What is a pious fraud?

Here is a curious example among so many others of the frauds and forgeries perpetrated in the vaunted primitive church, which got the name of pious frauds: Gospels, Apostolic Acts, Canons, and Constitutions, Sibylline prophecies, Ignatius' Epistles, visions, even a letter from Christ. Nothing was wanting in the way of falsehood, in the early centuries of the church, to impose superstition and corruption on the ignorance they were in, and exalt the clergy at the expense of the authority of the word of God.

We pause here a moment to observe that Urquhart in his "New Biblical Guide," points out very forcibly that there are a number of words used that have their roots in the Egyptian language and not the Hebrew, as well as allusions to Egyptian customs and geographical details, which would only be known to people familiar with Egypt, and that these are introduced without one word of explanation. The unbelieving "Higher Critics" insisted that the Pentateuch was never written by Moses, but was the work of Ezra, or of someone else about his time — that it was a "pious fraud" perpetrated in the hope of making the people attach more weight to the law they were supposed to observe. But Ezra, or someone else, coming from Babylon, would never have had this intimate knowledge of Egyptian words and customs dating a thousand years before, and could he in some miraculous way have obtained the knowledge, he would have had to insert explanations to make them intelligible to the readers of his day. No, the hallmark of the Egypt of the time of Moses is plainly to be seen. It is as well for us ordinary Christians to know these facts, for we may occasionally be confronted by these infidel reasonings.

177 Members of commissions may laugh if it be asked, Are we to have a Bible or no? but this is the question. Germans may hold, still pretending to be Christians, that the allegations of miracles at once render a book unhistorical; but the proofs by which they convince others that it cannot be are the proofs by which Mr. Smith would prove that the Pentateuch, and especially Deuteronomy, are unhistorical, and these are with heartless indifference, on the ground of legal technicalities, to be allowed to be valid on the plea that Mr. Smith on other grounds holds them trustworthy. And what grounds are these? That, because these Shemitic historians, like Thucydides or Livy giving speeches they invent as spoken by the persons they wrote about, do not think it fraud to put the words in their heroes' mouths, we must take them as they gave them, and they were received at the time; and this is divine inspiration! Does he mean, or does the speech mean, that this fabled Shemitic system was held at the time for divine inspiration? That they received what was known to be put into Moses' mouth by a modern author to polish crude legislation, as the WORD OF GOD by the mouth of Moses saying, "Jehovah spake unto Moses saying," when they knew and received it as Mr. Smith does now (namely, that it was not so given), though some few portions might be true traditions of what Moses taught? Let us see what the "wary and well-considered" compromise speech in the journal amounts to. Mr. Smith is guarded enough. We have this account of Scripture from him: the written record of the revelation of God's will which is necessary unto salvation makes use of certain forms of literary presentation which have always been thought legitimate in ordinary composition, but which were not always understood to be used in the Bible. Used by whom? How carefully the inspiration of the writings is avoided! Mr. Smith does not call this fraud as Dr. Kuenen honestly does ("pious fraud"): that is his opinion, but not the question.

One final question remains, If the Divine and Eternal Sonship was not the truth of God, why did the enemy so relentlessly attack it, and heresy so passionately deny it? If, as we are told today, it was a theological invention and a pious fraud, then the enemy should have rejoiced that so great an untruth was believed by the saints of God. Surely the answer may be left to the judgment of any unsophisticated conscience!

Three things come before us in our consideration of this theme: the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection of believers, and the resurrection of unbelievers. If Christ's resurrection is fable and not fact, then is Christianity a hollow farce. Preaching and faith are alike vain. Believers, instead of being saved, are yet in their sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. So the Apostle argues in 1 Cor. 15. Thank God, no such uncertainty exists. Christ's resurrection is one of the best attested facts in the history of this world. The precautions taken by the authorities of that day, the stern regulations concerning sleeping soldiers, the unbelief of the disciples, the large number of those who interviewed the Saviour subsequently, all combine to prove that no pious fraud was perpetrated, but that God really raised His beloved Son from amongst the dead. The fact itself is of immense import. It was God's public vindication of the claims and character of the crucified One, it signified His acceptance of His atoning work, and it involved the complete justification of every sinner who believes in His name.

The well-known passage in 2 Timothy 3 gives us the clearest instruction on this point. It has peculiar emphasis, because the Church had already separated from godliness and order, and perilous times were to come, and evil men and seducers wax worse and worse. The saints needed a sure ground to go upon; a resting-place for their hearts somewhere. Besides personal confidence in Paul, which we have only in his writings, the apostle continues, "and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. All (every) scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." 2 Tim. 3:15. Now here, when the resource of a soul in a dangerous and distracting time had to be furnished, what was it? The holy scriptures, the holy writings. Forgeries are not holy, they are very unholy, whatever pious frauds may be in them; and certainly they are not a resource in dangerous times. It is a knowledge of it as a child takes it, a known resource of authority over the mind; next, it is not partial. All (or more exactly, every) scripture is given by inspiration of God, is Θεόπνευστος.

But scripture was no isolated individual announcement; every prophecy of scripture was divine. Holy men — not patriotic bards, or concocters of pious frauds to act on the mind of a young king — had spoken. Prophecy did not come in old time by the will of man, exactly what is alleged as to it; but "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1:21. He also calls the writings of Paul scriptures; putting them on a level with the rest. John is very bold, and says that listening to the apostles is a test whether a man is of God or not. "Hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." 1 John 4:6. He that knoweth God heareth them, he tells us. How am I to listen to him now? He and Jude both refer to the Pentateuch as of unquestioned and unquestionable authority. We know what the Revelation threatens to them who mutilate or add to it. Such are the witnesses which the Lord and His apostles give to the authority, authenticity, and inspiration of scripture.

The Lord declares that Moses gave the commandment as to divorce, but because of the hardness of their hearts. All a mistake! Nor had He any need to blame or excuse him. David himself, He tells us, said, by the Holy Ghost, that Christ was to sit on God's right hand. Was this inspired? or what is Christ's authority here? They might in the books of Moses have read of God's appearance in the bush, a proof of the resurrection — all a fable. The Son of man was to go as it was written. He could have prayed, and had twelve legions of angels; but how, then, should the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? It governs the Lord's own mind in the most solemn moment on which all hang, if Christianity is true, as in His early conflicts with Satan. When Jerusalem was encompassed with armies, they were the days of vengeance, that all things that were written might be fulfilled. But these were only idle threats of zealous Jehovists: so they would have us believe. Zacharias, filled with the Holy Ghost, prophesied and declared that the raising up Christ was as had been spoken by the mouth of God's holy prophets since the world began. Here we get threefold delusion. In Luke, who says Zacharias spoke by the Holy Ghost; in Zacharias, who declared the coming of Christ was fulfilling the prophets; in the supposition that they were God's holy prophets. This was so far from being the Holy Ghost, that it was Jewish prejudice; and the prophets themselves were fanatics or guilty of pious frauds! This is a comfortable basis for a religion and laying down your life for the truth of it. Christ quotes Elias and Eliseus according to this history; but His quotations of them are constant, and as applied to Himself and owning the prophets, and the law as distinct as in a passage already referred to in another view: "These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me." Here the well-known division of the Hebrew scriptures is given. The Lord (and remark He is risen here) puts His seal upon them, and treats them as to be fulfilled as having spoken of Himself. The risen Lord treats them as inspired, and as prophecies of Himself. And then, as we saw before, He opened their understandings to understand them.

116 As regards Athanasius, the passage quoted (of which Bellarmine speaks as so beautiful) is a notoriously spurious letter, and placed among the spurious ones by his Benedictine editors; the proofs you can see in Dupin on this Father, and it is a proof only of the practices resorted to by papal advocates to clothe their pretensions with the authority of great names, and which have acquired the name of pious frauds. We will therefore leave Athanasius, who affords you no help, though he resorted to Rome to help him against the Arians. It is strange moreover Roman Catholics should quote a letter to Felix, for Felix was a pope thrust in by the Arians, while Liberius was banished by the Arian Emperor; and Athanasius says it was a deed that bore the stamp of antichrist. Cardinal Baronius, the great Roman Catholic historian, will not admit him to be pope at all, as there cannot be two. Bellarmine says he was a fresh instance of how solid a foundation popes are for the church to be built upon. Roman Catholics cannot agree whether he was or was not a pope. When the Emperor let Pope Liberius back on his agreeing to communion with the Arians and signing an Arian or semi-Arian creed, Felix and he had to rub on together, two popes and two heads at a time, till Liberius died.

182 Dr. N. must have well known, that since Ussher and Daille they have been called in question; that there are two recensions, besides confessedly spurious letters, one enormously interpolated, the other shorter; so that though defended by learned men, as a document they were of questionable authority. Since then it has been, I think I may say, ascertained — I do not say all acquiesce in it — that five out of the eight letters are wholly spurious, and the three remaining ones, even in the short recension, interpolated, and the passages in favour of unity, which Dr. N. delighted in, are all, save one, false and spurious; for you must know that these pious frauds were the custom of this vaunted primitive church. There was one Leucas, or Lucius, who had quite a manufactory of them. I do not know that it was he who tampered with Ignatius. There were numbers of false Gospels and acts of the apostles, and that not only by heretics, but by pious people, and this very early indeed.