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

412 RELIGIOUS ERRORS OF MR. MAHAN.2004. " 10. And tboujib, ' notwithstanding those twelve known infallibleand faithful judges of controversy, (the twelve apostles,) there wereas many and as ddmnahle heresies crept in, even in the apostolic ago, asin any other age, perhaps, during the same space of time.' Reeve's Fre-Ibnhiary Dhcoxiv&e to the Commonitory of Vincent ius Lirinensia, p. 190.2005. '^11. And though there were in the manuscripts of the NewTestament, at the time of editing the last printed copies of the Greektext, upward of one hundred and thirty thousand various readings.'— Unitarian New Version^ ^. 22.2006. ''12. And though 'the confusion unavoidable in these versions(the ancient Latin, from which all our European versions are derived)had arisen to such a height, that St. Jerome, in his Preface to the Gospels,complains that no one copy resembled another.' 31ichaclis, vol. ii.p. 119.2007. "13. And though the Gospels fatally contradict each other;that is, in several important particulars, they do so to such an extent as noingenuity of supposition has yet been able to reconcile : after Marsh,Michaelis, and the most learned critics, have stuck, and owned theconquest.2008. " 14. And though the difference of character between the threefirst Gospels and that ascribed to St. John is so flagrantly egregious, thatthe most learned Christian divines and profoundest scholars have franklyavowed that the Jesus Christ of St. John is a wholly different characterfrom the Jesus Christ of Matthew, Mark, and Luke ; and that theiraccount and his should both be true is flatly impossible.*2009. " 15. And though such was the idolatrous adulation paid to theauthority of Origen, that emendations of the text which were but suggestedby him were taken in as part of the New Testament; though hehimself acknowledged that they were supported by the authority of nomanuscript whatever. Marsh, in loco.2010. "16. And though, even so late as the period of the Reformation,we have whole passages which have been thrust into the text, and thrustout, just as it served the turn which the Protestant tricksters had to serve.2011. "17. And though we have on record the most indubitable historicalevidence of a general censure and correction of the Gospels havingbeen made at Constantinople, in the year 506, by order of the EmperorAnastasius.f2012. " 18. And though we have like unquestionable historical evidenceof measureless and inappreciable alterations of the same havingbeen made by our own Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, for theavowed purpose of accommodating them to the faith of the orthodox.''\* " Si forte accidisset, ut Johanuis Evangclium per octodecim secula priora prosus ignotumjacuissct, et nostris demum tcuiporibus, in niodium productum essct omncs haud dubieuno ore confitcrentur Jesum a Johanne descriptuni longe alium esse ac illium Matthrei,Marci, et Lucae, nee utramque descriptionem simul veram esse posse.— Carol. Tlieoph.Bretschncider Prohah, L!j)sicc, 1S20.t ''Here it is. 'Messala V. C. consule, Constantinopoli, jubente Anastasia Imperatore,sancta evangelia, tanquam ab idiotis cvangelistis composita, reprehenduntur et emendantur.'Victor Tununensis, Cave's Jlistoria Litcraria, vol. i. p. 415—i. e., * The illastriouaMcssala heinrj Consul, by the command of the Emjyeror Anastasius, the holy Gospels, as havingbeen tcrittcn by idiot evangelists, are censured and corrected.'—Victor, BishojJ of Tunisin Africa.X "See Beausobre, quoted in the Manifesto of the Christian Society; and this andthe preceding extract vindicated, in the author's Syntagma, against the vituperations ofthe evangelical Dr. John Pye Smith, in locis."