Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Christianity -- Origin; Paul, the Apostle, Saint
Part 3. The purpose continued.--"To open their eyes, and to turn them
from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God..." Still
the same nothingness: to his life's end a man might be hearing stories
such as these, and still at the end of it be none the wiser:--no
additional doctrine--no additional gospel--no declaration at all--no
gospel at all--here.
Part 4. The purpose continued and concluded... "that they may receive
forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by
faith that is in me." Good. But this is not doctrine; this is not
gospel; this is not itself the promised doctrine: but it is a
description of the effect, of which the promised doctrine was to be the
cause.
Now it is, as we have just seen, that Paul is represented as commencing
his preaching, or sallying forth upon his mission; preaching, from
_instructions_ received in a supernatural way--received by revelation.
Yet, after all, no such _instructions_ has he received. Thrice has the
historian--once in his own person, twice in that of his hero--undertaken
to produce those instructions. But by no one, from first to last, have
they anywhere been produced.
Truly, then, of his own making was this Gospel which Paul went
preaching; of his own making, as well as of his own using; that Gospel,
which he himself declares to his Galatians was not of man, was not,
therefore, of those Apostles, to whom the opposition made by him is thus
proclaimed.
When, after having given in his own person an account of a supposed
occurrence,--an historian, on another occasion, takes up the same
occurrence; and, in the person of another individual, gives of that same
occurrence another account different from, and so different from, as to
be irreconcileable with it; can this historian, with any propriety, be
said to be himself a believer in this second account which he thus
gives? Instead of giving it as a true account, does he not, at any rate,
in respect of all the several distinguishable circumstances in which it
differs from the account given in his own person--give it in the
character of a fable? a fable invented on the occasion on which the
other person is supposed to speak--invented in the intent that it shall
promote the purpose for which this speech is supposed to be made? Yet
this account, which in the eyes of the very man by whom it is delivered
to us, is but a fable, even those to whom in this same character of a
fable it is delivered--this account it is that _Christians_ have thus
long persisted in regarding, supporting, and acting upon, as if it were
from beginning to end, a truth--a great body of truth!--O Locke! O
Newton! where was your discernment!
On such evidence would any Judge fine a man a shilling? Would he give
effect to a claim to that amount? Yet such is the evidence, on the
belief of which the difference between happiness and misery, both in
intensity as well as duration, infinite, we are told, depends!
SECTION 5.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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