BY GEORGE BETHUNE ENGLISH.
"Should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?" "Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good?—Thou chooseth[fn1] the tongue of the crafty. Thy own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee." "Behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth."
PHILADELPHIA:
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR.
1824.
[PG Editor's Note: Many printer's errors in this text have been retained as found in the original—in particular the will be found a large number of mismatched and wrongspace quotation marks.]
ADVERTISEMENT.
WHEN I left America, I had no intention of giving Mr. Everett's book a formal answer: but having learned since my arrival in the Old World, that: the controversy in which I had engaged myself had attracted some attention, and had been reviewed by a distinguished member of a German university, my hopes of being serviceable to the cause of truth and philanthrophy are revived, and I have therefore determined to give a reply to Mr. Everett's publication.
In this Work, as in my prior writings, I have taken for granted the Divine Authority of the Old Testament, and I have argued upon the principle that every book, claiming to be considered as a Divine revelation and building itself upon the Old Testament as upon a foundation, must agree with it, otherwise the superstructure cannot stand. The New Testament, the Talmud, and the Koran are all placed by their authors upon the Law and the Prophets, as an edifice is upon its foundation; and if it be true that any or all of them be found to be irreconcileable with the primitive Revelation to which they all refer themselves, the question as to their Divine Authority is decided against them, most obviously and completely.
This work was written in Egypt and forwarded to the U. States, while I was preparing to accompany Ismael Pacha to the conquest of Ethiopia; an expedition in which I expected to perish, and therefore felt it to be my duty to leave behind me, something from which my countrymen might learn what were my real sentiments upon a most important and interesting subject; and as I hoped would learn too, how grossly they had been deluded into building their faith and hope upon a demonstrated error.