ssion to alter the original copy of Washington's Farewell
Address? Would not the man who should attempt such sacrilege be torn in
a thousand pieces? But Washington will never be an object of such
veneration as John, nor will his Farewell Address ever compare in
importance with Paul's Farewell Letter to the Philippians. Besides,
these Gospels and Letters were public documents, containing the records
of laws, in obedience to which men are daily crossing their
inclinations, enduring the mockery of their neighbors, losing their
money, and endangering their lives. They contained the proofs and
promises of that religious faith in God and hope of heaven, for the sake
of which they suffered such things. Is it credible that they would allow
them to be altered and corrupted? You might far more rationally talk of
altering the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the
United States. Translated into different languages--transported into
Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Carthage, Egypt,
Parthia, Persia, India, and China--committed to memory by children, and
quoted in the writings of Christian authors of the first three
centuries, to such an extent, that we can gather the whole of the New
Testament, except twenty-six verses, from their writings--appealed to as
authority by heretics and orthodox in controversy--and publicly read in
the hearing of tens of hundreds of thousands every Sabbath day in
worship--we are a thousand times more certain that the New Testament has
not been corrupted, than we are that the Declaration of Independence is
genuine.

On this ground then we plant ourselves. The whole story of a late and
gradual formation of the New Testament, or, in plain English, of its
forgery, stands out as an unmitigated falsehood in the eyes of every man
capable of writing his own name. The first churches could not be
deceived with forgeries for apostolic writings. Nor could they, if they
would, allow these writings to be corrupted. Be they true or false, fact
or fiction, the books of the New Testament are the words of the Apostles
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the next chapter we will inquire
into the truth of their story.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] The Family Christian Almanac for 1859, p. 57, American Tract
Society, New York.

[66] Acta Concitia, sub voce Laodicea, Canon iv. Lardner vi. p. 368.

[67] Gibbon's Decline and Fall, II. p. 267.

[68] The original authorities may be found co