him. TESTIMONY OF LUCIAN. Lucian, in his dialogue entitled Philopatris, speaks of a Galilean with a bald forehead and a long nose, who was carried, (or rather pretended that he had been carried) to the third heaven, and speaks of his hearers as a set of tatterdemalions almost naked, with fierce looks, and the gait of madmen, who moan and make contortions; swearing by the son who was begotten by the father; predicting a thousand misfortunes to the empire, and cursing the Emperor. I have far greater pleasure in quoting the unexceptionable TESTIMONY OF LONGINUS. Longinus Dionysius Cassius who had been Secretary to Zenobia Queen of Palmyra, and died A. D. 273, in his enumeration of the most distinguished characters of Greece; after naming Demosthenes, Lysias, Æschines, Aristides, and others, concludes, and "add to these Paul of Tarsus, whom I consider to be the first setter-forth of an unproved doctrine."* This testimony is, indeed, very late in time, and extends a very little way; but let it avail as much as it may avail, there can be no doubt (whether Christianity be received or rejected) that Paul was a most distinguished and conspicuous metaphysician, who lived and wrote about the time usually assigned, and that those Epistles which go under his name in the New Testament, are in good faith, (and even with less alteration than many other writings of equal antiquity have undergone) such as he either penned or dictated. Should any sincere and upright believer in Προς τούτους Παύλος ο Ταρσεύς οντινα και πρώτον φημι προισταμενον δόγματος αναποδείκτου.— Eur. Magazine. |