The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
Gospels not written by the Authors whose name they bear.
The ordinary notion, that the four gospels were written by the persons whose names they bear, and that they have descended to us from original autographs of Matthew and John, immediate disciples, and of Mark and Luke, cotemporaries and companions of Christ; in like, manner as the writings of still more early poets and historians have descended to us, from the pens of the authors, to whom they are attributed, is altogether untenable. It has been entirely surrendered by the most able and ingenuous Christian writers and will no longer be maintained by any but those whose zeal outruns their knowledge, and whose recklessness and temerity of assertion, can serve only to dishonour and betray the cause they so injudiciously seek to defend.
The surrender of a position which the world has for ages been led to consider impregnable, by the admission of all that the early objection of the learned Christian Bishop, Faustus, the Manichean, implied, when he pressed Augustine with that bold challenge which Augustine was unable to answer, that, [a] "It is certain that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while after them, by some unknown persons, who lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to their works the names of apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been their companions, asserting that what they had written themselves, was written according to those persons to whom they ascribed it." [LN., Saint Faustus of Riez- Rhegium, Provence, a defender of Semipelagianism, around 405-10 till 490-5?]
[a] Nec ab ipso scriptum constat, nec ab ejus apostolis sed longo post tempore a quibusdam incerti nominis viris, qui ne sibi non haberetur fides scribentibus quae nescirent, partim apostolorum, partim eorum qui apostolos secuti viderentur nomina scriptorum suorum frontibus indiderunt, asseverantes secundum eos, se scripsisse quae scripserunt. - Quoted by Lardner, vol. 2, p. 221. - See Chapter 7, p. 66, of this Diegesis.]
This admission has not been held to be fatal to the claims of divine relation, nor was it held to be so even by the learned Father himself who so strenuously insisted on it, since he declares his own unshaken faith in Christ's mystical crucifixion, notwithstanding.
Adroitly handled as the passage has been by the ingenuity of theologians, it has been made rather to sub-serve the cause of the evidences of the Christian religion, than, to injure it. Since though it be admitted, that the Christian world has "all along been under a delusion" in this respect, and has held these writings to be of higher authority than they really are; yet the writings themselves and their authors, are innocent of having contributed to that delusion, and never bore on them, nor in them, any challenge to so high authority as the mistaken piety of Christians has ascribed to them, but did all along profess no more than to have been written, as Faustus testifies, not by, but according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and by persons of whom indeed it is not known who nor what they were, nor was it of any consequence that it should be, after the general acquiescence of the church had established the sufficient correctness of the compilations they had made.
And here the longo post tempore, (the great while after,) is a favourable presumption of the sufficient opportunity that all persons [b] had, of knowing and being satisfied, that the gospels which the church received, were indeed all that they purported to be; that is, faithful narrations of the life and doctrines of Christ, according to what could be collected from the verbal accounts which his apostles had given, or by tradition been supposed to have given, and as such, "worthy of all acceptation." [b] By all persons, understanding strictly all parsons, for the common people were nobody, and never at any time had any voice, judgment, or option, in the business of religion, but always believed, that which their godfathers and godmothers did promise and vow that they should believe. God or devil, and any scriptures their masters pleased, were always all one to them.]
While the objection of Faustus, becomes from its own nature the most indubitable and unexceptionable evidence, carrying us up to the very early age, the fourth century, in which he wrote, with a demonstration, that the gospels were then universally known and received, under the precise designation, and none other, than that with which they have come down to us, even as the gospels respectively, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Of course, there can be no occasion to pursue the inquiry into the authenticity of the Christian scriptures, lower down than the fourth century.
1. Though, in that age, there was no established canon or authoritative declaration, that such and none other than, those which have come down to us, were the books which contained the Christian rule of faith.
2. And though "no manuscript of these writings now in existence is prior to the sixth century, and various readings which, as appears from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the Greek Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are at present remaining." - Michaelis, vol. 2, p. 160.
3. And though many passages which are now found in these scriptures were not contained in any ancient copies whatever;
4. And though "in our common editions of the Greek Testament, are many readings, which exist not in a single manuscript, but are founded on mere conjecture." - Marsh's Michaelis, Vol. 2, p. 496.
5. And though "it is notorious, that the orthodox charge the heretics with corrupting the text, and that the heretics recriminate upon the orthodox." - Unitarian New Version, p. 121.
6. And though "it is an undoubted fact, that the heretics were in the right in many points of criticism, where the Fathers accused them of wilful corruption." - Bp. Marsh, Vol. 2, p. 302.
7. And though "it is notorious, that forged writings under the names of the Apostles were in circulation almost from the apostolic age." - See 2 Thess. 2-2, quoted in Unitarian New Version. [Almost from the apostolic age!" Why the text itself, if it proves anything, proves that such forged writings were in existence absolutely in the apostolic age, and among the apostles themselves.]
8. And though "not long after Christ's ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance." - Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 109.
9. And though, says the great Scaliger, "They put into their scriptures whatever they thought would serve their purpose."! [Julius Caesar Scaliger, 1484 to 1558, Italian scholar and physician. Although I think it more likely refers to Joseph Justus Scaliger, French religious leader and scholar, 1540 to 1609,]
10. And though "notwithstanding those twelve-known infallible and faithful judges of controversy (the twelve Apostles), there were as many and as damnable heresies crept in, even in the apostolic age, as in any other age, perhaps, during- the same space of time." - Reeve's Preliminary Discourse to the Commonitory of Vincentius Lirinen- sis, p. 190.
11. And though there were in the manuscripts of the New Testament, at the time of editing the last printed copies of the Greek text, upwards of one hundred and thirty thousand various readings." - Unitarian New Version, p. 22.
12. And though "the confusion unavoidable in these versions (the ancient Latin, from which all our European versions are derived), had arisen to such a height, that St. Jerome, in his Preface to the Gospels, complains that no one copy resembled another." - Michaelis, vol. 2. p. 119.
13. And though the gospels fatally contradict each other; that is, in several important particulars, they do so to such an extent, as no ingenuity or supposition has yet been able to reconcile: only the most stupid and ignorant of Methodist parsons, and canting, arrogant fanatics, any longer attempting to reconcile them, after Marsh, Michaelis, and the most learned critics, have struck, and owned the conquest. [See Bishop Marsh's Surrender, quoted in chapter 17.]
14. And though the difference of character between the three first gospels, and that ascribed to St. John, is so flagrantly egregious, that the most learned Christian divines, and profoundest scholars, have frankly avowed that the Jesus Christ of St. John, is a wholly different character from the Jesus Christ of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and that their account and his should both be true, is flatly impossible.
[Si forte accidisset, ut Johannis Evangelium per octodecim secula priora prorsus ignotum jacuisset, et nostris demum temporibus, in medium productum esset omnes haud dubie uno ore confiterentur Jesum a Johanne descriptum longo alium esse ac illium Matthaei, Marci, et Lucae, nec utramque descriptionem simul veram esse posse. - Carol. Theoph. BretSchneider Probab. Lipsiae, 1820.] [LN., Bretschneider, Karl Gottlieb, 1776 to 1848, was a German Protestant scholar and theologian.]
15. And though such was the idolatrous adulation paid to the authority of Original that emendations of the text which were but suggested by him, were taken in as part of the New Testament; though he himself acknowledged that they were supported by the authority of no manuscript whatever. - Marsh, in loco.
16. And though, even so late as the period of the Reformation, we have whole passages which have been thrust into the text, and thrust out, just as it served the turn which the Protestant tricksters had to serve.
17. And though we have on record the most indubitably historical evidence, of a general censure and correction of the Gospels having been made at Constantinople, in the year 506, by order of the emperor Anastasius. [Here it is. "Messala V. C. consule, Constantinopoli, jubente Anastasio Imperatore, sancta evangelia, tanquam ab idiotis evangelistis composita, reprehenduntur et emendantur." - Victor Tununensis, Cave's Historia Literaria, vol. 1. p. 415 - i.e. "The illustrious Messala being Consul; by the command of the Emperor Anastasius, the holy Gospels, as having been written by idiot evangelists, are censured and corrected."- Victor, Bishop of Tunis in Africa.] [LN., Anastasius I, nicknamed Dicorus, because he had one black and one blue eye, he was by faith a Miaphysite.]
18. And though we have like unquestionable historical evidence, of measureless and inappreciable alterations of the same, having been made by our own Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the avowed purpose of accommodating them to the faith of the orthodox. [See Beausobre, quoted in the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society; and this, and the preceding extract vindicated, in the author's Syntagma, against the vituperations of the evangelical Dr John Pye Smith, in locis.] [LN., John Pye-Smith, 1774 to 1851, Congregational theologian and tutor,] [Lanfranc, 1005-10 to 1089AD. He was appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury after the conquest of William the Conqueror,]
19. And though there are other passages retained and circulated as part of the word of God, which are known and admitted by all parties to be wilful interpolations, and downright forgery and falsehood.
20. And though we see with our own eyes, and witness in our own experience - as per example, in the Athanasian Creed - that nothing could be so absurd, so false, so wicked, but that it would be retained and supported by our Christian clergy, on the self-same principle as that on which they support all the rest onto, - even because it supports them!
conclusion
Yet, after all, we shall find thousands of interested and aspiring pedants, pretending to reconcile what cannot be reconciled, to prove what cannot be proved, and to show that to be true, which every sense and faculty of man attests and demonstrates to be false. It is, however, on the ground of inspiration, that they ultimately rest their pretensions: it was on that ground that the Tower of Babel was built; that we leave them; but on the ground of history, criticism, reason, and natural evidence, they have no rest for the sole of their boot. I recommend them to treat us with contempt, and I send us to Coventry, and not to Oakham.
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Next Chapter 16. On the Origin of our Three First Canonical Gospels.