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 unbiased 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versions, as the historical references attached to them in the following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
