having been concerned in the getting up of the spell, which is called the spell, or Gospel according to St. Matthew. This need not be more effectually done, than by referring to the list of the various and contradictory titles that the spell has borne, before its final settlement and succession to our times, under the title which now it bears. 66 * A late learned Bishop of London, now with Jesus," assures us that St. Jerom never makes the Gospel of Matthew to have been the current title of that Gospel. Jerom, Theodoret, Irenæus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Eusebius, and others, among the Fathers-Beausobre, Jones, Sandius, Reynolds, among the most renowned of modern Biblical scholars, authenticate the titles of 1. The Gospel according to the Hebrews. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Twelve Apostles. ⚫ Nazarenes. Encratiles. Egyptians. Titjan. St. James. St. Peter. St. Matthew; to which I can add, the Gospel according to the 21st of September ; which is St. Matthew's day, and the Gospel according to God knows who; but certainly never was it the Gospel according to reason. "The uncertainty persons were under us to the author," says the highest authority I could appeal to on this subject, the great Jones,*" and the various denominations of heretics who made use of it, occasioned its having different titles." But that's all settled now you know, and my scowling masters of the Holy Ghost shop, are cock sure, that it's inspired. And so I s'pose it is, or they'll set their Rev. Dr. John Pye Smith at me, and beliar and befool me till all the Syntagmas" and "Diegeses" should be impotent to save my reputation, either as scholar or a man. Well then, we're "looking unto Jesus."... "And when he was come down from the mountain." Be sure now, we're going to have another miracle, for here's another lo and behold. o h 33 "Kneeled "Behold, there came a leper and worshipped him." down to him," says Mark. Fell on his face," says Luke. 1. How came the leper to know him? 2. How came the leper to worship, and kneel, and fall down by him 3.0% "Method of settling the Canon," part 2, chap. 2.-Reynold's Defence, page 27. 3. How came the leper to have such a much btter opinion of his abilities than of his disposition? 4. How came Jesus to put forth his hand, when he should have kept it in his breeches pocket? 5. How came Jesus to touch the man? 6. How came Jesus to tell the man to say nothing about it? 7. How came we to know any thing about it, if the man did as he was told? 8. How came Jesus to cure the man for nothing, and then send him to the priest to pay for it? 9. How came Jesus to accept to himself the worship that was due to God only? 10 How came Jesus and the priests to be on such terms of understanding, that he was to work miracles, and they to be paid for them? That was, he to have the worship, and they to have the money. 11. What difference could it make to the patient, whether he paid the apprentice or the master for his cure? 12. How much cheaper was the cure than he might have had it of a modern quack. When he had to pay to the priest a matter of 101. 6s. 3d. for this little bit of a miracle? That is, the worth of two game-fowl, two he-lambs, an ewe, three-tenth deals of fine flour, (which, whatever sort of deal it was, we may be sure was a good deal,) and a jar or log of oil. So, ye see, it was not without reason that the leper had his doubts as to Jesus's disposition to do him a kindness. He could, if he would, to be sure; but had the leper been a poor man, he had better died of his complaint, than run up such a bill with the doctor. And, 13. How.comes it that this miracle of curing the leper, which is the first miracle which Matthew's Gospel distinctly relates of Christ, is precisely in the same arrangement, the same miracle, which the Bhagavat Pourana relates of Chrishna, the God of India, recorded upwards of fourteen hundred years before the Christian Christ is pretended to have existed? These are thirteen questions, which a man may ask; and yet you'd not find a Christian minister any where, who would not run away from you as if the devil was running afrer him, if you were to cry "Stop there, your reverence, and clear the matter up a little bit." They have indeed put into the mouth of their God Almighty the fair-play challenge-" Come now, and let us reason together." But let a man but call on them to reason with him, they'd soon let him know that they'd see him damned first. We talk of the dark age of popery, and of popish priestcraft, shutting the gates of knowledge on mankind. But should a man venture to ask a question, on which he might believe his soul depended, of any Protestant preacher, he'd soon find what sort of No. 23. Vol. 4. 3 A gates would be shut on him. There are 344 nails in a gate which I know at Oakham. Well, the first miracle which Jesus had performed, were performed to serve a priest: the next which he tried at, was to serve a soldier. The church and the army, you know, take care to be served first. In this affair the centurion's servant, who lay at home "sick of the palsy, grievously tormented," seems to have had as little to do with the miracle, as the miracle had to do with him. He was never consulted about it; but by the drollest setting of the saddle on the wrong horse that ever was, the condition of his cure was made to depend on his master's believing, so that one of them was to have the faith, and the other the salvation. The captain, and the what-dye-call-him, bandy compliments with each other, on their respective degrees of authority, with this advantage on the captain's side, that the miraclemonger, who confesses that he had not where to lay his head," thought that a good opportunity for getting his head into the captain's quarters. "I will come and heal him," says Jesus; the devil doubt ye, says the captain. But I'll take care ye don't come into my house. If the powers of nature are under your authority, they will obey you as my servants obey me. The word Sir, the word of command will do, REAR RANK, TAKE OPEN ORDER! MARCH! or you'll never catch my man marching in your regiment." When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and making the best excuse he could for the mortification he had received, he said to them that followed, "Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great impudence, no, not in Israel." There can be no doubt that αναίδειαν, and not πιστιν, is the proper Greek work in this text; and not faith, but impudence is the literal rendering of that word. 66 The contradiction between Matthew and Luke's telling of the story is ludicrously striking. Matthew has it, that the centurion came unto Jesus; Luke, that he sent unto him. Matthew, that he wished Jesus not to come; Luke, that he sent beseeching him that he would come. If, however, this critical emendation be rejected, and faith be to stand its ground, it must evidently be understood ironically, as implying no faith at all: for certainly the centurion had none; and, as Jesus had too gcod reason to know, very little hospitality. The captain was too genteel to have any faith; and too YORK to suffer Jesus and his vagabonds to come on his premises. He smelt the basket, and it was no go. So our blessed Saviour was fain to put himself to lodge upon Mrs. Fish, a distant relation, that was his man Peter's wife's mother, who, as she happened to be laid up with a fever, could not turn him out, nor play him off the card the captain had dealt him, by insisting on having the cure performed at the least possible expense. He came the arose and ministered unto them." "and touched her hand, and the fever left her; and Ministered, that is, as we have before seen, served up a dinner. And pray observe “ministered unto them;" not unto him merely, but unto them. For here was not only the Doctor to be entertained, but the whole hungry gang of his followers were to have a finger in the old woman's pie. Captain York, you see, had been up to this scheme, and had come it with a sort of No! no! Doctor Jesus. If you please, I'l take the medicine home in my pocket: you've only to give me the directions; but no touch. You touch, me no touch: Doctor Touch'em. But poor Mrs. Fish was cut for the simples; and instead of a sixpenny-box of pills, or a saline draught that would have done her quite as much good, she had to feed a regiment. The tale continues-When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils; and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick. Alas! so sick a state of brain sits on the believing idiots of salvation, that though the trick and villainy of it were declared, avowed, acknowledged, and set before their eyes in characters as huge as the Monument of London, they wouldn't see it. By this right hand, Sirs, I am persuaded that no powers of human imagination could imagine a tale so monstrous, a lie so glaring, or a conceit so mad as that it would not have done well enough for gospel. I'll pit them the story of Aladdin and his Lamp, of Cinderella and the Glass-Slipper, or the History of the Life and Adventures of Jack the Giant-Killer, or of the Death and Burial of Poor Cock-Robin; and undertake to prove that either of those stories is quite as probable, and a great deal better told, than the history of poor cock-(a cough). After what day's business? They brought The devil they Is there now a believer of the Gospel in the world, who has ever shown so much fair play to his own wits, as when he has read, "when the even was come," to ask, in the name of God Almighty now, what evening? When? where? how? why in the evening? unto him many that were possessed with devils." did; and why must the devils be brought unto him? And why bring the devils there? And who in the devil's name were the devils? And what sort of folks were they who had the devils in them? And were the devils in their brains, or running up and down their? (coughing.) "And he cast out the spirits with his word." Did he? and, What occasion for a word about it? and Why his particular word? and How came the devils to know the word they were to go out at? and What was the word? 3 ▲ 2 Was it-Open Sesame ? Was it-Talitha Cumi? Was it-Abracadabra ? Was it-Hi Presto? Was it-Cock-o-lorum? Was it-A Dose of Glauber's Salts? And “ he healed all that were sick”παντας τους κάκως εχοντας all that were poorly is the text, not quite so bad as sick. And parvo, again, he doctored them is the word; and whatever was the matter with them, why was it necessary that they should be brought to him? Why not send them their cures by message, in the way the soldier got his, and trust 'em for the payment? and, Where was it that they were brought to? Now, Sirs, let us abjure our reason altogether, renounce the faculty of connecting one idea with another, and be the veriest fools that folly itself can make us; and I admit, that nothing can be more solemn, more sacred, more serious, and I dare say nothing more easily admitting of a calm and philosophical and dignified explanation into a perfect compatibility with the dictates of enlightened reason, than the sacred words which I have read from this most blessed Gospel. "For ever, O Lord, thy word is truth, in heaven." But if it is? The tale we've got on earth reads so damnably like a leaf out of the Newgate Calendar; the adventures of a rascal that was hanged for swindling just at the place where he turns quack doctor, persuades an old woman that he can cure diseases with a touch, contrives to get his beef and mutton at her expense, and then very gratefully whistles up the rest of the gang, turns Mother Fish and fish and all into the streets, and sets up his pestle and mortar, with "DR. GIMBLET, SURGEON, APOTHECARY, AND MAN-MIDWIFE" over her shop; that really, if God Almighty did not mean his Gospel for a hoax, the sin of our infidelity must lie at his door, for not letting us know what he did mean. But, mark ye, what a comfortable salvo for our infidel consciences, the Gospel itself sticks upon this precious bit of thaumaturgy! And why shouldn't we, my brethren, draw comfort from the Gospel, as well as the rest of 'em. And because they choose to be such fools as to believe these things themselves, with most intolerant and audacious falsehood will they give the lie to their own Gospel, fly in the teeth of its most express statements, and insist on't that it was written that it might be believed: where the text has it here, and twenty-sevën |