stark-staring desperate-foreswear his own eyes-and call me "the greatest liar that ever opened a mouth, or set pen to paper," &c. &c. So, as I hope he will not apply these epithets to Dr. Smith, however he may seem to contradict himself-himself shall be my authority. Let quotations made by him, be held to be fairly quoted, and these are his own materials for solving the quærenda which arise from his own positions.

"The documents of history, for that period and some centuries after, are very obscure. In the time of Simon, and the learned Benedictines of St. Maur, very great and numerous errors with respect to the persons and transactions of those dark ages, were commonly received," &c. (p. 16.)

"It is well enough known, that in the early ages of Christianity, many silly and fraudulent persons composed fictitious narratives of the life and actions of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, and gave them out as the writings of Peter, Nicodemus, Thomas, Barnabas, and even Judas Iscariot. By far the larger part of these spurious compositions have long ago dropped into deserved oblivion. That they ever existed, is known only from the records of the early Christian writers, usually called the Fathers, and they were always rejected by the general body of Christians."(p. 40.)

Reader, is this forgery? Is it I who have said all this? Or will Dr. Smith again charge me with putting forth what I would put forth, with a front of dogmatical assurance; if I only suggest the questions which arise from his own statements, and leave it to himself or to any body in the world who can do so, to answer them :

1st. If the documents of history at any given period, and for some centuries after that period, are very obscure, what is there to render them such as a man may rest his salvation upon, prior to that period?

2. If very great and numerous errors with respect to the persons and transactions of the eleventh century, are admitted, what guarantee have we for the infallibility of the first ?*

3. Shall our knowledge that a man was infinitely mendacious in his mature life, lead us to infer that his word might be depended on in his infancy?

* Adeo verbum Dei inefficax esse censuerunt, ut regnum Christi sine men dacio, promoveri posse diffiderunt.-Epist. ad Casaubon, p. 303.

It was a maxim of the Church, that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by that means the interest of the Church might be promoted.—Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 382.

For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner.-Romans, iii. 7.

"For, notwithstanding those twelve known infallible and faithful judges of controversy (i. e. the twelve apostles), there were as many and as damnable heresies crept in, even in the apostolic age, as in any after age, perhaps, during the same space of time-so little will nfallibility serve the turn it is set up for."-Reeves' Preliminary Discourse to the Commonitory of Vincentius Lirinensis, p. 190.

4. If eleven hundred years (from the 3d or 4th to the 15th or 16th century-from the more than barbarous ignorance, and grosser than pagan superstition which prevailed over the whole christian world) are justly called the DARK AGES-how can mankind be said to have been enlightened by the Gospel? The world surely is as forlorn of evidence to prove any beneficial effect of the pretended revelation upon men's understandings, as an abusive and scurrilous priest would be, if called on to show that it had any influence in softening his temper, or mitigating his virulence.

5. If in the early ages of Christianity, many silly and fraudulent persons composed fictitious narratives, &c., must not fictitiousnarrative making have been a good trade?

6. Must they not have found the Christian community easily imposed on?

7. How, then, can Dr. Smith, or any one else, presume to, say, that they were always rejected by the general body of Christians?

8. Or, who the general body of Christians were?

9. Or, that rejection by the general body of Christians, was a sufficient proof that the matter ought to have been rejected?

10. Or, that admission by the general body of Christians, was a sufficient proof that the matter ought to have been admitted? 11. Who were the representatives of the general body of Christians, that exercised for them the stupendous arbitration? 12. Were there no dissenters from the general body?

13. Will the dissenterian Dr. John Pye Smith maintain that no respect could possibly be due to those dissenters ?

14. If by far the larger part of those spurious compositions have long ago dropped into deserved oblivion, who is to determine now, that, that oblivion was deserved?

15. Who is to determine that they were spurious?

16. Who is to determine that those Scriptures which have been preserved (owing their preservation as they do to those who had the strongest possible interest in undervaluing and decrying them), are a fair specimen of what the others were?

17. Would not those, who wished the received Scriptures to be held in honour, make the best of them?

18. Would not those, who wished the rejected Scriptures to be held in contempt, make the worst of them?

19. If writings were forged in the names of Peter, Nicodemus, Thomas, and Barnabas, why might not those which appear under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, have been forgeries also?

20. Why should not all the rest of the disciples have written gospels, as well as the two, Matthew and John?

21. Why should not the gospels of all the rest of the disciples have had as good a claim on our credence, as those of Matthew

and John, who were no more than disciples-and a better claim than those of Mark and Luke, who were no disciples at all?

22. If the gospels which appear under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, appear infinitely more respectable than those which appear under the names of Peter, Nicodemus, Thomas, and Barnabas, is not that circumstance a presumption in favour of the prior existence of those of Peter, Nicodemus, Thomas, and Barnabas?

23. Assuming that there had been some real foundation for the gospel story, is it not a presumption-that the more simple, artless, and awkward style of telling it, would have been the original one?

24. If all accounts or narratives of Jesus Christ and his apostles were forgeries, as 'tis admitted that all the apocryphal ones were-what can the superior character of the received gospel prove for them; but that they are merely superiorly executed forgeries?

Let the reader answer these questions to his own convictions! Let him make them his own! and if he should not answer them, as he may perhaps guess that I should, he will yet, I hope, observe, that with all my dogmatical assurance and unblushing effrontery, I have not yet assumed the style of my reverend opponent-nor shall I take upon myself either to say or even to think that " he must have sacrificed his reason and conscience to the darkest depravity of soul."

The Doctor's avowedly" fearless challenge to produce any writings approaching to the same professed antiquity, whose genuineness is supported by evidence equally abundant and unexceptionable," coupled with the remark which follows it, partakes of his characteristic style,-it is the desperabund forlorn flinging-off,-of a man, who when he finds he has nothing reasonable to say-plays devil may care, as to what he says, and stakes his last throw upon the chance to frighten you from observing the shallow weakness of his argumentby the sonorous insolence of his vituperation.

66

Approaching to the same professed antiquity." What! an apology for them-there is wonderful evidence for their genuineness, considering how old they are.-But were his challenge to such a comparison accepted-and all the advantage of complete victory, (which by the bye is infinitely doubtful) in his hands: What would it prove for the pretensions of divine revelation, to prove that its records stood on as good ground, or probably better, for the chance of being genuine, than the histories, legends, romances, or poems of an equally remote antiquity-which it never mattered one penny or one care to any body, whether they were genuine or not?

Should we take up Hardoin's hypothesis, and persuade ourselves, that the classical writings were the compositions of no

such persons as they are ascribed to, but were dexterously got up by the monks of a much later age, than that to which they purport to belong-why, well done the monks! who have done as well as the authors themselves, had they been genuine, could have done! and there's the amount of the mischief.

Suppose it should one day be discovered, that the Paradise Lost was written by no such person as John Milton, or that Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was no work of Gibbon's-no material question is affected, no important issue is at stake. But as the Doctor would find it very hard to name any one celebrated work of antiquity that was ever in such a predicament, that about the time of its appearance, or at any time, there either were or possibly could have been rival and competitive works-affecting to have been written by the same author, and claiming equal merit :-as bold a writer as himself might fearlessly challenge him to shew that any one of the writers he has named-has not a thousand fold better general evidence, than any that can be pretended for the writings of the New Testament: and might even defy imagination itself, to imagine, how writings which so strong interests, craft, policy, passions, and prejudices of men had concurred for so great a length of time to impose upon the world as divine oracles, could possibly betray stronger and clearer marks of forgery and imposture than are to be found in these.

Note.-"This opinion has always been in the world, that to settle a certain and assured estimation upon that which is good and true, it is necessary to remove out of the way whatsoever may be an hindrance to it. Neither ought we to wonder that even those of the honest, innocent primitive times made use of these deceits; seeing for a good end they made no scruple to forge whole books." Daille on the use of the Fathers, b. 1. c. 3. Passim occurrunt patrum voces de hæreticis conquerentium, quod fraudum artifices, ut somniis suis autoritatem conciliarent, libros quibus ea in vulgus proseminabant, celeberrimae cujusque ecclesiæ Doctoris imo et Apostolorum nominibus inscribere ausi Johannes Dallæus, lib. 1. c. 3.

essent.

END OF SECTION I.

SECTION II.

OF ACTS AND EDICTS FOR THE ALTERATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.

66 Nothing of the kind is to be found in history," says, this unassuming and humble-minded Divine, and that, too, within the echo of his own reproof of another-for having spoken with too much confidence. The greatest historian that ever lived, would have been restrained by the modesty that ever accompanies great and substantial knowledge, from saying more-than that in his extent of historical reading, or within his memory of what he had read, he recollected nothing of the kind: a dissenterian Doctor of Divinity may say any thing. "It is scarcely possible. to imagine a greater untruth, than this assertion," says our infallible D.D.! Yes, if being all that it purports to be, a reference merely, to direct the reader to the sources where he shall find matter yielding such support as he himself may judge whether it be competent or not to support the proposition which he is called and invited to disprove-be an assertion: and if being an assertion, it were an untruth; it would yet be possible to imagine a grosser one, because it would be possible to imagine a man's attempting to make the world believe, that there could be nothing in the whole compass of history, but what had come under his observation, and could not escape his memory.

"With respect to Constantine* and Theodosius, the writer of the Manifesto has dishonourably omitted," &c.

"With respect to Constantine"-if the reader chooses to refer to the life of Constantine by his intimate friend Eusebius, (book 4. chap. 36, 37.) The reader is to suspect no gasconade here, no ostentatious pretence of acquaintance with the original Greek of Eusebius, no concealment of the English translation which he must have found so useful-and no suppression of what -if he had had any pretensions to the character of a scholar-he must have known of the character of Eusebius,-and how little entitled to credit any life of his intimate friend and patron must be, written by the courtly bishop-who danced attendance on the tyrant's pleasure, in an age when it was an established "maxim of christian piety-that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie; when by such means the interests of the church might be promoted." (Mosheim's Ecc. Hist. London 1811. vol. 1. p. 382), and when he himself confesses or rather avows his own adoption of that pious principle, as the rule of his fidelity as an historian, and takes a pride to himself in having related whatever might redound to the glory, and SUPPRESSED all that could tend to the disgrace of religion." Gibbon vol. 2, p. 490.

Of the power of the Roman Emperors, and of all christian kings, princes, and governors to alter the text of scripture to any extent they pleased the proofs are so abundant, that their abundance only stood in the way of enumeration. See their innumerable decrees, acts, and edicts to this effect, in every history of their reigns. "The proofs of that supreme power of the emperors in religious matters, appear so incontestible in this controversy, that it is amazing it should ever have been called in question." Mosheim, cent. 4. part 2. vol. 1. p. 406, note 9. See the Bible itself. See also, the plenary inspiration ascribed to kings in the Liturgy. "O almighty God, we are taught by thy holy word, that the hearts of kings are in thy rule and governance, and that thou dost dispose and turn them as seemeth best to thy godly wisdom." See also, the king's title, "OF THE CHURCH ON EARTH, THE SUPREME HEAD."