of Christianity were unassailable; while the Apostle, forlorn of all evidence, desperate of all argument; with an impiety desperate as his cause-and forlorn as his hopes, ascribed the whole Gospel dispensation, to its origination in THE FOOLISHNESS OF GOD.1 Corinth, i. 25.

It is admitted, that of Chrishna's history, we have only the outlines.* But, had we the fillings-up, a still closer resemblance might be traced. What might be wanting in the Indian mythology, is abundantly to be supplied, from the idolatrous mythology of Phenician, Druidical, Greek, and Roman superstition.

It is impossible, that within the compass of these pages, I should trust myself in an expatiation on this subject, to which I have for many years, devoted my studies, and intend, should my prison hours be extended, to revise and enlarge the works I have already produced.

The ADONIS of the Phoenicians, is an undeniable Jesus Christ. -See Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon.

The EASTRE, from which our English word Easter, is derived, is the Druidical type of Jesus.

The PROMETHEUS of the Greeks, is the crucified God.

The MERCURY, the Word or Messenger of the Covenant, is the same visionary conceit.

The Apollo.

The Bacchus, and all the idolatrous family, are but the varied embodyings of the same parent, and universally diffused halucination.

In the hieroglyphical representations, on the Pyramids of Egypt, Plato,† 348 years before the Christian era, traced the significant symbols of a religion, which the priests informed him, had then existed, upwards of ten thousand years. The cross with the man upon it, was the object of Pagan worship, and the significant emblem of the doctrines of the Pagan faith, for countless ages;

*14. "He washed the feet of the Brahmins, and preached very nobly indeed, and sublimely, but always in their favour." Sir William Jones in Asiatic Researches, Vol. 1, Chap. 9.

+PLATO Broadshoulders died 348 before our Epocha. The beginning of John's gospel is evidently Platonic. This philosopher was himself believed to have been born of a pure virgin; and in his writings had drawn up the imaginary character of a DIVINE MAN, whose ideal picture he completed by the supposition that such a man would be CRUCIFIED:

"Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,

What Plato thought, and GODLIKE Cato was."

See Madame Dacier's Trans. and Clarke's Evidences.

*

ere that faith took up its Jewish features, and Minutius Felix, one of the earliest Fathers, taunts them for their adoration of that symbol. I myself have seen, and many gentlemen at this day possess, lamps brought from the bases of the pyramids, of an antiquity, that makes a yesterday of the era of Augustus, and yet shaped so as to present the light that issued from them, before the symbols of the Cross, Eternity, and the Trinity. Nay, the religious honours paid to the NILE, from the time when the ourang outang ancestors of mankind became sensible of the benefit of its inundations, were necessarily addressed to the upright post with a transverse beam, indicating the height to which its waters would reach, and the extent to which they would carry the blessings of fertilization. The demon of famine was happily expressed, by the naked and emaciated being, nailed upon it: the reed in his hand was gathered from the marshy margin of the river: the NILE had smote him with that reed. His crown of thorns, emblemized the sterility of the provinces over which he reigned, and his infamous title indicated that he was the king of vagrants and beggars.-Meagher on the Popish Mass.

END OF SECTION XIV.

SECTION XV.

THE PHENICIAN JESUS CHRIST.

A VERY learned sect or party among divines and critics maintain, that the Hebrew points ordinarily annexed to the consonants of the word in Jehovah, are not the natural points belonging to that word, nor express the true pronunciation of it, but are the vowal points belonging to the words Adonai and Elohim, applied to the consonants of the ineffable name Jehovah, to warn the readers, that instead of the word Jehovah, the pronunciation of which is now entirely lost, they were to say ADONAI. I have sifted this matter out, by inquiring among the Rabbis and more intelligent Jews, and find, that without any other reason but their religion, they invariably pronounce the mystical tetragrammaton, which we see inscribed even over our Christian altars, A DON: GNAW: YE! as a Scotchman would say "I don't know ye. The word literally signifies, OUR LORD. It is the real ADONIS of the Phoenicians, and the Jesus Christ of those who ought to know better. Not only the names, but the attri

*"You it is ye Pagans who worship wooden Gods, that are the most likely people to adore wooden crosses. Your victorious trophies not only represent a simple cross, but a cross with a man upon it; and whereas ye tax our religion with the worship of a criminal and his cross; you are strangely out of the way of truth to imagine either that a criminal can deserve to be taken for a Deity, or that a mere man can possibly be a God," p. 134, Reeve's Translation.

butes, the legendary history, and the religious rites of these mystical hypostases are the same. Under the designation of TAMMUZ, and as a personification of the SUN, this idol was worshipped, and had his altar even in the temple of the Lord which was at Jerusalem. Several of the Psalms of David were parts of the liturgical service employed in his worship, the 110th in particular tho' utterly without any meaning, as gabbled over in our Church service-is an account of a friendly alliance between the two idols : and : Jehovah and Adonis, in which Jehovah ordains Adonis for his priest as sitting at his right hand, and promises to fight for him against his enemies, and to break their skulls for them. This idol was worshipped at Byblis in Phoenicia, with precisely the same ceremonies: the same articles of faith as to his mystical incarnation, his precious death and burial, and his glorious resurrection and ascension, and even in the very same words of religious adoration and homage which are now, with the slightest degree of newfangledness that could well be conceived addressed to the idol of the Gospel. On a certain night during the passion week, an image representing the suffering God, was laid upon a bed; excessive wailings and lamentations constituted an essential part of the mystical solemnities. The attachment of the women to the beautiful deity provoked the jealous Jehovah and in Ezekiel, Chap. viii, verse 14, we find that this mode of idolatry was denounced as a most wicked abomination-" He brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz." After the lamentations had continued to exhaustion, lights* were brought in, the image was lifted up from its shrine, and the priest anointed the lips of the assistants in those holy mysteries. It was announced, that the god had risen from the dead, and the priest addressed the admiring and grateful worshippers in words, whose exact sense is retained in our Easter hymn:

But the pains, which he endured

Our salvation have procured

In sober prose-Trust ye in God, for out of his pains we receive salvation.+-See Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon.

END OF SECTION XV.

SECTION XVI.

THE ATHENIAN JESUS CHRIST.

THE Prometheus Bound, of Eschylus, was acted as a tragedy in Athens, 500 years before the Christian era. The plot, or fable

*Hence those expressions in the idolatrous Psalmography of the Sidonians and Phoenicians "There is sprung up a light for the righteous, and joyful gladness for such as are true-hearted.' "Full of grace are thy lips, because God hath anointed thee.'

+ παρειτε τω Θεω εστι γαρ ημιν εκ πονων Σωτηρια.

My very able and respected opponent the Rev. Mr. Beard, of Manchester, labours as hard to defeat this resemblance of the Grecian tragedy to the Chris

A

of the drama, being then confessedly derived from the universally recognized type of an infinitely remote antiquity; yet presenting not one or two, but innumerable coincidences with the Christian tragedy; not only the more prominent situations, but the very sentiments, and often the words of the two heroes are precisely the same. So that there can be no doubt, that as the original was unquestionably a poetical figment, the version was of the same imaginary creation. It has only been since ignorance has happily given way to the inroads of science and philosophy, and men have found the pleasure of being rational, that the priests have found it necessary to pretend the existence of a real personage, and a substantial substratum for their system. In the pure primitive days, it was'nt wanted, there was no call for evidence; but now, must the priests go to work, the people want to believe, and to have a reason for it too! and some time, some place, some probabilities, must be invented for them. Well! What was to be done? Why! "Get as far out of sight-and as long ago with your story, as they will patiently endure-say it was in Judea: they had no historians there-say it was in the light of the Augustan era,

tian romance, as I confess I have done to establish it. But as I labour only for truth, and have no right to impute any other aim to him; I am sorry when I find him condescending to take an advantage in the argument unworthy of his great powers and highly cultivated intelligence. He defies me to point out a line in the tragedy, in which the God Oceanus is called Petreus, (p. 55.) I had never implied that there was such a line; but any good classical dictionary would have borne out the strict and literal truth of what I both said and meant-" Oceanus, one of whose names was Petreus." The conduct of this personage in the process of the drama, is in as close resemblance to that of the fisherman of Galilee as his name Petreus is to Peter. He forsook his friend, when the wrath of God had made him a victim for the sins of the human race. The difference between being crucified on a beam of timber, and nailed exactly in the same manner upon a rock is not enough to redeem the palpable plagiarism. Let Mr. Beard however, in welcome, deny all those points of coincidence that I have maintained: his own admissions, when he admits the least, will, I say not to every impartial mind, but surely to every excursive imagination, vindicate the Athenians, for rejecting the doctrine of the Apostle Paul, as being no new thing to them. Prometheus made the first man and woman out of clay. Prometheus was a God. Prometheus exposed himself to the wrath of God, incurred by him in his zeal to save mankind. Prometheus, in the agonies of crucifixion had exclaimed—

See what, a God, I suffer from the Gods;
For mercy to mankind, I am not deemed
Worthy of mercy-but in this uncouth

Appointment am fixed here,

A spectacle dishonourable to Jove.

On the throne of Heaven scarce was he seated,

On the powers of heaven

He showered his various benefits, thereby

Confirming his sovereignty: But for unhappy mortals

Had no regard, but all the present race

Willed to extirpate and to form a new:

None, save myself, opposed his will. I dared,

And boldly pleading saved them from destruction,
Saved them from sinking to the realms of night;
For which offence I bow beneath these pains,
Dreadful to suffer, piteous to behold!

Potter's Translation, quoted from memory.

when every body might have seen all about it: for eleven or twelve hundred years of dark ages have transpired since then ; and we're all safe, for now the candle has gone out."-Such is the history of Christianity.

The close resemblances, the almost exact conformities of the Christian and Pagan mythologies, were so far from shaking the faith of the first Fathers of the Church, that in a sense perhaps which I shall not be allowed to put on the words of Sir William Jones, they also would have said-" the adamantine pillars of our faith cannot be shaken by any investigation of Heathen mythology." Certainly not! for it was the Heathen mythology itself, that constituted the pillars of that faith; and the resemblance of the one to the other was urged by the first preachers, as their most powerful argument to recommend Christianity, and to induce the Pagans to be converted, seeing that the transition was almost imperceptible, the difference was so very immaterial. Paganism and Christianity were as like as two peas to each other-and in fact, the better and shrewder sort of Pagans, had been Christians without knowing it.

To one passage only in the Doctor's Treatise will I turn back, as leading most naturally to the conclusion of this whole argument. I follow a rambling writer, and must be excused for fetching him up to the arrangement he ought to have observed. His objection to the very last position of the Manifesto, occurs 16 or 17 pages before his objections to subsequent positions:-I take him here, then

"It is a perfect insult to common sense, that this man pretends to adduce scripture evidence, that the blessed Jesus never existed." (I pass over his ruffian scurrility) and he adds-"a mere child who can read the New Testament might easily confute, &c." Now this was as easily said, as was the egregious untruth that follows it. But easy, as he may choose to say, it would be to a child to confute that conclusion. He himself is not man enough to do it: and I'll undertake to write myself by any one of the vile opprobrious epithets which he has applied to me, if he can find any other child to help him do it, e'en an' let it be forty or fifty years since that child cut his teeth.

Observe but the canon of critical evidence, which the conviction of all men places on the same basis of certainty as the theorems of the multiplication table-to wit

AN ABSTRACTION OR PHANTASY OF THE IMAGINATION, MAY BE SPOKEN OF IN TERMS STRICTLY AND LITERALLY APPLICABLE ONLY TO A SUBSTANTIAL AND CORPOREAL BEINGBUT A SUBSTANTIAL AND CORPOREAL BEING, CANNOT HAVE ONE SINGLE ATTRIBUTE PREDICATED OF IT THAT WOULD EXCLUDE THE NOTION OF CORPOREITY, AND BELONG ONLY TO AN ABSTRACTION. You may draw out an allegory to any extent of invention. You may say for instance that "Wisdom