Herod and all the chief priests and scribes of the people, with the wise men of the east, to inquire where Christ should be born. A.D. 12. "A council of priests, whereat Jesus Christ was admitted into the holy order of priesthood,-a jury of midwives having been impanneled, and upon due scrutiny had, on the body of his mother, having given in their unanimous verdict, that her virginity remained intact.”—So far the learned Suidas, as he learned of a Jew. A.D. 32. Council of chief priests to make their bargain with Judas Iscariot for the arrest of Jesus Christ. A.D. 32. A Council of chief priests to defeat the testimony of the soldiers who kept the sepulchre. A.D. 32. Council of the Apostles to elect Matthias into the apostleship in the room of the traitor Judas. GENERAL COUNCILS. A.D. 47. Council of the Apostles concerning circumcision.Acts of the Apostles. A.D. 66. Council of the Apostles to elect Simeon Cleophas 2nd Bishop of Jerusalem, to succeed James. A.D. 70. Council in which the apostolic canons are pretended to have been agreed on. A.D. 99. Council of Ephesus for the reformation of the churches and consecration of Bishops, at which John the Evangelist was present; and being a priest, as we learn from Polycrates, who had the advantage of him in being a bishop, wore a * scapulary or surplice. A.D. 163. The Council of Ancyra in Galatia, to suppress the errors of Montanus. A.D. 179. Councils in France and Asia, against the heresy of Montanus. A.D. 193. Council at Rome touching the celebration of Easter. Victor Bishop of Rome, excommunicated all the eastern churches, for their difference on this subject. A.D. 248. Fabianus, Pope of Rome, miraculously elected by the Holy Ghost perching upon his head in the shape of a dove; in synod denounced the schism of Novatus. A.D. 254. Council of Carthage under its President, Cyprian, fell into the heresy of re-baptizing heretics. A.D. 271. A first and second council of Antioch, for the condemnation of, and degradation of its Bishop, Paul of Samosata. A.D. 295. Grand Council of 300 bishops and 30 priests, at Sinuessa, where Marcellinus, Bishop of Rome, was condemned for denying Christ, and sacrificing to idols. * Και ιωαννης ο επι το στήθος τα κυριε αναπεσαν, ος εγενήθη ιερευς το πεταλον -And John, who leaned on the Lord's bosom, who having become a priest wore a petalon.-Euseb. lib. 3. c. 25.-Popish trumpery so soon in fashion! A.D. 307. Council of Ancyra, where such as sacrificed to idols, were allowed to be received under certain conditions, and deacons who could not contain, were suffered to marry. A.D. 327. Grand Council of Nice in Bythinia, under the presidency of Constantine the Great, gave us the God of God creed used in the communion service. Pappus, in his Synodicon to the council of Nice, asserts, that having promiscuously put all the books under the communion table in a church, they besought the Lord, that the inspired records might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained underneath, which accordingly happened.* A.D. 368. Council of Laodicea. This council first, and not that of Nice, is supposed to have given a catalogue of the books contained in the New Testament: not including the Revelation. A.D. 397. The third council of Carthage; present, Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage; Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, and 42 other bishops. Of this council, the 47th Canon ordains, "that nothing beside the canonical scriptures be read in the church under the name of divine scriptures." All those contained and arranged as in our present Old and New Testaments, are in this canon enumerated as being canonical. A.D. 401. The council of Chalcedon. Here first the New Testament was set in the midst of the assembly, as the great appeal. Yet St. Chrysostom, who died A.D. 407, assures us, that in his time, the Acts of the Apostles was a book by many Christians, entirely unknown. "The canon of the New Testament," says Dr. Lardner, “had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged, but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves, concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical; and to determine according to evidence." Even so late as in the time of the historian Cassiodorus,† whom Dr. Lardner places at A.D. 556. There are reckoned in all 17 general councils, but the rest of them are too late in time, or too irrelevant to any bearing on the historical evidences of Christianity, to come within the scope of this DIEGESIS-the council of Trent, A.D. 1549, is the last of them. Augustus the monk first preached Christianity in England A.D. 597. The inhabitants of England being Picts, or painted savages, first embraced Christianity, A.D. 698. Chronol. Table of Evans's Sketches. * Εν γαρ οικω του Θεου κατω παρα τη δεια τραπεζη αυτας παραθεμενη, προσευξατο ως ευρεθηναι τας θεοπνευστους επάνω, τον Κυριον εξαιτησαμένη, και τας κιβδηλους, ο και γεγονεν, υποκατωθεν. †Senator and Complier of the Tripartite History, i. e. the Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret united.-See this argument handled in my Syntagma p. 68. Published from this prison in refutation of the infinite vituperations of the Christian Instruction Society. ECCLESIASTICAL REVENUES. Expenditure of the Clergy of all the Christian World. England, and Prots Ireland. Scotland. France. Spain. Portugal. Hungary. Italy. Austria. Switzerland. Prussia. German States. Holland.sy Netherlands. Denmark. Sweden. 760,000 Total Christians Grt. Britain, for 219,532,824 pay their Clergy, £18,772,000 9,920,000 Leaving, for 198,728,000 people to pay only £8,852,000 EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. If we divide the known countries of the earth, into thirty equal parts, five of them are Christian, six Mahometan, and nineteen Pagan. Bayle's Dictionary. Dr. Evans supposing the inhabitants of the world to be eight hundred millions; gives us the annexed scale of probable pro portions. Jews Pagans 2,500,000 482,000,000 In this, which is wholly Christian arithmetic, no account is made of the probable proportion of either professed or real UNBELIEVERS, whose number, be it greater or less, is on all hands admitted to be an increasing number, and a number to be deducted, not from the amount of Jews, Pagans, or Mohammedans; but exclusively from the amount of Christians; and in the amount of Christians, chiefly from the most intelligent, reflecting, and literary characters, that is unquestionably from the very nerves and core of their strength. Let their own statement be credible—e. g. Dr. Priestley observes in one of his last sermons, that when he visited France in 1774, all her philosophers and men of letters were absolutely infidels.* Dr. Evans who died Jan. 24, 1827, had announced his plan of a work, which he lived not to finish, whose professed object, in his own terms, was to shield the minds of the rising generation, from the growing evil of the age, an overweening and clamorous infidelity.† The whole united Scottish Presbytery, in a dolorous Jeremiad, publicly announce, that all the most intelligent and accomplished men among them, have imbibed the principles of infidelity. Their own words are, "O God, pity us, for our case is very pitiful, and there is nobody else to pity us, but only thou, O God! And not now is it according to the word of the Lord in the parable, that one sheep should be astray, and ninety and nine safely gathered into the fold, but that the ninety and nine should be straying and only one abiding in the fold." * Quoted thus in Evans's Sketches, 15th ed. p. 5. † Evans's Sketches, 15th ed. pref. xv. + Pastoral Letter from the Scottish Presbytery 1827, p. 39, Yet these zealous advocates of the Christian cause affect to treat their AUTHORITIES ADDUCED IN THE DIEGESIS. Dr. Whitby's Last Thoughts, 3. Faustus, 66, 65, 114, 252, 371. Elsley's Annotations on the Gospels, 5, Basnage, 78. Virgil, 9, 142, 155, 216, 220, 328, 358. Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, 10, Orosius, 13, 398. Gibbon's Decime and Fall of the Ro- Pope's Homer's Iliad, 15. Le Clerc, Latin Note, 19, 120. 113, 114, 117, 138, 144, 145, 146. Shaw's Travels, 23. Shakspeare, 24, 296. Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon, 24, 155, 158, 160, 161, 162, 183, 189. A Friend, 25. Josephus, Greek, 27, 59, 96. Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Evanson's Dissonance of the Four 136. Eusebius, Greek, 28, 64, 69, 70, 71, St. Ambrose, 146. 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 85. Valerius Maximus, 29. Addison, 148, 285. Author's Syntagma, 31, 32, 34, 89, Seneca's Medea, 149. 129, 271, 352, 368. Pseudo Plutarch, 32. More's Songs, 23. Juvenal, 23, 232, 466. Montfaucon, 60. Holyot, 60. Lange, 60, Henman, 60 Eusebius, 150, 151, 164. Ovid, 150, 196, 232, 233, 293. Dr. Lardner, 152, 206, 291, 294, 297, 298, 305, 306, 312, 317. Justin Martyr, 153, 232, 257, 258, 314, 315, 316, 317. Spence's Polymetis, 155. |