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deity, incarnate in Christ-na, rescued the world from the venomous 

 serpent Galen gam, (the French orthography for Callinaga,) whosr 

 head he crushed, after having himself received a wound in his heel;* 

 a remarkable concession, from so inveterate an enemy, though made 

 Avith the most insidious design ; still, however, highly important, 

 since it proves from the mouth of an adversary that I have not, to 

 serve a favourite hypothesis, misrepresented the sentiments of the 

 Brahmins on this subject; after these accumulated insults, Mr. 

 V^olney has had the audacity to assert, that even the existence of 

 Jesus Christ is no better proved than that of Osiris, Hercules, and the 

 Chinese Fo ; and that the Gospels were not written by the Evangelists, 

 whose names they bear, but are errant forgeries " compiled from the 

 books of the Mithriacs of Persia and the Essenians of Syria, who 

 were only reformed Samaritans. "-\- 



The writer who thus shamelessly violates the truth of history, and 

 sets at defiance the united attestation of ages, merits no answer 

 but contempt. That contempt, however, is turned into indignation 

 and horror, when all this insult to truth and decency is known to 

 spring from motives hostile to the peace and order of society, and 

 subversive of the best interests of man. Contempt itself, therefore, 

 refuses to be wholly silent on a subject so unspeakably important; 

 and the answer is both easy and obvious, a full refutation of 

 the whole argument being contained in a plain statement of what, 

 at the first view, to every impartial examiner must appear to be the 

 genuine fact. The insane reveries of the Persian Mithriacs, in their 

 romantic legends, are as different from the rational, the pure, the 

 temperate, theological doctrines inculcated in the New Testa- 

 ment, as the unsocial habits, the disgusting austerities, and the 

 haughty reserve, affected by the Indian gymnosophists, were from 



* Ruins, p. 202. t Ibid. p. 209. 



