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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 39

Letter No. VI

page 23

Letter No. VI.

Let me once again caution you against the statements made by learned men and infidels. They would fain have us believe that our Faith rests purely upon the merits of its intrinsic worth and the integrity of its human founders. They tell us we are Christians, simply because we happen to be born in Christian lands, and because Christian education has been administered unto us. How false a Christian knows all this to be if once he believe in the doctrine of Election! We are Christians because it is God's will that we should be so, whilst it is also God's will that all the rest of mankind should be heathens and heretics. It is furthermore God's will that these heathens and heretics should go to hell for being such.

Anxious to subvert this Holy Faith, the scholars of our own time have conclusively shown that the Gospels upon which our Faith rests, were not written by their reputed authors, and that we have not the slightest trace of them before their supposed authors and the men whose lives they profess to give had long been in their graves. We are really informed upon the very best authority, that the Gospels which we have are nothing more nor less than condensations of a multitude of other Gospels which existed before them, which were read in the page 24 Primitive Churches, which were believed in as divine by the first Christians, which were for very many years the only Gospels in use, and of which, undoubtedly, our Gospels are very late, and, as we have said, condensed copies. But these fifty false Gospels, though they were the first, and for a long time the only ones in use, have been condemned by the Church, and that is sufficient to satisfy any good Christian as to their spuriousness.

Though these Gospels have been justly condemned, I cannot help but admit that some of them are very interesting to one who has accustomed himself to the glorious habit of believing. I am rather sorry, myself, that the "Gospel of the Infancy" has been omitted from the Canon, since it contains some pleasing accounts of the Life of Jesus during his boyhood, of which the Canonical Gospels leave us in ignorance. It is in this Gospel that we learn that as soon as Jesus was born he cried out, "Mary, I am the Son of God." When he was taken down into Egypt this Gospel informs us that all the idols fell down before him.

We also learn the following from this Gospel:—

When Mary had put the swaddling clothes of Jesus out to dry after their arrival in Egypt, a son of an Egyptian priest who was possessed of devils happened to come near them, and immediately the devils came out of the unfortunate man's nose, and they flew away in the shape of crows and serpents. One day he came in contact with a mule, which was none other than a man who had been transformed by the aid of witchcraft into that shape. Jesus got on the mule's back, and immediately it returned into a man. It appears that when Judas Iscariot was a boy, he even then was possessed of page 25 a devil, which caused him to attempt to bite the side of Jesus. Immediately Jesus cried out, and the devil jumped out of Judas, "and ran away like a mad dog" (chap, xiv.) It would also appear that when Jesus was quite young he was exceedingly fond of playing with other boys of his acquaintance. One day he made a number of clay sparrows, and he showed his superiority over his companions by commanding his clay birds to fly away, which they readily did. Whilst playing on one occasion with his companions upon the roof of a house, one of his companions fell off and was killed. The rest all ran away, leaving him alone to be accused of the crime of having killed the boy. When, however, the relations of the boy accused him of the murder, Jesus proposed that they should go down and ask the boy who was dead who had killed him. They agreed to this, so Jesus stood over the boy's head and exclaimed, "Zeinunus! Zeinunus! who threw thee down from the house-top?" Then the boy answered "Thou didst not, but such an one did." Whatever school Jesus went to, he knew more than his schoolmaster. He helped his father very materially by enlarging or decreasing any piece of carpentering work which Joseph had not made to the proper size. In this way, by the speaking of a single word, he enlarged the throne of Herod, which his father had made too small. He killed so many people who had offended him, that eventually his parents would not "allow him to go out of the house," because" every one who displeases him is killed." (1 Infancy xx. 1—16; 2 Infancy iii. 1—7).

These are by no means all the miracles which are recorded by the author or authors of the "Gospel of page 26 the Infancy," but they will serve to throw some light upon the early life of our Master. It is for this reason that I regret that the wisdom and inspiration of our Church have not seen fit to preserve it in the Canon. But since they have not, it only remains for me to submit to what our Church believes without a single murmur.

There are, as I have intimated, many other wonderful Gospels besides this one, all of which, either by the whole Church or sections of it, were at one time considered as infallible and divinely inspired. It becomes our duty, however, to reject them all since the Church has done so. Only let us be careful not to reject the four true Gospels (which are an epitome of the others) since our Church has sanctioned these. The infidels would have you place the whole of them in the same category, to use your common sense in judging and comparing their merits, and only to accept the good and beautiful, in whichsoever Gospel they are found. But what is the advice of an infidel compared with that of—Yours, etc.

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