account from the same document which the apostle had previously quoted, or even from the text of the apostle himself.

"in

Thus, no exception from the general rule remains; and we must admit, with all its consequences, the prior existence of these epistolary writings, detailing, as they do, the history of communities of Christians, and fully established churches in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica, "rooted and grounded in the faith,"—" beloved of God,"- "called of Christ Jesus,”every thing enriched, in all utterance and all knowledge,"— coming behind in no good gift," and having, as the apostle, in the case of the Galatian church, emphatically declares, so certainly received the only true and authentic Gospel, that if even the apostle himself, or an angel from heaven, should preach any other gospel than that which they had received, LET HIM BE ACCURSED." Gal. i. 8.-See Syntagma of the

Evidences, p. 75.

6. Here we find the Gospel already so fully established, that there was a sense in which it could be said that it had been preached unto every creature under heaven (Colos. i. 23), before the date assigned to any one of the gospels that have come down to us, before any one of the disciples had suffered martyrdom, before any one of them could have completed his commission. Here we find a spiritual dynasty established, exercising the most tremendous authority ever grasped by man, not merely over the lives and fortunes, minds and persons, but over the supposed eternal destinies of its enslaved and degraded vassals, and confirmed by so strong an influence over all their powers of resistance, that its haughty possessor could bear them witness that they were ready to pluck their eyes out, and give them to him. Here we find churches already perfectly organized "to their power," yea (and the Apostle boasts), beyond their power, contributing to the pomp and splendour of their ministers, and beseeching them, with much entreaty, to take their money from them.* (2 Cor. viii. 4).

7. Here we find the distinct orders of bishops and deacons already reigning in the plenitude of their distinctive authorities; and the bishops, forsooth, the proudest of the proud, already of such long prescription in their seat of power, as often to have abused that power, and to need admonitions "not to be self-willed, not to be given to wine, no strikers,

* And what goes with the story of the Apostles, meeting with such ill success as to have to lay down their lives for their testimony? It is not only not true, but not conceivable to be true; it out-herod's Herod, and out-lies the consistency of romance itself. 9*

and not given to filthy lucre," (Tit. i. 7,) as some of that right-reverend order must have been proved to be, ere such admonitions could have been called for; yet called for they were, and necessary they had become, as the reader will see by the table, some eight or ten years before the date assigned to the writing of the four Gospels.

"The Essenians, of whom Philo has written the history, were confessedly Pythagorians, and I think we may see some traces of these people among the Druids. They existed before Christianity, and lived in buildings called monasteria or monasteries, and were called Koinobioi* or Cœnobites. They were of three kinds, some never married, others of them did. They are most highly spoken of by all the authors of antiquity who have named them.". The Celtic Druids, by Godfrey Higgins, Esq. a. D. 1827, p. 125. Were there any degree of difficulty in accounting for such a scheme of tyrannous aggrandisement, and of obtaining unbounded power and influence over the subjugated reason of mankind, philosophy, that forbids all supposition of supernatural agency, would acknowledge that difficulty; but to imagine any, in accounting for the rise and progress of Christianity, we must, by a laborious effort of imagination, imagine nature to be the very reverse in every thing from what we experience it to be; we must suppose a man to be at a loss to find his own head; we must suppose Infinite Wisdom teaching trickery to a thief, and the orchestra of the spheres supplying resin for a fiddlestick-introducing our God not to extricate the mystery of the scene, but to sweep the stage, and grease the pulleys.

CHAPTER XII.

REFERENCES TO THE MONKISH OR THERAPEUTAN DOCTRINES, TO BE TRACED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

1. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their's is the kingdom of heaven."-Matt. v. 3.

This, the first principle put into the mouth of the Galilean Thaumaturge, was also the first principle of the

* Kooẞto-living in common. Acts iv. 32. Hy avтos añarta xoiva—“ they had all things in common."

+ Mr. Higgins's testimony is the more valuable, as it is that of a witness averse to the conclusions to which he marshals us the way. His splendid work, instructive and interesting as it is in the highest degree, though superfluously orthodox, has delightfully beguiled the tedium of many of my prison-hours'

Therapeutæ, and as such had been known and taught for ages before the time assigned to the first publication of the Gospel.

It is to be found in the previously existing writings of Menander, in the sentence δει νομίζονθ' οι πενητες των θεω We ought to consider the poor as especially belonging to the gods; and in the ancient Latin adage, "Bonæ mentis soror paupertas"-Poverty is the sister of a good mind. It is observable, that this Menander the comedian, is not only quoted by name, by the first of the Fathers (not apostolical), Justin Martyr, in his apology to the Emperor Adrian, as one of the authorities with whom the Christians held so many sentiments in common, but is again plagiarised into the text of 1 Cor. xv. 33-Perigovai non poyo quikiai zazai—“ Evil communications corrupt good manners."

2. "And the disciples came and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given."-Matt. xiii. 10. "Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing, they may hear and not understand.”- -Mark iv. 11.

Surely, here, and in the innumerable passages to the same effect, the principle of deceiving the vulgar is held forth in its most disgusting deformity. Here the double and mystical-sense system, as adopted by the Therapeutæ, is put in full exemplification.

3. "And there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."-Matt. xix. 12.

Let the reader only ask himself the obvious questions, what eunuchs could they be? Certainly, not followers of the law of Moses, which held a personal defect, however involuntarily incurred, as disqualifying the unfortunate from ever entering into the congregation of the Lord, Deut. xxiii. 1. Nor was a future state of rewards ever propounded to the selfishness or ambition of the children of Israel.

4. John the Baptist is described as a Monk, residing in the wilderness, practising all the austerities of the contemplative life, neither eating nor drinking in observance of the demands of nature; "his food was locusts and wild-honey :" and not only a monk, but a father confessor, since "all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, were all bap

tized of him, confessing their sins." Here, then, is certainly an Ascetic-in the strictest circumstances of description, a Monkish confessor-the admitted forerunner of Christ, of whom he is represented as saying, that "Moses and the prophets were until John the Baptist, but since then the kingdom of God was preached." The great absurdity, however, of representing the sinless Jesus as receiving baptism of John for the remission of his sins, would have been evaded, had the compilers of our Gospels stuck to the text of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or that of these Hebrew-descended Therapeuts, which Lessing and Niemeyerf have so convincingly shown to have been the original from which their legends are copied, and from which it appears that Jesus actually refused to be baptized, saying, "What sin have I committed, that I should be baptized by him ?" And how could that horrible species of self-martyrdom, the greatest evidence of sincerity in the faith that could be imagined, have been practised "for the kingdom of heaven's sake," if the kingdom of heaven had not been propounded to the faith of these visionaries as the reward of such a sacrifice, sufficiently long before, and sufficiently notoriously, to be quoted thus as an historical example, by the speaker in the text of Matthew?

It is evident that Origen, the most distinguished and learned of all the Christian Fathers, must have read Christ's recommendation of this suicidal act in its very strongest sense, or have found it in some earlier copies of the Gospel than have come down to us, urged in stronger terms, or his excellent understanding would never have fallen under the horrors of a belief that it was necessary to imitate the example thus commended, and to prepare himself for singing in heaven, by spoiling his voice for preaching upon earth.

5. But Matt. xviii. 15, betrays, in the most indisputable evidence, the previous existence and established discipline of a Christian church, such as that of the Therapeute is described to have been, from any length of time anterior to the Christian era.

"Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother: 16 But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the

* This phrase, the kingdom of God, and all its synonymes, was peculiarly characteristic of the monkish fraternity of Egypt-the dynasty of priests, as paramount to that of kings.

+ Quoted in Marsh's Michaelis, and hereafter in this DIEGESIS.

mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. 17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto THE CHURCH: but if he neglect to hear THE CHURCH, let him be unto thee an heathen man and a publican. 18 Verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven," &c. &c.

If this does not involve all that the unwary admissions of Eusebius and Epiphanius would lead us to, even the previous existence of the whole Christian dynasty in all its corruption, or in all its purity, long anterior to any time when such language could have been used, or the Gospel which contained such language could have been written; if it betray not its design to subserve the purposes of ecclesiastical usurpation; if it savour not of popery in the rankest tank that ever pope himself was popish; there is no skill in criticism to discover any truth below the surface of expression-no wrong in any wrong that can be put off as right—no Rome in Italy-no day-light in the sun-shine.

6. "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive."-Acts xx. 35.

No such words as these are contained in either of our four Gospels; they must, therefore have been contained in some gospel which previously existed, which was known and established in the esteem of the persons who were thus reminded of it, and which therefore ought not to have been rejected.

“It is, I think," says Lardner, (vol 1, p. 71, 4to. edit.) "a just observation of Dr. Prideaux, that almost all that is peculiar in this sect, is condemned by Christ and his apostles."

But from this admission follows, at any rate, the certainty of the previous notoriety of this sect, and of those tenets which were peculiar to it.

And if, excepting the "almost all that was peculiar to this sect," which Christ and his apostles condemned, there yet remained something which was peculiar to this sect, which they adopted, what other conclusion can follow, than that the Christian tenets were but a reformation upon the preexistent Essenian principles, and had no claim of themselves to a character of originality? We say, in like manner, at this day, that our Protestant church condemns almost all that is peculiar to the church of Rome, while in that condemnation itself is involved an admission of its prior existence, and of its common origin. There can be