Christ, as reported by the Evangelists, or those of Peter and Paul, as preserved in the Acts of the Apostles; and maintain the contrary-if he dare. More especially, let the reader of the New Testament mark what evident proofs it contains of simplicity, integrity, piety, and beneficence; and he will hardly suspect that those, who could write so admirably well, could act so detestably ill as to employ that writing in support of an imposture. For,

(1.) Their style of narration is most happily adapted to gain our belief. Details are often fatal to the dealer in fiction, because they so hazardously widen the ground for scrutiny: but they as certainly help to verify facts. Besides, the sacred story is every where told in the most natural and You find in it nothing like design, easy manner. or artifice; no harangues, no apologies, no encomiums. Facts are left to speak for themselves. Affecting no excellency of speech, the historians of the Gospel determine to know only Jesus Christ, even Him that was crucified *—a conduct the more to be admired, when we consider that their theme would have supplied them with abundant variety of the most pathetic declamation.

(2.) And the freedom, with which they record even the humiliating circumstances relating to their Lord and Master, equally vouches for their integrity. They scruple not to own, that his country was infamous, his birth and education low, and his life indigent that by the rulers he was accused of Sabbath-breaking, sedition, and blasphemy, while he was reviled by the populace as a demoniac and

1 Cor. ii, 1, 2.

a wine-bibber; and at last, through the joint clamours of both, after enduring much terror and agony of spirit, ignominiously executed as one of the vilest of malefactors! With respect to themselves, they admit not only the meanness of their original employments, and in some instances the scandals of their former life; but also their remaining prejudices and errors-their slowness of apprehension, their cowardice, their ambition, their temerity, and their unbelief. Their sole concern obviously is, the true and the simple; the power of God, and the wisdom of God. ||

(3.) Nor are plainness and honesty their only characteristics. In their writings, more particularly the Epistolary parts of the New Testament, we find striking examples of the most devout and generous disposition: and to the workings of that holy temper, which they everywhere display, we may justly ascribe whatever of virtue and goodness are still to be found in the world. In letters especially addressed to intimate friends, to whom the mind naturally opens itself without disguise, if we incidentally discover traits of unaffected benevolence and piety, no candid judge would lightly pronounce them to be counterfeit. And, in proportion to the improbability that the writers of such letters would be guilty of any notorious wickedness, should be the positive evidence of their guilt. Yet, if the testimony of the Apostles was false (since they could not have been mistaken), without any such positive evidence, of such notorious wickedness must they have been guiltyguilty, not in one or two, but in a thousand in

stances. Their whole life, in effect, must have been one continued scene of perjury.

And the inhumanity of their conduct would have been equal to its impiety; as they must have been consciously beguiling men to venture their entire future happiness on the power and the fidelity of One, whom upon this hypothesis they knew to be an impostor! To have done all this in the face of the most strenuous opposition, thus exposing themselves, as well as their duped followers, to certain temporal ruin, enhances at once the guilt and the idiotism of the undertaking. It appears, indeed, utterly improbable that any twelve men could have been found we say not in Judæa, but in any part of the earth-who would have entered, upon any terms whatever, into so black a confederacy. Can the reader then, more particularly after recollecting what has been above stated respecting the character of the Apostles, in his heart believe twelve such men to have engaged in it?

3. Especially, as they could not be under any temptation to do so. Gain and glory must, assuredly, have been equally out of the question. Does it, indeed, look like a contrivance of artful men, to charge their rulers with having crucified the Son of God? The plainest understanding could not but foresee, that those rulers would immediately employ their whole power against the authors of so heavy a crimination. And, accordingingly, one of their body was soon afterwards stoned, and another beheaded; while most of the rest, scattered abroad into strange cities, had to struggle against the Jewish anticipation of a temporal Messiah, which rendered the doctrine of Christ crucifi

greater

ed an insurmountable stumbling-block to the part of their infatuated fellow-countrymen. * Neither could they reasonably expect, that the Gentiles would readily renounce the Gods of their ancestors in favour of One, who had died the death of a slave; or exchange without reluctance the pompous ceremonies and gross sensualities of their religion, for the simple worship of an invisible Deity, and a set of precepts professing to control not only the enormities of mens actions, but also the irregularities of their hearts-and all this, on the strength of arguments deduced from views of a future state of happiness or misery to be dispensed by their crucified Jesus, and on the affirmation of men unlettered and unknown! And if they failed in their undertaking, what could they expect, but to be persecuted by one class of those whom they addressed, as blasphemers or rebels, and by another to be insulted as madmen or fools? That such indeed would be the case, they assure us, their Lord had often foretold them; and they, in their turn, warned their followers to be prepared for it. But those admonitions and convictions only rendered them more courageous to resist even unto blood. § Is it, then, in the slightest degree probable, that any persons of common sense would engage in an imposture, from which they could not on their own principles hope to derive any thing but infamy and ruin in this world, and damnation in the next?

4. Under the influence, however, of some unaccountable phrensy if they had ventured on the attempt, they must (humanly speaking) infallibly

* 1 Cor. i. 23.

§ Heb. xii. 4.

have perished in it; both from the nature of the grand fact which they asserted, and the methods which they adopted to gain it belief.

(1.) The story of the Resurrection of a dead being, and of his subsequent ascent into Heaven, would of course, by its strangeness, generate a thousand objections; and some extraordinary proof would, therefore, be required to encounter them. How, indeed, without some such proof, could such a story obtain credit? When, and where, could it first begin to be received? In the same, or in a succeeding age? At Jerusalem, where it was stated to have happened, or in Greece, or Italy, or Asia, or Africa? Change the time, and the scene, as you please: the difficulty remains. Suppose twelve men in London were now to affirm, that a person executed there six weeks, six months, or six years ago as a malefactor, was a prophet sent from God with supernatural powers, had been raised from the dead, conversed with them after his revival, and was subsequently taken up into Heaven would their united testimony cause them to be believed? Or, suppose them dispersed; and that while one or two told their story at Leicester, or Derby, or York, others carried it to Paris, Vienna and Madrid. Could they hope for any thing better, than to be treated as idiots or lunatics? And, if they endeavoured to mend their scheme by stating the transaction took place one or two hundred years before, without any historical proof whatever, would they not thereby rather increase than remove the difficulty? Particularly if, in consequence of such alleged facts, they called upon their hearers to renounce the religion of their forefathers, the indulgence of their dearest passions,