[fn106 1. If the Christians should do this, the fundamental articles of their creed, would be, to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their mind, and soul, and strength, and to love their neighbours as themselves: for on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
2. If the Christians should do this, they would have precisely the same Scriptures which the apostles and first Christians had, and which they considered as sufficient. Even Paul himself pronounces, that the Old Testament was "given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 2 Tim. ch. iii. 16.
3. If the Christians should do this, all the endless and rancourous disputes about the trinity, incarnation, atonement, transubstantiation, worship of the Virgin Mary, the saints, their images and relics, the supremacy of the Pope, et id genus omne, would be quietly laid upon the shelf, and torment mankind no more.
4. The hundred sects into which Christians are divided, would coalesce; for it is the New Testament which keeps them asunder. So long as that book is believed to contain a Revelation from God, there can be no peace. For pious and good men who believe that it is of divine authority, and who are zealously disposed to discover from its contents "what is the mind of the spirit," must necessarily be divided in their opinions; BECAUSE the New Testament is not only inconsistent with the Old, but is also inconsistent with itself too; and must therefore necessarily create a diversity of opinions in those who reverence it as the word of God. This is the grand secret, and everacting cause, which has made scisms in the church.]
[fn107 Mr. Everett, p. 427 of his work, alluding to my anticipations in one of my publications, in which I expressed myself as aware of what I should have to encounter, in consequence of my undertaking on behalf of the oppressed, and slandered Jews; says with something like "the charity of a monk, and the meekness of an inquisitor," that "the affecting allusion he (Mr. English,) has made to his prospects in the world, has many a time restrained me, when I ought to have used the language of indignation."
If a man had told me, that in consequence of my enterprise I should encounter great misfortunes, I should have answered, I expected, and was prepared to meet them. But if he had told me, a native of the New World discovered a few centuries ago, that the time would come when I should write upon this subject, in the very land, and almost on the very spot that gave birth to Moses and the Pharoahs, I should have thought him amusing himself with a jest; nevertheless such is the fact. I write this book; on the banks of old Nile, and in sight of the pyramids.]
[fn108 I have read in a Magazine, of an itinerant Methodist preacher, not perfectly acquainted with the sublime arts of reading and writing, who, in a sermon of his in praise of Industry, alledged as a proof of God's aversion to idleness, that God commanded Moses, when he built the Tabernacle in the wilderness, to cover it with "BEGGAR'S SKINS." The English Translation says Ex. ch. xxvi 14. with BADGER'S SKINS." Now I suppose that if such a quotation from the Old. Testament was found in a work whose title page represented it to have been written by Bishop Marsh, that there is not a scholar, in. Christendom, who would not pronounce the book to be a forgery.]
[fn109 Mr. Everett says p. 243, of his work that "not one of the books of the New Testament, nor all of them together, were intended to be a forensic defence of Christianity." The-Epistle to the Hebrews, at least, convicts this opinion of mistake.
He says also p. 273., "As to what Mr. English, after Collins, proceeds to say, that the authors of the books of the New Testament always argue absolutely from the quotations they cite as prophecies out of the books of the old Testament, it is so far from being correct, that it is highly notorious, that they do not argue from them at all." Mr. Everett must have felt very desperate to venture upon such an assertion in the face of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Mr. Everett may succeed with some in facing down argument, but he is mistaken if he thinks, that
"Stubborn facts must still give place "To his unpenetrable face,
"Which-makes its way through all affairs, &c. &c."']