le to its present shape with the hope that in spite
of illiberal clerical influence, my fellow Christians will read and
inwardly digest the sublime precepts they inculcate;--as pure, as holy,
and as charitable as those principles of Christianity taught in the
Scriptures they; now read by permission; although their minds may, after
mature reflection, doubt the truth of the miraculous records therein
given.

To ensure these Gospels and Epistles an unprejudiced and serious
attention, which they are entitled to, equally with those now patronised
by Church authority, I will briefly refer to that disgraceful epoch in
Roman Ecclesiastical Annals, when the New Testament was mutilated, and
priestly craft was employed for excluding these books from its pages.
HONE, in the preface to his first edition of the Apocryphal New
Testament, so called, without satisfactory grounds, by the Council of
Nice, in the reign of the Emperor Constantine, thus opens the subject:--

"After the writings contained in the New Testament were selected from the
numerous Gospels and Epistles then in existence, what became of the Books
that were rejected by the compilers?"

This question naturally occurs on every investigation as to the period
when and the persons by whom the New Testament was formed. It has been
supposed by many that the volume was compiled by the first Council of
Nice, which, according to Jortin (Rem. on Eccl. vol. ii. p. 177),
originated thus: Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and Arius, who was a
presbyter in his diocese, disputed together about the nature of Christ;
and the bishop being displeased at the notions of Arius, and finding
that they were adopted by other persons, "was very angry." He commanded
Arius to come over to his sentiments, and to quit his own; as if a man
could change his opinions as easily as he can change his coat! He then
called a Council of War, consisting of nearly, a hundred bishops, and
deposed, excommunicated, and anathematized Arius, and with him several
ecclesiastics, two of whom were bishops. Constantine sent a letter, in
which he reprimanded the bishops for disturbing the church with their
insignificant disputes. But the affair was gone too far to be thus
composed. To settle this and other points, the Nicene Council was
summoned, consisting of about 318 bishops. The first thing they did was
to quarrel, and to express their resentments, and to present accusations
to the Emperor against one another. "The E