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.
The New Testament is in every one's hands: the claims of the four gospels therein contained we have already considered.
The thirteen epistles, purporting to have been written by an early convert to Christianity, who was before a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious; [1 Tim. 1-13.] the anonymous epistle to the Hebrews; the one of James; one of Jude; two of Peter; three of John: and the Apocalypse, or Revelation of St. John the Divine; though all of them, except the Apocalypse, are admitted to have been written before any one of the four gospels; are entirely without date, and will read as well to an understanding or supposition of their having been written five or six hundred, or even a thousand years, either earlier or later than the period to which they are usually assigned. Certain it is, that they contain not a single phrase of a nature or significance to fix with any satisfactory probability the time when they were written; but from beginning to end they proceed on the recognition of an existing [Acts 12-19.] church government and an established ecclesiastical polity which, on the supposition of its origination in events that happened later than the time of Augustus, must outrage all our knowledge of history, and all common sense, to be reconciled with the supposition of their having been written by the persons to whom they are ascribed: as 'tis certain that no such state of church government, that could be properly called Christian, existed or could have existed among the followers of a religion which had originated in the age of Augustus, or among any persons who had been his contemporaries.
The Acts of the Apostles is evidently a broken narrative, and gives us no account whatever of what became of the immediate disciples of Christ, or how or with what success they executed the important commission they had received from their divine master; save, that Judas the traitor is said to have come to a violent death, as a judgment of God upon his perfidy; and that Peter and John were imprisoned as impostors, after having received the Holy Ghost, and been endued with the gift of speaking all the languages of the earth (a miracle which no rational being on earth believes); and that James was put to death by Herod.
The last account we have of Peter in the sacred history, requires us to believe, that after having been delivered from prison by the intervention of an angel, his chains falling off, and the ponderous iron gate opening of his own accord, "he went down from Judea to Caesarea and there, abode." [Acts 12- 19.]
The last we learn of Paul is, that "Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house and received all that came into him; preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him."
The evident air and aim of this account, as far as it goes, is palpably incompatible with any notion of the apostles having suffered martyrdom; it rather seems to make an ostentation of their prodigious success, and their perfect prosperity and security, and that too in Rome, in the immediate neighbourhood, and under the government of the tyrant Nero: while the insinuation at least with respect to the melancholy end of Judas, is, that the apostles themselves would have considered martyrdom as dishonourable to their religion, and their being put to violent and cruel deaths, an indication of the divine displeasure, as it is evidently represented to have been, upon Judas.
The names and order of the twelve apostles, in the last list we have of them, are
1. Peter 5. Philip 9. James Alpheus
2. James 6. Thomas 10. Simon Zealots
3. John 7. Bartholomew 11. Jude, the brother of James
4. Andrew 8 Matthew 12. Matthias
In the Lives of the Apostles, written by the eunuch Dorotheus, bishop of Tyrus, who died a. d. 366, we have the following brief account of the apostles respectively:
1. Simon Peter.
Simon Peter is the chief of the apostles. He, as we are given to understand by his epistles, preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, and in the end preached at Rome, where, afterwards, he was crucified, the third kalends of July, under Nero the emperor, with his head downwards (for that was his desire), and there also buried.
2. James.
James, the son of Zebedee, a fisherman, preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ unto the twelve dispersed tribes. He was slain with the sword, by Herod the tetrarch, in Judea, where also he was buried.
3. John.
John, the brother of James, who was also an evangelist, whom the Lord loved, preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in Asia. The emperor Trajan exiled him into the Isle of Patmos for the word of God, where he wrote also his gospel, the which afterwards he published at Ephesus, by Gaius, his host and deacon. After the death of Trajan, he returned out of the Isle of Patmos, and remained at Ephesus, until he had lived a hundred and twenty years, at the end of which, he being yet in full health and strength (for the Lord would have it so), dug his own grave, and buried himself alive. There are some which write that he was not banished into the Isle of Patmos under Trajan, but in the time of Domitian, the son of Vespasian.
The translator of this John, St. Jerome, quotes the authority of Tertullian to prove, that in the time of Nero, he was thrown at Rome into a tun of hot boiling oil, and thereby he took no harm, but came forth after his trial purer than when he went in. St. Augustine relates, that "after St. John had made his grave at Ephesus, in the presence of divers persons, he went into it alive, and being no sooner in, and as appeared to the by-standers, dead, they threw the earth in upon him, and covered him; but that kind of rest was rather to be termed a state of sleep than of death; for that the earth of the grave bubbles and boils up to this day after the- manner of a well, by reason of John resting therein and breathing - a sign that he only slumbering there, but is not really dead! And till Christ shall come again, thus he remains, plainly showing that he is alive by the heaving up of the earth, which is caused by his breathing; for the dust is believed to ascend from the bottom of the tomb to the top, impelled by the state of him resting beneath it. Those who know the place," adds this conscientiously veracious Father, "must have seen the earth thus heaven up and down; and that it is certainly truth, we are assured, as having heard it from no light-minded witnesses." [a]
[a] "Idem Augustinus asserat Apostolum Johannem vivere atque in illo sepul chro ejus, quod est apud Ephesum, dormire eura potius quam mortuum jacere contendat. Assurnat in argumentum quod illic terra sensim seatere et quasi ebullire perhibeatur, atque hoc ejus anhelitu fieri. Et cum mortuus putaretu scpultum fuisse dormientem, et donee Christus veniat, sic manere, suamque vitam Rcaturigine pulveris indicare: qui pulvis creditur ut ab imo ad superficiem tumuli ascendat statu quescentis impelli. Viderint qui locum sciunt - quia et revera, non a levibus hominibus id audivimus. Ad hanc rem satis superque satis testificandum utor. - Fabricii Codice Apocrypho, torn. 2, p. 590, in notis.]
4. Andrew,
The brother of Simon Peter, as our elders have delivered unto us, preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ unto the Scythians, Sogdians, Sacians, and in the middle Sebastopolis inhabited of wild Ethiopians. He was crucified by Aegeas, king of the Edesssens, and buried at Patris, a city of Achaia.
5. Philip.
Philip, of the city of Bethsaida, preached the Gospel in Phrygia; he was honourably buried at Hierapolis, with his daughters. In Acts 8-39, Philip is described as possessing the power of rendering himself invisible.
6. Thomas,
As it has been delivered unto us, [b] preached the Gospel of our Saviour Jesus Christ unto the Parthians, Medes, and Persians; he preached also unto the Caramans, Hircans, Bactrians, and Magicians! He rested at Calamina, a city in India, being slain with a dart, where he was also honourably buried. [b] Surely this is a very suspicious sort of wording for the first and earliest testimony that can be pretended to the existence of so extraordinary a Thomas.]
7. Bartholomew
Preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ unto the Indians and delivered unto them the gospel of Matthew. He rested, and was buried in Albania, a city of Armenia the Great.
The translator, Peter de Natalibus, informs us, that this St. Bartholomew was nephew to the king of Syria. Antonius, in his Chronicle, writes, that some have delivered that he was beaten to death with cudgels; some, that he was crucified with his head downwards; others, that he was flayed alive; and others, that he was beheaded, at the commandment of Ptolemseus, king of India; but Peter de Natal, together with Abdias, bishop of Babylon, reconcile the whole in this manner: how that the first day the apostle was beaten with cudgels, the second day crucified and flayed alive, and afterwards, while yet he continued to breathe, beheaded.
With all due respect to such profoundly learned authorities, I could suggest another way of reconciling the whole matter. This royal apostle was especially distinguished for his miraculous power of rendering himself invisible and slipping through the key-hole into bed-chambers, for the greater convenience of giving lectures to young ladies, on the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. [c] This, faculty he possessed in common with St. Philip.
[c] Et caapit quaerere Apostolum, sed non invenit earn amplius. Factum est autem ut apparuit Apostolus ostio clauso in cubiculo ipsius dicens nihil carnale desidero sed scire te volo quia filius Dei in virginis vulva conceptus, inter ipsa secreta virginis. Ohe! jam satis est! terque quaterque plus quarn satis!]
8. Matthew
The evangelist, wrote the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Hebrew tongue, and delivered it unto James, the brother of the Lord according to the flesh, who was bishop of Jerusalem. He died at Hierapolis, in Parthia, where he also was honourably buried.
9. James Alpheus.
James, the son of Alpheus, was bishop of Jerusalem by the appointment of the other apostles. He was killed by St. Paul. Having been set by the Jews upon a pinnacle of the temple, Saul, who was afterwards called Paul, thrust him off; and while yet he breathed after his fall, one came with a fuller's club and brained him.
10. Simon Zealot.
Simon Zealot, that is, Simon the Fanatic, preached Christ throughout Mauritania and the Lesser Africa; at length he was crucified in Britannia, slain and buried.
11. Jude.
Jude, the brother of James, called also Thaddaeus and Lebbaeus, preached unto the Edessseans, and throughout all Mesopotamia. He was slain at Berytus, in the time of Agbarus, king of Edessa, and buried very honourably.
These two apostles, St. Simon and St. Jude, are generally mentioned together, and seem to have been inseparably united through the whole course of their truly incredible adventures. Their commemoration is kept by the church of England on the 28th day of October. Their conjoint miracles of healing all manner of diseases, raising the dead till churchyards were completely useless, and worrying and tormenting the poor devils till they howled and squealed, and wished themselves back again in hell from whence they had issued; are but every-day work, common to them with all the rest of the apostolic community. But they were more especially distinguished by their holy zeal, and their exertion of miraculous energies in protecting the moral character of those whom they had once admitted into holy orders. [a] "They had with them many disciples, out of whom they ordained in every city, priests, deacons and clerks, and for whom they built innumerable churches. It happened that one of their deacons was accused of criminal conversation. The daughter of a wealthy satrap being found in the plight of the Virgin Mary, after she had received the salutation of the angel Gabriel, but not able, like her, to persuade the world that her pregnancy resulted from the obumbrating of the Holy Ghost, upon being questioned by her parents, swore her child upon the chaste and holy deacon Euphrosinus, upon whom her parents were for taking the law; which, when the apostles St. Simon and St. Jude heard, they came instantly to the girl's parents, who, upon seeing the apostles, loudly accused the deacon of the crime. Then the apostle said, 'When was the child born?' And they answered, 'This very day, at one o'clock.' Then said they, 'Bring the infant and this deacon, whom you accuse, together before us.' And, upon the infant and the deacon being confronted, the apostles addressed the new-born babe, and said, 'In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, speak and tell us if this deacon got you.' Whereupon the babe, with most perfect and complete eloquence, answered, 'Gentlemen, I assure you that this deacon is holy and chaste, and has never ' (The reader must translate the rest on't for himself - the young one was a bit of a wag.) But the parents of the girl insisted that the apostles should make the child tell (if the deacon was not his father) who else was. The apostles answered and said, "Oh, no; it is our place only to absolve the innocent, not to betray the guilty." There was evidently a good understanding between the apostles themselves and the young one.
[a] Habebunt autem secum discipulos multos, ex quibus ordinabant per civitates presbyteros, et diaconos et clericos, et ecclesias multas constituebant. Factum est autem ut unus ex diaconibus pateretur crimen incesti. Erat enim vicinus filise Satrapse cujusdam ditissimi hominis, quae perdita virginitate partum edens periclitabatur. Interrogata autem a parentibus virum Dei sanctum et castum Euphrosinum diaconum impetebat. Qui tentus a parentibus puellae urgebatur subire vin dictam. Quod ubi Apostoli audiverunt, venerunt ad parentes puellae. At illi cum adspexissent apostolos, cseperent clamare et diaconum reum hujus criminis accusare. Turn Apostoli: quando inquiunt natus est puer? responderunt hodie hora diei prima. Dicunt ei apostoli. Perducite hue infantem, et diaconum quern aecusatis hue pariter adducite. Cumque in prsesentia essent, alloquuntur apostoli infantem, dicentes: "In nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi loquere, et die si iste diaconus prgesumserit hanc iniquitatem." Tuminfans absolutissimo sermone ait, "Hie dia conus, vir sanctus et castus est et nunquam inquinavit carnem suam." Rursus au tern insistebant parentes Apostolis, ut de persona infans interrogaretur incest}. Qui dixerunt: nos innocentes solvere decet, et nocentes prodere non decet. - De SS Simone et Juda Abdiee Historia Apostolir.a, lib. 6, c. 18.
12. Matthias.
Matthias, being one of the seventy disciples, was afterwards numbered with the eleven apostles, in the room of Judas the traitor. He preached the Gospel in Ethiopia, about the haven called Hyssus and the river Phasis, unto barbarous nations and cannibals. He died at Sebastopol, and was buried near the temple of the Sun.
Cephas.
It appears from the Catalogue of Dorotheus, that Cephas, who was one of the seventy disciples, and not one of the twelve apostles, was the person whom Paul reprehended at Antioch, and that he was bishop of Cannia. For though Cephas is a Syriac word of the same sense and significance as Peter, or Petra, a rock [a] yet have we this positive testimony of Dorotheus, who wrote earlier than Eusebius, and all the conceivable congruities of the case, supported by the explicit and positive testimony of Eusebius, and of Clemens Alexandrinus, that Cephas and Peter were wholly distinct personages. By this understanding we evade the revolting absurdity of the supposition, that Paul, a late convert, should have taken upon himself to withstand Peter to the face, when he was come to Antioch (Gal. 2), while we retain the other horn of the dilemma, that Paul has, in his 1st Epistle to the Corinthians (chap, 15.), given an account of the resurrection of Christ, utterly irreconcilable with that of either of our four gospels. [b]
[a] It is in French only that the miserable pun on St. Peter's name is exact - "Tu es Pierri et sur cette pierre." The same is imperfect in Greek, Latin, Italian, &c. and totally unintelligible in our Teutonic. languages.]
[b] Neither the Peter nor the Judas of the Acts of the Apostles are the same characters as the Peter and Judas of the Gospels, nor can the two histories be fairly reconciled.]
Origin of the Acts of the Apostles.
This critique is of most essential argument, inasmuch, as if valid, it tends to detect and cut off the sophisticated artifice which would endeavour to connect the narrative and probable part of the Acts of the Apostles with the mystical personages and adventures of the Gospel, there by aiming to reflect something of the air of historical probability which attaches to the mere journal of the voyages and travels of some schismatic missionaries from the Egyptian monasteries, upon the wholly supernatural dramatis persona of the Gospel, and to make the one seem a sequel and a continuation of the other.
To this device solely, we owe the canonicity of the Acts of the Apostles, an evident fragment as it is, and an awkward jumble of fiction and fact, romance and real history. It was held necessary (so as it were to bring heaven and earth together) that some account, it mattered not what, should be crammed down the gaping throat of that natural curiosity which would want to know what became of the glorious company of the apostles after they had seen Jesus Christ ascend up through the clouds, pass through Orion's belt, and take his chair at the right hand of God. So late, however, as 407AD, or the beginning of the fifth century, the Acts of the Apostles had not gained general acceptance or was rather too gross a finesse even for the credulity of the faithful.
Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople at that time, in his first homily upon the title and beginning of this legend, says, "To many this book is unknown, by others it is despised, because it is clear and easy." The first of his homilies upon the whole book begins with the sentence, "By many this book is not at all known, neither (the book) itself, nor who wrote and put it together." [LN., Chrysostom, John [golden mouth] Archbishop of Constantinople, around AD. 349 to 407.]
Case of St. Judas Iscariot.
Judas Iscariot, though thrown out of the list of apostles, by an apparent conspiracy of the rest against him, had, in the contexture of the Gospel-story, certainly been chosen and appointed to the apostleship by Christ himself, had received and exercised the gift of miracles, had cast out as many devils, healed as many patients, and restored as many dead folks to life, as any of his apostolic brethren. His being the treasurer of the Mendicity Society, having the bag, and bearing what was put therein, is a strong presumption that he was the most trustworthy among them. The sincerity and the intensity of his repentance for having betrayed Jesus - his returning the wages of iniquity which he had received-, and above all, his offering himself to the imminent hazard of death, by coming forward and protesting to the innocence of his master, when all his other disciples forsook him and fled, and then terminating his own life in an agony of sorrow for his fault; are alleviating considerations, which must render him, with all but bad-hearted people, rather an object of pity than of hatred; and when Peter, who cursed and swore, and lied and perjured, till the very cock crowded shame on him, was forgiven upon a wink, Judas must certainly be considered as having been very unfairly used. But no ingenuity of critical chicane can reconcile the character of the Judas of the gospels with the personage who bears the same name in the Acts of the Apostles; they are wholly different characters.
The Judas of the Gospels the Judas of the Acts
The Judas of the Gospels The Judas of the Acts
Repented; Did not repent;
Returned the money to the chief
priests and elders; Kept the money for his own use;
Cast it down in the temple, and
departed; Bought a field with it;
Died by his own act and will. Died by accident.
Next to the immediate apostles, in apostolic dignity, and first of all real personages whose existence there is no reason to doubt, however much there may be to question whether their adventures and performances were such as have been ascribed to them, are the two un-apostolical evangelists, Mark and Luke, and that least of the apostles, who was not meant to be called an apostle, [1 Cor. 15-9.] Paul of Tarsus, the apostolic chief of sinners. [1 Tim. 1-15.]
Mark
The evangelist, according to Eusebius, was bishop of Alexandria. "He preached the Gospel," says Dorotheus, "unto the people of Alexandria, and all the bordering regions from Egypt unto Pentapolis. In the time of Trajan, he had a cable-rope tied about his neck at Alexandria, by which he was drawn from the place called Bucolus unto the place called Angels, where he was burned to ashes by the furious idolaters, in the month of April, and buried at Bucolus." [LN., Dorotheus of Tyre, around 255 to 362AD, he was reported to be a learned priest of Antioch, and by tradition is said to have written the Acts of the Seventy Apostles?]
Luke
The evangelist, of the city of Antioch, by profession a physician (i.e. a Therapeut), wrote the Gospel as he heard Peter the apostle, preach and the Acts of the Apostles as Paul delivered unto him. He accompanied the apostles in their peregrinations, but especially Paul. He died at Ephesus, where he was also buried; [a] and after many years, together with Andrew and Timothy, he was translated to Constantinople, in the time of Constantius, the son of Constantinus Magnus.
[a] The particular care which this historian shows for having all his saints and martyrs authentically buried is, to attest the identity of their relics, which retained their miraculous virtue for ages, and thus achieved as many miracles after their decease as they had ever done while living. From the time when these worthies were buried till the accession of Constantius must have been upwards of 300years so that in the natural order of things, every particle of their bodies must have evaporated or mouldered away; but Manet post funera virtus!]
Paul,
"Being called of the Lord Jesus Christ himself after his assumption, and numbered in the catalogue of the apostles, began to preach the Gospel from Jerusalem, and travelled through Illyricum, Italy, and Spain. His epistles are extant at this day full of all heavenly wisdom. [This heavenly wisdom is a very particular sort of wisdom.] He was beheaded at Rome under Nero, the third kalends of July, so died a martyr, and lieth there, buried with Peter the apostle." - Thus far Dorotheus.
Though there can be no doubt of the existence of St. Paul, of his being entirely such a character as he is in the New Testament represented to have been, and that the epistles which go under his name are competently authentic, and such as without a most unphilosophical and futile litigiousness, no man would think of denying to have been written by him, excepting only a few immaterial interpolations; yet for the fact of his having been beheaded by order of Nero, or having suffered martyrdom in any way, we have no better authority than such as those who would have us believe it, would be ashamed to produce; that is, neither other nor better authority than that of Linus, the imaginary successor of the imaginary St. Peter in the bishopric of Rome, who would persuade us, that " after Paul's head was struck off by the sword of the executioner, it did with a loud and distinct voice utter forth, in Hebrew, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, while, instead of blood, it was nought but a stream of pure milk that flowed from his veins;" or that of Abdias, bishop of Babylon, who assures us, that when his head was cut off, instead of blood, ran milk, so that the milky [a] wave flowed all over the sword, and washed over the executioner's arm. [b]
In a church at Rome, at this day called 'At the three fountains,' the place where St. Paul was beheaded, they show the identical spot where the milk spouted forth from his apostolical arteries, and where, moreover, his head, after it had done preaching, took three jumps (to the honour of the holy Trinity), and at each spot on which it jumped there instantly struck up a spring of living water, which retains at this day a plain and distinct taste of milk. Of all which facts, Baronius, Mabillon, and all the gravest authors of the Roman Catholic communion, give us the most credible and unquestionable assurance. [c] [LN., Jean Mabillon, 1632 to 1707, he was a Benedictine monk. Baronies, Caesar, 1538 to 1607, he was an Italian cardinal, church historian of the Roman Catholic Church.]
It would be an injustice, however, to father such miraculous accounts exclusively on the writers of the Roman Catholic communion. We should not have even a single credible witness left to ascertain to us, that Christianity, in any shape or guise, continued in existence, or what it was, after it passed from the first to other hands, should we consider the most egregious, atrocious, impudent lying as a disparagement to the credibility of Christian historians. It is no fanatic or enthusiast who is himself deceived, but it is the calm, serious, calculating, most sincere, most accomplished, most veracious St. Augustin, who, in his 33rd Sermon addressed to his reverend brethren, fearlessly stakes his eternal salvation to the fact, which was as true as the Gospel, and for which there can be no doubt that he would as cheerfully as for the Gospel have suffered himself to be burned at the stake; that "he himself being at that time bishop of Hippo Regius, had preached the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to a whole nation of men and women that had no heads, but had their eyes in their bosoms; and in countries still more southerly, he preached to a nation among whom each individual had but one eye, and that situate in the middle of the forehead. [d] While the no less credible Eusebius assures us, that on some occasions the bodies of the martyrs who had been devoured by wild beasts, upon the beasts being strangled, were found alive in their stomachs, even after having been completely digested." [e]
[a] Flexis genibus, crucisque se signo muniens, cervicem praebuit percussori;]
[b] cujusgladio, desecto capite, pro sanguine lac cucurrit ita ut percussoris dextram lactea unda perfunderet. - Apostol. Hist. lib. 2, p. 455.]
[c] See the statement to the sense, not the letter, in Dr Middleton's Letter from Rome, p. 127.]
[d] Syntagma, p. 33]
[e] Lardner, Vol. 4, p. 91.] [LN., Lardner, Nathaniel, 1684 to 1768, an English theologian.]
Such statements, and ecclesiastical history is little better than a continued series of such, must surely convince every impartial inquirer, that the professors and preachers of Christianity, however a few honourable exceptions may have from time to time arisen, (as never was the society so bad, but that there must have been some among them not quite so bad as the worst), yet generally they were men who had no respect for truth, and no governing principle but a wicked 'esprit du corps,' which determined them 'a toute outrance' to impose on the credulity and ignorance of the vulgar.
That there is no difference between the Popish legends and the
canonical Acts of the Apostles.
The great difficulty is to draw the line between ecclesiastical history, and that which is truly apostolical; since it is hardly possible to fix on a legend so egregiously absurd, or a pretended miracle so monstrously ridiculous, in all that is absurd and ridiculous in Popish superstition, but that its original type and first draft shall be to be found even in our own canonical and inspired Scriptures.
After having laughed at St. Dunstan's taking the Devil by the nose with a pair of red-hot tongs, in the golden legend, we are made to laugh on the other side of the mouth, or rather to tremble and adore, at the account, which nobody may doubt, of the fate of the seven sons of Sceva the Jew, in conflict with whom it was the Devil who proved victorious, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. Nor was the wonder-working name of "Jesus, whom Paul preached," sufficient to lay him; for, said the Devil, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you? - Acts xix. 15.
In like manner we Protestants, who despise all the stories of miracles wrought by old rags, rotten bones, rusty nails, pocket-handkerchiefs, and aprons; that stand on no better authority than those monkish tales which our church has rejected, do bow with implicit faith to the miracles wrought by relics, which stand on the authority of those monkish tales which our church has not rejected; and it is to be believed, or at least not laughed at, under peril of being sent to jail, that "God wrought special miracles by the hand of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick, handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out from them."" - Acts 19-12.
Here again is an egregious atropism. - How could St. Paul have aprons? or what use could Jews have of pocket handkerchiefs? Are we to forget that their sleeves and beards answered all the purpose, and saved washing?
We are at full liberty to have our mirth out at the story of St. Bartholomew possessing the faculty of becoming invisible, and appearing and disappearing, as the cause of the gospel required, because that story rests only on the authority of the apostolic history of Abdias, a few pages further on than our canonical Acts of the Apostles has continued to make extracts from it; but had it been introduced, as many arguments would have been adduced by our clergy to justify it, and as great peril of incarceration incurred for snuffing at it, as at precisely the parallel story of St. Philip, who, in the canonical part of the book, is described as riding in the air, as picked up by the Spirit of the Lord in one place, and popped down in another (Acts 8-40).
That no such persons as the Twelve Apostles ever existed.
Thus, the glorious company of the apostles, having glistened upon the world's darkness like the sparks on a burnt rag, go out in like manner, leaving no more vestige of their existence, or of any effect of the miraculous powers with which they are believed to have been invested, than "the bird's wing on the air, or the pathway of the keel through the wave." No credible history whatever recognizes the existence of any one of them, or of any one result of all their stupendous labours and sufferings. The very criterion miracle itself, the most critical and important of all, that which if not true, leaves not so much as a possibility that any other should be so - the miracle of the gift of tongues, not only has no one particle of concurrent evidence in all the world to make it credible, or even to make it conceivable, but absolutely breaks down and gives way, and is attended by positive demonstration of its falsehood, even in the immediate context of the legend which relates it. In sequence, on the passage which instructs us that the assembled apostles were by the immediate power of God "enabled to speak all the languages of the earth in a moment of time," and thus unquestionably must have been rendered the most consummate and accomplished scholars that ever lived, we find Peter and John, the most distinguished of them, in the next scene, brought before the magistrates as notorious tricksters and cheats, and then and there availing themselves of their supernatural gift of eloquence to no better effect than, to show that they were unlearned and ignorant men, (Acts 4-13)
The Arabian Nights Entertainments are more consistent. Consult the records of history, and what has become of these most extraordinary personages that ever existed, if indeed they ever existed? Not only their names are nowhere to be found, but the mighty works which should have perpetuated their names have no records. The churches which they are said to have founded, have all shared the fate of Aladdin's castle: the nations which they converted, have all relapsed into idolatry; the light that was to lighten the Gentiles, only served to introduce the dark ages. Not only chronology and history withhold all countenance from the fabulous adventures of these fabulous personages, but geography itself recoils from the story; not only were there no such persons as themselves, and no such persons as the kings and potentates whom they are said to have baptized and converted, but no such countries, cities, and nations as many of those in which they are said to have achieved their mightiest works. Like their divine Master, their kingdoms were not of this world. Where, for instance, was the country of the Magicians, of the Amazons, of the Acephaii, the Monoculi, and the Salamanders? Where but in the same latitude with Brobdignag and Lilliputa?
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next Chapter 39. The HE Argument of Martyrdom