29. Your Lordships, no doubt, will readily explain and settle the mysterious disagreement between John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.* John being asked if he was Elias, answered, I am not; but Jesus** affirms, the contrary. As few even of the Christians have faith enough to believe that John was and was not Elias at the same time, a word or two of explanation would afford them infinite satisfaction. Commentators in divinity can do miracles in the way of explaining; but, unfortunately for us, all other miracles have long ceased, though at no time so much wanted as at present.
30. Out of forty Gospels we receive four as canonical; the rest are the fruitful produce of that spirit of forgery which the Christian world has always been celebrated for. Their piety was indefatigable in burning the books of the heretics and unbelievers, and the same piety was not sparing in furnishing apocryphal books. It is for the salvation of mankind that Christianity should prevail; and how can its propagation be advanced, and its dominion confirmed, more than by preventing the arguments against it from being exposed to view? Some may indeed pretend, that this mode of proceeding is tyrannical, and destructive of the rights of mankind; but we, the faithful, insist that it is zealous and politic. How can a man be said to be injured, even if we allow that he is cheated, since he is cheated into salvation, though perhaps against his will? Yet it will be doing a singular service to us weaker Christians, if your Lordships will point out by what particular emanation of the Holy Spirit the Church was enabled to select the divine out of such a number of apocryphal writings.
* John i. 21.
** Matt. xi. 14.
Our enemies, the infidels, say, that time has obliterated the primitive disputes on this subject, and that the sanction of custom has confirmed the authority of the four Gospels, which, so far from external and historical, have not even the internal evidence of truth. They observe, that the gospel of Mark, though evidently an abridgement of that of Matthew, yet differs from it in many very material particulars; that the grand circumstance of the conspiracy by which Christ lost his life, is told differently and discordantly by all the four. They express the highest astonishment that the sending of Jesus to Herod by Pilate should be related by Luke, and that the other three Evangelists should not only omit that occurrence, but relate the proceedings in this affair so as entirely to exclude the possibility of its insertion. They think it also impossible that an earthquake should rend rocks, and that many saints should arise from the dead, and go into the holy city, as Matthew relates; and yet that these great events should not only have escaped contemporary historians, but even the other three Evangelists. And to this they add, that it is particularly strange and amazing that John, who was present at the crucifixion,* should not only forbear to mention any one of the terrible appearances recorded in Matthew on that occasion, but that even the darkness of three hours' duration, which must have made the most lasting impression on every individual in Judea, should also be by him totally unnoticed.
* Such as we behold even in the present enlightened day by
that great prophetess, Joanna Southcott, and her followers!
who are now deceiving the people of this kingdom with her
prophecies. Edit.
31. The malevolence and incredulity of our adversaries, the unbelievers, are visible in nothing so much as the criticisms they make on the resurrection. They complain, and with some degree of reason, that this most miraculous and important event, instead of possessing that extraordinary and uncommonly clear evidence, which its incredible nature requires, bears, on the contrary, every mark of a forgery. Instead of Christ's re-appearing to all the world, that the world might believe, he is said to have appeared to his disciples, who were the only men on earth whose evidence could be exceptionable in the case; men who already engaged in the attempt of forming a sect or party,* could by no means be disinterested in their report; the only men on earth who could be suspected of forgery in the present instance. These are the men, say our enemies, who were to preach Jesus Christ to the world, and to find arguments to support the fact, which Christ might have uncontrovertibly established by appearing again in public. But the generation was unworthy of that condescension, we reply, which they wickedly paraphrase thus: "God, who desireth: not the death of a sinner, left them in their sins, that they might die—God, who spared not his beloved Son, but gave him to the bitterness of death, that sinners might be saved, chose, nevertheless, to deprive all mankind of the proper evidence of the resurrection, because the Jews of that age were sinners!" Mercy is the character of the first act, but how shall we characterize the latter? Is the God of the Christians inconsistent with himself? Did the great and merciful Being act thus? Did he inspire four men to write accounts of the resurrection,* which disagree with each other in almost every circumstance? Does his divine truth bear the resemblance of forgery and invention, that we may shew our faith and reliance on him, by making a sacrifice of our reason; and believing by an act, not of the understanding but of the will? But why, O thou Supreme Governor! why hast thou given us reason, if reason be the accursed thing which we ought to cast from us? Or rather, is not reason the first and only revelation from thee; and are not those enthusiasts accursed, who, promulgating vile systems unworthy of thee, find their base purposes are not to be accomplished, till they have first deprived us of thy best gift?
* See the concluding chapters of the four Evangelists.
These, my Lords, are the reflections of infidels and unbelievers; reflections which our truly Christian zeal and detestation would have prevented us from repeating, if we had not been supported by a pleasing anticipation of the glorious and satisfactory manner in which they will be answered, explained, and overthrown by your Lordships, to the entire satisfaction and conviction of us weak Christians. Not by persecution, pains, penalties, fines and imprisonment, otherwise the unbelievers will then sneeringly say, that your Lordships are incapable of answering them, or, what is more unfortunate, that they are really unanswerable.
FINIS.