certainly would not, we believe, be received in a modern
court of justice, to settle the fact about a debt of
five dollars. And if it be still urged, that
such a story is unparalleled, and therefore respectable;
we say that it is not unparalleled; as we have an
account of a false Messiah, who applied the prophecies
to himself, had a forerunner, and more than two hundred
thousand followers, who publicly acknowledged him
for the Messiah, raised contributions, and supported
him magnificently. He too, quoted the prophets
as speaking concerning him, and was said to have worked
divers miracles, and was ultimately put to death by
the order of the Grand Seignor at Constantinople;
yet nevertheless was said to have been, seen again
by certain of his followers, who wrote books in favour
of that fact, and of his Messiahship. Many learned
Rabbins enrolled themselves as his disciples, and
wrote controversial works in his cause, as Paul did.
And to conclude, his party was not entirely extinct
within a very few years. Yet, notwithstanding
all this, he was an impostor; and no man now believes
the stories of his miracles, or his resurrection;
notwithstanding that both are affirmed by more recent,
more learned, and more respectable testimony than
is, or can be, offered, in favour of the Messiahship
of Jesus. The name of this famous impostor was
Shabathai Tzevi, and his history is given by Basnage,
in his history of the Jews, [and by other writers
of Jewish history. See on this subject the Sepher
Torath Hakenaoth, page 2. The learned Mr. Zedner
has extracted the life of Shabetai Tsebi from tins
book, and published it, with a German translation,
in his Auswahl historischer Stucke aus Hebraischen
Schriftstellern, Berlin, 1840.—D.]
I wish the Christian reader to peruse carefully, and cooly, that account; and if he then persists in believing the history given by the evangelists; with such faith as his, he certainly ought to be able to move mountains; and I have no doubt at all, that with such a good natured understanding as his, if he had found in his New Testament the story of Jonah misquoted, and and by a small transposition a la mode de Surenhusius, representing that “Jonah swallowed the whale!” this sturdy “confidence in things not seen,” would, I doubt not have enabled him without difficulty to swallow the prophet with the whale in his belly.
CHAPTER XVII.
Of the peculiar morality of
the new testament,
as it affects individuals.