Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of resurrection from the principles of vegetation."Thou fool" says he, "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." To which one might reply in his own language, and say, Thou fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can vegetate.It is only the living grains that produce the next crop.But the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile.It is succession, and [not] resurrection.
The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does not, and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.
Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or dogmatical;and as the argument is defective, and the dogmatical part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them.And the same may be said for the remaining parts of the Testament.It is not upon the Epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church, calling itself the Christian Church, is founded.The Epistles are dependant upon those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Chiist be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it, as a supposed truth, must fall with it.
We know from history, that one of the principal leaders of this church, Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was formed; [Athanasius died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371 -- Auther.] and we know also, from the absurd jargon he has left us under the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we know also from the same history that the authenticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the time.It was upon the vote of such as Athanasius that the Testament was decreed to be the word of God; and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of God by vote.Those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of God, and have no true foundation for future happiness.Credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction.
It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth.We should never force belief upon ourselves in any thing.
I here close the subject on the Old Testament and the New.The evidence I have produced to prove them forgeries, is extracted from the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edge sword, either way.If the evidence be denied, the authenticity of the Scriptures is denied with it, for it is Scripture evidence: and if the evidence be admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved.The contradictory impossibilities, contained in the Old Testament and the New, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against.
Either evidence convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys reputation.
Should the Bible and the Testament hereafter fall, it is not that Ihave done it.I have done no more than extracted the evidence from the confused mass of matters with which it is mixed, and arranged that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily comprehended; and, having done this, I leave the reader to judge for himself, as I have judged for myself.
