INTRODUCTION*. ILLUSTRIOUS, in the church of Jesus in general, and in the church of England in particular, is the name of CONYERS MIDDLETON. Signal was, and is, the service rendered by him to the religion of Jesus. By that bold, though reverend, hand, it now stands cleared of many a heap of pernicious rubbish, with which it had been incumbered and defiled, by the unhallowed labours of a succession of writers, who,-without personal intercourse with the founder, any more than we have now,-have, from the mere circumstance of the comparative vicinity of their days to those in which he lived, derived the exclusive possession of the imposing title of Fathers of the Church, or, in one word, The Fathers. So able, so effectual, has been this clearance, that, *This Introduction is, in the main, a reprint from the single sheet pamphlet, published Ao 1821, under the title of Summary View, &c.; but with some defalcations, additions, and alterations. †The Reverend Dr. Conyers Middleton, A° 1721, principal librarian of the University of Cambridge; afterwards possessor of an ecclesiastical benefice in the county of Surry, (Biographia Britannica, MIDDLETON), in his work intituled, "A Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers, supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church, from the earliest Ages," &c. as it has been observed by the Edinburgh Reviewers *, -speaking of course of protestants, and more particularly of English protestants,-till one unexpected exception, which it mentions, had presented itself, they had thought that in no man's opinion were those writers any longer to be regarded longer to be regarded as guides, either in faith or morals." 66 One step further was still wanting. One thorn still remained, to be plucked out of the side of this so much injured religion,-and that was, the addition made to it by Saul of Tarsus: by that Saul, who, under the name of Paul, has-(as will be seen) without warrant from, and even in the teeth of, the history of Jesus, as delivered by his companions and biographers the four evangelists,-been dignified with the title of his apostle: his apostle, that is to say, his emissary: his emissary, that is to say, sent out by him: sent out, by that Jesus, whose immediate disciples he so long persecuted and destroyed, and whose person, -unless dreaming of a person after his death, or professing to have dreamt of him, is seeing him,—he never saw. In the course of the ensuing examination, the subject of miracles has come, unavoidably, under consideration. On this delicate ground, it has been mat * A° 1814, No. 47, p. 58. † Apostle, a modification of the Greek word Apostolos (AñoOTOλOS) a person sent out. : Emissary, from the Latin word emissus-sent out. |