contained in your last proof. Really, Mr. Carlile, you are a most unfortunate man in the way of assertion. The book intitled Toldoth Jeschu is not as you most learnedly affirm an avowed Jewish production of the 2d century, but in the words of Dr. Lardner, a modern work, written in the 14th or 15th century, and is throughout from beginning to the end, burlesque and falsehood." You are very kind, however, to permit us to have this ancient document. But we will not trouble you, for it is not, as you imply, a work in favour of Christianity.

You continue," besides this there has not been handed down to us a single Christian document in the language of Jesus and his pretended Jewish disciples?" And what if there has not? This will not disprove the existence of Christ. Do you believe in the existence of Lycurgus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras? Refer me to the documents handed down to us written by them or their contemporaries in the language which they severally spoke. Our Saxon and Norman Kings would be all annihilated by you, because they have had the misfortune to have their existence and their deeds recorded in Latin. I wonder you do not turn the destruction of Jerusalem into an allegory, the doctrines of the Jewish sects into old wives' fables, because both are recorded in Greek instead of Hebrew. But now again as to facts, Pray, Sir, do you know the language in which Jesus and his disciples spoke or are said to have spoken? About this I must be allowed to doubt, though your assertions are so positive. It was not the Hebrew. That had ceased to be a spoken language from the time of the return from the Babylonish Captivity, A dialect of this called the Aramean, and the Greek and Roman languages were those which were chiefly spoken in Judea. Now what do you mean by a Christian document? One of those books which constitute the New Testament? If so, it happens that we have the whole of the New Testament transmitted to us in a dialect most closely similar to that which Jesus spoke. I allude to the New says, it is but a few years since he delivered this doctrine, who is now reckoned by the Christians to be the son of God," speaks of him "as the first author of this sedition," and reproaches him with being a "carpenter," and with his being born "in a Jewish village," testifies to the progress which Christianity had made thus early (186, Mosheim.) "At first (he says) they the Christians) were few in number, and then they agreed. But being increased and spread abroad, they divide again and again, and every one will have a party of his own; which is what they were disposed to of old."* But I forget that my object is only to confute and not to prove. For confutation surely here is more than enough. I leave Mr. Carlile to battle the -matter with his Deistical associate Celsus.

* Lardner, vol. 4, 113, &c.

+ Lardner, vol. xiv. y. 524, note c. 4to.

"I have not made Celsus an authority for any thing in"" The Republican." Positively, we have none of his writings; for, in such a matter, I have no confidence in Origen's extracts.

R. C.

Testament in Syriac, a language spoken in one part of Palestine while the Aramean was spoken in another.*

But the very Greek in which also we have the books of the New Testament is the strongest confutation of your supposition. It never, Sír, would have been written by Grecians. It is absurd to say "the language is barbarous and therefore the work of illiterate men." The language is barbarous and therefore not the work of illiterate Greeks. The very term barbarous proves my point. We do not speak of illiterate Englishmen writing, barbarous but incorrect English. They are foreigners that write barbarous English. So in the New Testament; the Greek is barbarous and therefore the production of foreigners. The faults are not such as an illiterate native would commit writing in his vernacular tongue but such as would attach to a foreigner and that foreigner a Jew. The faults are not vulgarisms, inaccuracies of style, solecisms; but the clothing of Hebrew ideas and phraseology in Greek letters. In a word, I assert, in agreement with the most learned authorities on this subject, I assert and challenge you to the disproof, that the language in which the books of the New Testament are written proves that these books originated in Judea before the destruction of Jerusalem. At no later period could the peculiar language we find in them have been written't

7

But from affirming that there has not been handed down to us a single document in the language of Jesus. You proceed per saltem to say" that all the Gospels, all the Epistles, and all the Revelations were written in the Greek Language." Now in contradiction to this, I beg to inform you that learned men have decided on the best of evidence, that the Epistle to the Hebrews most probably and the Gospel by Matthew most certainly were written originally in Hebrew. The reason is, because they were addressed to Jews who read though they did not speak the Hebrew. But it would have been absurd indeed to write in Hebrew to the Romans, the Corinthians, to others utterly ignorant of that language, Why did not Josephus, a Jew, write in Hebrew, but because he wished his work to make its way among all nations that then existed? The same reason influenced the Evangelists and Apostles who wrote in Greek. Will you reject the testimony of Josephus because his work is not written in his native tongue? Will you deny that he ever existed, or that the facts he narrates are authentic, because his works are transmitted to us in Greek? If you cannot be guilty of this absurdity, it remains with you to show why, what is absurd in reference to Josephus, is justifiable in reference to Christianity.

One more remark on this part of your paper, and I have done * Michaelis Introduction Vol. I. Wakefield's reply to Paine. + Michaelis ibid.

Michaelis. Vol. III. part 1. Lardner Vol. III. Belsham's Epistles. No, asserted but not certain.

R. C.

with it.

Where did you learn that Christ was a favourite word with the Greeks? You have again made an unsupported assertion. I deny its correctness and the proof lays with you.

66

Secondly then, as to times and dates."

You begin by saying, that from the year 70, A. D. viz. the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, to,the predominance of the Christian religion under the Roman emperors, we have no history of Jerusalem." How came you then to discover the piece of history recorded in the succeeding sentence? I had always thought that it was the peculiar province of history to record facts; that facts, relating to past ages, can alone be known as they are recorded by history. But in the interval you make, there was no history you inform us. If no history, no facts could be recorded; if no facts were recorded, none could be known, But you adduce one. There was history therefore. Here, I fear, you are again selfconfuted. But I must bring other proofs of the existence of history relative to those times, besides your own. Dr. Priestley, then, in his Church History, vol. 1.* informs us, that the Jews were not entirely quelled, nor was Judea emptied of its inhabitants till the time of Adrian, who began his reign 138 after Christ. Under Trajan (117) we find that L. Quietus, on account of a victory gained over the Jews, was made governor of Judea. And in the 8th year of Adrian, when at last Betthera, a fortified place near Jerusalem, was with extreme difficulty taken, was it not before, that the Jews were wholly expelled from Judea. Then a Roman colony was founded at Jerusalem, called Eli Capitolina, in honour of the Emperor Elius Adrian. So much for your gratuitous assertion, that we have no history of the interval defined by yourself. This interval, let it be observed, in which you lay the time of the fabrication of Christianity, was not a period of repose but of war and bloodshed. There was not then an opportunity for the rise of a new sect. Judea still remained the abode of conflicting enemies. These enemies, Jews and Romans, would, most early have contradicted any fabrication the scenes of which were laid among themselves. Nay the eyes of the Roman Government and consequently of the Roman peo-. ple would be directed to the scene of contest. Nothing whose nature it is to avoid the light could arise and flourish. new sect appeared, had its members as, is most natural, consorted together, had they spoken as Christianity does of a Kingdom, a King, Servants, conquest over enemies, a day of retribution, it would quickly have been crushed by the Roman Commanders. From the date of the destruction of Jerusalem down to the time

* See also Gibbon, vol. ii. 278, cap. xy.

Had a

• I have not read Cicero in the Latin language; but in the course of my reading a work sent to me by the Vicar of Cerne, I read that Cicero, travelling in Greece, saw monuments erected to many Christs. Is it so or not?

R. C.

in which you allow Christianity existed, (120) no new sects could have arisen near Jerusalem. 8

But a Grecian fabulist, you rejoin, thirty years after the fall of Jerusalem, set his head to work to lay in Jerusalem the scene of a fable. You confirm this conjecture by asserting that no one could contradict him. As you give us so much novel information, pray, good Sir, tell us his name; his residence; his motives; his reward. Was that reward persecution, such as you allow was inflicted on his followers by Pliny. And how made he converts? Because nobody could contradict him. A goodly reason I ween. To illustrate your argument, I assert, that the moon is condensed oxygen. No one can contradict me; therefore every one will believe me. I wonder, then, that the old story of the moon's being made of green cheese has not obtained universal credence. My friend, in such a case, the absence of evidence is refutation. Still further: am I likely to maintain this absurdity at the sacrifice of life? And will you, and thousands of others, join me in braving persecution from those infidels who will not consent to oxygenize the moon, even although you and I say so? Or to give another illustration: do you expect that we shall believe the gratuitous assertion you have now made relatively to the origin of Christianity in the absence of all historical evidence; nay, in direct contradiction to historical evidence, which gives even you a “difficulty?" I am to believe, forsooth, in a certain Grecian fabulist whom I know not; of whom the world never heard before; in a man dropt from the moon, or the brain of one moonstricken; in a tale unevidenced, contradicted by history, at the risk of life and happiness. Curious things, certainly, are sometimes possible, but surely this hardly comes within the range of possibility. You require a little too much. Even Christians are not quite so credulous as to believe this.

I had just written thus far when I had the pleasure to hear of your liberation from prison. I most sincerely congratulate you on the termination of your sufferings, and hope that we have seen the last of a wretched system of intolerance.

The fabrication of the books of the New Testament, then, you ascribe to some Grecian fabulist. This fabulist, I think you must allow, must have been possessed of a mind of the very first order. To conceive and delineate the character of Jesus Chirst with such perfect artlessness and consistency; to originate and develope the system of gospel morality; to scatter throughout his fabrication so many indications, powerful, because apparently undesigned, of reality and truth, could be the work of no ordinary intellect. Is it not strange, then, that this gifted mortal was never heard of? Was he unknown to his contemporaries? If not, why has not

I do not say, that the Christian sect began near Jerusalem; but at a distance. Your assertion verifies mine. R. C.

some account of him been handed down to these days? Who is this, that by one effort has transcended the noblest efforts of Aristotle or Cicero, without transmitting to posterity even the echo of his name? What luminary is this which appeared in the moral horizon with so resplendent a glory, and yet never attracted the notice of those whom he enlightened? And yet in this per-son; this really fabulous hero, you believe, in preference to one whose existence is evidenced by the narratives of credible historians. Do you reply as you say, in another place, that the writers of the books of the New Testament were illiterate men." It were passing strange that illiterate men could devise such an im.... posture as Christianity must be. But it were still more strange, that men without influence; without letters; without eloquence; without wealth; without arms; in a word, " illiterate men," could foister upon the world a creature of their own production; could gain credit to a palpable falsehood; secure it an extensive reception some ten or twenty years after its origin, though that reception involved the loss of all that men hold most dear.

But what difficulty could there be in overwhelming with the conviction of his turpitude the wretched author of this supposed fabrication. Contradiction was easy. Myriads of Jews were saved from destruction under the walls of Jerusalem.* These scattered themselves throughout the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Here you suppose Christianity to have had its birth. How easy for these Jews to arrest the very first efforts for the diffusion of the base falsehood; to deny the existence of Jesus Christ; to expose the pretensions to miraculous powers; to show the discrepancies between reality and fiction, the language of Judea, and that of our fabulist! Yet Christianity grew, and mightily prevailed, and men went to the very death to evidence their sincerity, and the truth of their religion. You hint a time may come in which the followers of Johanna Southcote may have spread themselves widely. Do you believe their numbers will ever rival the numbers of Christians even in the days of Constantine? I do not think that you can believe so, You see as well as I that her futilities are suffering the fate of all fiction. They are all but extinct. Such would have been the fate of Christianity had it rested on a similar basis. It might have at first met with reception from a few fanatics. But the cunningly devised fable would have soon been exposed. The failure of its experiments in the way of miracles; the disappointment of hopes it presented, would soon have brought it to the dust. Instead of this it went on gathering strength till it reckoned not a long time after the period you assign for its origin, men" of all ranks, and of every age;"† nay, soon nations and emperors, among its votaries.

*

No

Priestley's Works, vol. 17, p. 75. Josephus' Jewish War, book 6. c. viii., sec. 2, and c. iv. sec. 2 and 3.

+ Pliny's letter. Gibbon, vol. ii. c. xv.