Evidence of Josephus and Gibbon vs. Mr. Mahan.
2013. The silence of Josephus respecting Christ induced some Christians to concoct the pious fraud of interpolating in his history a notice of the career and crucifixion of Christ, but subsequent Christian writers have detected and exposed the interpolation; so that the history alluded to, written soon after Christ’s death by the distinguished Hebrew, contains no notice of those events; and, from the following passage in Gibbon, it appears that it did not awaken much attention among the Romans. Yet Mahan, assuming the opposite to be true, urges it as evidence of the evangelical account, that the phenomena drew universal attention.
2014. “How shall we excuse,” says Gibbon, “the supine inattention of the pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? This miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of nature—earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses—which his indefatigable curiosity could collect; both one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe.” (Gibbon, vol. ii. chap. xv. p. 379.)
The Worshippers of the Golden Calf more righteous than their Assassins.
2015. The example is set in the Old Testament of attributing the worst motives to every one who does not concur with the accusers in religious opinions. I conscientiously believe that the Israelites who made the golden calf were at least as righteous in their worship as those who treacherously and cruelly massacred them in obedience to an order strangely represented as sanctioned by Jehovah: “Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out of the camp, and slay every man his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbour; and the children of Levi did according to the words of Moses, and there fell of the people on that day about three thousand men.”
2016. Obviously, the only way in which those who, with Mr. Mahan, can find any pretence for ascribing this horrible sanguinary order to the inspiration of God, is by treating idolatry as so wicked as to be punished, not only in the immediate transgressor, but in his offspring to the third and fourth generation. Is it not a fairer way of viewing this affair to infer that Moses and his partisans were covetous, unprincipled men, who did not hesitate at swindling, lying, massacre, or any measures requisite to give him and them ascendency? Was there ever a greater analogy between the measures of any two evil-doers than those of Mohammed and Moses, both professing communion with God, which we now know could not have taken place, and both pleading his commands to exercise the most horrible intolerance at home, as well as cruel rapacity abroad?
2017. Mohammed appears to have been more successful than Moses in convincing his followers of his mission. There seems to have been a great distrust of Moses, which he artfully always ascribes to the impiety of the unbelievers; like all other religious impostors, identifying his word with that of God. Nothing but his inability to convince the skeptics of the divine origin of his mission could have induced them to worship idols in opposition to his remonstrance; and the fact that Aaron assisted them in casting the golden calf, can only be explained by his participation in the heresy. Does not this alleged conduct on the part of Aaron render the whole affair so absurd as to throw doubt over the whole history? Moses, while killing the malcontents, could hardly avoid punishing their ringleader. Moreover, how could one who would assist in idolatrous worship, be fit to hold the office of high-priest, into which he was soon afterward installed with great pomp?
2018. It is perfectly clear, to my mind, that a pagan who sincerely worships any thing as his God, really worships God. He stands in the same relation to his God that a debtor stands to his real creditor when paying a forged draft.
2019. Wicked priests have raised a cry against idolaters, as the real thief strives, by calling after some innocent person within view, to divert the hue and cry from himself. As an exemplification of this species of wickedness, I quote here a speech made to the Emperor Constantius by Julius Firmicius Maternus, (Taylor’s Diagesis, page 144:)
2020. (Addressing the Emperor Constantius.) “Take away, take away, in perfect security,” exclaims this self-called Christian priest, “O most holy emperor, take away all the ornaments of their temples. Let the fire of the mint or the flames of the mines melt down their gods. Seize upon all their wealthy endowments, and turn them to your own use and property. And, O most sacred emperor, it is absolutely necessary for you to revenge and punish this evil. You are commanded by the law of the Most High God to persecute all sorts of idolatry with the utmost severity; hear and commend to your own sacred understanding what God himself commands. He commands you not to spare your son or your brother; he bids you plunge the avenging knife even into the heart of your wife that sleeps in your bosom; to persecute your dearest friend with a sublime severity; and to arm your whole people against these sacrilegious pagans, and tear them limb from limb. Yea, even whole cities, if you should find this guilt in them, must be cut off. O most holy emperor, God promises you the rewards of his mercy, upon condition of your thus acting. Do, therefore, what he commands, complete what he prescribes.”