ther are we certain in what language they were originally
written. The matters they now contain may be classed under two heads:
anecdote, and epistolary correspondence.

The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are
altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place.
They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others did and said
to him; and in several instances they relate the same event differently.
Revelation is necessarily out of the question with respect to those
books; not only because of the disagreement of the writers, but because
revelation cannot be applied to the relating of facts by the persons
who saw them done, nor to the relating or recording of any discourse
or conversation by those who heard it. The book called the Acts of the
Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to the anecdotal part.

All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas,
called the Revelations, are a collection of letters under the name of
epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a common practice
in the world, that the probability is at least equal, whether they are
genuine or forged. One thing, however, is much less equivocal, which
is, that out of the matters contained in those books, together with
the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of
religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name
it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended
imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom,
by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons,
dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that
name or carrying that appearance. But the case nevertheless is, that
those things derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion,
and the theory deduced therefrom, which was, that one person could stand
in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services for him.
The probability, therefore, is, that the whole theory or doctrine of
what is called the redemption (which is said to have been accomplished
by the act of one person in the room of another) was originally
fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those secondary
and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in the books upon
which the idea of theory of redemption is built, have been manufac