cheer of mind which I here enjoy, as if 'twere in their own cause that I was thus a martyr. None of the prisoners, (and none do they visit but as friends and benefactors) are more pleased with their attentions than I. To their never failing inquiry whether I have any cause of complaint, I have never yet been able to find any other answer than, "Only the old grievance, gentlemen, Mr. Orridge won't let me out, I have nothing else to quarrel about," and I am generally answered with as good natured and encouraging an entendre, "Ah, well, you must forget and forgive that, and he'll not persist in it much longer." Of Mr. Bonney, I hear from all quarters, and my own eyes and experience ratify what I hear, that he is goodness itself personified;

"A man he is, to all the country dear."

And I am sure that neither you nor I could ever wish a shilling taken from his income. Whatever he preaches, he must be a very dangerous preacher, because it would indeed "prevail with double sway;" it would cost even your strength of stubborn good sense, the devil's own tussel at it, to keep resistance on its legs against the force of some two or three palpable sophistications, shot at the heart, by such enchanted archery. Such men as these are the most formidable enemies of truth and reason, that the whole world could furnish forth; these are the very giants of superstition, that hide and belie her native ugliness, enwrap her iron fetters in wreaths of velvet; burnish deceit, and make imposture amiable. Give our cause such clergy to contend with, as the chaplain of this gaol, or the Reverend Vicar of the parish, your cursing Ash-Wednesday clergy, your proud and haughty priests who "mince to set a foot upon the ground for pride and haughtiness," who were never guilty of going about to make any body love 'em, who levy their tythes to the utmost farthing, and who only care to have a congregation to hear them, of those who depend in some way or other on their patronage, or tremble at their power.

Such a God-a'mighty is, as I understand, doing our business in Jerusalem, and once, (for I shall take care that it shall be no more than once) attempted to play off his Godhead upon me, I shall let him know I like the devil better. A clergyman perfectly hated by all parties, with not any one known act of kindness or humanity shown to any one of his parishioners upon record, to redeem the offensiveness of a pomp of carriage, an hauteur of frown, and arrogance of more than human dignity, that would outdo the vanity of Pope Hildebrand, is the very man to give mankind their freedom.

He actually circulates our tracts for us, and is a walking sarcasm on the egregious tale of the meek and holy Jesus. He's a living edition of ECCE HOMO, known and read of all men. Those who never knew great A from a bull's foot, will read me off, the

difference between the rector of the parish, and any man that the world would not be the better for being rid of, without schooling.

But the whirl of universal hypocrisy, the eternal oscillation between deceiving and being deceived, is kept up in Jerusalem beyond the power of any degree of intellect in the place, to break the spell. My Lord's reverend illegitimate, believes himself popular, because he is always attended by full congregations. The clue however to the magic is, that the congregation dare not desert him. Their names are mostly on my Lord's rent-roll. and none would keep his place in my Lord's good graces who was not found in his place in my Lord's Jack's gospel-shop. When the rector is expected, (which they all thank God is very seldom) the farming-louts fluck together, and grin and tip the wink to each other, at the consciousness of the common hypocrisy. -Why what brings you here to day? is retorted on, with a why the same as brings you.

But it is a most important fact, and due to the observance of historical fidelity, to state, that these reverend Hildebrands of the church, are entirely of the Evangelical faction. It is the most sanctified of all, that are the proudest of all, and by the gnomon of that never varying law of diametrical contraries, which is the gauge of religious profession and religious practice throughout the world, so surely, as you find the man, the most arrogant, swelling pompous mass of conceit, bursting at the inflations of his own vanity, and festering in the venom of his contempt for his fellow creatures, shall you find the doctrine, all about the necessity of walking humbly with your God, of kissing the dust at his footstool, and working out your own salvation on such terms of beggarly meanness, of villainous shirking, and rascal-rope's-end gallows cowardice, that any man who had but the pluck of a pigeon, would run all hazards of damnation, rather than brook the insult of their gospel. Charles the Second is said to have remarked to Lord Lauderdale, upon hearing something of this sort, that "it was no religion for a gentleman." 1 remain, your's truly, ROBERT TAYLOR.

Oakham, October 26th, 1828.

[The following Paper on the Existence of Jesus Christ, &c. is from a gentleman of some literary and academical note in America. R. C.]

To the Editor of the National Gazette, Philadelphia. THE morality of the New Testament has been greatly vaunted, without much reason, as we shall see. Whether any such person as Jesus Christ ever lived, is a very dubious question. We have two authentic writers of Jewish history of their own times, Philo Judæus, and Josephus. The first

of these was, undoubtedly, contemporary with Jesus Christ, if, indeed, Jesus Christ ever lived at all. About this, there can be no dispute. But Philo Judæus never mentions any such person, or any of the miraculous facts contained in the four gospels: although, in the year of our Christian Æra 42, reckoning from the birth of Christ, Philo, then about 60, was sent to Rome as the apologist of the Jews. Jesus Christ is now supposed to have suffered death in the 33d year of his age: but Irenæus, one of the most antient of the fathers, says he died at 50. If so, Josephus as well as Philo, must have been his cotemporary, living in Jerusalem at the same time. But, except in a short passage, now universally acknowledged to be a christian forgery, no mention is made of Jesus Christ by Josephus. He is not mentioned or noticed by any contempory writer. The reveries, now forgotten, of the Rev. J. Jones, having hardly lived, are long since dead. All the wonderful accounts told of Jesus in the gospels, were ut terly unknown in every other part of the known world; nor is one of the four evangelists mentioned or cited by name, as the authors of the gospels ascribed to them, till about 190 years after the Christian Era, by Irenæus; nor is any clear account given of the 58 spurious gospels and forged writings extant in the early ages of the church; nor why these four should be selected from among the mass, and adopted as authentic, and 54 rejected. That the Christians existed as a sect in the time of the younger Pliny and of Tacitus, there can be no doubt; although the passage mentioning them in Pliny's letters, is found in one copy only, and is not acknowledged as ge nuine by the German theologians. It is probable that some obscure imposture, like Eliz. Canning, or the Cock-Lane Ghost of London, might have started up, and been suppressed by the police of Jerusalem; but no person of the name of Jesus Christ was ever known there, worthy the dig nity of history.

The utter silence of Philo and Josephus is decisive against the whole story. They were Jews; men of learning; historians; they lived in the place, at the time; they wrote the accounts of, and they were alive to the passing transactions of their own day; the facts could not have taken place without their knowledge; a person so remarkable must have been known to, or heard of by them; had he lived and died, as the gospel wri ters relate, whether Philo and Josephus had believed or disbelieved, they must have mentioned him. But neither they, or any other known writer of credit, near to the times, take any notice of his existence.

I say known writer of credit; for who was Matthew? No one knows. In what language did he write, when, and where? No one can tell. Is the gospel attributed to him, the gospel of the Ebionites and Corinthians? This point is disputed. If he wrote as is said, in Hebrew, who translated him, when, where? No one knows, or pretends to know. Are the two first chapters of Matthew's gospel spurious or genuine? Epiphaneus, Jerome, and others of the fathers, say spurious; so say the learned among the Unitarian Christians; but who can say any thing about it on conclusive evidence? All is darkness, doubt and uncertainty. I refer to Jones, Lardner, Christian writers; who will furnish the reader with all the Christian references and authorities, for all my assertions. They are, and well they may be, regarded as good and faithful Christians; and able, learned, and unexceptionable compilers. I have access to the original works referred to; I challenge the clergy, (those at least, who are compe tent in point of learning) to the controversy. I am not willing to waste my time, by contending with the ignorant as well as the bigoted.

The questions I ask about Matthew, I ask also respecting Mark, Luke, and Jolin. What contemporary author mentions or acknowledges them as

The first author

the writers of the gospels attributed to them? Not one. who names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in this respect, is Irenæus, in his book against Heresies, L. 3. ch. 1. Many spurious accounts (that is accounts now acknowledged so to be) had been published concerning Jesus, (Christ is not a proper name, but a Greek title signifying anointed ;) but before Irenæus, these evangelists do not appear to have been named as the authors. Irenæus, by common consent of all ecclesiastical authorities, died 202, after Christ. Lardner thinks, that his five books against heresies were not published so early as 178. Tillemont and Massuet think the more probable date of this publication was 192, after Christ; about the latter end of the time of Elutherus. See the London edition of Dr. Lardner's works, in 12 volumes, 1788, V. 2. p. 154 to 159. There is, therefore, no evidence whatever, that these evangelists wrote any of the gospels ascribed to them, earlier than about 200 years after the Christian Era; for the citations in authors previous to that time, may have been taken, as many of them are known to be, from other similar accounts, not now received as genuine, though standing upon as good ground as those that are now, for some unknown reason, received as of superior authority. The reasons assigned by Irenæus himself, why there should be four gospels, and no more, are curious. It is cited by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, L. 5. ch. 8: and in Grabe's Spicilegium, p.

221:

"Nor can there be more, or fewer gospels than these. For as there are four regions of the world in which we live, and four catholic spirits, and the gospel is the pillar and the foundation of the church, and the spirit of life, in like manner was it fit that it should have four pillars, breathing on all sides, incorruption, and refreshing mankind."

Upon such strange and imperfect evidence, for the first time, near 200 years after the transactions, by a blockhead and ideot like Irenæus, does the very existence of Jesus Christ rest. A person utterly unknown to Philo and Josephus, two honest and learned men, who are the only authors of the Jewish transactions of that time, in Jerusalem, who lived there, and must have known Jesus Christ, and his doings, if he had ever existed as he is now said to have done; and who make not the slightest mention of his life, his death, or his deeds! Nor could Jesus himself write, or he would have committed to writing some of his precepts for the use of his disciples. Some obscure enthusiast, in some low and despicable quarter of the city, might have lived and preached to a few miserable disciples; but even this is hardly possible, else he would have been noticed among the offenders put to death, as a false Messiah. As to his disciples, they were acknowledged to have been the vilest of rascals, omni requitia requiores.

Charles the Ist, of England, succeeded to the throne in 1628, two hundred years ago. Suppose that now, for the first time, a despicable ideot, like Irenæus, should say that certain accounts of a man endued with miraculous power, who lived in London in 1628, and worked miracles there, were published by Matthew Bay, Mark Randall, Luke Faust, and John Johnson, (persons not heard of before, or mentioned by any writer of the time,) of something miraculous that happened under Charles 1st; what credit ought to be ascribed at such a distance of time, to such a narration? Yet, is this the kind of evidence on which Christianity is founded; and this is the story that so many base and unprincipled swindlers live by asserting, teaching, and propagating.

This is the story that so many men solemnly declare before God, they are preternaturally moved by the Holy Ghost, to preach and propagate! Men whose conduct is notoriously regulated by their salaries of from 1 to 4000 dollars a year in this country; drawn from the pockets of the credu

lous, the timid, the time serving, and the ignorant, who willingly support these impostures in aristocratic idleness. This is the morality that the popularity hunting penner of bigotted paragraphs, Mr. Walsh, and his clerical correspondent, would recommend to their readers. If these intolerant revilers do not know that the account I have given is a true and fair one, more shame for them; they ought to know it, and I challenge them to the controversy-I dare them to the discussion. If they shrink from it, they have no reason to object that the revilings of the godly against infi delity, should be retorted on them: if they do accept this challenge, they shall be treated in the language proper to be used towards gentlemen, they shall be furnished with faithful and accurate quotations of authorities from the actual books used, and cited, and, with what I sincerely deem fair and honest argument, adapted, not for oratory, but truth; for I have no other interest to serve, and I have no other motive or object.

OF THE MORALITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

The Morality of the Gospel is very objectionable, as appears in the actions and doctrines of Jesus and his Apostles,

Instances of harsh language toward parents and relations; exhortations to leave them, and cut off ali connexion with them, for the sake of opinions which any man who behaves kindly and mildly in his domestic relations, may maintain not the less firmly on that account. Matt, xix. 29; Mark iii. 32; Mark x. 29; Luke viii. 19; Luke xiv. 26; John ii. 3. I entreat of the reader to peruse these texts, and ask himself whether he would ap prove this conduct in his own children. In the same unfeeling spirit is Matt. viii. 21, 22; Luke ix. 61.

Instances of gross and vulgar abuse of the Pharisees and others, the prevailing and literary sect of the Jews; calculated to excite the hatred and violence of the common people against them, in cases where reason and argument were called for, and where Jesus was clearly in the wrong. Matt. xvi. 1. 4; Matt. xxiii. the whole chapter; Mark xii. 38. 40; Luke xi. 37 to the end; John viii. 44. Whoever will carefully peruse these passages will find it difficult to discover how the revilings of Jesus Christ applied to the

persons or cases.

Instances of violent assault, and breach of the peace, Matt. xxi. 12; Luke xix. 45.

Instances of his attempts to form a party among the pupalace, Matt. xxi. 9, &c.; Mark xix. 10, &c.; Luke xix. 38, &c. What but riot and sedition can it be called, to enter publicly into Jerusalem, while his disciples were exciting the multitude, who followed him to hail him as KING!

Instances of his abuse of riches, and of rich men; exciting the animosity of the poor against the rich, merely for being rich, and treating riches as criminal. Matt. v. 4; Matt. xix. 23, 24; Mark xii. 44; Mark. x. 21; Luke xvi. throughout; Luke xviii. 22. Yet when his own luxurious enjoyment was in question, he made no scruple to prefer himself to the poor, Matt. xxvi. 10.

Instance of prevarication, or rather of direct and positive falsehood, John vii. 8. Go ye up unto this feast; I go not up yet, unto this feast.

But when his brethren, whom he wished to mislead, were gone, then went he also up unto the feast. The word yet is an orthodox interpolation, (a forgery) to get rid of the difficulty, and to soften down a falsehood into a prevarication. Mills, Leusden, and many others, have it saw, not yet, cram ming the other and the true reading in the notes: but the reading that rests upon the best evidence of ancient manuscripts, is 8k, "I shall not go;"