he unbelief of an unfortunate
nation, who, on that account, have for almost eighteen hundred years,
been made the victim of rancorous prejudice, the most infernal
cruelties, and the most atrocious wickedness. If the Christian religion
be, in truth, not well founded, surely it is the duty of every honest
and every humane, man, to endeavour to dispel an illusion, which
certainly has been, notwithstanding any thing that can be said to the
contrary, the bona fide, and real cause of unspeakable misery, and of
repeated, and remorseless plunderings, and massacres, to an unhappy
people; the journal of whose sufferings, on account of it, forms the
blackest page in the history of the human race, and the most detestable
one in the history of human superstition.--E.

* Jerome, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, says, that
"The Church of Christ was not gathered from the Academy, or the Lyceum,
but from the lowest of the people." [Vili Plebecula.] And Coecilius, in
Minutius Felix, says, that the Christian assemblies were made up "de
ultima faece collectis, imperitioribus, et mulieribus credulis sexus
suae facilitate labentibus," i. e. "that they consisted of the lowest
of the mob, simple and unlearned, men, and credulous women."

The president of a province is introduced, by Prudentius as thus
addressing a martyr:--"Tu qui Doctor, ait, seris novellum Commenti
genus, ut Leves Puellae, Lucos destituunt, Jovem relinquant; Damnes, si
sapias, ANILE DOGMA."

The Christian Fathers confess, and glory in it, that the greater part of
their congregations consisted of women and children, slaves, beggars,
and vagabonds.

The Jewish Christians were, as appears evidently from the New Testament,
exceedingly poor, and therefore there is frequent mention made of
contributions for "the poor Saints at Jerusalem." From thence it was
that the Jewish Christians got the name of Ebionites, i. e. Poor. The
Jewish Christian Church consisted of the dregs of the Jewish people,
simple and ignorant men, Samaritans, &c. No person in Judea of eminence,
or learning, appears to have joined the sect of the Nazarenes, except
Paul; after the destruction of Jerusalem they gradually dwindled in
number, and became extinct.--E.

* I will here lay before the reader the arguments advanced by the
Mahometans in behalf of the miracles of their prophet, extracted from
the learned Reland's account of Mehometanism. They say that--"the
miracles of Mahomet and hi