carefully weighed; because it happens to be the identical name of the very first written document upon the Evidences of the Christian Religion that was ever in existence, or rather, perhaps I should say, which is of prior existence to all other Christian writings, of which any knowledge has descended to us. It is the name of that selfsame original monkish legend, from which our three first Gospels, of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are so fraudulently and deceitfully foisted on the world as originals, are derived. This important fact, cannot by any means be too much obtruded and enforced, whether they will or will not, on the observance of our Gospel preachers, for the sake of letting them know that we are at home, and have found them out, and shall bring them to book, and will let them lye no longer. Among other proofs of this derivation, is one, which owing to an ambiguous translation, or a crafty or else ignorant mistake of the title of a book, for the sequence of the author's sense, sleeps unobserved in the first verse of the first chapter of St. Luke," Forasmuch as maný have taken in hand to set forth in order, a DECLARATION of those things which are most surely believed among us,* &c. &c. It seemed good to me also, &c." The proper rendering of which, is that "Since such a many persons have already destroyed the inviolability which in former times attached to the sacred documents of our faith, which none but the monks ought ever to have been acquainted with, and have audaciously made extracts and published compilations from the DIEGESIS, and have escaped the punishment they merited for such a desecration. God, I saw no reason why I shouldn't have a pull at it too ;" and thereupon follows the DIEGESIS, as abridged, compiled, and arranged in order ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. The irrefutable inference from the only conceivable sense of this admission, is, that St. Luke's Gospel is no original, that it was made from the Diegesis which had been long in the possession of that wicked knot of evangelical jugglers, the University of Alexandriat who had themselves (as I have elsewhere shown) imported the general makings of the story, from the Brahminical romances of CHRISHNA. Eusebius himself, expressly acknowledging that the sacred books used by the Egyptian Therapeuts, who were the founders of that university, the same as our Gospels and Epistles." At the time that Matthew, Mark, and Luke got their opportunity of making compilations from the DIEGESIS: and thus exposing the "mys were * Επειδηπερ πολλοι επεχείρησαν ανατάξασθαι ΔΙΗΓΗΣΙΝ, έδοξε κάμοι καθεξής σα γράψαι. +St. Mark himself is ridiculously said to have founded this university. So, when St. Bartholomew went to preach in India, he found them already in possession of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which Pantanus, the head of that university, brought from thence. No. 13.-Vol, 2. 2 D tery of the Kingdom," the monks from long security, had grown lazy and careless, and the DIEGESIS had got so terribly out of order; one telling the story one way, and one another; its different preachers flatly contradicting one another, some having it, that Christ was crucified, others that he was not crucified; so that the DIEGESIS itself began to grow into contempt, and to be suspected of containing no sort of a story that would hang together at all. Whereupon, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who were neither of them Jews nor had ever been in Judea, took in hand, among many others, to set the Diegesis in order, and to bring the gospel story into some sort of method, adhering as much as possible to so much of the original text of the Diegesis, as the people from often having it dinned into their ears (though they had never seen it,) were familiar with: and Matthew, Mark, and Luke, having been generally thought to have executed the task much better than the many others who had taken it in hand; their compilations were generally approved, and the rest were set aside as apocryphal; and hence are derived our gospels, so fraudulently and wickedly imposed on the world as original compositions. I calculate that these gospels were made about the beginning of the second century, or rather earlier than later than that time; and that the DIEGESIS, or original legend from which the gospels were extracted; was at that time about 800 or a thousand years old. It can be traced above the age of Homer. I didn't mean however to fall into a dissertation; my Diegesis will fully answer to the design which you proposed as a GOSPEL ACCORDING To Robert TAYLOR. I have so written, as to defy the criticism of the learned, and yet to be easily and perfectly intelligible to plain English readers. I have given always the best translation of all the Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Italian, and French quotations, which in such a work were absolutely necessary, in the body of the text itself, throwing the original into the margin; and in all cases, giving the authorities with most punctilious accuracy, in like manner at the bottom of the page; so that those who wish to pick up, or brush up their remembrance of the learned languages, may find Diegesis, independently of its historical information, an useful Classical Assistant on the Hamiltonian system. My guiding principle throughout the work has been utility. Hence are supplied tables in chronological arrangement of the successive and contemporary Fathers, Emperors, Heretics, Historians, Infidels, &c.; characters and specimens of their works. The text and merits of all the arguments that have ever been brought forward, and of all the documents that have ever been pretended, for the Christian Evidence; a distinct tracing of every article of the Christian faith, and of every sentiment, conceit, or idea, conveyed in the New Testament, not excepting one, to its original dovetailing into the niches of the Pagan idolatry, from which it was derived. In short, nothing is omitted. The reader will be able in a minute to find every document or argument that has ever been adduced, or he shall ever be likely to hear spoken of, as affording evidence to Christianity; and I have so exposed the sophistries and dissimulations of Lardner, Paley, Grotius, Doddridge, and all others, that no just man shall have a doubt left, but that they stand convicted as wilful and wicked DECEIVERS OF THE PEOPLE. This work is "solemn, serious, deliberate argument, addressed only to the minds of persons capable of reasoning and judging of such matters," and therefore, answers to the definition of that mode of attacking Christianity, which my Lord Tenterden declared upon my trial, that the law allowed. Yet for all that definition, and all the safety which so high authority might seem to guarantee, I know enough of the wolves, neither to believe them, nor to trust them, and should not venture to publish this work, or any other, after I have once escaped "From these lone walls, my day's eternal bound, These whitewashed walls, with slates and brickbats crown'd." I must get the work off-hand, or at least dispose of my property or responsibility on account of it, before February next, or I shall assuredly be in danger of imprisonment for life, or of being, what there is far more glory than fun in being, buried alive, for which my appetite is vastly on the decline. I doubt, however, whether last week's bright shining sun shone on a happier individual, on one more calmly and philosophically happy, or (trutinatis omnibus)* in a more perfect condition of absolute welfare, both of mind, body, and estate, than I am. Think then how I must enjoy and chuckle over the religious waggery of old Mother Doctor Doncaster, who claps her head into my little parlour, and runs away again, as if she was afraid I should bite her, with a deep compassionating sigh, "Ah, sir, I am sure you are not so happy now, as when you were preaching the Gospel at Midhurst." I was seized with such a violent fit of laughing, as she could not stand to witness; much less to hear out my rejoinder, God, ma'am, your Gospel preachers are on the safe side! D'ye lock a man up, and then reproach him for not being so happy as he would be, if he had his liberty?" 66 I have this week been enlivened and cheered (if I had any need of being so) by the most delightful visit of an unspeakably dear and valued friend, on whom I was amply revenged for his poetry, by making him endure an examination of my Diegesis. All our friends (and none more than I, as you know), consider his, as the pilot judgment among us; and he says, that Diegesis is just the work which the world really needed, and he vastly approves it. No man can have more than his proper share of mental perfections, my friend is best in the best; but I pray God forgive him his small-beer poetry. He brought me a delightful letter from one of my most constant and faithful Areopagites, which I keep as a treat, for the pleasure of owing an * All things being weighed. answer to it. His approbation of my prose was the more candid and ingenuous, inasmuch as it was not suborned by my approbation of his verse. Most truly your's, His Majesty's Apartments, ROBERT TAylor. P. S.-That cowardly, forging Christian thief, Edward B. Singley, who forged the petition to Parliament in my name, and who writes letters to insult respectable persons-clergymen and others-as coming from me, and signed with my name, continues still his indefatigable annoyances. What possible means of redress or protection have I from such a mode of hostility as this? I have been actually threatened with personal retaliation for insulting letters which this blackguard has written in my name, to persons I never heard of. These are their Christian devices! These things being done by Christians-and as I shrewdly suspect this Edward B. Singley to be a Christian priest-in our own knowledge and experience, what sort of fair play may we guess had the infidels, of former times, to look for from Christian hands? I am obliged to refuse all letters that are not post paid. "In the name of God, One in his Essence, and Three in his Persons." THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, As preached by himself. Now first rendered into English from a Version of an Arabian Manuscript, preserved in the Royal Library at Paris. By ROBERT TAYLOR, A.B. Respectfully and gratefully presented to RICHARD Carlile. (Concluded from p. 384.) CHAPTER XXVIII.-A FUNERAL ORATION DELIVERED BY CHRIST. 1. O death, how dost thou render all science fleeting, what tears and wailings dost thou cause. 2. But after all, God my father, He it is, who gave thee this power. 3. For the transgression of Adam, and of Eve his wife, do men die, nor does death spare even one. 4. To no man however does it happen, or is it brought upon him but by the commandment of my father. 5. There have indeed been men who lived nine hundred years, but they died; yea, though some lived yet longer, they bowed at last to the same fate, nor was there one of them who ever said I have not tasted death. 6. For the Lord never brings in the same punishment but once, when it pleased my father to send it upon man. 7. And in the same moment, when Death coming forth, sees the commandment coming to him from heaven, he says, "I will go against him disturbance." 8. Then instantly the rush is made upon his soul, and Death has dominion over it, dealing with it after his own pleasure. 9. For because Adam did not obey the will of my father, but transgressed his commandment; my father being provoked to wrath, sentenced him to death, and thus Death entered into the world. 10. But if Adam had kept the commandment of my father, death would never have befallen him. 11. Think ye now that I cannot ask of my good father, to send a fiery chariot, and take the body of my father Joseph, and carry it to the place of rest to dwell with spirits? 12. But it was on account of the prevarication of Adam, that this calamity and violence of death came down upon the whole human race. 13. And this is the cause why it behoveth me, according to the flesh, to die, for my own work whom I have created, that they may attain grace. Paul in his 15th to the Corinthians, assumes this doctrine of the entailed sin of Adam, which is no where intimated in the Old Testament, but evidently derived from this Gospel of Christ, which is that which he asserts that he had preached. CHAPTER XXIX. 1. And when I had spoken these things, I embraced the body of my father Joseph, and wept over it. 2. And they opened the door of the sepulchre, and placed his body in it, by the side of the body of his father Jacob. 3. And when he died, he had completed a hundred and eleven years. 4. He never had the tooth-ache, nor was the clearness of his sight dimmed, nor was his stature bent, nor his strength diminished. 5. But he followed the trade of a carpenter to the last day of his life. 6. And that day was the six and twentieth of the month Abib." CHAPTER XXX. 1. But we Apostles, when we heard these things from our Saviour, arose delighted, and falling prostrate in honour to him, we said, 2. O our Saviour, shew us thy grace, now indeed have we heard the word of life. 8. Yet we wonder, O our Saviour, at the fate of Enoch and Elias, who never died at all. 4. For they inhabit the seat of the just even unto this day, and their bodies have not seen corruption. - Matthew, in contradiction to Luke, adheres to this text. Here the Epitome of this Gospel, as handed down by Isidore, ended.. |