Page:The Scourge - Volume 5.djvu/38

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23 Gibbon arid Volney.


language of the temperate disputant, anxious only for the truth, unwilling to lacerate by the wantonness of ridicule, the feelings of the religious public; comparing the iniquity of passible- blasphemy, with the praise that may attach to an occasional effort of successful wit : the conscientious advocate of infidelity, will become respectable in his errors, while he incurs not the crime of adventurous profaneness, and will soar as far above Volneys and the Paines, as the scepticism of Cicero is more respectable than the blasphemy of Aristophanes.

To wanton in profaneness, however, seems to be the favorite pursuit of the individual whom Mr. Eaton has selected for the purpose ^of extending and completing the labors in which Mr. Paine and his disciples had been so long engaged. The title of his book is Ecce Homo, or a Critical Enquiry into the History of Jesus Christ, -being a rational Analysis of the Gospels. This " rational analysis" is a compilation of all the indecent ribaldry, and the hackneyed sophisms that could be found in the writings of the French philosophers, or of their imitators: undisguised and unadorned by the classical elegance or artful wit of a Gibbon, or a Volney; and combining the ribaldry of Paine with the imbecility by which the literary opponents of that extraordinary man were so remarkably distinguished.

In the introduction to this publication, we are informed that " the gospel is merely an eastern romance, disgusting to every man of common sense, and apparently addressed to the ignorant, the stupid and the vulgar, the only persons whom it can mislead. Criticism finds there no connection of facts, no agreement of circumstances, no train of principles, and no uniformity of relation. Four men, unpolished and devoid of letters, pass for the faithful authors of memoirs, containing the life of Jesus Christ, and it is on their testimony that Christians believe themselves bound to receive the religion they profess, and adopt without examination, the most contradictory facts, the most incredible actions, the most amazing prodigies*,

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