Page images
PDF
EPUB

bery; so that Jesus was not crucified by wicked hands: and it was very wrong in Peter to call people wicked that were not wicked.

The Jesuan historian says in Acts, c. 1, v. 18, that Judas purchased a field with the reward of iniquity. Now it could not be iniquity in Judas, to serve as a guide to those who took Jesus, that he might be brought to trial. If Judas committed iniquity in that instance, then all runners and constables would be criminal, whenever they took up thieves; an absurd supposition.

There is very much the appearance, from reading Acts, c. 2, that Jesus's church in Jerusalem was not composed of inhabitants and natives of Judæa; for these seem to have held Jesus in reprobation, but of pilgrims, who came from various parts to worship at the temple. Perhaps their means of return raa short, and they might close in with a proposal of the Apostles to club their resources together; and then they would not examine closely into the truth of Jesus's pretended miracles and resurrection. Their grandchildren very likely were real believers. As for the number of these free-masons or odd-fellows, we should in many cases deduct very largely from Jewish numbers to arrive at the truth.

In Acts, c. 3, v. 1-8, we have a miracle by confederacy on a man with a sham bad leg. Remember, that it is the Jesuans here who tell the story in their own way.

Now in c. 2, v. 34 and 35, observe the assurance of Peter in quoting the Greek version of the 110th Psalm in Judæa, where only the Hebrew version was in use. In the Septuagint it is called a psalm of David, as if David had penned it himself and termed the Messiah, My Lord, as in, "The Lord said unto my Lord the Messiah," &c. But in the Hebrew it is called, Mizmor le David, a psalm for David, or in honor of David, and is to be understood thus, as if the courtly psalmist had said, "The Lord said unto my lord King David, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.'" This is an absurd contrivance of Peter, by misquotation of the psalm to pay a compliment to Jesus.

The Priests, and the Captain of the Temple, and the Sadducees, in Acts, e. 4, v. 1-7 came upon Peter and John to apprehend them for the miracle by confederacy with the man's sham bad leg, in c. 3, and the next day they were brought before the Sanhedrim. Here we see Peter's impudence; Luke calls it holdness, v. 13; for Peter calls Jesus the Christ, and falsely says, that he was brought up at Nazareth, when Celsus affirms, that he was in Egypt till he was grown up.

When Peter returned to the church of the Jesuans, he has the impudence again to misapply the Second Psalm, for it is only David himself who is complimented in that Psalm, v. 7: "To day I will declare the decree; the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my son, I begat thee." The to-day has been wrongly transposed. No compliment was here intended for Jesus. What a fine thing to have a good assurance! Peter has the impudence to maintain, before the Sanhedrim, that Jesus was brought up at Nazareth, and to say that the Sanhedrim crucified him, when it was the Romans and that he was raised from the dead, when he had not died yet.

In c. 5, v. 16, the Apostles perform so many conjuring tricks and miracles by confederacy, that the high priest and the Sadducees determined to check them, and they brought them before the Sanhedrim: but the Pharisaic members showed them some favor, so that no great harm was done to them. Peter has the outrageous assurance again to maintain that the Sanhedrim had hung Jesus on a tree, when they had no power to hang

any body; and that they slew him when he was not yet dead, but was alive and well: see c. 5, v. 30.

In c. 6, the Apostles are turned off from being waiters on account of their addiction to administering poison; witness the case of Ananias and his wife; and the church resolved to have men of honest report that time. Stephen is one of these waiters: however, for all his honesty he can play conjuring tricks and miracles by confederacy, v. 8. He might excel as a conjurer; bat when he gets into an argument with the Libertines, Cyreneans and others, v. 9, he has the worst of it, as you may read in c. 7, where he wanders from the subject. He blames the Israelites of earlier time c. 7, v. 52, unjustly for persecuting the prophets: for these prophets were thieves; witness Samuel who stole Cis's asses; for he could find them when they were enquired after by Saul, 1 Sam. c. 9. But Samuel could not have known where the asses were, if he had not stole them and hid them.

Again, we see, 2 Kings, c. 5, that Elisha employed his servant Gehazi to steal a garment from Naaman the Syrian; and the theft being discovered, the prophet produces by means of drugs a fictitious leprosy on Gehazi, to deprecate the Syrian's anger, and prevent any farther exposure of the business.

Observe the villainy of the prophet Isaiah, who says, c. 5, v. 8. "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field;" just as if men have not a right to invest their own money in whatever way they think proper:" but this is to curry favor with a part of the people. Again he says "Wo unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight," v. 21. The prophet did not like people to see far before them: impostors get nothing from them. That Isaiah's meaning ought to be interpreted in a bad sense will be evident from his impudence in v. 19. "Woe unto them that say, Let him make speed and hasten his work, that we may see it, and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it." Objectors had challenged the prophet to fix upon a time for the fulfilment of his prophecy, or at least to fix a limit, and that a short and early one, that they might know whether he was a prophet or only an impostor: nothing could be more reasonable than that proposal; but Isaiah declined it: We see what sort of people the prophets were; and the harsh treatment they met with from their countryDien was amply merited. Mr. Isaiah's woes, v. 18, "Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin with a cart-rope," are pointed against Isaiah himself; for he and Stephen both pull the same way; and they also both of them "sin with a cart-rope.'

[ocr errors]

Stephen says, v. 52, that these prophets foretold the coming of Jesus. Now there is not one of them that ever mentions Jesus. Stephen adds that the Jews had betrayed Jesus. To charge Jesus in a regular way with a robbery before a Roman magistrate was not a betrayal of Jesus: and ho had still the chance of acquittal, if the charge could not have been made out against him. He says, that the Jews murdered Jesus; who had not yet died and was living all the while.

Luke says, v. 58, 59, that the Jews threw stones at Stephen and killed him. But he does not mention that any of them were put to death for the murder, which they would have been, if Stephen had not been the aggressor: therefore, we may conclude that Stephen threw stones at them first, and that in the affray the conjuror Stephen had the worst of it.

In c. 8, v. 1, there is a persecution against the Jesuan church at Jerusalem. The affair of the poisoning doubtless had transpired by that time, and perhaps other enormities. Another waiter of honest repute, Philip,

who was also a conjuror, v. 7, thought it prudent to decamp for some reason, for all his honesty: and when he came to Samaria, he got acquainted with another conjuror, named Simon, who discovered that the Jesuans whose sleight of hand and deceptions had been brought by Jesus from Egypt, were better than those of the Samaritan jugglers: he therefore kept close to Philip, for some time, with view to learn some tricks of him; but Philip seems to have been upon his guard, from what follows. The affair of the poisoning seems now to have reached the ears of the magistrates, and we find Peter, who performed a prominent part in the business of Ananias, accompanied by John, who might have had some hand in it; for he is the brother of the murderer James. These two frame an excuse for their disappearance from Jerusalem, and are seen in Samaria. Simon proposed to these two last to sell him a trick or two. They affect indignation, that supernatural powers should be regarded as the mere tricks of a juggler: but Simon, being a conjuror himself, knew that they were nothing better; and from practising that art, he must be a competent judge of those matters.

66

Philip overtakes a eunuch of Queen Candace, c. 8, v. 32, reading aloud in Isaiah, c. 53, v. 7. He was oppressed and was afflicted; yet he opened not his mouth," &c. Now Philip has the assurance to tell the eunuch, that this is a prophecy of Jesus; when it is obvious, that it is not a prediction at all: the past time is used. It is some hard lot that befel a cotemporary of the prophet. This is a fair specimen we may suppose of what Stephen calls prophecies about Jesus. How can narratives of past events be prophecies about any body?

When in c. 9, Paul came over to Jesuism, a miracle by confederacy was practised between another Ananias and him: scales of fish were gummed upon Paul's eyes and kept on three days, v. 9; in v. 18, you find the scales of fish are rubbed off. We have conjurors in London that would have made a complete laugh of the paltry performances and sleight-of-hand of Jesus and his Apostles.

In v.

22, you have an impudent boast, that Paul confuted the Jews in the synagogue at Damascus. Why then does Paul admit, that he gained so few proselytes among the better informed classes, when he says, I Cor. c. 1, v. 20, "Where is the wise, where is the scribe, where is the disputer of this world?" By his own admission, the Jews must have refuted Paul ; for his words imply as much.

Against those who maintain that Paul was the author of Jesuism, we have, as a testimony, the Ebionites and Encratita who rejected Paul from being an Apostle.

We have not time to pursue Paul through all his journeys. By trade, he was a journeyman tent-maker, or rather, a house-joiner, as Adam Clarke renders it. He did not like hard work, and was glad of any release from it. That is the reason he submits to sometimes be pelted with stones, and sometimes thrown into prison: and he is never ashamed of any thing he says. Rom. c. 1, v. 16.

He continued to go with the contribution for the church in Judæa, c. 20, v. 22, and it is a question, whether they ever got much of it; for we find that the Roman governors think Paul possessed of money; and one might think that they would have good intelligence, c. 24, v. 26.

How impudent Luke must be, to put in the mouth of King Agrippa, c. 26, v. 28, such words as " Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." For King Agrippa, being a descendant of Herod the Great, another pretender to be Christ, and a rival of Jesus, though dead before Jesus's birth, Agrippa, I say, must have been an Herodian of course, and must from his

birth have belonged to another and rival Christianity; but nothing is too absurd for a Jesuan to say.

When Paul and Barnabas were in the Isle of Cyprus, the governor sent for Paul and Barnabas, hearing that they were conjurors; for he had got another man of the same art, named Elymas, most probably, that they might contend together in the exhibition of skill for his amusement, c. 13, v. 6—11, and Paul was so mischievous as to inject some subtle powder into Elymas's eyes and blinded him, v. 11.

Here is enough said, to show, that the Acts of the Apostles is too valuable to the disbelievers, for them to wantonly reject the book as spurious: especially as there is not a shadow of a proof to sanction that rejection. I come fourthly to the fragment of Celsus contained in Origen.

If Mr. Taylor wishes to maintain that Celsus is a forgery, he ought to show who forged it.

Or else, secondly, to show, that an Epicurean, like as Celsus was, could not have written it.

To show who forged it, he has not attempted.

He has offered a feeble reason, why Celsus could not have been the author, which shall be noticed.

But I must premise, that, if Celsus be a forgery, then the bulky apology of Origen must have been written for no other object, but to prove that Jesus did exist, when nobody appears to have ever questioned Jesus's existence: a cumbrous labour without an object.

Mr. T. says (Syntagma, p. 115), that Celsus "never would have made so foolish an admission, as that Christ wrought real miracles by the power of magic."

The words of Celsus, B. 1, p. 30, are "mistharnesanta eis Aigypton dynameon tinon peirathenta eceithen epanelthein.

This does not imply that Celsus meant to say, that there was any thing supernatural in Jesus's miracles. That he acquired that ability in Egypt looks rather as if his art was only that of a conjuror; for Egypt was celebrated for that art. But supernatural power could be no more acquired in one country than another. Therefore there is nothing in the passage, which an Epicurean, totally free from superstition, might not have written. So that there is not any thing advanced here, that will warrant a denial that the fragment of Celsus is genuine.

The fragment of Celsus is valuable to disbelievers; because he gives us some account of Jesus, without weakening the credit of it by the insertion of miracles.

The Epicurean philosopher, Celsus, lived in the reign of Adrian*, and, therefore, near enough to the time of Jesus, to be enabled to collect some authentic account of him. The book of Celsus, from which the fragment is extracted, is called Alethes logos, or True Discourse †. I will next week embody the extracts.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

SIR,-The very admirable jesting of your female correspondent, in your last number, under the head of "The Animal Earth," has, I may say, perfectly astounded me. By the bye, the lady discovers something very masculine in her ideas, and, between you and me, I think it does not

require a more than ordinary share of discernment, to detect a pair of unmentionables beneath the thin-spun veil of the petticoat *. But, however this may be, her jesting, I repeat it, has perfectly astounded me, and undoubtedly, a good joke like the one in question, must be far more convincing than a whole volume of argumentation. I can now clearly perceive how erroneously I judged, in supposing that a subject so frivolous, so unimportant, as that concerning the Earth's animation, could be at all interesting to your readers. To be sure, I did attempt, as I thought, something like argument in my first communication on the subject, by drawing certain inferences from the state and appearance of our globe, but it would appear, that to reason on such a subject, is equivalent to not reasoning at all. In my last communication, too, though I did indulge in a little imagination, just to keep, as it were, the faculty awake, I conceived that I had rather extended the notion, by founding an original argument on the theory of M. Cuvier, whom I then considered as a person not entirely destitute of truth or talent, especially, as he had been so highly extolled by Mr. Lawrence in his Lectures. It seems, however, I was deceived, and that his celebrated system is a mere romance, that the science of geology, when it would seem to prove a state of things at variance with the ideas of certain persons, is not to be relied on, and, in fine, that the notion adapted by Kepler, M. Patrin, and many other scientific men, as well modern as ancient, that the Earth contains the principle of its motion within itself, is unworthy of notice, further, than by being made the subject of a very "excellent joke!"

age

To make, however, no further joke of the joker, I must declare, "in serious mood," that under the pretended show of unbounded liberality of sentiment, there appears to be a deal of bigotry still larking, which particularly exhibits itself in the continual endeavour to establish at all events, the system of mere matter and motion Of course then, there must be a decided objection, to any theory or speculation, that would go to prove, that there is a state of existence superior to that which man possesses, although man is, comparatively, but as a moving point. There also appears to be a great antipathy, to any argument that tends to limit the of the Earth, as an habitable planet. Thus, Mr. Mackey is a favourite author; because, in his attempt to investigate this subject, he has thought proper to assign it a period of, I believe 470,000 years; and his proofs, as it appears to me, have no other foundation whatever, than the mere fanciful conjectures of his own mind. He might have saved himself a deal of needless toil in his airy speculations, if he had first perused some such treatise as Cuvier's "Researches in regard to the Age of the World, and of the Human Race."-Undoubtedly the age of the world, as respects the accumulated materials which compose it, may be extended with propriety to an indefinite period; but as regards its being inhabited, and especially by man, geology furnishes insuperable arguments in favour of its comparative recentness.

But to return to your fair correspondent, I would advise her to pause, ere she decides so dogmatically on the demerits of any theory that she may not have well considered; because, though she has pronounced mine to be a strange and useless conceit, it does not at all appear from the nature of it, or from any opposing argument, to be such. I must confess, I began the subject of the earth's animation, with a degree of hesitation, and per

It is not so, if D. D. will call, or depute a person to call on me, I will produce the original paper, with a satisfactory explanation. R. C.

+ Aye, and forty such periods! R. C.

« PreviousContinue »