emperor, observes, that when the petitioners had so many temples and altars of their own, in all the streets of Rome, where they might freely offer their sacrifices, it seemed to me a mere insult on Christianity, to demand still one altar more; and especially in the senate house, where the greater part were then Christians. This petition was rejected by Valentinian, against the advice of all his council, but was granted presently after by the Christian emperor, Eugenius, who murthered and succeeded him.

Thus entering on the fifth century, and further surely we need not descend, we have the surest and most unequivocal demonstration, that Christianity, as a religion distinct from the ancient Paganism, up to that time, had gained no extensive footing in the world. After that period, all that there was of religion in the world, merges in the palpable obscure of the dark ages. The pretence to an argument for the Christian religion, from any thing either miraculous or extraordinary in its propagation is, therefore, a sheer defiance of all evidence and reason whatever.

17. "Pantænus, the head of the Alexandrian school, was probably the first who enriched the church with a version of the sacred writings, which has been lost among the ruins of time.”—Mosh, vol. i. 186.— Compare with No 34, in this Chapter.

48. "They all (i. e. all the fathers of the second century) attributed a double sense to the words of Scripture, the one obvious and literal, the other hidden and mysterious, which lay concealed, as it were, under the veil of the outward letter. The former they treated with the utmost neglect," &c.—Ibid. 106.

49. "God also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”— 2 Corinth. iii. 6.

50. "It is here to be attentively observed (says Mosheim, speaking of the church in the second century), that the form used in the exclusion of heinous offenders from the society of Christians was at first extremely simple; but was, however, imperceptibly altered, enlarged by an addition of a vast multitude of rites, and new modelled according to the discipline used in the ancient mysteries.”—Mosh. vol. i. p. 199.

51. "The profound respect that was paid to the Greek and Roman mysteries, and the extraordinary sanctity that was attributed to them, induced the Christians (of the second century) to give their religion a mystic air, in order to put it upon an equal footing, in point of dignity with that of the Pagans. For this purpose, they gave the name of mysteries to the institutions of the gospel, and decorated, particularly the holy sacrament, with that solemn title. They used, in that sacred

institution, as also in that of baptism, several of the terms employed in the heathen mysteries, and proceeded so far, at length, as even to adopt some of the rites and ceremonies of which those renowned mysteries consisted."-1bid. 204.

52. "It may be further observed, that the custom of teaching their religious doctrines by images, actions, signs, and other sensible representations, which prevailed among the Egyptians, and indeed in almost all the eastern nations, was another cause of the increase of external rites in the church."-Ibid. 204.

T

53. " Among the human means that contributed to multiply the number of Christians, and extend the limits of the church in the third century, we shall find a great variety of causes uniting their influence, and contributing jointly to this happy purpose. Among these must be reckoned the zeal and labours of Origen, and the different works which were published by learned and pious men in defence of the gospel. If, among the causes of the propagation of Christianity, there is any place due to PIOUS FRAUDS, it is certain that they merit a very small part of the honour of having contributed to this glorious purpose, since they were practised by few, and that very rarely."*-Mosheim, vol. I. p. 246. 54. “Origen, invited from Alexandria by an Arabian prince, converted by his assiduous labours a certain tribe of wandering Arabs to the Christian faith. The Goths, a fierce and warlike people, received the knowledge of the gospel by the means of certain Christian doctors, sent thither from Asia. The holy lives of these venerable teachers, and the MIRACULOUS POWERS with which they were endowed, attracted the esteem of even a people educated to nothing but plunder and devastation, and absolutely uncivilized by letters or science: and their authority and influence became so great, and produced in process of time such remarkable effects, that a great part of this barbarous people professed themselves the disciples of Christ, and put off, in a manner, that ferocity which had been so natural to them."-Vol. I. 247.

55. Among the superhuman means," which, after all that he has admitted, this writer thinks can alone sufficiently account for the successful propagation of the gospel, we not only reckon the intrinsic force of celestial truth, and the piety and fortitude of those who declared it to the world, but also that especial and interposing providence, which, by dreams and visions, presented to the minds of many, who were

* How must every ingenuous and virtuous sensibility in man's nature have smarted under the distress of being obliged to use language like this. I know the man who hath preferred the fate of felons, and would rather still pass only from the prison to the tomb, than he would use the like.

either inattentive to the Christian doctrine, or its professed enemies, touched their hearts with a conviction of the truth, and a sense of its importance; and engaged them, without delay, to profess themselves the disciples of Christ."

56. "To this may also be added, the healing of diseases, and other miracles, which many Christians were yet enabled to perform, by invoking the name of the Divine Saviour."-Mosheim, vol. 1. p. 245.

On these last four most important admissions the reader will observe, that it may be enough to remark, that the principle on which this work is conducted, so well expressed in its motto, that philosophy which is agreeable to nature, approve and cherish; but that which pretends to commerce with the deity, avoid! pledges us to view all references to supernatural agency as being no proof of such agency, but as demonstration absolute of the idiotish stupidity or errant knavery of the party, resting any cause whatever on such references. It is not in the former of these predicaments, that such an historian as Mosheim can be impeached; nor could either the emoluments or dignities of the theological chair at Helmstadt, or the Chancellorship of the University of Gottingen, allay the smartings of sentiment and the anguish of conscious meanness, in holding them at so dear a price as the necessity of making such statements, of thus selling his name to the secret scorn of all whose praise was worth ambition; thus outraging his own convictions; thus conflicting with his own statements; thus bowing down his stupendous strength of talent to harmonize with the figments of drivelling idiotcy, making learning do homage to ignorance, and the clarion that should have roused the sleeping world, pipe down to concert with the rattle-trap and Jews'-harp of the nursery.

Of the pious frauds, which this historian admits to share only a small part of the honour of contributing to the propagation of the gospel, because they were "practised by so few," he had not the alleviation of his feelings of being able to be ignorant that he has falsified that statement in innumerable passages of this and his other writings; and that his whole history of the Church, from first to last, contains not so much as a single instance of one of the fathers of the church, or first preachers of the gospel, who did not practise those pious frauds.

57. "The authors who have treated of the innocence and sanctity of the primitive Christians, have fallen into the error of supposing them to have been unspotted models of piety and virtue, and a gross error indeed it is, as the strongest testimonies too evidently prove.”Ibid. p. 120.

58.* "Such was the license of inventing, so headlong the readiness of believing, in the first ages, that the credibility of transactions derived from thence, must have been hugely doubtful: nor has the world only, but the church of God also, has reasonably to complain of its mystical times."-Bishop Fell, so rendered in the Author's SYNTAGMA, p. 34.

59. "The extravagant notions which obtained among the Christians of the primitive ages (says Dupin), sprang from the opinions of the Pagan philosophers, and from the mysteries which crack-brained men put on the history of the Old and New Testament, according to their imaginations. The more extraordinary these opinions were, the more did they relish, and the better did they like them; and those who invented them, published them gravely, as great mysteries, to the simple, who were all disposed to receive them."-Dupin's short history of the Church, vol. 2, c. 4, as quoted by Tindal, p. 224.

60. "They have but little knowledge of the Jewish nation, and of the primitive Christians, who obstinately refuse to believe that such sort of notions could not proceed from thence; for, on the contrary, it was their very character to turn the whole scripture into allegory.' Archbishop Wake's Life of the Apostle Barnabas, p. 73.

Of the MIRACULOUS POWERS with which Mosheim† would persuade us that the Christians of the third century were still endowed, we have but to confront him with his own conflicting statement, on the 11th page of his second volume: concluding with his own reflection on that admission:- "Thus does it generally happen in human life, that when danger attends the discovery and the profession of the truth, the prudent are silent, the multitude believe, and impostors triumph."

Of the DREAMS AND VISIONS, of which he speaks, it is enough to answer him with the intuitive demonstration, that such sort of evidence for Christianity might be as easily pretended for one religion as another; it is such as none but a desperate cause would appeal to, such as no rational man would respect, and no honest man maintain; not only of no nature to afford proof to the claims of a divine revelation, but itself unproved; and not alone unproved, but of its own nature, both morally and physically, incapable of receiving any sort of proof. The heart smarts for the degradation of outraged reason, for the humiliation of torn and lacerated humanity, that a Mosheim should talk of dreams and

* "Tanta fuit primis sæculis fingendi licentia, tam prona in credendo facilitas, ut rerum gestarum fides exinde graviter laboraverat. Neque enim orbis terrarum tantum, sed et Dei ecclesia de temporibus suis mysticis merito quæratur."-Fell, Bishop of Oxford, quoted by Lardner and Tindal.

+ Vol. 1, p. 247.

visions that it should come to this! O Christianity, how great are thy triumphs!

Of the HEALING OF DISEASES, by the invoking of a name. It is impossible not to see, that this author did not believe his own argument: because it is impossible not to know, that no man in his senses could believe it, and impossible not to suspect, that so weak and foolish an argument was, by this author, purposely exhibited, as one of the main pillars of the Christian evidence, in order to betray to future times how weak that evidence was, and to encourage those who should come to live in some happier day, when the choused world might better endure the being undeceived:—to blow it down with their breath. Beausobre, Tillotson, South, Watson, Paley, and some high in the church, yet living, have given more than pregnant inuendoes of their acting on this policy.

Nothing is more obvious, than that persons diseased in body, must labour under a corresponding weakness of mind. There is no delusion of such obvious practicability on a weak mind in a diseased body, as that which should hold out hopes of cure beyond the promise of nature. A miracle of healing is, therefore, of all miracles, in its own nature most suspicious, and least capable of evidence.

It was the pretence to these gifts of healing, that gave name to the Therapeute, or Healers; and consequently supplies us with an infallible clue to lead to the birth-place and cradle of Christianity. The cure being performed by invocation of a name, still lights us on to the germ and nucleus of the whole system. Neither slight nor few are the indications of this magical or supposed charming operation of the Brutum fulmen; the mere name only of the words Jesus Christ, in the New Testament itself; and consequently neither weak nor inconsecutive are our reasons, for maintaining that it was in the name, and the name only, that the first preachers of Christianity believed. That it was not supposed by them to be the designation of any person who had really existed, but was a vox et præterea nihil,—a charm more powerful than the Abraxas, more sacred than Abracadabra; in short, those were but the spells that bound the services of inferior demons-this conjured the assistance of omnipotence, and was indeed the God's spell. "There is none other NAME under heaven (says the Peter of the Acts of thẹ Apostles) given among men, whereby we must be saved."-Chap. iv. 12.

61. Origen, ever the main strength and sheet anchor of the advocates of Christianity, expressly maintains, that "the miraculous powers which the Christians possessed were not in the least owing to enchantments, (which he makes Celsus seem to have objected,) but to their