Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations, [electronic ...

410 RELIGIOUS ERRORS OF MR. MAHAN.No. 34 Arcli street, as well as other books wliicli may assist readers toform an opinion for themselves. I shall quote some pages from this work,which, being studied after reading Mahan's arrogant allegations, will makegood the old tajing, that "One story is good until another is told."1988. " The ordinary notion, that the four gospels were written by thepersons whose names they bear, and that they have descended to us fromoriginal autographs of Matthew and John, immediate disciples, and ofMark and Luke, contemporaries and companions, of Christ, in like manneras the writings of still more early poets and historians have descended tous from the pens of the authors to whom they are attributed, is altogetheruntenable. It has been entirely surrendered by the most able and ingenuousChristian writers, and will no longer be maintained by any but thosewhose zeal outruns their knowledge, and whose recklessness and temerityof assertion can serve only to dishonour and betray the cause they so injudiciouslyseek to defend.1989. "The surrender of a position which the world has for ages beenled to consider impregnable, by the admission of all that the early objectionof the learned Christian Bishop, Faustus the Manichean, implied,when he pressed Augustine with that bold challenge which Augustine wasnot able to answer, that,* ^ It was certain that the New Testament wasnot written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while afterthem, by some unknown persons, who, lest they should not be creditedwhen they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to theirworks the names of apostles, or of such as were supposed to have beentheir companions, asserting that what they had written themselves waswritten according to those persons to whom they ascribed it.'1990. " This admission has not been held to be fatal to the claims ofdivine revelation, nor was it held to be so even by the learned Fatherhimself who so strenuously insisted on it, since he declares his own unshakenfaith in Christ's mystical crucifixion, notwithstanding.1991. "Adroitly handled as the passage has been by the ingenuity oftheologians, it has been made rather to subserve the cause of the evidencesof the Christian religion than to injure it. Since, though it be admittedthat the Christian world has ^ all along been under a delusion^ in thisrespect, and has held these writings to be of higher authority than theyreally are ;yet the writings themselves and their authors are innocent ofhaving contributed to that delusion, and never bore o?i them, nor in them,any challenge to so high authority as the mistaken piety of Christians hasascribed to them, but did all along profess no more than to have beenwritten, as Faustus testifies, not by, but according to, Matthew, Mark,Luke, and John ; and by persons of whom indeed it is not known whoor what they were, nor was it of any conseqence that it should be, afterthe general acquiescence of the church had established the sufficient correctnessof the compilations they had made.1992. "And here the longo ^wst tempore (tlic great icliile after) is afavourable presumption of the sufficient opportunity that all personsf had,* "Nee ab ipso scriptum constat, nee ab ejus apostolis sod longo post tempore a quibusdamincerti nominis viris, qui no sibi non habere tur fides scribentibus quaj nescircnt, partimapostolorum, partim eorurn que apostolos secuti viderentur nomina scriptorum euorumfrontibus indidcrunt, assoverantes secundum cos, sc scripsissc qua) scripserunt.— Quotedhy Lardno; vol. 2, p. 221.t "By all pcrsojis, understanding strictly all 2^»>'sons, for the common people were