the insurrection at Ephesus, the expulsion from Antioch and Pisidia, the attempt at stoning at Iconium, the completion of it at Lystra, are alluded to in various epistles.

Q. What strength of evidence do these afford?

A. Being drawn from independent sources, they confirm the truth of particular points, and add to the credit of the whole narrative, as well as support the author's profession of being a contemporary of the person whose history he writes.

Q. Are these statements confirmed by the companions and immediate followers of the Apostles.

A. Yes, expressly: Clement mentions the sufferings and martyrdom of Peter and Paul; Hermas the general sufferings of Christians; Polycarp those of the fathers, Paul, and the Apostles; and Ignatius the contempt of believers in Christ for death.

Q. Can you describe a persecution in those days? A. Yes; from a circular letter from the church of Smyrna, soon after the martyrdom of their bishop, Polycarp, who had lived with St. John. The victims under the most exquisite torments displayed admirable magnanimity, and though flayed with whipping till the frame of their bodies appeared, and being compelled to lie upon sharp spikes, and undergo divers punishments to bring them to deny Christ, still showed their patience and love of their master.

CHAPTER V.

Q. WHAT observations are necessary on the history of which the last chapter contains an abstract? A. A few, by way of applying its testimony to the proposition for which we contend.

Q. How does the information gathered from the history of one Apostle extend to the rest?

A. Because it shows the nature of the service. Q. Allowing this inference to be fair, is it borne out by the letters before referred to ?

A. Yes; the writer alludes not only to his own sufferings, but speaks of the rest of the Apostles as enduring similar.

Q. Is not there a direct account of these in the former part of the history?

A. Yes; their imprisonments and punishments, the beheading of one, and the sentence of another to the same fate, in Jerusalem, all within ten years. after the Founder's death and the commencement of the Institution.

Q. Is the miraculous part, or correctness of single passages of the narrative yet asserted?

A. No: but if it be not all a romance, a dream; if Peter and Paul, and the other Apostles mentioned be not imaginary, and their letters all forgeries, and that of names and characters that never existed, there is evidence to support the only fact contended for.

Q. Is it a fact in itself highly probable ?

A. Yes; viz. that the original followers of Christ exerted great endeavours and underwent great labours, dangers, and sufferings, in consequence of the undertaking.

Q. What confirms the general reality of the apostolic history?

A. The consideration that it does no more than assign adequate causes for effects which certainly were produced; the exertion of the founders and the first propagators, their treatment, the opposition they encountered, their sufferings and dangers, are what might reasonably be expected from the nature of the undertaking, compared with the character of the age and country.

Q. Do the records supply evidence that (as is highly probable) the primitive Christians assumed, on conversion, a new and peculiar course of private life.

A. Yes; we hear of their continuing in prayer, of their strict injunctions to their converts to refrain from things not then deemed criminal; we know the purity and benevolence of their maxims, and if they were in any degree regarded, they must produce a frame of mind and system of conduct different from their former life and the conduct of others.

Q. Do the letters mention this change?

A. Yes; the teachers perpetually refer in them to the distinction of manners resulting from the new character.

Q. Mention some of the phrases employed on this occasion by St. Paul.

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A. The moral condition of Christians is described by him as newness of life," being "freed from sin,” being "dead to sin," "children of light and of the day."

Q. What is the nature and æra of Pliny's testimony?

A. It occurs fifty years after that of St. Paul. Having observed that the Christians met on a stated day and sang hymns to Christ, as a God, he says, they bound themselves by an oath that they would not be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery, of falsifying their word, or denying a pledge.

Q. What does this testimony prove?

A. That a stricter morality than ordinary prevailed among Christians.

Q. Does it apply exclusively to that period?

A. No; it may fairly be carried back to the Apostles' age, for it is not probable that the hearers of Christ were more relaxed than their successors of Pliny's time.

CHAPTER VI.

Q. WHAT are the eight considerations now to be examined ?

A. 1st, The prevalence of the religion at this

hour. 2nd, The only credible account of its origin. 3rd, The opposition to the Founder and his associates. 4th, His fate attested by Heathen and Christian writers. 5th, The testimony of the same writers to the sufferings of Christians contemporary with, or immediate successors to the original settlers of Christianity. 6th, Predictions of sufferings of Christians ascribed to Christ, proving them either delivered and fulfilled, or attributed to him because events had so occurred. 7th, Letters by some principals in the business, referring to labours and dangers of them and their companions. 8th, A history, relating persecutions corresponding to what former reasons lead us to expect, corresponding also with the letters.

Q. What is the inference from these considerations, which are the substance of the preceding chapters ?

A. That a number of persons then appeared, who, for the sake of propagating their belief of an extraordinary story, incurred great dangers, exerted great industry, and in consequence of their belief, real or pretended, entered upon a new and singular course of life.

Q. How is it inferred that this story was miraculous, or that they pretended to some kind of miraculous evidence?

A. Because they had nothing else to stand upon. That Jesus was the Messiah could only be asserted from supernatural tokens attributed to him. had no victories, no great efforts of genius, no disco

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