well expressed in its motto, that philosophy which is agreeable to nature, approve and cherish; but that which pretends to commerce with the deity, avoid! pledges us to view all references to supernatural agency, as being no proof of such agency, but as demonstration absolute of the idiotish stupidity, or arrant knavery of the party, resting any cause whatever on such references. It is not in the former of these predicaments, that such an historian as Mosheim, can be impeached; nor could either the emoluments or dignities of the theological chair at Helmstadt, or the chancellorship of the University of Gottingen, allay the smartings of sentiment, and the anguish of conscious meanness, in holding them at so dear a price, as the necessity of making such statements, of thus selling his name to the secret scorn of all whose praise was worth ambition, thus outraging his own convictions, thus conflicting with his own statements; thus bowing down his stupendous strength of talent, to harmonize with the figments of drivelling idiotcy, making learning do homage to ignorance, and the clarion that should have roused the sleeping world, pipe down to concert with the rattle-trap and Jew's-harp of the nursery.

Of the pious frauds, which this historian admits to share only a small part of the honour of contributing to the propagation of the gospel, because they were "practised by so few;" he had not the alleviation to his feelings, of being able to be ignorant that he had falsified that statement in innumerable passages of this and his other writings; and that his whole history of the church, from first to last, contains not so much as a single instance, of one of the fathers of the church, or first preachers of the gospel, who did not practice those pious frauds.

57. The authors who have treated of the innocence and sanctity of the primitive Christians, have fallen into the error of supposing them to have been unspotted models of piety and virtue, and a gross error indeed it is, as the strongest testimonies too evidently prove."-Ibid. p. 120.

58.*"Such was the license of inventing, so headlong the readiness of believing, in the first. ages, that the credibility of transactions derived from thence, must have been hugely doubtful: nor has the world only, but the

* "Tanta fuit primis sæculis fingendi licentia, tam prona in credendo facilitas, ut rerum gestarum fides exinde graviter laboraverat. Neque enim orbis terrarum tantum, sed et Dei ecclesia de temporibus suis mysticis merito quæratur."-Fell, Bishop of Oxford, quoted by Lardner and Tindal.

church of God also, has reasonably to complain of its mystical times."-Bishop Fell, so rendered in the Author's SYNTAGMA, p. 34.

59. The extravagant notions which obtained among the Christians of the primitive ages, (says Dupin) sprang from the opinions of the Pagan philosophers, and from the mysteries, which crack-brained men put on the history of the Old and New-Testament, according to their imaginations. The more extraordinary these opinions were, the more did they relish, and the better did they like them; and those who invented them, published them gravely, as great mysteries to the simple, who were all disposed to receive them."-Dupin's Short History of the Church, vol. 2. c. 4, as quoted by Tindal, p. 224.

60. They have but little knowledge of the Jewish nation, and of the primitive Christians, who obstinately refuse to believe that such sort of notions could not proceed from thence; for on the contrary, it was their very character to turn the whole scripture into allegory."-Archbishop Wake's Life of the apostle Barnabas, p. 73.

Of the MIRACULOUS POWERS With which Mosheim* would persuade us that the Christians of the third century were still endowed; we have but to confront him with his own conflicting statement, on the 11th page of his second volume: concluding with his own reflection on that admission:-"Thus does it generally happen in human life, that when danger attends the discovery and the profession of the truth, the prudent are silent, the multitude believe, and impostors triumph."

Of the DREAMS AND VISIONS, of which he speaks; it is enough to answer him with the intuitive demonstration, that such sort of evidence for Christianity, might be as easily pretended for one religion as another; it is such as none but a desperate cause would appeal to, such as no rational man would respect, and no honest man maintain; not only of no nature to afford proof to the claims of a divine revelation, but itself unproved; and not alone unproved; but of its own nature, both morally and physically, incapable of receiving any sort of proof. The heart smarts for the degradation of outraged reason, for the humiliation of torn and lacerated humanity; that a Mosheim should talk of dreams and visions-that it should come to this! O Christianity, how great are thy triumphs!

* Vol. I, p. 247.

Of the HEALING OF DISEASES, by the invoking of a name. It is impossible not to see, that this author did not believe his own argument because it is impossible not to know that no man in his senses could believe it, and impossible not to suspect, that so weak and foolish an argument, was by this author, purposely exhibited as one of the main pillars of the Christian evidence, in order to betray to future times, how weak that evidence was, and to encourage those who should come to live in some happier day when the choused world might better endure the being undeceived;-to blow it down with their breath. Beausobre, Tillotson, South, Watson, Paley, and some high in the church, yet living, have given more than pregnant inuendoes of their acting on this policy.

Nothing is more obvious, than that persons diseased in body, must labour under a corresponding weakness of mind. There is no delusion of such obvious practicability on a weak mind in a diseased body; as that which should hold out hopes of cure, beyond the promise of nature. A miracle of healing, is therefore of all miracles, in its own nature most suspicious, and least capable of evidence.

It was the pretence to these gifts of healing, that gave name to the Therapeuta, or Healers; and consequently supplies us with an infallible clue to lead to the birth-place and cradle of Christianity. The cure being performed by invocation of a name, still lights us on to the germ and nucleus of the whole system. Neither slight nor few are the indications of this magical or supposed charming operation of the Brutum fulmen; the mere name only of the words, Jesus Christ, in the New Testament itself; and consequently neither weak nor inconsecutive are our reasons, for maintaining that it was in the name, and the name only, that the first preachers of Christianity believed; that it was not supposed by them to be the designation of any person who had really existed, but was a vox et præterea nihil,—a charm more powerful than the Abraxas, more sacred than Abracadabra; in short, those were but the spells that bound the services of inferior demons- this, conjured the assistance of omnipotence, and was indeed, the God's spell. "There is none other NAME under heaven, (says the Peter of the Acts of the Apostles) given among men, whereby we must be saved."-Chap. iv. 12.

61. Origen, ever the main strength and sheet-anchor of the advocates of Christianity, expressly maintains, that

*

"the miraculous powers which the Christians possessed, were not in the least owing to enchantments, (which he makes Celsus seem to have objected,) but to their pronouncing the name I. E. S. U. S, and making mention of some remarkable occurrences of his life. Nay, the name of I. E. S. U. S, has had such power over demons, that it has sometimes proved effectual, though pronounced by very wicked persons."-Answer to Celsus, chap. 6.

62. "And the name of I. E. S. U. S, at this very day, composes the ruffled minds of men, dispossesses demons, cures diseases; and works a meek, gentle, and amiable temper in all those persons, who make profession of Christianity, from a higher end than their worldly interests."-Ibid. 57. So says Origen. No Christian will for a moment think that there is any salving of the matter in such a statement. Friar's balsam was found in every case without fail; to heal the wound, even after a man's head was clean cut off, provided his head were set on again the right way.

63. "When men pretend to work miracles, and talk of immediate revelations, of knowing the truth by revelation, and of more than ordinary illumination; we ought not to be frightened by those big words, from looking what is under them; nor to be afraid of calling those things into question, which we see set off with such high-flown pretences. It is somewhat strange that we should believe men the more, for that very reason, upon which we should believe them the less.-Clagit's Persuasive to an Ingenuous Trial of Opinions, p. 19, as quoted by Tindal, p. 217.

64. St. Chrysostom declares, "that miracles are only proper to excite sluggish and vulgar minds, that men of sense have no occasion for them, and that they frequently carry some untoward suspicion along with them."-Quoted in Middleton's Prefatory Discourse to his Letter from Rome, p. 104.

In this sentiment it must be owned, that the Christian saint strikingly coincides with the Pagan philosopher Polybius, who considered all miracles as fables, invented to preserve in the vulgar a due sense of respect for the deity."-Reimmann, Hist. Ath. p. 233.

65. The great theologian, Beausobre, in his immense Histoire de Manichee, tom. 2, p. 568, says, "We see in

* See similar mystical senses of the epithets, Christ and Chrest, under the articles Serapis, and Adrian's Letter.

+ "On voit dans l'histoire que j'ai rapportee, une sorte d'hypocrisie, qui n'a

the history which I have related, a sort of hypocrisy, that has been perhaps, but too common at all times: that churchmen not only do not say what they think, but they do say, the direct contrary of what they think. Philosophers in their cabinets; out of them, they are content with fables, though they well know that they are fables. Nay more they deliver honest men to the executioner, for having uttered what they themselves know to be true. How many Atheists and Pagans have burned holy men under the pretext of heresy? Every day do hypocrites consecrate, and make people adore the host, though as well convinced as I am, that it is nothing but a bit of bread.

66. The learned Grotius has a similar avowal: "He that reads ecclesiastical history, reads nothing but the roguery and folly of bishops and churchmen."— Grotii Epist. 22.

No man could quote higher authorities.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE ESSENES OR THERAPEUTS.

A KNOWLEDGE of the character and tenets of that most remarkable set of men that ever existed, who were known by the name of Essenes or Therapeuts, is absolutely necessary to a fair investigation of the claims of the New Testament, in the origination and references of which, they bear so prominent a part.

The celebrated German critic, Michaelis, whose great work, the Introduction to the New Testament, has been translated by Dr. Herbert Marsh, the present Lord Bishop of Peterborough, defines them as "a Jewish sect, which began to spread itself at Ephesus, and to threaten great mischief to Christianity, in the time (or, indeed, previous to the time) of St. Paul; on which account, in his epistles to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, and to Timothy; he declares himself openly against them."

peut-etre ete que trop commune dans tous les terns. C'est que des ecclesiastiques, non seulement ne disent pas ce qu'ils pensent, mais disent tout le contraire de ce qu'ils pensent. Philosophes dans leur cabinet, hors dela, ils content des fables, quoiqu'ils sachont bien que ce sont des fables. Ils font plus ; ils livrent au bourreau des gens de biens pour l'avoir dit. Combiens d'athees et de prophanes ont fait bruler de saints personnages, sous pretexte d'heresie ! Tous les jours des hypocrites, consacrent et font adorer l'hostie, bien qu'ils soient aussi convaincus que moi, que ce n'est qu'un morceau de pain."-Ibid.

† Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 79.