to have been the first who ventured to interpret the gospels merely in a typical, allegorical, and spiritual sense, and boldly maintained that not one of the miracles of Jesus was actually performed. He wrote without method or art, and in a style confused and coarse, but not destitute of vigour. His six discourses against the miracles of Jesus Christ were publicly sold at London, in his own house. In the course of two years, from 1737 to 1739, he had three editions of them printed, of twenty thousand copies each, and yet it is now very difficult to procure one from the booksellers. ‹

f

Never was christianity so daringly assailed by any christian. Few writers entertain less awe or respect for the public, and no priest ever declared himself more openly the enemy of priests. He even dared to justify this hatred by that of Jesus Christ against the Pharisees and Scribes; and he said that he should not, like Jesus Christ, become their victim, because he had come into the world in a more enlightened age.

He certainly hoped to justify his rashness by his adoption of the mystical sense; but he employs expres sions so contemptuous and abusive that every christian ear is shocked at them.

If we may believe him,* when Jesus sent the Devil into the herd of two thousand swine, he did neither more nor less than commit a robbery on their owners, If the story had been told of Mahomet, he would have been considered as " an abominable wizard, and a sworn slave to the Devil" And if the proprietor of the swine, and the merchants who in the outer court of the temple sold beasts for sacrifices, and whom Jesus drove out with a scourge, came to demand justice when he was apprehended, it is clear that he was de servedly condemned, as there never was a jury' in England that would not have found him guilty.

He tells her fortune to the woman of Samaria, just like a wandering Bohemian or gipsy. This alone was bufficient to cause his banishment, which was the punishment inflicted upon fortune-tellers, or diviners, Page 521

Vol. 1. 38.

Page 39,

by Tiberius. "I am astonished," says he," that the gipsies do not proclaim themselves the genuine disciples of Jesus, as their vocation is the same. However,

I am glad to see that he did not extort money from the Samaritan woman, differing in this respect from our clergy, who take care to be well paid for their divinations."*

I follow the order of the pages in his book. The author goes on to the entrance of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. It is not clear, he says,† whether he was mounted on a male or female ass, or upon the foal of an ass, or upon all three together.

He compares Jesus, when tempted by the Devil, to St. Dunstan, who seized the Devil by the nose; and he gives the preference to St. Dunstan.

66

At the article of the fig-tree, which was cursed with barrenness for not producing figs out of season for them, he describes Jesus as a mere vagabond,‡ a mendicant friar, who before he turned field-preacher was no better than a journeyman carpenter.' It is surprising, he says, that the court of Rome has not among all its relics some little fancy-box or joint-stool of his workmanship. In a word, it is difficult to carry blasphemy farther.

After diverting himself with the probationary fishpool of Bethesda, the waters of which were troubled or stirred once in every year by an angel, he enquires how it could well be, that neither Flavius Josephus nor Philo should ever mention this angel; why St. John should be the sole historian of this miracle; and by what other miracle it happened that no Roman ever saw this angel,§ or ever even heard his name mentioned ?

The water changed into wine at the marriage in Cana, according to him, excites the laughter and contempt of all who are not imbruted by superstition.

"What!" says he,|| "John expressly says that the guests were already intoxicated, methus tosi;' and

* Vol. i. 55.

↑ Page 65.

Third Discourse, p. 8.

Vol. i. 60.

Fourth Discourse, p. 31.

God comes down to earth and performs his first miracle to enable them to drink still more!"

God made man, commences his mission by assisting at a village wedding. "Whether Jesus and his mother were drunk, as were others of the company, is not certain.* The familiarity of the lady with a soldier leads to the presumption that she was fond of her bottle; that her son however was somewhat affected by the wine, appears from his answering his mother sowaspishly and snappishly' as he did, when he said, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" It may be inferred, from these words, that Mary was not a virgin, and that Jesus was not her son; had it been otherwise, he would not have thus insulted his father and mother in violation of one of the most sacred commandments of the law. However, he complies with his mother's request; he fills eighteen jars with water, and makes punch of it." These are the very words of Thomas Woolston, and must fill every christian soul with indignation.

It is with regret, and even with trembling, that I quote these passages; but there have been sixty thousand copies of this work printed, all bearing the name of the author, and all publicly sold at his house. It can never be said that I calumniate him.

It is to the dead raised again by Jesus Christ that he principally directs his attention. He contends that a dead man restored to life would have been an object of attention and astonishment to the universe; that all the Jewish magistracy, and more especially Pilate, would have made the most minute investigations and obtained the most authentic depositions; that Tiberius enjoined all proconsuls, prætors, and governors of provinces to inform him with exactness of every event that took place; that Lazarus, who had been dead four whole days, would have been most strictly interrogated; and that no little curiosity would have been excited to know what had become, during that time, of his soul. With what eager interest would Tiberius and the

Page 32

whole Roman senate have questioned him, and not indeed only him, but the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Naim? Three dead persons restored to life would have been three attestations to the divinity of Jesus, which almost in a single moment would have made the whole world christian. But instead of all this, the whole world, for more than two hundred years, knew nothing about these resplendent and decisive evidences. It is not till a hundred years have rolled away from the date of the events, that some obscure individuals show one another the writings that contain the relation of those miracles. Eighty-nine emperors, reckoning those who had only the name of tyrants,' never hear the slightest mention of these resurrections, although they must inevitably have held all nature in amazement. Neither the Jewish historian Josephus, nor the learned Philo, nor any Greek or Roman historian at all notices these prodigies. In short, Woolston has the imprudence to say, that the history of Lazarus is so brimful of absurdities that St. John, when he wrote it, had outlived his senses.' *

Supposing, says Woolston,+ that God should in our own times send an ambassador to London to convert the hireling clergy, and that ambassador should raise the dead, what would the clergy say?

He blasphemes the incarnation, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ, just upon the same system; and he calls these miracles" The most manifest and the most barefaced imposture that ever was put upon the world!"

A

What is perhaps more singular still is, that each of his discourses is dedicated to a bishop. His dedications are certainly not exactly in the French style. He bestows no flattery or compliments. He upbraids them with their pride and avarice, their ambition and faction, and smiles with triumph at the thought of their being now, like every other class of citizens, in complete subjection to the laws of the state.

At last these bishops, tired of being insulted by an

Vol. ii. 33. + Vol. i 472 Vol. ii. Discourse vi. 27.

undignified member of the university of Cambridge determined upon a formal appeal to the laws. They instituted a prosecution against Woolston in the King's Bench, and he was tried before Chief-Justice Raymond, in 1729, when he was imprisoned, condemned to pay a fine, and obliged to give security to the amount of a hundred and fifty pounds sterling. His friends furnished him with the security, and he did not in fact die in prison, as in some of our careless and ill-compiled dictionaries he is stated to have done. He died

at his own house in London, after having uttered these words "This is a pass that every man must come to." Some time before his death, a female zealot meeting him in the street was gross enough to spit in his face; he calmly wiped his face and bowed to her. His manners were mild and pleasing. He was obstinately infatuated with the mystical meaning, and blasphemed the literal one; but let us hope that he repented on his death-bed, and that God has showed him mercy.

About the same period there appeared in France the will of John Meslier, clergyman (curé) of But and Entrepigni, in Champagne, of whom we have already -spoken, under the article CONTRADICTIONS.

It was both a wonderful and a melancholy spectacle to see two priests at the same time writing against the christian religion. Meslier is still more violent than Woolston. He ventures to treat the Devil's carrying off our Lord to the top of a mountain, the marriage of Cana, and the loaves and fishes, as absurd tales, injurious to the Supreme Being, which for three hundred years were unknown to the whole Roman empire, and at last advanced from the dregs of the community to the throne of the emperors, when policy compelled them to adopt the nonsense of the people, in order to keep them the better in subjection. The declamations of the English priest do not approach in vehemence those of the priest of Champagne. Woolston occasionally showed discretion. Meslier never has any; he is a man so sensitively sore to the crimes he has been witness to, that he renders the christian religion responsible for them, forgetting that it condemns them.

VOL. V.

G