There is so strong a resemblance between the characters of Jesus and of chap. vi. Buddha, that it cannot have been purely accidental. But the character of Buddha or Crishna or the great father was already in existence, previous to the alleged time of Christ's appearance upon earth. The character therefore of the heathen divinity cannot have been borrowed from that of Christ. But, if it were not borrowed from that of Christ, the character of Christ must have been borrowed from it. Hence it will follow, that, if we tear off the disguise of a Jewish dress, we shall clearly perceive, that the incarnate God of the Church, whom Christians ignorantly worship as the creator of the world, is the very same person as the virgin-born great father of Paganism. He is the Sun in the sign of the virgin: his very name of Christ is no other than the Sanscrit Crishna: and the whole history of his appearance upon earth is a mere fable. There are absolutely, says Mr. Volney, no other monuments of the existence of Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus, a single phrase in Tacitus, and the gospels. But the passage in Josephus is unanimously acknowledged to be apocryphal and to have been interpolated towards the close of the third century: and that of Tacitus is so vague, and so evidently taken from the deposition of the Christians before the tribunals, that it may be ranked in the class of evangelical records. So that the existence of Jesus is no better proved, than that of Osiris and Hercules, or that of Fo or Buddha, with whom the Chinese continually confound him; for they never call Jesus by any other name than Fo'.

I am willing to believe, that Mr. Volney's argument, though much curtailed, has lost none of its force in my hands: we have now to estimate the amount of that force.

(1.) According to this writer then, there is no sufficient evidence for the literal manifestation of Christ upon earth: because, exclusive of the gospels, he is mentioned only in a spurious passage of Josephus, and in a single expression of Tacitus who manifestly wrote solely from the depositions of believers themselves.

With the place in Josephus I shall not concern myself, save only to ob

Pag. Idol.

Volney's Ruins. p. 229-239, 287, 288.

VOL. III.

4N

1

BOOK VI. Serve that it is not unanimously acknowledged to be apocryphal: I shalf pass directly to the expression in Tacitus. Now, supposing that this author had written solely from the depositions of Christians on their trial, it might reasonably be asked, what better evidence could we have for the real existence of Jesus as a human being? A great number of men is brought before the tribunals of the Roman magistrates; and these declare, that but as yesterday an extraordinary person appeared in Judea, who during his life-time openly conversed with thousands, and who at length was put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate. In such a declaration, which respects a matter of fact, they obstinately persist, even in the face of the most cruel torments. Now, though doubtless men have sometimes given up their lives in the cause of a false religion; yet they have never done so, except when they themselves were fully persuaded of the truth of it. But, if we admit the paradox of Mr. Volney, we must be credulous enough to believe, that not merely a single wrong-headed individual, but that whole multitudes, chose rather to suffer the most cruel deaths, than to give up the existence of a man, whom all the while they must have known perfectly well had never existed at all. This may very possibly be swallowed by the easy faith of an infidel: but a man of plain common sense, who is accustomed to weigh motives and actions, will not be quite so easily satisfied. Does Tacitus however write from the mere depositions of Christians? It is said to have been a regular part of the atheistical system on the continent, to misquote and misrepresent ancient authors: and the honest principle of it was this. Where one reader is capable of following the citer, ten will be incapable: of those who are capable, where one takes the trouble to do it, ten will not take the trouble: and of those who detect the falshood, where one steps forward to expose it, ten will be silent. It may therefore never be detected: and, if it be detected, the voice of a single individual, when the efforts of a whole conspiracy are employed to drown it, will be heard to but a very little distance. Whether Mr. Volney made any such calculation with respect to the passage in Tacitus, I shall not pretend to say but most certain it is, that the passage itself affords not the slightest ground for his gloss upon it. Tacitus, a grave historian, simply relates a well-known recent fact; which it was perfectly easy to contradict, had

person

there been no foundation for it. The fact, which he specifies without say- CHAP. VIL ing a single syllable about depositions, is as follows. A man, named Christ, was the author of the Christian superstition. This started up in Judea, one of the Roman provinces: and he was put to death, during the reign of Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius Pilate'. Such are the parti culars, which Tacitus details about 70 years after the time when they are said to have happened. Now, on Mr. Volney's hypothesis that they never did happen, it seems rather extraordinary, that Tacitus should not have been a little more careful in ascertaining the recent alleged fact of Christ's condemnation by Pilate. The Christians at that time had become very numerous, according to the account of the historian himself: and their active enemies were still more numerous. If then no such man as Christ had ever existed, and if the whole history of his condemnation by Pilate were an impudent fiction; it is passing strange, that, when Tacitus wrote, the imposture should not have been discovered. One might have imagined, that, as all the transactions were said to have occurred in Judèa, if they never had occurred, hundreds of enemies to the Christian name would have

As Mr. Volney has not indulged his readers with the passage, which, he assures us, was written by Tacitus from the depositions of the Christian prisoners, I shall supply the deficiency. We may then be the better enabled to appreciate the critical talents of this French writer.

Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos, et quæsitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor nominis ejus Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat. Repressaque in præsens exitia bilis superstitio rursus erumpebat, non modo per Judæam originem ejus mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque. Igitur primo correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens, haud perinde in crimina incendii, quam odio generis humani, convicti sunt. Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti, laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus affixi, aut flammati, atque abi defecisset dies in usum nocturni luminis urerentur. Annal. lib. xv. c. 44.

If we may belive Mr. Volney, the person, whom Tacitus declares to have been put to death by Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, never existed at all; the unlucky historian being shamefully befooled by a set of gross liare, who themselves chose to be worried by dogs and to be crucified and to be burned alive in support of what they all the while knew to be an absurd falshood. Nothing, save the credulity of a professed unbeliever, could digest so portentous a discovery, as this of our French philosopher.

BOOK VI. triumphantly exclaimed: We have made diligent inquiries throughout Pa lestine; and we actually find, that there never was such a person as Christ, and that no one there ever heard of his being put to death by Pontius Pi late. Yet, wonderful to say, the lately discovered secret of his non-existence was wholly unknown in the time of Tacitus: for, bitter as that histotorian is against Christians, he states, as a matter not to be doubted, that the author of the name was really condemned by the Roman governor of Judea during the reign of Tiberius. Seventy years had then elapsed from the alleged death of Christ: the fact was as fresh and as recent, as the rise (for instance) of Methodism amongst ourselves: and a modern historian might just as rationally deny literal existence to the founder of that wide spreading sect, as Tacitus could have denied it to the founder of Christianity. In reality, the hypothesis of Mr. Volney never once entered into his contemplation. He cordially hated the Christians indeed: but he mentions, without the slightest hesitation, that their head appeared in Judea, and that he was condemned to death by. Pontius Pilate.

(2.) This writer however asserts, that the literal existence of Christ rests on the sole testimony of Tacitus.

He must surely have either forgotten or wilfully suppressed the mass of direct evidence, by which the fact in question is established. The hostility of the Jews to Christianity is proverbial. Now, as Palestine is made the theatre of our Lord's actions, and as he himself is declared to have been publicly executed at Jerusalem by the sentence of the Roman governor.; if the whole narrative were a mere fiction, the Jews would most assuredly. have been the first to expose it, nor would they have left the grateful task to be performed by a modern French infidel. They however, so far from having even dreamt of the notable discovery made by Mr. Volney, always speak of Jesus, as a person that had actually existed and had been truly put to death. Nor do they deny, that he wrought miracles: the fact of his having wrought them they acknowledge; but they pretend to account for it, by an idle tale of his having stolen the wonder-working name of Jehovah out of the temple'. Just the same remark applies to the other

Toledoth Jesu, and Avoda Zara..

ancient enemies of the gospel. Celsus and Porphyry, Hierocles and Julian, CHAP. V. never think of denying the existence of Christ: on the contrary, they too, like the Jews, allow, that he even performed miracles; but, while they admit the fact, they pretend that he performed these by magic'. How much trouble might these authors have saved themselves, if they had had the benefit of Mr. Volney's sagacious researches. Yet probably it might not have been quite prudent to hazard the new hypothesis, during the four first centuries. At any rate we may be tolerably sure, that, if the emperor Julian could have ascertained that the author of Christianity never existed and consequently that he was never crucified by Pontius Pilate; he would not have troubled himself to account for his miracles, but would have cut the matter short at once by taxing believers with a gross and shame> less falsehood. He had full power to consult the records of the empire, and he had agents as virulent as himself: but the whole of his malice spends itself in reproaching Christians, for worshipping, as God, one, who had been erucified as a felon. We have therefore a chain of most unexceptionable evidence, because it is the evidence of professed enemies, beginning with Tacitus and the Jews in the first century, and extending to the emperor Julian in the fourth. Had Christ been a mere non-entity, since the imposture lay open to so very easy a detection, the ancient enemies of the gospel would scarcely have left the glory of exposing it to a French philosopher of the eighteenth century..

(3.) Mr. Volney is not more fortunate in his etymological, than in his historical, researches.

It is certainly a very suspicious circumstance, that the word Christ should be so like the word Crishna: but unluckily the ingenious etymologist does not seem to have recollected, that Jesus was wholly unknown by the title of Christ in the land where he lived and died. Most schoolboys could have informed him, that the Greek word Christ is a mere translation of the Hebrew word Messiah; that they equally signify the anointed one; that the name Christ therefore has nothing in common with the Sanscrit. Crishna,

Orig. cont. Cels. lib. i. p. 30. lib. ii. § 48. Hieron. cont. Virgil. Hieroc. apud Euseb.. Julian. apud Cyril. lib. vi. See Paley's Eviden. vol. ii. p. 338, 339. and Douglas's Criter:. p. 307, 308,