2. It requires some softening I think on these accounts; since 1. Luke was not an eyewitness of the facts he records in his gospel, it is only a hearsay story. 2. It contradicts the other gospels.

3. It has been grossly interpolated.

4. The learned Professor Marsh in his dissertation upon the three first gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, (in his notes to Michaelis' Introduction to the N. T.) represents, and gives ingenious reasons to prove, that those gospels are Compilations from pre-existing documents, written by nobody knows who. So that the pieces from which the three first gospels were composed were, according to this Hypothesis, anonymous, and the gospels themselves written by we do not know what authors; and yet, you know sir, that these patch-work narratives of miracles have passed not only for credible, bat for inspired!

5. The Book of Acts was rejected by the Jewish Christians, as containing accounts untrue, and contradictory to their Acts of the Apostles. It was rejected also by the Encratites, and the Severians, and I believe by the Marcionites. The Jewish Christians were the oldest Christian Church, and they pronounced that the Book of Acts in our Canon was written by a partizan of Paul's; and it will be recollected that our Book of Acts is in fact, principally taken up in recording the travels and preaching of Paul, and contains little comparatively of the other Apostles. The Jewish Christians had a Book of Acts different from ours. And besides the fact, that the oldest Christian church, the mother church of Judea, with whom we should expect to find the truth if any where, rejected the Acts, Chrysostom Bishop of Constantinople, at the end of the 4th century, in a homily upon this Book says, that "not only the author and collector of the Book, but the Book itself was unknown to many." This mother church had not only a book of Acts of the apostles different from ours, but also a gospel of their own, called the gospel of the twelve apostles, which is supposed by the learned in important particulars to differ from ours. According to Augustine however, this gospel was publickly read in the churches as authentick for 300 years. This gospel in the opinion of Grabe, Mills, and other learned men, was written before the gospels now received as canonical. See Toland's Nazarenus.

6. The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, those to the Ephesians, and Colossians, are nearly proved to be apocryphal by Evanson, and about the rest there are some suspicious circumstances. You refer the reader of your Sermons in that note to Paley's Evidences, 9th chapter, for evidence for the authenticity of the rest of the gospels; but if the reader goes there he will find, that all the testimony Paley quotes for the first 200 years after Christ except that of Papias, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, (the value of whose testimony to the authenticity of the gospels, has been considered in the 16th ch. of my work; and which may further appear from these circumstances, that Irenaeus considered the Book of Hermas an inspired Scripture as much as he did the four gospels, and that Tertullian contended stoutly for the inspiration of the ridiculous book of Enoch, one of the most stupid forgeries that ever was seen,) the quotations and supposed allusions in the earlier fathers are uncertain, since it is acknowledged by Dodwell, and also by others, that it cannot be shown with any certainty, whether these quotations and allusions belong to ours or to apocryphal gospels. And to conclude, would you not require as much evidence for the authenticity of the gospels, which relate supernatural events, as we have for most of the classics, and yet if you examine the subject closely, you will be satisfied to your astonishment that we have not so much as we have for the works of Virgil or Cicero; and that we have not by a great deal so much testimony for the miracles of Jesus, which were supernatural events which require at least as great proof as natural ones as we have for the deaths of Pompey and of Julius Caesar, though you seem from your note to think otherwise. As to Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, if they allowed the gospels to be genuine, they might have done so, and taken advantage of such an allowance to show that they could net, from their contradictions, have been written by men having a mission from the God of Truth. But Sir, is it certain that they did acknowledge it? Since the only fragments of their works upon Christianity we have remaining, are just such parts as their Christian answerers have picked out, and selected; the works themselves were carefully burned. And that these answerers have not acted fairly may be more than suspected, I think from a hint given us by Jerom, (which you will find in Dr. Middleton's Free Enquiry) that Origen in his answer to Celsus, sometimes fought the devil at his own weapons, i.e. lied for the sake of the truth; and it is notorious, that the Fathers of the church allowed this to be lawful, and practiced it abundantly. See the note at the end.

You allow in the 20th page that the sincerity of the propagators of opinions is no proof of their truth; and yet you seem to think, that the twelve apostles must have been correct, because the opinions they propagated were, you think, contrary to their prejudices as Jews. This argument cannot, I conceive, support the consequences you lay upon it, were it true that the apostles had abandoned their opinions as Jews about the nature of the Messiah's Kingdom. But I believe you will not be a little surprized, when I shall show you, that in preaching Jesus as the Messiah they did by no means adopt the very spiritual ideas you ascribe to them, but in fact believed that Jesus would soon return and "restore the Kingdom to Israel" in good earnest, and in a sense by no means spiritual. This argument, if I can establish it, you observe, sir, no doubt, must consequently subvert a very considerable part of your system, by which you endeavour to account for the discrepancies which you do allow as yet to subsist between the prophecies of the Messiah, and Jesus of Nazareth. I beseech you therefore to heed me carefully.

In Luke i. verse 32. The angel tells Mary that her son Jesus should be great, and be called: the son of the Highest and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Israel forever and to his kingdom there shall be no end, and in verse 67, &c. Zachariah, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost too, thus praises God concerning Jesus "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because he hath visited and redeemed his people, and he hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the month of his holy prophets which have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us, &c. that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies should serve him with holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our lives." [See the Original.] You see, sir the notion that these words allude to, they certainly appear to me to mean something else than deliverance from spiritual foes. See also in the 2d ch. 25 verse, where Simeon a man who was "looking for the consolation of Israel" and was full of the Holy Ghost, expresses similar sentiments. And Anna the prophetess also spake concerning Jesus to all who "were expecting deliverance in Jerusalem," i.e. undoubtedly deliverance from the Romans. The carnal ideas of the Apostles with regard to the nature of their Master's Kingdom, and their consequent expectations with regard to Jesus, before his crucifixion, are acknowledged; and in the 24th chapt. of Luke 21st v. they say in despair, "But we trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel." And after the resurrection, and just before the ascension of Jesus, after they had been for forty days "instructed in the things pertaining to the kingdom of God," which was the same as that of the Messiah, by Jesus himself, they do not seem to have had the least idea of the metaphysical kingdom of modern Christians, for they ask him, "Lord wilt thou now (or at this time) restore the kingdom to Israel?" And his answer is, not that it should never be restored, but that "it was not for them to know the times, and the seasons," see Acts 1. And even after the day of Pentecost, ch. iii. verse 19, Peter tells the Jews to repent, that their sins may be blotted out "when the times of refreshing [i.e. of deliverance] shall come from the face of the Lord, and he shall send Jesus Christ [i.e. the Messiah] before preached, (or promised) unto you, whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restoration of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began." From this we see, that the Apostles thought that Jesus was gone to heaven for a time, and was to return again [there is no mention whatever in the Prophets of a double coming of the Messiah] and fulfill the prophecies with regard to "the restoration of all things" to a paradisiacal state, and the temporal kingdom of the Messiah sitting upon the throne of David in Jerusalem, all which is contained in the words of "the holy prophets" which have been since the world began. And what sort of a kingdom it was to be will appear from the not very spiritual description of the reign of Jesus upon earth during the Millennium, described in the 20th chapter of Revelations, and not only so, but the author of that book represents the final, and permanent state of the blessed as fixed, not in heaven, as modern Christians suppose, but on a new earth, or the earth renewed, and in a superb city, called "the new Jerusalem."

In fact, the ideas of the twelve Apostles upon the subject of the kingdom of the Messiah were precisely as carnal as those of their unbelieving brethren of the Jewish nation. They believed, as has been shown abundantly in the 15th chapter of "The Grounds of Christianity Examined," that their Master Jesus would come again, as he had told them he would, in that generation, and perform for Israel all the glorious things promised; that he would come in a cloud with power and great glory, and all the holy angels with him; that many from the east, and from the west should sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in that kingdom; and that the disciples were to eat and drink at Jesus' table in his kingdom, and were to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The author of the book of Revelations, after describing the magnificence and felicity of Jesus' kingdom upon earth, represents him as saying that he should come quickly: and in the first chapters, that they who had pierced him should see him coming in the clouds. The Apostles, as appears from the epistles, were on tiptoe with expectation, and frequently assured their converts that "the Lord is at hand, the judge stood before the door, &c." And to conclude, Can you not now, sir, conceive, and guess the cause of the gradual disappearance of the Jewish Christians after "that generation had passed away?" The fact was, that the Jewish Christians never dreamed of that figment a spiritual Messiah. They expected that Jesus would come again in "that generation" as he had told them he would; he did not come; in consequence the Jewish Church, after waiting, and waiting a great while, dwindled into annihilation.

You conclude your most eloquent sermons by an appeal to the feelings in behalf of opinions which ought I think to be defended by reason and proof rather than by sentiment. You complain of ridicule in an examination of this kind. I hope you will excuse my expressing some doubts whether eloquent sentiment, and appeals to the feelings are less exceptionable in a discussion of the causes why we ought to give Christianity a respectful and dispassionate examination. If I were so happy as to be so eloquent as you, and in a manner which such power of persuasion as you possess would give me ability to do, had described the burnings, the tortures, the murders, and the plundering of the Jew's during the last thousand years, in order to cause my readers to wish to find reason to hate Christianity; would you not have said it was unfair? It cannot be necessary to inform so finished a scholar as Mr. Channing, that in a discussion about the truth of a system the consideration of the consequences of the system's being proved to be false, is irrelevant and contrary to rule. You will say that you were not discussing the truth of a system, but the reasons why we should give it a respectful examination. This is true-The question you advised your auditors to examine was, whether the Christian religion was true or otherwise. Be it so. I appeal then to your candour, whether it was the way to send them to the important enquiry unprejudiced and unbiased, to impress them by authority, and by arguments which are good only when used as subsidiary to proof or demonstration and by terrifying them with what you imagine would be the consequences of finding that Christianity is unfounded? Ah sir, does the advocate of a cause "founded on adamant" wish to dazzle the judges and fascinate the jury before he ventures to bring the merits of his cause to trial? Must they be made to shed tears, must their hearts be made to feel that you are right, in order that their understandings may be able to perceive it? Should the learned and able champion of a system, who offers it as true, and to be received only because it is true, when its claims are threatened with a scrutiny, lay so much stress upon its supposed utility when the question is its truth? Is it an argument that Christianity is true, because if false, you think we should have no religion left? This argument no doubt looks ludicrous to you, and yet I am told that it has been gravely offered by some well meaning men after reading your sermons, who thought it of no small weight. You may see from this, my dear sir, how easily simplicity is satisfied.

You lay great stress upon the comforts derived from believing Christianity true. But ought men to be encouraged to lean and build their hopes on what may perhaps when examined turn out to be a broken reed? The expiring Indian dies in peace-holding a cow's tail in his hand. If he was in his full health, and vigour of understanding, would you think It charitable to let that man remain uninformed of his delusion in trusting to such a staff of comfort? Would you not endeavour to enlighten him, and make him ashamed of his superstition? I know you would, and you would do him a kindness deserving his gratitude. To conclude, the Christian religion is either a divine and solid foundation of morals, hope, and consolation, or it is not. If it is, there is no reason in the world to fear, that it can be undermined, or hurt in the least. To believe so would be I conceive to doubt the Providence of God. For it cannot be supposed, that a religion really given by the Almighty and All wise can be undermined by a wretched mortal, a child of dust and infirmity; the supposition is monstrous, and therefore no examination of its claims ought to be deprecated, or frowned at by those who think it "founded on adamant," for no man shrinks at having that examined which he is positively confident of being able to prove.