UC-NRL.F ^B lliD 5b3 •^*' •t X-- '^2 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. GIRX O] ^-M 08* Received . Septemhei% i885 . Accessions No. ^'^'^<^^- Shelf No. X S^ rt Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation I http://www.archive.org/details/dissonanceoffourOOevanrich THE DISSONANCE OF THE FOUR GENERALLY RECEIVED JEir^JVGEJLISTSj AND THE Evidence of their respective Authenticity, EXAMINED; WITH THAT OF SOME OTHER SCRIPTURES, DEEMED CANONICAL. EDWAKJ^' EVANSON, M M. 9»^ THE SECOND EDITION; /« reJiich many Arguments are considerably improved and strengthened) AND WITH THE ADDITION OF A TABLE OF CONTENTS, ** I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me." ** As for lies, I hate and abhor them; but thy Law do I love." Psalm cxix. SO. 163. GLOUCESTER : PRINTED BY D. WALKER, ^©R JOSEPH JOHNSON, 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD} S0k9 ALSO BY W. VIDLER, J.87, HIGH HOLEORN, LONDONj AND JOHN WASHBOURN, GLOUCESTER. 1805. \9 0^ ^^^^^^ i-: j:ir la 'jv! PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, And Sold hy J. Johnson, 72, St. PauVs Church-yard ; W. Vidler, 187, High-Holborn, London; and J. Washbourn, Gloucester, 1. A Defence of the Dissonance of the Four Evan- gelists, in reply to the Objections of Dr. Priestley and the Rev. Mr. Simpson ; in a Letter to Dr. Priestley's Young Man, with a Postscript, Price 2s, 2. Arguments against and for the Sabbatical Ob- servance of Sunday ; together with a Letter to the Rev. Dr. Priestley. Price 2s. 6d. 3. Reflections upon the State of Religion in Chris- tendom; containing a full and regular, though con- cise. Explanation of the Apocalypse, or Book of Reve- lation. Price 2s. 6d. 4. Second Thoughts on the Trinity, recommended ta the Bishop of Gloucester. Price Is. 6d. PREF^CK T9* T N bdtli the general spirit and particuto precepts at* the religion ioF Jesus Christ, there is something so amiable, so obviously conducing to the diminution 'ofiliisery, and thedifiusion of comfort and happiness amongst mankind, that, it may reasonably be presumed, no man duly acquainted with that beaiitilVd, that perfect system of morality, can beso un- feeling for the concerns of Jiis felloiv-creatureb^ and so little a real frie\id to himself, as 'ifiotto wish the truth of the Gospel Revelation ciould be so 'Satisfactorily demonstrated, -as'^to'coEi"- vince the minds of men' of all degrees and stations, and induce them, not merely- to profess to receive it, for that alone can answer no desirable purpose,- hut conscientiously to make it the rule of their lives and conduct; at all times, and on all occasions, bothaiii>pu:biic and in private. To accomplish this,-it! is,, in the first^plade^ absolutely necessary; that its celestial- origin- and cauthenti city should be fully tiviA clcariy ascertained, and'^na ^just 5V " PREFACE. cause left for cloiibt and uncertainty about it; for the least room for doubting in such a case, throws so considerable a ^veight into the scale of immediate self-interest, and our natural ap- petites and infirmities^ as renders it next to impossible that its precepts should have any valuable efficacy upon him who doubts; not- withstanding all the prudential suggestions of modern preachei's, that he who walketh religi-^ ously, walketh surely; and that the truest wis- dom is to act upon the supposition of the truth of the Christian Revelation. Men sometimes act upon uncertain^ dubious prospects, in the trifling concerns of the present life; but the views of futurity, opened to us by revelation, are too vast, too impoitant for the calculation of chances, or the principles of commercial speculation: if they are not indisputably certain, they are nothing. The Apostles and primitive Christians acted under a full conviction of the infallible cer- tainty of the doctrines which they believed and taught. And if satisfactory proofs of the truth and divine authority of the Gospel, and a complete knowledge and understanding of its intent and doctrines, be really attainable to the ordinary faculties of the human mind, and easy to be comprehended by children and the most illiterate of the people, 1Ms' tli^n like what it was represented to be when h first preached to the* unlearned and the poor; %vorthy of the impartial benevolence of the common father of the human race; and fit to be an universal rule of life, and source of re- ligious information, to every rational indivi- dual of all the nations of the earth. If, on the contrarj^ its own truth, and the authenticity of the scriptures w^hich teach it, rest solely upon the plurality of the voices of corrupt and erring men, of no authority from heaven, and supported only by the power of earthly magistrates; if its most important, because its fundamental, doctrines are to be interpreted only by the critical sagacity of the learned, respecting the meaning of a few controverted words or sentences of Greek or Hebrew, it is then involved in endless doubt and uncer- tainty ; is totally unlike the Gospel preached originally by Jesus and his Apostles; abso- lutely useless, because unintelligible, to the great bulk of mankind; and, in every Avay, unbecoming that eternal fountain of wisdom and intelligence from which it is said to be derived. ' Under this dilemma, thinking the certainty of either the truth or falsehood of ^ revelation A 3 *»1 PEEFACE, of the will of God to be of the hio-hest iui- portance, the Author of the following disqiii- sition, at once to satisfy his own mind, and to qualify himself for a faithful and beneficial perforqiance of the duties of the Christian ministry, for which he had been educated, i^iany j^ars ago determined to study the scrip- tures diligently, with no other illustration than what they reflect upon each other; and more especially those prophetic parts of them which, if duly fulfilled, must afford the strong- est and most convincing evidence of the di- vine authority of. the revelation itst>lf; and almost necessarily lead to a right understand- ing of the nature of that religious Covenant ^tp which they bear a supernatural attestation. ])- He had remarked, indeed, that amongst its professional teachers, all the ablest advocates J*or the truth and divine authority of ti>c Got:^- fpel, as if they knew of no certain, demon- strative, pvoof which could be adduced in a case of so much importance, seemed to con- ,tent themselves, and . expe^ct their readers .should- bQ satisfied, with, an; accumulation of probable arguments in its favour. And the Author has even been told, that the case ad- mits of nq other ^ift^l; of proof He is happy , IWY.^y?^* to h^.v.Q; ;l^ai:\ied, ift'QiP t^e; only in- PREFACE. \u fallible authority, the direct contrary. And he begs all professed Christians of that per- suasion to consider, whether it covdd be re- conciled to any just ideas of wisdom in an earthly Potentate, if he should send an am- bassador to a foreign state to mediate a nego- ciation of the greatest importance, without furnishing him with certain indubitable ere* dentials of the truth and authenticity of his mission. And to consider further, whether it be just or seemly to attribute to the omni- scient, omnipotent Deity, a degree of weak- ness and folly which was never yet imputed to any of his human creatures : for unless men are impious and hardy enough to pass so gross an affront upon the tremendous Ma- jesty of Heaven, the improbability that God should delegate the Mediator of a most im^ portant Covenant to be proposed to all man-^ kind, without enabling him to give them clear and indisputable proof of the divine authority qf his mission, must ever infinitely outweigh the aggregate sum of all the probabilities which can be accumulated in the opposite scale of the balance. So that to all those who know of no other, proof of the divine autho- rity of the Gospel, no rational proof of it ex- ists. Mere human testimony, whether re- a4 Corded in written liistorj^ or deduced to us by oral tmdition, is manifestly incompetent to afford satisfaction to any unprejudiced Iftind respecting communications of a sujoer- niafnrai kind. And with regard to rniiacles, nrider the Old Covenant, God himself, by his prophet Moses, cautioned' the Jews against receiving the religious doctrines of any pre- tended prophet, though he should even work miracles to convince them, because they would be liabk to be deluded and deceived by such evidence:* and under the New Cove- nant he has warned lis, by his prophet Jesusi in the persons of his Apostles Paul and John^ that the false and fabulous superstition, which would for so man 3^ centuries supplant the true religion of the Gospel, would be embraced by the people, in consequence of their deia- sibn by '^ sig7is and lying wonders,']- and all the " dcceivahlcness of unrighteousness'' llus be- ing the case with miracles considered in themselves alone, God, by his prophets both of the Old Covenant and the New, hath ixiveu us another, an infellible criterion by which to distinguish the true from a false religion, and, as 1 have shew A- in- the following pages, refer * Deut xiii. 1—5. "f-Thess ii; 9j 10? Apoc. xiii. ^3, tl, and xix. 'iO. PREPACP. IX US solely to the testimony of completed pro- phecy, which he would not have done, if any other had been necessary, or to be depended upon with equal certaint)'^ and satisfaction of mind. In religion, as in every other science found- ed in truth, if we recur to its first principles, we shall find them self-evident propositions, by means of which thie truth of all its doctrines- may be clearly and satisfactorily demonstrated. For instance, that the whole is greater than any of its parts, is not a more unquestionable truth than the proposition, that no effect can exist without some adequate producing cause. And on tliis axiom is founded, that certain, satisfactory demonstration, which tlie visible structure of the universe, and all it contains, affords us of the being; of a God. From the very same axiom — if predictions of any men exist, respecting events that were not to take place till many ages after the deaths of those men themselves; which predictions are known to have been promulged to the world several centuries before their completion, and which history and our own experience inform us have been punctually accomplished — a sure demonstrative proof arises, that the prophets could have received their information only 3fc piie:face. through a revelation, communicated to thcra by the Deity, of his will and decrees concern- ing the events of futurity ; for such prophe- cies are eflects which no other cause is com- petent to produce. -In the course of an investigation formed upon this plan, and pursued upon these grounds, the Author soon found hmiself con- vinced of the truth of Christianity, as taught by its first preachers; but was led also to re- mark many obvious inconsistencies and im- probabihties in several of the canonical scriptures of the New Covenant, which he could not account for, on a supposition that the authors were men of that veracity and in- formation of their subject, which must be ex-* pected from the Apostles and other miracu- lously gifted disciples of Jesus Christ. He therefore resolved to examine thoroughly into the nature of those proofs of the genuine au-^ thenticity of the books of the New Testament, which, till then, he had taken for granted, and supposed I to be uncontrqvertibly demonstrat- ed; and was astonished- to find, upon what sliglit and unsatisfactory grounds scriptures of the greatest consequence have been univer- sally received i>y j>rofessed Christians, as the infallible word, <>i, God. . From his studious PREFACE.. kt rit^-cnlion to the prophetic parts of those scrip- tures, wkich abne carry certain evidence of their own divine authority along with them, he could not fail als^) to observe^ that the chief and almost only arorument in favour of the present canon of scripture, Avhich does not rest upon mere human authority of the most suspicious kind, is manifestly fallacious; he means the arijument which uro:es, that both the wisdom and goodness of God required the interposition of his povidence, to preserve pure and uncorrupt the genuine authentic records of that Gospel which he had thought fit, at the expence of so many miracles and prophecies, to publish to the world. — For having, by his prophet Paul, declared that Christians, of times succeeding the apos- tolic age, would apostatize from the original faith and doctrines of the Gospel; that some with hardened hypocrisy would publish lies;^ and that professed Christians in general, would turn away their ears from the truths and be turned imlo fables ;'f the veracity of the God of truth plainly demanded, that lying fictions and fabulous scriptures should, at least, be joined with the true and genuine records of the religion of the New Covenant, or it would * 1 Tim. iv. 2. f 2 Tim. iv. 4. %H PREFACE. have been impossible for the apostate Church to fulfil those prophecies, by disregarding the latter and paying devout attention to the for- mer. That many therefore of those scrip- tures, which form the most essential part of the canon of the apostate Church, must be fabulous and false, seems as certain, as that the woi'd of God is true. Strongly impressed with this apparently inevitable consequence from those prophecies, and dissatisfied with all the external evidence which the case admits, he turned his attention more particularly to those internal marks of authenticity or spuriousness, which genuine or fictitious scriptures must always necessarily contain. And that attentive examination brought him to the conclusions which he here submits to public consideration. He does this the more cheerfully, because the subjects of discussion, like the Gospel of Christ itself, are level to common capacities, and intelligible to every person who will exert his rational feiculties about tliem : for where the detection of forgery and falsehood de- pends upon gross and palpable inconsistencies and contradictions, it is not peculiarly the J-irovince of tbH^t critical skill which requires a knowledge of the original langu^e of the PREFACE. Xm •scriptures attainable to few ; but, when those contradictions are pointed out, becomes the proper business of the common sense of every reader of even the vulgar translations. He is fully persuaded, that nothing can so effectu- ally amend and bless mankind, as a general, rational comprehension and well-grounded belief of the Gospel Covenant; and that nothing can so much promote the cause of Christian truth and piety, as the distinguish- ing them from fabulous falsehood and impious superstition. Unconnected for near thirty years with any religious sect or party what* soever, disapproving in every point of view of the office of a teacher of so plain a thing as Christianity, considered as a lucrative oc- cupation, and much too far advanced in life to have any temporal interest in view, the Author trusts his mind has been per- fectly unbiassed and impartial in its inve^* ligations. But if he should liave deceived himself, and be judged by others to be in the wrong, still his errors, if found to be such, may most easily be exposed and refuted ; and no one will be better pleased than himself with their just and candid refutation. Should this, however, be attempted, he hopes it will be effected in a more manly, rational manner, XIV PftSFACE. than was adopted by the only two gentlemen who th6ught proper to make any public at- tack upon the first edition, :by clearly recon- ciling the several objectionable passages, as the scriptures really exist, withont recdrring either to ^ny huriiau authoritjv or to a fanci- ful transposition of paragraplis, or to hypo- thetical systems unwarranted by the. Gospels themselves; for^ by such means, a man of a fertile imagination may possibly frame an ideal history of Jesus, which may comprehend the most incongruous circumstances, as geo- metricians can contrive to draw a circle of some dialneter .'or other through any three points which lie not in a right line; but, if such modes of interpreting scripture may be allowed, the mofet ingenious novel-writer will make the ablest commentator; and in removing the difficulties of the evangelical histories; will far surpass the eiforts of the most learned doctors of Christendom* TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION, '6ecti7 (;"'-.i,'. "j-'-'j - * The Sections in *he pages marked..tb4f 4* V'^'«^«<>*" if Mr^n.tf'.t^H^^ ; but the fresh paragraph in wch, denotes where they ought to hayc heen in- XVI CONTENTS. Section, ^ Pt'^t. III. Prophecies — Two of the Baptist — Of fa#ting — Of the death and resurrection of Jesus — Of the kingdom of God .... 89 IV. Destruction of Jeiiisalem — Parable of the mustard-seed and leaven — Doctrine of atonement— Whether few shall be saved — Answer .of Jesus to those who counselled him to quit Galilee »101 V. The suddenness of the Jewish destruction — The unjust Judge — General want of faith at Christ's conring-^Para- ble of the ten pounds — Lamentation over Jerusalem- Why these predictions could not be written after Jerusa- lem was destroyed — Tlie husbandmen and vineyard — Promise oi baptism with the Holy Ghost — Important observations 116 VI. Review of the evidence in favour of this :ersarit^]^ of Cbristi- anity, is; ve^ry far from l;>eing, in any d^egree, a proof of the point in qi^pstion. They w^re aU,n)jich I0.9 gi;e^t ma,st?r3,,Q^ a^^u9lj|^|lj;^ja9^ THE EVANGELISTS. /T"^^ ^^^ to see how greatly that very concess^op was in their favour. And were not the aiitK&i' of these pages convinced, as he really is, upon better and firmer grounds^ of the truth and divine authority of the revelation by Jesus Christ; and had he an inclination to preju- dice the gospel in the opinion of thinking men ; he cannot imagine a stronger argument than might be drawn against it, from the objection- able, contradictory passages contained in those books, on a supposition that they were all ac- tually written by its first and most authorita- tive teachers : but he has no object in view, in this publication, besideshe investigation of truth, and the promotion of moral virtue and human happiness, by endeavouringto demon- strate the sure and certain grounds upon which the genuine religion of Christ is founded; v/hich, he is persuaded, can only be effected by clearing the pure and simple seed of the divine word, not from any chaff, from any native in- cumbrances of its own, for it has none, but from the gross, fictitious varnish and filthy rubbish with which idolatrous superstition hath so long clogged and overwhelmed it, that not only its natural beneficial powets of vegetation remain suspended ; but it is even become exceedingly difficult for mankind t^ B 2 ^ THE DISSONANCB OF discern what it is. For this purpose, after the mature dehberatioii of a greater number of years than the Roman Po^t thought fit to prescribe for pubhcations of a less import- ant kind, the author presumes to trace the abuses and corruptions of Christianity to their source; and to distinguish the truth of re- vealed religion from the fables of credulous superstition, in those very scriptures which have be^n hitherto regarded as being all of equal authority and credibility, and as con- taining, in common, the fundamental truths and essential doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When we consult that succession of eccle- siastical winters, to which we are referred, from the establishment of the Church by Con- stantine, we find they received the four Gos- pels, which they have transmitted tons, upon the authority of those professed Christians of the second and third centuries, whom they have thought fit to denominate orthodox; and w ho, rejecting all those numerous Evan- gelical histories which Luke informs us were written iu his time, admitted and preserved tliese four alone, and attributed them to the authors under whose names they no\f appear. THE EVANGELISTS. 21 This, it is apprehended, is a true, impar- tial state of the historical evidence, that Matthew and John the apostles, and Mark and Luke disciples of the apostohc age, were the writers of the several histories which bear their name. But this evidence, satisfactory as it hath been thought to be, is really at- tended with such suspicious circumstances as make it liable to much reasonable distrust ; for either the orthodox religion established by the Emperor Constantine, is a blasphemous, idolatrous superstition, an apostasy from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which it has sup- planted, and, of course, the Fathers of that Church of the preceding centuries, were by no means fit judges of the genuine Evangeli- cal writings; or else the Gospel itself cannot be admitted to be true. For thus stands the case. II. A DIVINE Revelation, being a super- natural interposition of the Deity in human affairs, cannot, by any prudent person, be acknowledged as such upon common and merely natural evidence of any sort whatever. To gain it admission and belief at first, it must ever be attested by a display of miracu-. B 3 32 THE DISSONANCE OF lous supernatural power, as in the case of Moses and the prophets under the Jewish Law, and of Jesus and his apostles under the Gospel ; and to all future ages, prophecy, the completed prediction of events out of the power of human sagacity to foresee, is the only supernatural testimony that can be al^ leged in proof of the authenticity of any Re-» velation. To those, for example, of the pre- sent age, who have any doubt about the cer-^ tainty of the Christian Revelation, s^nd conse- quently of the truth and authenticity of those histories in which it is recorded, it cannot be of the least use to allege the mimculous acts there, and there only, related to have been performed by the first preachers of that Re- velation ; because those acts making a very considerable part of the narration, tiie autho- rity and credibility of the histories must be firmly established, before the miracles con- tained in them can reasonably' be admitted as r^al facts. But with prophecy the case is widely different. The testimony it adduces^: deperjds not ia the least upori the veracity or credibility of the writer, but every man ca-^ pable of iinderstanding the meaning of the predictiop, and of comparing it with the com Ti^E EVANGELISTS. H responding events whereby it hath been 6f is conipleated, is a competent judge of the de- gree of proof it affords. Prophecy', therefore, is by far the most sa- tisfactory, d.nd the only lasting, supernatu- ral evidence of the truth of any Revelation. To this the Jewish, to this ihfe Cliristian Reve- lation both appeal, as the great criterion oi iheiY divine origin and authority. In the old Testanient, God, by his prophet Isaiah,* de- clares this to be the proper distinguishing mark between false fdigions and the true, ^'g^Produce your cause, suith the Lord ; bring " forth your stroiig reasons, saith the King of " Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and " shew us what shall happen ; let them shew " the former things what they be, that Wi " may consider tKem, and know the latter end " of them; or declare us things for to come, " shew the things thai art io come hereafter, " that W6 may know thai ye are gods,'* And agaiuj-f- " Tlnls saith the Lord, — I am the " first and I am the last, and besides me there " is no God. And who, as I, shall call and *^ shall declare it, and set it in order for me, " since I appointed the ancient People? And " the things that art doming tnd shall come, Ut B 4 24 THE DISSONANCE OF " them shew unto them" with many other pas- sages of the hke import. In Deuteronomj ,^ prophecy is particularly referred to as the only satisfactory proof of the divine mission of the mediator of the new covenant, who is there expressly promised to the Jewish nation. " If " thou say in thine heart, how shall we know *^ the word which the Lord hath not spoken ? ^' when a prophet speaketh in the name of " the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come " to pass, that is the thing which the Lord " hath not spoken, but the prophet hath " spoken it presumptuously: tiiou shalt not " be afraid of him." And in the New Testa- ment, in conformity to this criterion given us by Moses, we are assured vipon the highest authority ,-|- that " the testimony of Jesus is *' the spirit of prophecy." We are necessarily reduced to this alternative, either to adiuit that, therefore, those predictions contained in the New^ Testament, which relate to the pie- sent time and to times ahead}'' past, have been fulfilled, or that the Gospel itself is an imposture and of po authority at all. . .Now the obvious purport of almost ^11 the prophecies of the Gospel, as they are dis^ parsed indiflferent scriptures of the N^w Tes-^ *^. xvjii. ^1 aad ^2, f Apoc. xix. 10. THE EVANGELISTS/ 25 tament, is to predict tke circumstances of a most unhappy ebrruption of the genuine reli- gion of Jesus, which began to operate even in the days of the apostles themselves, and was to end in an entire apostasy from the truths of the Gospel, and the establishment of a f^lse, fabulous, irrational, idolatrous, blasphemous superstition, first by the civil power of the Roman Empire, under some signal change in its circumstances, and after- wards by the civil power of all those separate western kingdoms, into which that Empire, at its dissolution, was to be divided* And the same prophecies assure us, that the true reli- gion of Christ would be no where generally received, till after the same civil powers which estabhshed it, shall have abolished and de- sti'oyed the Anticliristian Church thus pre- dicted. : Unless therefore the testimony of these prophecisss fail us entirely, and the- Gos- pel itself be ftilse, the orthodox Church estab- lished by Constantine, which is now and has been ever since his time, in some modification of it orother, the only religion established by the civil- :pOweTSy of Europe, is the very object of these prophecies, the completion of the pre- dicted apostasy :/or no other is to be found.* * if^there'be, let 'file zrealous advocatei'of tht doctrines of that Church, andhe^ canonical'"sCTiptnreis> point'lt out to us j or if that be •2« THE DISSONANCE OF III. For this reason, to an impartial inves- tigator of the truth of Christianity, the mere testimony of any writer whom the long estab- lished European Church hath denominated orthodox^ is so far from affording satisfactory proof of the authenticity of the several books of the New Testament, that, unless it be con- firmed by evidence of another kind, it eveii affords, not merely strong grounds of suspi- cion, but absolute proof, that they are not, either in the whole, or, at least, in some parts, the works of the apostles or primitive disciples of Jesus Christ: because part of the prophetic description of the antichristian Church is, that its members should* turn away their ears from the truths and listen to fahlesj and believe falsehoods; circumstances of the prediction which, taken together, cannot have been fulfilled, unless fables and falsehoods are, at least, intermixed w^th disregarded truth, in those writings to which the Church of Constantine hath, in all ages, appealed as containing the grounds and foundation of every doctrine she hath taught. What ren- ders this still more probable is, that before the invention of printing it \vas very easy for iicA'm't'heir power, let tlieMhahcstly and caiidi^ly yield to the force f f arguments founded upon the infallible word of the God of truth. * 2 Timt iv. 4; and 1 Tim. iv. i? ^C THE EVANGELISTS. 2r artful or superstitious copyists, not only to in- terpolate authentic writings with such altera- tions and additions as accorded with their own creduUty or cunning, but even to pro- duce entiiH3 pieces of their own or otliers' for- gery under the name of any writer they pleased. And this practice was actually so common amongst several who called them* selves Christians, in the second and succeed- ing centuries, that if what we call the scrip- tures of the New Testament were not so tam^ pered with, they are almost the only writings upon the same subject of those early times, which have escaped free. Archbishop Wake took the pains to collect all the writings extant, except those that hav6 been received into the canon of the church, which are attributed to any christian writer^ within the first half of the second century j and every competent, impartial judge must agree with the timly learned and candid Pro^ fessor Mosheim, that, of the whole collec- tion, there is no satisfactory proof that any one piece worth notice, is really the work of the writer whose name it bears, except the lirst Epistle of Clemens the Roman : and even that hath been evidently corrupted by f8 THE DISSONANCE OF an interpolation of the absurd Pagan fable of the Phoenix. Irenaeus informs us* that the different sectarists of those early ages, had pubhshed an innumerable multitude of apo- cryphal and spurious scriptures to astonish the weak and ignorant. And TertuHian-f* mentions that an Asiatic priest had been de- tected in ascribing to Paul a work entirely his own. And that the writings of Luk^, on many accounts by far the most respectable historian in the canonical collection, did not escape untouched by the hands of the inter- polators, even after the second century, we have the clearest conviction; forOrigen tells us that s(^veral believers in his time were of- fended with that part of Luke's Gospel, wherein our Lord promises the penitent thief upon the cross that he should that day be with him in Paradise^ as being absolutely in- consistent with the history of our Lord's own circumstances and situation from his death to his resurrection ; and declared, that passage was not in the older copies, but a late addition of some of the interpolators.:]; And though Origen himself does not agree with them, 3^et •* Lib. I. c. xvli. f De Bap. sec. xvii. „J fahovcyoi^ See his Comm. on John. THE EVANGELISTS. 39 they were assuredly in the right ; for neither Justin, nor Ireneeus, nor Tertullian, take the least notice of so very remarkable a circum- stance, though they have quoted almost every other passage of Luke relating to the cruci- fixion ; and though Tertulhan in particular has written a treatise upon the soul, in which he expressly considers the different opinions con- cerning the intermediate state of the souls of good and bad men between their death and resurrection, repeatedly quotes the pa- rable of the rich man and Lazarus, from which, as being only a parable constructed upon the popular notions of the Jews, no sa- tisfactory argument can be deduced ; whereas that single passage of Luke's history, had it existed in his time, must have settled the point beyond all dispute: and consequently it could not have been omitted by him when writing on such a subject. It is clear there- fore that as the doctrine of an intermediate state of Purgatory and Paradise gained ground in the orthodox church after the se- cond century, that particular passage was in- terpolated to give the sanction of holy scrip- ture to the newly received doctrine ; as Sir Isaac Newton has proved to the conviction 80 THE DISSONANCE OF of every unprejudiGed* mind^ the famous se-^ venth verse of John's first Epistle was inserted some ages later, to comitenance another long controverted doctrine of the same Church, the Trinity in Unity. IV. The whole weight of the historical evidence in favour of the authenticity of the four Gospels, amounts to no more than thisy that those books, in the main of their con- tents, %vere extant in the latter end of the se- cond century, and were received by all the Christian writers, w^iose works have been suffered to come down to us, as the writings of the several apostles and apostohc men "whose names they bear. But besides the suspicious circumstance already mentioned, arising from the prophecies of the Gospel, this evidence is defective in such essential points as render it wholly unsatisfactory and insufficient to prove any matter of conse- quence, even in the ordinary courts of jus- tice: for neither the competency nor veracity of the witnesses can be depended on. * Even the prejudiced and uncandid must surely, now, be si- lenced, at least, by the learned and ingenious letters of Mr. Porson to Archdeacon Travis. THE EVANGELISTS. St To convince me, for instance, that histo- ries recording such very extraordinary, use- less, ill-supported, improbable facts as are contained in the Gospels of Matthew and John, are really the works of those apostles, and not either some of the many spurious productions with which, we learn from Ire- neeus, that early age abounded, calculated to a.stonish the credulous and susperstitious, ot else writings of authors, of the same ^ge, who were themselves infected with the grossest su- perstitious credulity; of what use can it be %o adduce the testimony of the very few- writers of the same or the next succeeding age, when the very reading their wofks shews me that they themselves were tainted with that same superstitious credulity of which I sus- pect the real authors of the histories in ques- tion ? When one* of them illustrates and pleads for the toleration of the orthodox doc- trine of the generation of the Word by the hea- then Emperors, because of its resemblance to the fabulous origin of their own Deities Mercury and Minerva ; and justifies the doc- trine of tlie incarnatifiri by its siinila^rity to the births of Esculapius and tjei'cuksy ^nd tha other illustrious Godr-meu of pagaij: oiy tUpio- * Justift Martyr, £^29^-^ h 52 THE DISSONANCE OF* gy ; and accounts for this similarity betweert tlie orthodox doctrines ^nd the lables of the Poets, by asserting that the Pdets delivered them through the inspiration of Demons and evil geniuses, in order to prejudice the world against the reception of those orthodox tenets, when the time should come for their promul-* gation. When another,* describing the Mil- lennium, gravely assures me, upon the autho- rity of the apostle John himself, not only that every productive part of the vine from the stem to the bunch, and of wheat from the root to the ear, shall be multiplied by ten thousand, every bunch containing ten thou- sand grapes, and every ear ten thousand grains, but that every grain of wheat shall yield ten pounds of pure Jine flour ^ and every grape four hogsheads of wine, and that when any of the Saii}fs shall be going to gather one of these bunches, another will cry out, I am a better bunch, take me and bless God by me. When a third'f asserts, upon his own knowledge, that the corpse of one dead Christian, at the first breath of the pi^ayer made by the Priest, on occasion of its own funeral, removed its hands from its sides, into the usual posture of asuppli-- CGf;if, and, when the service was ended, restored * Irenaeus Lib. v, c. xxxiii. f TertulUan, De, ^n. c. U. THE EVANGELISTS. 83 them again to their former situation; and re- lates as a fact, which he and all the ortho- dox of his time credited, that the body of another Christian already interred moved it- self to one side of the grave^ to make room for another corpse, which was going to be laid bi/ it. It is an obvious rule in the admission of evidence in any cause whatsoever, that the more important the matter to be determined by it is, the more unsullied and unexcep- tionable ou2;ht the characters of the witnesses to be. And when no court of justice, in de- termining a question of fraud to the amount of a few pounds, will admit the testimony of witnesses v/ho are themselves notoriously con- victed of the same crime of which the de- fendant is accused; how can it be expected, that any reasonable, unprejudiced person should admit similar evidence to be of weight, in a case of the greatest importance possible, not to himself only, but to the whole human race? V. But there is still a greater defect in the testimony of those early writers, than even their superstitious credulity. I mean their disregard of honour and veracity in what- S4 ^TW I?lSSONANCE OF e\^er concerned the cause of their particu- lar system. Tiiough Luke assures us, that many, even before he wrote his histories for the use of his friend Theophihis, had written upon the same subject, who of course were chiefly converts from amongst the Jews; and many more must have written afterwards, some of them, without doubt, hke Timothy, educated from their infancy in the rehgion of Jesus Christ, as taught by the Apostles themselves, whose writings, on that very account, would have been particularly valuable: so singularly in- dustrious have the Fathers and succeeding Sons of the orthodox Church been in destroy -r ing every writing upon the subject of Christie anity, which Ihey could not by some means or other apply to the support of their own blasphemous superstition, that no work of importance of any Christian writer within the three 'first centuries hath been permitted to (•ome down to us^ except those books which they have thqught fit to adopt and transmit to: us^ as the canon of apostolic scripture; and the works of a few other writers, who w^re all of them, not only converts from Pa- ganism, but men who had been educated and THE EVANGELISTS. ^9 >veU instructed iu the philosophic schools of the later Platonists and Pythagoreans. The established maxim of those schools was, that it was not lawful only, but com- mendable, to deceive and assert falsehoods, for the sake of promoting, what they thought, the cause af truth and piety : and the effects of this maxim, which was soon adopted by the orthodox and other sects of nominal Chris- tians, produced that multiplicity of false q,nd spurious writings, wherewith the latter end of the second and succeeding centuries abounded- For, as Professor Mosheim hath very justly observed,* ^^ the Christian teach-^ ^' ers, who had been instructed in the schools " of Sophists and Rhetoricians, transferred " tlie arts of their masters to the Christian " discipline, and adopted that mode of con- ' " tending with their adversaries, in which ^' truth was pot 30 much their aim as victory j ^' and they were confirmed in this practice " by the Platonists, who asserted, that a man '^ did no wrong who supported truth, when ^' hard pressed, by deceit and lies. This vi- ^' cious eagerness, not to vanquish their ad- ^^ versaries by reason and fair argument, but • ^' life ;Ov^rthrow and confound them,'' conti- * Hist. Eccl. 8jb5c. III. p. 2. c. iii. :■.. . C ^ ' . .S6 THE DISSONANCE OF nues the Professor, " produced so many " books, falsely attributed to persons of great " eminence and renown. For, since great " part of mankind are guided more by autho- " rity than by reason, or the word of God " itself, they thought it their best way to coun- " terfeit the authority of writers of the great- " est renown, to oppose to their antagonists." There is also another well-known, incon- testable proof of the deceit and falsehood of the orthodox Christians of early times, of which every person in the least conversant with the ecclesiastical history of those times, must be convinced — their pretended power of working miracles. From the history of the first age of the Gospel dispensation, as re- corded in the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that the supernatural power of working mira- icles, which could onl}^ be intended to gain the new religion- attention from the world, and to be a pi'esent testimony of its divine origin and authority, till the more lasting and more satisfactory proof of completed pro- phecy could take place, was communicated only two ways ; first, by the signal, miraculous eftusion of the holy inspiration, whereof there were but two instances, the one general, at the feast of Penteccst, which followed our THE EVANGELISTS. dT Lord's ascension; the other particular, in the house of Cornehus : and, secondly, by the lai/ing on of the hands of the Apostles, a pri- vilege confined, as appears from the story of Simon the Magician, and other circumstances, solely to the persons of the Apostles them- selves. And as there is no record of their ever delegating, or of their having the power to delegate, this privilege to any other per- sons, it is manifest, that all the supernatural effects of that divine inspiration which was vouchsafed to the Christians of the apostolic aoe, must have ceased and determined with the lives of Christians of that generation; that is, before the expiration of the first half of tijjs second century. Yet it is w^ell known, that both the Fathers of the orthodox Church of the latter half of that century, and of the third, and the members of the same Church, after it w^as established by Constantine, dur- ing several succeeding centuries, pretended to the supernatural power of working mira- cles. But so indeed it was predicted* of the antichristian apostasy, that it should estab- lish itself Z>j/ lying wonders^ and deceive the world hy falsehood and pretended miracles, * 2 Thess, ii. 9. &c. and Apoc. xiii. 14rf c 3 38 THE DISSONANCE CF Since, then, the external evidence of the au^ thenticity of the four Evangelical histories^ is so very unsatisfactory to an unprejudiced mind; a rational inquirer into the truth of the Christian revelation, will consider tho- iroughly the internal evidence of veracity and authority which the histories themselves af^ ford. For different composers of false, ficti- tious narratives, will, almost inevitably, be found frequently inconsistent with themselves^ or with each other, and contradictory to ob- vious truth and probability. Vl. Ik this investigation^ as the Gt)spei attributed to Matthew stands first in the ca* Bonical collection; as it is said to have been written by him, an eye*witness of what h^ records, by much the first in order of lime, viz. about eight years after our Saviour's ciu- cifixion; whereas Luke's appears to have been written at least twenty-height years after that event; it should seem most , regular to begin with that, and make it a sort of stan- dard, by which we might compare the other Ihree: but the very reading over the histories th€mselves in thici original, with aiiy critical •attention^ seems to render this iiiipossiblcc THE EVANGEXISTS. ;; For it is to be observed, that the Gospels ac- cording to Matthew and Mark, contain not the slightest insinuation that their authors 'were apostles of Jesus Christ, or even men of the apostohc age; whilst the writer called Luke professes himself to have been a fellow- traveller of Paul ; and is the author of two distinct histories, which, if w^e except some interpolations of the fx^^mpyoi, the ready-fin- gered scribes of those times, which appear not difficult to be distinguished by an accu- rate, attentive reader, are perfectly rational^ probable, and consistent, not only with themv selves and with each other, but also with all other histories of the same thiies. That these histories were originally written by Luke in the language in which we have received them, is also unanimously asserted by all the writers 'of Christian antiquity. But it is not so with the Gospel attributed to ]\Jatthew. The only wiiters who inform us that he vvrote any evan~ gelical history, assure us he wrote it in He- brew; and, one of the earliest, that he wrote it when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel and founding the Church at Rome ; that is, at the Greek Calends ; for there is no sufficient reason to induce us to believe, that; c 4 to THE DISSONANCE OF Peter, peculiarly the apostle to the Jews, as Paul was to the Gentiles, was ever at Rome : at least, he certainly was not there -when Paul first went to Rome, in the beginning of Nero's reign ; and yet we learn from the Acts, that then Paul founded the Christian Church at Rome, when he preached the Gospel there for two years, in his ow^n hired house. And if we inquire how the Gospel received as Matthew's, came to be in Greek, if he wrote it in Hebrew; the same waiters inform us, that it was afterwards translated into Greek: but we find, nobody knows when, w^here, or T)y whom. So far are they also from assuring us, that any one person, w^ho understood both languages, had compared the translation with the original Hebrew, and certified its fidelity and correctness, that they do not even afford us any satisfactory evidence, that such an origi- nal copy was ever seen by any person capa- ble of reading it. Surely, mankind are very easy of belief, in whatsoever is offered them under the pretended sanction of religion! otherwise they could never, under such cir- cumstances, have been satisfied, that the Greek book which bears his name was really a correct and faithful translatimi of the He^ THE EVANGELISTS. 41 brew Gospel of Matthew, and have acqui- esced in it for so many centuries, as the words of divine inspiration, even if it had been certain that Matthew actually Avrote such a Gospel. But a critical attention to the language of the Greek writing itself, compared with that of Luke's histories, seems sufficient to con- vince any impartial reader, that it cannot be a translation from any uniform original ; that it must have been written long after Luke's second history, and Mark s after that ; that both of them vvxre of later date than Jose- phus's history, most probably not earlier than the latter end of Trajan's reign, or beginning of Adrian's ; and that the writer of what we call Matthew's Gospel, is so far from being an i\postle, that his ignorance, both of the geography of Palestine, and of the customs of the Hebrew people, shew that he was not a Jew. To the same purpose might be alleged, his not understanding the prophecies of the Jewish scripture, particularly those apphed by him in the first and second chap- ters : but as one of those he has quoted is an obvious forgery, existing in no part of the Old Testament, and since it is not possible that a 42 tut i^issonAnci: of tvritei* who had the whole of the othci* pro* |>hecies before him, either in the original or the Greek translation, could misunderstand their real meaning, ^nd not be conscious that> if he had quoted an>^ one of them entirely, it would have appeared to have had no relation to the subject of his history ; the maimed^ partial quotation, which he has given from each, must have been done designedly, and with intent to deceive those who were unac- quainted with the Jewish scriptures : and therefore the author was assuredly one of those many champions of Orthodoxy with which the second and succeeding centuries abounded, who thought it allowable to sup- port the religious, system he had adopted, even by fraud and falsehood. If the reader has patience enough to sustain the shock, which these assertions wdll most probably give to his earliest formed preju- dices, and to peruse the following pages with a candid dispassionate mind, *it is hoped he will be convinced, that, new and harsh as they may seem, they are far from being rash and unfounded ; though in this place they are' anticipated, merely as reasons for giving the preference to the histories of Luke, wdiich THE EVANGBLISTiS. 43 were certainly first in order ^f time ; and for making them the standard of comparison be- tween the several Evangelical histories. We will begin therefore with the Gospel accord- ing to Luke ; and examine the iiiternal evi- dence which it affords of its oW«n, or ^of" the aUthenticit}' of the others. CHAPTER I. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE, SECTION I, JN this investigation, the first thing that pre- sents itself to our observation in this Gos- pel> is the style and language in which it is writ- ten ; which in both Luke's histories is, in ge- neral, not only pure and unexceptionable, but the diction and composition of the para- bles and speeches recorded by him, are so just and elegant, that, independently of the sub- jects on wliich he writes, as hath before been remarked by much abler critics, he well de- serves to be reckoned amongst the fine writ- ers of the Greek language. But the found- ers of the orthodox faith of the second cen- tur}^ were so ready at interpolating genuine, as well as at forging spurious writings, that we must not take it for granted, that the whole of what is received as Luke's histories, is in every part and passage just what he THE EVANGELISTS. 45 wrote. I have already mentioned one famous passage, respecting a paradise, and the rea- sons why I think it a manifest interpolation. There are also some others, in each of his histories, which are liable to much reasona- ble distrust. Such, for instance, in his Gos- pel, is the story of the demoniac possessed by a legion of demons, who petitioned and were permitted to enter into the herd of swine ; and, in the Acts of the Apostles, the passage w^hich says, that diseases and luna- cies were cured by handkerchiefs or aprons brought from Paul's body. In the first, there is every circumstance of improbability, and of inconsistency with .the rest of the history, that can well be imagined ; for Luke repeat- edly speaks of what was then called by the ignorant, superstitious vulgar, being possessed of demons^ and in more modern terms, being bezmtched^ as bodily diseases, which they un- doubtedly were, and calls, what was termed casting out the demon^ healing the patient ; the exclamations therefore recorded by him in other cases, w^ere evidently the ravings of the lunatics ; and no preternatural cause of the disease is insinuated as subsisting, and acting, after the cure was effected: but in tliis story of the demoniac of Gadara, tlu3 num is 40 THE DISSONANei^ 5)F ^akl, not, as when other demcmriaqsar^ men-* tioned, to have an umlean spirit^ :\yv\t, tj| ham mamj demons. These, demons al^o, «^ ggents, quite- distinct from the m^an, hol^^'u verse with- Jesus, andy having obtained histyje^'nus- sion-, enter into and dcs.troy an whole iierdqf swine. \ ; I :Strong objection to the vemeity ^f this fcitor}^ have, been frequently urgqdv bothifrom the great .improbability of Jewish people keeping herds of $wine, and ftom the uni- versally benevol^Bt, in$tea*^^ But there is a part of the Gospel accord- ing to Luke of much greater magnitude and importance, which, from the testimony of Luke himself, as well as from the numerous circumstances of inconsistency and improba- bihty that attend it, we need not hesitate to pronounce none of his, but the daring fiction of some of the easy c2;ortog interpolators, as Origen calls them, of the beginning of the second century, from amongst the pagan con- verts ; who, to do honour, as they deemed it, to the author of their newly-embraced reli- gion, were willing that his birth should, at least, equal that of the paga;n heroes and demi-gods, Bacchus and Hercules, in its woa- .58 THE DISSONANCE OF derful circumstances and high descent ; and theveby laid the foundation of the succeeding orthodox deification of the man Jesus, which, in degree of blasphemous absurdity, exceeds even the gross fables of pagan superstition : inasmuch a^ it makes him equal in Godhead, power, and even in eternity of existence, with his celestial Sire, tlie supreme Deity himself. .What I mean is, the whole of the two first cliapters, which follows the short introduc- tory preface to Theophilus, containing tlie narrative of the birth of John the Baptist, and the history of the birth, infancy, and twelve first years of the life of our Lord Jesus. To an impartial reader many difficulties will occur in this part of the history attributed to Luke, besides the repeated appearance of an Angel under the same appellation, by which Daniel denominates one that appeared to him in his prophetic visions, as if the word Gabriel did not signify a celestial being in human form, that is, an Angel; but as if Angels like Men were distinguished from each other by proper names: and he will find no small stumbling block at the very threshold. For Elizabeth is said to be not only of the ^t^ibe of Levi, but, of the daughters of Aaron; ifiud yet she ia spoken of as nearly related to THE EVANGELISTS, ^Jg ■\iary, who if there could botany trutfi ifi thfe story of the miraculous birth of Jesus, must necessarily have been, in an uninterrupted line^ of the tribe of Judah and family of David, to make him, in any sense, a descend- ant from thkt Prince. It is true that amonij: the Jews, heiresses alone v/ere forbidden ta marry out of their own tribe, but since the whole tribe of Levi, and more especially the family of Aarori', were separated from all the other tribes and families, and peculiarly sanc- tified and appropriated to the rites and offices of their religion; it is in Ihe highest degree improbable that they should intermarry with any other tribe. Neither is it at all probable, that the providence of the Almighty should destine the Jewish prophecies, respecting the Messiah and his precursor, to be accomplished in two persons, related by consanguinity to each other ; and whose parents were so inti- rnately connected, as might afford the incre- dulous strong grounds whereon to apprehend some family-collusion in the case, and to sus- pect the pretensions, of both the cousins, to distinguished regard, of artful imposture. Had the familiar intimacy, described by the author of these two chapters, and which is so ^ THE DISSONANCE OF nBtural ^nd usual amongst relations, really- subsisted between the mothers of John and ^Jesus, strengthened and increased as it nmst have been by the very extraordinary circum- stances of the two angelic annunciations, and the two miraculous conceptions, the two chil- dren must have passed great part of their early years together; must have been in- formed by their parents, and those about thpm, of the angehc and human testimonies, the predictions and uncommon events respect- ing each of them ; and have grown up in ha- bits of mutual regard and personal intercourse and intimacy, at least, to the time of John'^ retiring into the wilderness. Yet^ if we might rely upon the testimony of the Baptist him- self, as recorded by the Gospel attributed to the apostle John, he was an intire stranger to Jesus when he came to be baptised by him ; and he should not have known him to be the predicted Messiah, but for an immediate re- velation from heaven. But though this palpa- ble inconsistency, between these two histories, affords one striking proof of the easy credulity of those who receive them both for authentic scripture, and even as the inspired, infallible w^ord of God, no stress is laid upon it, in the THE EVANGELISTS. J&\ case before us, for reasons which will appear hereafter. What is much more to our present purpose is, that this whole history of tlie con- sanguinity and intimate famiUarity between Mary and Elizabeth, is equally irreconcileable to the subsequent narration of Luke himself. For in the seventh chapter he informs us, that upon the fame of Jesus being celebrated throughout the Land, on account of the won- derful miracles effected by him, the disciples of John, who was at that time confined in. prison by Herod, related to him all that past concerning the new prophet Jesus: and we find that John, like a person unacquainted with Jesus, and uncertain whether he was the Messiah, the promised prophet, to whose ap- pearance his own mission and preaching were only preparatory, sent two of his disciples to ask him the question indirect terms, whether he really was the predicted Messiah, or they were to expect another person to fulfil that important character. In his answer, our Lord, instead of reminding him of the angelic testimonies of his being the tj'ue Messiah, which he must know preceded both their mi- raculous births, and, of the subsequent testis, monies of his own father Zacharias, and the 63 tllE l3tSS0NANCE OP propHet and prophetess, Simeon and \Anna, refers liira only to some well known predict tions of Isaiah respecting the Messiah, which John's messenp-ei-s saw were then sins-ularlv accomplished'in his wonderful works. Now it seems absolutely impossible that John, after being from his earliest infancy personally acquainted with Jesus, and not only in pos- session of all the information respecting him, which he must have learnt from the two fa- milies, but so miraculously impressed with af- jfection and reverence for him, as^ to exult for joy, though but an embryo in the womb, at the mere sound of his mother's voice, could> at any time, have entertained the least ddubt of Jesus being the Messiah. And since cir- cumstances and facts of such public notoriety, must have been known to the disciples of both, if their masters were faithful instructors — ^as indeed it is evident they were, if the two chapters in question were written by Luke — > it appears to be next to impossible, if not quite so, that any serious, consistent writer should be the author of the first chapter, and afterwards relate the story of John's embassy, without the smallest reference to the contra- dictory narrative of that chapter, and without THE EVANGELISTS, 6.1' a single remark upon either the unaccount- able incredulity or farcical absurdity of Jdha' displayed in such a legation. In the first chapter also, the Angel is made to inform Mary, that the child to be born o^ her should be called the Son of God, and for this reason, because it was to be produced by the Holy Ghost coming upon her, and the power of the highest over-shadowing her : yet in the subsequent part of hi^ history, Luke, as if he meant directly to contradict this heavenly annunciator, except in the acclama- tions of some lunatics, never once mentions him by any other appellation than Son of Man or Son of David, till after his resurrec- tion. Then, indeed, he speaks of him as being commonly and publicly called the Sott of God; but in the discourses of the Apos- tles, where they call him so, they give a very different reason for it from that alleged by the Angel; and refer for the cause of it, not to any circumstances of his carnal birth, but to his being raised from the dead to a new aiid spiritual life, by the immediate power of the Almighty. Indeed were the story of his miraculous birth undoubted truth, yet, since it could be certainly knowri tb be sb by no mortal Uesides Mary herself, it could not be 6t THE DISSONANCE OF of sufficient notoriety to induce men to call him bj^ that name; especially since, in the whole course of his own and his Apostles' preaching the Gospel, the circumstance of his preternatural conception is not once men- tioned, nor so much as alluded to. The falsehood, tiQwever, of this prediction of the pretended Angel, that he should be called Son of God because of his miraculous birth, appears incontestibly fvom other scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament, which teach us that the Son of God was so far from being a title which the Messiah promised to the Jews, acquired from any wonderful cir- cuDpiStances of his nativity, in the reign of Augustus Caesar, that he had been commonly spokei;^ of under that very denomination long before his birth, even from the time of his progenitor David ; for that God himself had given him that appellation in the prophecies of him recorded in the book of Psalms, where, speaking to and of this future descendant of David, in the name of his forefather, he says, ". thou art niy Son, this day have I begotten " thee ;'' apd again, " he shall be to me a Son "and 1 will he to him a Father ;'' and asjain, "I will make him, my first-born, higher than "the Kings of the Earth/'. Now that Jesus THE EVANGELISTS. t'S could not become the Jirst-born of God, in any sense respecting his human birth, is evi- dent, because in that sense Adam was beyond all controversy his Jirst-born. And that the begetting here spoken of had not the least re- ference to the carnal birth of the Messiah, but to his regeneration after death, to a new and spiritual state of existence, in which he is truly the Jirst'born of God, is expressly taught us by the Apostles in their discourses to the Jews, recorded by Luke himself, in his his- tory of their Acts. From Luke's own narrative of what passed at our Lord's examination before the Jewish council, previous to their accusation of him before Pilate, it is evident that, in the esti- mation of the Jews, occasioned, without doubt, by the above quoted prophecies, to declare a person to be the Christy or to declare him to be the Son of God^ was exactly the same thing ; for intending to render him ob- noxious to the Roman Governor, as a rebel against the authority of Caesar, the only point on which they examined him was, whe- ther he avowed himself to be the Christy that is, the person, of whom their prophecies pre- dicted, that God would anoint him to reign over them to the end of time: to which he M THf PISSONANCE OF answered, that if he told them he was so, they , would not believe him, neither, if he at- tempted to argue with them, about the mean- ing of their prophecies, would they answer him nor let him go. But, adds he, from this time forth (so it should have been translated) shall he, who, at present, assumes no title nor character h\xt th,e Sou of Ma/i^ be exalted to that super-eminent station of empire and au- thority, which, in. the 110th Psalm, is pro- phesied of by the term, sitting on the right hand of the power of God. Knowing that to be a propliecy of the Messiah, that Son of David, whoija God had promised to make his own Soii^ W[idfirst-bor?iy and with r^a^on sup- -.posing himself to be the San of Man he spake of, they all exclaimed togetheiv (ivt thou then the SoTi of Qod? art thou. ^^ Son of Man^ who is to be exalted to th^ glojions character of Son of God^ And on his acknowledging himself to be so, they cried out, what need we qny further witnpss? for we ourselves hane Jteard of his omi mouth; and immediately coDtducted hin;i tp Pilate, and accused him of perverting the, n0i4)n^ and forbidding to give tribute to Cossary by sayings that he himself was .Christ J a King, The Christy therefore, or ^anointed Kipg, and the SonofGod, Ixad pre- THE EVANGELIST$' M, cisely the same meaning. Yet both our Lord himself and his Apostles, expressly teach us/ that he could not become the Christy or Soji of Gody but by his resurrection after death to a new and spiritual life. Even in his life time, he taught the Sadducees, that it was the being raised from the dead, by the immedi-* ate vivifying power of God himself, which aloiie could make him or any man the Son of God ; when he told them that, " they which ^* shall be accounted worthy to obtain that " world and tlie resurrection from the dead, "are equal unto the Angels, and are the " Children of God^ being the Children of the " resurrection/' And to lead them to apply this instruction, that men became Sons of God by a resurrection to a future life, to the particular case of the predicted Messiah or Christ, and thereby to. a right understanding of their own prophecies respecting himself, immediately after this defence and explana- tion of the doctrine of the resurrection, he asks how the Scribes could say that any Soil of David would, as such, be the expected Christ : when David himself, in the very pro- phecies concerning him, acknowledges the Christ to be his Lord ? plainly intimating, that by dying to this mortal life, he must £ 2 # THE DISSONANCE OF cease to be David*s Son, and by a resurrec- tion to a spiritual life, be made the Son of Gody before he could become the Christy and be exalted to that high degree of celestial power, Avhich is called being seated at the right haiid of God, where he would be Lord, not only over David, but over all the gene- rations of men, whether dead or living. To the same purpose, after his resurrection, Luke assures us, he expounded the prophe- cies respecting himself, to the two disciples at Emmaus, and afterwards to the whole assembly of disciples at Jerusalem ; to con- vince them, that it was necessary he should have suffered death and burial before he could -enter into the glorious character of the Christ, Impressed with this conviction, Pe- ter, on the memorable day of Pentecost, ex- plains the same prophecies to the Jews in ge- neral ; informs them of the actual resurrec- tion from the dead of this promised Son of David, and that the miraculous gift of tongues, which they then witnessed, was the influence of that power to which God had, «ince his ascension into heaven, exalted him; and adds, " therefore let all the house of Is- " rael know assuredly that God hath made *^* that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified. THE EVANGELISTS. 69 ^' both I-ord and Christ." Paul also, some time after, preaching at Antioch, interprets the predictions of the Messiah, contained iu the book of Psalms, in the very same man- ner; and particularly refers to the resuiTec- tion, for that birth, whereby he was made the Son of God. " The promise," says' the Apos- tle, *' which was made unto the Fathers, Gro'd " hath fulfilled the same Unto us, their' chil- *' dren, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, ** as it is also written in the second Psalm, ^^ Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten " thee." And the author of the Epistle to the Romans, in the same spirit of interpreta* tion, asserts that Jesus Christ "was made of " the seed of David according to the flesh;'* that is, at his first birth, was the natural bom Son of David, and " determined, or consti* " tuted, the Son of God ^ with power, accord- " ing to the spirit of holiness, by" his second birth, " the resurrection from the dead." But the falsehood of the pretended Angel respecting the reason of our Lord's being de- nominated the Son of God, is not the only in- consistency between this Pagan fable of the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ, and the subsequent narrative of both the histories written by Luke. It contains in it a contra- 3e3 ro THE dissonh^nce of diction of much greater importance, which, if admitted to be true, would destroy the very • fundamental article of the Christian Faith, as Luke himself informs us it w^as originally preached both by our Lord and his apostles; and would utterly overthrow every pretension of Jesus to be the Messiah predicted in the scriptures of the Old Testament. For the pro- phecies concerning the Messiah, in the books of MoseSj assure us that he was to be theseed^ tlmtis, the natural born descendant of Abra- ham, through Isaac. Jacob, and Judah; to which subsequent predictions add, that he .should also he the Son or seed of David ; and tliat he was to be a prophet, rr//5ed tip from amongst the Jewish people, like unto Moses. Under these prophecies, our Saviour claimed .the title of the promised Messiah or Clnist, .in his conversations wi-th his Apostles after ^his resurrection: and to the completion of these same prophecies in their Master's pei- ^spia^ the Apostles theiT>selves constantly ap- pealed J in preaching his Govspel to their brer, thren t)ie Jews. They assert,* that he was tJi^ $ee4 of Abrahp^m, promised and sent to Wess all mankint} ;' th^t-'j- he was the seed of * Atts'tii/25and-26. Gal. ili. la. THE EVANGELISTS; fl David; the fruit of his l&im; the** predicted Jewish prophet like unto Moses. It necessa* rily follows, therefore, either that our Lord Je* SLis was such a Jewish prophet as Moses^ and the naturally descended Son of Abraham and David, or he was not the Christ, the Messiah promised in the Jewish prophecies; and all our faith in him, as such, is vain^ The futile sophistry of school divines is well known^ whereby they attempt to satisfy the preju- dices of orthodox minds, respecting these pro- phetic descriptions of the Messiah, suggesting a partial resemblance between Moses and the miraculously conceived Son of Mary, in their common characters of mediators, and deliverers, and promulgers of God's will to Men; and supposing that nothing more is meant by his being the lineal descendant of Abraham and David, than his being, though in a preternatural manner, the offspring of a daughter of Abraham and David : but the express words of the sacred scriptures thein- selves, will by no means warrant these miserg^ ble subterfuges of bigotted superstition. The words of Moses are, " God will taiae ^' thee up from amongst thy brethren^ a pro- ** ph€t like unto me ;" that is, will exalt a * Acts Hi. 2^.— .viL 3f . E 4 n THE DISSONANCE OF common Jewish man like myself to the dis- ^^ tinguished character of such a prophet as I am. Now a God, or an Angel incarnate, though commissioned to every office that Mo- ses was, is so far from being one of the Jewish people raised up to the prophetic character, that it is a being, infinitely, ortranscendently superior to any man, degraded into the station of an human prophet : and even a mere Man, created without the intervention of an human Father, by the miraculous influence of God himself on the mother, is not one of the Jew- ish people like Moses, nor like any thing else that was ever heard or read of, except in the absurd, fabulous legends of pagan mythology. 'Neither will the derivation of Mary's genea- logy from David and Abraham at all remove the obvious contradiction between this story of the miraculous conception of her son, and ^those scriptures which assert, that he was the seed of Abraham and the fruit of the loins of David ; for the female, from whatsoever fa- mily descended, is no more than the seed- bed formed to mature the seed of the male; and therefore^ in the genealogies of all na- "tionSj the children ate accounted the seed or Jineal' descendants of the male line only„ without any regard to the family, or even the THE EVANGELISTS. ff^ %^ nation, of the female. Thus, tor cSk^^jpplep David is justly accounted the seed of^'^l*' ham, and as true an Israelite as any other descendant from Jacob, though he and his father Jesse wei^e the offspring of Obed, the son of a Moabitish woman. Were it tru^e, therefore, that the Almighty, in the single in- stance of Mary's conception, had miracu- lously created seed, like^ that of the human species, to become an euibryo in her vvomb, to be matured and brought forth like other children, after the usual period of gestation; yet such a child would no more be the seed of Abraham, nor the fruit of Davids loins, than Adam himself. He would be the seed of no man ; but, like the first created of our species, the immediate production of the plastic power of God. For this reason, either this very extraordinary history of Mary's mi- raculous conception of her son Jesus, must be false and fabulous, or else Jesus is not the Messiah promised to the Jews. Ever since these two chapters annexed to Luke's history, and the Gospel according to IMatthew, have been acknowledged by the Fathers of the orthodox Church to be the ge- nuine writings of Matthew and Luke, that is, ever s^ince^ the latter half of the second cen- 74 THE DISSONANCE OF cury .of the Christian aera, the miraculous con- ception of Jesus by a virgin has been taught, referred to, and commented upon, by every apologist for the orthodox religion, and every expositor of those four Gospels, which the Church of Constantine, some ages later, for- jnally decreed in council to be the only true, apostolic histories of the Gospel ; has been a fundamental article of the orthodox faith, andj as such, expressly recited in every creed or formulary of belief which has ever been in use. It is evident, indeed, that this must ne- cessarily have been the case. And, for the same reasons, if this story of the preterna- tural origin of our Lord Jesus, had been Jvuown and credited by the apostles and first preachers of Christianity, they also must have mentioned it in their discourses and letters of instruction to their converts, and instead of dwelling upon prophecies concerning the de- scent of the Messiah, absolutely incompatible with so extraordinary a circumstance, without once alluding to it, they must have enume- rated it amongst the necessary articles of a Christianas belief. Yet in no one apostolic Epistle, in no one discourse recorded in the Acts of tlie Apostles, is the miraculous con- ception, or in any one circumstance of. the THE EVANGELISTS. .7^ history of Jesus, previous to John s Baptism, hinted at even in the most distant inauner: on the contrary, that Baptism is repeatedly* referred ta and mentioned as the proper commencement of evangelical instruction; and when the eleven Apostles proceeded to elect a twelfth, to supply the place of Judas, the only quaUfication made essentially requi- site in the candidates was, their having been eye-v/itnesses of our Lord's ministry, from the Baptism of John to his Ascension. Now, to lay no stress upon the dissimilarity of style observable between these two first chapters and the rest of Luke's histories, and the af- fected, but sometimes unsuccessful imitation-|- of his common phraseology, nor upon the inconsistency of the stories they contain, of the prophet Simeon and the prophetess An- na, with the well known historic truth, that there never was a prophet amongst the Jews, fi^om the time of their return from their cap- tivity to the preaching of John the Baptist, it appears impossible that any writer, though of * Acts i. i^.—x. 37.— xili. 23, 24. f For example, this interpolated fable begins with the same word fy£vsTO, with wkich Luke begins most of his paragraphs j but in Luke it always means, it caine to pass, or he was made or becaipe, and never, there was, which is its only jneaning here, and for which -Luke always u'!st?s'»iv»- 76 THE DISSONANCE OF a degree of respectability much inferior to v/liat Lulie is, on many accounts, justly en- titled to, should so grossly, so absurdly con- tradict himself in the same history, without so much as attempting to reconcile, or even noticing, such palpable inconsistencies; and, had we no other grounds to proceed upon, we need not hesitate to pronounce, that the writer of the twenty-six last chapters, and of the Acts of the Apostles, could not be the author of the wonderful two first chapters of the Gospel according to Luke. Happily, however, for the cause of tnith and rational religion, we have Luke's own testimony to convince us, that this is the case; and do not depend upon any man's inferences or opinion. He has addressed both his his- tories to the same Theophilus ; aiid in the ad- dress, which is introductory to his second book, he gives an accurate description of the contents of the first. " The former treatise,'* says he, " I have made of all that Jesus began " todo and to teach, until the day in which *' he was taken up.'' That is, mj^ former book is a history of the acts and doctrine of Jesus, from their first commencement to his ascen- sion. Luke himself, therefore, assures us, (and a writer's word may surely be taken for THE EVAI^GELISTS. ^f the contents of his own work) that his first history went no higher than the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, and enHed with his ascension into heaven. Now, if we turn to the third chapter of what is called the Gos- pel according to Luke, we find the proper, regular commencement of an accurate his- tory, specifying, with precision, in what year of the reigning Emperor, and under what sub- ordinate Mao;istrates of the several divisions of Palestine, the Baptism of John, which im- mediately preceded the public ministry of Jesus, took place ; and ending in the twenty- fourth chapter, as Luke himself describes it, with a brief account of his ascension. And this history, so accurately described by the author of it, comprises only a period of two years ; whilst the two first chapters, of which Luke takes not the least notice, comprehend a history of near fourteen years, beginning, according to the generally received opinion, full thirty years before John's Baptism and the commencement of our Lord's ministry; which Luke himself mentions to Theophilus, tor whose information both his books were %vritten, as the beginning of his first treatise. Nay, even in his introduction to his Evange- lical history itself, he in reality asserts the 7q 'Tim DISSONANCE OF very same thing, that it commenced with the account of the Baptism of John : for he tells llieophilus, that to the end he might know the certainty of the doctrine in v/hich he had been instructed, having dihgently investigated every circumsttoce from the veri/. Jirsi, ahcv the example of many others, he had written for him a, regular narration of those things, of which they had received a full assurance, hav^ ing been taught them by those, who from the hegmning were eye-witnesses, and were made ministers of the Christian doctrine, that is, by the Apostles. ; Now it is evident, that the b^inning 3Xid the v^rij Jirst^ here alluded to, must be the public preaching and baptism of :John> not.QJiJy because that is tte a^'a of the Christian instruction determined by the Apostles themselves, as hath been before re- marked, from their election of Matthias and their own preachirng recorded in the Acts ; but also because the full assurance of the disci- ples here mentioned, depended upon the circumstance of their teachers having!: been eye-witnesses of the facts they taught; and since, before the mission of the Baptist, the Apostles were all strangers both to John and Jesus, they could not have been eye-witnesses of any fact antecedent to it> nor, of course, THE EVANGELISTS. 49 to any thing related in those two first chapV ters. As to the fundamental article of the jfaith of the church of Constantine, the mira- culous conception of Jesus, it is not capable of being assured by the testimony of any eye* witness whatsoever. There is also another unaccountable in- consistency between the story of the miracu- lous conception, and the subsequent history of Luke, as it now stands ; I mean, the genea* logy of Jesus to prove his lineal descent from David and Abraham : for it is the genealogy of Joseph, which indeed, if Jesus be allowed to be his natural born son, and the genealogy to be a correct one, would answer the purpose of proving him to be, in that respect, the ob- ject of the prophecies concerning the family of the Messiah contained in the Pentateuch, and the book of Psalms; but if his miraculous birth related in the first chapter be admitted, he was no more the son of Joseph than of Pontius Pilate; and to answer any, even the sophistical purpose of a polemic divine on the occasion, the writer should have given us the genealogy of Mary, and not of Joseph. Such a genealogy, however, derived from the female line, could not have been allowed by any Jew^ nor indeed by any unprejudiced pei'soii; ^ THE DISSONANCE OF for in eva^ry country, anc3 more especially where a plurality of wives is customary, as in Judea, men being at liberty to marry women, not only of any family, but of any nation, were the caprice of deriving a genealogy from the female instead of the male to be indulged, the same man's children might be proved to be of different families, and perhaps C>f different nations, and the confusion of pedigrees would be inexplicable. By taking the mother's side at Obed, David's grandfa- ther, David, and consequently his descendant, the Messiah, might be proved to be a Moa- bite, the offspring of the incestuous bed of Lot, instead of being proved an Israelite, the lineal, legitimate sou of Abraham: for which reason, even the genealogy attributed to Mat- thew is the genealogy of Joseph, not of Mary* However, this additional contradictory cir- cumstance is not much to be insisted on, because it must be frankly confessed, that there is room for doubts likewise about the authenticity of this genealogy; for from the second letter of Paul to Timothy, compared with Luke's own history of the Apostles, it appears that Luke was the constant, faithfully attached disciple, friend, and companion, of Paul; and therefore it is most probable he THE EVANGELISTS. 81 had approved and adopted the same precepts and instructions, Avhich Paul urged upon his other disciples ; and, in his first letter to Ti- mothy, we find Paul earnestly dissuading him from givi?ig heed to endless genealogies^ as fur- nishhig matter of dispute and vain jangling^ rather than Godly ^ edifijiijg, and Christian cha-- rity. There is, therefore, very strong reason to believe that the genealogy was not con- tained in the original history as written by Luke. In the list of the twelve apostles, also given ch. vi. 13, compared with that which the author has given us in his second history, i. 13, there is a perturbation of the order of their enumeration, evidently occasioned by a similar interpolation from the Gospel accord- ing to Matthew, with what we have seen was practised respecting the Lord's Prayer, in order to make Luke agree with the pre- tended Matthew, in asserting the Apostle Andrew to be Simon Peter's brother. Al- though from the whole tenor of Luke's history of Peter, in both his books, it plamly ap- pears, that he had no brother; and that between him and Andrew, there was no do- mestic connexion of any kind. But of this, more when we come to the Gospel of Mat- thew. There are also two or three other 9t THE DISSONANCE, &c. passages of little moment, not mentioned on this occasion, of which, from some suspicious circiimstances attending them, or from their abrupt incoherence with both the preceding ^nd following sentences, one is tempted to exclaim, assidtur y annus ! This savours much ■of a patch tacked on by some interpolatmg copyist of the second century ! CHAPTER IL THE GOSFEL ACCORDING TO LUKE, CONTINUED. SECTION I. THE before mentioned passages except- ed, the internal evidence of both these histories, the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, agrees with the txternal testimony of all the earliest writers, that they were written by Luke, who was not himself indeed an Apostle, but one of the first converts amongst the Jews, a disciple, and personal attendant, of the Apostles : for though the author does not call himself Luke, but Silas, yet he professes to have been the companion and fellow traveller of Paul, which from Paul's Epistles we learn that he really was. These histories also, which contain a record of the principal transactions amongst the first Christians, during a period of above thirty years, are perfectly consistent with themselves and each other, and with the n 2 84 THE DISSONANCE OF Jewish and Roman .histories of tlie same period : and the talents, the temper, and thorough information of his subject, displayed by the writer, are such as would vindicate his credibihty, and claim our respect, in any ordinary historian. But in the historian of a supernatural event, such as the promulgation of a divine revelation of the will of God to Man, still more is requisite. The duly authorized pro- mulger must necessarily be enabled to pro- duce immediate acts of miraculous powerj in attestation of the truth of his divine mission, and to confirm it by the more sober, rational, .and satisfactory testimony of prophecy. The history of such a person, therefore, must con- tain a relation of thc^semirac]es,and of tlie seve- ral events predicted by the e:^.traprdinary mes- senger, before they carxie to pass : and, be- fore we give implicit credit to. the veracity of the relater, reason suggests, that we should examine whether the recorded miracles be such^as are properiy adapted to the circum- stances of the case, and worthy of the inter- position of that almighty being, by whose power only they could have been effected; an Deo dignus mndice 7iodus ? For no leason- ing mind can think it grobab^e,^^that the THE EVANGELISTS* 85 dhine fountain of all wisdom, as w^ll as of all power, should enable any {)erson to work miracles for trivial, unimportant pux^poses ; much less such as are inconsistent with equity and goodness, or any other of his. eternal, im- • mutable attributes. And with regard to the predictions he records, we should consider Avhether the events are such as human sagacity could not foresee ; whether they are predicted to take- place at such different intervals as to afford the indispensably requisite testimony of completed prophecy to the hearers of that time, and to all succeeding generations : and above all, whether such of them, the period of wdiose accomphshment is already past, have really been completed. It will be ne- cessarv, therefore, to examine both the mira- cles and predictions attributed to Jesus Christ, in the Gospel according to Luke, in these points of view. II. \^ considering the recorded miracles, and the degree of probability which arises from their propriety, the leading criterion must be the genius and spirit of the revelation, the divine authority of which they are intended to attest. Thus in the religion revealed by Moses, in an age of the world when the un* r 3 85 THE DISSONANCE OF improved, unenlightened state of human rea- son, taken in the aggregate, may be justly deemed the intellectual childhood of man- kind, the chief object intended by it being, to preserve a just and rational idea of the Deity amongst men, till the maturity of their reasoning faculties, and an increase of light and knowledge should render them capable of a purer and more spiritual religion ; and, for that purpose, to teach the Jews that, both as individuals, and as a nation, they and all mankind depended solely upon the power and providence of the one true God, for every in- stance of temporal prosperity or adversity, for their preservation or destruction. Nothing eould accord better with the genius and in- tent of that revelation than the miracles wrought in Egypt and at the Red Sea, to ef- fect their deliverance from Pharaoh's tyrann}^ and afterwards amongst themselves, during their peregrination in the Wilderness; be- cause they could not fail of making a lasting, national impression upon their minds, and convincing them of the tremendous power of God to accomplish all those temporal blessings or curses which were the sanction of that Law ot Fear. But to gain attention to- the hea^ irenly promulgation of the New Covenant, THE EVANGELISTS. 8f the Evangelicnl Law of Love, which teaches mankind to look up to the supreme Deity with grateful affection, as to their common Father, Friend, and Benefactor, and to regard the whole human race as brethren entitled to every instance of kindness, beneficence, and love from each other, miracles of a A^ery dif* ferent nature seem obviously requisite to make them correspond with the intent and spirit of the revelation itself. Accordingly, in the history which Luke hath given us of instances of miraculous power exerted in proof of the divine authority of their mission, both by Jesus Christ himself and his Apostles^ if we except the interpolated miracle of the destruction of the herd of swine, and the* miraculous suppression of the dangerous storm Avhich had alarmed the fears of his disciples in crossing the Lake, (a miracle sin- gularly calculated to confirm their entire con- fidence in the protection of that almighty power by which their Master was commis- sioned to preach the Gospel) they are all * I have omitted the wonderful draught of fishes, not knowing whether it be universally admitted to be a miracle. Vet, consider- ing the situation and circumstances of the Apostles, no miracu- lous act could have been more proper, both to attach them to their Master, and to prove their own disinterestedness concerning worldly v»'^alth. p 4> 83 THE DISSONANCE OF works of mercy, benevolence, and tender compassion : such as feeding the hungry, healing every kind of sickness and disease, giving sight to the bhnd, and soundness to the lame, and restoring suspended animation, to comfort a disconsolate widow or the deeply af- flicted parents of an only child: works which breathe the same spirit of benevolence and universal love as the religion whose divine au- thority they were intended to attest, and which hold forth to all the disciples of that religion a most striking lesson of duty, to exert, on all occasions, whatever faculties they are endowed with, for the same amiable purposes of charity and beneficence. And that this suitableness of the nature of the miracles to the spirit of our religion itself was not ac- cidental, but intentional, our Lord himself teaches us, in the rebuke he gave to his dis- ciples, when, provoked by the inhospitable affront put upon their Master by some Sama- ritans, they proposed his calling down mira- culous destruction upon them, like one of the Jewish prophets, " Ye know not,'' says he, " what manner of spirit ye are of. For the ** son of man is not come to destroy men's " lives, but to save them." And also by de- legating to his apostles and the ^seventy dis- THE EVANGELISTS. 80 ciples, power to, be exerted only in tlie 5ame benevolent acts. II L In reviewing tlie predictions contained in the evangelical liistory of Luke, the two first which present thennselves, are in the con- cise account given us, in the third, or, us I reckon it, in the first chapter, of the preaci:- ing of John the Baptist. When John asks the people, who had warned them to flee from ihe wrath about to come upon them ? and teaches them the only way to avoid it ; and adds, even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees; he plainly intimates that the divine vengeance, denounced upon that nation by their own prophets^ was fast approaching, and would actually come upon that depraved ge- neration. A prophetic admonition of an event which it was not in the power of any man to foresee by his own sagacity; but wdiich we know was fully and fatally accom- plished, w^ithin little more than forty years • afterwards, by the intire destruction of Jeru- salem, and extirpation of the Jews from their .own country. The second is a prediction of the Baptist respecting the true Messiah, whom he declares himself not to be, but says to THE DISSONANCE OF that he is coming ; and instead of hspUmi^ his disciples with water, like himself; should baptize them with the hohj inspiration and with Jive. This very prediction is repeated by Jesus Christ himself to his disciples, after his resurrection ;* and, by its literal completion a few days afterwards, on the memorable day of Pentecost, afforded the Apostles and first followers of our Lord a most convincing, double proof of the truth and divine authority of the mission, both of their Master and the Baptist John. In the fifth chapter, verse So^ we find our Saviour, in the answer he gives to the question of the Scribes and Pharisees, why his disciples never fasted ? which those of John and of the Pharisees did frequ en tl}^ foretelling, that he the Bridegroom^ adopting the same parabolical denomination by which he is sometimes spoken of, both in the preceding predictions of the Jewish prophets, and in the subsequent Christian prophecy of the Revelation, should Jye taken away from them; and that, during that separation, his disciples indeed should fast;\\mi is, should really be in a state of kumiliation, sufferins:, and affliction, lliat * Acts i. 5. THE EVANGELISTS. m' tliis is our Lord*s true meaning, and not that his disciples would adopt days of voluntary fasting and humiliation, as a religious obser- vance Hke the Pharisees, is evident from the parable which he subjoins immediately to this answer, by wdiich he teaches the Jews, that for him to graft his spiritual religion upon the carnal ordinances of the Mosaic ritual, would be as improper and as absurd as for a man who had purchased a new garment, instead of wearing it and laying aside his old one, to repair and patch his old garment with pieces cut out of the new ; which could only spoil the new, and make a ridiculous motley of the old: And though it was no more Wonderful, that they should prefer the rites and ceremo- nies of their Law to the simple purity of his Gospel, than that men, whose palates had been long habituated to old wdne, should not immediately relish new, though perhaps of a superior quality, which they had never tasted before; yet the old ordinances and observan- ces of their Law were as ill suited to the spirit of the religion he preached, as old, de- cayed, leathern bottles were, to contain new wine whose fermentation was not yet over. That fasting, in its strictest sense, made a part 92 THE DISSONANCE OF of the afflictions endured by his i\postles and eariiest disciples, appears from Paul's enu- meration of the sufferings he had endured for the Gospel's sake,* where he recounts his being m hunger and thirsty in fastings often; and therefore our Lord, by a very common figure of speech, putting a part for the whole, answers the question as if he had said, " Fast- " ing is a state df grief, affliction, and humilia- " tion; and whilst I, the delegate of heaven, " who announce to them the joyful tidings of *' the New Covenant, remain with them, such " U state were as improper and as unnatural " for them, as it would be for the attendants of " the bridegroom at a marriage feast: but the " time approaches, when I shall be removed " from them, and during my absence, it will ^' be their lot to be amply grieved, humbled, " and afflicted." To the same purport many other prophetic admonitions, contained in this history, in the Acts and in the Apoca- lypse, repeatedly assert the constant state of affliction and persecution, in which the faith- ful, conscientious disciples of Jesus Christ would continue, from his ascension to the period of his appearing again to mankind, in * 2 Cor. xi. 27. • THE EVANGELISTS. d3 the prophetic character of the lamb-like bridegroom, when the true christian church, Im wife,^ shall have made herself readj/. It is the more , necessary to point out to public notice the real meaning of this predic- tion, because, whilst the well-known^ too literal completion must convince u§, of the divine authority of the prophet, the very- recording this and similar prophecies, of the same import, by the Apostles and first Disci- ples of Jesus Christ, affords the most striking and satisfactory proof that can be conceived, of their own disiuterested sincerity in;€?rpbra€r ing and preaching to the world the rejigipn of the Gospd; for, the spirit of prophecy being expressly declared to he- the testimony of Jeszis, and of every authentic messenger of heaven, the truth of their masters mission, and even their own veracity, depended upon the ac- complishment of these predictions in their o^V^n persons^ anii ithose 'pfr their fellow christians. From their >yriting3 it appears, that they wetr^wellaw^re of this; and accordingly expected, and were prepared, as the certain consequence of the religious profession they embraced, and to which they zealously invited others, not only to abandon all hopes of tem- * Apoc. xix. 7. m THE DISSONANCE OF poral emolument and prosperit}', but also to undergo the contempt and hatred of the rest of the world, and all the most mju- rlous or painful inflictions of unrelenting persecution. Unless, therefore, we suppose them to have been the grossest fools and madmen, which no person, who enjoys his own senses, and has read the genuine writings of Luke and Paul, can suppose, it is abso- lutely impossible that any thing less than the most satisfactory^ conviction of the actual resurrection of their illustrious Master to an immortal life, and the firmest confidence that, their present life ended, they, like him, should be amply recompensed for all their sufferings for the Gospel's sake, could have induced them to profess, much less to propagate^ the religion of Jesus Christ. The orthodox church, indeed, established by the Emperor Constantine, hath experi- enced none of these prophetic marks of the true disciples of Christ. She very early placed herself under the protection, and prostituted herself to the will, of the Princes of the pre- sent world ; and, instead of suffering humili- ation or afflictions of any kind, by her influ- ence over them, she hath amply shared the authority of her royal paramours, and even THE EVANGELISTS. 97, wantoned in the continual enjoyment of tem- poral honours, opulence, and power. But though, for this, amongst many other reasons, she herself cannot be justly allowed the title of the true Church of Christ,* yet, from the first moment of her establishment to the present hour, she hath been the chief means of ac- complishing these prophecies upon the con- scientious disciples of Jesus and his apostles, by the confiscation of their propert}^ the im- prisonment and punishment of their bodies, the deprivation, in numberless cases, of their lives, and, in all, of their natural rights, as men and denizens of their native countries. And it must be matter of no small consola- tion to those faithful Christians, who are able to disceim the signs of the times, that the pre- dicted period of her presumptuous," cruel triumph, and of their own state of degra- dation and oppression, hastens fast to its conclusion. In the ninth chapter, verse 21, &c. Luke informs us, that our Lord checked his disci- * It is obvious that, by parity of reason, her elder Sister, the Church of Arius, is also barred of all claim to the same title j for though the contest ended at last in favour of the orthodox Church, they were long rivals in the affections of the same worldly potentates, and, during several reigns, enjoyed alternately the same imperial protection, the same honours and emoluments, and disphyed the very same spirit of intolerant persecution. 96 THE DISSONANCE OF pies, for calling him ^//e C//m^ o/'Gor/; that is, the predicted anointed King of the Jews ; and forbad them to call him so to any man ; telling them (without doubt, both to remove -from their minds all expectation of present emolument to themselves, from the idea, so prevalent amongst the Jews, that the pro- mised Messiah was to reio;n over them in all the M'orldly pomp and splendour of a tempo- ral prince ; and to prevent their furnishing the Rulers of the Jews, with the very pretence thej sought for, of accusing him to the Ro- mans, as one who proclaimed himself their King ;) that before he, whose onlj character at present was that of the Son of Man^ or an human prophet, could appear in the glorious character of the Christy or anointed sovereign of the Jews, promised by their prophets, he *' must suffer much, be rejected of the elders, " chief priests, and scribes," as it is repeated in the 44th verse of this chapter, and still more circumstantially, c. xviii. 31 — 34 — " be " delivered into the hands of men, of the *' Gentiles, and be slain, and rise again the *' third day/' Nay, he even described unto them, the particular mode of his suffering death, by adding, that if they were resolved to be his followers, they must learn self-de- THE EVANGfiLIStS. - Wf nial, and imitate him, by being daily prc;? pared to undergo the death of the cross* To these clear and explicit prophecifts of his own death and resurrection, the vision of angels, recorded in the 24th chapter, referred the women ^ who came to embalm jbis body on the third day after his death i and though, being prophecies penned by the historian after the event, they afford its no satisfactory evidence in themselves, yet to his disciples, who well recollected the Words of these predictions, though they did not, at the time, comprehend their meaning, and who then saw them so literally and won^ derfully accomplished, they must have af- forded the most convincing as well as asto- nishing proof of the divine authority of their master's mission, that can be imagined. In the conclusion of the same discourse with his disciples, in which he assures them, that after being put to death he should appear in the glorious character of the predicted Christ, or King, and be invested with heavenly power and authority, he adds, " I tell you of ^' a truth, there be some standing here which " shall not taste of death till they see the " kingdom of God/' In ord^' to understand gur Lord's meaning in this prediction, that |8 THE DISSONANCE OF the kingdom of God wovild appear even before the death of some of those disciples to whom he was then speaking, it is necessary to observe, that though a difierent sense is sometimes given to these words in other scriptures,, and. consequently by commenta- tors upon those scriptures, yet in the writings of Luke and Paul, and in* the book of the Jlevelation; the phrase. Kingdom of God,, or of Christ, is invariably used to signify only the state of the present world under the New Covenant of the Gospel, or the establishment of true Christiaoity amongst mankind. For this reason, when the Pharisees, with ideas of a very different kind,; of earthly kingdom, which they expected: from the Messiah, asked our Saviour,* wheji the kingdom of God should come?, hq answered, that the kingdom of God ^vould not be an object of external shew and observation, but the faithful, obedient sub- jection of the internal disposition and hearts of men to the will of God. Ye shall not be able to point it, out when it comes, saying, " lo, here! or, loj. there! for behold the king- *'* dom of God is within you.'' But. that, after his resurrection, he was actually invested with the heavenly glory and power, of the pre- • Luke xvii. 20. THE EVANGELISTS; 0^. dieted Son ' of Gody the Christy or Messiah^. promised to the Jews, was manifested to the eleven apostles and all his other disciples, in his miraculous ascension from off the earth; in the prophetic revelation of the future state of his Church, to his apostle Johil; in his glorious personal appearances, many times vouchsafed to his twelfth, posthumous, apos- tle Paul; and paore extensively in the display of those supernatural powers, with which he endowed the first preachers of his Gospel to the world. And with respect to the estab- lishment of the religion of the New Covenant amongst mankind, there are but two ways of its being effected, suggested to us, in the sacred scripture. One of these is the conviction and conversion of the different nations of the world, to the rational religion of the Gospel, by the preaching to them that word of God, attested to the first ages by the supernatural evidence of miraculous acts, as well as by completed predictions, and to all succeeding generations, by the continually increasing weight of evidence arising from a long series of prophecies; which predication of the truths of the Gospel, in the figurative lan- guage of the Apocalypse, is called* a sharp * Apoc. xix. 15. ' G 2 idO THE DISSONANCE eP sword proceeding out of the mouth of Christ, a weapon that we are assured will, at length, prove invincible, and entirely extirpate super- stitious error, deceit and falsehood, howsoever powerfully supported : the other, by the sig- nal, providential destruction pf those earthly powers which oppose, and endeavour to sup- press, its progress. By the first pf these means, most oi* the Apostles and first preachers of Christianity saw the kingdom of God take place, in a very considerable degree, before their death, in the conversion of great num- bers^ not of Jews only, but of Pagans, both in Asia and Europe; and by a very memorable and signal instance of the second, in the pre- dicted destruction of the temple and city of Jerusalem, the desolation of the country of Judea, and the entire dispersion of the whole nation of tfae Jews, those first malignant op- posers of the Gospel, and persecutors of the followers of Christ, (an event, which, as it "took place within forty years after the cruci- fixion of Jesus, some of his disciples must have Jived to see^) the rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic religion, were rendered absolutely impracticable for the time to come; the Old Covenant made with that people by the mediation of Moses, cancelled and abolished ;^ THE EVANGELISTS. lOi and no other left subsisting between the Deity, and any of his creatures, except the New Covenant of the kingdmi ofGod^ pro*^ posed to all mankind in the Gospel. In the eleventh chapter, verse 29, &c. aixd again in the conclusion of the same chapter, our Saviour, like the Baptist, expressly limits the predicted destruction of Jerusalem, and the calamities that were coming upon that nation, in consequence of their impenitence, and obstinate, inhuman rejection of him, their last and greatest prophet, to that gene- ration to which he was then speaking ; and in verse 29 and 30, specifies the precise num- ber of years that were to intervene between his preaching to them and that dreadful ca- tastrophe. " Thi^ evil generation,'' says he, " seeketh a sign ; and there shall be no sign " given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. " For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, " so shall the Son of Man be to this genera- " tion/' The writer usually called Matthew, without the least reason or propriety, makes this similitude, between Jonas and our Sa- viour, to consist in the time that the former was in the whale's belly, and the latter in the grave ; but if the fabulous interpolation of the two first chapters of the Book of Jo* G 3 105 THE DISSONANCE OF Ml iiah, (to which Mendelsohn,* the late learned Jew of Berlin, assures'us no reasonable Jew ever pays the least regard) could be true ; yet w^hosoever compares the geographical situa- tion of Nineveh, with respect to the Mediter- ranean sea, will be convinced that nothing transacted upon that sea could fall under the notice of the inhabitants of Nineveh, nor, consequently, be any sign to thein at all. The only sign that Jonas was to the Ninevites, was his being a prophet, commissioned by God, to preach to them repentance and righ- teousness; to upbraid them with their vicious immoralities ; and to denounce, if their wic- kedness was continued, the destruction of their city, ^^iXhmforUjdays^ that is, (according to the tmiform meaning of that expression in prophetic language) /or-^^/ //^«^^> ixom. the time of his preaching. Such a preacher of re- pentance and righteousness, onlj^ in a much superior and more distinguished character, Avas Jesus Christ, to the nation of the Jews ; he repeatedly assured them, that "except ^^ they repented, like those Galileans, whose *' blood Pilate had mingled with their sacri- " fices, and those upon whom the tower of ^ ,• See the. Letter prefixed to his Dialogue on xh& Immortality of ''iheSoul. THE EViVNGEtlSt^ ife " Siloain fell and slew them, they should all " likewise perish ;" and by ^this similitudfe between the denunciation of Jonah' and his own, he plainly declares, that the destruc- tion of Jerusalem would be ' accomplished within forty years after his death ; for tliat they would not hearken to his preaching, and repent, as the men of Nineveh did at the preaching of Jonas, and that, therefore^ the destruction of their city would not be post- poned beyond the then existing generation, like that of Nineveh, and that, in the judg- ment which was so soon coming upon them, they would stand condemned by the striking contrast between the behaviour of the people of Nineveh and, their owu. Agreeably to this prophetic denunciation of our Saviour, from his crucifixion, that is, from the seven- teenth of the emperor Tiberius, to the final destruction of the city and temple of Jerusa- lem, by Titus, in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, is a period of exactly forty years.* * Luke informs us, thnt the ministry of John the Baptist began in the fifteenth year of Tiberius; and as the Jewish year commenced only fourteen days before the Passover, at which time it was the duty, both of John himself, and the nation of the Jews, in general, to be engaged at Jerusalem in the celebration of that feast, it is next to certain, that he did not begin to preach and baptise, till after the feast of the Passover of that year; If any time at all, therefore, be allowed for the ministry of John, before Jesus began to preach the new covenant G 4 104 TW[E' DISSONANCE OF The thirteenth chapter of the Gospel ac- cording to Luke, verse 18-^21, contains two prophetic simiUtudes of the kingdom of God, that is of the state of true Christianity in the world, which are plain predictions, that the religion of the Gospel, of however small ex^ tent and influence at the beginning, will in time become sufnpieutly extensive to j^fFord refuge and consolation, to the various nations .of the earth ; and that though its influence may be slow, and for some time scarcely per- of the kingdom of God, the haiVest, previous to which our Lord's dis- ciples r4.ibbed the ears of corn for food, must have been the harvest of the sixteenth year of that emperor ^ and his public ministry, which pre- ceded that circumstance but a short time, must have begun soon after the Passover of that year, and after Herod had imprisoned John, through a jealous fear of his popularity. Consequently, the succeed- 'iftg Passover, at which, Luke tells, our Saviour was crucified, was m the «eventeenth year oF the reign of Tiberius. Now Tiberius reigned twenty-two years and almost seven months, and died March l(5th ; so "tliat'from the Crucifixion to the Pa§sover, which, followed th^ death of Y. M. D. Tiberius, was just ...,.,....•.. 6" Caligula reigned 3 10 8 Claudius .-t 13 820 Nero f. 13 8 Galba ........ ^ 7 13 Otho 3 4 Yit;ellius> about • f 8 38 9 15 So -that from our Lord's death to the first Passover after Vespasian wat^ made Emperor, was thirty-nine years j aiid consequently to the same festival, in the second year of his reign, when his son Titus l^d the fatal siege to that devoted city, was exactly forty.years. THE EVANGELISTS. l&r* ceivcd, yet it will assuredly at length, spread itself over the whole globe. These prophecies still remain to be completed, and therefore, at present afford no satisfactory evidence of the truth and divine authority of the Gospel. They naturally suggest, however, some very important reflections to the observing mind, which is desirous to distinguish truth from error, and to avoid embracing the latter for the former. It is natural for many sorts of seeds, which, at length, rise to the size of extensive trees, to lie long in the ground, before their vegetation is perceptible, and to increase very slowly for a considerable length of time ; a very small quantity of leaven also, inclosed within a great bulk of meal, must necessarily operate very slowly, and require a long time before much effect from it can he discerned, and a cold, unfavourable season would naturally restrain the vegetation in the one case, and check the fermentation in the other ; yet in process of time both might be completely per- fected : but when a seed is once grown to the dimensions of a large tree, it is contrary to the whole course of nature for it to rfe- crease ; and dough once leavened cannot be- come unleavened. We may- therefore, pro- 106 THE I>ISSONANCE OF nounce with certainty, upon the credit of these prophetic similitudes, that," notwith- standing its being called, and professing to be> Christian, the rehgion which spread so rapidly in the second and third centuries, which, in the fourth century was established, by the au- thority of the Roman emperors, under the ti- tle of the orthodox and holy catholic church, and which, for some ages, prevailed exclu- sively in every country in Europe, and in a very large part of Asia and Africa, was not the church of Christ, nor the religion of his Gospel. For, besides that it did not make its progress in the slow, gradual manner here described, in the seventh century, upon the rise of the Mahomedan superstition, it soon decreased^ ,and became diminished in its ex- tent, and continued gradually losing ground^ till at length, it was supplanted by it out of all Asia, Africa, and a considerable part of Europe, that is, particularly out of all those regions of the world, where it originated, and was first established ; and the fabulous reli- gion of the pretended Arabian prophet, at this day, occupies a much larger extent of the earth, tlian ever was occupied by the re- ligion oi tiie orthodox church, in its most flourishing condition. As the members of THE EVANGELISTS. lOT tliat church make a merit of foregoing the use of their reason, in questions concerning their religion, it is no wonder that difficulties like these, affect them not with the slightest impression, though they acknowledge that the constant over-ruling providence of God restrains or promotes every important change in the affairs of men : but a disinterested, un- prejudiced observer will easily discern suffi- cient reason for God's so conspicuously de- claring his preference of the Maliomedan to the orthodox superstition. If ^Ye compare them only in two striking features, the one respecting the Deity him3elf, the other as in- fluencing the morals of mankind, we shall find that Mahomedariism, by teaching the undivided uncom^pounded unity of almighty God, gives its professors a just and rational idea of the purely spiritual, incorporeal na- ture of the author of their existence, and the only proper object of their adoration; and, as it prohibits and prevents idolatry of every kind, it so far coincides with the first great purpose \ and design of all revealed religion, and must so far, therefore, meet with the approbation of the immutable God of truth; whilst the orthodox church, on the contrary, represents God as of a compounded nature. JOS THE DISSONANCE OF SO monstrous and irrational, that she herself declares her own definition of him to be un- intelligible, though it must be believed; and by addressing distinct and separate worship to each of the three different agents, that compose her triform Deity, and to one of them as incarnate in an human body like our own, she directly contradicts the voice of the Almighty, concerning himself,, and estab- lishes, as a religious duty, every species of idolatry forbidden by divine Revelation. The Koran also, by the single prohibition of the use of strong drink, whilst it effectually en- forces on its disQiples a rigid observance of the Gospel precepts of continual temperance, b}'' constantly preserving the temperament of their bodies cool and undisturbed, and their irational faculties clear and unclouded, can^' not fail of having a powerful influence, highly favourable to their bodily health, and the moral virtue of their minds;* whereas, in Christendom, the constant, copious use, and very frequent intemperate and excessive * I was, many years ago, assured by an intimate friend, an intel- ligent, worthy man, who had traded largely, both in the northern parts of Africa, and in many different countries of Europe, that I;e \vas never once deceived in cpnfiding in the honour and integrity of a Mahomedan ; Hiit that, through the perfidy and dishonesty of somes 'of thos« he dealt w ith, he had been defrauded and injured in every , nation of yrofe^itd C hristians. THE EVANGELISTS. ' 109. abuse, of fermented liquors, has eifFects fatally pernicious both to the bodily health and mo- rals of its inhabitants. It is tme, the orthodox church preaches the pure ethics of the Gospel, and the virtue of temperance amongst the rest; but she has, at the same time, ingeniously and impiously, contrived to render her own, and what is still worse, all the preaching of the Gospel, of none effect, by her doctrine of the death of Jesus, considered as a propitiatory sacrifice of infi- nite efficacy, and an universal atonement for sin. Even the protestant subdivisions of that church, in their most sacred and solemn acts of devotion, as well as in the sermons of their preachers, declare that, by his death, afulU perfect and sufficient sacrifice^ oblation mid satisfaction, hath been made to the divine jus- tice, jfor the sins of the whole world. Gracious God, have mercy upon the presumptuous folly and madness of thy erring €reaturesl — By this single doctrine, she has erected an universal asylum, as far as another life is con- cerned, not for intemperance alone, but for every other vice and crime, of which human nature is capable. The miserable, quibbling supplement to this shocking doctrine, tliat repentance and a proper faith is necessary, 110 tHE DISSONANCE OF for the particular application of the benefits of this atonementj can be of no avail; for no sinner can believe that a jW Being will inflict any punishment on account of offences foi* which he has already actually received perfecl mid sufficient satisfaction: and, besides, since the people are also taught, that a sinner may effectually recur to this saving faith and repentance, even on his death-bed, or in the condemned dungeon of Newgate, what reli- gious motive can any man have to curb and restrain his natural passions or inclinations, so long as he hath it in hi^ power to gratify them, at any rate, when he knows, that to the last moment of his life, he can hope to screen himself against the deserved consequence of his wickedness, by taking refuge at the cross of Christ ? If any reflecting person . can doubt of the dreadfully pernicious influence, which such a persuasioti as this, must have tipon the morals of the people in general,* * I say, in general, because, so congenial is moral virtue to our tmcorrupted nature, that the world hath, at all times,' produced ex- emplary, virtuous individuals, even amidst the grossest abuses of superstition of every kind. Without doubt there are, and always have been, many good and amiable characters amongst the members of the orthodox Church, in spite of the. naturally evil tendency of her doctri^ies ; as Pagan Athens^ even in the libertine and vicious age of Alcibiades arid Aristophanes, could boast a Socrates'and a Xcnophon» . '. ' . THE Evangelists. ut wheresoever it is embraced, let him, for a moment, consider what would be the certain effect, should the Legislature set up an asy- lum for murder, in every parish in the king- dom, to which, if the wilful murderer could flee before he was apprehended, he should be exempt from punishment. Society would soon experience the evil consequences of such a policy, in the centuple multiplication of in- stances, even of that crime the most shock- ing to human nature. And, to complete his conviction of the similar effects, whieli this docti'ine has, and ever hath had, upon the morals of professed Christians, he needs only to review the moral history of Christen- dom, from the beginning of the fourth, and attend to the vicious immoralities every where continually practised by persons of all stations, within the sphere of his own obser- vation, in this first decade of the nineteenth century of the Christian iEra.* * To maintain a religious establislirnent, whose main object is the preaching up this pernicious asylum to the people, according to ti;e estimate of the Lord Bishop of LandafF,* costs this country two mil- lions sterling every year. But, on a supposition that the amount of ^1 the landed eatates in our own country, which may be justly deemed ecclesiastical, are equivalent to all the Lay impropriations or tithes in Lay hands, which, I persuade myself, cannot be far from the xruth, it is easy to shew that the v^iue of our ecclesiastical revenue, * Seehijs Charge to the Clergy, 179 i. 112 THE DISSONANCE OF In the answer which our Lord gives, verse 24 — 30, to the question, whether there were few that should be saved from the woes he is above double what the learned and liberal minded Prelate takes if to be. For since, in the cases of new inclosures, the smallest pro- portion of land allotted to the Clergy, by the Legislature, in lieu of tythes, is one seventh, the value of the tithes of the Whole kingdom ipust be equal to, at least, one seventh of the land. Now, from the calculations of Sir John Sinclair, and other the most able estimator!?, it appears, that tlie anniial rental of the whole kingdorrt amounts to full si* ty millioas j but as houses, except in the city of London, are not subject to any kind of tithe, supposing the rental of all the rest of the houses to be equal to that of the land, the titheable property will then amount totkirty millions yearly, the seventh part of which is rather more than four millions and a quarter. A sum "Which, whenever the thlie arrives when our Rulers, thinking it right to prove themselves the impartially equitable, common parents of the whole national family, by favouring the tenets and opinions of no one sect or party above the rest, instead of vainly attempting to controul and regulate the minds of their subjects, in matters concetn* ing only God, and their own consciences, shall content themselves with restraining and regulating their overt actions and civil conduct, by the vigorous and equal execution of wise and wholesome laws, and leave ever}'^ man, like the various sects of dissenters of the present day, to chuse his own mode of worshipping the Deity, and remune- rating his own religious instructor, will be sufficient, by selling the tithes to the several proprietors of land, at only twenty-five years' purchase, and the estates to the highest biddei*, greatly to reduce the present immense national debt, and thereby exonerate the people of between three and four millions of taxes. In the fortunate, affluent circumstances of this nation, should Administration have wisdom, and equity, and true christian piety enough, to adopt such a plan of religious reformation, without waiting till it is forced upon them, bjr the tumultuous, violent paroxysm of some convulsion of the state, it might be quietly effected, in the course of a few years, without the smallest injury to any one individual, by a gradual abolition of the present ecclesiastical establishment, and a proportional diminution of the public burthens, on the voidance of every benefice, either by the death or voluntary resignation of the leveral incumbents, THE EVANGELISTS. llj UtONAKCE 6F as they went toEmmaus; and that, on the sub- sequent evening, that is, according to the Jew- ish computation of time, on the beginning of the second day of the week, he appeared to all the ekven apostles, and thehundred other disciples who accompanied them, in the city of Jeru- salem ; that he continued to instruct and con- verse with them, in the same city and its neighbourhood, for forty days after his resur- rection, and, immediately before his miracu- lous ascension, commanded them to tarry in the city of Jerusalem till they received the promised gift of supernatural inspiration ; and that they accordingly did so, and conti- nually frequented the temple, to offer their praises and thanksgivings to Almighty God, for all the w^onders of v/hich they had been witnesses. The apostles, therefore, never departed from Jerusalem, from the resurrec- tion to the day of Pentecost, VJ. Let us then, after this brief review of the miracles and prophecies recorded in the evangelical history of Luke, consider what the whole combined weight of evidence, in favour of its genuine authenticity, amounts to, when cleared of those fabulous and oiroundless additions, which the coarertfl; THE EVANGELISTS. lit from Paganism, and the schools of the later Phitonists, made to it in the beginning of the second century. All the historical and other writings of pro- fessed christians, which are extant, agree, as, is before observed, in attributing this Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, to a very early disciple, though not an apostle, named Luke. Tlie writer himself informs us, that his name %vas Silas ; that he was one of those chief men among the brethren, w^hom the Apostles and the Elders, wath the whole church at Jerusa- lem, sent to acquaint the converted Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, wdth their de- cision respecting the only observances of the Jewish I^aw, that were judged necessary for them ; that he himself Avas a prophet, a duly qualified teacher of the Gospel, and preached much to the people at Antioch, to exhort them to continue in the faith they had adopt- ed; that when his co-delegate, Judas, re- turned to Jerusalem to the Apostles there, he chose to remain in Antioch w ith Paul and Barnabas; that upon the separation which took place, in consequence of a dissension between these two, he was chosen by Paul to supply the place of Barnabas ; and that from that time, to his being sent prisoner to Rome, I 3 134 THE DISSONANCE OF and during his residence in that imperial city, he continued Paul's constant adherent, fiiend and fellow-traveller. That it was Silas, who wrote these two his- tories, appears thus. From the conclusion of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth chapter of the Acts, we find that when Paul left Antioch, no one but Silas accompanied him, as far as Derbe and Lystra; and that there they were joined by Timotheus, whom Paul chose also to travel with him ; that they three went through Phrygia and Galatia, and came to Troas, where Paul, in a vision, was directed to go over into Macedonia : " and " after he had seen the vision," says the au- thor, " immediately we endeavoured to go '^into Macedonia, assuredly gathering, that f the Lord had called us to preach the Cos- " pel unto them/' This is the first passage in which the writer speaks in his own person ; and in the same person, he frequently ex- presses himself afterwards to the end of his history. Now, since it is evident from this part of the Acts, compared with 2 Cor. c. i. v. ,19, and with the address of both the epistles to the Thessalonians, that Paul had no at- tendants when he first preached the Gospel in Macedonia and Greece, besides Silas or THE EVANGELISTS. I3g Silvanus, of which last name Silas is merely an abbreviation, and Timotheus, one of those two must be professedly the writer of these histories. That it' was not Timotheus, ap- pears from Acts c, xx. v. 4 and 5, where the author enumerates Timotheus amongst those disciples who accompanied Paul, on his re- turn into Asia, and adds, " these going before, /* tarried for us at Troas/' It is Silas or Silva- nus alone, therefore, who professes himself to have been the author of both these important histories. And his manner of informing us that he was so, affords infinitely greater satis* faction respecting the truth of his informa- tion, than could be derived from any titular ascription of them to him, either by himself or others. And though this circumstance, at fii'st, has the appearance of contradiction to the universal historic testimony, which attri- butes them to Luke, they really only confirm the veracity of each other; for Lucas, that is Luke, is exactly the same abbreviation of Lucanus, a name derived from luciis^ a grove or wood, that Silas is of Silvanus from Sylva, a word of the same signification. Since, therefore, we find that amongst those Jewish Christians, particularly, Avho were most con- 136 THE DISSONANCE OF versant amongst the Greeks and Romans, it was customary to change their original Hebrew names, without doubt, the more to familiarize tliemselves to those people, as Tabitha was exchanged for the Greek word Dorcas, and Saul for the Roman name Paulus ; and as is still usual with the Jews in every country ; it seems clear that the name of the author of these histories, which in the Hebrew most probably was some word of similar import, viz. belonging to a grove or wood, might be translated indifferently by the Roman names, Lucanus or Silvanus,* and though he was, at first, called Silas, yet upon the persecution raised by Nero, or some other prudential rea- son, it might be deemed right to vary it to Luke, for many circumstances concur to ren- der it liighly probable, that the Lucas w.hom Paul mentions to Timothy in his second Epis- tle, as the only person who remained with him, is the very same as Silas, both which names, if re-translated into the original Hebrew name, must be expressed by the same word, A very * In the same manner, the Hebrew name Aaron, niight have been familiarized to the Iloraans, by being rendered CoUinus or Monta- nus J and an Englishman of the name of Wood, might domesticate his very name in France, by calling himself either Du Bois, or Lsk •Fortt, THE EVANGELISTS. IST probable circumstance, which may well ac- count for later writers calling him by that name. It appears, then, upon the united testimonj- of the early Christian writers, and of the au- thor himself, corroborated by that of the Apostle, with whom he was joined in the commission to preach the Gospel in Mace- donia and Greece, that these two books were really written by Silas or Luke, who w^as so well qualified a witness of what he relates, that he was the approved friend and assistant of all the Apostles, from whom he could not fail to receive perfect information, of every fact and doctrine he has recorded, previous to his own conversion ; and was so considerable a personage in the transactions he has related afterwards, that, in the words of the Roman Poet, he might justly have called himself a relater of events, qiiceqiie ipse vUliy et quorum pars 7nagna fid; events whereof he had not only been an eye-witness, but in which he himself had been, for the most part, actively concerned. On reviewing and comparing these two histories of Luke, we find the dates of all the important facts clearly and accurately ascer- tained ; there appears in them a perfect har- iSt THE DISSONANCE OF mony and consistency, not only with each other and with the epistles of Paul, but with all other historians, who have written of the same times.'*' The miracles recorded in them, * of how great importance it is to have the true Author of these histories ascertained, may be seen from the xii. Section of MichaelHs's Introduction to the New Testament. For, owing to his not having observed the satisfactory information given us by the Author him- self, that these histories were written by the Silas mentioned in the second of them, as being himself an inspired Prophet, delegated by James and the rest of the Apostles resident at Jerusalem, the learned Professor is led to imagine, that the Author " was not a native of " Palestinr, but, having accompanied St. Paul thither, made only a *' short stay in Jerusalem, an i spent the greatest part of his time in «* Cesarea." And merely on the grounds of this misapprehension, though he allows him " to appear in all other respects to most ad- ** vantage, when put in competition with the other writers of the •« New Testament," except *' in some particular facts which disagree, «* either really or apparently, with the relations which have been- *' given by profane Historians." And tells us, that even admitting tome errors, " he ceases not to be a most valuable Historian, espe- ** cially in the Actis of the Apostles, where he speaks either as an ''eye-witness himself, or instructed by St. Paul, the companion of •« his journey." Yet lays a greater stress upon the difficulties sup- posed to be found in Luke's writings, than upon those which appear in all the rest, as being more irreconcilable to profane History. All these suppose i difficulties-, except one, exist in the Acts of the Apos- tles, w hi'-h the learned Professor himself, as well as Dr. Lardner, has, in a masterly manner, shewn to be ungrounded j and that Luke's His- tory is entitled to greater credit than that of Josephus, who chiefly contradicts him. So that the only irreconcilable difficulty is, that, ** in the beginning of the Second Chipter of his Gospel, that Christ ** was born during the taxation of Judea, when Quirinius was Go- <' vernorof Syrii, when it is certain, from the Roman historians, that '' Quirinius war^ at that period in a different country." And as I have shewn, from the testimony of the Author himself, that Silas or L'i!:3 wv.s not the Author of the two first Chapters of his Gospel, he must remain, according to the testimony of the learned Professor THE EVANGELISTS. 139 breathe all thesaine compassionate, benevolent spirit, which is so peculiarly characteristic of' the religion of Jesus Christ ; and they contain the requisite evidence of sundry prophecies, some for the conviction of the first disciples, fulfilled within a few days or weeks after their prediction, others, at the interval of forty years, when the writer himself, in all proba- bility, was not alive, and others extending to all ages, from the first promulgation of the Christian Covenant to the present time, and to a period yet to come. We have here, then, every kind of evidence, whereof the na- ture of the case admits, to convince us of the genuine authenticity and veracity of both these histories; and with these, for my own part, I am abundantly satisfied. Others, per- haps, submitting their judgments to early pre- possessions, or to the decisions of the ortho- dox church, may persuade themselves, with that father of the Church, Theophylact, that God has given the world just four Gospels, neither more nor less, because there are just four cardinal virtues, four seasons of the year, four quarters oftheworid, north, east, south himself, a most valuable Historian ; and appear in all respects to supe- rior advantage, when compared with the writers of the other Evan- gelical Histories. 140 THE DISSONANCE OF and west ; and because, as these Gospels arc intended to be pillars to support the whole world, it is necessary there should be one for each of those four principal points of the com- pass : but these and all such ingenious, rheto- rical arguments, have so little weight M-ith me^ that I profess myself better pleased with one evangelical history, satisfactorily authen- ticated, than with four thousand that should be found spurious, or even of doubtful • and reasonably suspicious authority.* * *^ It IS very probable, that every one of tlie four Evangelists hatfi ill his book the whole substance, all the necessary parts, of the Gos^ pel of Christ. But for St. Luke, that he hath written such a perfect Gospel, in my judgment, it ought to be with them that believe him no manner of question. Consider, first the introduction to his Gos- pel, where he declares, what he intends to write, in these words*: Voramiuck as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things ti>hirJi are most surcli/ believed aynongaf us, even as they delivered them unt.) usy zvhiehj'rom the beginning were Eye-witnesses, and JSlinisters of the Word^ it s:cmed good to ine also, having had ])erfect VTidcrstanduTg of all tfrir/gs,J'ront the very first, to write to thee, in order, wost excellent Theopkilus, that thou mightesi know the certaintyi of those things, Toherein thou hast been instructed. Add to this place, the en- trance to his History of the Acts of the Apostles : The former Trtatisc have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began, both to do and teach, until the day in which he was taken vp. Weigh well these two places, and then answer me freely and ingenuously to these demands t t. Whether St. Luke doth not undertake the very same thing, which, ha ^i\Y^,tnnny h.id taken in Jumd? 2- Whether this were not to set firih in order, a declaration of those things zvhich were most surety be- lieved amongst Christ iansi o. Whether the whole Gospel of Christ, and cveiy necessary doctrine of it, were not surely believed among Chrrstiims ? 4. Wlretlier tliey, which were Eye-witnesses and Ministers ttflhe Woid,from the beginuint, delivered not the whole Gospel of Christ? THE EVANGELISTS. Ui From what Lukeand other Avriters inform us, there is no doubt but the orthodox church, if •slie had chosen to preserve them, might at this liour have had forty instead of four different Gospels ; and many of them much more de- serving her regard, than three of those she hath thought fit to select and save from the o-eneral wreck, in which the writinsrs of the primitive Christians have been involved : but, as far as the providence of Almighty God is concerned in preserving sufficient notice of the Evangelical Covenant, which he hath proposed to all mankind, I can see no more reason why there should be four distinct au- 5. Whether he doth not undertake to write in order these things, zvJiereofhe had perfect understanding from the first ? 6. Whether he had not perfect understanding of the whole Gospel of Christ ? 7. Whether 2ie doth not undertake to write to Theopbilus of all those things, ■wJxrt- in he had been instructed ? 8- And whether he had not been instructed "in all the necessary parts of the Gospel of Christ ? 9.' Whether, in the other text. All tilings which Jesus begun to do and teach, must not ?-t least imply, all the princlp:d and necessary things ? 10. Whether this be not the very interpretation oF your llhenhh Doctors, in their annotation upon tkis place ? 11. Whether all these Aiticlesc^" the Christian Faith, without the belief whereof, no man can be saved,, be not the principal and most necessary things wh.ich Jesus taught f •12, and l.istly. V/hether many things which St. Luke hath wrote la his Gospel, be not less principal, and less necessary, than all :;nu eveiy one of these ? When you have well considered these propo- sals, I believe you will be very apt to think (if iSt. Luke he of credit with you) that all things necessary to salvation, are certainly con- tained in his writings alone." ChillinowortHj chap. iv. art. 4o. 14S THE DISSONANCE OF thentic histories of the very short period from the Baptism of John to the resurrection of Jesus, than that there should be four histories of the much longer, and equally important period, comprised in the Acts of the Apostles ; or than the Jews should have had four dif- ferent histories of the creation and their Patriarchs, and of the deliverance of their forefathers from the Egyptian bondage. How- ever, since many great, learned and saga- cious men have been in the habit of taking the authenticity of the other three for granted, they certainly ought not to be rejected as spurious, unless sufficient reason can be shewn for so doing. Having, therefore, in Luke's two histories, found a firm and so- lid basis for the genuine religion of Jesus se- curely to stand upon, I the more willingly and cheerfully proceed to examine the pre- tensions and merits of each of the other three Gospels, and to try them also by the same criterion : only remarking previously upon the Gospel according to Luke, that from the manner in which it is referred to in the intro- duction to the Acts, it appears not to have been written any great length of time before the latter history, which must have been com- posed after the fourth year of the reign of Ne- THE EVANGELISTS. 143 ro, that is full thirty years after our Saviours death and resurrection ; and from the reasou alleged in the short preface to what is called his Gospel, for writing it, we may conclude with certainty, that he knew of no such his- tory then written by any of the Apostles themselves. For he tells Theophilus, (wii€- ther that be the real name of any particular friend, or only the common appellation of every sincere Christian) for whose use and in- formation he intended both his works, that, because many had undertaken to publish an account of the great objects of their faith, as they liad been taught them by the Apostles, and those who had been eye-witnesses jQf what they had related, he also having had perfect information from the beginning, had written to him an account of every thing, iu order, that he might know the certainty of those things in which he had been instructed. Now had Matthew or any other Apostle, published a history of this kind, it would have entirely superseded the necessity oi' Lukes writing ; and instead of a treatise of his own^ he would undoubtedly have sent, or recommended to him, the narration of the Apostle : at least he could never have pre- sumed to differ from that account, in either U4> TH£ DISSONANCE, 5cc. the order or circumstances of the facts re* corded, in the manner in which every atten* tive reader of the Gospels must know he docs differ from the history attributed to Matthe\v. So that Luke's work itself very strongly im- phes, that Matthew had written no Gospel at all before the fourth year of Nero: for as he had resided several years Avith Matthew and the other Apostles at Jerusalem, |^d did not leave them till nineteen years after their Master's death, that is full ten years after the date usually allotted to Matthew's Gospel, he could not have been ignorant of such a publication, had it really existed at that time. It is true, some critics^ on very insuf- ficient grounds, postpone the Gospel of Mat* thew to a much later date ; yet still they all agree that it was written before Luke's. CHAPTER nr. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. sectio:n^ !• *¥N observing critically the Gospel attri- -^ bated to Matthew, the first circumstance to be remarked is, that the author himself gives not the slightest hint to suggest to us who he was, much less that he was an Apos- tle of* Jesus Christ; so that the mere opinion of the fathers of the orthodox church of the second century, is all the foundation there is for its being called Matthew's, which, w^e have seen, is not the case with Luke's histories. The next is, that all those early writers, who inform us that Matthew wrote a Gospel, as- sure us he wrote it in Hebrew ; and that our copy is a translation of it into Greek, by what hand is uncertain. The work itself, however, has by no means the appearance of an uniform translation from any language: for one can hardly suppose that any person K 146 THE DISSONANCE OF not duly skilled in the Greek language, would undertake to translate it; and whilst the greatest part of it is exceeding bad Greek, abounding with barbarous idioms, which is not to be accounted for, if the translator was properly qualified for the work, there are many passages, and several of them of con- siderable length, which are not only ex- pressed in pure and elegant diction, but are nearly word for word the same as they stand in the Gospel according to Luke. This last circumstance is so obviously remarkable, both in this and the Gospel according to Mark, that to account for so improbable a fatit, Grotius, Mills, and every candid critic, who has adopted the orthodox persuasion, that these Gospels were written in the same order in which the cailon of the church hath placed them, have been forced to acknow- ledge that, it is evident, the writer of one must have transcribed from the other ; and that, therefore, Avhen Mark wrote his Gospel he must have had Matthew's before him, and Luke both the others. But it is absohitely im- possible for me to suppose that Silas or Luke, who suffered so much, and so disinterestedly, to testify the truth of the Gospel, could profess to write accurately, and in order, an account THE EVANGELISTS. of those acts and doctrines of Jes{v8^y>\vlilch w^re taught them bv those who had been eje-witnesses of his ministry, and were his chosen Apostles; and yet, with the written account of an Apostle before his eyes, not olil}' in many places invert the order of the narration, but diifer greatly from him in the circumstances attending some of the most re- markable facts, and in others directly contra- dict him. Besides, in Luke, those verbally <:orresponding passages of the different Gos- pels are regular coherent parts of one uni^ form, well composed whole; whereas in Matthew they are quite incongruous to the rest of the language in which the book is written, and, like the ill-suited passages of those inconsistent poems condemned by Ho- race, purpurei late splendent panni. It must be observed also, that these two Gospels of Matthew and Mark abound in instances of Latin words, written in Greek letters ; I do not toean proper names, nor even the names of coins, weights or measures, such as the Romans perhaps made use of, even i*n the most distant provinces, but military terms and words of common use in every language. In- stead of the Greek words which Luke, Jose- phus, and, I believe, every other Greek writer K 2 143 THE DISSONANCE OF within the Hmits of the first century, use for Taxes or Tribute, Legion, Spearman, Watch or Guard, Centurion, to Scourge, and some others, they give us the names by which the Romans expressed them in their own language written in Greek characters : a circumstance which, though in itself not fully demonstra- tive of the age in which they were really written, when corroborated by other evidence of their spuriousness, is of considerable weight to convince us, that these two Gospels can- not be older than nearly the middle of the second century : and, therefore, the writer called Matthew might very probably see and transcribe from the Gospel according to Luke, and the pretended Mark from both. I^et us examine each Gospel in its turn. ' 11. The two first chapters of Matthew Contain so many wonderful circumstances, repugnant both to the other scriptures and to common sense, and so entirely unsupported by any other history, sacred or profane, that many persons, both of the present and former ages, have rejected them as a forgery, added by some other writer to the work of Matthew, (as, I persuade myself, I have demonstrated to have been the case with Luke's Gospel) THE EVANGELISTS, ug and that this book also originally began at the third chapter, with the Baptism of John ; though there is no proper beginning of a his- tory at that chapter, as there evidently is in Luke's. But to me, who find full as many extraordinary things, equally inadmissible, in the two last chapters, and several more in the body of the w^ork, the whole appears to be of equal authenticity, or rather, equally spuri- ous and false. With the reader s leave, there- fore, we will take a cursory review of the whole. Of the Genealogy, Avith which this Gospel begins, it is unnecessary to remark its irrecon- cileable contradiction to that introduced into Luke s Gospel, because it has been so gene- rally noticed by all commentators, and must strike the most superficial reader, as it traces Joseph's descent from David, through a line totally different : I only wonder that, under such a circumstance, any rational creature can be found, who can really believe both these contradictory pedigrees to be true, and, what is still more, the inspired word of God. My intent, therefore, is only to point out the glaring inconsistency of the author, on this occasion, with himself. Tlie sole purpose of these two first chap- ters, is to teach, that Jesus was not the son of K 3 1^0 THE DISSONANCE OF Joseph, but, like Bacchus and Hercules amongst the Pagans, the offspring of Mary, impregnated by the influence of the supreme Peity of heaven. Yet, to prove to us that, as the completion of the old prophecies con- cerning the Messiah required, he was the li- neal descendant of David and Abraham, he gives us the pretended genealogy of Joseph only frpm those Patriarchs : and with such a proof the orthodox church hath been satis- fied for 1600 years \l But whilst the celes- tial origin he attributes to our blessed Saviour effectually precludes the possibility of many prophecies of the Old Testament, relative to the Christ, being accomplished in his per- son, the author has endeavoured to persuade us, that the miraculous ciucurastance he re- lates, of his birth, was predicted in another prophecy, and accordingly refers us to that well known prophecy in Isaiah, c. vii, v. 14. '^ Behokl a' young wx-)man shall conceive and " bear a son,'' &c. The word which I trans- late a ?/ow?/^^ woman,, he renders a virgin^ and insinuates that, by virtue of that singfe word, the prophet meaTii a miraculous conception, ivithout the intervention of a man ; and that the. child intended m 'the 'prophecy was the child Jesus. ^Nothing raoi^^e, however, i^ ne- THE EVANGELISTS. 151 cessary to convince an unprejudiced person that both these insinuations arc perfectly groundless, than to turn to the book of Isaiah itself. We there find that the child, whose birth is predicted, is given to King Ahaz and his subjects, who were alarmed at the pros- pect of an invasion by the confederate kings of Syria and Samaria, as a sign, that before the child which was at that time to be conceived should be born, and be old enough " to chuse " good from evil,'' or, as it is repeated in the subsequent chapter, (where the child is ex- pressly said to be a child of Isaiah's, by his own wife, and that he took faithful witnesses to record the time, that they might be cer- tain the promised male child was actually born at nine months from the delivery of the prophecy) before the child should be able to speak, that is, within two years from the day of the prediction, the enemy's country should be deprived of both the menacing kings, who should be slain, and the spoil of Damascus and Samaria be carried away by the king of Assyria. So that the prophecy has no more reference to the age of Augustus Caesar, or the son of Maryj than it has to the author of this Gospel himself. As to the word trans- - lated a virgin, on which so much stress is, in K 4 15« THE DISSONANCE OF vain, unreasonably laid, it is evident, that in the original it does not necessarily signify any thing more than a woman young enough to bear childien, from its being the very same word which is used in Proverbs, c. xxx. v. 19, and there translated a maid ; for a virgin^ in the strict sense of the word, could not be meant in that place, because, " the way of a man with" such an one is by no means track- less and undiscernible ; and because the wri- ter expressly uses it to signify a married wo- man, saying, " such is the way of the adulte- " rous woman." In the second chapter, this writer informs us that our Saviour was born at Bethlehem, in Judea, in direct contradiction to both the histories of Luke, which, by repeatedly cal- ling him Jesus of Nazareth, assure us he was born at Nazareth, in Galilee, as Paul of Tar- sus, Timotheus of Derbe, and the like, ahrays signify that those persons were natives of tlie places so mentioned ; and as a reason for his being born there, he alleges a propliecy of Micah, respecting the Messiah, which, if the author had been, I do not say an Apostle of Christ, but merely an intelligent Jew, he could not have so misapprehended or misapplied. The purport of the prophet is simply that ^)f THE EVANGELISTS. • 153 almost all the prophecies of the Messiah, sub- sequent to the reign of David, to declare that this predicted Saviour, and prince of peace, would l)e, not the son of no mortal man, as this Ml iter tells us he was, but the lineally descended son of David, who was a native of Bethlehem, as was his father Jesse and all his family. Not only, therefore, this particularly predicted descendant, but every son of David, is justly said to have sprung originally from Bethlehem, though perhaps not one of them was born there ; and provided Jesus was truly the son of David by natural descent, this prophecy would have been equally accom- plished in his person, whether he had been born at Bethlehem, Nazareth, or even at Rome. But the ingenious author has more marvels to introduce, in consequence of this misapplication of the prophet Micah, de- signed, no doubt, to catch the attention and admiration of the ignorant and credulous of his own times. A legation of idolatrous Chaldean Astrologers, who had calculated the nativity of this new-born king of the Jews by a star, though entire aliens from the Jewish Law, is dispatched from the East to do him homage even in his cradle; and when, by the help of this prophecy, the chief priests 154 THE DISSONANCE OF and scribes had informed Herod, he inform?^ these Eastern Magi, that he was to be bora at Bethlehem: but though he was anxiously solicitous to discover who and where this rival of his throne was; neither curiosity, policy, nor hospitality, induced him either to ac- company them himself, or to send any trusty person with them, under the plausible and decent pretext of guiding the extraordinary strangers on their way. The star, however, more humane and hospitable than Herod, led them safe to Bethlehem, (as it might as well have done without inquiring of Herod at all ; but then the inhuman massacre and other wonders that follow could have had no place ;) and even directed them to the very house where the young child was. In this wonderful story, which, with the generality, of people, has so long passed for the infallible word of the God of Truth, there are two cir- cumstances absolutely impossible; the one is, that any splendid object in tlie atmosphere even a meteor, sufficiently elevated to be, wdtb the least propriety, called a star, should in the natwe of things mark out any parti- cuJar hous<5 ; for even on a supposition that it was stationed directly over the house, the eye of the beliDlder could Bot possibly perceive THE EVANGELISTS. 155 that, but must of necessity refer it to the same situation with all the other stars in that part of the firmament opposite to his eye, when looking at the supposed meteor; and, therefore, it must always appear to him equally distant from him with the remotest star in the heavens. The other impossibility is, that the immutable Deity, whose word spoken by the Jewish prophets is replete with taunting sneers at the vanity and folly of the pretended science of Astrology, and ja0i^ who expressly commanded all Astrolo- gers amongst his own people to be put to death, should so greatly change his sentiments and conduct respecting it, as to give it the most distinguished token of his approbation and encouragement, by permitting Pagan diviners to discover the nativity of the pro- mised Messiah by their skill in Astrology, and become the first promulgers of it to the Jewish Government. Upon these Astrologers returning home, without giving the Jewish king the intelli- gence he desired, and which, without de- pending upon them for it, he might easily have obtained, if he had been possessed of either common decency of conduct towards strangers, or even of common sense, Herod, 1S6 'THE DISSONANCE OF violently intent upon the destruction of his infant rival, that he might be sure of mur- dering the right child, formed and executed, the historian tells us, a project of the most diabolical, unexampled cruelty, in massacre- ing all the infants '* from two years old and " under,'' that were in Bethlehem and the adjoining country; the writer does not ex- cept even the females. Now, if a Tyrant could be found wantonly cruel enough to at- tempt to execute such a project, it is impos- sible that the execution of it should not have excited an insurrection of the people. It is not in human nature for»all the parents of a whole city, and considerable extent of terri- tory, to submit tamely to have their infants torn from their arms and butchered before their eyes, without opposing the murderers, and endeavouring to secrete or flee away with their children: yet there is no record of such an insurrection ; and since the escape of one sinde child, which it was not in his power to prevent, might defeat his whole aim and intention, Herod must have been, ac- cording to this writer, the most senseless as well as most inhuman of men. Luke has re- corded many particular anecdotes and do- mestic circumstances of the princes and chief THE EVANGELISTS. 157 persons of the times of which he wrote, and they are all both probable in themselves and confirmed by the testimony of otlier writers ; but this highly improbable story stands upon the very doubtful authority of this Gospel alone, unsupported by the evidence of any other writer, sacred or profane, Josephus and the Roman historians give us particular accounts of the character of this Jew^ish king, who received his sovereign authority from the Roman emperor, and inform us of other acts of cruelty which he was guilty of in his own family; but of this infamous, inhu- man butchery, which to this day remains unparalleled in the annals of tyranny, they are entirely silent. Under such circum- stances, if ray eternal happiness depended upon it, I could not believe it true: but though I readily exclaim with Horace 7ion ego^ I cannot add, as he does, credat Judcetcs apella ; for I am confident there is no Jew that reads this chapter, who does not laugh at the ignorant credulity of those profes- sed Christians, who receive such ground- less, improbable ' stories for the inspired ^vord of God, and lay the foundation of their religion upon such incredible fictions as these. 158 THE £>tSSGNANCE 0^ After all, however, we find that this bar- barous inhumanity was in vain $ for, in obe- dience to the divine admonition of a dream, Joseph, we are informed, preserved the life of the infant Jesus, by escaping with him into Egypt ; and, to give a sanction to his story, he makes this circumstance also the comple- tion of another prophecy of tlie Old Testament, as he does likewise the massacre of the inno- cent children, referring us to Hosea, c. xi. v. 1. But as his not understandiiig the meaning of Micah's prophecy proves the author not to have been a Jew, so his application of a pretended prophecy in this, and the two following ift- Stances, prove him to have been a writer who had adopted the maxims of the Pytha*- gorean, and Platonic schools, that deceit and falsehood were allowable in promoting \vhat he deemed the cause of christian piety ; for the very reading over the passage of Hosea, here alluded to, is sufficient to convince any man, that the prophet's words in this place have not the least reference to any future event, but are an upbraiding of the Jewish people, for the ungrateful return they had made to God, for his kindness to them, in the infancy of their nation, when he delivered them from their bondage in Egypt. In THE EVANGELISTS. t$b the same manner, the passage of Jeremiah, c. xxxi. V. 15, is only a prophecy of the restoration of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, fully completed in that event nmny centuries before the birth of Chiist; and which. the writer, whoever he was, must know could not, in any sense, apply to the tran* saction he has recorded ; because, tte very next words are, '' Thus saith the Lord, Re- frain thy voice from weeping and thine eyes from tears : for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own borcjler*' As to the prophecy mentioned in the last verse of this chapter, that the IVIesismh was to be called a Nazarene, it is not to be found any Avhere else, and therefore must be tlic mere production of the writer's own fertile imagination, to account, in some manner, for our Lord's being so often spoken of by the title of Jesus of Nazareth ; but in the account he has thought fit to give us of the cause of his dwelling at Nazareth, in Galilee, he has betrayed an ignorance of the Geograpliy of Palestine, which cannot be attributed tt> Matthew, nor to any other native of tkat 160 THE DISSONANCE OF country. He tells us, that Joseph, on his re- turn out of Egypt, after the death of Herod, finding that his son reigned in his stead, was afraid to go into Judea, and thei'efore, by divine admonition, " turned aside into the " parts of Galilee." Here the reader is requested to remark, first, that Galilee having been as much under Herod's jurisdiction as Judea, and his kingdom having been divided amongst his sons after his death, it was a son of Herod who reigned in his stead, in Galilee as well as in Judea, consequently the child Jesus could be no securer in one province than in the other. He is next desired to cast his eyes upon the map of Palestine, and ob- serve how impossible it was for Joseph to hav^e gone from Egypt to Nazareth, without tra- velling through the whole extent of Arche- laus's kingdom, unless he undertook a long peregrination through the deserts, on the north and east of the lake Asphalites, and the country of Moab, and then either crossed the Jordan into Samaria, or the lake of Gennesa- reth into Galilee, and from thence went to the city Nazareth : and if it were at all credible, that the latter was the case, with what propriety could such a tedious journey have been deno- minated, turning aside into the parts of Galilee? ^HE EVANGELISTS. 161 HI. In the history of John's Baptism, re- Corded in the third chapter, there are many sentences copied word fot word from the Gospel according to Luke, notwithstanding which, it contains one ver}^ essential differ- ence, and one direct contradiction to it. Tlie first is in the second verse ; where we are told that John preached, "saying, Repent '* ye, for the khigdom of heaven is at hand/' If this account were true, then Jesus and his Apostles could not be the first preachers of the Gospel ; for these are the very words they use, to announce the commencement of the Gospel Covenant to the Jews : but Luke in- forms us, not only in the parallel place of his first history, but also in a speech of Paul, related Actsxix. 4, that John only "preached " the Baptism of repentance for the remis- " sion of sins /'* and since our Saviour tells the Jews^ Luke xvi. l6. that the Law and the Prophets, that is, the Mosaic Covenant, subsisted until John, but that since John's time, the New Covenant of the kingdom of God was preached, we may be certain j that * The advocates of the doctrine of atonement and satisfaction would do well to consider, how the supposed sacrifice of the death of Jesus could be necessary to the Deity-'s pardoning the sins of man;- kind, when, before the ministry, of Jfesus, John was commissioned by God to preach the remission of sins, on condition of repentanc only^ L i62 THE DISSONANCE OP John s mission was only preparatory to that of Jesus ; and that Jesus was the first pro- mulger of the Gospel Covenant, and of the supersession of the Old Covenant, by the commencement of the kingdom of God*, or, a3 this author calls it, the kingdom of heaven, in the world. This passage therefore is one, and as we proceed, there will be occasion to point out several other proofs, that the writer of this history, whoever he was, did not un- derstand the phrase kingdom of God, in the sense in which only it is used by our Lord himself, in the prayer he taught his disciples, by Luke, and by every other primitive preacher of the Gospel. In the seventh verse, the latter half of which is transcribed literally from Luke, we are told that this me- morable prophetic exclamation of the Bap- tist, " O Generation of Vipers, who hath " warned you to flee from the wrath to " come ?" was addressed to " many of the *' Pharisees and Sadducees, who came to his " Baptism," in flat contradiction to Luke, who not only aflSrms it was made to the whole " multitude of the Jews, that came to "be baptised of him,'' but c. vii. v. 30, ex- pressly assures us, " that the Pharisess and " Lawyers were not baptized of him," It is THE EVANGELISTS. 168 not possible, that both these contradictory assertions should be true ; and on which the guilt of falsehood rests, every man must judge for himself. IV. The fourth chapter commences with the most extraordinary and incredible narra- tive of our Lord's forty days' fast, and subse- quent temptation, by that manichean, ima- ginary being, denominated the Devil. A narrative, which, I have before observed, there is the strongest reason to believe, was from hence interpolated into Luke's history, in the second century, together with the story of his Baptism by John. And as the mortification of long fasting, or (to use Paul's prophetic language, respecting the first au- thors of the apostasy from the true religion of Christ) frequent abstinence from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanks* giving^ was held amongst the sect of the En-- cratiteS) that arose early in the second cen- tury, to be the next meritorious virtue to cell* bacy and unnatural chastity, there seems iid doubt but that the whole Gospel, and this fable in particular, was the production of one of that apostate sect of professed Chris- tians, with a view to authorize and encou- L 2 164 THE DISSONANCE OF rage the general adoption of the tenets of their own superstition, by the pretended exam- ple of our Lord himself. In verses 13, 14, 15, we have another remarkable instance of the author s very imperfect knowledge of the geography :of Palestine, which cannot be supposed of any native of the country ; as well as another direct contradiction to the much more probable account given us by Luke* As if he imagined the city of Nazareth was pot as properly in Galilee, as Capernaum was, (which indeed seems implied also in the second chapter, where he tells us Joseph V went aside," not into Galilee, but "into "the parts or coasts of Galilee,") he informs liSy that after John s imprisonment, our Sa- viour departed into Galilee^ and, leaving Naza- reth, came and dwelt at Capernaum, in order to fulfil a saying of Isaiah's, respecting the country beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the Gen* ides. Now to Isaiah, or any inhabitant of Judea, the country beyond mM^t be the country east of the Jordan, as Gaulanitis or Galilee of i the Gentiles, is well known to have been; whereas, Capernaum was a city on the western side of the lake of Gennesa- reth, through which the Jordan flows.. This wholes tory of theremoval of Jesus fromNa- THE EVANGELISTS. 105 zareth to dwell at Capernaum, is also in di- rect opposition to the history of Luke ; for he assures us, c. iv. that the reason of our Lord's leaving Nazareth was, because the inhabitants, offended with his discourse to them, drove him out of their city, with in- tent to throw him headlong from an adjoin- ing precipice ; but that he escaped through the midst of them, and went down to Caper- naum, where he preached to the people for a short time, and wrought many miracles of healing ; but was so far from taking up his dwelling there, that, though the inhabitants entreated him to stay and not depart from the?n^ he left them saying, he must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also ; for that was the purpose of his mission. In the last verse of this chapter, the au- thor infoi'ms us, that great multitudes of peo- ple followed Jesus, amongst other places, from Decapolis ; and speaks of this Decapo- lis, not only as a particular country or pro- vince, but as a country, which did not lie eastward of the Jordan, because he expressly distinguishes it from " the country beyond " Jordan :" and the writer called Mark, speaking of the same Decapolis, c. vii. v. 31, more than insinuates that it was a country L 3 (»»• THE DISSONANCE OF lying north-west of the sea of Gahlee ; for he tells us, that Jesus " came from the coasts of " Tyre and Sidon, to the sea of Galilee, " through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis'* These are circumstances, which merit the critical attention of every candid reader, who wishes to satisfy himself, respecting the true time when these two Gospels were reall}' written : for no such country as Decapolis is once mentioned by any other writer of either Testament ; and, from the geographical de- scription of Palestine, given us by Luke, con- firmed both by Josephus and Tacitus, it ap* pears that in the fifteenth j^ear of Tiberius, and during his whole reign, the Jewish terri- tory was divided by the Romans into four tet- rarchies, Judea in the south, which was go- verned by a Roman prefect ; the north-east- ern t^trarchy, which contained Trachonitis, Iturea, and Batanea, with Gaulanitis, or Ga- lilee, east of the Jordan, under the govern- ment of Philip, a son of Herod ; the western, comprehending Galilee proi)er, and all the coVintry west of the Jordan, and north of the prefecture of Judea, to w hich was annexed the province of Perea, on the eastern banks of the Jordan, governed by Herod, another son of Herod the great ; and Abilene, so THE EVANGELISTS. 167 called from its metropolis Abila, including^ except Perea, all Palestine east of the Jor- dan, and south of Gaulanitis, subject to the dominion of Lysanias. Under this division by the Romans, its conquerors, Palestine seems to have remained, until the reign of of the emperor Claudius, who, Tacitus in- forms us,* erected several smaller principali- ties or prefectures in that country, to gratify his freedmen and favourite Roman knights, alluding, most probably, to the toparchies that Judea was, at length, divided into, which are enumerated, though with some httle difference, by Josephus and the elder Pliny, and to some others which are occasion- ally mentioned by Josephus. In. the twelfth year of his reign, Claudius-f- gave the coun- try, which had formed the tetrarchies of Phi- lip and Lysanias, as a kingdom, to Agrippa : but though Josephus particularly describes the kingdom allotted by the Emperor to that Jewish prince, and the several addi- tional grants of territory, which were made to him afterwards ; though several of the ten cities which, Pliny tells us, were generally reckoned to compose the Decapolis, were si- tuated in the country expressly said to be * Hist. 1. V. c. 9. t Jos. Ant. 1. xx. c. 5 L 4 168 THE DISSONANCE OP assigned to i\grippa ; and though, in the preceding parts of his hiiitories, he has re- peatedly given us accurate geographical de- finitions of the several provinces of Palestine and the adjacent countries, no such province or ethnarchy, as Decapolis, is taken notice of by Josephus, nor does he once mention the name, . before Vespasian was governor of Syria, and general against the rebehious Jews, in the latter end of Nero's reign, and then only says of it,* that " Scythopolis was *^ the largest city of the Decapolis;" and, though he afterwards, (in his life) several times, mentions the cities intended by the name Decapolis, he never again uses that aggregate term, of the singular number 5 but calls them the t€7i ^ cities of Syria: and since he speaks of the insurrection of tiio Jewish against the Syrian inhabitants of some of those cities, it is natural to con-- elude that, from some particular motives, the Romans had been induced to annex ten Jewish cities to the government of Syria, and to place in them colonies of Syrians, to whom the Hebrew inhabitants could not be recon-- ciled ; and as the first disturbances amongst the Jews began in that part of Palestine. * Bell. 1. iii. c. IC, THE EVANGELISTS. 169 which formed the kingdom of Agrippa, it is most probable, that those rebelUous insurrec- tions cave rise to the estabhshment of such a line of mihtary stations, peculiarly subject to the authority of the Proconsul of SjTia, and that before that period of Nero's reign, the very name Decapolis did not exist. At least, ^ince Pliny tells us,* that the territory which intervened between those ten cities, and which surrounded each of theui, was not subject to the same government as the cities themselves, but to the adjoining tetrarchies, and Jose^ phus informs us, that all those ten cities ap- pertained to the government of Syria, it is evident that the Decapolis was not anj^ dis- tinct country or continued district, as the pretended Matthew and Mark represent it, but merely the general appellation often de- tached, insulated cities, lying all, except Scy- thopolis, beyond, or east of, the river Jordan, which in later times, for some military conve- nience to the Romans, were taken from the jurisdiction of the original tetrarchies, (most of them probably long after the time allotted for the writing these Gospels) and made sub- ject to Syria. So that to talk of any per- son's going to or coming from the Decapolis, ♦ Nat. Hist. 1, V. c. 18. ITO THE DISSONANCE, Sec. without specif]^ing which of the ten cities is meant, is to use a language devoid of mean- ing and perfectly unintelligible: and to speak of it as a province, like Galilee or Trachoni- tis, and as being situated north-west of the Sea of Galilee, is to betray an ignorance of the geography of Palestine too gross to be attributed to any native of that country; and shews that the authors were not primitive disciples of Jesus Christ, but writers of a much later date, who, being personally unac- quainted with the country, adopted a term they had heard applied to it, whose significa- tion they did not understand* CHAPTER IV. THE GOSPEL JCCORDING TO MATTHEW, CONTINUED. SF-CTION I. THE fifth and two following chapters con- tain what is commonly called, our Lord's sermon uoon the mount, a desultory, uncon- nectcd harangue, composed of many passages, taken, almost verbatim, from the discourses which Luke has related to us, as held upon many different occasions, with additions either deduced from the writinos of the Old Testa- ment, or according with the author's own ideas of Christianity. Concerning the first circum- stance, as well as all the other parts of this Gospel, which are expressed exactly, or very nearly, in the words of Luke, I have only to observe, that either Luke must have copied them from this book, or this writer must have adopted them from Luke; but as Luke in both his histories has shewn himself to be a good and elegant writer of the Greek language, 172 THE DISSONANCE OF whilst this writer's language, wherever it does not verbally correspond with Luke, is bad, abounding with barbarous idioms, no impartial person can doubt but that it was written after Luke's; and that the bad writer borrowed from the good one, the only flowers wiiich adorn his work, and not the good from the bad. That such a discourse as this was dehvered by our Saviour, at such a time and in such a place, is in the highest degree improbable; for being addressed particularly to his disciples, if it was dehvered at all, it must have been in* tended as a lesson of instruction in Christian ethics, to them in general, and especially to his i\postIes, who were to teach the same doc- trines to the world : it is but reasonable, there- fore, to suppose that so full and ample a moral lecture would have been postponed, at least^ till all those who w^re to be his Apostles, were called to be his disciples, and actually ap' pointed to their office. Accordingly, Luke in- forms us this really was the case; and that the fast moral lesson given to his disciples particu- larly, but in the audience of a great multitude of people, was delivered after he had chosen the tsvclve Apostles, 'iliat instructive dis- course is recorded by Luke, c. vi. v. 20, &c. THE EVANGELISTS. * 1?8 and, what is worthy of notice, begins, like this we are considering, with beatitudes of encou- ragement to his followers; and though this writer has greatly altered their sense and im- port, and added several to the number, and has omitted the woes entirely, yet from the first and last beatitude he has given us, as well as from many entire passages of Luke interwoven in different parts of this sermon, it is evident he had Luke's Gospel before him. So incon* sistent, however, is this writer, not with Luke only, but with himself, that fi"om his ninth chapter, v. 9^ we find that Matthew, the very Apostle who is supposed to be the author of this book, and to have so circumstantially recorded this Jong, incoherent, moral lecture, was not so much as called to follow our Saviour, till some time after it was deliveix^d, and consequently the Apostles were chosen still later, as mentioned, c. x. So much for the time when this sermon is said to have been preached. Respecting the place of its deli- very, I beg leave to observe, that, as Luke explicitly assures us was the case, though our Lord addressed himselt^ in the first place to his disciples, yet he intended his instructions also for the w^hole multitude of auditors, with which he w^as surrounded; indeed, if he had uot>,he ^74 THE DISSONANCE OF* would have acted directly contrary to his own doctrine, and instead of displaying the moral light of his religion to the people^ would have covered it with a bushel: and since this writer himself tells us, that " when Jesus had ended " these sayings, the people were astonished at " his doctrine," and that when he descended from his mountainous pulpit "great multitudes " followed him/' we must conclude that this discourse was intei^ded to be, and actually was, heard by the surrounding multitude. Now let any man, who knows what it is to speak to a crowd of people, conceive what situa* tion a speaker, who wished to be heard by as many as possible, would choose for himself on such an occasion. If the people were in an open plain, he would endeavour to take the advantage of some small rise in the ground, or other mode of elevating himself, so as to be seen by his audience ; or, if an hill were adjoining, he would ascend the slope of the hill a little way, so as to answer that purpose, whilst the people remained in the plain, or if they ascended the side of the hill, he would accomplish the same effect, by re- maining himself at the foot of it, in the plain : but would any man in his senses, so circum* stanced, and intending to be heard by the THE EVANGELISTS. 175 crowd, go up to the top of the hill, which from its convex form, must necessarily pre- vent, all but those who immediately surrounded him, from either seehig or hearing him, and even there set himself down before he began to teach them ? Yet precisely such is the si- tuation in which the author of this history makes our Saviour place himself to instruct the people, in the moral duties of the Gospel. Luke, on the contrary, informs us, that when he gave his disciples and the whole multitude that instructive lesson, after the choice of his Apostles, " he came down and stood in the " plain;'' and that, on another previous occa- sion, on the banks of the lake^f Gennesareth, he went into a fishing-boat, and, being at a little distance from the land, he sat down and taught the people who stood on the shore. In the seventeenth verse of the fifth chap- ter, our Lord is represented as saying, " Think " not that I am come to destroy the Law ; I ** am not come to destroy, but to fulfil ;" an assertion which flatly contradicts the pro- phets of the Old Testament, as also Luke and Paul, and the whole scope and intent of the Gospel Covenant. At the time when Moses administered to the Jews the Old Covenant of the Law, he ire tflE DISSONANCE OF informed them it was to continue onlj till the? coming of that prophet of a New Covenaiit, w4iom the Lord their God would raise up up unto them, from amongst their brethren, like unto himself; for says he,^ "unto him " shall ye hearken, and whosoever Avill not " hearken unto my words, which he shall " speak in my name, (saith the Lord God) 1 " will require it of him/' By the prophet Jeremiah, God saysj-f- " Beliold the days " come, when I will make a New Covenant " with Israel and Judah, not according to the " Covenant which I made with their fathers, " when I brought them out of Egypt; but ^* (instead of a* Law written upon tables of " stone) I will put my Law in their inward " parts, and write it in their hearts/' Ac- cordingly, Jesus Christ declares of the New Covenant,^ that the kingdom of God intended to be established by it, is not an object of external observation, but is within those who receive it. He affirms also,§ that the Law of Moses ended with John the Baptist; and that, since the time of his imprisonment, the New Covenant of the kingdom of God is preached to the whole world. In confirma- * De«t. c. xviii. v. 15, &c. f Jer. e. xxxi. v. 31> &c. J Luke c. Jivii.v. ^0& 21. § Luke c. xvi. v. 16. THE EVANGELISTS. 177 tion of this assertion, he denounced the speedy destructiou of that temple, the exist- ence of which was absokitely necessary for the ritual observances of theMosaicLaw ; and, without any suggestion that it would ever be rebuilt, declares that Jerusalem itself " shall " be trodden down of the Gentiles," until the new covenant of his Gospel is actually established in the nations of the earth. That such was the doctrine also of the disciples of Jesus, immediately after their miraculous de- legation to preach the Gospel covenant, is evident from the history of Stephen's death; for though he was falsely accused of bias- phem'mg the temple and the law of Moses, we fmd that the sole ground of this accusation Avas, his having said that *' Jesus of Nazareth would destroy their temple, and change the customs which Moses delivered them :" and in his answer, he is so far from denying or retracting that doctrine which was the same that his master had always taught, that his w^hole discourse to the council of the Jews is calculated to prove the truth of it. He reminds them, that the covenant made with Abraham preceded that of Moses, and was to continue till the object of it was acjcom- plished in the appearance of that promised M ITS THE DISSONANCE OF seed of the Patriarch, in whom all the kin- dreds of the earth are to be blessed ; that when Moses established the covenant of the Law, he assured them it would be superseded by a future prophet, whom they were to obey, and whom he then predicted to them ; and that under the new covenant of this promised prophet whom they had just crucified, tem- ples according to the prophecy of Isaiah relating to the very same period, were of no kind of use ; and that it was mere superstition to imagine that the Almighty inhabited tem- ples of human structure; " heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool ; what house will ye build me ? saith the Lord, or where is ihe plac€ of my rest r" At such instruction as this^ Luke informs us, the Jews were highly enraged; and, upon Stephen's extatic excla- »iatioii, that he beheld Jesus exalted to the station of the predicted Messiah, at the right hand of God, consequently endued with power to vanquish all his foes, and to ac- complish, according to his own prophecies, the destruction of their city and temple, and with it, the abolition of the Moi>aic Covenant, they ran upon him furiously, ejected him ftom the city, and stoned him, a^^on^iillly-cdrt- victed of the charo:e whiclr tiie witnesses had THE EVANGELISTS. 1T9 alleged against liinl. Paul, likewise, who had himself consented to the death of Stephen as fust and legal, afterwards^ in his discourse to the Athenians, urged this same doctrine of Isaiah, that the use of temples, and the wor- shipping God with external rites and cere- monies, were abolished under the Gospel dis- pensation : and, in the third chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, he adduces the very same arguments suggested by Stephen, re- specting the two Old Covenants, and ex- pressly declares, that the covenant of the Law of Moses was only added to the cove- naut made with Abraham " till the seed should come to whom the promise was made ;" that, therefore, the Law was only the School- master of the Jewish nation, to educate them for a manly maturity in tlie rational religion of Jesus Christ ; and that, now the Christian faith is come, '' they are no longer under a Schoolmaster/' Indeed common sense as- sures us, that the declarations which God made to the Jews . by their prophets, that, in time to come, he would give them a new law, and make a new covenant with them, must imply the abolition of the old ; for the subsistence of an- old covenant, with only some new additions made to it, can with ik> M 2 180 THE DISSONANCE OF more propriety be called a new covenant, than an old garment, upon the addition of lace or fringes, could be called a new gar- ment : and from Paul's argument to the Ga- latians it plainly appears, that, under the new covenant of the Gospel, it Avere as unreason- able even for the Jews themselves to recur to the ritual observances of the Mosaic Law, as it woidd be for men arrived at the maturity of manhood, again to subject themselves to the circumstances of <:hildhood, and submit to the discipline of the ferula and rod. So gross af contradiction of the uniform doc- trine of the best authenticated scriptures, both of the Old Testameut and the New, can never he justly nor reasonably attributed to an Apostle of JesuS Christ, but must be the com- position of a much later writer, who himself did not understand either the genius or the doctrines of the religion he hath presumed ta teach. To the same ignorance or misapprehension, respecting jthe abolition of temples under the New Covenant, must be iascribed also what the author puts into our Lord s mouth, in the following verses, about altars, and gifts to be offered wponilmm, all which are peculiar to this -writer.:. Indeed, it would be both cu- THE EVANGELISTS. 181^ rious and useful to extract from this sermon, and other parts of his book, all the unsup^ ported doctrines that are to be met with only in this writer: but my present intent is merely to advert to such passages as are ai^solutely Irreconcilable to better authenticated scrip- tures. In this lecture to his disciples, c. vi. v. 5 — 13, our Saviour is made to give them ample directions for the manner of offering up their pi'ayers to God, and to teach them tlie very formulary he would. have them use, which is commonly known by the name of the Lord's Prayer. Their so early instruction, however, in the use of this prayer, is directly contra- dictory to the account given us by Luke, who informs us, that long after the time allotted to the sermon on the mount, even some time after the return of the seventy disciples, they were so far from having already received this instruction, that, observing their master in prayer to God, when he had finished, one of them entreated him to teach them to pray, as John the Baptist had taught his disciples; and immediately, without reminding them or upbraiding them for not remembering what he had taught them before, he began to teach them, as for the first time, this very form of M 3 182 THE DISSONANCE OF prayer. Here one of these two writers mti'^t certainly have given us a false account. It h to be observed, that the Doxology which closes this prayer, according to the supposed Mat- thew, is not found in any copy of the prayer recorded by Luke; and if I thought it had been inserted by the wiiter himself, I should urge it as another proof that he did not un- derstand the Gospel meaning of the phrase Idngdom of God; and that, by the addition of this Doxology, he has made nonsense of the prayer; but, though the orthodox church still continues to make use of it, the best cri- tics have very satisfactorily shewn that it did not exist in the original copies of even this work ;* and, therefore, it nmst be the addi- tion of some later copyist, who understood ' ^ Of tBis the Reformers, of the English Church were so well convinced, that, from the time of Elizabeth, to the rebellion in the I'eign of Charles I. in the established Book of Common Prayer, the Doxology is not once printed. And whoever will look into that edition of the Liturgy, which was printed so late as t!he jrear 1640, will see that this Mtas not an accidental omission, but, the result of mature deliberation : because, where the Lord's Prayer is abbreviated in the printing, thus, " (!>ur Father, &6*^* the abbreviatioil is Mirdly ever carried on to the end. Bwt the c^ c is followed by the last peti- tion, ** And lead us not into temptation ; but deliver us from evil. Ara^n.'" Yet ever sinte the sera Of the Restoration, so much moro uhfekilled in biblical history, or so ijiuch less attentive to propriety, luve the IcaTiing English Clergy Ueen than their predecessors at th4 ^eformmioh, that the Doxology has ever since been printed in most ^ f lace^wH ere thuf prater occurs, and continues to be' in general us^f THE EVANGELISTS. 1C3 not what Jesus meant by *' thy kingdom " come," and whose weak mind supposed tlie Ahuighty Lord of heaven and earth, like hu- man sovereigns^ to be pleased with fawning, flattering expressions, and superfluous, verbal acknowledgments of his power and greatness. In the sixteenth, and following verses, the pretended Matthew represents our Lord as teaching his disciples in what manner they should fast; a doctrine quite inconsistent, not only with what Luke assures us, but even with what this writer himself, c. ix. v. 14, &c. has copied from Luke, viz. that his disciples did not fast at all; and that such formal, car- nal observances of the Jewish ritual, were by no means suited to the genius of that new religion, which he came to establish in the world. In chapter vii. verse 6, we find a vulgar proverb, antecedent to the mission of Jesus Christ, converted into a precept of the Gos- pel — " Give not that which is holy unto the "** dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before " swine, lest they trample them tmder their " feet, and turn again and rent you.'' If these words have any meaning in this place, it must be to prohibit the teaching his holy religion, and propounding the valuable doctrines of the M 4 184 THE DISSONANCE OF Gospel to such profligate, profane, and brutal characters, as it was probable would only treat their instructions with scorn and con- tempt, and rcAviard their zeal with persecution and personal violence. Yet such a precept is directly contrary to the well-known constant practice of our Lord himself, and all his Apos- tles, and utterly repugnant to the most ex- plicit, repeated lessons of duty urged upon his disciples on other occasions; the uniform tenor of which is, tiiat in preaching the Gos- pel they must expect and be prepared to en- dure odium, contempt, and ignomin}^ and the most cruel persecutions of every kind, even unto death. 11. In the eighth chapter, this writer re- cords the story of the healing the Centurion s •servant, but with circumstances directly con- tradictory to liuke's account of the same mi- racle; for he tells us that the centurion came to our Lord himself, and conversed with him in person; whereas Luke informs us, that he only sent a deputation to him of the Elders of r the Jews, and declared that he did not think himself worthy to come to him, and for that reason did not come himself. Here again one of these historians must relate a THE EVANGELISTS.- 185 falsehood. It is observable also, that, accord- ing to this Gospel called Matthew's, this mira- cle, in order of time, preceded the healing of Peter s mother-in-law, the calling of iMatthew himself, and the choice of the twelve Apostles; whereas Luke tells us that it was subsequent to all the three. Yet Luke assures Theophi- lus, that having attained perfect information of every- thing from the very first, he had written him an account of every transaction in order. Now, he could have received his •information only from the Apostle^ he lived with at Jerusalem,: of whom MatthcAV was one; and> as it is impossible but Matthew mu^ have known whether he w^as himself with Jesus, when this miracle was wrought, or not, he could not have written that he was. not, and have informed Luke that he was; and therefore the writel' of this Gospel could not be Matthew, nor any other of the Apostles. To avoid unnecessary repetitions, the reader is desired to. consider this as a ge- neral remark upon the many instances of con- tradiction, in the order of the narration, be- tween this writer and Luke, which are both numerous, and obvious to the least degree of attention. im THE DISSONANCE OF In the conclusion of this chapter, the au- thor has introduced also the miracle of the Demons and the herd of Swine; but having in the second chapter literally out-beroded Herod, he was determined here to out-do the interpolater himself; for he makes two de- moniacs instead of one, and, of course, two lesions of devils. . In the enumeration of the names of the twelve x\postles in the tenth chapter, the first remarkable circumstance is the authors re- presenting the Apostle Andrew as Simon Pe- ters brother, which indeed he had prepared us for in the fourth, by telling us expressly that he was so, and that he was called to be an Apos- tle at the same time, and in the same terms, with Peter. Luke, on the contrary, informs us, that no such person as Andrew was with Peter at the time of his call; that James and John, tlic isons of Zebedee, were his only partners ; and that his destination to be an Apostle> implied in the words, " from henceforth thou shalt catch men," w^as announced to him alone in the singular number, and not in the plxiira;!, as this author relates it. Indeed, from both Luke's Histories, as no brother of Peter is once spoken of, it is most obvious, that he THE EVANGELISTS. 387 bad no brother ; and since in tlie enumeration of the names of the Apostles, in Acts i, James and Jolin intervene before Andrew, it appears that there was no family connexion between him and Peter, llie next circmnstance de- serving our observation* is, that the Apostles James and John are said to be brothers, and sons of Zebedee. Yet, from Luke's Histories, and. from Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, it plainly app(^ars, that James the Apostle was the brother of the Lord Jesus, and that the two sons of Zebedee, were not Apostles,but are the brothers mentioned. Acts xii. v.2 ; of whom James was put to death by Herod, and the other brother, John, was most probably thie game whose surname was Mark. Nothing can be more express than Paufs assertion, that the Apostle James was the Lord's brother; who consequeutly could not be James, the son of Alpheus. And Luke clearly informs us of the same thing, when telling us, c. xxiii. v, 55^ that the women, who came with him from Galilee, beheld the sepulchre, and how his ♦ For this remark of the ignorance, not only of this writer, but also of the pretended Mark and John, respecting the relationship of the Apostle James to tlie Lord Jesus, which affords such a decisive proof of the spuriousness of these three Gospels, the Author is obliged to Mr. Richard Foster, of Dal ton, near Huddersfield, Yorkshire, who, in 1796, favoured him with a letter upon the subject, but who, he is sorry to say, in otber respects, still remains an entire stranger 'to him. 168 THE DISSONANCE OF body was laid^ and prepared spices to t^m- balm it ; and, mentioning their names in c. xxiv. V. 10, to be Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, tells us also ' that James was brother of the Lord Jesus; for, from Lukeviii. 2,3, 19, it ap- pears, that no other Mary, but Mary Mag- dalene, came with Jesus out of Galilee, except his own mother. Mho accompanied hmi with all her children. And Luke calls her, in c. xxiv. the mother of James, because Jesus hinlself was no longer living. But in Acts i. wliei'e the history informs us Jesus was alive again, the same Mary is again called the mother of Jesus. Now, if theJ author of this Gospel had himself been an Apostle, lie could not possibly have called his brother Apostles, James and John, sons of Zebedee, when he must have known that they never were Apostles, and that the Apostle James was the brother of Jesus. A circumstance, which satisfactorily accounts for James being made the President of the Council of tlfe Apostles resident at Jerusalem. In proceeding with this Author s enumera- tion, instead of Judas the Son, or, as our translators chose to render $t, tlie brother of James, mentioned by Luke, we rpad " Leb- THE EVANGELISTS. 18^ beus sumamed Thaddcus;'' to account for this seeming contradiction, commentatoi-s ob- serve, that Thaddeus is a Syrian word of much the same signification with Judas : but if Mat- thew wrote any Gospel, he wrote it in He- brew, not in Syriac; and had he adopted a Syrian, instead of the Hebrew name of his brother-apostle, still any consistent wTiter would have repeated the same Syrian denomi- nation for the same name, and the last of the twelve also would have been called Thaddeus Iscarriot. As Luke conversed and lived long with all the Apostles, he could not be ignorant of the name by Aviiich they called the son of James; and therefore this writer cannot be one of them, because he would then, as usual, have called him Judas, not Thaddeus, and still less Lebbeus. In chapter xi. v. 12, not to remark upon the confused jumble of two distinct conversa- tions of our Saviour, which in Luke are sepa- rated by the intervention of no less than nine chapters, the author affords us a very striking proof of his entire ignorance of the Gospel meaning of the phrase, the kingdom of God, or, as hi calls it, of heaven \ for, not comprehend- ing the sense of Luke, c. xvi. v. 16, he sa3s, " From the days of John the Baptist, w/i/// ^90 th£ dissonance of naw^ the kingdom of heaven sufiereth violence^ and the violent take it by force.*' From the days of Jolm the Baptist, uqtil the age of this writer, I have no doubt, was a period of many years; but what sense can the words imiil now have, supposing them to have been used by our Saviour whilst John was hving, and withiix tvyo months, or perhaps less, after his baptiz- ing and preaching publicly ? And in what meaning can the New Covenant of the king- dom of God, which was in np degree estab- lished in the world, till after our liOrd's resur- rection, be said, at any time, but especially at the very beginning of his ministry, to suffer iJio/ence, and to be taken forcihly by violent men? Can any unprejudiced person believe, thaf an Apostle of Jesus Christ could be the author of such a sentence ? In chapter xii. v. 14 — 21, we have anpther instance of the uncommon ingenuity of this writer, in the application of the old prophecies so conspicuously displayed by him in the first and second chapters of his work. Not to dwell upon the impossibility of a person's re- maining unknown, who was followed by great multitudes^ and healed all the sick whom those multitudes brought unto him, consequently the unreasonable absurdity of such a person s THE EVANGELISTS. 191 charging the multitudes not to make him known, the writer tells us, that this very cir- cumstance was the completion of a well known prophecy of Isaiah respecting the Messiah, which, like many prophecies of the New Tes- tament, predicts, that the religion of the new covenant should be embraced by the Gentiles, and that all nations will become subject to the authority of Christ ; a prophecy which at this day remains to be fulfilled, and which had therefore no more reference to the circum- stances here recorded of our Saviour, than the prophecy of the return of the Jews from their Babylonish captivity, applied in the second chapter, had to the pretended slaughter of the infants. At verse 40, the author, not understanding our Lord's meaning about the sign which Jonas was to the Ninevites, as recorded by Luke, not only shews that his credulity easily swallowed tiie fabulous legend of the prophet in the whale's belly ; but, in order to make out some kind of similitude between his situa- tion there and our Saviour's, tells us, that as Jonas was confined in that extraordinary prison three days and three nights, so the son of man should be three days and thrice nights in the heart of the earth. Even this \nx- 192 THE DISSONA'NCE 0¥ tended similitude, however, has not one coiv responding feature in the two parts ; for, in the first place, our Lord >vas in the grave only one day and two nights ; and, in the next, Jonas, according to this incredible story, was alive the whole time, praying to and praising God, whereas Jesus was amongst the dead, and buried, of whom the Psalmist says,* " the dead praise not thee, O Lord, " neither they that go down into silence/' IIL In the thirteenth chapter we find that, according to this writer, our Lord had greatly changed his mode of preaching to the peo- ple since the time of his delivering to them his sermon on the mount : for though in that ample collection of unconnected moral apho- risms, there is scarcely any thing like a para- ble to be met with, now^ the author tell us, " he spake not unto them without a parable/' Accordingly, the w^holeof his discourses given us in this chapter, both from the ship and even after he w^as come into the house, except where they are interrupted by explanations to his disciples alone, consists of a collection of seven parables, three of which are evident- ly borrowed from Luke ; two of them ver- ♦. Psalm cxv. 17. THE EVANGELISTS. 193 batim, and the other four are the autho/s own composition. To this circumstance the reader's particular attention is requested; for, I persuade myself, there is no person of taste or feeling, who has attentively read the writ- ings of Luke, and has not admired the para* bles of his first, and the speeches of his se- cond history, as pieces of masterly Composi- tion, whether he considers the elegant sim- plicity of the diction, the justness and force of the sentiment and doctrine intended to be conveyed by them, or the strict propriety, and consistency of character, of the several agents or speakers introduced, either allego- rical or real : but whoever impartially consi- ders the various parables, related by the writer called Matthew, will find that every one of them, which is not taken from Luke, is grossly defective in some or all of those particulars ; and that, of those which he has evidently copied from Luke, there is not one which is not injured, exactly in the propor- tion in which he has thought fit to deviate from the very words of Luke. Of all this, the parables that compose this chapter afford us most striking examples. The first is the- well known parable of the sower ; from se- veral circumstances of which, it is as clear as N 194 ~ TH£ dissonance OF lights* as Dr. Mills expresses it, tbat the au- thor mui^t have borrowed it, and transcribed several sentences from Luke; but he has ehosen to vary some parts of the phraseolo-^ gy, and, in&toad of telling us, in tha words of the latter, that "some fell upon, a rock, and, " as soon as it sprung up, it withered away " because it lacked moisture," he says, " some " fell on stoney places, where they (the seeds) *' had not much earth, and forthwith they ** sprung up, because thiey had no depth of *^ e^ti\\9 and wheix the sun was up they wem *^ scotched^ and because tbey had not root " tliey withered^away/' Here, the concise simplicity and strict propriety of: :Luke's ex- pression, and the^aukwardly. laboured pe- riphrasis of this au/thor, togother ;with the falser idea it suggests, that see^d vegetates the kboner for want of depth .of soil, form; so glaring a contrast, as. mus.t surely strike every attentiA^e reader: aiad where Luke tells us^, "other fell on good ground, and " sprang up, and bare fruit an hundred fold,'' this writer ' saysj no doubt, Avitb .' intent to improve upon his niqdel, thait >^jolh^r fell ^* into good ground, and brought forth fruit, "some an Imndred fold, some skty fold, and * Lwce Clariu9» THE EVANGELIStS. 1^5 *' some thirty fold/' Now, if the criterion of good ground be, its producing an hundred fold, that which produces only thirty or even sixty fold, is certainly not good ground ; and the author, instead of apprehending our Savioui's meaning, in the parable I'ecorded by Luk^, seems to have been misled into these three different degrees of produce, of what he calls good ground^ by the very dis- similar parable of the talents, and an atten- tion to the different capa:cities oi. men ; but that difference is by nO means the object of this parable, as stated by Luke; and, there- fore, he is far from attributing the product of the fruit of the Gospel, in any degree, like this writer, to the mental capacity of the hearer, but represents his Master as teaching us, that by the seed on the good ground, is meant all those, who, "in an honest and " good heart,, having heard the word, keep it, " and bring forth fruit with patience/^ The intellectual abilities of men, indeed, vary as greatly as the degrees of their bodily strength, but in capacity for moral virtue they 'are all equal ; the weakest and most illiterate may possess as honest and as good a heart, as the wisest and most exalted genius that ever lived : the moral virtue of the latter may have N 2 . ^ 190 THE DISSONANCE OF a. more extensive influence than that of the former, but that difference is merely acci- dental ; his heart cannot be justly represented 38 a better and more fruitful soil in its pro- portion, though it might, with propriety, be compared to a more extensive field of equally productive soil, whose produce must of consequence be more extensively bene- ficial. The second parable of this collection is entirely the author s own ; and the reader will in vain search in it for that propriety of expression, and consistency of doctrine, which are so eminently conspicuous in Luke's com- positions of the same kind. It begins with resembling the kingdom of heaven to '' a " man who sowed good seed in his field ;'^ but what idea must this writer have formed to himself, of the meaning of the kingdom of heaven^ that he could think of likening it to a husbandman ? The kingdom of heaven (or, as it is always called by other writers, of God, or of Christ, as that phrase is used by Jesus in the prayer he taught his disciples, by Luke, Paul, and John in the apocalypse) uniformly signifies, as I have before observed, the duti- ful state of submission and obedience of mankind, to the terms of the New Covenant THE EVANGELISTS. 197 of the Gospel ; and what similitude can there be between such a state of the world, and the husbandman in this parable ? It is said, indeed, to obviate objections to many solecisms that are observable in the language of some parts of the canonical scriptures, that though the miraculous gift of tongues sup- plied the writers with a knowledge of differ- ent languages, so far as to enable them to make themselves understood by those to whom they preached the Gospel ; it did not endow them with that elegance, and pro- priety of diction, which is acquired gradually by the cultivation of natural learning : but why the knowledge of any language, infused into thQ mind at once, by the influence of divine inspiration, should be less complete and perfect than the slower attainments of human industry and application, is not easy to see. It is certain, if Luke acquired his Greek on the memorable day of Pente- cost, few scholars, in the ordinary ways of learning, could ever make a greater profi- ciency; and, whether he did oV not, it must be remembered that, according to all those who tell us this history was written by Mat- thewj he wrote it not in. Greek, but $n his K 3 198 THE DISSONANCE OF own native language, Hebrew : and w|iat credit or regard ought to be paid to an un- known translator, who presumes to translate any work, and, above all, a work of import- ance, into a language of which he himself is not thoroughly master ? A work, however, so evidently borrowed in many passages, and in some literally transcribed, from Luke, and in all the rest of it so badly written, cannot be a translation of any original Hebrew^ -work ; but must have been composed, in the very form in .which we have received it, long ^ftev the publication of the Gospel of Luke, and consequently not by Matthew nor any other Apostle. Indeed if, after all the in- structions of their great Master, and the su- pernatural illumination of their minds, by di- vine inspiration, any one of them could still remain so ignorant of the propriety of the comn)oix fovms of speech, as to tells us, our Saviour compared the kingdom to the person-* ^ge, of his parable, who represents the King^ he was very unUke those pieachers of Chris- tiixj^ityy whom we read of in the Acts, and vei:y unfit for the in;iportant object of his TO^i^on; But. lev MS pass by this o.bvious so- lecism at the. beginning, a^id attend to iIk;.' . THE EVANGELISTS. I9f meaning of the parable, as it is explained by the author himself, v. 37? &c. We are there given to understand that> according to the system pf the Manichces, the world, even under the Gospel Covenant, is still subject to the influence of two opposite principles, counteracting each other ] that as fast as Je- sus Christ, the delegate • of God, sovvs the seeds of virtue and righteousness amongst men, his equally potent enemy, the Devil, ROWS the seeds of vice and wickedness ; that God himself cannot cause the wicked to be rooted out of the world, without destroying the righteous with them ; that, therefore, the good and bad will always remain blended to- gether amongst men, whilst the world lasts ; but that, at the end of the world, the angels will separate them, and the wicked will be thrown into hell-fire ; but the righteous will be received with honour into the kingdom of God. By the writer's giving that appellation to the future existence of the virtuous, in a state of happiness and immortality in hea- ven, it is manifest that, whoever he was, he did not understand our Saviour's meaning iu that expression, so frequently used by him, and so peculiar to his Gospel ; for, besides jsr 4 200 THE DISSONANCE ©F that no other writer of the New Testament uses it in that sense, the obvious meanins; of the second petition of the Lord*s Prayer, and of all the prophecies of both Testaments, ref- lating to the Messiah or Christ, makes it re- fer merely to the state of human affaii-s in the present world, and not to that future state which is to succeed the general resurrection : -and, instead of teaching us, like this parable, that sin and wickedness will continue amongst men to the end of this world, all the other scriptures assure us, that the very purpose of the mission of Christ, and the preaching his Gospel, is to eradicate, and put an end to, the growth of these tares of vice and iniquity ; and that the reformed state of mankind in the present world, under the universal influ- ence of the righteousness and moral virtue of the Gospel, is what is peculiarly denominated the khigdom of God, or of his Christ. Who then can believe that an Apostle of Jesus Christ could either be so ignorant of the great end and design of the Gospel, or so culpa- bly daring as to put into the mouth of our blessed Saviolir a doctrine so absurdly false and impioiL/^ as is taught us in this parable, and so diiectly contradictory to every idea THE 'evangelists. 001 ^iverrus of the new covenant of the Messiah by all the other sacred writers, whether Jew* or Christians ? The two prophetic parables or similitudes introduced at verses 31 and 33, are tran- scribed evidently from Luke ; so that there is nothing w^orthy of remark in them, except that the author, from his own misconceived idea, that what Luke calls the kingdom ofGody means the future state of the virtuous in hea- ven, has, in both these cases, changed it for the kingdom of heaven, as he has done in most instances throughout his book, though he is the only writer who has made that alteration of the phrase. In the two next parables, verses 44, 45, and 46, we have the same idea held out to us of the kingdom of heaven, as meaning a future state of happiness ; only in the latter, the author has been guilty of a similar sole- cism to that observed in the parable of the wheat and tares ; and, instead of comparing the eternal happiness of heaven to the pearl of great value, as he does to the hidden trea- sure in the former, he here compares it to the trader, who purchases the pearl. In the last of these seven parables, v. 47, this writer gives us another idea of the king-- .2^ THE DISSONANCE OF (lorn of heaven^ according to which, it signifies, jieither the earthly npr th^ heav.enly 3tate of men, but the day of general judgment, and final distribution of punishments and rewards to the wicked and the just. So- little con- sistent is he with himself, as well as. so contra- dictory to the best attested scriptures ? IV. I]^' the fourteenth chapter, we have a very singular story told us, of the cauge of the .death of Jojm the Baptist ; but it is the pe- culiar fate of this historian,, to have almost a]I the uncommon facts he. has related, uncon- firme.d.by mj other v/rit^r. Luke, though he mentions John's being beheaded by He- rod, speaks of it in the person of Herod, as his own voluntary act, and gives not the least hint, that he was artfully drawn in to murder him, against his own inclination : and Jose- phus, who is equally silent about the daugh- ter of Herodias, pleasing Herod by her danc- ing, expressly assures us, that Herod, after he had iuiprisoued. him,, put him to death, be- causq he was jealous of the great influence his character. ^n.d preaching had upon the people, and because he thought it easier and more prudent, by his death .to. prevent any insurrection upon his account, than to inflict THE EXANGEJi-ISTS, i^^S tlic same puiiisjiment on liim, after a tumult might be begun. In chapter xv. verse il, we have the fol- lowing curious piecQ of instruction addressed to the multitude : " Not that which goeth "into the. mouth defileth a man ; but that ^' whjch GometUoutof the mouth, tliis defileth " a m^n :" and ^t v., 15. this is called a para- ble. Surely thisr writer did not consider what constitutes a. pe^rable,, when he called it by that name ; for here ^s no similitude nor alle- gorical allusion whatsoever, but a plain, di- dactic aphorism, so very perspicuous, that even the explanation of it, said to be given to the disciples, at the request of Peter, in the 17th and following verses, is not in any degree more intelligible, though much more absurd ; for, with what propriety can evil thoughts, murders, and th<^fts, be said to pro- cecdout of the mouth? Indeed, to say that ^ny thing which proceeds out of the mouth, or even out of the heart of man, defdeth him, is as absurd as it were; to say, tliat the turbid stream, w4iich flows from a polluted fountain, defileth the fountain. Accordino; to Luke, our Saviour, on the contrary, with much more reason and propriety, taught both his disciples and the multitude, c. yi. v. 45, that " a good. ':oi THE DISSONANCE OF '' imtYiy out of the good treasure of his heart, " bringeth forth that -which is good ; and an ^^ evil man, out of the evil treasure of his " heart, bringeth forth that which is evil : for *^ out of the abundance of the heart his mouth ^' speaketh/' We cannot wonder, however, that thi& writer should be found inconsistent with Luke, when he even palpably contra- dicts himself. We have seen above, that, in the sermon on the mount, he makes our Lord expressly declare, that he was not come to destroy one jot or one tittle of the Law of Moses. Yet that Law prohibited many un-^ clean meats, the eating of which certainly defiled any member of that covenant: to teach, therefore, that nothing which a man eat defiled him, was at once to destroy a very considerable part of that Lavv, for the observ- ance of which, Peter himself, notwithstanding this pretended early instruction to the con- trary, was zealous, long after his Master's ascension, as appears from his vision in the matter of Cornelius, and of which every Jew, to this day, is particularly tenacious. The author, chapter 18, has introduced another parable of his own composition, the obvious scope of which is an exceeding good one, viz. the enforcing the Christian doctrine THE EVANGELISTS. 20^ of mutual forgiveness : but he has been very far from attaining that happy propriety of figurative expression and character, which so strikingly distinguishes all the parables of our Saviour recorded by Luke. It begins with a repetition of his former solecism, the likening the kingdom to the king ; and here the king' dom of heavcfiy instead of meaning what the Ic'mgdom of God always means in Luke, has a new signification, different even from any which he himself has before assigned to it ; for it represents the government of the divine providence over the affairs of men : but in his endeavours to inculcate the necessity of the duty he intended to teach, he has entirely Jost sight of justice and honour, in the con* duct of his parabolic king. Had he repre- sented him, as the Lord's Prayer represents the Almighty to us, forgiving his offending subject, on condition that he forgave his fei^ low subjects, the conclusion of the parable had been consistent both with propriety and equity ; but after an absolute, unconditional forgiveness onoe granted, to recant that par- don, and enforce the payment of his debt i)y the severest penalties, because the man did not shew similar mercy to his own debtor, is downright tyranny and injustice. Let us sup- eo6 tfiE^ DISSONANCE* OF pose, that at ^ubj^dt had oti sbine occasion aim^ a stroke with his sWord M- an earthly sovereign, arid that^ ttith iincoifAiriofi magna- nimity and mercy; moved by his sitbmfissidn and apparent penitenecytHe • sovereign had granted him a full and fVeepatdo^ ; and that, on his return from the palace, he received a blo\V himself from one of his fellow subjects, against whom he immediately instititted a prosecution in the courts of justice, that the offender migto be legally punished for the assault ; in such ih case,: could th<& sovereign, with any shadow of equity or honour, breaH his; own word, awd cau^e the man m be ap-^ prehended, tried and executed for that high treason, which he. had already pardoned ? Yet such and so unjustifiable is tlie conduct attributed to the king in thia parable ! In chap* xix. V. 12, the author, very inad- vertently, puts into the moiith of our Saviour an expression, which plainly betrays the ago in w^hich this spurious Gospel was written, and the particular sect of apostate Christians, which he himself favoured ; for in reply to a remark of the disciples, upon a pretended condemnation of the divorces allowed by the Mosaic Law, our Lord is made to say, that " there are some eunuchs, which were so born THE EVANGELISTS. tOr ** from their ulother s womb ; and there arc " some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs ** of men ; and there be eunuchs, which hacc " made themselves eunuchs, /or tjie kingelom of " heaveiis sake" Now the prophetic marks of the predicted antichvustian apostasy given us by Paul, 1 Tim. c. iv. 2 and 3, are first, that its authors would speak Iks in hypocr'mi^ hav'mg a seared conscience (a character, as fkr as I am able to judge, strongly and strik- ingly exemplified in this writer); and secondly, that they would forbid marTiage^\ and. abstain from meat& :• in conformiity to the last distin- guishing character of this early a^pos^tasy, this author, as 1 have before observed, ifi contrar diction, not only to what Luke, but to what he himself elsewl'iere relates, as our Saviour'^* doctrine, makes him give directions for faist- ing; and, on another occasion, to ;§ayj that even the miira^ulous power of God, in curium; some kind of Demoniacs, couki not be effi- caciously exerted " without prayer andy^6'^- ^' ing,'' on the part of the Ahiiighty s agent ; and here he clearly discovers to us thc^ second of these prophetic marks, pre-noticed by Paul, by making our Saviour approve of.a^ determined^ unnatural abstinence from ma^-- riage, for the kingdom of heavens sake. These eu8 TIi£ DISSONAKCE OF were the petuliar doctrines of the Encfra-* tites or Contineutes, a sect which appeared very early in the second century^ a-iid amongst whom it is not improbable, that tlie same madness of superstitious enthusiasm, which soon after led men into hermitages, monaste- ries, and even to stand for a great length of time in ^n erect posture on the top of a pillar, liiight have produced some instances of the unnatural self-violence the author speaks of, not long after the rise of that s^ct, the very allusion to which convicts him of being a wri- ter later than those instances, that is, not ear- lier than near the middle of the second cen- tury; but it is absolutely impossible that in our Saviour's time, almost as soon as the New Covenant of the kingdom of God was begun to be preached, and even before his disciples comprehended its nature and intent, any men could have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of it. In the latter half of the second, and within the third century, indeed, such numerous instances occurred in consequence of the approbation of our Saviour himself, supposed to be given in this spurious Gospel, which had been received as the Apostle Matthew's, that early in the fourth century, the first Council of Nice, in conformity to THE EVANGELISTS. 200 the Mosaic Law* which forbad any Man, that had a blemish or defect, from performing the office of a priest, decreed that no man, who had castrated himself, should be admit- ted into, or retained in any clerical office : though the same Council evinced their at- tachment to the principles and doctrines of the Encratites, by decreeing, at the same time, that no man of the clerical order should be allowed to marry. It should be observed also, that in the introduction to this curious discourse, the writer again betrays the gross- est ignorance of the geography of the coun- try ; for he says, it passed when our Saviour *' leaving Galilee, came into the coasts of ** Judea beyond Jordaii ;' though the Jordan was the eastern boundary of both the Jewish and Roman province of Judea, and conse* quently no part of it was beyond the Jordan. V. The twentieth chapter begins with ano- ther parable peculiar to this author, who, with his usual incongruity of figurative lan- guage, hei-e resembles the kingdom of heaven to an householder hiring labourers into his vineyard, at different hours of the day, and in the evening, paying those who were hired » Lev. xxi. ir— 24. O m THE DISSONANCE OF i^arly in the morning, the stipulated, custom- ary price of their day's labour, and generously giving the very same sum to all those who were hired later, or even to such as had worked only a single hour. But if, by work- ing in the vineyard, is meant men s perform- ing the moral duties of the Gospel ; and by their payment in the evening, is to be under- stood, the rewards of that future life, which God has promised to all faithful and true Christians ; there is not the least resemblance of any kind between the circumstances of the Gospel Covenant and those of the bar- gain made with the labourers in the parable : for ever since the Gospel has been preached to the world, wheresoever it is known, the labourers in the Christian vineyard are in- vited all together to enter into it ; and the same covenanted terms are proposed to all, without any partial choice or predilection, viz. an eternal life of happiness in heaven. Now in this parable, though the labourers, who had wrought the entire day, having re- ceived the bare payment they had earned, had certainly no right to complain of injus- tice in the householder, nor to controul his generosity towards the others, in giving them more than they had earned ; yet surely they THE EVANGELISTS. 211 must feel tlie great difference between his mere justice to themselves, and his extraordi- nary liberality to those who had wrought but one hour; and we cannot wonder that they murmured at so seemingly unreasonable a preference and partiality, in the distribution of his bounty. But the eternity of happiness, promised us in the Gospel, is so transcendent a recompense that, in comparison of it, the difference between the longest and the short- est life of man becomes perfectly evanescent ; we are all, therefore, taught to consider our- selves as unprofitable^ that is, unmeriting ser- vants, who, in constantly doing our utmost, can barely do our duty : and, instead of finding cause to murmur, the best of men must see reason for endless gratitude to the Deity, for the Gospel promises of such an infinite and undeserved portion of his be- neficence. The beginning of the twenty-first chapter contains the history of our Lord's entry into Jerusalem, amidst the hosannas of the peo- ple, as predicted by the prophet Zechariah, " meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, " the foal of an ass ;" but this writer was so ignorant of the usual pleonasm and redun- dancy of the Hebrew idiom, that, misunder- o 2 212 THE DISSONANCE OF standing the prophet, who only means to say, that the promised king would come riding on an ass, and that the ass he should ride on, would be a young one, or an ass's colt, he supposes him to predict his riding upon two asses ; and therefore, to shew that the pro- phecy was more literally accomplished than Luke/s history had shewn it to be, he informs us, our Lord sent two of his disciples to fetch an ass and a colt with her : that " they " brought the ass and the colt, and put on " them their clothes, and they set him upon '" them" In v/hat position either the writer himself, or those who, for so many centuries, have believed him to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ, conceived our Saviour to have been seated on two animals at a time, I pretend not to determine ; but surely, a more glaring instance of the gross ignorance of the one, re- specting the Jewish prophecies, and of the extreme credulit3^ of the others, need not be produced ! ! At the twenty-eighth verse of this chapter, there is a kind of an attempt at another pa- rable ; but whether working in the vineyard means becoming Christians, or living righte- ously under any religious institution ; why publicans and harlots are styled the eldest THE EVANGELISTS ai^ son of the master of the vineyard, and the chief priests and elders of the Jews, his younger son ; whether the repentance and righteousness preached by John the Baptist, or the Gospel of Christ, be here meant by the kingdom of God ; and upon what autho- rity, harlots are mentioned as particularly flocking to John's baptism ; does not appear from the parable itself, at least, it is not in my power to discover. The following parable, verse 33, with some trifling alterations in the expression, is taken entirely from Luke, and is very perspicuous and intelligible ; but, towards the close of it, Luke represents our Saviour, as asking, " what, therefore, shall the Lord of the vine- " yard do unto them?" and supplying the an- swer himself in these words, ** He shall come '' and destroy these husbandmen, and shall " give the vineyard to others :" whereas, this writer tells us, the chief Priests and Pharisees answered his question, in words nearl}' to the same purpose, in direct contradiction to Luke, who assures us, they were so far from de- nouncing such a judgment against them- selves, that, when they heard our Saviour ut- ter it, they exclaimed, God forbid ! 3 f!14 THE DISSONANCE OF The twenty-second chapter begins with another remarkable parable, the idea of which is evidently borrowed from one of Luke's ; but the time, place, language, circumstances, and general scope of the whole, are so altered, that it may, with reason, pass for the author's own. In Luke, c. 14, the parable is merely prophetic of the preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles, in consequence of the chief per- sons of the Jewish nation refusing to receive it, from an interested attachment to, what they thought, their temporal welfare, an event which took place before the destruction of Jerusalem; and, therefore, the poor and lowxr classes of the Jews, whereof our Lord's first disciples mostly consisted, are repre- sented by the indigent and distressed fre- quenters of the streets and lanes of tlie Jewish, city, and the Gentiles, by those who were found about the highways and hedges : but this author, who, I have no doubt, wrote Ions: after the destruction of Jerusalem, makes the invitation of the Gentiles, to accept the Gospel Covenant, posterior to that calamity. The parable, therefore, in the first seven verses, refers only to tlie preaching the New Covenant to the Jews ; describes their cruel THE EVANGELISTS. »il5 persecution of the Apostles and the first preachers of the Gospel, and the vengeance inflicted on them by heaven, in the utter ruin of their city and nation ; after which, the messengers of the Gospel are ordered to go and preach it to the Gentiles. The manner, however, in which that is done in the parable, shews that the writer did not live in the age of Matthew, but at a time, when Christianity was, with great numbers, a mere external pro- fession, and the state of the Church so cor- rupt, that the majority of its members were bad men ; for he tells us, the king's ser- vants furnished the wedding with guests, by collecting together " as many as they found, " both bad mid good'* This is a pretty accu- rate description of the state of professed Christianity, as it is at present, and as I am well convinced it was in the age of this writer, and has been ever since ; but nothing can be more unlike the state of the true Church of Christ, as it was founded by Mat- thew and the other Apostles ; and as, where it subsists at all, it must for ever continue to be : for the Apostles and the first preachers of the Gospel were so far from admitting bad men into the Christian society, th^-jt Paul stric^y enjoins the Gentile converts, 1 Cor. o 4 J 16 THE DISSONANCE OF c. V. V. 11, not to suffer any man, who was guilty of any of the vices prohibited in the Gospel, to remain a member of their commu- nity, nor to associate, nor even so much a? to eat, with him. In the conclusion of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, the author informs us, as the reason of the mas- ter's partiality, that though, under the Gos- pel Covenant, " many are called, yet few *' are chosen ;" and he repeats the same words at the end of this parable also ; for, since he considered all the professed christi- ans of his own time to be called, and was sensible that but few of them, in comparison of the whole number, were really virtuous, good men ; and ignorantly supposed, that such would be the state of the Christian reli- gion to the end of the world ; it was natural for him to conclude, that those, whom God would finally approve at the day of judgment, would be very few indeed. But had he been an Apostle of Jesus Christ, or had he under- stood the Gospel meaning of the kwgdoni of God, or the sense of the old prophecies, re- specting the state of the world under the New Covenant of the Messiah, he would have known^ that no immoral, bad man could be a member of the true Church of Christ, THE EVANGELISTS. «ir M hatever his profession might be ; and that, therefore, the whole congregation of faith- ful Christians are denominated the chosen or elect of God; and, instead of their being found to be few at the day of general judgment and retribution, he would have known also, that the very end and design of the religion of Jesus Christ, is to bless all the families of the earthy v/ith the happy effects of its moral in- fluence in the present life; and that, Avhea the marriage of the king's son really takes place, righteousness will overspread the earth, as completely as the waters cover the sea. With respect to the guest, who had not on a wedding garment^ whatever the author meant by that figurative expression, though the man, it seems, had nothing to say for himself, one cannot help pitying him: be- cause, from the circumstances of the para- ble, he appears to have been, in a manner, pressed to attend at the marriage feast ; and, if any particular robe was necessary, since the king's servants must see that he had none, they ought either to have supplied him with one, or not to have invited him at all : and it seems rather hard, that, in conse- quence of their inattention or neglect, the unhappy wretch should be bound hand and !?J8 THE DISSONANCE OF foof^ and thrown into outer darlmess, there to remain weeping and gnashing his teeth. VI. At the close of the twenty- third chap- ter, we meet with a very remarkable instance of this writer's ignorance of, and astonishing inattention to, the meaning of Luke's history, though he has made so free and copious an use of it in patching up his own. The reader will recollect, that, in the tliirteenth chapter of Luke, our Saviour is represented, whilst he was yet in Galilee, as breaking out into a hfeautiful, pathetic ejaculation, upon the fore- sight of his own death, ,and the consequent destruction of the city of Jerusalem ; and, though he was urged to hasten out of Herod's jurisdiction, saying, he should still stay a few days longer in Galilee, and predicting that the people of Jerusalem should not see him, till they were prepared to receive him with exclamations of *' Blessed is he that cometh *• in the name of the Lord ;'' a prediction which, we have seen, was hterally fulfilled, at his entering Jerusalem upon a young ass, as the prophet Zechariah had foretold. But this writer having already, in his own ex- traordinary manner, related the accomplish- nient of that prophecy, in the twenty -first THE EVANGELISTS. 219 chapter, here, when our Lord is actually teaching at Jeiusaleni, in the temple, not only makes him utter the same tender apos- trophe to that city, but makes him also add the same prediction of the people's hosannas, at his entry into Jerusalem, after it had been fulfilled, " For I say unto you, ye shall not " see me henceforth^ till ye shall say. Blessed " is he that cometh in the name of the Lord/' What meaning the writer could intend to con- vey by these words, I cannot imagine ; be- cause such a prediction, given at the date which he has assigned to it, even according to his own history, was not completed, and was, therefore, absolutely false : for, in the very next chapter, he informs us, that, as soon as our Saviour had so said, he left the temple, and went out of the city, to the Mount of Olives, fj'om thence to Bethany, where he was a guest to Simon the Leper; and though he returned again to Jerusalem to eat the Passover, and was seen by the whole city, during his examination before the council, and before Pontius Pilate, and at his cruci- fixion, yet no such circumstance, as is here predicted, is so much as said to have taken place. no THE DISSONANCE OF The twenty-fifth chapter contains two more parables, the first entirely this autlK)r*s, in which the kingdom of heaven is compared to ten virgins^ half of them prudent, and careful to be always prepared for the expected com- ing of the bridegroom ; and the other half improvident, and unprepared for his sudden appearance. Here again we have a just re- presentation of the state of mankind in gene- ral, under every other system of religion ; but not at all suited to the circumstances, that are predicted of the world under the Gospel Covenant, when it is become the kingdom of God. This parable, therefore, is another proof that the writer^either did not comprehend, or, at least, did not believe, the universal, moral reformation of that prophetic state of man in the present life ; and, consequently, that he was not an Apostle of Jesus Christ. The next is the parable of the talents, which is evidently an imitation, though a very aukward and faulty one, of Luke's pa- rable of the ten pounds. In the latter, our Saviour is represented as distributing the ad- vantages of light and knowledge displayed in his Gospel, in the same equal proportion, to all his followers of every rank and. degree, a^ THE EVANGELISTS. 221 is strictly the case ; because his precepts and religious instructions are equally intelligible to all ; but, since the natural powers and abi- lities of men are very different, his servants are described, as making different degrees of im- provement of those equal advantages, except one, who, corresponding to those persons, who, having been instructed in the religion of Jesus Christ reject it, as the unwarranted imposture of an artful, unjust man, refused to make any use of them at all.* The pre- tended Matthew, on the contrary, makes him distribute his talents in the most partial, un- equal manner — one only to one of his fol- lowers, twice as many to another, and fiv^e times as many to a third, as he himself ex- presses it, " to every man according to Ms *' abilities ;' as if the religious instruction of * It should be remarked, that the word napkin, used in this ser- vant's answer, in our copies of Luke's Gospel, is a Latin word, written in Greek characters j but that it cannot be the word origi- nally used by Luke himself, is manifest from the obvious sense of the sentence, and the participle annexed to the substantive napkin, which is not wrapped or tied up, but laid up j for the servant means to tell his Lord, that he has Icept tlie pound deposited in a place of security, that he might be sure of receiving his own, when he re- turned, though nothing more j accordingly, in this parable attri- buted to Matthew, he is said to have concealed the money under ground } but a jiapkin is no place of security to lay up money in ; and therefore, the deficiency of the original word in the earliest co- pies of Luke, has undoubtedly been capriciously supplied, by some unskilful copies t of the second century, ^22 THE DISSONANCE OF that Gospel, so peculiarly preached to the poorest and most illiterate, was not equally intelligible to men of all capacities and degrees. The latter part of this chapter is a descrip- tion of the day of judgment, and expressly teaches, not only that the righteous will then be rewarded with eternal life in heaven, but also, that the wicked will suffer everlasting punishment. There is such palpable injus- tice ascribed to the righteous Lord of heaven and earth, by all those who represent him as inflicting infinite punishment for the definite, momentary oflFences of finite creatures, that such a doctrine would make me strongly sus- pect the authenticity of any scripture in which I found it ; and it is with great satis- faction I can remark, that this doctrine is peculiar to this spurious Efvangelical history, and as repugnant to the positive declaration of the other scriptures of the New Testament, as it is to strict justice arid the voice of rea- son ; for they assure us, that, not an endless life of torment, bat utter destruction and a second death await* the unreformed wicked. The history of our Saviour's eating the Paschal lamb with his Apostles, and of the in- * See 2 Thess. i. Q.—Apoc. xx. Q. THE EVANGELISTS. 2SS stitution of the Lord's supper, is contained in the twenty-sixth chapter; but attended with so many different and contradictory cir- cumstances, that it is absolutely irreconcila- ble to Luke's history of the same things. For Luke informs us, that, according to the uni- versal practice of the Jews in celebrating the Passover, our Lord began w ith taking a cup of wine, which, after thanking God for the mercies recorded in that festival, he handed round to the Apostles, with an apology for his own non-observance of the custom of drinking of it first himself, as every master of a family did on the same occasion ; that next, as was customary also, he took a loaf of bread, and, having oflfered up the usual thanksgiving to God, brake the bread, and distributed of it to each of them, bidding them consider that bread as an emblem of his body, which was given for them, and to observe a similar ceremony amongst them- selves in remembrance of him ; that he then partook with them of the Paschal supper ; and that, after supper, he distributed to them in the same manner, the grace-cup, with which that festive meal was always closed, bidding them to consider the wine also as an emblem of his blood, which w^as about to be 224 THE DISSONANCE OF shed, to ratify the New Covenant, which God now made with them ; that, nnmedi- ately after, as if it were by way of contrast to that affectionate, grateful remembrance of him, which he had just enjoined them prac- tically to retain, he exclaimed, *' But, be- " hold, the hand of him that betrayeth me, " is with me on the table :" that so extraordi- nary a declaration set them to enquire amongst themselves^ which of them could be meant : as the annunciation of his approaching death made them contend, which of them should be accounted their chieftain after that event ; that, to put an end to a strife so unbecoming the spirit of his unassuming religion, he told them, no one of his disciples, as such, should aiTogate a superiority over his Christian brethren ; and that they were to expect no other authority or pre-eminence, besides what they were destined to partake of, in some degree with himself, after their death, at the final, complete establishment of his kingdom, or the kingdom of God, upon earth : but, according to Luke, he did not interpose one word to settle their doubts about the per- son of the traitor. The writer, called Mat- thew, on the contrary, who, instead of being a Jew himself, appears to have been very tHE EVANGELISTS. . 325: imperfectly acquainted with either the pro- phecies or customs of the Jews, takes not the least notice of the cup preceding the supper, and in telling us that tlie apology for his own not drinking of the wine, was made by Jesus at the grace-cup, when he ordained the ce- remony of the Lord's supper, he really be- trays his own ignorance, by teaching us tliat lie did not begin the feast, as was customary, with the cup ; for if he didjand the apology for his not drinking of it himself was given then, there could be no propriety in his repeating it so soon after, at the grace-cup ; especially when we consider, that the latter was pro- posed to them, as a commencement of that commemorative rite of which he was to be the object, not the partaker: whereas, the' participation of the cup before the supper was the common form of beginning the Pas- chal feast, Avliich, as a Jew, concerned him as much as his disciples. In contradiction also to Luke, who tells us, that what was said of the traitor, was said after the supper was • ended, and the commemorative observance instituted — and plainly intimates, that he did not explain whom he meant — this writer informs us, that it passed whilst they were eating the supper, and, what is singularly un- t26 THE DISSONANCE OF accountable, even before the breaking an(J distributing the unleavened bread ; and says, that every one of the Apostles asked him, whether it was he, and upon Judas's asking him the same question, he declared before them all, that he was the person ; yet he im- mediately proceeded to institute, what we call, the Lord's supper, and enjoined it upon Judas equally with the rest. One of these two histories, therefore, must be false; and which it is, another very remarkable differ- ence, concerning the expi'ess terms, in which that part of the Lord's supper that regards the wine, was instituted, will perhaps help us to determine ; for this autlipr tells us, our Lord s words were, " This is my blood of 'Vtlie New Covenant, which is shed for many, '^for the remission of sins;' words which have proved the source of that fatal inefficacy of the moral influence of the Gospel, occa- sioned by representing the death of Jesus as a propitiatory sacrifice, and a satisfactory atonement for the sins of the whole world ; whereas, Luke mentions nothing of the re- mission of sins; but says, his words were, ^^ This cup is the New Covenant in my ^^ blood, which is shed for you." And that Luke s account is tlie true one, we have the 'The evangelists. 5^7 most convincing evidence from Panl, who, 1 Cor. c. xi. V* 25, assures us, that he re*- ceived the account of this institution from our blessed Saviour himself; and that his words were, as Luke has recorded them, " This cup is the New Covenant in my "blood,'' without one syllable of the remmiOTf, VII, From hence, to the conclusion of this Gospel, the differences and contradic- tions, between this writer and Luke, are so numerous and so great, that it appears asto* nishing, notwithstanding Paul's early predic- tion to the Thessalonians, that so it would be, that the inhabitants of Christendom, of every intellectual degree, should, for so many centuries, have received, for the word of truth itself, the most gross and palpable falsehood, which^ of two contradictory histories, one of them must certainly be. But it is well worth our while tp consider, with all our attention, that Paul tells us, that, even under the influ- ence of this predicted, strong delusion^ men Avould stand condemned in the sight of God ; because the real, though unavowed reason of their rejecting truth for fables and fictitious falsehood, has been their taking pleasure in p 2 52* THE DISSONANCE OF unrighteousness. Now that the doctrine of Christ's death being a full satisfaction to the divine justice, for all the sins and unrighteous- ness of men, which is founded principally upon this fabulous and spurious Gospel called Matthew s, is particularly alluded to, by the Christian prophet, in this prediction, I have no doubt : and that this hath always been the grand inducement, with the members of the orthodox Church of Constantine, next to the compulsion and temporal allurements of the civil magistrate, to attach them to its fabu- lous, idolatrous superstition, is evident from the testimony even of her present most zea- lous champions, bishops, and other grave di- vines, who, to disparage those modern preachers of the Gospel, (who, ceasing to blaspheme the Almighty Creator of the uni- verse, by a communication of his Godhead and divine honours to a mortal man, have reject(^d also this doctrine of an universal asylum for sin and wickedness) tell us, that the religion which they preach is an uncom- jortable religion. Uncomfortable ! Are these right reverend and reverend personages then unacquainted with the heart-felt comfort of a life duly regulated by the moral precepts of tlie Gospel of Christ ? Are the conscious expe- THE EVANGELISTS. 92* rience, except in very extraordinary cases, of the continual blessing of God in this life, and the certainty of enjoying after deeith, im- mortality and happiness in a future life, no comforts ? Or, are these to be accounted of no value, unless the orthodox doctrine of atonement afford men the additional comfort of being able, securely to lead lives incon- sistent with Christian righteousness, and to attain the rewards of the next life, through the unwarrantable gratifications of their pas- sions and sensual appetites in this? Such divines, howsoever eminent in worldly dig- nity or learning, may teach what they please ; but they, and their flocks too, will find, at last, that under the Christian, as well as the Mosaic Covenant, there is no comfort ^ saith Gody to the imrighieous. Luke informs us, that, after the supper was ended, a very serious, important conver- sation took place, between our Saviour and his Apostles, upon several subjects suited to the occasion, in the course of which he pre- dicted Peters thrice denying that he knew, him ; and that, after this, he went ovit of Je- rusalem, to his lodging at the Mount of Olives, as usual. This writer, on the cqur. trary, informs us, that " when they had sung p 3 250 THE DISSONANCE OF ^ an. hymn/' after supper, " they went out " into the Mount of Ohves," and that there he predicted not only Peter^s denial of him, but that all his Apostles should that night he offended because of him ; of the verification of which there is not the smallest degree of evi- dence. He makes our Lord declare also, that, after he is risen, he will go before them into Galilee^ though Luke assures us, that af- ter his resurrection, he appeared to them all at Jerusalem; that he there daily conversed with them till his ascension; that, by his ex- press command, tiiey continued at Jerusa- lem, from the Passover to the feast of Pente- cost : and that the Apostles abode there long after. In Luke too, our Lord is represented, as from his station and character we might Ex- pect him to be, perfectly collected and undis- turbed, (for the two verses, recording his agony and the vision of an angel strengthen- ing him, are known to be an interpolation, because they are not found in the oldest and best copies of Luke) introducing into his nightly devotions, a singfe petition to God, to remove that cup from him, if it was his will'; but immediately rcsigning himself, v^^ith the liiost calm and dutiful submission, ■ to THE EVANGELISTS. 281 the accomplisliment of the divine will^ in pre- ference to his own incUnation. The writer before us, on the contrary, represents him as greatly afflicted, and exceedmg sorrowful, at the approach of his expected death, soUcit* ing heaven with prayers, repeated three dif- ferent times, that, if possible, thatxup might pass from him; and, after the offering up his reiterated prayers, so very confused and discomposed, as to address his sleepy Apos- tles in the following incoherent, irrational language : " Sleep on now and take your rest, ^^ behold the hour is at hand, and the son of " man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. " Rise, let ns be going; behold he is at hand " that doth betray me/' Luke tells us, as is most probable, that those who apprehended our Lord detained him all night in custody in the hall of the High Priest's palace ; and that Peter sat down ,ia the hall amongst them ; that after his fear had thrice induced him, simply to deny his ac- quaintance, and connexion with Jesus, upon the cock's crowing, our Lord turned and looked upon him, which, making him imme- diately recollect what had before passed upon that subject, affected him so much that he JiR^as ft)i;ced to go out, in order to give the na- V 4 232 THE DISSONANCE OF turai vent to his sorrow ; that " as soon as it *' zms day, the elders of the people, and the " chief priests, and the scribes, came together, " and led him into their council ;" that, tiiere he answered every question put to him, as he did afterwards before Pontius Pilate, to whom they carried him, as soon as they had drawn from him the ground of their accusation of him to the Romans, a declaration that he was the object of the prophecies respecting the Christy : or anointed king of the Jewish na^ tion, which they strove to construe into a re- bellion against Coesar; and the words in which he made that declaration, Luke says, were, " from this time forth" (not hereafter, as our translation hath it) ^' shall the son of " man sit on the right hand of the pov/er of " God ;'' intimating, as he did on several other occasions, that it was not till after his death that he should be invested with the glorious character of the Ciirist. The pretended Matthew, on the other hand, informs us, that the apprchenders of our Lord led him directly ^* to Caiaphas the High Priest, where," at that late hour of the night, the whole Jewish council " was assembled" to receive witnesses Against iiim, that they might " put him to ^' death/' • 'I'hat here, as abo afterwards be^ THE EVANGELISTS. fiSS fore Pilate, he persisted in an indecent, sul- len silence, till the High Priest adjured him, by the living God^ to say, whether he was the predicted Christ, or not; that then he ac- knowledged he was, and added, " neverthe- *' less, from this time forth, shall ye see the son " of man sitting on the right hand of power, ^* and coming in the clouds of heaven :" a pre- -diction absohitely false, because the Jewish nation, from that time to this, have never ^een any such tiling, but still remain incredu- lous to his being the proniised Christ. Upon his speaking thus, however, the author makes the High Priest rend his clothes, through in- dignation at the blmphemy of the speech, which J believe no man else can discover in it ; and tells us, the members of the council, after pronouncing him guilty of death, amused themselves till morning, in putting on him all sorts of contemptuous, ludicrous, and wanton indignities and abuse ; and that then, having consulted together in what manner he should be put to death, "they bound him, and led *' him away, and delivered him to Pontius ^' Pilate the Governor ;" that, in the mean while, Peter was not admitted into the coun- cil chamber, as we may easily suppose, but as " he sat without in the palace/' where it «84 THE DISSONANCE OF was^ impossible for our Lord to look upon Jiiniy as Luke assures us he did, three dif- ferent persons successively challenged him as? l>eing a follower of Je&us ; and that he was «ot contented with barely denying any know- ledge af his master, but accompanied his de- nial with oaths and imprecations, a& unwor- thy the character of one chosen to be an Apostle, as they are contradictory to the^ ac- coufi^t given us by Luke. In the beginning of the twenty-seventh trhapter, the author informs us, that when Judas saw that the Jewish council had con- demned our Lord to die, (though he mu^t have known from the first, when he cove- nanted with them to betray him into their hands, that they could have no other intent,) he repented, brought again the price of his treachery, threw the money down in the tem- ple, and went and hanged himself'^ and that the priests did not put the money info the treasury of the temple, because it was the price of blood ; but purchased with it the potters field, to bury strangers in, which, says the author^ "was called the field of blood -• unto this day;' an expression denoting that a long interval of time had elapsed between that event and 'the . da:te ^f his history, not THE EVANCaiSTS: fiS^ ciglit or nine years only, the period at which Mattl)ew is said to have written. Hereby^ he tells us, they accomplished a prophecy of Jeremiah; but, like the prophecy of the Messiah's being called a Nazarene, quoted ia the second chapter, it is no where to be found in Jeremiah, tior in the writings of any other prophet of thi3 Old Testament. Luke, on the contrary, in the first chapter of the ^ Acts, assures us, that Judas, far from repent- ing and restoring the money he had received, having traiterously abandoned his apostleship, , that he might go to a place peculiarly his own, purchased some land with the reward of his iniquity; and that he \vas afterwards killed upon the land he had bought by the violence it by the other ma-r lefactor. ;;:: n- ;' In verse 46, &c. we read, that^, when he had hung three hours upon the cross, our Lord i exclaimed, "my God, my Qod, why 'Vhast thou forsaken me?" and, when he had exclaimed a second time, expired. Luke, on the contrary, is so far from; making him utter any thing that could lead the people to think, or that might appear as if he himself thought, he was in any sense forsaken by Al- mighty God, that he tells us, at the ninth hour, " he cried with a loud voice, and said, ". Father, into thy hands I commend my spir " x\tv, and having said thus, died," THE EVANGELISTS. aS# They both mention, that the vail of tije temple was rent: but this author alone in^ forms us of the earthquake that rent the rocks and opened the graves; and that many bo- dies of the dead saints arose, and, taking ad^ vantage of the aperture, " came out of the ''^ graves after his resurrection/' (what they did in the interval is not mentioned,) " and *^ went into the holy city, and appeared unto ^' many/' Surely this story is well worthy of those spurious legends of the beginning ol the second century, which^ Irenaeus tells u^^ were calculated to astonish the credulous and supei^titious! For who. can be meant bj tlie saints? That was an appellation commo^nlj given to the Christians in after times ; but at the time of our Lord s crucifixion it was ap-. plied to no particular set of people. And what became of these bodies of the saints after they came into tJiQ city ? Had they joined the society of. pur Lord's disciples, we should have heard of them in the Act^; but per- haps the author meant we shodd understand that, after just exhibiting so extraordinary aii appearance, they returned q^uietly unnoticed, every one to his own. narrow sepjUlchral cell^ and there let us kave them undisturbed* 040 THE DISSONANCE OF Luke informs us, that " when tlic Centu- " rion saw what was done" at our Saviour s expiration, he said, " certainly this w-as a " righteous man/' But this writer tells us, that he and those who were with him said, " truly this was the" (or rather a) " son of " God/' In what sense a Roman Centurion could use the latter expression, and which denomination it is most probable he should make use of, I submit to the reader's deter- mination. According to Luke, as soon as Jesus was dead, Joseph of Arimathea w^ent to Pilate, and begged his body; and hasted to bury it, because the sabbath, which began at sun-set, drew on; that his female disciples attended the burial, observed how his body was placed in the sepulchre, and returned and prepared spices and ointments to embalm it with, be- fore the sabbath commenced; and then rested the sabbath day, according to the command- ment. The pretended Matthew, however, tells us, that " Ziehen even was come" that is, when the sabbath was actually begun, Joseph went to beg the body, took it down, wrapped it in linen, and buried it; and that Mary Mag- dalene and the other Mary were sitting over l^tiE EVANGELISTS. 241 against the sepulchre. From the time this writer has thought fit to allot for the burial of our Saviour, it is evident that he was not only no Jew himself, but so ignorant of the customs of the Jews, that he did not know their day always began with the evening; or he could never have emplo^^ed Joseph in doing ^vhat no Jew would, nor dared to have done, after the commencenjent of the sab- bath. He takes no notice at all of tlie pre- paration made by the women to embalm the body ; for that would not have agreed with the sequel of his truly wonderful story ; but, to make up for that omission, he informs us of a circumstance, with which Luke's history shews us he was perfectly unacquainted : for he tells us, that " the next day that followed " the day of the preparation '—such is the peri- phrasis that he uses for the sabbath day ! It is well known, that amongst the Jews, it was customary to prepare and set out, in the af- ternoon of the Friday, all the food and neces- saries for every family, during the sabbath day, because they were forbid to light a fire, or to do an}^ the most trivial servile work, on that day, and therefore Friday was very properly called the day of preparation ; but it ap- pears to me next to impossible, that any Jew^ Q 3418 THE DISSONANCE OF or any other person who had been accustomed to keep the sabbath as a rehgious ordinance, should call the sabbath the day that followed the day of the preparation: yet this singular his- torian so denominates it, and goes on to in- form us, that the Chief Priests and Pharisees went to Pilate, to ask for a guard to be placed round the sepulchre till the third day, to pre- vent his disciples from stealing away his body, and then saying he was risen from the dead ; and that, after obtaining the Governor s per- mission, they went and secured the sepulchre^ by sealing the stone that was rolled against it, and setting a watch. Here it is wonder- ful, that the Jewish rulers should, in so public a manner, thus violate the precept for ob- serving the sabbath day ; more wonderful, that they should have so much better attended to and comprehended the meaning of our Lord's prediction of his rising to life again, than any of his own disciples did ; and most wonderful, that a Roman Proconsul should consent to let his troops keep watch round a tomb, for fear it should be thought that a dead man was come to life again. But though our author's history of these extraordi- nary facts is neither consistent with reason and probability, nor with any other history of the same event, it proceeds in pretty strict ccmformity to the manner in which it sets out ; for^ to convince xis still more fully that the author was totally ignorant of the mode of computing time, in use amongst the Jews, and habituated to that used by the Greeks and Romans, he reckons the sabbath to last till day-light on the Sunday moniing, and says, c. 28, that^ " in the end of the sabbath, as it ^ began to^ tlawn toward the first day of the *' week,'* the two Marys, before mentioned, came, not, as according to Luke, to embalm the body, for, with a guard round the sepul- chre, that must have been impracticable, but tx) see the sepulchre. Whilst they were there, the author tells us, there was another great earthquake, and an angel descended, rolled awav the stone, and sat upon it ; at whose sight, the soldiers trembled and were frighted to death ; but to prevent the like effect of his appearance upon the w^omen, he said unto them, " fear not i/e, for I know that ye seek ^^ Jesus who was crucified/' That the women, as well as the soldiers, w^ere present at the "descent of this- angel, appears, not only front there being nobody else, by whom these un^ common circumstances ccmld have been re- lated, but afeo by the pronoun personal ye, Q 9i4 THE DISSONANCE OF inserted in the original Greek, which in that language is never done, unless it be empha- tically to mark such a distinction or antithe- sis, as there was, on this occasion, between them and the Roman guard. Here, how- ever, the author is, inadvertently, inconsistent with himself, as well as with every other his- torian, agreeably to the vulgar proverb of our own country; and, forgetting that the sole intent of rolling away the stone, was to open a passage absolutely necessary for our Lord's body to come forth out of the sepul- chre, and that, if he had risen after the angel had rolled it away, both the women and the soldiers must have seen him rise, he makes the angel bid them look into the sepulchre to see, he was not there, and tell them, that he was already risen; that they should in- form his disciples of it ; and that he was going before them into Galilee^ where they should see him. In their way, the author adds, Jesus himself met the women, and said, " be "not afraid; go, tell my brethren to go into '' Galilee, and there shall they see me :'' that the eleven Apostles accordingly went into Galilee to an appointed mountain, and not only saw him there, but, contrary to what they ever did at any other time, either before or THE EVANGELISTS. 5245 after, they worshipped him, notwithstanding some of them were so incredulous, as not to believe even the testimony of their own senses. In the interim, whilst the women were going to the Apostles, the author tells us, " some of the watch," some strictly disciplined Roman soldiers, left their station, to bring an account of what had passed, not to the Go- vernor their General, nor to any other of their own officers, but to the Chief Priests of the Jews ; that they assembled a council of the Elders upon the occasion, and, after deliberating what was to be done, induced the soldiers, by large bribes, to run the risk of being put to death themselves, upon the highly improbable chance of the Jewish ru- lers having influence sufficient, with a Ro- man Proconsul, to prevail on him, to submit to the indelible infamy of neglecting the dis- cipline of the army under his command, to such a degree, as to suffer an entire guard of soldiers avowedly to sleep upon their station, ^vithout any notice being taken of it, and to say, that our Lord's disciples stole his body away, whilst they slept. This incredible story is another instance how necessary it is, that those, who do not adhere closely to the truth, should have extraordinary good memo- Q 3 2^6 THE r/lSSONANCE OF riesj.to enable them to keep dear of gross absurdities, or palpable contradictions, in jtbeir narrations ; for how were the tongues of these sokMers to be restrained, amongst the inquisitive inhabitants of a great city, at that time particularly crowded, on account of the Paschal feast, not only in their way to the Cliief Priests, but also during the whole time whilst^ the Priests assembled the council, and deliberated with the Elders what was to be done ? /And if that pait of the watch^ wiiQ, the author says, came to inform the Jew^, were .pioltroons enough, for the sake of a bribe, to undergo so shameful a disgrace to themselves, as well as to hazard the resent- ment of their General, how could they un- ^dertake that all their comrades, who re- mained at the sepulchre, would do the same ? And to what purpose could the Jewish Coun- cil bribe so?ii€, without a possibility of know- ing how the rest Qf the corps would act ? And, even supposing all these difficulties sur- moimted, and that the whole guard had agreed and persisted in Sciying, that " lus " jdificiplcs sto^e him away wlulst they slept," of what service could that be to the Jewish rulers, except to demonstrate the folly of jjiitjtij^' any guard at all?' For, if the guards THE EVANGELISTS. l(TJ5^ * S4f^ were asleep, they could be no evi^nce that his body was stolen away ; and it must be ]u»t as probable, tliat he might rise to life again whilst the watch was asleep, as it was if no watch had been set. Our author subjoins, " And this saying is commonly reported " amongst the Jews, until this day ;" another inadvertent slip, if he really meant to pass for Matthew, (of which, however, I must do him the justice to say, I see not the least proof;) for it evidently implies, that from these events to the time of the author, a long series of years had intervened : and, therefore, such an expression could not, at any time, have been used with propriety by Matthew, especially if he wrote his Gospel so early as is asserted. For my own part, from the number of La- tin words w^ritten in Greek characters, w^hich this book contains; from the authors evident ignorance of the customs, prophecies, and country of the Jews ; from the form of bap- tism enjoined at the conclusion ; from the Roman centurion being made to call our Sa- viour a Son of God, which words, in the mouth of a Pagan, could only mean, that he must be a Hero or Demigod, like Bacchus, Hercules, or^Escuiapius; and from the women and all the Apostles being represented as Q 4 :: 8 THE DISSONANCE OF worshipping their Master, without an}'' rea- son alleged, or even suggested, for tlieir idola'rj ; I am perfectly convinced, that this Gospel was not written earlier than near, the middle of the second century ; and that it is the patched-work composition of some con- vert from the Pagan schools. Whether my arguments may work the same conviction upon an}^ of my readers, is not for me to judge ; but I am confident, that whoever im- partially considers, that, according to Luke's histories, the Christians of the apostolic age did ' not baptize in the terms of the form here prescribed, but simply in the name of the Lord Jesus ; that his disciples were so far from knowing a watch was set round tlie se- pulchre, that the women came early on Sun- day morning to embalm the body; and were perplexed at finding the stone rolled away, and that the body was not in the sepulchre; that a vision of two angels, in human shape, informed them he Avas risen, and reminded them, that it was only what he had foretold them must come to pass, long before they came to Jerusalem ; that they gave them no orders to send the .Apostles into Galilee to see him ; on the contrary, that, though he did not appear to two of the women, as the pre- THE evangelists: ^4^ tended Matthew asserts, yet he appeared that same day to Peter, at Jerusalejn ; to two other disciples, as they went to Emmaus ; and, the succeeding night, to the whole con- gregation of the disciples, not in Galilee^ but at Jerusalem ; and that, by his express com- mand, the Apostles did not go into Galilee, but remained at Jerusalem till the feast of Pentecost; cannot rationally believe both these contradictory histories, and consequently he must be satisfied that one of them is grossly fabulous and false. VIII. In reviewing the miracles of Jesus recorded by this writer, we find most of them, like those of Luke, works of mercy and benevolence; only he relates more of them; and, with a view, no doubt, to aggrandize the miracle, it is observable that he frequentl}^ doubles the object or the malady to be healed, making two where Luke mentions but one ; or making the demoniac, that Luke tells us was dumb, both blind and dumb also. But there are a few of a very different kind re- lated by this author, of which Luke makes Bot the least mention; those are, c. xiv. our Saviour's walking on the water of the sea of Galilee, in the night time, to overtake his ^$9 THE DISSONANCE OF disciples, whom he had ''' constrained to get " into a ship, to go before him unto the other "side," though, as the ship was detained by -contrary winds in the midst of the sea, till he came to them, their embarking seems to have answered no end, except the display of his supernatural power in this singular miracle ; and his curin. all the ma*adies of the people of Gennesaret, by letting them only touch the hem of his garment; c, xvii. his paying tribute at Capernaum, by directing Peter to take the required piece of money out of a fish s mouthy where the miracle is rendered the more w^on- derful by the fish's being able to hold the money fast in its mouth till Peter took it out, though it was caught and pulled up with au hook and line; and c. xxi. the cursing the fig-tree because he found no fruit on it, w^herevvith to mitigate his hunger. Whether such miracles as these are suitable to the cha- racter of Jesus Christ ; and whether it be any disparagement to the Gospel according to Luke, that they are not to be found in it, I leave to the candid reader to determine. As to that most important mark, and to us the onlv convincing: evidence of the authen- ticityofany sacred scripture, the testimony of the prophecies recorded in it, w4ien com- THE EVANGELISTS. i^l pared with their corresponding events, I find bat one in this Gospel attributed to Matthew, which is not evidently lx)rrowed, and for the most part verbally copied from Luke; that is c xvi. V. 18 and 19, wiiere the author makes our Lord foretell, that" the gates of hell shall " not prevail against liis church;'' and that he will give to Peter the keys of the king- dom of heaven, and that whatsoever he shall hind .or loose on earth shall be bound or loosed in ^heaven. But w^hat is meant here fey the gates of hell, and by not prevailing ^against the church of Christ ? Does the first ^expression mean impious violence, or death jftiid destruction, or all together ? And does 4he last mean only, according to the literal -sense of the original Greek word, growing strong and powerful against it? or does it signify utterly destroying it, so as to prevent its being finally established in the world ? If the last only be all that is intended, it is not ^o intelligibly expressed, but predicts merely the same thing as the two prophetic parables of the mustard-seed and the leaven hid in three measures of meal ; but, in every other sense, it is a false prediction : for the violence and deadly persecution of Pagans and of the orthodox church, as other better authenti- ^52 THE DISSONANCE OF cated prophecies foretold they would do, have- prevailed so greatly against the true church of Christ, that a very small number of its members is any where to be found. And should any be inclined to think, as without doubt many do, that the orthodox church it- self is the true church of Christ, yet ask Asia, Africa, and the south-east of Europe, w]ie- ther Mahomedanism has not prevailed against her? And with respect to the latter part of the prediction, the very nature of the Gospel Covenant, as well as the whole history of Peter and the other Apostles, shews us, that neither he nor any of them had the powder of forgiving or retaining sins; and that neither the whole college of Apostles, nor even J^sus Christ himself, ever have been or will be able (if it were possible to suppose them willing) to admit one vicious, unreformed person into, nor to exclude one virtuous, benevolent man out of, the kingdom of lieaven. Indeed the whole conversation, of which this prophecy makes a part, is so exceedingly different from that which 1 Aike tells us our Saviour held on the same occasion, that it cannot be entitled to any degree of credit, except-with those, if airv such can be, who think fit rather to re- ject the Gospel of Luke. THE EVANGELISTS. 055 The twenty-fourth chapter is one entire long prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, and, as the author expresses it, the end of the worlds composed of two sepa- rate prophecies of that event recorded by Luke, with a few alterations and additions. From some of these, one is led to tliink, the author must have intended to allude to the final day of judgment; but since he has adopted the very words of Luke, that the ge- neration living in our Saviour's, time should not pass away till all those predictions were fulfilled, we must suppose him to mean only the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation, and the commence- ment of the end of the worlds as signifying the last dispensation of the New Covenant of tlie Gospel, by the actual abolition of the Old Covenant of Moses. But then one addition which he has made to these prophecies is ma- nifestly false; for he says, v. 14, "This Gos- " pel of the kingdom shall be preached in all " the world for a witness unto all nations, and *' then shall the end come:" yet the Gospel was so far from being preached to all the na- tions of the world, be tore the destruction of Jerusalem, that there are still many amongst whom it is utterly unknown. even at this day. 45* THE DISSONANCE or —At V. 9, he has directly contradicted Luke, at the time he was copying from him; for he tells us, that " then" (after the civil wars and great natural evils, which were to precede the destruction of Jerusalem,) " the Christians " should be persecuted, killed, and universally "hated;" all which our Lord, according to Luke, expressly said would come to pass, 6e- fore all these things: and the whole Christian history demonstrates that the fact was as he has stated the prediction. — There is also ano- ther remarkable difference between these two writers in stating this prophecy : Luke in- forms us, that our Lord told his disciples> plainly^ that they needed not apprehend the ruin of the Jewish nation, at the beginning of the insurrections and wars in Palestine, for it would be some years afterwards before that calamity would take place; but that Avhen they should see Jerusalem itself invested with armies, then the fatal period was arrived, and they should lose no time in saving themselves from the general ruin, by a speedy flight out of the devoted country; and there is every reason to believe, that the Christians actually profited by this plain and timely admonition : but this writer makes our Lord tell them to flee out of Judea, when they shall see the abonii' THE EVANGELISTS, £53 nation of desolation spoken of by Daniel stand in the holy place ; words to them absolutely unin- telligible without an explanation, and which must, therefore, have rendert d the prophetic warning entirely useless to them. And what could the author mea i by adding, v. 22, that, ^* except those days should be shortened, *' there should no flesh be saved ; but that for ^' the elect's sake those days should be shorten- *' ed ?" To what circumstances, in the destruc-^ tion of Jerusaleui and the ruin of the Jewish nation, can such a sentence refer ? CHAPTER V. GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. SECTION I. TT ET us next examine what internal evi- -^*-*^ dence of authenticity is to be found in the Gospel according to Mark ; and compare that also with the Evangelical history of Luke. This is the more necessary, because the author himself no where pretends to be Mark ; and nothing can be slighter or less satisfactory than the external testimony or historic evidence in its favour ; as every can- did inquirer will be convinced, who atten- tively peruses the collection of those testimo- nies prefixed to the best editions of this Gos- pel, the chief of which, respecting a revela- tion to Peter of Mark's having written it, &c. are manifestly fabulous. If we pursue the plan adopted with the two others, and begin by examining the style in which this history is composed, we shall THE EVANGELISTS. IL^X ^ ■■*. find it, with a very few exceptions, and no. greater alterations than modern liarmonists and paraphrasers make in these books every- day, compiled entirely of passages copied, of- ten literally, either from the Gospel called Matthew's, or Luke's. It is certain, therefore, that whoever the author was, he must have had both those Gospels before him, and con- sequently could not have written till after the former was published ; that is, if there be any force in the arguments already submitted to the reader, not sooner than the beginning of the second century. He too, like the writer called Matthew, uses several Latin words written in Greek characters, contrary to the custom of all ordinary writers in Greek, prior to the reign of Trajan. From these circum- stances^ it seems impossible to consider the unknown author of this Gospel, in any other light, than as the first person who attempted to harmonize the two contradictory Gospels of Matthew and Luke ; and, by extracting from each what he thought the most mate- rial passages, to compose of them one regular, consistent history of the public ministry of our Saviour. With this view, finding it ab- solutely impracticable to reconcile the two genealogies and accounts of the ^tivity and ^ftA THE DISSONANCE OF infancy of Jesus, like many other later com- mentators, when they find themselves unable to elucidate the text, he has entirely omitted those parts of the two histories ; and begins, where the original writing of Luke certamly began, with the preaching and baptism of John. For the same reason, as it is impossi- ble to make the conclusions of those two Gospels harmonize together, this compiler abruptly broke off his history, at the eighth Vers'e of the last chapter; and the twelve fol- rowing verses, which are compiled partly from JLuke and Matthfew, and still more from the Gospel attributed to John, not havhig been found in the earliest and best copies of this work, arc undoubtedly the addition of some still later hand, who has betrayed himself, by inadvertently making his addition expressly contradict the author whom he personated ; for, in conformity to Matthew's Gospel, which he transcribed from, the pretended Mark, in the seventh verse, makes the anget order the two women to fell his disciples to go into Galilee, and there they should see him ; but this Gospel -finishing Copy is tv at the ninth verse, begins a distinct history of our Lord's resurrection, 'different from that related six or seven verseB before ; and informs us, that in- THE EVANGELISTS, 250 stead of their seeing him in Galilee^ he ap- peared at Jenisalem^ to Mary Magdalene, in one form ; to two of the disciples, who were walking into the country, m another form^ and afterwards, at Jerusalem again, (he docs not say, whether in a third form or not) " to " all the eleven, as they sat at meat." In enumerating the names of the twelve Apostles, in chap. iii. it is observable, that, though this writer has followed the Gospel called Matthew's, in making the Apostle An- drew, brother to Simon Peter, he has placed the name of Andrew, not second, but fourth in the list, as he stands in that given us by Luke, in Acts i, ; which, since this writer has al- most always transcribed literally from the Gos- pel of Matthew or Luke, affords great reason to think, that, in his copy of Luke, Andrew stood there, in that order, at the time of his writing. Yet he also shews his entire igno- rance, that the Apostle James was the bro- ther of the Lord Jesus, by calling him the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother; so that it is plain, he could be ao writejr of the Apostolic age. In a book, which contains but a very few sentences, that are not directly copied from the two otiier Gospels, or close imitations ojf R 2 i60 THE msSONANCE OF them,* there can be but very little, peculiar to the author, to remark upon. One of these few passages is a parable, c. iv. v. 26*, &c. which, though the hint is obviously taken from that of Matthew, of the wheat and tares, as it is here stated, is entirely this authors. He has kept clear of the solecism in the be- ginning, customary with the pretended Mat- , thew ; and uses the words kingdom of God ^ in the same sense Avith Luke; but with what pro- priety can it be said, that the conversion of mankind to the religion of the Gospel, is as imperceptible and unaccountable, as the ve- getation of plants from seed ? Was it not the reasonable and visible effects of the miracles and doctrines of its first preachers, which produced a conviction of its truth and di- vine authority ? And if the harvest here re- presents the day of judgment, as in the Gos- pel of Matthew, (which, without doubt, the author intended) the insinuation, that that day would take place, as soon as the state of mankind, under the influence of the Gospel, is maturely accomplished, is equally repug- nant to common sense and reason, and to the • According to the tables of Ammianus, there are but twenty pas- sages of ajij kind, in the whole Gospel, which are peculiar to .this THE EVANGELISTS, ' IQQX clearest and most expressive prophecies of the New Testament. II. In the sixth chapter, verse JL3, this writer tells us, without the least warrant from his orighials, Luke and Matthew, that when our Lord sent out the twelve i\postles, with miraculous power, to cure diseases, they anointed the sick they healed, with oih Now, since the very intent of these miracu- lous cures was to convince the Jews who be- held them, in a way peculiarly adapted to the kind, benevolent genius of the Gospel, of the supernatural interposition of the Deity, in fa- vour of the new religion they announced ; every application, though of the most simple kind, must necessarily tend to counteract the belief of the miracle, and afford ground for suspicion, that tlie cure was effected by some medical virtue of the oil they used, not by the immediate power of God ; and therefore, as no such application is ever said to have been used by our Saviour, or any of his dis- ciples, in either of Luke's histories, it is in the highest degree improbable, that any such unction was ever used by them ; and the very mention of such a circumstance in this Gos- pel, and in the Epistle attributed to James, R 3 2G2 THE DISSONANCE OF affords a very strong presumptive proof, that neither of the writers Hved in the Apostolic age ; but that, they both wrote in the second century, when the preachers of Christianity, no longer having the miraculous gift of heal- ing, yet pretending to possess it, conscious that no effect would be produced upon the patient, by their word or touch, introduced the formal ceremonj^ of anointing with oil, accompanied by the united prayer of the Presbytery ; and if, as, no doubt, sometimes happened, the sick person recovered, the cure was attributed to the miraculous efBca- cy of the pious, greasy ritual, which, that it might not be deemed, in any case absolutely ineffectual, whenever the patient died, was transferred to the next world, to secure his eternal salvation there ; for which purpose alone, under the title of extreme unction^ it is still used by the most perfectly and most con- sistently orthodox Church in Christendom. The seventh chapter, v. SS^ contains an account of our Lord's curing a deaf and dumb person, with such unmeaning gesticula- tions, as are very unworthy the character of the messenger of Almighty God — putting his fingers into his ears, and touching his tongue with his spittle. THE EVANGEtlSTS. Jjf8 In the eighth chapter, v. 12, the author, ur* able to reconcile his mind tp w^at t)^e pre- tended Matthew has said of the sign of the prophet Jonas, though he w^s actually co- pying from him, has thought proper flatly to contradict both him and Luke, and to make our Saviour declare, that no sign at all shQ\il4- be given to that generation. At the twenty-third verse, this writer agsiin represents our Saviour, in a very unbecoming manner, applying his spittle to the eyes of a blind man, in order to give him §ight; and, as if one interposition of Almighty ppwer were not sufficient to accompli^U a perfect cure, the man's sight is not coippletely acquired, till he has applied his hands a second time to his eyes. It is worth observing also, that if this blind man had ever seen before, as seems ta^ be insinuated ipi the word restored^ it is inconceivable how, with even an indistinct vision, he could find the least resemblanc)^ between men and trees walking \ and, if he had never eftjoyed the blessing of sight till then, it was not possible for him to have had any idea of the ocular appearance of either men ©r trees. To convince us, how improbable it is, that either our Saviour, or the Apostles whom he R 4< 264. THE DISSONANCE OF delegated, should, in curing diseases, have used any such external applications as are recorded in thi^ and the preceding chapter; and how displeasing such a conduct would have been to the Deity ; it is only necessary to adv^t to the history of Moses striking the rock,* which tended to make the people be- lieve that his stroke alone gave vent to the imprisoned waters, and made them flow. For it is recorded, as being immediately con- demned by the Deity himself; and in pu- nishment for his not clearly manifesting the niiracuious interposition of the Almighty, by merely speaking to the rock, as he was commanded, he was doomed, like all the other rebellious Israelites, to die in the wil- derness, a;nd not to enter into the promised land. And 'Md' Jesus of Nazareth been guilty of the practices ascribed to him in this Gospel, and in that attributed to John, he inust have been equally criminal in the sight ofGod. - '' -' ' I'he only prophecies that I have observed peculiar to this Gospel, attributed to Mark, are, first, c.x. v. 30, where he makes our Lord predict, that whosoever hath forsaken hguses, lands, or friends, for his sake and the * Num. XX. 7—12. rnt EVANGELISTS. HdS Gosp^lX ^hall [receive not only e'temal life in the world to cbmef\i\il now in this time,, the very same articleis multiplied an hundred fold, with persecution. '^ As persecution can be exerted only upon a person's property, liberty, or life, it seems inconceivable how possessimis of any kind should be so greatly multiplied in a state of persecution; and the very terms of the prediction appear to imply in them a mani- fest contradiction: but, howsoever they may be interpreted, the whole history of religious persecution, from the illustrious messenger of the New Covenant to the present hour, proves the prophecy to be absolutely false, and the writer of it altogether unworthy of credit. The second is the prediction respecting Peter's denying his Master, c. xiv. v. 30, where, in direct contradiction to both the writings he had before him, he makes our Lord tell him, that before the cock should crow twice he would thrice deny him. Accord- ingly, V. 68 — 72, he says, the cock crew as soon as Peter had once denied him ; and, after he had repeated his denial twice more, with oaths and curses very unbecoming a chosen disciple of Jesus Christ, the cock crew a se- cond time. This relation is so absolutely ir- 20 THE DISSONANCE, &c. reconcilable with what is given us in the Gos- pel according to Matthew, and that with the circumstances of the same event recorded by Luke, that two of the three must inevitably be false ; and which those are, the judicious reader will decide as he thinks fit. CHAPTER VI. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN. SECTION I* "^T^TE come now to the fourth of thege- ^ ^ nerally received Evangelical histories, which, by the tradition of the orthodox Church, is attributed to the Apostle John, the avowed autiior of the prophetic book of the Apocalypse. And as in our examination of the internal evidence of the authenticity of the other three, we have begun with taking notice of their style, it is impossible not to observe the striking difference there is be- tween the language of the Apocalypse, and that in which this Gosj^el is written. To re- move so obvious a difficulty in the way of at- tributing these two works to the same writer, commentators are accustomed to insinuate, (but without any proof of the fact) that, as John wrote his Gospel many years after he had written the Apgcalypse, he had acquired. 208 THE DISSONANCE OF by practice and experience, a much better knowledge of the Greek, than had been com- municated by the miraculous gift of tongues : and, on that account, the style of his later work is quite unlike that of his first. The same critics might, with equal reason and equal satisfaction to their readers, have re- marked also, that the same superior advan- tage of time and experience had given him a knowledge of the Platonic philosophy, of .wliigh, in hi3. earlier days, he Avas entirely ig- norant; forw^hoever the writer of this Gospel really was, it must be evident to every com- petent, unprejudiced judge, who reads it in the original, particularly the exordium, that he ivas well acquainted w^ith the writings of Plato. According to the tradition, that John was the Apostle who, in this Gospel, is said to have been the beloved disciple of Jesus, and to have leaned upon his bosom, at the last supper, the book itself tells us he was the au- thor ; for, speaking of him, c. xxi. v. 24, it sa^^s, "This is the disciple which testifieth of " these things and wrote these things, and we '' know that Ins testimony is true :" but since it is unaccountable, how any Avriter should speak of himself in such a manner as this, the THE EVANGELISTS. 9m same critical sagacity has invented a mode of solving this difficulty also, and informs us, merely upon its own conjecture, that the Gospel written by John ends with the twen- tieth chapter; and that the following chapter is an addition made afterwards by the Church of Ephesus : by which means, the palpable falsehood contained in the last verse, under the pretence of an hyperbole, is also entirely thrown upon the same Church. However, since both the diction and credibility of the narrative appear to be the same in the twenty- fii^t, as in all the other chapters, the whole seems to merit to be accounted equally spu- rious, or equally genuine and authentic. Let us bring the whole, therefore, to the proposed test; observing, by the way, a gross contra- diction between this writer and the pretended MatthcAV, at the very outset: for, c, i. v. 32^ he tells us, that John the Baptist declared he did not know Jesus to be the destined Mes- siah, till he saw the Holy Spirit descending on him; whereas the Gospel of Matthevr, c. iii. V. 14, informs us that he knew him as soon as he came to him; and, at first, refused to baptize him, "saying, I have need to be " baptized of thee, and comest thou to mer*" Yet still the orthodox receive both these Gos- fro THE DISSONANCE OF pels for the genuine works of Apostles; and believe both these contradictory assertions to be truths and even the inspired word of God!!! Luke informs us, that, previous to our Lord s having any particular!}^ attached dis- ciples, he wrought many miracles in the dif- ferent cities of Galilee, especially at Caper- naum, where he healed Simon s mother-in- law of a fever ; and, since not the least hint is given of his being a different person of the same name, from the situation of Capernaum, from his so readily receiving our Lord on board his fishing boat, and letting down his net again at his command, contrary to his own opinion and inclination, it is natural to conclude, that it was the same Simon of Capernaum who, with the sons of Zebedee, struck with the wonderful draught of fishes, superadded to the cure of his mfe s mother, immediately forsook their former occupation and their homes, and became the first faithful followers of Jesus. This writer, on the con- trar3% Avith whom, if he was the Apostle John, Luke long lived, and must have frequently conversed upon the subject at Jerusalem, after our Saviour's death, informs us, c. i. v. 35, &c. that before our Lord bad worked any THE EVANGELISTS, tli iniracle, two of the Baptists disciples, one of ^vhom was Andrew, whom he also makes Si- mon Peters brother, without any call from Jesus, being told by John that he was the Lamb of God, followed him and attached themselves to him ; and that Andrew induced his brother Simon to do the same, by telling him they had found the Messiah or Christ. So that Simon Peter instead of being the first, as Luke represents him, according to this Gospel, was only the third of our Lords disciples ; and none of them were induced by any such motive as the miraculous cure of a disease or the extraordinary draught of fishes ; and far from telling us, like Luke, that Zebedee's sons, John and James, commenced disciples and followers of Jesus at the same time with Simon, the pretended John gives no account at all of the time or manner of their becoming disciples; but — telling us that Simon and Andrew were not citizens of Ca- pernaum, but of Bethsaida ; that Philip of the same city was called to be the fifth, and Nathaniel the sixth disciple, who, though de- clared by our Lord to be witliout guile, was not one of his iVpostles, nor is ever once men- tioned in any other history — the author goes an to inform us, that the beginning of our Sa^ ^n THE DISSONANCE OF Tiours miracles was his turning water into wine, at a marriage feast in Cana, to which he, and his mother, and his disciples, were in^ vited. How others can^ w^ith satisfaction to their own minds, receive both these contra- dictory histories for truth, I know not; to nic it appears incontestable that one of them is fictitious and false. According to Luke, our Saviour never went out of Galilee from the commencement of his public ministry till the feast of the Passover, at which he was crucified; and, upon his going to Jerusalem on that oc- casion, after entermg the city amidst the ac- clamations of the multitude, who proclaimed him their promised king, he began (i. e. at- tempted) to eject those out of the temple, who indecently, as predicted by Jeremiah, c. vii. V. 11, made that house of prajer a place of traffic and unjust gain; a circum- stance which, it is by no means probable, should have occurred to him twice. This writer, on the contrary, tells us, that a few days after his miracle at Cana, he went up to Jerusalem, to the feast of the Passover; and that there, in what would appear a sudden paroxysm of frantic zeal, if he were not re- presented as deliberately cool enough to plat THE EVANGELISTS. 27S und prepare a scourge of small cords for the purpose, he drove all the traders and animals out of the temple, overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and scattered all their money about, with a violence as unbecoming the meek and benevolent Jesus, as it is impro- bable it would hav6 been tamely submitted to by the other parties. It is to be observed also, that this supposed Apostle, in recording the instrument of violence, constructed and used by our Saviour, in this extraordinary manner, expresses it by a word, neither of Greek nor Hebrew origin, but by a Latin Avord, barbarously written in Greek charac- ters, which, as I have observed in the case of the two preceding Evangelists^ of itself affords strong grounds of presumption, that whoever the writer may be said to be, he did not live till after the beginning of the second century ; and, when corroborated by other circumstances, so highly improbable in them- selves, and so directly contradictory to the history of Luke, is a very satisfactory proof that he was no Apostle, nor any Jew^ nor even a respectable Greek convert of the Apostolic age; but one of the many com- posers of spurious and fabulous writings of (^■4, THE DISSONANCE OF the secand century ; and that he deserves not the least credit or attention. JI. When our Saviour liad staid some time at Jerusalem, this author informs us, C. iii. V. 22, still in contradiction to the whole tenor of the Gospel according to Luke, that i^e 4welt with his disciples in the land of Judea ; ^ftd; that, by his disciples, as it is explained, 15,. iy^^- 3» h^ baptized there greater numbers tha^n John, at the same time that Mm bap^ tized in Eiion^ for tha^t John was not yet cast into prison. This passage is so replete with the most palpable falsehood, that it is asto- Xitishing how any kind of delusion should have induced creatures, endowed with reason, sq long to have received it as the word of truth, ;^nd the work of an A]K)stle of Jesus Christ. In the first place, the two writers called Mat- thew and Mark both positively assert, that Jesus did not enter ijpoxi his public ministry, Upr was followed by a single disciple, till af- ter J^hp mas cast into prison ; and though, for reasom already stated, if Luke's history did not more thar^ insinuate the same thing, their testimony woi^iid; h^yQviju^ weight with me, yet Siich: gross Qoutmdictioft ought to conv.inca THiE tVANGELi^TS. 27^ lilt? ttiDist orthodox, that there must ht false- hood on one side or the Other, if not 6n both ; and that, therefore, comirion sense and reason Acquire them, at leasts to reject as false and spaiiv/Lis, eittier this Gospel attributed to John, or both tlie Gospels attributed to the othet" two. In the next places, from the two respectable histories of Luke, confirmed by the very nature and circumstances of the Gos- pel, we know for certain, th^t baptism was never used by the disciples of Jesus, till after the memorable day of Pentecost, and then only tor the same purpose, for which it had 1 been always used by the Jews, as a form of admitting proselytes to their religion; a reli- gion they then preached for the first time, and which, during their niastef's life, they did not themselves understand. When the twelve, and afterwards tlie seventj^, were sent forth to (Excite the atteiition of the people, by mira- culous acts of kindness and compassion, and to announce" to them the approaching pro- ftiulgation of the Ne#' Covenant of the king- dom of God, baptizing made no part of their cbmmis^ioA ; and they returned without any addition to their numbers ; nay, so far were a/Z fricji from coming to Jfesus as disciples, as is 'as- serted v. 26, that when the Apostles and the s 2 tre THE DISSONANCE OF whole society of Christians were assembled together, after his ascension, the number amounted but to one hundred and twenty, that is, only about forty more than those ori- ginal disciples, who had been deputed on the two commissions ; whereas the Baptist's dis- ciples were so numerous, that Josephus attri- butes his death to Herod's jealousy of him on that very account. In the fourth chapter, this historian relates our Lord's removal from his dwelling in Ju- dea to Galilee; and, as the road lay through Samaria, he entertains us with an episode concerning our Saviour and a libidinous wo- man of Samaria, who, having had no less than five husbands, was then living as the concu- bine of a sixth man. This woman expresses her surprise, that he, who was a Jew, should ask drink of a Samaritan, which the author explains by informing us, that the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans; though, to account for our Lord s being left alone, he had just told us, that all his disciples, who, a few verses before, are represented, to be so numerous, " were gone away into the Sama- " ritan city Sychar,'* (a city never heard of by any one else) " to buy meat." On their return with the meat, whilst the woman went THE EVANGELISTS. ^77 into the city to tell the people she had found the Messiah or Christ, in a conversation with his disciples, he observes that it was then four months to the time of harvest, which fixes the time of year to be about our Ja- nuary ; so that this writer makes our Lord continue in Judea, after the preceding Pass- over, baptizing and making disciples, during John s baptizing and preaching, as long a time as the three other Gospels allot to the duration of his whole public ministry; which they as&ure us did not begin till John's mi- nistry was ended by his imprisonment. From the natural harvest, he takes occasion to sug- gest the spiritual harvest, which then presented itself in the ripeness of the Samaritans for conversion ; Avho, if this account be true, were wonderfully more mature than their neighbours the Jews, though, as is re- marked, v. 22, they were far more ignorant in affairs of the true religion; and though, according to Luke's histories, the Samaritans refused to receive him, when he was goino: to the feast of the Passover, at which he died ; and no Samaritan city was converted to the Gospel, till Philip preached it in Samaria, af- ter the death of Stephen. In the words of this writer, our Lord adds, " Herein is that s 3 Srs THE DISSONANCE OF *^ saying true, one soweth and another rcapeth^ *' I sent you to reap that whereon ye be- " stQwed no labour; other men laboured, and, ^lye are entered into their labour." Luke m- forms us, that after our Saviour had preached ^nd performed many miracles throughout all Galiljee, that i^, Ipng after the period here re- qorded, because the wiiter tells us the second qf his miracles in Galilee was not done till af- ter this conversation, he sent out two different deputations of his disciples, to precede him, in announcing to the Jews the approaching cst^ablishment of God's New Convenant with them and all the w^orld ; that, after his death, they were commissioned and miraculously qualified to preach Christ and the New Cove- nant of the kingdom of GocJ, first to the Jew- ish nation, and afterwards to the Samaritans and Gentiles of the whole world; this preach- ing, w^e find, the}" called planting, and sowing the seed of the Gospel, in allusion to their liOrd's parable of the sower ; and the only harvest intended and hoped for by them was the fruits of moral virtue, in the lives of their converts ; as fpr themselves, they knew they were \o, receive no recompense nor advantage frona their owu labour, till after death. Who the,a were these sowers of the word of God, THE EVANGELISTS. 279 prior to the disciples of Christ ? Whea ^vtYG his disciples sent to reap and not to so^7 ? What did tliey ever reap, about which they had bestowed no labour f^ And who were those other men^ into whose labours they en- tered? Surely, a writer so little consistent w^ith the best confirmed truth, and Avith com- mon sense, is very unjustly accounted an Apostle of Jesus Christ ! In the same strain of fictitious jargon, this writer continues to inform us, that our Lord taught and con- vinced both the w^oman and the Samaritans of that city, that he was the Christ, the Saviovr of the world ; though, according to Luke, he never announced himself in that character, to the Jews, in his life-time ; but checked his own disciples, and forbad them to call him so to any man ; and, after his resurrection, convinced them, from the prophecies, that he could not become the Christ, the predicted King under theNew Covenant, till after he had died, and been made literally the son of God, by being hh first-born from the dead to a life of immortality. In the fifth chapter, the author tells us, that after the cure of the nobleman^s son at Caper- naum, which, he says, was the second of our Saviours miracles in Galilee, he went asain to s 4 280 THE DISSONANCE OF Jerusalem, to a feast of the Jews; but doc* not say what feast. According to his own description of the time of our Lord's return ta Galilee, that it was four months before harvest, it ought to be another feast of the Passover, miless we suppose him to have transgressed the injunction of the Mosaic Law. If this writer, therefore, were a Jew, or well versed in the customs and ordinances of the Jews, he nmst mean that this was a second Passover, at which our Saviour attended, after the commence- ment of his public ministry; yet after his re- turn again into Galilee from this feast in the very next chapter, we are told that he crossed the sea of Galilee, and that " the Passover, a " feast of the Jews, was nigh." Surely this writer is the most extraordinarj^ chronologist and historiographer that ever appeared in the world ! However, he does not say, that Jesus went up to this third approaching Passover ; but after relating the same miraculous feeding a large multitude, and walking upon the water> recorded in the Gospel attributed to Matthew,. with a discourse to the multitude altogether pecuhar to lumselfj the author tells us, in the seventh chapter, that Jesus continued in Gali- lee, because the Jews of Judea sought to kill him ; hut that, the feast of tabernacles being THE EVANGELISTS 881 near, after his brethren were gone up without him, " he also went up to the feast secretly " and jet " in the midst of the feast, he went *' up into the temple and taught" publicly. In the fifth verse of this ehapter, the author of this gospel tells us, that the brethren of Jesus did not believe on him ; so that he also was ignorant that the Apostle James w^as a brother of Jesus, and directly contradicts both Lukes histories, the first of which in- forms us that his mother and his brethren ac- companied him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and the second, that after his death, resurrection, and ascension, they continued at Jerusalem with the eleven Apostles. From this feast till after the feast of Dedication, this writer tells us our Lord continued in Jerusalem or its en- virons; then, to avoid the attempts of the Jews to apprehend him, he retired to the country beyond Jordan, where John first bap- tized ; and from thence, c. xi. upon the death of Lazarus, he came again into Judea to Beth- any ; that, to escape the malice of the Chief Priests, he withdrew with his disciples, to the city of Ephraim, adjoining the wilderness of Judea, and continued there till he went again to Bethany, six days before the Passover, at which he sutfered ; and from thence to Jerusa- ^ 9m- THE DISSONANCE OF lem, riding on a young ass, amidst the ho^att* nas of the people, who came forth to meet fcitn. We see then, that, according to this writer, tmv Saviour entered upon his public ministry tvhilst that of John the Baptist still subsisted: and that the Pas^sover, at which he was cru- cified, was the fourth from the comencement rfhis ministiy. I^ike, on the contrary, plainly intimates, as indeed is reasonable to expect,. that John's ministry had ceased in conse- quence of his imprisonment by Herod, before Jesus began to teach and to make himself conspicuous ; and assures us, that our Lord 'was crucified at the very first Passover after his entering on his mini&try. This writer tells us, that be resided chiefly, and perfoi^med most of his miracles, at Jerusalem and in Judea; that be was but very little in Galilee ; and that he made and had great numbers of disciples in Judea : yet from the Acts of the Apostles, e. i. V. 11, and c. ii. v. 7, we find, that all his disciples were Galileans; and, from Lukes Gospel, that almost all his miracles were wrought in Galilee ; and that he did not quit the jurisdiction of Ilerod, till he set out, with his disciples, to travel through Samaria to Jerusalem, in order to keep the fatal Passover; THE EVANGELISTS. SS8 that he did not sojourn at the city of Ephraim ; but kept tlie direct road from Jericlio; and when lie cauie near Bethany, instead of going to visit the family of Lazarus, he only sent two of his disciples to fetch the ass's colt on which lie proposed to enter Jerusalem. It is not possible, tlierefore, for two histories of the life and actions of the same person to be more directly contradictor}-' to each other; consc- c\ h..a '' In chapter v. vers6 43, we find our LoM saying to the Jews^ " I am come in my'T^- *' ther s name, and ye receive me not ; if ano- "ther shall come in his own name, him ye **will receive/' Which words evidently ^fni- ply, first, that someone would falsely ^ssumB the character of the predicted ]\idssiah, witli- out deriving his authority fronVGod; and se- 502 THE DISS(W3ANC^ (yT condljj that the Jewish nation would receive him as such ; but of all the false Christs, who appeared amidst the final wars and calamities of Judea, there was not one who did not pre- tend to come with the authority of God, and to be able to evince it, by working miracles ; and though each was followed by more or fewer of the common people, yet the Jewish nation in general, who rejected our blessed Saviour, from that time to this, have never re^ ceived any man as their expected Messiah. In chapter viii. v, 51, our Lord is repre- sented, as saying, " verily, verily if a man " keep my saying, he shall never see death," or, as it is repeated in the next verse, " shall " never taste of death f and again, c. xi. V. 25 and 26, he not only says " he who be- •' heveth on me, though he were dead, yet " shall he live,'* but also, " whosoever livcth " and believeth in me, shall never die/' What meaning could the writer have, in such absurd and groundless predictions as these ? Paul, as well as daily experience, assures us, that in Adam, in our human nature, all men die, and we know, that our Lord himself, his Apostles, and all his most faithful disciples, died, or, in the words of the author, have seen or tasted of death; and if we should suppose THE EVANGEtrSTS. 3fi3 that he only intended to insinuate that, oi\ account of the certainty of the resurrectioi| of his disciples, their natural death was not; to be accounted dying; yet still, aqcordin^ to tliis author himself, the quibble would hold as truly of the most profligate unbeliever as of those who believed on him ; for, c* v. V. 28 and 29? he says, " the hour is coniing ^ in which all that are in the graves shall hear " the voice of the Son of God, and shall cpm^ *' forth, they that have done good unto the re^ *' surrection of life, and they that have donq *' evil unto the resurrection of damnation.'" In chapter xiv. v, l6, &c. our Lord, in the style peculiar to this writer, is made to pro- mise his disciples, after his death, the spiri- tual comfort and assistance of divine inspi- ration ; but this is an event, which had taken place long before the earliest date allotted fot* the composition of this pretended GospeL In chapter xvi. v. 32, Jesus, in his last dis- course, says to his disciples, *^ Behold the " hour Cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall " be scattered, every man to his own home, " and shall leave me alone :" and accordino- to this writer, they not only deserted him at his appreijcnsion, but after his death and resur- rection; and even after his giving them the S04 THE DISSONANCE, &c. Holy Ghost, they went eveiy one to his o\^ti home in Galilee, and reGommenced their for- mer occupations : but, unhappily for the au- thors credit, this is not only repugnan: to rea- son and probability, but irreconcilably contra^ dictory to both the histories of Luke. These, and two or three more sentences such as these, to be picked out of the long, valedictory con- versation of JesuSy said to be held with his disciples immediately preceding his cruci- fixion, make up the whole of the internal tes- timony of the spirit of prophecy to be met with in this scripture, so long injuriously at- tributed to the prophetic Apostle John. CHAPTER VIL THE EPISTLES SECTION r. AVING thus stated, what to me appear contradictions absolutely irrecoocila* ble; and submitted to the pubhc, the reasons which have long induced me to rqect tinea of the four generally received Gospels, as spurious fictions of the second century, un- necessar}^^ and even prejudicial, to the cause of true Christianity, and in every respect un- worthy of the regard which so many ages have, paid to them ; I have accomplislied all that I at first proposed. Leaving every reader^ therefore, to judge for himself, as I have donCy and to criticise tn}^ reasoning with the same unreserved freedom, with whichjj though a sincere convert to the Gospel Co- venant, I have found it necessary for my own rational conviction to scrutinize the respective authenticity and credibility of these import^ 305 THE DISSONANCE OF ant scriptures, it was my original intention^ hei^ to have closed the present disquisition* But, because the same ti'ain of investigation hath led me to reject likewise several of the canonical Epistles, upon the sole authority of which, several fundamental doctrines of the orthodox Church, anil of various sects of professed Christians, ai-e confidently taught the people, for doctrines of the Gospel of Christ, I think it my duty, to add briefly my reasons for expunging also ont of the volume of duly authenticated scriptures of the New Covenant^ the Epistles, to the Romans — to the Ephesians — to the Colossians-^ to the He- brews — of James — of Peter^-of John— -of Jude^— and, in the book of the Revelation, the Epistles to tlie seven Churches of Asia. Of these, wiiosoever is at all acquainted tvith the history of the constitution of the present canon of the Christian scriptures, well knows that the Epistles to the Hebrews, of James, second of Peter, second and third of John and of Jude^ were rejected as spurious bj many Churches, from the first of their ap- pearance t and not universally received as genuine writings of the authors whose names they bear, till the fifth centuryj when a hia* jority of votes^ in -the Council of C^irthag^, rut EVANGELISTS. S07 for the Greek Church, and the decision of Pope Innocent, for the Latin, determined the long controverted question, in favour of their genuine authenticity ; a determination which, to me, who am both a Protestant against papal infallibility, and fully convinced of the corrupt apostasy of the prelates of the Church, much earlier than the fifth century, aflfbrds no kind of satisfaction, but rather ex- cites the contrary. In the Epistle to the Romans, the author writes indeed in the name of Paul ; but he writes to a Christian Church, already subsist- ing at Rome, and celebrated for its faith in Christ throughout the whole worlds before he himself had been there; for, v. 13 — 15, he says, " I would not have you ignorant, brethren, " that often-times I purposed to come unto " you (but was let hitherto), that I might have " some fruit among you also, even as among " other Gentiles ; I am debtor both to the " Greeks and the barbarians, both to the wi^e «' aind the unwise. So, as mufch as in me is, I " am ready to preach the Gospel to you that " are at Rome also.'* In c. xv. v. 25, &C. he as- certains the time of Paufs writing this Epistle to be, when he was going to Jerusalem, with the CGhtributi:of^ forthe- pdor Christians of th^t u 2 5oa THE DISSONANCE OF city, that is, in the reign of Claudius ; and says tliat, when he has peiformed that good office, he will come, by way of Rome, into Spain. Now, whoever has read^ with proper attention, the history of Paul's travels, written by his friend and fellow-traveller, Si- las or Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, must be convinced, that Paul never had the least idea of travelling into Spain; and that he did not go to Rome, till, by the partiality of Fes- tus to his persecutors, he was constrained to ap^ peal unto Ccesar. From the same history it is evident also, that when Paid arrived at Rome, for the first time, in the reign of Nero^ there was no Christian Church there, as in- deed it is not at all probable there should have been; because Paul was ttie Apostle particularly chosen and delegated for that purpose, and he, accordingly, first preached the Gospel to the distant Gentiles, as re- corded in the Acts. From the same history, there is every reason to believe, that the Gos- pel had never been preached beyond the li- inits of Asia, till Paul was, in a vision, ad- monished to go into Macedonia, and from thence into Greece ; yet Paul is made to write this Epistle to the Christian converts at Rome, whil:st he was preaching the Gospel THE EVANGELISTS. ^g at Corinth. Who then was that other Apos- tle to the Gentiles, who so far preceded Paul, as already to have reached Rome, without preaching the Gospel to the inhabitants of the intervening countries of Asia Minor and Greece, and to have founded a Church there, early enough for its being spoken of flirough- out the whole worlds when Paul, in the execu- tion of the commission miraculously given to him by Christ himself, had advanced no far- ther than Macedonia and Greece ? Besides, from the last chapter of the Acts, it appears incontestably, that they were not Christians, but Jews, who met Paul at Appii Forum ; that his first step, when he arrived at Romcj was to call together the Jews resident there, and exculpate hmiself for having appealed to the Emperor ; that those Jews, far from knowing the Gospel to have been already preached and received at Rome, declared themselves totally ignorant concerning it, ex- cept that it was every where spoken against, and were desirous to be informed of its doc- trines by him ; that they all assembled for that purpose, at his lodging, on an appointed day, when he preached to them the New Co- venant of the kingdom of God the whole day, and pointed out to them those passages of ¥ 3 SIO THE DISSONANCE OT the Law of Moses and the prophets, wherein it was predicted ; that upon their disagreeing ^nd leaving him, he said, '' Be if known to ^^ you, that the salvation of God is sent (that ^' is, the Gospel is to be preached) to the " Gentiles, and that they will hear it/* Whereas, according to this Epistle, it must have bepi known already to the Jev/s of Rome, that the Gospel had been preached to the Gentiles of that city, and that they had re^ ceived it. These palpable, and as tliey seem to me, irreconcilable contradictions, oblige me utterly to reject this Epistle, called PauFs, and to regard it only as one of the many spur rious forgeries of the second century, unwor- thy the least serious attention. I cannot, however, forbear remarking iarther the incon- sistency of this writer, (which indeed must generally be discernible in all falsifiers) in mak- mg Paul personally acquainted with so long a list of members of the Church at Rome, where he had never been, amongst whom we find 4quila and Priscilla, and even his own mo- ther, to whom he sends salutation in the last chapter, v. 13. Of the two first, Luke tells \i.s^ that) about or rather heforp the pretended date of this Epistle, they had left Rome, be- ing Jews, in obedience to an edict of Clau- .-.'THE EVANGELISTSv fiU. dius. And, if there is any reason to believe that Paurs mother was then living, is it credi- ble, that an old woman of Tarsus, in Cilieia> whose son was so wonderfully appointed to preach the Gospel, and who was occupied in that commission in Asia and Greece, should Jeave her native country and such a son, aiid ramble after other preachers of the Gospel, ut so advanced an age, to the far distant metropolis of Italy ? But, in the eleventh chapter, the author clearly betrays himself to be, not Paul, but some person who lived and wrote some time after the destruction of Je- rusalem and the dispersion of the Jews ; for to these events alone, can the following sen- tences refer : v. 12, " If the fall of them" (the Jews) " be the riches of the world, and ^ the diminishing of them the riches of the " Gentiles, how much more their fullness ?'* Again, v. 15, " If the casting away of them " be the reconciling of the world, what sliall "the receiving of them be?'' Again, v. 21 and 22, " If God spared not the natural " branches, take heed lest he also spare " not thee. Behold the goodness and severity " of God : on them which fell severity ; but "towards thee goodness, if thou continue in u 4 S12 THE DISSONANCE CF *^ his goodness ; otherwise, thou also slialt b6 "cut of ;r Sec. II. The Epistle to the Ephesians is also writ- ten in the name of Pan], but under a suppo-* sition that a Christian Church was settled at Ephesus, before Paul himself preached the Gospel there; for, c. i. v. 15 and 16, the writer makes him say, " Wherefore I also, " after / heard of your fi^ith in the Lord Je- • *^ sus and love unto all the Saints, cease not " to give thanks for you,'' &c. and c. iii. v. 1, &c. " for this cause, I Paul, the Frisoner of ** Jesus Christ, for you Gentiles, if ye have " heard of the dispensation of the grace of God " which is given to me to you-ward ; how that ^^ by revelation he made knov/n unto, uie *' the mystery (as / wrote afore in few words) ; " whereby when ye fxad, ye may. understand " my knowledge in the mystery of Chiist/' This supposition, however, cannot possibly be allowed by any one who credits the his- tory of the Acts of the Apostles; for in that we are expressly told, e. xviii. apd xix. that Paul himself preached the Gospel at Ephe- sus, first in the synagogue of the Jews, at twg ^liflerent times, and afterwards in the scho(A THE EVANGELISTS. 313 t>f T}Tannus, for the space of two years; and to read over his valedictory discourse to the ciders of the Church of Ephesus, at Miletus, recorded Acts xx. is amply sufficient to con- vince every impartial mind, that Paul could never have written to the Ephesians in the above quoted language of this Epistle. Some critics indeed, wittiout the least proof, sug- gest that this Epistle was originally inscribed to the Church of Laodieea, and not of Ephe- sus ; but if there was really any satisfactory evidence, that, notwithstanding the great dissimilarity of the names, the transcribers of all the existing copies had conspired to make so extraordinary a change, still the difficulty would not be removed ; because, according to the Acts, Paul was the first preacher of the Gospel at Laodicea also, and every other part of Asia Minor The same insuperable objection lies against the Epistle to the Colossians, which is mani- festly fabricated by the same opificer who composed that to the Ephesians. In c. i. V, 4 — 9^ the author makes Paul say, that it was Epaphras who first preached the Gospel to the Colossians ; and that it was from him he had heard of their faith and love in Christ Jesus. AndjC. iio v. 1, he makes him ex- ^M THE DISSONANCE (W pressly declare, that neither they nor the Lac>- dicesns had mtn hh face in the Jlesh, Yet jColo&se aiard Laodicea were both cities of Phry^](ia, where Luke assures us^^ Psml, ac- etxmpanied by himself, repeatedly preached the Gugpel to every icity iu order. m^ There are also some circumstances Sii the Epistles to the. Philippians and to Ti- -tus, which render them both apocryphal in my estimation ; btit as they may not, per- iaps, he thought by others to afford the same '.satisfactoiy demonstration of their spnrious- tness, as 1 : persuade myself I h^ve produced .itithd three preceding; cases, I;. oiily mention them by the. wgjy r ttnd submit them ta the mattire comsideration of those who, as well as myself, niaythink it of the first importance, to both the teacher and learner of the Gospel, ^ to' separate truth from fabulous falsehood^ and the genuine scriptures of Christ s primi- tive disciples from the presumptuous fictions . and forgeries of the fathers of the grand apos- tasy in the second and third centuries. In the very first verse of the E|Vistle to the PinHppians, there, is a distinction madebe- .twtetii the general iGQirigregatiaii of the Saints ' * Acts-x'vi, 6i — xwm.'HS THE EVANGELISTS. 315 or Christians, and the Bishops and Deacons, which is not to be found in any. other episto- lar}^ addrei^s of Paul ; ^;[;id which, if it be not an interpolation, savours very strongly of a much later, ^ge than that of the Apostles. At verse 13 — ^18, compared with c. iv. v. 22, we .are informed, th^t through the notice taken of him during his imprisonment, many of the Emperor Nero's court -were converted to Christianity, a fact in the highest degree improbablC;^ and far fripm being confirmed by Luke or any .Roman historian.; ^nd that ma.- ny xlisciples of the pospel, wlijQi, to be manjj, must h^ye been con vjerted before Paul's ar- rival at Rome, wl>ich Luke's bistorj makes quite incredible, emboldened by his success, pre^ch^d the Gospel there at, the same time that he did, some of them, good .Christians! only enviously for contention and strife's sake, in hopes to vex and teaze him; all which seems irreconcilable to the account given us in the last chapter of the Acts. In c. iii, v^ 2, the Philippians aie bid to beware of dogs and of the concisioriy expressions never used by Paul in any other writing. The latter seems a very improper, unbecoming manner of speaking of a divine ordinance, which, as the Mosaic Covenant was not then actually sift THE DISSONANCE OF abrogated, still subsisted, and was even prac- tised by Paul himself on his disciple Timo- th}' , though he was only the son of a Jewish mother by a Greek father. And if by the former we are to understand the Cynic philo- sophers, what was there in their numbers, doctrines, or lives, that could make Paul point them out as so peculiarly inimical to Christianity above the other philosophic sects? In chap. iv. v. 3, he in treats his yoke- fellow, whom, however, he does not name, to '^ help those women who labour with him in •^ the Gospel f yet Luke assures us, that none but he and Timoth}^ accompanied Paul into Macedonia and Greece: and, 1 Cor. c. ix. v. 5, Paul himself plainly intimates, that though some other Apostles and preachers of the Gospel were accompanied by their wives or female relations, he and Barnabas had no Avomah who attended them. In the fifth verse the wTiter saj^s, the Loj^d is at hand; ap- parently meaning that the predicted coming of Chi'id \xns nearly approaching; but that is directly contradictory to Paul's own explicit doctrine in the second chapter of his second Epistle to the Thcssalonians. In verses 10—19, we find the author describing him- self as in a state of ajfliction and pecuniary THE EVANGELISTS. ttf distresSj and very seasonably relieved by the supply they had sent him by Epapliroditus; remindmg them, that at his first preacliing the Gospel in Macedonia, they were tiie only- Christian Church who gave him any thing ; and that they, two or three times, relieved his necessity^ when he was at Thcssalonica* Yet Luke tells us, that, no accusation being sent to Rome by the Jews against Paul, he was under no affliction and very little re- straint, being permitted to dwell where he pleased, under the guard of a single soldier; and that he " dwelt two whole years in his " own hired house, and received all that came *' in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God *' and teaching Christianity boldly, no man ^* forbidding him/' And we know that Pauls constant boast was, that he always* mam- tained himself by his own labour, and never made his preaching the Gospel a charge to any body; and thougii, 2 Cor. xi. 9, he says, that the Macedonian converts supplied that pecuniary deficiency, which was occasioned by the persecutions that interrupted his ma- nual labour, far from intimating tiiat the Plii- hppians had been particularly benevolent and liberal towards him, at his first preach- * 1 Cor. ix. 14 and IS.^See also Acts xx. 'Jti—35. Sl^l TJKE DISSONANCE OV irig thi Gospel to them and to the Thessata^ liians, he says to the latter, 1 Thess. c. ii. V. 2,6, 9j "'After we had suffered before, and '^ were shamefiilly entreated, as ye kno\V, aJ *^ PkiUppr^ we were bold in our God,'to speak *' unto you the Gospel of God, with much ^* contention. — Ndr of men sought we glory^ I' neither of j'du, nor yet of others, when we " might have been burdensome, as the i\pos- " ties of Christ. — For ye remember^ brethren, *' our labour and travel : for labourina: nis^ht " and day, because we would not be charge- ** able unto any of you, w^e preached unto *^ you th^ Gospel of God.'^ ^' In the Epistle to Titus, the very introduc- tory address excites in my mind a strong sus- picion, that it was not written by Paul: for he calls himself, what he never does in any other Epistle, a servant of God; though, to the Galatians, c. iv. v. 6 and 7, he s^ys, "" be- " cause ye are sons, God hath sent forththxi " spirit of his son into yoiir hearts, ciying Abba " Father, wherefore thou art no move a sermnij " but a son, &c." He adds also, ''an Apbstle " of Jesus Christ,'' (not by the will of God^ as he usually expresses it, hni)'' according to the ^' faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of ' /' the truth f all which, in Paul's mouth, is "THt: EVANGELISTS. '.^l^ quite a new kind of langirage. As T pmceed, my suspicion is greatly confirmed by finding a most malicious, illiberal, national reflectibil of a Greek Poet upon the moral character of the Cretans quoted by the author, affirmed by him to be true, aiid the Poet himself deno- fninated a Prophet. The-satrrical verse herc quoted is taken from Epimenides, a Poet of Crete, but that part of it which accusfcs tlie Cretans of being liars, is copied literally from a hymn -of Callimachus in hdnoUr'of Jupitei% and he explains the grounds of his accusation to be, that *^the Cretans had alwaj^s boasted, ^* that they liad the sepulchre of JupiteT in •" their island^ which must be falst^', because it *^ was impossible for the supreme of the im- *' mortak to have died and been buried any- *' where/'" Who c?in believe that the Apos^tle I^aul would have Sanctioned such a slander, founded u pon sudh groutids' as these ? fee- sides, the Btate of the Church ii^ Cretie, :as described in the seven last verses' of the fii^t chapter, and tlie direction about ha-ctics, c. iii. v. 10, are lAuch -more i^uifeble-^% ^ «tateof the Church itr lafer tirtics, ^radicted hy Paul to Timothy,* than at aW period during the life of PauL The author of the • 1 Tim/ivJ 1, iid 2 Tim/iv. 3 and 4. i^ THE DISSONANCE OF Epistle also, c. iii. v. 3, represents himself and Titus, as having, in the former part of their lives, before their conversion to Chris- tianity, been " foolish, disobedient, deceived, *' serving divers lasts and pleasures, liviug in " malice and envy, hateful, and hating one " another/' Now, when Paul enumerates several unchristian immoralities to the Corin^ thians,* he adds, not including himself, nor even the majority of the heathen converts^ ^ and such were some of you; but ye are *' washed/' &c. And of himself be confi- dently declared before the Jewish Council^ Acts c. xxiii. v. 1, " Men and brethren, I " have lived in all good conscience before " God, until this day/' As to the Epistle to Philemon, it is too in- significant to merit much attention ; but it is observable, that, in this short letter,, Paul not only talks of his bonds, a phrase not uncom- monly applied to any kind of confinement or restraint, but speaks of his fellow-prisaner : and yet we learn from the Acts, that he him- self was the only Christian prisoner sent thi- ther by Festus; and that he was permitted " to dwell by himself ^ with a soldier that kept '' him/' ♦ 1 Cor. YJ. 9 and !•. The Evangelists. six if. That the Epistle to the Hebrews could not' be' written by Paul, is so evident to anv reader^' who compares the style atid scope of it with those of his other Epistles, that it '^eenis astonishing that, eVen in the fifth century, it should have been' decreed to t)e his, especially since the writer does not 'pretend to be Paul; and the only circum- stance of probability that he was so, is the 'mention of Timothy, in the close of the Epis- tle ; as if there never was more than one 'Christian of that name. But that it is of miich later date than the Apostolic age, is manifest i'rom chap. xiii. v. 7 and 17? where the teachers of Christianity are said to rule over their congregations, in direct contra- diction to our Saviour's express injunctions, and to the constant practice of Paul liiiTiself and all the primitive preachers of the Gos- pel. Indeed, I cannot iiiiaghie a grossier af- Tronf to the memory of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, tliau to ascribe to /^^/;^, either the interpreting the Greek word for Covenant to signify a will or testament ; or tiie assertion of this writer, c. iv. v. 2, that the Gospel was preached'to the Israelites in the wilderness, as well as to us ; or all the nonsensical absur- dity, in chap. vii. about Melchisedec, as a X 332 ' THE DISSONANCE OP man having neither beginning of days nor end of life ; or, lastly, the reckoning as the per- fection of the Christian doctrine, c. vi. v. 1 and 2, far superior to the doctrines of Re- pentancCy Faith, the Resurrection, and a fu- ture Judgment^ the explanation of the Old Covenant of the Mosaic Law, as a type and .shadow of the New Covenant of the Gospel, which, upon the principles laid down by Paul himself, in his Epistle to the Galatians, is just as trifling and useless, as it would be to represent the scholastic discipline, under which we are educated in our childhood, as the type and shadow of our conduct, when arrived at manhood, and a full maturity of reason. It must be considered also, that the writing to the Jewish converts particularly, either in general or in any one country, by the appellation of Hebrews, is to make and keep up a distinction between them and the Gentile converts to Christianity, a behaviour quite unjustifiable in any teacher of the Gos- pel ; because all distinctions tend naturally to destroy that unity and mutual affection ne- cessary in the disciples of Jesus Christ ; and, as far as our religion is concerned with the writings of theOldTestament, the Gentile con- verts were equally interested in them with the THE EVANGELISTS. 323 Ikbrew disciples ; and Paul, especially, could never have made such a distinction ; for he assures us, Gal. iii. 27 and 28, that, " as many " as have been baptized into Christ, have put *' on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, " there is neither bond nor free, there is nei- " ther male nor female ; for ye are all one in ^' Christ Jesus/* The author too has thought fit to change the original words of the fortieth Psalm, in order to make them confirm his new doctrine, that the body of Jesus crucified was a propitiatory sacrifice for sin ; and quotes the Psalmist, as saying " sacrifice and offering " thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou pre- *' pared me ;" whereas David really says, " sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire, " mine ears hast thou opened :" that is, thou hast made me olx^dient to thy word ; express- ing the superiority of the New Covenant over th€ Old, in nearly the same sentiment with that of Samuel, " behold, to obey is bet- " ter than sacrifice, and to hearken than the " fat of rams." Whether this extraordinary transmutation of the sense of the royal Psal- mist, was made by the error of the translators of the Septuagint, or whether the Septuagint itself was thus altered by the ready-fingered interpolaters of much later times, to accom- X 2 S24 THE DISSONANCE OF niodate it to the doctrine taught in this Epis- tle, I know not ;* but this I know, that no Hebrew, writing particularly to the Hebrews, could have quoted the scriptures of the Old Testament, in the words of the Greek trans- lation, instead of those of the original He- brew ; especially where the sense of the two differed very materially ; and, therefore, 1 am fully satisfied, tiiat neither Paul, nor any other Jew, was the author of this Epistle. In c; ii. y. 13, the author has had the effrontery, to quote the words of Isaiahj c. viii. v. 18, as meaning Jesus Christ and his disciples, though, whoever turns to the book of the Jewish prophet must see, that he is speaking only of himself and his own children, as ap- pointed by God to be signs to Ahaz and the inhabitants of Jerusalem at that time. In c. iii. V. 1, this writer calls Christ Jesus, the Apostle of our profession^ that is, I suppose, of the Christian faith; but the denommation. Apostle^ in all the genuine scriptures, is pe- . • Dottor Whitby supposes, tliat this accommodation was made by ■tiie suggestions of the Holy Spirit to the minds of the seventy trans- lators 5 but it is more consonant to reason to believe, that the Holy Spirit supplied the Royal Prophet, in the first instance, with words duly expressive of the meaning of the Deity : and, therefore, they, who are acquainted with the practices of the puhovpyoi of the second and third centuries of the Christian a?ra, will think it much more *^robable,thatthe accommodating alteration was their ingenious work. THE EVANGELISTS. 3?^ culiarly appropriated to those who were de- legated by him to preach the Gospel ; and, as Pauls constant boast is, that he was an. Apostle of Jesus Christy it seems impossible, that he should have given the same denomi- nation to Jesus Christ himself. Let us con- sider also, to w^hom this Epistle could h?tve been sent by Paul. It is said to be written from Italy to the Hebrews, that is, the Jews; but there were Jews in every city where hq had preached the Gospel, and he had first taught in their synagogues ; and when the majority of them had every where rejected the Gospel, he had determined to turn froin them to the Gentiles, whose conversion was the peculiar object of his apostleship, as that of the Jews was of Peter's; the Jews, therefore, in every Gentile city, made too small a part of the Christian Church, to be particularly written to by Paul; and, since there were some in every city, to which of them was this letter sent ? for it could not be delivered to them all. If, by the word Hebrews^ is meant the Hebrew nation of Palestine, and we are to understand, that this Epistle was sent to the Jews of the Christian Church at Jerusalem ; it is by no means credible, that Paul should so iar de- X 3 S26 THE DISSONANCE OF part from his own peculiar province, and in- vade that of Peter, as to send such a letter as this to that Church, of which Peter himself, and all the other surviving Apostles, were re- sident members. Besides, in c. ii. v. 3 and 4, the author expresses himself in terms, which plainly shew, he was not Paul, and that he lived after the Apostolic age ; for he says, the Gospel " at the first began to be spoken " by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by " them that heard him ; God also bearing " them witness, both with signs and wonders, " and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy *' Ghost/' The writer is here evidently speak- ing of persons, circumstances, and times al- ready past ; and distinguishes himself and his contemporaries from the Apostles and first preachers of the Gospel, who confirmed their doctrine by the testimony of miracles, lie cannot therefore be Paul, wdio repeatedly as- sures us, that he received his instruction in the Gospel from no man living, but by imme- diate revelation from Jesus Christ ; and who was himself endued with the power of work- ing miracles, and enjoyed the gifts of the holy inspiration in the highest degree. The same objections whicli have been urged against the Epistle addressed particularly to THE EVANGELISTS. 327 the Hebrews, lie in full force against the Epistle of James also; for thougli it is pro- fessedly written to Christians, who, as such, were no longer Jews, it is addressed " to the "twelve tribes which are scattered abroad i' an expression which seems to refer to the final dispersion of the Jews under Vespasian, and consequently to imply that it was not penned till after that event: yet such a de- nomination, even if we should suppose, that some out of all the twelve tribes of the Jews had been converted to Christianity during the ministry of the Apostles, could no longer be given to them with the least propriety, for reasons which I have already mentioned. And to what place could a letter so addressed have been sent? Indeed, from the whole te- nor of the Epistle it is evident, that it was not written in the age of the Apostles, but in after times, when professed Christians w^ere guilty of many immoralities plainly repug- nant to the precepts of their religion ; and one cannot suppose that the converts from Judaism alone merited the writer's admoni- tions and reproofs, nor see why they should be so particularly directed to them. In c. v. V. 8, the writer tells them, that " the coming X 4 528 THE DISSONANCE OF "of the Lord draweth nigh/' which he con- firms in the next verse, by adding, " behold " the judge standeth before the door;" whereby he plainly shews that he was no Apostle of Christ, nor well instructed in the Gosj)el prophecies respecting our Lord's com- ing again : for Paul wrote expressly to the Thessalonians to correct their misapprehen- sion upon that very point, and to assure them, that before that predicted period would ar- rive, true Christianity would be shamefully corrupted, and a lamentable, sinful apostasy from the faith of the Gospel would be estab- hshed in the world; which John told them would continue to prevail for near thirteen centuries. At the tenth verse, he tells them, to " take the prophets who have spoken in " the name of ttie Lord," (without doubt meaning the Apostles) •' for an example of " suffering affliction and patience;" which proves that he was not himself an Apostle. The origin also of extreme unction, for which a direction is given, v. 14, is a demonstration that the writer himself was, not endowed with the gift of healing; and that he wrote after those miraculous powers had ceased in the Church. The shocking doctrine also, v. 15, THE EVANGELISTS. ^3t tlmt a wicked Christian, upon the bed of sick* ucss, ma}^ receive forgiveness of; his sins by means of the pra3^ers of the KUlers of the Church; and the institution of auricular con- fession, v, l6, atford much more convincing proofs that this Epistle is one of the many spurious writings of the third century, than it is possible to produce in favour of its authen- ticity. V. The Epistle called the first of Peter, is supposed also to have been addressed to the Jewish converts to Christianity, that were dis- persed throughout the several countries of ^sia Minor ; and, if so, it is liable to the ob- jections already urged against the two last- mentioned Epistles. But, in c. ii. v. 10, speaking of those to whom the Epistle is di- rected, the author says, " which, in time past, " were not a people, but are now the people " of God ;" words which, in the prophecy of Hosea, from whence they are quoted, are spoken particularly of the conversion of the Gentiles, and could never, with any propriety, be applied to the Jews. However, whether it be supposed to be written to the Jewish or the Gentile converts, since the countries men- 9$0 THE DISSONANCE OF tioned are precisely those where it was pecu- liarly allotted to Paul to preach the Gospel, whilst the province of Judea and Palestine was as peculiarly allotted to Peter, it cannot be believed, without much better evidence than is produced in favour of this Epistle, that Peter wrote it ; especially when we find the author professing himself, c. iv. v. 3, to have been, in the former part of his life, a lascivious, lustful, drunken, riotous, and abomi- nable/ idolatrous Gentile. Peter also could not have been so io-norant of the sense of the Christian prophecies as to affirm, as this writer does, c. iv. v. 7, that when he wrote, ilie end of all things was at haiid. The an* thor professes too to Avrite from Babylon, where, whether we understand Assyrian or Egyptian Babylon, there is not the least rea- son to believe Peter ever went. Could any Apostle of Jesus Christ write such nonsense as we find, c. iii. v. 19 and 20, about Christ^s going by the spirit, and preaching to the spi- rits in prison, who were disobedient at the time of Noahs flood? And what is said, e. ii. V. 12, of the Christians being accused as evil-doers, v/hich, we know from Pliny's testi- mony, was not the case in the beginning of the THE EVANGELISTS. S81 second century, is another proof that this Epistle also, was not the work of any man of the Apostohc age, but of the third century. Of the second Epistle of Peter, and the Epistle of Jude, which were both evidently written with the same view, viz. to condemn those who opposed the ambitious growth of Clerical power and authority, that advanced apace and to a very unchristian height, in the third century and beginning of the fourth, and both, as seems probable from the style and similarity of expressions, by the same author, it is sufficient to remark, that they have no one testimony of their authenticity, of the least weight, either internal or external; and that they were generally rejected as spu- rious, from the time of their first appearance till the fifth century: that the author of the second epistle of Peter, c. iii. v. 15 and l6, speaks of Paul's Epistles as being collected together, and universally known in his time ; professes to have read them all; and says, there are some things in them hard to be un- derstood; not oneof which circumstances can be reasonably supposed of Peter: that both these Epistles refer to the fabulous legend of the fallen angels^ and the story of Balaam's ass; and to some apocrypha] fiction of a con- ^2* THE DISSONANCE OF test between Michael and the Devil about the body of Moses ; for the truth of all which^ x\rhether any other person be able to find faith, I cannot tell; but I am sure such a belief is utterly out of my power. '^ 'VI The three remaining canonical Epis- tles are attributed to the Apostle John, the autlior of the Apocalypse, although the style fe very different. Of these, the two last are too insignificant to merit much attention; it is, therefore, sufficient to observe concerning tliem, that all the writers of the fourth cen- tury, who are the fii^st that mention them, in- form us they were spoken against, and by 'many rejected as spurious. As to the first and most important of the three, it is evidently the work of the same hand as the Gospel at- tributed to the same Apostle; for, like a staunch disciple of the Platonic School, he si>eaks of our Saviour in his introduction, as he had done before in the introduction to his Evangelical History, as the Divine Logos of Plato, manifested to the world in human form. Bui he very satisfactorily discovers that he was riot John; arid that he did not write this Epi'stle'till a considerable time after the Apo- olic ^^i f6-r,'C.' H.'.V^ 18, be says,*^- Little T^E EVANGELISTS. SSS << Children, it is the last time: and ;^s ye^^ 've ^^ lieard that Antichrist ^hvW come,'e\Tnmoir *' are tliere many 'Antichrists^ whereby wse ^' know that it is the last time," In this extra-^ ordinary assertion are several circuinstaTi^^ei deserving particular attention. First,- th^ term Antichrist, which is no v>^here to be foniid in any other scriptm^e, is here, and agstin^ 4C. iv.'V, S, mentioned by this Avriter as a de^ iiommation well known by the Christians of iiis' time to express the fatal object of the il^hief prophecies of the Gospel, which- they had heard .should come. Now, since no isncli ^ord as this is to be met with, either in the prophecies of the Apocalypse or in Pauls pre- dictions of the same event, it is plain that the term Antichrist could not become conimonlj used and understood by Christians in general, till, being accustomed to reflect, and talk, and write about the Revelation c^f Jahn, and more especially about Paul's prophecy contained in 2 Thessalonians, chap. ii. thejr 'had agreed to call by that peculiar name the sinful human pouier, or t1iat man of'sin^s^ Paul expresses it, who should oppo.^e his au- thority to that of God and Christ, and con- tinue in ^dme degree till our Lords glorious 'coming; btlt itis not possible, that this siK)uld 884 THE DISSONANCE OF have been the case with Christians in genefalj till those books had been in common use, and been often read and commented upon ; which it is in the highest degree improbable should happen till long after the death of both Paul and John. Secondly, the writer deems all the heterodox teachers of his own time to be Antichrists, in the sense of these prophecies ; though it is manifest from the prophecies themselves, that the opposition to God and Christ, which they describe, is of a very dif- ferent kind. Thirdly, he declares that the predicted opposer of Christ was then already in the worlds though Paul expressly affirms, that he would not appear till after there had been a general apostasy of professed Chris- tians from the true and rational faith of the Gospel; an event which did not take place for above a century after the death of all the Apos- tles, and which, indeed, Paul tells Timothy, 1 Ep. c. iv. V. 1, would happen at some distant period, saying, it would come to pass in the latter times^ or, as it should rather have been translated, in succeeding or future tunes Last- ly, the author of this Epistle affirms the time in which he w rote to be the last time^ and says, that by the Antichrists which then existed, he knew it to be the last tune ; an assertion THE EVANGELISTS. S35 winch we, who live 1700 years after the death of John, and 1500 years after the appear- ance of this Epistle, know to be an absolute falsehood, because the last time is not yet come. We know also, that the prophetic author of the Apocalypse could never have uttered such an assertion, because he him- self, as well as Paul, hath assured us, that the last time of Christianiy is the time when the sph'it and power of Antichrist will be an- nihilated, and the pure uncorrupted religion of the Gospel prevail amongst mankind, which he repeatedly assures us, will not be ac- complished till full 1260 years after the com- plete establishment of a fabulous, blasphe- mous superstition in every country of Eu- rope, by means of that predicted anti-chris tian power, which did not begin to shew itsel any where before the fourth century of th Christian a^ra. I have thus, as concisely as 1 could, (for to their attainment of truth in such inquiries as these, it is much more necessary to make peo- ple think tlian to make them read,) stated the grounds and reasons of my own rejection of so large a number of those Epistles, which the orthodox and holy Catholic Church hath though^ 5S6 THE DISSONANCE OF fit to ^dopt as genuine, authentic scriptures of the A p<. sties of Jesus Christ; and of the strength or weakness of my arguments every reader miist determine for himself. ] have only further to remark, that not one of these Epis- tles contains in it that necessary internal tes- timony of the divine authority of the writer, the spirit of prophecy ; wliilst Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians, Thessaloniahs, Galatiahs, and Timothy, liave the historic testimony in thdr favour, strongly corroborated by that arid every othei: internal evidence of authen- ticity. **VII. It remains for me to explain my rea- sons for objecting also to the Epistles to the seven Churches of Asia, as a spurious inter- polation of" the important book of the A po- calypse. In the introduction to those prophetic vi- sions, John calls them " the Revelation which " God gave unto Jesus Christ, to shew unto ** his servants things, which must shortly come " to pass, and which he sent arid signified bi/ " his angel unto his servant John." Agreeably to this annunciation of the contents of the book, we find, after the beginning of the THE EVANGELISTS. 537 visions in the foui^th chapter, that an angel is the constant mystagogue of the Apostle through every scene ; but the intei'position of these seven unimportant, and to us scarce- ly intelhgible, Epistles, occasions a most un- accountable inconsistency in the writer, as it makes him, immediately after the above de- claration, introduce a vision, in which, not an •nngel sent by Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ himself^ is represented as the sole personage of the vision^ appearing under a very extra- ordinary figure, attended with very extraor- dinary emblems^ for no other purpose, that I can discover, than to condemn the heresy of the Nicolaitanes, and those \^ho scrupled not to eat things offered to idols. Now John s original book, of the Apocalypse must have been written before Paul wrote bis above- mentioned genuine Epistles, because in them he several times refers to it; ^nd from them, and that part of his history which is subse^ quent to his writing some of them, we learn both that he himself spoke of eating things, which had been offered to idols as innocent in itself, and also that he knew nothing of these disciples of Nicolaus, though these seven churches were all of his own planting; and Y 3^8 THE DISSONANCE OF though these visionary Epistles represent the heresy as subsisting at the time wheil they were written. The only prophetic part of them also, if any part can pro- perly be called so*, is absolutely false; for whilst some are threatened with havino; their candlestick, that is their church, re- moved out of its place, and others with other signal punishments and marks of his resent- ment, the churches of Smyrna and Philadel- phia are favoured and approved ; and the lat- ter is particularly assured, that, " because she s" had kept the word of his patience^ he would " also keep her from the hour of temptation, *' which should come upon all the world to " try them that dwell upon the earth/' Yet the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia have been both involved in the same common sufferings and calamities with all the other churches of Asia; and have had their candle- ^ sticks removed out of their places, and sup- , planted by the lamps of Mahomed. Besides, in order to predict the leading circumstances .,0f the subsequent prophetic vision, our Savi- ;^ur,must have known, that the church of Philadelphia and of Smyrna, and all the other churches iu Asia, would unite, under the de- THE EVANGELISTS. 33g nomination of tlie Greek church, to form the predicted apostasy from his religion ; and, by means of an Hierarchy estabhshed by the Emperor Constantine, become, at no very distant period, the first grand object of the chief prediction of this very Apocalypse: he therefore could never have dictated Epistles to those churches in such terms as thes^. Y 2 ^ CONCLUSION, ^UCH, candid Reader, are the arguments ^^ which have long ago induced the Author of these pages, to regard so large a part of the canonical scriptures as spurious fictions, of no authority, and undeserving the attention of a disciple of Jesus Christ. What effect they may have upon the minds of his readers in general, is not in his power to determine. But it is great satisfaction to him, that, be- sides the demand of the Public for ^ new edi- tion, he has received from many individuals^ in different aqd distant parts of the kingdom, the most unequivocal testimony of their ap- probation. And whosoever will attentively examine those writings, which, thus convinced, lie refuses to adjnit into, his Creed, v.ill find, that they alone have given cause for that voluminous ini)ndatipn of school-divinity, and those endless theological controversies, that have for so many ages oppressed the literature THR EVANGELISTS. Ut id fatigued the patiQiice of Europe; that they alone have been the source of those wild, irrational systenjs, which have so long misled people from the plain, straight, perspicuous paths of true religion^ into the manifold, devi-. ous wanderings of th.at obscure labyrinth of fabulous superstition, whose impious doctrines, having nothing to do with reason, ^nd apply-r ing only to the passions, have so exasperated the minds of men against each other, and so inhumanly, as well as unchristianly, hardened their he^rta, a$ to produce frequently, in every nation of Christendom, under the plea of godly, ^eal, scenes pf the most barbarous violence 3nd brutal cruelty^ Doctrines, which (since statesmen have b0en wise enough to discou- rage the spirit of religious persecution,) have tilled the nominally Christian world with a continually increasing variety of sects, both the teachers and disciples of which, according to the prophetic description long since given of them by the Apostle Paul, though from infancy to old age they are ever learnings are never able to attain a rational, satisfactory in* tt^iligence of the religion they continue to pro- fess, nor to come to the knowledge of the obvious ^nd simple, but important, truths joi the New m- THE DISSONANCE OF Covenant of the Gospel. Dpctrine^ which, well knowing them to have had their origin only in the second and third centuries, and finding them to be pointed out by the finger of God himself, as the falsehoods and fabulous fic- tions of the predicted Antichristian Apostasy, which, when supported by the power of the civil magistrate, would for so many centu^ ries supplant the genuine Religion of the New Covenant, preached by Christ and his Apos- tles, the Author glories in having strenuously combated, for near thirty years, by argu- ments which have never yet been refuted. And now, having attained the advanced age erf his seventy-fifth year, amidst the increas- ing bodily infirmities and debility, which he reasonably considers as admonitions of his iapproaching dissolutioii, he blesses God for his gracious goodness, in having con- tinued to him the entire preservation of his mental faculties, which has enabled him to give -the Public a Second Edition of this Work; in which he hopes they will find many arguments considerably improved and strengthened. A'nd now, being conscious of having faithfully discharged his duty to God, rris Saviour, and to 'his fellow-creatures, . ta THE EVANGELISTS. . 543' tlie best of the abilities that God has given him^ hechearfully resigns himself to his mor- tal fate, in a firm confidence of inheriting ia another hfe the blessed rewards of that Co- venant, in the cause of which he has so long coo tended almost aloni?.- ^ .cut 5A»rr— ir«t/fcerj Printer. ERRATA. I*agc 19— Line 14— F