cause we are determined, with the Apostle, to know "Jesus Christ and him crucified;"* thus "building upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone?" Is it not rather a tower of strength, founded on a rock which shall remain unmoved, when the heavens shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? It is founded on the word of an immutable Being, and will therefore stand for ever.§

The Christian Unitarian professes to search the Scriptures, not only as a right, but as a duty. In the pursuit of religious truth, he cares not for proxy-believers, creedmongers, or the learned fabricators of old wives' fables,|| whatever be the authority with which the world chooses to invest them.-Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are ye? He resolves to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made him free,** and he will neither truckle beneath the intolerance of Synods, or quail at the anathemas of bigotry; he will not yield to the mandates of popular error, nor submit to the current misrepresentations of the world. He appeals to the law and to the testimony,++ instead of doctors and fathers; he rejects decrees and confessions, for that Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation;‡‡ and he refuses to be shackled with systems, and creeds, and points, because he cannot forget the apostolic admonition,§§ "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ!"

D. S.

A Summary View of the State of the Argument, on the Historical Evidences of Christianity, between Mr. Beard and his opponents Mr. Carlile and Mr. Taylor. (Continued from page 84.)

Mr. C.-We have no account of Christianity within the period that Jerusalem existed as a city, with its temple.

Mr. B.-Here again you are in error. An abundance of Christian testimony negatives your assertion. But we have more. Though it is by no means certain that Josephus does not mention Jesus Christ, yet he mentions John the Baptist; and he is assuredly connected with Christianity. And you are obliged to acknowledge that the clear distinct testimony of Tacitus is difficult. "They (the Christians) had their denomination from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal, by the Procurator Pontius Pilate." Now the silence of one historian can never negative the positive testimony of another. It may be a fault to conceal a fact, but it is a crime to narrate a falsehood. There is, too, so wonderful an agreement between the predictions of our Saviour, and their fulfilment as recorded by Josephus, in his Jewish Wars, that, coming from an enemy of Christianity, would, one might imagine, constrain the belief of all to whom the evidence was proposed.-(L. i. p. 12, 13.

Mr. C.-Tacitus could not have accurate knowledge of this affair, because public records were then very scarce.

Mr. B.-What need had he of records of facts that had so recently taken place, as the destruction of Rome by Nero, and his accusing the Christians of the crime, to liberate himself from the charge? But that records were not very rare, is clear, from these words of Gibbon: "At the distance of sixty years, it was the duty of the annalist to adopt the narratives of contemporaries." That they were abundant, you may learn from Adam's Antiquities of the Romans, p. 17, "Julius Cæsar appointed that what was done in the city, Diurna Acta (the Daily Transactions) should be published. An account of their proceedings was always made out, and under the succeeding Emperors, we find some Senator chosen for this purpose." (L. i. p. 14, 15.)

Mr. C.-Tacitus might have identified the Christians with the Galileans who were persecuted by Nero.

Mr. B. For your confutation, read the words of your own Gibbon: "Under the appellation of Galileans, two distinctions of men were confounded; the disciples who had embraced the faith of Jesus of Nazareth, and the zealots who had followed the standard of Judas the Gaulonite. The followers of Judas were soon buried under the ruins of Jerusalem, whilst those of Jesus, known by

the more celebrated name of Christians, diffused themselves over the Roman empire." The real Galileans, then, the followers of Judas, did not exist to be persecuted. But Suetonius, contemporary with Tacitus, whom Gibbon characterizes by the epithets "accurate and diligent," affirms that they were Christians, who suffered from the malignity of Nero. In his life of Nero (A. D. 68), Suetonius says, "The CHRISTIANS were punished; a sort of men of a new and magical superstition." If this evidence, the circumstances of the case, the impossibility of your supposition, the testimony of two most credible historians, does not satisfy every rational man, I know not how we are to attain certainty. What evidence do you require, Sir? If we had the direct testimony of Josephus, this would not satisfy the man who is not content with that of Tacitus and Suetonius.-(L. i. p. 15-17.)

Mr. C.-But I do not impeach the veracity of Tacitus. Mr. B.-Excuse me, Sir; you do impeach it; not intentionally, but still not the less really. That man is a false man, who makes a positive assertion on what he knows to be bad ground, equally with him who does so on no ground at all. And the historian who will give an equal semblance of certainty to his style, both where he himself is certain, and where not, cannot be deemed a veracious historian.—(L. ii. p. 47.)

Mr. C.-I do not wish to shelter myself under the imputation, that the passage from Tacitus is an interpolation.

Mr. B.-I find from this, that you have very suddenly changed your mind. For, in No. 1. of the same volume, you adduce Mr. Taylor's conjecture of an interpolation among other very "applicable authorities."-(L. ii. p. 49.) Mr. C.-Tacitus might confound the Jewish Galileans with the Christians.

Mr. B.-Possibilities can never weigh against facts; the Galileans had perished. Grant that the name remained. What then? There could only be a confusion of names, not of persons. The question to be decided is, could Tacitus have believed that the Galileans existed, when and where they existed not? Put a parallel case. There is a sect denominated A: they perish. Another sect is also denominated A and B. A writer characterizes these last as B; how could the two sects be confounded in his mind? What proof-nay, what probability from these data?-(L. ii. p. 48.)

Mr. C.-But I assert that Tacitus had no public and authentic documents.

Mr. B.-It is time we left off these unsupported assertions, and substituted proofs in their stead. Call to mind, that I proved that public registers were kept of the every-day transactions in the city; and if needs be, I can corroborate my proofs. But it will be time enough when they are impugned, or met by something more than mere assertion. Till then, I say, and I have the vantage ground, "We have, in Tacitus, an account of Christianity within the period that Jerusalem existed as a city, with its temple." -(L. ii. p. 49.)

Mr. C.-Tacitus, Suetonius, and Celsus, might have taken the story of the life of Jesus Christ as far as it was probable.

Mr. B.-O yes; they might have done many things; but did they do what "As far as was proaffirm? you bable!" How far was that, Mr. Carlile? How far was it probable? Your answer, if in consistency with your avowed sentiments, must be "not at all." What! the story of his life probable! The life of a "wonder-worker," a pretender to impossibilities"-his death probablewho never lived! This is not probable assuredly. If so, you stand self-confuted.-(L. ii. p. 47.)

"

Mr. C.-No Christian writer, until we come to Eusebius, in the fourth century, has narrated the destruction of the temple; therefore, old Jerusalem was to the first Christians merely a spiritual city.

Mr. B.-Now, the acknowledgment of the books of the New Testament, by a long series of writers, from the year 71 (acknowledgment made by quotations from these books), asserts the truth of the Gospel history, relatively to the destruction of Jerusalem. But not to insist on this, Barnabas, who is placed by Lardner as early as the year 71, says, speaking of the Jews and the temple, "And so it came to pass; for through their means it is now destroyed by their enemies." This was long before the fourth century; and, to adopt your own words, it "is something like substantive proof" of another error.-(L. i. p. 17, 18.) Mr. C.-In answer to your disproof of my assertion, I refer you to the "Republican," Vol. ix. No. 1.

Mr. B.-Thither have I gone; but instead of finding Barnabas, whom I quoted, brought down below the fourth century, as was essential to the verification of your asser

tion, not a word have I there found as to the age in which he flourished. However, to make security doubly secure, take a quotation from Minutius Felix (210). "Learn the fate of the Jews from Josephus, or from Antonius Julianus. Whence you will find, that, by their turpitude, they had merited their fate, and that they suffered nothing which had not been predicted should await them, if they persisted in their contumacy. Thus they were not deserted, till they themselves had deserted God."-(L. ii. p. 57.)

Mr. C.-In the Old Testament, we read nothing of a place called Golgotha, or Mount Calvary, or the pool of Siloam; and hence all these places are of Christian in

vention.

Mr. B.-Here, à strict logician would demur: he would remind you of the time that had elapsed between the date of the last book of the Old Testament and that of the book of the New. He would be disposed to think it very possible, that during an interval of some hundred years, places might have exchanged their old for new appellations. And if he were an Englishman, the history of Great Britain would furnish him some good confirmation of his suggestion. But in the Old Testament, we do read of a place called Golgotha, or which is the same, Gilgal, for Golgotha is only the Chaldee form of the Hebrew word Gilgal, of which Calvary is the Latin designation.-See Joshua, v. 9; Judges ii. 1. Such a place, is, therefore, “read of." But the Gilgal of the Old Testament is not the Calvary of the New. The first was near Jericho, the second is on the north-west of Jerusalem. And though Calvary is not mentioned in the Old Testament, the mountain of which it is a part, is mentioned, viz. Mount Moriah, 2 Chron. iii. 1. And that Calvary is a part of Mount Moriah, may be learned from Dr. Wells, in his Geography of the New Testament: "Calvary, a hill upon the great Mount of Moriah." The difficulty, then, which presses on Christianity, is not the fabrication of a place never before heard of, but the ascribing to some petty bill near Jerusalem, a name not given to it in a book written some centuries before it took its rise. Truly, a mighty matter! But this is no difficulty to me: I mean to say, rather, it is a confirmation of the veracity of the historians. I expect these minor varieties in every true history. I am led to do so by experience. But, Sir, you should have looked into a Concordance again, before you asserted