he will raise you also. Having purified your souls by obeying the truth, cherish brotherly kindness without hypocrisy, and from a pure heart, and earnestly love one another. Having been born again, not from corruptible seed, but from seed that is incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and remaineth for ever." 1 Pet. i. 16-24. Our Saviour considered the paschal lamb which commemorated the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage as a type of his death, which was intended to deliver men from the bondage of sin. When the reality came to pass, the shadow vanished away. Hence our Lord instituted his supper in order to supersede the paschal lamb as celebrated by the Jews. Matt. xxvi. 26. To this passage Peter here alludes: hence the mention of a lamb, spotless and unblemished, in connection with the blood of Christ; hence too he says, that the death of Jesus was foreknown before the beginning of the world, though not fulfilled till the latter days of the Jewish dispensation. This allusion moreover explains the reason why we are said to be redeemed or ransomed by the honoured blood of Christ, not from our sins, but from an unavailing mode of worship, that is, from the burdensome, yet unprofitable, rites of the law; the ordinances of the law, and the sacrifice of the paschal lamb in the number, being abolished by his death. No efficacy then, either to appease the wrath of God, or to purify men from their sins, is in this passage of Peter imputed to the blood of Christ. Our Lord, as he instituted the sacrament before his death, could only allude to his resurrection, as the efficacious means of purifying men from their sins. But Peter now writing after that event, brings it forward, and renders it prominent as the true source of the purification which the Gospel was calculated to produce. They believed in God that raised him from the dead, and gave him glory, so that they had faith and hope in God that he will raise them also. Under the

influence of this faith and hope, by obeying the truth, i. e. by embracing the Gospel, which was the truth or reality, in contradistinction to the Mosaic rites, which were its shadow, they purified their souls, and were born again to a new life of virtue, purity, and benevolence.

PART THE SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

The conversion of Paul according to Gamaliel Smith a scheme of personal ambition.-His objections against the narrative of Paul's conversion stated and refuted.

THE object of the work "Not Paul but Jesus” is thus briefly stated by the author:-1. That Paul had no such commission as he professed to have ;-2. That his enterprize was a scheme of ambition, and nothing more ;3. That his system of doctrine is fraught with mischief in a variety of shapes, and, in so far as it departs from or adds to those of Jesus, with good in none;-and that it has no warrant in any thing that, as far as appears from any of the four Gospels, was ever said or done by Jesus.

In making out these novel charges against one of the principal pillars of the Christian religion, Gamaliel Smith yet pretends to be a believer in its divine origin. Whatever renders Christianity more rational, renders it at the same time more worthy of acceptation. Convinced of this, Middleton, Lardner and Farmer have endeavoured to remove the rubbish that had been heaped upon it in the dark ages; and Gamaliel, in imitation of these great men, professes to have for his object the removing of one thorn, which still remained to be plucked from the side of this much injured religion. This being the case, he hopes "by the clearing it of this incumbrance, not only

as yet unexampled purity, but additional extent may not unreasonably be expected to be given to it."

Here I have to complain of a disingenuousness utterly unworthy of one, whose object is to enlighten mankind on a subject of the highest importance to their morals and happiness. The author of this work is not a believer in Revelation: and his pretence to imitate the example of the above venerable names, in removing the corruptions which, in the eye of reason, weigh down Christianity, is a mere snare to entrap his readers: and if this publication succeeded, it might soon be followed by another from the same pen, entitled, "Neither Paul nor Jesus." The whole of this work is penned in the same spirit of disingenuousness and even dishonesty ; and my object is not merely to prove the futility of his arguments, but to show that these arguments are too obviously inconsistent, false, and absurd, to be believed even by the author himself. Gamaliel Smith, through metaphysical subtlety, or the abuses of Christianity, or some unhappy early bias, became an unbeliever in the Gospel; and the present work is a laboured effort of his own imagination, without one particle of truth, first to justify himself in believing, and next to induce others to believe Christianity to be a system of imposture. The person therefore, who undertakes to answer Gamaliel Smith, will have the painful task not only to silence petty cavils, to unravel sophistry,to correct misrepresenta. tions, to expose ignorance, but also to detect fraud, and to brand falsehood and imposition in a writer, who on other subjects has the fairest claims on the gratitude and admiration of the human race. Since the publication of this work, certain persons* who look to this casuist as an oracle, have been industrious to trumpet him forth as

* I allude to the conductors of the Examiner-men who seldom miss an opportunity to vilify the Christian Religion-men, nevertheless, who have a large claim on the gratitude and patronage of the public, as being on all occasions the able and consistent advocates of civil and religious liberty-as

a great critic and a man of genius. If candour, taste, sensibility and vigour, be essential to genius; if bursts of eloquence or flights of fancy, however irregular, be found among its characteristics; if extent of information, elevation of views, or profundity of research, mark the boundaries of its course, Gamaliel Smith has little claim to its praise. His genius displays itself, not in investing truth and virtue with new forms, or recommending them by fresh attractions, but in hiding them from the views of mankind under colours borrowed from imposture and falsehood; and its efforts, at least in the present work, instead of reminding us of the elasticity of the eagle stooping from its height and sweeping away its prey with sounding pinions,-points to the low cunning of the serpent in Paradise, when deceiving the mother of mankind, or when coiling in envenomed wreaths about the tree of life, and exerting its impotent malice to blast its verdure and its fruit.

The scheme of personal ambition, in which the pretended conversion of Paul originated, is thus stated by Gamaliel Smith in the second chapter of his book :—“ As the first converts placed their property at the disposal of the Apostles, the worldly affairs of the church soon became very flourishing. Of this flourishing state Saul had all along been a witness. While carrying on against it that persecution, in which, if not the original instigator, he had been a most active instrument, he could not in the course of such his disastrous employment have failed to obtain a considerable insight into the state of their worldly affairs. In the mean time Peter went to Samaria to communicate the holy spirit to the converts in that country; and Simon the magician offered money for obtaining that high privilege. To Paul's alert and busy mind-the offer made by the sorcerer to purchase of the

being among the foremost, at all hazard, to plead the cause of humanity against injustice and oppression; nor do they often descend to personalities, except to abase Paul, and to extol Jeremy Bentham.