ON THE GENERAL EVIDENCE OF THE PRETENDED GENUINENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES.

I SHALL follow the learned and reverend Doctor, according to his own method, section for section, page for page. The reader will please to observe, that it is on the eighth page of the Answer to the Manifesto, that he will meet with the very first sentence that purports to be a reply to any part of the Manifesto. And here he will observe, that, what in the Manifesto are called PROPOSITIONS, and which, as propositions, are accompanied by subjoined PROOFS, and submitted in public challenge to all ministers and preachers, to come forward and show, if they can, the contrary: those propositions being declared to have been, as far as to us appeared (i. e. to the assembled Christian Evidence Society) "fully and unanswerably demonstrated." These propositions are very conveniently called by the Doctor, assertions, as if they had not been accompanied by any attempted proof; nor offered in fair and ingenuous challenge of disproof: that so he might bring these propositions down to the level of all that he can bring against them--assertions,—and seem justified in saying of them, what can only justly be said of assertions, that they are uttered with " a front of dogmatical assurance."

We shall find this distinction of some importance.

When EUCLID published to the world his Treatise of Geometry, he put forth what he called propositions, he accompanied them with what seemed to him to be proofs, and he submitted them in public challenge to all the geometricians in the world "to come forward and show, if they could, the contrary." Now, just such a geometrician, as Dr. Smith is a divine, would have been the man who might have chosen to call those propositions, assertions, to say that they had been put forth "with a front of dogmatical assurance;" or, that they were sufficiently answered, by applying to the proposer of them, any of the abusive and virulent epithets of Dr. Smith's evangelical vocabulary. But calling the two first PROPOSITIONS of the Manifesto, assertions (to wit, 1st., THAT THE SCRIPTURES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WERE NOT WRITTEN BY THE PERSONS WHOSE NAMES THEY BEAR, and 2nd., THAT THEY DID NOT APPEAR IN THE TIMES TO WHICH THEY REFER; and, taking the two to be but one,) the doctor (whom nobody must suspect of being dogmatical) gives what his Homerton College students may consider as a complete refutation of the two first propositions of the Manifesto, in the words

"Our summary reply, to the first of these assertions, is this: We have the most satisfactory evidence, that the books of the New Testament WERE written at the time which they intimate, and by the persons to whom they are attributed."-page 6, Sect. I.

It is a summary reply indeed! Let the reader digest the knowledge he hath gained! and perhaps he will see, that it was a good stroke of policy to call the PROPOSITIONS assertions, and to complain of the front of dogmatical assurance, with which they had been put forth; because, by so doing, he might forestall any suspicion of his own dogmatism, while he was making the best of the best materials he had. Pull down the ground about you, and you raise yourselves-call PROPOSITIONS, accompanied by *PROOFS, and submitted in challenge of disproof, mere assertions, and then; when you can do no better, you know you may begin and call ill names, and say that one assertion is as good as another. "WE have the most satisfactory evidence," says this learned, unquestionably most learned divine. Have you so? and, by my honour I'm glad of it for your sakes: but who are WE? For if, in that WE, I, and half a dozen whom I could answer for, be included, I must remind the doctor, that satisfactory is not quite the adjective that one man has a right to predicate of another man's meal: and that WE have not the most satisfactory evidence. I deny not, I dispute not the satisfactoriness, the abundance, the crapula, the surfeit of evidence, for the divinity of the Christian Scriptures, that must appear to the minds of those whom those Scriptures are the means of seating in professorial chairs, and college dignities, of enabling them to arrogate the more than mortal prerogative, of being ambassadors of Omnipotence, of swelling in idle, vain-glorious, and useless pomp, and riding in triumph over the insulted intelligence and ruined fortunes of the starving and deluded people;-and only starving, because they are deluded.

If, indeed, the genuineness of the Christian Scriptures, can be disproved, or, which is the same thing, if the great body of society shall be brought to see (what I will lose no means of showing them) that those Scriptures really are not genuine! Why the Christian craft is up! Doctors of Divinity will become-ah! what will they not become? they will be obliged to turn honestand so

Farewell pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious priestcraft!
And Oh! ye Moorfields pulpits, whose loud throats

Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! The Reverend occupation's gone!

Now reader be awake, and see what you see, and see this reverend doctor of divinity, after having given you his own unqualified and unsupported assertion, that the evidence for the genuineness of the Christian Scriptures is "most satisfactory," and challenged for that assertion, that it should, on the ground of his doctorial dignity, and autocratorical wE, be received as a summary reply to the propositions of the Manifesto: in the very next sentence, receding from his bold advance, and leaving ground enough, e'en if there were no more, for the firm footing of the proposition he assails. 16 915 7odi

"Several of them (that is, of the books of the New Testament) do not bear any name in the beginning or body of their composition." Say you so, Sir? then what say common sense and common honesty, upon turning to your English copies of the New Testament, which you are circulating by your Bible Societies, and never ceasing from your pulpits to speak of as a revelation from a God of Truth: and finding that there is not one of those books but what does bear a name in the beginning, the name of some supposed inspired apostle, per virtue and authority of which name, and of which alone, it derives all its influence on the minds, all its obligation on the consciences of men.

If that terrible and heart-appalling summons on the prostration of all minds-the surrender of all the faculties of man—] -his submission as unto fate-his obedience even unto death--If that dread-THUS SAITH THE LORD! or, thus by his Holy and Inspired Servant and Messenger hath he said-turns out at last, that THUS he hath not said—but thus hath said-we know not whom-but who had no more right to say so, than the Tutor of Homerton College. What is forgery-what is imposture, if this be not? And if this be the predicament of " several" of the books, of which there are but 27 altogether, while we know not which, nor how many, that several may be-what can we say of the man who, with such an admission before him, that imposture has been at work; that forgery is there; that the names of several of the books which are prefixed, were not prefixed by the persons whose names they purport to be; and that a parade of authority is set forth in the translation, for which there is no support in the original-what, I ask, can we say of the man, who will still persist in ascribing scriptures of such infinitely suspicious external evidence (to say nothing of their incongruous absurd, and contradictory contents) to the immediate authority of a God of infinite wisdom, goodness, and truth? What?— But that he had better do it "DEVOUTLY"-he had better do it " with PRAYER" (p. 54)—for he hath need of forgiveness; and perhaps a little CONFESSION, too, might help to disgorge the o'er-cloyed conscience.

But never was the wily shirking traitor, that had turned King's evidence against his brother thieves, beaten by crossexamination into so forlorn a come-off, as that of our Divines, who, after having all along arrogated for the writings of the New Testament a supernatural and superhuman authority-and held it to be no more than " the words of truth and soberness," to say of the whole Bible, that "it hath God for its author, happiness for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter," at last turn round on us with the startling surrender of every thing, by attempting to show, that these writings have as good proofs of their genuineness, or perhaps, better, than the works of Thucydides, Xenophon and Demosthenes, among the

C

Greeks; or of Cicero, Cæsar, and Livy, among the Romansworks which have absolutely no authority at all, which never pretended to any, but which do each of them, in very many places, expressly discard and disclaim all pretence to authority, and in all and every part of them, offer themselves in submission to the reader's judgment, not in control or direction of it. These writings claim no particle or degree of our admiration on account of their being respectively the works of Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Cicero, Cæsar, or Livy, but are esteemed for their intrinsic and indefeasible merit only, which would be and remain the same, neither more nor less, though critical research should discover to the world that it was not Xenophon, but Clearchus, that wrote the Anabasis; not Demosthenes, but Isocrates, that delivered the Olynthiacs; not Cicero, but Atticus, that composed the De Officiis.

“The thing we call a rose would smell as sweet,
If it were called by any other name”-

but not so your ROSE of SHARON—if that be not in the predicament ye have predicated of it-if it be not, that

“Th' etherial spirit o'er its leaves doth move,
And on its top descends the mystic dove,"

Paugh! it's a vile stinking darnel, and hath neither colour, scent, or medicine, to save it from our loathing!

The "intelligent" reader, unless he has a mind to surrender his intelligence, ought not to suffer himself to be coaxed by being called " intelligent," into a peace and WELL-A-DAY sort of compromise-with this NO-HELPING-IT-NOW condition of divine revelation.

"The titles at the head of each book were prefixed, not by the authors, but by the early transcribers."

But, reader, is it of no consequence, where eternity is assumed to be at stake, to ask the obvious question?-Who were those early transcribers-and how early? And wherefore it is, that supposing that those early transcribers had a delegated or vicarious right to affix titles to some of the books, there should be several to which no titles are affixed-not even by those early transcribers?

Observe ye, then, the exact plight of the general evidence for the genuineness of the Christian Scriptures, upon Dr. Smith's own showing.

Of several of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, the Doctor not showing which nor how many those several are, it is admitted, that the names they bear were not affixed to them by their authors-no, nor even by their early transcribers.— COROLLARY-By whom, then, were they affixed, but by comparatively modern transcribers, who could have had no authority, neither direct nor delegated, for what they did?

But, of those books which are not included in the several, not saying which they be, but which have the higher authority of

having names prefixed to them, not by their authors, but by certain unknown whom and unknown when early transcribers; that circumstance which in any other, would be thought a little discouraging, in the Doctor's reasoning "involves a proof of the general belief and notoriety, that those books were the genuine productions of the writers whose names were familiarly attached to them."

Now, reader, as I at least wish to be innocent of" dogmatical assurance," I will only ask leave, to ask you to ask yourself, whether there be not two considerably important quærenda for your logic, even from this position, emergent

1st-Whether the circumstance of titles being prefixed to certain books, by persons who were certainly not the authors of them, does certainly involve a proof of the general belief and notoriety, that those books were really the works of the persons to whom they were so ascribed?

And secondly-Whether the public notoriety and general belief of those early times (supposing ourselves to have competent means of knowing what that public notoriety and general belief was,) would itself be sufficient ground for concluding that those early transcribers, or those who paid them for transcribing (good honest men), could not possibly be less trust-worthy than public notoriety and general belief held them to be-that they were no more capable of intending to deceive the people, than the people were of forming too high an opinion of them-that they could not put. the wrong name rather than the right one to the title of the matter that they had transcribed-that in those ages, 17 or 18 hundred years ago, learning was so generally diffused, and public notoriety so sure to find them out, that they could have had no opportunity of doing so, even if they had been so inclined—that though God only knows who they were, or by what motives they were actuated, yet we may be absolutely sure, that when a manuscript would fetch a hundred times the price for bearing the name of JACK rather than of GILL, they were too conscientious and disinterested to be capable of substituting the one name for the other?

To solve these important quærenda, I could supply the reader with quotations from Ecclesiastical history, Councils, Fathers, &c., as extensively, perhaps, and as fairly, as the Professorial Doctor, for, indeed, "it is not ignorance, it is not error, that prompts my horrid course" (p. 60)-but if the reader happens to be a member of the CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION SOCIETY, the chance is, that he may have been instructed by the precepts as well as by the example of this Christian instructor, to call such quotations a parade of learning and authority, and an ostentatious reference, &c.-and when he found the quotations absolutely correct and in the authors-there, as quoted, page for page, line for line, word for word, he might, like the Rev. Divine, run