Five Pebbles from the Brook | Page 6

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 trying to justify the writers of the New Testament, for quoting the Old Testament otherwise than it is written) and thus made them to differ from the reading of the Old Testament," p. 279.
I have supposed that a reasonable and reasoning man, desirous to ascertain the truth of the religion of the Christians, and