and confiftent friend to truth would wish to fee withheld. For the temporary inconveniences which may arife from allowing free scope to the artifices of fophiftry, the mistakes of ignorance, and the mifrepresentations and infults of malevolence, are of no moment, when weighed against the ferious and fatal mischiefs of persecution. The coercive fuppreffion of free inquiry can only be favourable to error and fuperftition. Truth is to be discovered by unrestrained investigation alone. And if, among the multitude of writers whom unbounded freedom of research may call forth, fome should appear, who, for want of ability, learning, or honesty, are incompetent to the undertaking, their deficiencies will foon be discovered, and their works will be configned to the oblivion which they merit.

Few pieces, fince the days of Woolston, have afforded more occafion for the exercise of the public indulgence, than these strictures upon the New Testament. The author, a man, confefsedly, and evidently, of no erudition, formerly, as the tranflator reports, an eminent filk-manufacturer in Lyons, after having lived near fifty years without examining the grounds of the religion he professed, undertakes the arduous task of overturning the Christian faith. As might be expected from an adventurer thus prepared and qualified, he neither enters into philofophical disquifitions on the possibility, or the probability, of fupernatural communications from heaven, or on the nature and degree of the evidence which may be necessary to authenticate such pretenfions; nor engages in a regular examination of the validity of the historical testimony brought in support of Chriftianity; but imagines he has completed his design, when in a cursory view of the contents of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, he has pointed out a few seeming, or inconfiderable defects and inconfiftencies. And even this poor design he executes in a manner, which discovers more ignorance and perverseness than ingenuity. This censure will be fully juftified, in the opinion of every candid reader, by the following brief extracts.

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Page 29. 'Matt. vi. 12. Forgive us our fins: for we alfo forgive every one that is indebted to us. I hope Luke practised this: but being a physician, it is likely he received his fees in ready money, and in course had no debtors. The governors of the church, not being physicians, or collectors for the benefit of others, have wifely rejected both; substituting- And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us."

Page 41. Mark v. 30. Jesus immediately knowing in himfelf that virtue had gone out of him. (If virtue had gone out at all, I should suppose it went out of his garment: but I do not see what virtue had to do in the affair if the obtained her cure as a reward for her faith."

Page 177. • Matt. xxvii. 53. And the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of

faints which flept, arose, and came out of the graves after his refurrection, (that was polite) and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. (After which, we may suppose, they peaceably retired again to their respective graves, as we hear no more of them.')

Page 187. • Mark xvi. 5. And entering into the fepulchre, they faw a young man fitting on the right fide, clothed in a long white garment, and they were affrighted. (Mary Magdalene affrighted by a handfome young man,')

Page 365. • Acts xxiv. 26. Of Felix, it is faid, he hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he fent for him the oftener, and communed with him. But after two years, Porcius Festus came into Felix' room, and Felix willing to fhew the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound.' Poor Paul, it is certain, could not preach himself our of bonds: but it is not, I think, quite fo certain that a Roman governor, the gallant Felix who kept the gay Drufilla, should expect a bribe from a poor tent-maker. But, upon recollection, this poor tent-maker had, by the agency of his pupil, messenger, companion and friend Titus, collected from the Macedonians, Corinthians, &c. confiderable sums for the poor brethren at Jerufalem, from whence he was hurried so suddenly, that poffibly he had not time to distribute the money, and in course his pockets were well lined; this fortunate circumstance, probably obtained the favour of the centurion his guard; and enabled him, during two years, to live at Rome in his own hired house.'

It is wholly unnecessary to dwell longer upon a work, which is too contemptible either to afford the adverfaries of Chriftianity any cause of triumph, or its advocates any ground of apprehenfion.

ART. XXII.

Strictures upon Primitive Chriftianity, by the Rev. Dr. Knowles, Prebendary of Ely; as alfo upon the theological and polemical Writings of the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of St. David's, the Rev. Dr. Priestley, and the late Rev. Mr. Badsock. By Edward Hamilton, Esq. Part the First. 8vo. 374 pages. Pr. 6s. in boards. Johnfon. 1790.

THIS writer boldly arrests the public attention with an ̔Ευρηκα. He has himself, as he supposes, been fo fortunate as to make a grand discovery; and he is "impatiently defirous that others should partake of the fatisfaction." The world has too often been imposed upon by such pretenfions, to allow them implicit credit; but it is too much interested in the real advancement of knowledge, not to give every writer a fair hearing.

First appearances, it must be confefsed, awaken a strong fufpicion that our author, as has often happened to projectors, has fome way or other imposed upon himself. It is, at first fight, very improbable that the religion of Jesus should be true, and, at the fame time, the books which record that religion be spurious. Yet, this is the strange notion which our author undertakes undertakes to maintain. To prepare the way for the full de-monstration of his paradoxical theorem, which we are given to expect in the fecond part of the work now preparing for the prefs, Mr. H. in this volume, attempts to afcertain the tenets of the first converts to the divine mission of Jesus, the Ebionites.

In a preliminary difquifition, he undertakes to prove, that the Ebionites (under which appellation he includes all the Jewish believers, and alfo all those Gentile believers who, like the Jews, conformed to the law of Mofcs) thought Jesus to be only a mere man; that they did not believe him to be the Meffiah, or the anointed, foretold by the Jewish prophets; and that they made little account of the books of the New Teftament, excepting only the Gospel of Mark, which was originally the fame as the Gospel of Peter, or that according to the Hebrews, but has undergone great interpolation. He then proceeds to give an account of the principal fects which sprang up among chriftians in the first three centuries, and to maintain, that all but the Ebionites were heretics.

On the ground of the fingular opinions boldly afferted, and in our judgment feebly fupported, in this preliminary differtation, Mr. H. examines the writings of the principal modern controverfialists who have written concerning the perfon of Christ. The chief purport of his remarks upon Dr. Knowles is, to vindicate Dr. Lardner from the charge, that he had scarcely, produced a paflage from the Fathers favourable to the fcripture-doctrine of the divinity of Chrift. Bishop Horsley, Mr. Badcock, and Dr. Priestley, being equally ignorant of our author's great discovery concerning the Ebionites, fall alike under his cenfure, for the inaccuracy of their accounts of the first herefies, and for their credulity in admitting the general authenticity of the books of the New Testament, and of the early chriftian Fathers. They are alfo charged with giving the paflages they quote, incompletely, and rendering them in a fort of free verfion, which enables them to put their own fenfe upon the author's words. In the course of his ftrictures on the Bishop of St. Davids' tracts, our author maintains, that no Jewish Gnoftic ever existed; that none of the Jewish believers acknowledged the diftinct perfonality of the Holy Spirit, or the miraculous conception; and that his lordship, in common with Dr. Prieftley, is chargeable with Sabellianiím. Dr. P. he cenfures for ranking Marcellus with the Unitarians, and for afierting, that the Arians holding that Jefus Christ had no intelligent human foul, was a novelty. Mr. Badcock he accufes, not only of having mis-tranflated many paffages of the Fathers, but with having egregioufly mifreprefented the letters which paffed between Jerom and Auguftine. Lastly, he advifes the modern Unitarians to defert their ground of scriptural authority

authority as untenable, and fairly to acknowledge, that the paffages which affert the pre-existence and divine nature of Chrift, are interpolations.

We shall give Mr. H.'s summary of the fingular doctrine of this book in his own words:

From these sheets it very clearly appears, that the Nazarenes and the Ebionites held the same fentiment concerning Jesus, as the believing Hebrews, namely, that he was an upright Man without any union of deity and that he was not the promised Meffiah. Now as the first followers of Jesus were nick-named, by the unbelieving Hebrews, Nazarenes, as being the followers of a Man of mean parentage, an inhabitant of the village of Nazareth: and as they are allowed by the Christian Fathers themselves, together with their primitive nick-name among the unbelieving Hebrews, to have retained their primitive faith without any adul'teration, can it reasonably be doubted, but that this faith is the true faith, which should be embraced by all lovers of truth, as being that which was delivered by Jesus to his apostles, and by them taught to the rest of mankind. This follows even from the principles of the Fathers themselves, who, with great propriety, maintained against the propounders of herefies continually springing up, that that which was novel, must neceffarily be falfe; and of course that that sentiment which was entertained by the primitive or first followers, must be the true faith. And what this faith was, both with regard to belief and practice, is evident from the controversy between Jerome and Auguftine lately laid before the readers. Such poor believers who founded upon the promises of the Mofaic law their future expectations, were nick-named by the Christians, Ebionites, thus poorly punning upon the term Ebion, which in Hebrew means poor: because, forfooth, fetting at nought the splendid promises held forth in the New Testament, esteeming it a spurious production, they relied folely in this respect upon those held forth in the law of Moses. Therefore, if perfons entertaining the fame religious notions are entitled to the fame appellation, doubtlessly the Nazarenes and Ebionites come within this predicament. If this then be indifputable, as I trust it is, it follows, that the Nazarenes and Ebionites were the fame sect under different appellations, the first being their nick-name among the unbelieving Jews, the latter among the Christians, the contrary of which has been afferted by the learned Dr. Horsley, and a crowd of Moderns. And that they were not Christians, as Dr. Priestley prefumes, is evident, independently of the teftimony of Athanafius, that they did not believe that the CHRIST HAD AT ALL COME, from their never having been thus designated by the antients.'

A believer in Jesus, who denies that he was the Meffiah-an Ebionite, who is no Christian-an advocate for the divine miffion of Mofes and Jesus, who pronounces ninety parts in a hundred of the bible useless, and afferts, as his great discovery, that " chriftianity itself is only a sophistication of the religion of Jesus" a writer who not only undertakes to criticise the VOL. VIII. works

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works of Dr. P. and his antagonists, but to decide upon the authenticity of the christian Fathers, and to pronounce spurious the writings of Justin Martyr, and of all who preceded Tertullian, not excepting the evangelists themselves, and at the same time confesses that he has not read the Fathers, and scarcely knows them, except through the moderns-is a phænomenon in the theological world so new and wonderful, that we must be allowed to suspend our judgment, till the second part of the work appears, in which these myfteries will, doubtless, be fully disclosed.

ART. XXIII. Three Sermons preached at the Norfolk Assizes, in the Spring and Summer, 1788, and in the Spring 1789, on the Neceffity of Government, and the Usefulness of Magistrates, and on civil and religious Liberty. Illustrated with Notes; containing Remarks upon Inspiration, the Variety of Opinions subsisting among Christians, Establishments, and other Points of Importance relative to the present State of Christianity. By the Rev. William Manning, Rector of Diss and Brome in Norfolk. Fools Cap 8vo. 186 p. Pr. 3s. sewed. Robinsons. 1790. AMONG the numerous evils arising from a narrow system of ecclefiaftical polity, one of the most grievous is, that it fubjects many worthy men to perplexity and embarrassment, by obliging them to maintain opinions, to them at least, of doubtful authority. This hardship, which is, at present, felt by many valuable members of our national establishment, is honeftly confefsed, and seriously lamented, by the author of these fermons, whose chief purpose in bringing them to light appears to have been, to show the impolicy of encumbering the church with confeffions and articles of faith, and the reasonableness and neceffity, in the present enlightened age, of enlarging the boundaries of church-communion.

Happy (fays he) shall I be, if my weak endeavours can at all affist in promoting a plan, which may bring relief to those worthy minds, who are thus embarrassed, and in reinstating those, who have thought themselves bound to resign their office, without distressing those who are tenacious of the present established opinions; and in promoting that peace and good-will amongst Chriftians, whereby the happy effects of the gospel of Christ may be more visible in their lives and conversations; and confequently the light of it more speedily extended through the world."

In the fermons we find many just and important sentiments, on the subjects of government and of civil and religious liberty, expressed in plain and unaffected language. In the notes, the author expresses more at large, and with still greater freedom, his notions concerning the scriptures, the origin of the doctrine of the Trinity, the atonement of Christ, and national establishments. As the notes form the most curious and original

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