Five Pebbles from the Brook | Page 6

as to
the genuineness of these books, is invalidated by the fact, (See
Middleton's Free Enquiry) that they admitted the principle of the
lawfulness of pious frauds, and from their having acted upon this
principle, in having asserted in their writings, as from their personal
knowledge, things which were certainly false; (See the work above
referred to) while their capability to distinguish the genuine writings of
the Apostles, from the numerous forgeries in their names that appeared
about the same time that the four Gospels begin to be mentioned, is
rendered suspicious by the fact, that they also give their sanction as
Divine Scriptures, to books notoriously apocryphal; for instance the
book of Enoch and the Sybilline Oracles.[fn11] The testimony of the
Fathers who succeeded them is liable to the same objections, with this
aggravation that its value diminishes more and more, as the distance of
the ages in which they flourished increases, from that of Jesus Christ.
Thirdly, He will find that these Gospels were never received by the
Mother Church of Jerusalem and Judea, founded by the Apostles. The
Jewish Christians, the countrymen of Jesus, who one would think had
the best means of knowing the real history, and real doctrines of Jesus
and his Apostles, uniformly rejected not only these Gospels, but all the

other books of the New Testament.[fn12] They were also rejected, by
several sects of Christians who flourished in the early ages of
Christianity.
Fourthly, he will learn too that the Christians most distinguished for
their learning on this subject, for instance, Michaelis, Semler, Lessing,
Eichorn, and the erudite Bishop Marsh, do allow and maintain in their
works, that the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke were
compiled from accounts of the life and doctrines of Jesus which
became, after different additions, revisions and translations, the BASIS
of our present Gospels; from such separate materials, which had gone
through different hands, and had acquired a variety of text and context,
from the different transcripts and translations in which they circulated,
though for the most part they were copied verbatim from one another,
several Gospels, among which were our three first Matthew Mark and
Luke, were composed AFTER [fn13] the destruction of Jerusalem, and
designated some by the names of the readers for whom they were
designed, and others by the names of their authors and compilers. (See
the life of Semler in Eichorn's Universal Library, as quoted by Mr. E. p.
465. of his work.)
These Gospels then, in the opinion of these learned Christians, were
originally compiled from anonymous writings, which had gone through
different hands and been variously altered, and added to in the passage,
before they became the BASIS,!! of our present Gospels.[fn14]
Lastly, he will discover, that since their construction from such
nameless materials, they have been further altered and interpolated.
Celsus accuses the Christians of his time (the latter part of the 2nd
century) of "continually altering their Gospels;" and the ancient
Christian sects accuse each other of the same fact. That these
accusations were well founded, is evident from Griesbach's edition of
the Greek Testament, where besides the notice of some hundred
thousands of various readings, we find not only single words, but
whole phrases, and verses, and even entire paragraphs rejected as
corruptions and interpolations. Neither have all these corruptions been
accidental; for as much as the strongest text in the New Testament, in

support of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus Christ,
which is to be found in the first Epistle, called of John ch. v. 7, "there
are three that bear witness in Heaven. The Father, the Word, and the
Holy Ghost and these three are one," has been struck out of the text by
Griesbach, himself a Trinitarian, as a pious fraud, and is now I believe
universally acknowledged as such by learned Christians.
There are also, two other passages which for ages have been cited as
proofs of the Divinity of Jesus (viz. "The Church of God which he has
redeemed with his own blood," Acts ch. xx. 28. and "God was
manifested in the flesh," in the first Epistle to Timothy, ch. iii. 16.)
which the same Critic has proved to have been altered from their
original reading to favour the same doctrine, and it is impossible to say
how many more frauds of a similar nature might be detected, if the
learned and candid Christians before- mentioned were in possession of
the primitive manuscripts of the New Testament.[fn15]
All these enormities Mr. Everett, who has a light hand in writing upon
some subjects, comprizes with great tenderness in the following
expressions, "our copies of the New Testament by the lapse of time,
have suffered some literal alterations, which may have fallen
occasionally on the quoted texts (he is