authorities, no one can be surprized, if we abide by the old fashioned interpretation, and receive neither. Whilst Mr. Taylor was occupied in conjecturing, he might as well have conjectured away the testimony of Pliny also. How easy were it to insert this letter in his collection. Conscientious scruples could have afforded no impediment. No matter that the letter is quoted by the Fathers; what they forged, that they could quote. Here, you see, is a good case at once, and a fearful enemy dispatched. Then as to Suetonius. Of course those who dealt in interpolation by the wholesale, could easily introduce a few words into his text. And thus the chief historical evidence for Christianity is spirited away. As, however, Mr. Taylor has not pursued his principles to their full extent, we will argue on his admission of the authority of Pliny's letter. And, you inform us, Mr. Taylor," that Pliny could, on his most diligent enquiry, find nothing among the professors of Christianity but a vile and excessive superstition; not a precept, not a doctrine, not a circumstance, not an iota of Christianity." What, then, is this -"None of these things (i. e. invocate the gods, supplicate the image of Trajan, revile Christ) as is said they who are really Christians, can by any means be compelled to do." If this is not a circumstance, nay a principle of Christianity--of what is it a circumstance? Of Heathenism? Of Judaism? Of what? Gibbon shall answer (vol ii. chap. xi.): "It was the first but arduous duty of a Christian to preserve himself pure and undefiled by the practice of idolatry." And what, too, is this"They affirmed that the whole of their fault or error lay in this, that they were wont to meet together on a stated day, and sing among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a God." This, also, we are required to believe on your word, is not a circumstance peculiar to Christianity. The fact is in the quotation which you have made, and which gives a semblance of truth to your assertions, you have taken a passage out of its connection, and affirmed that of the whole letter which only relates to a small part of it. In justification of what I have now said, I will quote the passage with its connection. "After receiving this account," says Pliny, "I judged it the more necessary to examine, and that by torture, two maid-servants who were called ministers. But I discovered nothing besides a bad and excessive superstition." By thus taking passages out of their connection the most contradictory propositions may be established from the works of any author. This is another specimen, Sir, of your argumentative impartiality. And another follows. "Its professors were so exceedingly abandoned and wicked, that they could not trust each other; and when they met to sing hymns to Christ as to a God, it was necessary to swear that there should be no throat-cutting, adultery, nor theft, till the farce was over." The passage ou which the above representation is founded is the following:"They affirmed that the whole of their fault or error lay in this, that they were wont to meet together on a stated day to sing hymns to Christ as to a God, and bind themselves by an oath, not to the commission of any wickedness, but not to be guilty of any theft, or robbery, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor to deny a pledge committed to them when called upon to return it. When these things were performed it was their custom to separate, and then come together again to a meal, which they ate in common without any disorder; but this they had forborne, since the publication of my edict, by which, according to your commands, I prohibited assemblies." The perversion practised in this case is the greater, because even unbelievers have regarded the passage of Pliny as an honourable testimony to the virtues of the primitive Christians. In this light, did Gibbon view it. "When the Christians of Bithynia were brought before the tribunal of the younger Pliny, they assured the Pro-Consul that far from being engaged in any unlawful conspiracy, they were bound by a solemn obligation to abstain from the commission of those crimes which disturb the private and public peace of society, from theft, from robbery, adultery, perjury, fraud." Nor can it be said that Gibbon is here giving loose to his ironical vein. He is discoursing of the virtues of the primitive Christians as one of the secondary causes that contributed to the rapid extension of Christianity. reason why the Christians disclaimed any confederation to disturb the peace of society by private or public vices, may be seen in the circumstances in which they stood. They were an obnoxious people, their private meetings would give rise to unfavourable suspicions, especially as those of the Heathen exhibited scenes of the most disgraceful nature. It was necessary, therefore, to exculpate themselves from these groundless suspicions, and to assure the Pro-Consul that so far from meeting together to devise or commit crime, a solemn oath obliged them to the performance of the most important duties of social life. The After such an exhibition of error on your premises it may safely leave your inference," there is then absolutely no evidence that Christianity originated in Judea, or in the reign of the emperor Tiberius," to fare for itself, and proceed to the scrutiny of the evidence which you adduce to prove that Christianity did not originate in Judea. The general scope, and the greater number of clear and positive texts of the New Testament treat, you inform us, of Christianity as already established in the world, and of great antiquity when the book was written. Of course the book treats of that as * Vol. ii. cap. 11. established whose establishment it records. This can be no great objection one would imagine. But something more than vague unsupported assertion might have been expected either in the text or notes, in regard to the other fact of which you apprise us, that the New Testament treats of Christianity as of great antiquity when the book was written. Out" of the greatest number of texts," it were easy to select some half-score to corroborate your statement. The person who advances an affirmative is always held bound to establish it, and until that is done a simple negative is deemed a sufficient reply. I might beat the air for a long time in combating what might have the shadow of appearance to be some of the multitude of texts, ready to be adduced in evidence. Until you have confirmed your bare assertion therefore, I might rest satisfied with denying its accuracy; but I make a gratuitous offer of the evidence of the Evangelist Luke, defining the time of the rise of Christianity, Luke i. 5. "There was in the days of Herod king of Judea," &c. Chap. iii. 1. "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, &c." ver. 23. "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age." The second evidence which you adduce from the Christian fathers will be found entirely to fail you. They it seems prove that Christianity did not originate in Judea, and disclaiming any thing like novelty and recentness in their religion, challenge for it the honour of a very remote and distinct origination. To prove all this, so contrary to received opinion, you adduce one quotation from one writer.-One quotation from one writer to prove the consentaneous and consistent admissions of the earliest fathers! Surely there is some little disparity between your premises and your conclusions. Mr. Taylor propagated unbelief, in proof of which reference is made to one passage of his writings and thence comes the weighty inference, therefore the propagation of unbelief was the consentaneous and consistent practice of all the writers in the reign of George the fourth. And not only this, but however early they are dated, these Christian fatliers make this admission, and to establish the words of what?-one of the earliest of them? No-the words of one who was born in the middle of the 4th century! You write of course with a view to convince your readers. But really you pay a sorry compliment to their understandings, when you ask them to make such inferences from such evidence. From the works of Augustine then whom you quote to bear you through such a variety of assertions, permit me to adduce a passage in explanation which is parallel to your weighty proof. "The race of Christians he says is from the beginning." How so? Because-" all that have believed in one God which the Saviour preached may be called Christians. For the advent of the Saviour has been promised from the beginning, where John in the Apocalypse says, "the lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world.”* You might with as much propriety have brought the prolepsis of John to prove your point as the words adduced. Christians may be said to have always existed, because there have always been those who have maintained one of its characteristic doctrines the unity of God. This is what Augustine asserts. A similarity of principles indicates a similarity of sect and in a vague way those may be designated by the same name who hold the same tenets. It is thus that Tindall contended that Christianity was as old as the crea tion, because its principles, if they are consistent with reason and nature, must be coeval with those relations that created beings sustain; and Dr. Sherlock was led to say that "the religion of the gospel, is the true original religion of reason and nature, and its precepts declarative of that original religion, which was as old as the creation."+ No one can doubt that the duties which arise out of our various relations must be as old as the existence of those relations. But those duties may not have been fully known, nor the observance of them adequately sanctioned. And to supply the deficiencies arising from the comparative ignorance and inadequate inducements, attendant on natural religion, was it that a divine interposition was made by Jesus Christ. To establish indisputably however that the evidence you have pressed into your service, does not prove that Augustine was one of those whose consentaneous and consistent admissions, referred the origination of Christianity to remote antiquity, read these his words. There (in Jerusalem) arose the religion of this designation" (belief in Christ.) He (Christ) died, says Augustine in the same connection under the consulship of the 2 Gemini," that is A. D. 29.‡ But had you, Mr. Taylor, thought proper to allow your reason to have before their eyes the whole of the passage you have adduced, you would not have been able to have given even the semblance of truth to your hardy assertions. These then, my readers, are the words of Augustine, and ask yourselves if they do not disprove that, to establish which part of them has been adduced. "That very thing which is now called the Christian religion, existed also among the ancients, nor has it been wanting from the beginning of the human race, until Jesus Christ himself came in the flesh, from which time the true religion which existed before began to be called Christian." And whether or not as you affirm the consentaneous and consistent admission of the earliest fathers prove that they denied the origin of Christianity to be very distant and remote, let my readers judge from the following facts. "We are but of yesterday (says Tertnllian, A. D. 200.) and yet have we filled every place." "Tiberius (adds the same writer.) Aug. op. Vol. 5. 1136. Tiberius (A. D. 14.) in whose reign the Christian name was first known in the world."* Under the same emperor is its origination placed by Julius Africanus, Lactantius, Severus, Sulpitius and others. We proceed then to your "thirdly," and in answer to your elegant metapher of" dovetailing back every idea in the New Testament to the niches of pagan idolatry." I ask what has the scriptural idea of the unity of God, to do with idolatry or its niches, except to confound and destroy them? With this question dismissing your unsupported assertion. I shall argue as though your premises rested on something more stable than their present support, and ask, supposing that the fragments of which the New Testament is composed, existed before its composition, how does it hence follow that he who gave to these fragments a local habitation and a name, may not be called the author of that modification of them, under which they now present themselves to us? The world we read before it assumed its present state, was a rude indigested chaos, yet God is acknowledged by all Theists to have been the author of it. Many of the incidents wrought up in Shakspeare's plays may be traced back to the pages of the old romances, yet who hesitates to ascribe the composition of those plays to Shakspeare. If Jesus did nothing more than collect the scattered rays of light, and form them into one grand moral and intellectual luminary, no one, I presume, will deny that he was the maker of that luminary. Whether the ideas found in the New Testament can be dovetailed back to the niches of Pagan idolatry or not, they did not, I suppose, exist there in their present shape from the foundation of the world. At some time then there must have existed a person who liberated them from "durance vile" and embodied them in the glorious temple of truth which now shines so splendently on those who choose to contemplate its beauties. And until you can show that this was done long anterior to the reign of Tiberius Caesar, your argument is nothing worth for the establishment of your position. You may easily learn the cogency of your reasoning by expressing it in different words. "I did not write the oration which has recently been published under my name-because there is not a single letter of it, beginning from the commencement of the alphabet and proceeding to its termination, which may not be distinctly traced back to the pages of authors who have produced one." The next proof which you adduce that Christianity is of very ancient origin, you derive from the mythology of the Hindus. "It is an undeniable fact, you say, that the name of Chrishna or Christ (which I take to be identical), and the general outline of his story, were long anterior to the birth of our Saviour, and probably to the time of Homer, which we know very certainly." Apology, c. 36. |