William Nicholson

“ But the generation was unworthy of that condescension, we reply, which they wickedly paraphrase thus: "God, who desireth: not the death of a sinner, left them in their sins, that they might die—God, who spared not his beloved Son, but gave him to the bitterness of death, that sinners might be saved, chose, nevertheless, to deprive all mankind of the proper evidence of the resurrection, because the Jews of that age were sinners!" Mercy is the character of the first act, but how shall we characterize the latter? Is the God of the Christians inconsistent with himself? ”

“ A mystery, that is to say, an assertion or theorem, which the human understanding is incapable of comprehending, must likewise be inexpressible in human speech; we cannot, therefore, avail ourselves of the short and elegant method of clearing and elucidating difficult parts of Scripture, by the use of the word mystery, but how shall we, without this happy resource, explain the business of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, of a speaking serpent, and of a tree of life, which God was obliged to guard by cherubim and a flaming sword, lest man should eat of the fruit and become immortal? ”

“ Some may indeed pretend, that this mode of proceeding is tyrannical, and destructive of the rights of mankind; but we, the faithful, insist that it is zealous and politic. How can a man be said to be injured, even if we allow that he is cheated, since he is cheated into salvation, though perhaps against his will? Yet it will be doing a singular service to us weaker Christians, if your Lordships will point out by what particular emanation of the Holy Spirit the Church was enabled to select the divine out of such a number of apocryphal writings. ”

“ How truly great, how far above the common weakness of humanity, appears the man after God's own heart, at the taking of the city of Rabbah!**** "He brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln!" O ye greatly inexorable heroes! ye Jews! ”

“ The most rational men reject the science of magic or witchcraft, as a silly imposition on the credulity of mankind; but we believers, who have nothing to do with reason, but are guided by the indefinable faculty called faith, are perfectly ready to admit it, and deplore the infidelity of that parliament, which repealed the acts by which so many of that profession lost their lives.
The witch of Endor,** and the Jewish law, both prove by divine argument, the existence of such professors, though, like miracles, they have now ceased to appear. ”

“ What an impiety, say the infidels, to the Majesty of Heaven!
Wherefore we, the true believers, pray that your Lordships will satisfactorily answer and explain all those doubts and objections brought forward against us by infidel philosophers and writers; and if unanswerable, that your Lordships will, with true Christian zeal, procure an act of parliament to be passed, in order to prevent any more doubts whatever being entertained by the enemies of our holy faith and religion, as by law established. ”

“ It is carrying the notion of liberty too far, to suppose, because we are free-born Englishmen, that we may choose our own faith and go to heaven our own way! What would become of the right reverend and reverend guides and turnpike-men, if people were permitted to avoid the strait gate and go to their journey's end without paying? ”

“ It is difficult to conceive, how the Lord of heaven and earth, who had so often changed the order, and suspended the established laws of nature in favour of his people the Jews, could not succeed against the inhabitants of a valley, because they had chariots of iron! Or ought we not rather to infer that the book in which this passage is found, has nothing of divine inspiration in it, but was written by one of the Jews who considered the God of Israel their protector as a local divinity; who was in some instances more, and in others less powerful, than the gods of their enemies. ”

“ Divine truths are so different from those which carnal minds are used to contemplate, that it must be very difficult by the force of mere human reason to persuade mankind in general, that Pharaoh's cattle were in any great danger from the hail storm, since they were all previously dead by the murrain; and some people are so stupid, that they think killing them a second time was no punishment at all. There are not wonting some amongst the present perverse generation ”

“ The malevolence and incredulity of our adversaries, the unbelievers, are visible in nothing so much as the criticisms they make on the resurrection. They complain, and with some degree of reason, that this most miraculous and important event, instead of possessing that extraordinary and uncommonly clear evidence, which its incredible nature requires, bears, on the contrary, every mark of a forgery. ”

“ Why should this idol of the Christians, this man after God's own heart, embrue his hands in the blood of the youth, who supposed he had done a charitable office to the deserted and expiring monarch, whom this David pretended to lament, and who, at the same time, gave such endearing proofs of loyalty to him himself, by presenting him with the regal ornaments? But we, the faithful, who can easily explain all scripture mysteries, say, that though David was really one of the greatest of sinners, yet he truly repented him before he died. Our enemies, the unbelievers, say no ”

“ The weight of the whole atmosphere, with all its vapours, is equal to no more than a hollow sphere of three or four and thirty feet thickness, environing the whole globe, and consequently the whole of its contents, if condensed into water, could not deluge the earth to the height of an ordinary house. It is to no purpose to break open the fountains of the abyss, or great deep, if any such fountains there are; for gravity would prevent the waters from issuing out; neither can we easily persuade infidels, that the windows of Heaven were opened, while they know it has no windows ”

“ The infidels suppose, that the two evangelists, rather than the church should be without the genealogy of its founder, chose to invent them; but we good Christians, who know that both writers were infallible and inspired, are ready to reject the clearest axioms of mere human science, and allow that, in sacred matters, the greater number may be equal to the less. These cavillers and infidels also demand how these genealogies of Joseph prove, that Jesus was the son of David, when it is avowed that Joseph was not his father? ”

“ The oracles of Delphos were obscure and capable of various interpretations, but the prophecies of sacred writ are all so clear and obvious, they shine so bright by their own native lustre, that no one has ever pretended to doubt their divine origin, except those infidels who are unfortunately blinded by the too great suffusion of light, which the Scriptures so continually emit. If the gift of curing the blind be not entirely lost among the apostles of the present day, it must be Christian charity to describe the symptoms of their disorder, that your Lordships may attempt the cure. ”

“ When the salvation of men is concerned, every means is justifiable. What right has a man to complain, though by virtue of an act of parliament, by pains and penalties, fines, imprisonment, and the pillory, he may be sent to heaven whether he will or no? ”

“ How could he divide the light from darkness, since darkness is nothing but the mere privation of light? How could time be divided into days, before the creation of the sun, since a day is the time between sun-rise and sun-rise? ”

“ What answer must we give to those who are inclined to deny, that an all-powerful and just God could make use of the most unjustifiable means to attain his great purpose of aggrandizing the posterity of Abraham? ”

“ Commentators in divinity can do miracles in the way of explaining; but, unfortunately for us, all other miracles have long ceased, though at no time so much wanted as at present.
30. Out of forty Gospels we receive four as canonical; the rest are the fruitful produce of that spirit of forgery which the Christian world has always been celebrated for. Their piety was indefatigable in burning the books of the heretics and unbelievers, and the same piety was not sparing in furnishing apocryphal books. It is for the salvation of mankind that Christianity should prevail ”

“ If the comparison might be allowed, we may affirm that the Spaniards were inferior to the Jews in this only circumstance, that they had a Las Casas among them. The Jews were obdurate to a man, and hardened with holy cruelty. We hear of no tergiversation when Jericho was to be destroyed; "Man and woman, young and old, ox, sheep, and ass, were put to the edge of the sword."* What a philosophical command over the tender passions must Joshua have acquired, to have enabled him to smite with the sword,** and utterly destroy the inhabitants of Ai, Libnah, Lachish, Hebron, Debir, &c. ”

“ Some weak believers are in doubts whether so mean, so ungenerous, and so dishonest an act, as borrowing the jewels of the Egyptians* without any intention of returning them, did not rather originate in that disposition which characterizes the Jews to this day, than in the command of the just God, who certainly could need no such tricks to accomplish his intentions. ”

“ The infidels here insist, that it is better to reject the whole story, than to believe that the Supreme Being could be angry with Balaam, merely because he obeyed his command; but the true believers, the sons of the church, who think there would be no exercise for our faith, if we were required to admit nothing but what can be supported by argument, are not at all concerned in this difficulty; the more improbable the doctrine, the greater must be the merit in believing. ”

“ If God set his bow in the clouds, as a token of his covenant with mankind after the flood, ought we not to conclude, that he, at that time, established the law of the various refrangibility and reflexibility of the rays of light, and consequently, that before the flood many optical experiments, which are common with us, would not then have succeeded? For example, a man could not have made a rainbow by spouting water out of his mouth ”

“ If Scripture was not meant to instruct philosophers, yet why should it mislead them? But though these infidels may please to assert, that wheat in our days is governed by laws directly contrary to these, as all naturalists indeed acknowledge, yet who can affirm that it was so eighteen hundred years ago? ”

“ Miracles must have been very common in Egypt, since there was a body of people whose trade it was to work them. When Aaron's rod was turned into a serpent,* Pharaoh, instead of being surprised at it, as an unusual phænomenon, sends for his magicians, who immediately perform the like with their rods. ”

“ Our enemies have reproached us with the examples of the primitive church; they observe, that the priests were poor and indefatigable, but are now pampered and lazy. Fat benefices and lordly bishoprics, they say, cause a total eclipse of the light of religion, by obtruding, their opake substances between the eye of the priest and the kingdom of Heaven. ”

“ They express the highest astonishment that the sending of Jesus to Herod by Pilate should be related by Luke, and that the other three Evangelists should not only omit that occurrence, but relate the proceedings in this affair so as entirely to exclude the possibility of its insertion. They think it also impossible that an earthquake should rend rocks, and that many saints should arise from the dead, and go into the holy city, as Matthew relates; and yet that these great events should not only have escaped contemporary historians, but even the other three Evangelists. ”

“ Notwithstanding your Lordships' readiness* "to oppose error of every kind by argument and persuasion," it happens unfortunately for us, that these mechanical and persuasive arguments are unknown in Britain. Instead of that most strong and logical argument, called the torture, we are obliged to adopt plain reason, or, at most, when that fails us, the prison, fine, and pillory. But, it is to be hoped, that the happy time is not far off, when the priests of Britain may be able to argue with as much force as the spiritual directors of other countries ”

“ Here again our petulant and unsatisfied opposers demand how Pharaoh could pursue with chariots and horsemen, since his horses were all slain twice over, once by the murrain and once by the hail; not to mention that the first born of cattle were slain even a third time. They likewise add, that Egypt, which, to facilitate the dispersion of the waters of the overflowing Nile, is intersected by numberless canals, must have always been a very improper country either for cavalry or chariots. ”

“ Instead of Christ's re-appearing to all the world, that the world might believe, he is said to have appeared to his disciples, who were the only men on earth whose evidence could be exceptionable in the case; men who already engaged in the attempt of forming a sect or party,* could by no means be disinterested in their report; the only men on earth who could be suspected of forgery in the present instance. ”

“ The miracles of the Old Testament were all performed in those ages of which we have no credible history; what reply then can be made to those who affirm, that miracles have always been confined to the early and fabulous times; that all nations have had them, but that they disappeared in proportion as men became enlightened, and capable of discovering imposture and priestcraft. ”

“ David repenting, was offered from God his choice, either "three years famine, three months destruction before his enemies, or three days pestilence the latter of which he chose, and there died of Israel seventy thousand men.
Our too curious and inquisitive opposers, who are unwilling to believe "cunningly devised fables,"*** enquire how it could be a crime in David to number the people, especially as it was by the instigation of the Lord. They beg to be informed, whether the Lord, and Satan, be one and the same person ”