though these visionary Epistles represent the heresy as subsisting at the time when they were written. The only prophetic part of them also, if any part can properly be called so, is absolutely false; for whilst some are threatened with having their candlestick, that is their church, removed out of its place, and others with other signal punishments and marks of his resentment, the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia are favoured and approved; and the latter is particularly assured, that, "because she "had kept the word of his patience, he would "also keep her from the hour of temptation, "which should come upon all the world to "try them that dwell upon the earth." Yet the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia have been both involved in the same common sufferings and calamities with all the other churches of Asia; and have had their candlesticks removed out of their places, and supplanted by the lamps of Mahomed. Besides, in order to predict the leading circumstances of the subsequent prophetic vision, our Saviour must have known, that the church of Philadelphia and of Smyrna, and all the other churches in Asia, would unite, under the de

nomination of the Greek church, to form the predicted apostasy from his religion; and, by means of an Hierarchy established by the Emperor Constantine, become, at no very distant period, the first grand object of the chief prediction of this very Apocalypse: he therefore could never have dictated Epistles to those churches in such terms as these.

Y 2'

CONCLUSION.

SUCH,

candid Reader, are the arguments which have long ago induced the Author of these pages, to regard so large a part of the canonical scriptures as spurious fictions, of no authority, and undeserving the attention of a disciple of Jesus Christ. What effect they may have upon the minds of his readers in general, is not in his power to determine. But it is great satisfaction to him, that, besides the demand of the Public for a new edition, he has received from many individuals, in different and distant parts of the kingdom, the most unequivocal testimony of their approbation. And whosoever will attentively examine those writings, which, thus convinced, he refuses to admit into his Creed, will find, that they alone have given cause for that voluminous inundation of school-divinity, and those endless theological controversies, that have for so many ages oppressed the literature

and fatigued the patience of Europe; that they alone have been the source of those wild, irrational systems, which have so long misled people from the plain, straight, perspicuous paths of true religion, into the manifold, devious wanderings of that obscure labyrinth of fabulous superstition, whose impious doctrines, having nothing to do with reason, and applying only to the passions, have so exasperated the minds of men against each other, and so inhumanly, as well as unchristianly, hardened their hearts, as to produce frequently, in every nation of Christendom, under the plea of godly. zeal, scenes of the most barbarous violence and brutal cruelty, Doctrines, which (since statesmen have been wise enough to discourage the spirit of religious persecution,) have filled the nominally Christian world with a continually increasing variety of sects, both the teachers and disciples of which, according to the prophetic description long since given of them by the Apostle Paul, though from infancy to old age they are ever learning, are never able to attain a rational, satisfactory intelligence of the religion they continue to profess, nor to come to the knowledge of the obvious and simple, but important, truths of the New

Covenant of the Gospel. Doctrines which, well knowing them to have had their origin only in the second and third centuries, and finding

་

them to be pointed out by the finger of God himself, as the falsehoods and fabulous fictions of the predicted Antichristian Apostasy, which, when supported by the power of the civil magistrate, would for so many centuries' supplant the genuine Religion of the New Covenant, preached by Christ and his Apostles, the Author glories in having strenuously combated, for near thirty years, by argu ments which have never yet been refuted. And now, having attained the advanced age of his seventy-fifth year, amidst the increasing bodily infirmities and debility, which he reasonably considers as admonitions of his approaching dissolution, he blesses God for his gracious goodness, in having continued to him the entire preservation of his mental faculties, which has enabled him to give the Public a Second Edition of this Work; in which he hopes they will find many arguments considerably improved and strengthened. And now, being conscious of having faithfully discharged his duty to God, Iris Saviour, and to his fellow-creatures, ta