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That only,

from previously existing Pagan writings. which could not, or would not, have expressed the fair sense of any form of Pagan faith, can be peculiarly Christian. That only which the Christian finds that he has to say, of which a worshipper of the gods could not have said the same or the like before him, is Christianity.

CHAPTER II.

THE CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN CREEDS COLLATED.

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The Pagan Creed.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jasius* Christ his only son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Born of the Virgin Electra. Suffered under (whom it might be.)

Was struck by a thunderbolt.

Dead and buried.

He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven. And sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

From whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Catholic Divinity.

The Communion of Saints.

The forgiveness of sins.

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“Jasiusque Pater, genus a quo principe nostrum. And father Jasius, from which Prince our race is descended.-VIRGIL.

16. The resurrection of the body.

17. And the life everlasting.

This creed, though not to be found in this form in the Christian Scriptures, is evidently deducible from them as their sense and purport.

"This creed still bears the name of the Apostle's Creed. From the fourth century downwards it was almost generally considered as a production of the Apostles. All, however, who have the least knowledge of antiquity, look upon this opinion as entirely false and destitute of all foundation. There is much more reason in the opinion of those who think that this creed was not all composed at once, but from small beginnings was imperceptibly augmented, in proportion to the growth of heresy, and according to the exigencies and circumstances of the church, from which it was designed to banish the errors that daily arose."-Mosheim, vol. i. p. 116, 117.

The immortality of the soul.
And the life everlasting.

This creed, though not to be found in this form in the Pagan Scriptures, is evidently deducible from them as their sense and purport.

The reader is to throw into this scale, an equal quantity of allowance and apology to that claimed by the advocate of Christianity for the opposite. He will only observe that on this side, apology and palliation for a known and acknowledged imposture and forgery for so many ages palmed upon the world, is not needed.

It is not the Pagan creed that was imposed upon mankind, under a false superscription, and ascribed to an authority from which it was known not to have proceeded. Whether a church, which stands convicted of having forged its creed, would have made any scruple of forging its gospels; is a problem that the reader will solve according to the influence of prejudice or probability on his mind.

INFERENCE.

As then, the so called Apostle's Creed, is admitted to have been written by no such persons as the Apostles, and with respect to the high authority which has for so many ages been claimed for it, is a convicted imposture and forgery; the equity of rational evidence will allow weight enough, even to a probable conjecture, to overthrow all that remains of its pretensions. The probability is, that it is really a Pagan document, and of Pagan origination; since, even after the trifling alteration and substitution of one name perhaps for another, to make it subserve its new application, it yet exhibits a closer resem

blance to its Pagan stock, than to the Christian stem on which it has been engrafted.

By a remarkable oversight of the keepings and congruities of the system, the Christian creed has omitted to call for our belief of the miracles or prophecies which constitute its evidence, or for our practice of the duties which should be the test of its utility.

If then, as the learned and judicious Jeremiah Jones, in his excellent treatise on the canonical authority of the New Testament, most justly observes, "In order to establish the canon of the New Testament, it be of absolute necessity that the pretences of all other books to canonical authority be first examined and refuted :"* much more must it be absolutely necessary to establish the paramount and distinctive challenges of Christianity, that we should be able to refute and overthrow all the pretences of previously existing religions, by such a cogency and fairness of argument, as in being fatal to them, shall admit of no application to this, which battering down their airbuilt castles, shall, when brought to play with equal force on Christianity, leave its defences unshaken and its beauty unimpaired.

CHAPTER III.

STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD.

Ir is manifestly unworthy of any cause, in itself containing an intrinsic and independent excellence, that its advocates should condescend to set it off by a foil, or to act as if they thought it necessary to decry and disparage the pretensions of others, in order to magnify and exalt their own. It is certain that the vileness of falsehood can add nothing to the glory of truth. Showing the various systems of heathen idolatry to be, how vile soever, would be adducing neither evidence nor even presumption. for the proof of the divinity of a system of religion that was not so vile, or even if you please, say infinitely superior; as a beautiful woman would certainly feel it to be but an ill compliment to her beauty, to have it constantly obtruded upon her observance, how hideously deformed and monstrously ugly were those, than whom she was so much more beautiful.

* Vol. I. p. 16. 8vo. Ed.

As it would not be fair to take up our notion of the Christian religion, from the lowest and most ignorant of its professors, and still less, perhaps, to estimate its merits, by the representations which its known and avowed enemies would be likely to give; the balance of equal justice on the other side, will forbid our forming our estimate of the ancient paganism from the misconceptions of its unworthy votaries, or the interested detractions and exaggerations of its Christian opponents.

The only just and honourable estimate will be that which shall judge of paganism, as Christians would wish their own religion to be judged-by its own absolute documents, by the representations of its advocates, and the admissions of its adversaries.

When it is borne in mind, that a supernatural origination or divine authority is not claimed for these systems of theology, there can be no occasion to fear their rivalry or encroachment on systems founded on such a claim; and still less, to decry, vituperate, and scandalize these, as any means of exalting or magnifying those. There cannot be the least doubt, that in dark and barbarous ages, the rude and unlettered part of mankind would grossly pervert the mystical or allegorical sense, if such there were, in the forms of religion propounded to their observance or imposed on their simplicity; while it is impossible, that those enlighted and philosophical characters, who have left us in their writings the most undoubted evidence of the greatest shrewdness of intellect, extent of inquiry, and goodness of heart, should have understood their mythology in no better or higher significancy than as it was understood by the ignorant of their own persuasion, or would be represented by their enemies, who had the strongest possible interest in defaming and decrying it. When the worst is done in this way, Christianity would be but little the gainer by being weighed in the same scales. Should we be allowed to fix on the darkest day of her eleven hundred years of dark ages, and to pit the grossest notions of the grossest ignorance of that day, as specimens of Christianity; against the views which Christians have been generally pleased to give as representations of paganism; how would they abide the challenge, "look on this picture and on this ?" Those doctrines only, of which no form or forms of the previously existing paganism could ever pretend the same or the like doctrines, can be properly and distinctively

called Christian. That degree of excellence, whose very lowest stage is raised above the very highest acme of what is known and admitted to have been no more than human, can alone put in a challenge to be regarded as divine. That which was not known before, is that only which a subsequent revelation can have taught.

To justify the claims, therefore, of such a subsequent revelation, we must make the full allowance, and entirely strike out of the equation, all quantities estimated to their fullest and utmost appreciation, which are, and have been claimed as the property of pre-existent systems; and as they were not divine, while it is pretended that this is, the discovery of a resemblance between the one and the other, can only be feared by those who are conscious that they are making a false pretence. Resemblance to a counterfeit is, in this assay, proof of a counterfeit. Brass may sometimes be brought to look like gold, but the pure gold had never yet the ring and imperfections of any baser metal.

At the time alleged as that of the birth of Jesus, all nations were living in the peaceful profession and practice of the several systems of religious faith which they had, as nations or as families, derived from their ancestors, in an antiquity lying far beyond the records of historical commemoration. Christians generally claim for this epocha of time the truly honourable distinction of being the pacific age.* The benign influence of letters and philosophy, was at this time extensively diffused through countries which had previously lain under the darkest ignorance; and nations, whose manners had been savage and barbarous, were civilized by the laws and commerce of the Romans. The Christian writer Orosius, maintains that the temple of Janus was then shut, and that wars and discords had absolutely ceased throughout the world: which, though an allegorical, and very probably an hyperbolical representation of the matter, is at least an honourable testimony to the then state of the heathen world.

The notion of one supreme being was universal. No calumny could be more egregious, than that which charges the pagan world with ever having lost sight of that notion, or compromised or surrendered its paramount importance, in all the varieties and modifications of pagan

* Mosheim, Vol. I. Chap. 1.

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