Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete

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Ti­tle: For­bid­den Gospels and Epis­tles, Com­plete

Au­thor: Arch­bish­op Wake

Re­lease Date: Septem­ber, 2004 [EBook #6516] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of sched­ule] [This file was first post­ed on De­cem­ber 25, 2002] [This file was last up­dat­ed on Jan­uary 22, 2003]

Edi­tion: 11

Lan­guage: En­glish

Char­ac­ter set en­cod­ing: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTEN­BERG EBOOK FOR­BID­DEN GOSPELS, WAKE, EN­TIRE ***

This eBook was pro­duced by David Widger <widger@ce­comet.net> Ad­di­tion­al proof­ing was done by Cur­tis A. Weyant

THE SUP­PRESSED GOSPELS AND EPIS­TLES OF THE ORIG­INAL NEW TES­TA­MENT OF JE­SUS THE CHRIST

AND OTH­ER POR­TIONS OF THE AN­CIENT HOLY SCRIP­TURES. NOW EX­TANT, AT­TRIBUT­ED TO HIS APOS­TLES, AND THEIR DIS­CI­PLES, AND VEN­ER­AT­ED BY THE PRIM­ITIVE CHRIS­TIAN CHURCH­ES DUR­ING THE FIRST FOUR CEN­TURIES, BUT SINCE, AF­TER VI­OLENT DIS­PU­TA­TIONS FOR­BID­DEN BY THE BISH­OPS OF THE NICENE COUN­CIL, IN THE REIGN OF THE EM­PER­OR CON­STAN­TINE AND OMIT­TED FROM THE CATHOLICS AND PROTES­TANT EDI­TIONS OF THE NEW TES­TA­MENT, BY ITS COM­PIL­ERS

TRANS­LAT­ED FROM THE ORIG­INAL TONGUES, WITH HIS­TOR­ICAL REF­ER­ENCES TO THEIR AU­THEN­TIC­ITY,

BY ARCH­BISH­OP WAKE AND OTH­ER LEARNED DI­VINES

THE OR­DER OF ALL THE FOR­BID­DEN BOOKS OF THE NEW TES­TA­MENT WITH THEIR PROP­ER NAMES, AND NUM­BER OF CHAP­TERS

CON­TENTS:

Mary Pro­te­van­ge­lion I. In­fan­cy II. In­fan­cy Nicode­mus Christ and Ab­garus Laodiceans Paul and Seneca Acts of Paul and The­cla I. Clement II. Clement Barn­abas Eph­esians Mag­ne­sians Tral­lians Ro­mans Philadel­phi­ans Smyr­naeans Poly­carp Philip­pi­ans I. Her­mas–Vi­sions II. Her­mas–Com­mands III. Her­mas–Simil­itudes

PREF­ACE.

To up­hold the “right of pri­vate judg­ment,” and our “Chris­tian lib­er­ty where­with Christ hath made us free;” to add fu­el to the fire of in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and in the cru­cible of deep in­quiry, melt from the gold of pure re­li­gion, the dross of man’s in­ven­tion; to ap­peal from the erring tri­bunals of a fal­li­ble Priest­hood, and re­store to its orig­inal state the mu­ti­lat­ed Tes­ta­ment of the Saviour; al­so to in­duce all earnest thinkers to search not a part, but the whole of the Scrip­tures, if there­in they think they will find eter­nal life; I, as an ad­vo­cate of free thought and un­tram­melled opin­ion, dis­pute the au­thor­ity of those un­char­ita­ble, bick­er­ing, and ig­no­rant Ec­cle­si­as­tics who first sup­pressed these gospels and epis­tles; and I join is­sue with their Catholic and Protes­tant suc­ces­sors who have since ex­clud­ed them from the New Tes­ta­ment, of which they formed a part; and were ven­er­at­ed by the Prim­itive Church­es, dur­ing the first four hun­dred years of the Chris­tian Era.

My op­po­si­tion is based on two grounds; first, the right of ev­ery ra­tio­nal be­ing to be­come a “Priest un­to him­self,” and by the test of en­light­ened rea­son, to form his own un­bi­assed judg­ment of all things nat­ural and spir­itu­al: sec­ond, that the rep­uta­tion of the Bish­ops who ex­tract­ed these books from the orig­inal New Tes­ta­ment, un­der the pre­tence of be­ing Apoc­ryphal, and for­bade them to be read by the peo­ple, is proved by au­then­tic im­par­tial his­to­ry too odi­ous to en­ti­tle them to any def­er­ence. Since the Nicene Coun­cil, by a pi­ous fraud, which I shall fur­ther al­lude to, sup­pressed these books, sev­er­al of them have been reis­sued from time to time by var­ious trans­la­tors, who dif­fered con­sid­er­ably in their ver­sions, as the his­tor­ical ref­er­ences at­tached to them in the fol­low­ing pages will demon­strate. But to the late Mr. William Hone we are in­debt­ed for their com­plete pub­li­ca­tion for the first time in one vol­ume, about the year 1820; which edi­tion, dili­gent­ly re­vised, and pu­ri­fied of many er­rors both in the text and the notes at­tached there­to, I have re-​pub­lished in num­bers to en­able all class­es of the na­tion to pur­chase and pe­ruse them. As, how­ev­er, in­stead of be­ing called by their own des­ig­na­tion “Apoc­ryphal,” (which yet re­mains to be proved), they were re-​en­ti­tled THE FOR­BID­DEN BOOKS, and, from com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­ceived, ap­pear to have ag­itat­ed a por­tion of the great mass of ig­no­rant big­otry which mars the fair form of Re­li­gion in these sect-​rid­den do­min­ions, I have mod­ified the ti­tle to its present shape with the hope that in spite of il­lib­er­al cler­ical in­flu­ence, my fel­low Chris­tians will read and in­ward­ly di­gest the sub­lime pre­cepts they in­cul­cate;–as pure, as holy, and as char­ita­ble as those prin­ci­ples of Chris­tian­ity taught in the Scrip­tures they; now read by per­mis­sion; al­though their minds may, af­ter ma­ture re­flec­tion, doubt the truth of the mirac­ulous records there­in giv­en.

To en­sure these Gospels and Epis­tles an un­prej­udiced and se­ri­ous at­ten­tion, which they are en­ti­tled to, equal­ly with those now pa­tro­nised by Church au­thor­ity, I will briefly re­fer to that dis­grace­ful epoch in Ro­man Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal An­nals, when the New Tes­ta­ment was mu­ti­lat­ed, and priest­ly craft was em­ployed for ex­clud­ing these books from its pages. HONE, in the pref­ace to his first edi­tion of the Apoc­ryphal New Tes­ta­ment, so called, with­out sat­is­fac­to­ry grounds, by the Coun­cil of Nice, in the reign of the Em­per­or Con­stan­tine, thus opens the sub­ject:–

“Af­ter the writ­ings con­tained in the New Tes­ta­ment were se­lect­ed from the nu­mer­ous Gospels and Epis­tles then in ex­is­tence, what be­came of the Books that were re­ject­ed by the com­pil­ers?”

This ques­tion nat­ural­ly oc­curs on ev­ery in­ves­ti­ga­tion as to the pe­ri­od when and the per­sons by whom the New Tes­ta­ment was formed. It has been sup­posed by many that the vol­ume was com­piled by the first Coun­cil of Nice, which, ac­cord­ing to Jortin (Rem. on Ec­cl. vol. ii. p. 177), orig­inat­ed thus: Alexan­der, Bish­op of Alexan­dria, and Ar­ius, who was a pres­byter in his dio­cese, dis­put­ed to­geth­er about the na­ture of Christ; and the bish­op be­ing dis­pleased at the no­tions of Ar­ius, and find­ing that they were adopt­ed by oth­er per­sons, “was very an­gry.” He com­mand­ed Ar­ius to come over to his sen­ti­ments, and to quit his own; as if a man could change his opin­ions as eas­ily as he can change his coat! He then called a Coun­cil of War, con­sist­ing of near­ly, a hun­dred bish­ops, and de­posed, ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ed, and anath­ema­tized Ar­ius, and with him sev­er­al ec­cle­si­as­tics, two of whom were bish­ops. Con­stan­tine sent a let­ter, in which he rep­ri­mand­ed the bish­ops for dis­turb­ing the church with their in­signif­icant dis­putes. But the af­fair was gone too far to be thus com­posed. To set­tle this and oth­er points, the Nicene Coun­cil was sum­moned, con­sist­ing of about 318 bish­ops. The first thing they did was to quar­rel, and to ex­press their re­sent­ments, and to present ac­cu­sa­tions to the Em­per­or against one an­oth­er. “The Em­per­or burnt all their li­bels, and ex­hort­ed them to peace and uni­ty.” (See Mosheim’s Ec­cle. Hist.) These were the kind of spir­itu­al shep­herds of whom Sabi­nus, the Bish­op Her­aclea af­firms, that ex­cept­ing Con­stan­tine him­self, and Eu­se­bius Pam­philus, they “were a set of il­lit­er­ate crea­tures, that un­der­stood noth­ing.” And now in­tel­li­gent Catholics, es­pe­cial­ly Protes­tants who are con­tent to read on­ly the books of the Tes­ta­ment au­tho­rized by the Coun­cil of Nice, and agreed to ev­er since by your own bish­ops, al­though they and you pro­fess to dis­sent from the Pa­pa­cy, hear what Pap­pus in his Syn­od­ican to that Coun­cil says of their crafty con­trivance when they sep­arat­ed the books of the orig­inal New Tes­ta­ment:–He tells us, that hav­ing “promis­cu­ous­ly put all the books that were re­ferred to the Coun­cil for de­lib­er­ation un­der the com­mu­nion-​ta­ble in a church, they be­sought the Lord that the in­spired writ­ings might get on the ta­ble, while the spu­ri­ous ones re­mained un­der­neath; and that it hap­pened ac­cord­ing­ly!” (See Com. Mace’s N. T. p. 875.) There­fore, good read­er, ev­ery Chris­tian sect from the fourth cen­tu­ry to the present pe­ri­od, have been blessed with the books that climbed up­on the com­mu­nion-​ta­ble, and in con­se­quence were deemed in­spired and canon­ical; at the same time have been for­bid­den to read the Gospels and Epis­tles here­in pub­lished, be­cause they could not per­form the same feat, but re­mained un­der the ta­ble, and were con­demned ac­cord­ing­ly, as unin­spired and apoc­ryphal writ­ings. If you be­lieve this popish leg­end, you will not read the good books I lay be­fore you, but still con­tin­ue to pos­sess on­ly HALF THE TES­TA­MENT, in­stead of the PER­FECT ONE, which will en­able you to burst the tram­mels of priestcraft, and by the light of God’s whole truth be­come free. In con­clu­sion, I im­plore you to ex­am­ine for your­selves, and ob­serve the tes­ti­mo­ny of Arch­bish­op Wake and oth­er learned di­vines and his­to­ri­ans ap­pend­ed there­to; and sub­scribe my­self,

Your well-​wish­er, ED­WARD HAN­COCK.

FOR­BID­DEN BOOKS OF THE NEW TES­TA­MENT.

THE GOSPEL OF THE BIRTH OF MARY.