dge, which it was their business to avoid. Mahomet, throughout
the Koran, inculcates all the virtues, and pointedly reprobates vice
of all kinds. His morality is merely the precepts of the Old and
New Testaments, modified a little, and expressed in Arabic. They
are good precepts, and always to be listened to with respect,
wherever, and by whomsoever, inculcated. But surely that will not
prove Islamism to be from God, nor that Mahomet was his
prophet!

That the Apostles suffered death on account of their preaching the
gospel, if allowed to be fact, as said before, proves nothing. Many
have suffered death for false and absurd doctrines. "But whether
any of the Apostles, (besides James who was slain by Herod,) died
a natural, or a violent death, the learned Christians do not certainly
know. For there is extant no authentic history of the Apostles,
besides the Acts. There are indeed many fabulous narrations
published by the Papists, called Martyrologies, stuffed with the
most extravagant lies, which no learned man now regards; and who
therefore will credit what such books say of the Apostles? Peter is
said in them to have been put to death at Rome by Nero,
nevertheless most of the learned men of the Protestants assert, that
Peter never was in Rome, and as for Paul, no one certainly knows
where, when, or how ho finished his days. So that if we were even
to allow the feeble argument of Martyrdom, all the influence and
weight given to it, it would not apply to the Apostles, who, we are
sure, derived some benefit, by preaching the gospel, and are not
sure that they came to any harm by it.

I will conclude this long chapter, by laying before my reader some
extracts from the book written by Celsus, a heathen philosopher,
against Christianity, preserved by Origen in his work against
Celsus. That the entire work of Celsus is lost, is to be regretted; as
he appears to have been a man of observation, though too sarcastic
to please a fair inquirer; and from the picture given by him of the
first Christians, their maxims, and their modes of teaching, and the
subjects they chose for converts, it appears, that they were the
exact prototypes of the Methodists and Shakers of the present day,
both sects which contain excellent people, with hardly any fault
but credulity.

"If they (i. e. the teachers of Christianity,) say 'do not examine,'
and the like: it is however incumbent on them to teach what those
things are which they assert, an