The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
to be traced in the New Testament.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." - Matt. 5-3.
This, the first principle put into the mouth of the Galilean Thaumaturge, was also the first principle of Therapeutae, and as such had been known and taught for ages before the time assigned to the first publication of the Gospel.
It is to be found in the previously existing writings of Menander, in the sentence [GK] - We ought to consider the poor as especially belonging to the gods; and in the ancient Latin adage, "Bonae mentis soror paupertas" - Poverty is the sister of a good mind. It is observable, that this Menander the comedian, is not only quoted by name, by the first of the Fathers (not apostolical), Justin Martyr, in his apology to the Emperor Adrian, as one of the authorities with whom the Christians held so many remarkable he supports Rev Taylor views, writing that the "true religion" predated Christianity, and that the "seeds of Christianity" actually predated the incarnation of Jesus, St Augustine also stated such.]sentiments in common but is again plagiarised into the text of 1 Cor. 15-33 - [GK] - "Evil communications corrupt good manners." [LN., Menander 342-1 to 290BC. Was a Greek, dramatist-comedian.] [Justin Martyr, somewhere around 100 to 165AD. he was an early Christian apologist,
References.
2. "And the disciples came and said unto him, why speak thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given." - Matt. 13-10. "Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing, they may hear and not understand." - Mark 4-11.
Surely, here, and in the innumerable passages to the same effect, the principle of deceiving the vulgar is held forth in its most disgusting deformity. Here the double and mystical-sense system, as adopted by Therapeutae, is put in full exemplification.
3. "And there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." - Matt. xix. 12.
Let the reader only ask himself the obvious questions, what eunuchs could they be? Certainly, not followers of the law of Moses, which held a personal defect, however involuntarily incurred, as disqualifying the unfortunate from ever entering into the congregation of the Lord, Deut. 23-1. Nor was a future state of rewards ever propounded to the selfishness or ambition of the children of Israel. [LN., The subject of self-castration is grossly misunderstood, it is something practised by priests or followers of ancient beliefs thousands of years before Christianity, to get a better understanding of this we must realise there was a point in time when Women, were considered greater than men, as the bee, originally the sign of Queen-ship, ruled the hive, read SV books on Canaanites, Sumerians, Akkadians and others that you will find this point explained.]
4. John the Baptist is described as a Monk, residing in the wilderness, practising all the austerities of the contemplative life, neither eating nor drinking in observance of the demands of nature; "his food was locusts and wild-honey:" and not only a monk, but a father confessor, since "all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, were all baptized of him, confessing their sins." [LN., the rules given for John' up bringing were those of a Nazarite.] Here, then, is certainly an Ascetic - in the strictest circumstances of description, a Monkish confessor - the admitted forerunner of Christ, of whom he is represented as saying, that "Moses and the prophets were until John the Baptist, but since then the kingdom of God [a] was preached." The great absurdity, however, of representing the sinless Jesus as receiving baptism of John for the remission of his sins, would have been evaded, had the compilers of our Gospels stuck to the text of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or that of these Hebrew-descended Therapeuts, which Lessing and Niemeyer [b] [c] have so convincingly shown to have been the original from which their legends are copied, and from which it appears that Jesus actually refused to be baptized, saying, "What sin have I committed, that I should be baptized by him?" And how could that horrible species of self-martyrdom, the greatest evidence of sincerity in the faith that could be imagined, have been practised "for the kingdom of heaven's sake," if the kingdom of heaven had not been propounded to the faith of these visionaries as the reward of such a sacrifice, sufficiently long before, and sufficiently notoriously, to be quoted thus as an historical example, by the speaker in the text of Matthew?
[a] This phrase, the kingdom of God, and all its synonyms, was peculiarly characteristic of the monkish fraternity of Egypt - the dynasty of priests, as paramount to that of kings.]
[b] Quoted in Marsh's Michaelis, and hereafterin this Diegesis.]
[c] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 1729 to 1781, was a writer, philosopher, dramatist, art critic and publisher. In his religious and philosophical writings, he defended the faithful Christian's right for freedom of thought. He argued against the belief in revelation and the holding on to a literal interpretation of the Bible by the predominant orthodox doctrine through a problem later to be called Lessing's Ditch. Lessing outlined the concept of the religious "Proof of Power": How can miracles continue to be used as a base for Christianity when we have no proof of miracles? Historical truths which are in doubt cannot be used to prove metaphysical truths (such as God's existence). As Lessing says it: "That, then, is the ugly great ditch which I cannot cross, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make that leap."
It is evident that Origen, the most distinguished and learned of all the Christian Fathers, must have read Christ's recommendation of this suicidal act in its very strongest sense, or have found it in some earlier copies of the Gospel than have come down to us, urged in stronger terms, or his excellent understanding would never have fallen under the horrors of a belief that it was necessary to imitate the example thus commended, and to prepare himself for singing in heaven, by spoiling his voice for preaching upon earth.
Rules of the Essenes' or Therapeutae
5. But Matt, 28-15-17-18, betrays, in the most indisputable evidence, the previous existence and established discipline of a Christian church, such as that of Therapeutae is described to have been, from any length of time anterior to the Christian era.
"Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother: But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may he established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto The Church: but if he, neglect to hear The Church, let him be unto thee a heathen man and a publican. Verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven," &c. &c. [LN. Modern texts may have 'tax collector' in place of publican.]
If this does not involve all that the unwary admissions of Eusebius and Epiphanius would lead us to, even the previous existence of the whole Christian dynasty in all its corruption, or in all its purity, long anterior to any time when such language could have been used, or the Gospel which contained such language could have been written; if it betray not its design to sub-serve the purposes of ecclesiastical usurpation; if it savoir not of popery in the rankest rank that every pope himself was popish; there is no skill in criticism to discover any truth below the surface of expression - no wrong in any wrong that can be put off as right - no Rome in Italy - no day-light in the sunshine.
For Christianity to attack the Essenes, is like a son who betrays his father.
6. "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" - Acts 20-35.
No such words as these are contained in either of our four Gospels; they must, therefore have been contained in some gospel which previously existed, which was known and established in the esteem of the persons who were thus reminded of it, and which therefore ought not to have been rejected.
"It is, I think," says Lardner, (Vol 1, p. 71, 4to. edit.) a just observation of Dr Prideaux, that almost all that is peculiar in this sect, is condemned by Christ and his apostles."
But from this admission follows, at any rate, the certainty of the previous notoriety of this sect, and of those tenets which were peculiar to it.
And if, excepting the "almost all that was peculiar to this sect," which Christ and his apostles condemned, there yet remained something which was peculiar to this sect, which they adopted, what other conclusion can follow than, that the Christian tenets were but a reformation upon the pre-existent Essene principles, and had no claim of themselves to a character of originality? We say, in like manner, at this day, that our Protestant church condemns almost all that is peculiar to the church of Rome, while in that condemnation itself is involved an admission of its prior existence, and of its common origin. There can be no conceivable reason why the peculiar tenets of a particular sect should be singled out for particular condemnation, unless the condemners stood in some more immediate relation, or knew something more particularly of the tenets so condemned, than of any other condemnable tenets.
The force of so particular a condemnation of almost all that was peculiar, involves as particular an approbation and sanction of whatever it was that was not included in so particular a condemnation. Not to object, that, in ordinary fairness, the gauging of the Essenes tenets so as to determine which, and how many of them, amounted to almost all, should hardly be trusted to the fidelity of those who have the strongest interest in disparaging and under-rating those tenets.
Again, the conjoining Christ and his Apostles as concurring in the condemnation of almost all that was peculiar to this sect, is assuming a concurrence unsupported by evidence, and inconsequential in reason.
It by no means follows, that he and they, in every instance, must have approved and condemned by the same rule; the need they had of being instructed by him, is a reason, and the rebukes they frequently received from him, is a proof, that their judgments and his might be the reverse of each other.
Apostles for or against the Essenes?
Nor is it a just and fair conclusion, that all the apostles of Christ condemned what it cannot be shown that more than one of them condemned, and which all the rest may in all probability have approved.
Nor, if it be Paul alone who hath condemned, is it just or fair to conclude that even one of the apostles of Christ has done so; since the claim of Paul to be considered as one of the apostles of Christ, rests on his own presumption only, and, to say the least against it, is in the highest degree questionable. [He is recognized only in the 2d Epistle of Peter, chap. 3. verse 14, as a beloved brother, which itself is no style or designation of apostleship, even if the authenticity of this epistle, in which it is contained, were indisputable, which it is not. - See Marsh's Michaelis, in loco.]
Surely, nothing could be more peculiar to any sect, than the conceit of making themselves "Eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake;" - and as surely, it is any other sort of language rather than that of condemnation, in which Christ is represented as speaking of that peculiarity, Matt. 19-12.
Essene' the perfect followers of Christ?
What the other peculiarities of this sect were, may be collected from the version I have given of the text of Eusebius on the subject.
Michaelis supplies, from the further authorities of Philo, from Josephus, Solinus, and Pliny, that their principles were generally derived from the Oriental or Gnostic Philosophy, of which they observed the moral part, while they rejected all its more absurd and egregious metaphysical speculations. [Gaius Julius Solinus, mid 3rdcentury, Latin grammarian and compiler.] [That is, "they were the Eclectic Philosophers, who rejected the evil, and chose the good, out of every system of religion or philosophy that had been propounded to mankind, and who had a flourishing university already established at Alexandria when our Saviour was upon earth." Mosheim.] They abstained from blood, and would not even offer a sacrifice, because they regarded the slaying of beasts as sinful. Most of them abstained from marriage and thought it an obstacle to the search after wisdom. The places in which they pursued their meditations, and which they held sacred, were called [GK] (that is, Monasteries). "All ornamental dress they detested."- Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 83.
7. Whose language, then, but theirs or of the followers of their sect, could that be?
"Whose adorning, let it not he that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel," &c. - 1 Pet. 3-3. "Not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array." - 1 Tim. 2- 9.
"They maintained a perfect community of goods, and an equality of external rank, considering vassalage as a violation of the laws of nature." - Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 83.
What could more naturally and directly tend to render their system acceptable to the poor, and to spread it at any time among those who had neither honour nor wealth to lose? What language could more Dearly describe the primitive condition of the evangelical community as portrayed in Acts iv. 32, or more entirely harmonize with those words ascribed to Christ?
8. "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not he so among you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant."1 - Matt, 20-25.
"Be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven." - Matt, 23-9. "They believed the soul would live forever; but they seem to have denied the resurrection of the body, which, according to their principles, would only render the soul sinful, by being re-united with it. They attributed a natural holiness to the Sabbath-day, because it is the seventh, and because the number (seven) results from adding the sides of a square to those of a triangle - thus: They spent most of their time in contemplation, which they called philosophical, and boasted of a philosophy pretended to be derived from their ancestors. And, notwithstanding their general profession of the contemplative life, great numbers of their sect were established in populous towns. "Nor is it one city only that they occupy," says Josephus, "but many dwelt in each city; and the provider for the faction is especially discernible among strangers, by his engagement in storing up clothing and necessary articles:" [Bell. Jud. lib. 2, s. 4.] [Michaelis, in his Introduction to the New Testament, by Herbert Marsh, now Bishop of Peterborough, vol. 4, p. 84.] from which it should seem they were the old-clothes-men of the world, from the remotest antiquity. "It is manifest," argues Michaelis, "that the Epistle to the Ephesians, that to the Colossians, and the 1st to Timothy, were written with a view of confuting this sect; for even the very words which Philo has used in describing their tenets, are for the most part retained by St. Paul."
Essenes worshippers of Apollo?
9. "And a certain Jew, named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John; and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly." - Acts 28-24.
Let the reader follow the clue that is here put into his hands, in this historical and evidently credible part of the real adventures of these schismatic missionaries from the original Essene sect. Here is Apollos, of Pagan-name; born in the very metropolis in which the Essene sect was of highest repute; ere any one of the apostles can be pretended to have preached the Gospel in that country; already instructed in the way of the Lord, and set up as a preacher of that way, in Ephesus. And our most learned critic rather maintains than conceals the incontrovertible fact, that "the earliest and principal members of the Christian community were attached to this sect." - Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 88.
Surely, then, it is only want of moral fortitude, and an unwillingness to embrace truths contrary to preconceived prejudices, that hinders man from seeing truths so evident, as that this Essene or Therapeutan sect itself were, as Eusebius has honestly admitted them to be, Christians; that Alexandria, and not Jerusalem, was the cradle of the infant church; that their ancient scriptures were the first types of the Gospels and Epistles; that the natural and probable parts of the Acts of the Apostles, are journals of the real adventures of schismatic missionaries from this ancient fraternity of Monks, who, after leaving their monasteries in the deserts of Thebais, cut out to themselves a new path to fame and fortune, by throwing off the stricter discipline of their mother church, opposing its less popular doctrines, and retaining what they chose to retain, in such new-fangled or reformed guise, as to give them the advantage of laying claim either to antiquity or originality, as their drift of argument might require. Like the Protestant reformers in later ages, those who were called Christians first at Antioch, turned around upon their ecclesiastical superiors, heaped all manner of abuse and misrepresentation upon them and their tenets, and pretended to a purer system of doctrine, and even a higher antiquity, than the church from which they sprang. [LN., In true reality, they, that is the Essenes were originally followers of Osiris of Egypt, who the Greek Apollo was the equivalent, both Osiris and Apollo were Sun gods and the Essenes worshipped the Sun.]
"It is not impossible (though till further proof be given, it cannot be asserted as a fact) that the "Vagabond Jews, exorcists, who took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits, the name of the Lord Jesus," (Acts 19-13,) were likewise Essenes; for it is well known that the Essenes applied themselves to superstitious arts and pretended to have converse with spirits. Some of them laid claim to the gift of prophecy, of which we find many instances in Josephus;" and of which we find as certainly, similar instances of the same claim, advanced by the first preachers and earliest members of the Christian community: so that the only question on this evidence is, which party had the more just claim to a faculty, of which reason denies the possibility to either? In a word, we have only to decide who were the greater - that is, the more successful impostors.
Prophets required?
"Among the first professors of Christianity," says Mosheim, "there were few men of learning - few who had capacity enough to insinuate into the minds of a gross and ignorant multitude, the knowledge of divine things, God, therefore, in his infinite wisdom, judged it necessary to raise up in many churches, extraordinary teachers, who were to discourse in the public assemblies, upon the various points of the Christian doctrine, and to treat with the people in the name of God, as guided by his direction, and clothed with his authority. Such were the prophets of the New Testament. They were invested with the power of censuring publicly such as had been guilty of any irregularity; but to prevent the abuses which designing men might make of this institution, by pretending to this extraordinary character, in order to execute unworthy ends, there were always present in the public auditoriums, judges divinely appointed, who, by certain, and infallible marks, were able to distinguish the false prophets from the true. This order of prophets ceased, when the want of teachers, which gave rise to it, was abundantly supplied." - Mosh. Eccl Hist. vol. 1, p. 102.
The mind smarts for the degradation which the necessity of maintaining popular delusion could impose on so intelligent and highly-cultivated a scholar, in obliging him to descend to this language of utter idiocy, - this reasoning that might disgrace the nursery. Here is infinite wisdom, to be sure, having recourse to expedients to insinuate its communications into the minds of the gross and ignorant multitude; divinely raised-up prophets, clothed with the authority of God himself; and divinely appointed judges, clothed with still higher authority, to judge whether infinite wisdom was right or wrong, but leaving the gross and ignorant multitude as much in need as ever of some other divinely appointed, still higher judges, to judge whether the other judges judged fairly; as it is certain that the gross and ignorant multitude, for whose benefit the divine insinuations were intended, were held to be no judges at all, and God or Devil was all as one to them. Slow must a man have looked when he reasoned thus? But the absurdity of this reasoning is not worse than an attempt to give respectability to the authority which makes it the best account that can be given of the matter.
10. "How is it," asks the Apostle himself, that "every one of you has a psalm, has a doctrine, has a tongue, has a revelation? If there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?" - 1 Cor. 14-23.
Essene' first Christians
Could language convey clearer evidence, that in the worst and grossest sense of what Philo or Josephus have represented the Essene churches to have been, that in reality the first assemblies of these primitive Christians were. And this is a state of things described as obtaining, several years before the writing of any one of our four Gospels.
If there were really any features of distinctive and different origination between these long anterior Therapeutan societies, and those who, in an after-age, acquired the name of Christian churches, all traces of that distinctiveness are lost. To all scope of history, and possibility of understanding, they must be pronounced and considered to be, one and the same class and order of religious fanatics.
As for the pretence to anything supernatural, philosophy teaches us to view it only as a certain and incontestable mark of imposture, by whomsoever advanced. Prophecy! the very name of such a thing is a surrender of all pretence to evidence; It is the language of insanity! The fetor of the charnel-house is not more charged with its admonition to our bodily health, to withdraw from the proximities of death, than the cracking sound of the thing is, with warning to our reason, that we are out of the regions of sobriety, wherever it is so much as seriously spoken of: no honest man ever pretended to it.
11. Matthew (18-18) relates a story of Jesus rebuking a devil who kept his hold so obstinately on the body of a boy, that his disciples, with all the miraculous powers with which he had previously gifted them, were unable to cast him out; which Jesus is represented as accounting for by saying, "howbeit this kind goes not out but by fasting and prayer." - Matt, 28-21.
"Now we know," says Michaelis, "that the Jews ascribed almost all diseases to the influence of evil spirits. To cure a disease, therefore, was, according to their notions, to expel an evil spirit: this they pretended to effect by charms and herbs; and we have seen from Eusebius, what extraordinary efficacy and virtue Therapeutans ascribed to prayer and fasting."
12. The whole doctrine of election, which distinguishes the epistolary writings of St. Paul, is but an application to the persons whom he addresses, of the notions which the Jews from previous ages had maintained, whose hopes of acceptance with God were founded on the merits of their ancestry. We have Abraham to our father, is represented as the reason they offered, why they had no need to bring forth fruits meant for repentance. One of their principal maxims was, [ HB ] that is, "All Israel have the portion of eternal life allotted to them."
Another of the Jewish doctrines is, "God promised to Abraham, that if his children were wicked, he would consider them as righteous on account of the sweet odour of his circumcised foreskin." [Pugio Fidei. V. 3, dis. 3, cap. 16, quoted by Michaelis, vol. 4. P. 95.]
The holding out a similar inducement to the selfishness and cruelty of the Gentile nations, with reservation of Jewish prerogative, constituted all the difference of the reformed Essenes, after it took the name of Christianity.
Allegory of Paul
13. The allegorical method of expounding their scriptures, so characteristic of Therapeutan monks, we find entirely adopted and avowed by Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, chap. 4. in which, of the most-simple and obvious apparent facts of the Old Testament, he asserts, "which things are an allegory." The two sons of Abraham are to be understood as two covenants; his kept-mistress is a mountain in Arabia; and, again, the mountain in Arabia, is the city Jerusalem.
14. Again, in 2 Cor. 4-6, the allegorical method, so entirely Essene, is spoken of as the chief design and intention of the Gospel ministry, and that too, even with respect to the sense of writings which constituted what was known and recognized as the New Testament, when this epistle was written, of which, therefore, the four Gospels which have come down to us, could have constituted no part; as it will be seen by the table, that they were not written till six or seven years after this epistle.
"God also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills" &c which principle the Christian Fathers carried to such an extent, that they hesitated not to admit that the Gospels themselves were not defensible as truth according to their literal text. "There are things contained therein," says Origen, [Horn. 6, in Isaiah, fol. 106. D.] "which, taken in their literal sense, are mere falsities and lies." And of the whole divine letter, St. Gregory asserts, that "it is not only dead, but deadly." And Athanasius admonishes us, that "should we understand sacred writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies."
15. Many objectionable tenets of the Essene sect are reproved and opposed in passages of Paul's epistles, too numerous to be quoted; but all in the manner and style of one who had been particularly acquainted with those tenets, and who admitted and recognized their affinity and relation to the Christian doctrines, as much nearer than any of the errors or absurdities of the other forms of heathenism.
The church already formed long before Paul or Jesus
16. Throughout all these epistles, we find the Gospel spoken of by all the varieties of designation that could be applied to it, as already preached, as read in all the churches, as the rule of faith, the test of orthodoxy - as being then of high antiquity - containing all the received doctrines with respect to the life and adventures of Jesus Christ, all that was necessary to make a man wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus: how he died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures. - 1 Cor. 15-4.
17. Upon the strength and faith of these doctrines, we find churches already established, and the distinct orders of bishops, elders or priests, and deacons, as described by Philo, already of so long standing, and of such high honour and emolument, that it could have become a common adage, that if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desires a good work; " many of the community having held that office in such a way as to render it necessary, in the election of future bishops, that care should be had, to appoint such as should be "not given to wine, no strikers, not greedy of filthy lucre," &c. - 1 Tim. hi. 3. And this was the state of things, in actual existence, before the writing of any one of the four gospels.
18. "In my father's house are many mansions; I go to prepare a place for you." - John xiv. 2. A fair translation of the passage would render it "In my father's house are many monasteries." - [ GK]. The translation here, egregiously protestantizes. Monastery is the correct rendering of the word, [GK] and of all possible derivatives and combinations of it; the leading or radical idea is, a solitary abode, where each individual is excluded, or excludes himself, from intercourse with others.
To those who consider Monachism, or Monkery, as a corruption of Christianity, sprung up in some later age, this and such like texts must bear the appearance of interpolations, or modernisms, tending to betray a later date than that challenged for these writings. But, taking nature for our guide, we must necessarily conclude, that an imperfect and defective system was infinitely more likely to improve by time, and gradually to throw off its original imperfections and defects, than a system that started from a state of excellence and perfection at first, to become in a few ages entirely deteriorated and corrupted.
The positive evidence, then, of Philo, to the prior existence of Monkery, has that challenge on our conviction, which must ever attend the highest species of testimony, when borne to the highest degree of probability.
19. In the first verse of the Epistle to the Philippians, there is a distinction made between the general congregation of the Saints, or Christians, and the Bishops and Deacons, which, by the learned Evanson, is adduced as an instance savouring very strongly of a much later age than that of the Apostles. - Dissonance, p. 264.
The antipapal antipathies of this Unitarian divine, allowed him only to see matter of offence in the term Saints, an order of men, as he supposes, first constituted by the superstitious piety of the Roman Catholic Church: but surely a moment's ingenuous speculation on the probabilities of circumstances, would discover matter of equal incongruity in the idea of the existence of the distinct orders of bishops and deacons, in a flourishing national church, when this epistle was written, ten or twelve years before the date of any one of our four gospels, and within the life time of one who was the cotemporary of Christ, and the companion of his immediate disciples.
That church, and all others that could have had in them the distinct orders of bishops and deacons, must have been ancient at the time. There could be no bishops and deacons among new converts. Such a state of the church, at that time, involves a certain demonstration, that its doctrine, discipline and government must have been of many years standing, anterior to the Augustan age.
20. It is a violence to imagination, and costs it a sort of painful effort to suppose that St. Paul could have written his epistle to the Romans, in the Greek language: We could as easily fancy a general address to the inhabitants of London, in Arabic.
21. In the earliest Greco-Latin Codices, the passage, Romans 12-13. "Distributing to the necessity of saints." -i.e. - [ GK] stood "communicating to the memories of the saints." i.e. - [GK] - Of this passage, Michaelis remarks, that it conveys the language and sentiments of a later age; [ GK] being used in the ecclesiastical sense of the word, for saints or martyrs, characters unknown at Rome, when St. Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans; and this fault, for a fault he conceives it evidently is, could hardly have taken place before the end of the second, or the beginning of the third century.
Mosheim describes the festivals and commemorations of the martyrs, being celebrated in the most extravagant manner, as characteristic of the depravity of the fourth century: and all Protestant ecclesiastics, strain every nerve to throw the odium of what they esteem corruptions of the primitive purity, on later ages.
"It is well known, among other things, what opportunities of sinning were offered to the licentious, by what were called the vigils of Easter and Whitsuntide, or Pentecost." Mosheim - vol. 1. p. 398. We find however that this religious observation of the vigils of the great festivals, especially that of Easter, in commemoration of Christ's resurrection, was observed in a distinguished manner among Therapeutan or Essenes, and as it was an annual observance, must have obtained many years before the birth of Christ. - See the translated chapter from Eusebius, verse 41.
Epistles written before any Gospel?
22. "Moreover, brethren, I delivered unto you first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of about five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep: after that, he was seen of James, then of all the apostles; and last of all he was seen by me also, as of one born out of due Time." - 1. Corinth 15-1. [LN. NIV. Has Abnormally = premature?]
The writer of this epistle, here refers to higher authority than his own, "that, which he also received," that is, scriptures, which related that Christ died for our sins; that he appeared after his resurrection to five hundred brethren at once, and in an especial manner, to Cephas, and in a like especial manner, to James. [Acts 1-15. This Cephas was one of the 70, a wholly different personage from the Peter of the Gospels: to this assurance, we have the positive assertion of Eusebius.]
1. These circumstances partake largely of the more marvellous and exaggerative character of the apocryphal gospels. 2. They are certainly not contained in the canonical ones. 3. And yet are insisted on, as so essential to the Christian faith, that unless they were kept in memory, Christians would have believed in vain. 4. No laws of evidence would endure the unsupported assumption that the witness, Cephas, was the same person as the apostle, Peter. 5. Nor were there twelve disciples, after Judas, who was one of the number, had hanged himself.
6. Nor is there the least intimation, in any of our gospels, of an especial appearance to James.
7. Nor was the number of the brethren, at their first meeting, after Christ's ascension from the top of Mount Olivet, more than "about a hundred and twenty." Nor was there time. -
9. Nor was it possible, that the scriptures, which detailed the circumstances of Christ's appearances after his resurrection, in this exaggerative style, could have been in any way derived from our four gospels, or any of them: they not having been written till twelve years after this epistle.
That, other scriptures than those which have come down to us, telling the Christian story in a different way, were the original basis of the Christian faith; and that those other scriptures were in vogue and notoriety, not only before our gospels were written, but before the events related in our gospels had occurred; are facts, whose force of evidence amounts to the utmost degree of certainty of which historical fact is capable. That those scriptures were the sacred writings of the Egyptian-Therapeuts described by Philo, and so expressly considered by Eusebius, is matter of the strongest presumption that can be supposed in the absence of all other grounds of presumption.
23. "Else what shall they do, which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?" - I Cor. 15-29.
Here is a reference to some, then well-known and established religious ceremony, existing in a Christian church; of which ceremony and its significance, and purport, no trace or vestige has come down to us: nor can our commentators come to any sort of agreement, as to what sense should be attached to the words. It is utterly impossible, that such a baptism could have come into use, or have acquired such a notoriety, as to make it stand for so general an argument, as that of the resurrection of the dead, within the term of life of any one who had conversed with St. Peter, on whom it hath been pretended, that the Christian church is founded. Let the reader, if he can, conceive any other way of accounting for the text than, its reference to some ancient ceremony of the Egyptian Therapeuts, which, after the schismatics and seceeders from their communion, had acquired the name of Christians, grew gradually into disuse, and so finally sunk in oblivion. [They joined themselves to Baal-Peor, and ate the offerings of the dead, - Psalm. The reader is to make what use lie pleases of this conjecture.]
24. Acts 20-18. St. Paul addresses the elders of the Ephesian church, - "I have been with you at all seasons. Ye all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God;" a style of the most affectionate intimacy. Yet the writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians, addresses them as a stranger, who had only heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints." (Eph. 1-15.) - Query. - Could the Paul, who declared in the one case, and the Paul who wrote in the other, be the same individual? Query, - Who were all the saints, who were loved by the Ephesians, at least twelve years before any one of our gospels was written? and consequently as many years before there could be any saints whatever, whose faith had been founded on those gospels?
25. "Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby you know that it is the last time," - 1 John 2-12. Here is a full confession of the comparatively modern character of this epistle: -
25-1. The time which could be spoken of as "the last," with relation to Christianity, could not but at least have been late, and late enough to have given the persons so addressed, time to have heard of the prophecy that Antichrist should come: and,
25-2. To have had faith in it, and expectation of its accomplishment, beforehand:
25-3. And if the time when this epistle was written (about 80AD.) was the last of Christianity, there can have been no Christianity in the world since then:
25-4. And if then, while St. John was living, Antichrist was come, and it was the last time, the Christ whom St. John intended to preach, must have been much earlier in the world than that time. All which agrees in style and manner with the character of an angry Egyptian monk, complaining of the corruptions and perversions which his contemporaries had put upon the pure and original Therapeutan doctrines; but presents not a single feature in keeping with the character of one, supposed to be himself one of the earliest preachers of an entirely new religion, who existed not in the last time, but in the first; not after Christianity had run to seed, but before it had fully sprung up. "And if Christianity," says Archbishop Wake, "remained not uncorrupted so long, surely, we may say, it came up and was cut down like a flower and continued not even so long as the usual term of the life of man."
26. "I wrote unto the church; but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence among them, receiveth us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious cords; and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the friars, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church." - 3 John 9. 10.
26-1. If this John were the disciple of Christ, this text is fatal to the claims of St. John's Gospel, since it shows that the rulers of the church had rejected his writings.
26-2. Its reference to the circumstances of mendicant friars, or travelling quack-doctors, is as clear as the day.
26-3. But who was this Diotrephes, whose name signifies literally the ward or pupil of Jupiter? Anything rather than a Christian name.
26-4. And with what conceivable state of a Christian community, that could have existed during the life-time of one of its first preachers, can we associate the idea of such a struggle for pre-eminence? The phenomena admit of no solution but that which determines that these writings are the compositions of no such persons as is supposed, and that, however ancient we take them to be, they refer to a state of ecclesiastical polity still more ancient.
27. "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls, as they that must give an account." - Heb. 13-17.
28. "Remember them that have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God!" - Heb. 13-7.
What have we here, but references to ecclesiastical government and spiritual power, already established in all its plenitude? A state of things which could not possibly have existed - a sort of language that could not possibly have been used, in any reference to an authority which had originated within the life-time of the persons so addressed, or to a word of God, of which the then preachers, were the first.
29. "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ; and no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light."- 2 Cor. 11-13. Aye! aye! And with what state of a religion, whose founder had been crucified, and whose doctrines had not yet passed into the hands of a second generation, and whose apostles had nothing but spiritual blessings to confer on others, and nothing but martyrdom to expect for themselves, can we imagine that apostleship to be so winning a game, that the Devil himself would play it? [A]
[A] There are innumerable other passages to the like effect; such as the wild man John preaching in the wilderness: A voice crying in the wilderness: the miraculous fasting of the old woman Anna: the pass-word of the vigilant monks, Watch and pray! &c. &c. whose further traction would detain me too long from worthier matter. Let the reader glance his eye over the New Testament with this observance.]
The Conclusion
Is inevitable. We are not, perhaps, entitled certainly to pronounce that it was so; but the hypothesis (if it be no more), that Paul and his party were sent out, in the first instance, as apostles, or missionaries, from this previously existing society of Monks, which had for ages, or any length of time before, fabricated and been in possession of the allegorical fiction of Jesus Christ, that the Acts of the Apostles, with the exception of all their supernatural details, are a garbled journal of his real adventures; and the Epistles, with the exception of some improved passages and superior sentiments that have been foisted into them, are such as he wrote to the various communities in which he had established his own independent supremacy, by a successful schism from the mother church : this hypothesis will solve all the phenomena; which is what no other will.
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Next chapter 13. On the Claims of the Scriptures of the New Testament to be Considered as Genuine and Authentic.