depravity of sentiment and manners must have prevailed, before such corrupt maxims could have obtained credit!  It is impossible to collect from these writings a consistent series of moral doctrine. (Enfield, B. 4. chap. 3.) It was the reformation of this wretched depravity of morals which Jesus undertook.  In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves.  We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their Logos and Demiurgos, AEons, and Daemons, male and female, with a long train of &c. &c. &c. or, shall I say at once, of nonsense.  We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphiboligisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.  There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.  I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds, in a dunghill.  The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were professed and acted on by the unlettered Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, and the Christians, of the first century.  Their Platonizing successors, indeed, in after times, in order to legitimate the corruptions which they had incorporated into the doctrines of Jesus, found it necessary to disavow the primitive Christians, who had taken their principles from the mouth of Jesus himself, of his Apostles, and the Fathers cotemporary with them.  They excommunicated their followers as heretics, branding them with the opprobrious name of Ebionites and Beggars.  For a comparison of the Grecian philosophy with that of Jesus, materials might be largely drawn from the same source.  Enfield gives a history and detailed account of the opinions and principles of the different sects.  These relate to the Gods, their natures, grades, places, and powers; the demi-Gods and Demons, and their agency with man; the universe, its structure, extent, and duration; the origin of things from the elements of fire, water, air, and earth; the human soul, its essence and derivation; the summum bonum, and finis bonorum; with a thousand idle dreams and fancies on these and other subjects, the knowledge of which is withheld from man; leaving but a short chapter for his moral duties, and the principal section of that given to what he owes himself, to precepts for rendering him impassible, and unassailable by the evils of life, and for preserving his mind in a state of constant serenity.