The author hopes, and thinks he has a right to expect, that whoever may attempt to answer his book, will do it fairly, like a man of candour; without trying to evade the main question—that of the Messiahship of Jesus. He fears, that he shall see an answer precisely resembling the many others he has seen upon that subject. Except two—those of Sukes, and Jeffries. (who acknowledge that miracles have nothing to do with the question of the Messiahship, which can be decided by the Old Testament only;)— all that he has ever met with, evade this question, and slide over to the ground of miracles. Such conduct in an answerer of this book would be very unfair, and also very absurd. For the case is precisely resembling the following—A father informs by letter his son in a foreign country, that he is about to send him a Tutor, whom he will know by the following marks; He is learned in the mathematics, and the physical sciences; acquainted with the learned languages, and an excellent physician; of a dark complexion; six feet high, and with a voice loud, and commanding. By and by, a man comes to the young man, professing to be this tutor sent to him by his father. On examining the man, and comparing him with the description in his fathers letter, he finds him totally unlike the person he had been taught to expect. Instead of being acquainted with the sciences, therein mentioned, he knows nothing about them; instead of being six feet high, of a dark complexion, and with a voice loud and commanding, he is a diminutive creature of five feet, of a light complexion, with a voice like a womans.
The young man, with his fathers letter in his hand, tells the pretended tutor, that he certainly cannot be the person he has been told to expect. The man persists, and appeals to certain wonderful works he performs in order to convince the young man, that he is acquainted with the sciences aforesaid, and that he is also six feet high; of a dark complexion; and talks like an Emperor! The young man replies. Friend, you are either an enthusiast, a mad man, or something worse. As to your signs and wonders, I have been warned in my fathers letter to pay no regard to any such things in this case. Besides, you ought to be sensible, that your identity with the person I am taught by my fathers letter to expect, can be only determined by comparing you with the description of him given therein. Whether your wonderful works are real miracles or not, I neither know, nor care. At any rate, they cannot, in the nature of things, be any thing to the purpose in; this case. For you to pretend, that they prove what you offer them to prove, is quite absurd; you might as well, and as reasonably, pretend, that they could prove Aristotle to have been Alexander; or the Methodist George Whitfield to be the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte!
To conclude, if any person should feel inclined to attempt to refute this book, let him do it like a man; without evading the question, or equivocating, or caviling about little things. Let him consider the principal question, and the main arguments on which he perceives that the author relies, and not pass over these silently, and hold up a few petty mistakes and subsidiary arguments as specimens of the whole book. Such a mode of defence would be very disengenuous, and with a discerning reader, perfectly futile and insufficient. It would be as if a man prostrate, and bleeding under a lion whose teeth and claws were infixed in his throat, should tear a handful of hairs out of the animals mane, and hold them up as proofs of victory.
In fine, let him, before his undertaking, carefully consider these pungent words of Bishop Beveridge, Opposite answers, and downright arguments advantage a cause; but when a disputant leaves many things untouched, as if they were too hot for his fingers; and declines the weight of other things, and alters the true state of the question: it is a shrewd sign, either that he has not weighed things maturely, or else (which is more probable,) that he maintains a desperate cause.
FINIS.
APPENDIX A.#
As reasons for this assertion, (that the account of the resurrection given by the evangelists is no better, nay, worse, than conjecture, as it is a mere forgery of the second century.—Vide page 86) take the following facts, which are now ascertained, and can be proved:—1. Several sects of Christians in the first century, in the apostolic era, denied that Jesus was crucified, as the Basildeans, &c. The author of the epistle ascribed to Barnabas, I think, denied it, and the author of the gospel of Thomas certainly did. 2. The Jewish Christians, the disciples of the twelve apostles, never received, but rejected every individual book of the present New Testament. They held in especial abomination the writings of Paul, whom they called an apostate; and there is extant, in Cotelerius Patres Apostolici, a letter ascribed to Peter, written to James at Jerusalem wherein he complains bitterly of Paul, styling him a lawless man, and a crafty misrepresenter of him (Peter,) and his doctrine, in that Paul represented, every where, Peter as being secretly of the same opinions with himself; against this he enters his protest, and declares that he reprobates the doctrine of Paul. (See Appendix B.) 3. It is certain, that from the beginning, the Christians were never agreed as to points of faith; and that the apostles themselves, so far from being considered as inspired, and infallible, were frequently contradicted, thwarted, and set at naught by their own converts: and there were as many sects, heresies, and quarrels, in the first century, as in the second or third. 4. Jesus and his apostles were no sooner off the stage, than forgeries of all kinds broke in with irresistible force: Gospels, Epistles, Acts, Revelations without number, published in the names, and under the feigned authority, of Jesus and his apostles, abounded in the Christian church; and as some of these were as early in time as any of the writings in the present canon of the New Testament, so they were received promiscuously with them, and held in equal credit and veneration, and read in the public assemblies as of equal authority with those now received. 5. The very learned and pious Dodwell, in his Dissertations on Iraeneus avows, that he cannot find in ecclesiastical antiquities, (which he understood better than any man of his age,) any evidence at all, that the four Gospels were known or heard of, before the time of Trajan, and Adrian, i.e. before the middle of the second century, i. e. nearly a hundred years after the apostles were dead. (See Appendix C.) Long before this time, we know that there were extant numbers of spurious gospels, forged, and ascribed to the apostles; and we have not the least evidence to be depended on, that those now received were not also apocryphal. For they were written nobody certainly knows by whom, or where, or when. They first appeared in an age of credulity, when forgeries of this kind abounded and were received with avidity by those whose opinions they favoured, while they were rejected as spurious by many sects of Christians, who asserted that they were possessed of the genuine apostles, which, however, those who received the four, denied. 6. All the different sects of Christians, without a known exception, altered, interpolated, and without scruple garbled, their different copies of their various and discordant gospels, in order to adapt them to their jarring and whimsical philosophical notions, Celsus accuses them of this, and they accuse each other. And that they were continually tampering with their copies of the books of the New Testament, is evident from the immense number of various readings, and from some whole phrases, and even verses, which for knavish purposes were foisted into the text, but have been detected, and exposed by Griesbach, and others. They also forged certain rhapsodies under the name of Sybbiline Oracles, and then adduce them as prophetic proofs of the truth of their religion. They also interpolated certain clumsy forgeries as prophecies of Jesus into their copies of their Greek version of the Old Testament. 7. The present canon of the New Testament has never been sanctioned by the general consent of Christians. The Syrian church rejects some of its books;—some of its books were not admitted until after long opposition, and not until several hundred years after Jesus. The lists of what were considered as canonical books, differ in different ages, and some books now acknowledged by all Christians to be forgeries, were in the second and third centuries considered as equally apostolic as those now received, and as such, were publicly read in the churches. 8. The reason why we have not now extant gospels, different and contradictory to those now received, is, because that the sect or party which finally got the better of its adversaries, and styled itself Catholic, or orthodox, took care to burn and destroy the heretics, and their gospels with them. They likewise took care to hunt up and burn the books of the pagan adversaries of Christianity, because they were shockingly offensive to pious ears. 9. Semler considered the New Testament as a collection of pious frauds, written for pious purposes, in the latter part of the second century, (the very time assigned for their first appearance by Dodwell.) Evanson adopts, and gives good reasons for a similar opinion with regard to most of the books which go to compose it. Lastly. The reason why the New Testament canon has been so long respected, seems to have been purely owing to the credulity of the ignorant, and the laziness, indifference, or fears of the learned.
Douglas, in his famous Criterion, gives us, as infallible tests, by which we may distinguish when written accounts of miracles are fabulous, the following marks:—
1. We have reason to suspect (he says) the accounts to be false, when they are not published to the world till after the time when they are said to have been performed.
2. We have reason to suspect them to be false, when they are not published in the place where it is pretended the facts were wrought, but are propagated only at a great distance from the supposed scene of action.