A.D. 307. Council of Ancyra, where such as sacrificed to idols, were allowed to be received under certain conditions, and deacons who could not contain, were suffered to marry. A.D. 327. Grand council of Nice, in Bythinia, under the presidency of Constantine the Great, gave us the God of God creed used in the communion service. Pappus, in his Synodicon to the council of Nice, asserts, that having promiscuously put all the books under the communion table in a church, they besought the Lord, that the inspired records might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained underneath, which accordingly happened.* A.D. 368. Council of Laodicea. This council first, and not that of Nice, is supposed to have given a catalogue of the books contained in the New Testament: not including the Revelation. A.D. 397. The third council of Carthage; present, Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage; Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, and 42 other bishops. Of this council, the 47th Canon ordains, "that nothing beside the canonical scriptures be read in the church under the name of divine scriptures." All those contained and arranged as in our present Old and New Testaments, are in this canon enumerated as being canonical. A.D. 401. The council of Chalcedon. Here first the New Testament was set in the midst of the assembly, as the great appeal. Yet St. Chrysostom, who died A.D. 407, assures us, that in his time, the Acts of the Apostles was a book by many Christians, entirely unknown. "The canon of the New Testament," says Dr. Lardner, “had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged, but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves, concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical; and to determine according to evidence." Even so late as in the time of the historian Cassiodorus,† whom Dr. Lardner places at A.D. 556. There are reckoned in all 17 general councils, but the rest of them are too late in time, or too irrelevant to any bearing on the historical evidences of Christianity, to come within the scope of this DIEGESIS-the council of Trent, A.D. 1549, is the last of them. Augustus the monk first preached Christianity in England A.D. 597. The inhabitants of England being Picts, or painted savages, first embraced Christianity, A.D. 698. Chronol. Table of Evans's Sketches. * Εν γαρ οικω του Θεου κατω παρα τη θεια τραπεζη αυτας παραθέμενη, προσευ ξατο ὡς ευρεθήναι τας θεοπνεύστους επάνω, τον Κυριον εξαιτησαμένη, και τας κιβδη λους, ὁ και γεγονεν, ὑποκάτωθεν. + Senator and Compiler of the Tripartite History, i. e. the Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret united. See this argument handled in my Syntagma p. 68. Published from this prison in refutation of the infinite vituperations of the Christian Instruction Society. APPENDIX. ECCLESIASTICAL REVENUES, Expenditure of the Clergy of all the Christian World. RECAPITULATION OF THE PRECEDING TABLE. Protestants, &c. 48,110,824 pay their Clergy. Catholics, 130,422,000 Greek Church, 41,000,000 Total Christians 219,532.824 pay their Clergy, Leaving, for £11,462,500 6,549,500 760,000 £18,772,000 9,920,000 198,728,000 people, to pay only £8,852,000 F F EXTENT OF CHRISTIANITY. If we divide the known countries of the earth, into thirty equal parts, five of them are Christian, six Mahometan, and nineteen Pagan.-Bayle's Dictionary. Dr. Evans supposing the inhabitants of the world to be eight hundred millions; gives us the annexed scale of probable proportions. Jews... ..2,500,000 ... 482,000,000 In this, which is wholly Christian arithmetic, no account is made of the probable proportion of either professed or real UNBELIEVERS, Whose number, be it greater or less, is on all hands admitted to be an increasing number, and a number to be deducted, not from the amount of Jews, Pagans, or Mohammedans; but exclusively from the amount of Christians; and in the amount of Christians, chiefly from the most intelligent, reflecting, and literary characters, that is unquestionably from the very nerves and core of their strength. Let their own statement be credible-e. g. Dr. Priestly observes in one of his last sermons, that when he visited France in 1774, all her philosophers and men of letters were absolutely infidels.* Dr. Evans who died Jan. 25, 1827, had announced his plan of a work, which he lived not to finish, whose professed object, in his own terms, was to shield the minds of the rising generation, from the growing evil of the age, an overweening and clamourous infidelity.+ The whole united Scottish Presbytery, in a dolorous Jeremiad, publicly announce, that all the most intelligent and accomplished men among them, have imbibed the principles of infidelity. Their own words are, "O God, pity us, for our case is very pitiful, and there is nobody else to pity us, but only thou, O God! And not now is it according to the word of the Lord in the parable, that one sheep should be astray, and ninety and nine safely gathered into the fold, but that the ninety and nine should be straying and only one abiding in the fold." Yet Quoted thus in Evans's Sketches, 15th ed. p. 5. + Evans' Sketches, 15th ed. pref. xv. Pastoral Letter from the Scottish Presbytery 1827, p. 39. these zealous advocates of the Christian cause affect to treat their AUTHORITIES ADDUCED IN THE DIEGESIS. Dr. Whitby's Last Thoughts, 3. Virgil, 9, 142, 155, 216, 220, 329, Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, 10, Faustus, 65, 66, 114, 252, 371. Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Evanson's Dissonance of the Four 136 Jones on the Canon of the New Test. Stein's Authentia Vindicata, 81, 117. Orosius, 13, 398. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Ro- Pope's Homer's Iliad, 15. Shaw's Travels, 23. Shakspeare, 24, 296. Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon, 24, 155, 158, 160, 161, 162, 183, 189. A Friend, 25. Josephus, Greek, 27, 59, 96. Bishop Sage's Principles of the Cypri- St. Athanasius, 101. Paley's Hora Paulinæ, 109, 375. Niemener, 122. Stalfeld of Gostingen, 124. Philo apud Eusebium, 69, 70, 71, 72, Julius Firmicius, 144, 162, 163, 164, Philo apud Eusebium, 142. Symmachus, 145. Origines Christianæ in Author's Let- Eusebius, Greek, 28, 64, 69, 70, 71, St. Ambrose, 146. 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 85. Valerius Maximus, 29. Addison, 148, 285. Pope, 148, 215. Author's Syntagma, 31, 32, 34, 89, Seneca's Medea, 149. 129, 271, 352, 368. Pseudo Plutarch. 32. More's Songs, 23. Juvenal, 23, 232, 466. Montfaucon, 60. Lange, 60. Henman, 60. Eusebius, 150, 151, 164. Ovid, 150, 196, 232, 233, 293. Dr. Lardner, 152, 206, 291, 29, 297, 298, 305, 306, 312, 317. Justin Martyr, 153, 232, 257, 258, Spence's Polymetis, 155. Tertullian, 34, 257, 325, 326, 327, Valency, 174. 370, 395, 396. Higgin's Celtic Druids, 176, 179, 209, Colonel Fitzclarence's Travels, 178. Dupuis, 184. Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, 184. Beausobre, 40, 58, 118, 125, 126, 295, Reeve's Apologies of the Fathers, 184. Gonzales, 185. Life of St. Patrick, 185. Aurelius, 185. Volney, 186. Hesychius, 187. Anacreon, 187. Porney's Pantheon Mythircum, 189, Homer, 191. Cicero, 43, 140, 141, 180, 182, 211. Eschylus, 192. 233, 234. Casaubon, 44. Dr. H. More. 44. Archbishop Wake, 45, 55, 291. Bell's Pantheon, 48, 142, 143, 144, Times Newspaper. 35. Mosheim, 47, 48, 52, 53, 61, 65, 98, Works of Paulinus, 49. Dr. Middleton's Letter from Rome, Dr. Middleton's Free Inquiry, 153, Bishop Stillingfleet, 50. Author's Letter from Oakham, 225. Bishop Fell, 54, 288. Mons. Dupin, 55, 338. Origen, 57, 92, 101, 121, 195, 389. Potter's Translation of, 193. Kortholt's Paganus Obtrectator, 197, Reeves's Apologies, 199. Dr. Edward Daniel Clarke's Travels, Skelton's Appeal, 202. Socrates Scholasticus, 203, 205, 250, Theodoret, 224, 255, 257, 258. 50, Apostles' Creed, 184. Archbishop Tillotson, 224, 225, 226, Gruter's Inscriptions, 237, Boldonius's Epigraphs, 237. |