[fn16 Mr. Everett recommends to me to adopt as an appropriate motto for the second edition of my first work, a passage from Celsus which speaks of the dispute, between the Jews and Christians as a "quarrel about the shadow of an ass." p. 327. of Mr. Everett's work.
Is it so indeed! How then has it happened that Mr. Everett's Coreligionists have for fifteen hundred years persecuted, despised, oppressed, trampled underfoot millions, plundered and massacred hundreds of thousands, tortured, racked, and roasted alive thousands of the Jewish nation; and all in a quarrel about "the shadow of an ass!" O shame, where is thy blush. O meek eye'd humanity, how hast thou been outraged and trampled on!
For my own part I do not consider it as a quarrel about "the shadow of an ass," I rather think it has a much greater resemblance to a quarrel about an ass in the Lion's skin; in which quarrel the Christians have shown themselves to be every thing but the Fox in the Fable upon that subject.]
[fn17 Mr. Everett, also quotes my words in another place into the 211 page of his work. "The Jews had certainly good reason from their prophecies, to expect no Messiah but one who should set on the Throne of David, and confer Liberty and happiness on them, and spread peace and happiness throughout the earth, and communicate the knowledge of God and virtue, and the love of their fellow men to every people."
Is this a character "whose laurel is to be watered by tears," the leaves of which is to "grow green in an atmosphere filled with sighs and groans?" I would ask Mr. Everett.]
[fn18 Mr. Everett says page, 107. with great gravity, "to hear the Evangelists charged in vulgar terms with misquoting and changing words, by one, who could himself fall into the errors and the misrepresentations we have just exposed, has moved me to a warmth of language, which I did not think to have used. But, I beg pardon: it is the New Testament which teaches us, that we "beware lest we condemn ourselves, in what we judge another." And Mr. English has let us know that the New Testament morality is pernicious to society. Justly, most Justly, does Dr. Leland observe, that "it would be hard to produce any persons whatever, who are chargeable with more unfair, and fraudulent management in their quotations, in curtailing, adding to, and altering the passages they cite, or taking them out of their connexion, and making them speak directly contrary to the sentiments of their authors than the Deistical Writers!!" They are indeed sad dogs, it must be allowed, Mr. Everett.]
[fn19 See Appendix B]
[fn20 Mr. Everett considers the happy reign of the Messiah as having actually commenced with the era of Jesus Christ, and that we are actually enjoying its blessings. Of course he must consider his being whipped, and gibbetted by his own subjects, and leaving the world in the hands of those holy men, Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, Domitian, and Heliogabalus, kingdom rising against kingdom, and nation against nation; (though the prophets declare that in the reign of the Messiah "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,") famines, earthquakes, and pestilences in divers places, (though the prophets declare that in the reign of the Messiah, the earth shall become a Paradise, and that God shall wipe all tears from off all faces, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away,) that horrid Jewish war in which perished more than eleven hundred thousand of the Jewish nation, while the rest were dispersed and enslaved, (though the prophets say, that in the reign of the Messiah the Jews should enjoy the most perfect and endless happiness,) the theological quarrels, frauds, forgeries. Councils, and Excommunications, and an endless detail of Battle and Murder, the irruptions and devastations of the Goths Huns and Vandals, the rise and establishment of "these venerable institutions," the Popedom and the Inquisition, the persecutions and wars excited by St. Dominic, the wars of Charlemagne, and the Teutonic Knights upon the Germans, giving them no alternative but the Gospel or the Sword, the Crusades, the pious exploits of Cortez and Pizarro in America, the comfortable state of things during the dark ages, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the wars carried on by the Catholicks against the Protestants, and the wars since carried on by the Protestants and Catholicks, indiscriminately with each other, as among those "blessed events, and happy changes," I use Mr. Everett's words, intended by "the highly figurative language," of the Old Testament prophets predictive of the reign of the Messiah! If the reader will pursue those predictions contained in Appendix, B, or that beautiful compend of them in Pope's "Messiah" he will I believe allow, that if it were possible for such things as the above mentioned, to be really intended by those prophecies, they would be the greatest hoax, and the most flagrant and enormous verification of the old proverb "parturiunt montes nascitur ridiculus mus," on record.
[fn21 It is worth notice that when the term "Saviour," is applied in the Old Testament to men, it invariably signifies a temporal deliverer, for instance, Judges iii. 9.15, in the Hebrew.]
[fn22 The writers of the Old Testament frequently speak of the head, hands, ears, eyes, and even nostrils of the Deity. Will Mr. Everett infer that because these expressions must be understood, figuratively, that whenever the sacred writers speak of heads, hands, ears, eyes, and noses of men, that said heads, hands, ears, eyes, and noses had no physical existence, but must be interpreted figuratively? If so, I do not despair of seeing Mr. Everett publish a dissertation, crowded by numerous quotations from the Rabbies, in order to prove, that the history of David's cutting off the head of Goliath, was in all probability merely a figurative account, in the oriental style, of the success of the prophet David in a controversy he had with a certain Philistine Heathen Priest of the God Dagon, ("strange sea monster, upward man, and downward fish:") who had written a book in order to prove against the Israelites) that their law was "a dead letter," and they themselves no "nation.">[