writings, published a dissertation, showing the reasons and causes of supposititious writings in the first and second century. And all own, says Lardner, that Christians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud; indeed, we may say, it was one great fault of the times.*

20. "And in the last place, (says the great Casaubon,) it mightily affects me, to see how many there were in the earliest times of the church, who considered it as a capital exploit, to lend to heavenly truth the help of their own inventions, in order that the new doctrine might be more readily allowed by the wise among the Gentiles. These officious lies, they were wont to say, were devised for a good end. From which source, beyond question, sprung nearly innumerable books, which that and the following age saw published by those who were far from being bad men, (for we are not speaking of the books of heretics,) under the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the apostles, and other saints."

The reader has only to satisfy himself with his own solution of the question emergent from such an admission. If those who palmed what they knew to be a lie, upon the world, under the name and sanction of a God of truth, are to be considered as still worthy of our confidence, and far from being bad men who are the bad men? Illud me quoque vehementer movet.

21. "There is scarce any church in Christendom at this day, (says one of the church's most distinguished ornaments) which doth not obtrude, not only plain falsehoods, but such falsehoods as will appear to any free spirit, pure contradictions and impossibilities; and that with the same gravity, authority, and importunity, as they do the holy oracles of God."-Dr. Henry Moore.

Here again emerge the anxious queries.-Why should not a man have a free spirit? and what credit can be due to the holy oracles of God, standing on no better evidence

* Lardner, vol. 4, p. 524.

"Postremo illud quoque me vehementer movet, quod videam primis ecclesiæ temporibus, quam plurimos extitisse, qui facinus palmarium judicabant, cælestem veritatem, figmentis suis ire adjutum, quo facilius nova doctrina a gentium sapientibus admitteretur. Officiosa hæc mendacia vocabant bono fine exeogitata. Quo ex fonte dubio procul, sunt orti libri fere sexcenti, quos illa ætas et proxima viderunt, ab hominibus minime malis, (nam de hæreticorum libris non loquimur) sub nomine etiam Domini Jesu Christi et apostolorum aliorumque sanctorum publicatos."-Casaubon, quoted in Lardner, vol. 4, p. 524.

Mosheim treats these holy forgers with the same tenderness, "they were men, (he says) whose intentions were not bad."-Eccl. Hist. vol. 1, p. 109.

of being such, than the testimony of those, who we know have palmed the grossest falsehoods on us, with the same gravity, and as of equal authority with those holy oracles? and

22. This opinion has always been in the world, that to settle a certain and assured estimation upon that which is good and true, it is necessary to remove out of the way, whatsoever may be an hindrance to it. Neither ought we to wonder, that even those of the honest innocent primitive times made use of these deceits, seeing for a good end they made no scruple to forge whole books."Daille, on the Use of the Fathers, b. 1, c. 3.

What good end was that, which needed to be prosecuted by the forgery of whole books?

23. "But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say ?"—Rom. iii. 5. "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie, unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner ?"—Romans, iii. 7.

24. The apostolic father, Hermas, who was the fellowlabourer of St. Paul in the work of the ministry; who is greeted as such in the New Testament: and whose writings are expressly quoted* as of divine inspiration by the early fathers, ingenuously confesses that LYING was the easily-besetting sin of a Christian. His words

are,

"O Lord, I never spake a true word in my life, but I have always lived in dissimulation, and afïrmed a lie for truth to all men, and no man contradicted me, but all gave credit to my words." To which the holy angel, whom he addresses, condescendingly admonishes him, that "as the lie was UP, now, he had better keep it up, and as in time it would come to be believed, it would answer as well as truth."

25. Even Christ himself is represented in the gospels as inculcating the necessity, and setting the example of deceiving and imposing upon the common people, and purposely speaking unto them in parables and double entendres, "that seeeing, they might see, and not perceive; and hearing, they might hear, but not understand."-Mark, iv. 12.

* The words of the text are, "Now thou hearest, take care from henceforth, that even those things which thou hast formerly spoken falsely, may by thy present truth, receive credit. For even those things may be credited; if for the time to come, thou shalt speak the truth, and by so doing, thou mayst attain unto life."-Archbishop Wake's Genuine Epistles of the Apostolic Fathers, in loco. See this article, where HERMAS occurs in the regular succession of apostolic fathers, in this DIEGESIS.

26. And divine inspiration, so far from involving any guarantee that truth would be spoken under its immediate influence, is in the scripture itself, laid down as the criterion whereby we may know that nothing in the shape of truth is to be expected :-" And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet. Ezek. xiv. 9.

27. When it was intended that King Ahab should be seduced to his inevitable destruction, God is represented as having employed his faith and piety as the means of his overthrow:-"Now, therefore, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all thy prophets."-1 Kings, xxii. 23. There were four hundred of them, all speaking under the influence of divine inspiration, all having received the spirit from on high, all of them the servants of God, and engaged in obeying none other than his godly motions, yet lying as fast as if the father of lies himself had commissioned them. Such a set of fellows, so employed, cannot at least but make us suspect some sort of sarcasm in our TE DEUM, where we say, "the goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee." The devil would hardly think such sort of praise, a compliment. Happy would it have been for Ahab, had he been an Infidel.

28. The New Testament, however, one might hope, as being a second revelation from God, would have given him an opportunity of "repenting of the evil he had spoken;" but alas! orthodoxy itself is constrained to tremble and adore, before that dreadful declaration, than which no religion that ever was in the world besides, ever contained any thing half so horrible :-" For this cause, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned."-2 Thess. ii. 11, 12. Such was to be the effect of divine revelation.

Should then, our further prosecution of the inquiry proposed by this DIEGESIS, lead us to the conviction that the amount of evidence for the pretensions of the Christian religion, is as strong as it may be, it will yet remain for an inquiry, which we shall never venture to prosecute, whether that strength of evidence itself, may not be strong delusion. Strong enough must that delusion needs be, by which Omnipotence would intend to impose on the credulity and weakness of his creatures. Is it for those who will defend the apparent inferences of such a passage, to point out any thing in the grossest conceits, of the

grossest forms of Pagånism, that might not have admitted of a palliative interpretation?

29. St. Paul himself, in an ambiguous text, either openly glories in the avowal, or but faintly repels the charge of practising a continued system of imposture and dissimulation. "For unto the Jews, (says he) I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To the weak, became I as

weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things to all men."-1 Corinth. ix. 22.

30. And in a passage still more pregnant with inference to our great inquiry, (2 Galat. ii.) he distinguishes the gospel which he preached on ordinary occasions, from "that gospel which he preached privately to them that were of reputation."

31. Dr. Mosheim admits, that the Platonists and Pythagoreans held it as a maxim, that it was not only lawful, but praiseworthy to deceive, and even to use the expedient of a lie, in order to advance the cause of truth and piety. The Jews who lived in Egypt, had learned and received this maxim from them, before the coming of Christ, as appears incontestibly from a multitude of ancient records, and the Christians were infected from both these sources, with the same pernicious error.-Mosheim, vol. 1. p. 197.

32. In the fourth century, the same great author instructs us "that it was an almost universally adopted maxim, that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of the church might be promoted."-Vol. 1. p. 198.

33. And as it regards the fifth century, he continues, the simplicity and ignorance of the generality in those times, furnished the most favourable occasion for the exercise of fraud; and the impudence of impostors in contriving false miracles, was artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar: while the sagacious and the wise, who perceived these cheats, were overawed into silence by the dangers that threatened their lives and fortunes, if they should expose the artifice."-Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. vol. 2. p. 11.

34. Nor must we, in any part of our subsequent investigation, quit our hold on the important admission of the fact supplied to us by the research of that most eminent of critics, the great SEMLER-that the sacred books of the Christian Scriptures (from which circumstance, it may be, they derive their name of sacred) were, during the early

CC.

ages of Christianity, really kept sacred. "The Christian Doctors (says he) never brought their sacred books before the common people; although people in general have been wont to think otherwise; during the first ages, they were in the hands of the clergy only."* I solemnly invoke the rumination of the reader to the inferences with which this admission teems. I write, but, cannot think for him. The light is in his hand :(what it shall show him, must depend on his willingness to see./

35. How the common people were christianized, we gather from a remarkable passage which Mosheim has preserved for us, in the life of Gregory, surnamed Thaumaturgus, that is, the wonder-worker: the passage is as follows :†

When Gregory perceived that the simple and unskilled multitude persisted in their worship of images, on account of the pleasures and sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the Pagan festivals, he granted them a permission to indulge themselves in the like pleasures, in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, hoping, that in process of time, they would return, of their own accord, to a more virtuous and regular course of life." The historian remarks, that there is no sort of doubt, that by this permission, Gregory allowed the Christians to dance, sport, and feast at the tombs of the martyrs, upon their respective festivals, and to do every thing which the Pagans were accustomed to do in their temples, during the feasts celebrated in honour of their gods."-Mosheim, vol. 1. Cent. 2. p. 202.

36. This accommodating and truly Christian spirit was carried to such an extent, that the images of the Pagan deities were in some instances allowed to remain, and continued to receive divine honours, in Christian churches. The images of the sybills, of which Gallæus has given us prints, were retained in the Christian church of Sienna."‡ -Bell's Panth. 2. 237.

* Christiani doctores non in vulgus prodebant libros sacros, licet soleant plerique aliter opinari, erant tantum in manibus clericorum, priora per sæcula.-Dissertat. in Tertul. 1. § 10. note 57.

† Cum animadvertisset Gregorius quod ob corporeas delectationes et voluptates, simplex et imperitum vulgus in simulacrorum cultus errore permaneret permisit eis, ut in memoriam et recordationem sanctorum martyrum sese oblectarent, et in lætitiam effunderentur, quod successu temporis aliquando futurum esset, ut sua sponte, ad honestiorem et accuratiorem vitæ rationem, transirent."

The head of the Jupiter Olympius of Phidias, carved in the mahogany transept, officiates at this day, as locum tenens for God Almighty, in the chapel of King's College, Cambridge.