(Enfield, B. 4. chap. 3.) It
was the reformation of this wretched depravity of morals which Jesus
undertook. In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should
have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been
muffled by priests who have travestied them into various forms, as
instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the
Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the
Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations,
their Logos and Demiurgos, AEons, and Daemons, male and female, with a
long train of &c. &c. &c. or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must
reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the
very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphiboligisms into which
they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had
fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta,
and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood
themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and
benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have
performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out
of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his,
and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds, in a dunghill. The
result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated
doctrines, such as were professed and acted on by the unlettered
Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, and the Christians, of the first
century.
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