in the ruins of Agrigentum or Palmyra; so you cannot persuade yourselves to believe that the denunciation of the prophets against the haughty cities of Tyre or Babylon, for instance, proceeded from the inspiration of the Deity. There is no doubt, that by some such general kind of reasoning, many are influenced to pay no attention to an argument, which, if properly considered, carries with it the strongest conviction.

Spinoza said, That he would have broken his atheistic system to pieces, and embraced without repugnance the ordinary faith of Christians, if he could have persuaded himself of the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead; and I question not that there are many disbelievers who would relinquish their deistic tenets, and receive the gospel, if they could persuade themselves that God had ever so far interfered in the moral government of the world, as to illumine the mind of any one man with the knowledge of future events. A miracle strikes the senses of the persons who see it; a prophecy addresses itself to the understandings of those who behold its completion; and it requires, in many cases, some fearning, in all some attention, to judge of the correspondence of events with the predictions concerning them. No one can be convinced, that what Jeremiah and the other prophets foretold of the fate of Babylon,—that it should be besieged by the Medes; that it should be taken when her mighty men were drunken, when her springs were dried up; and that it should become a pool of water, and should remain desolate for ever,- -no one, I say, can be convinced, that all these, and other parts of the prophetic denunciation, have been minutely fulfilled, without spending some time reading the accounts which profane historians have delivered down to us concerning its being taken by Cyrus ; and which modern travellers have given us of its present situation.

Porphyry was so persuaded of the coincidence between the prophecies of Daniel and the events, that he was forced to affirm, the prophecies were written after the things prophesied of had happened. Another Porphyry has, in our days, been so astonished at the correspondence between the prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem as related by St Matthew, and the history of that event as recorded by Josephus, that, rather than embrace Christianity, he has ventured (contrary to the faith of all ecclesiastical history, the opinion of the learned of all ages, and all the rules of good criticism) to assert, that St Matthew wrote his Gospel after Jerusalem had been taken and destroyed by the Romans. You may from these instances perceive the strength of the argument from prophecy it has not been able indeed to vanquish the prejudices of either the ancient

or the modern Porphyry; but it has been able to compel them both to be guilty of obvious falsehoods, which have nothing but impudent assertions to support them.

Some over-zealous interpreters of Scripture have found prophecies in simple narrations, extended real predictions beyond the times and circumstances to which they naturally were applied, and perplexed their readers with a thousand quaint allusions and allegorical conceits. This proceeding has made men of sense pay less regard to prophecy in general. There are some predictions, however, such as those concerning the present state of the Jewish people, and the corruption of Christianity, which are now fulfilling in the world; and which, if you will take the trouble to examine them, you will find of such an extraordinary nature, that you will not perhaps hesitate to refer them to God as their author : and if you once become persuaded of the truth of any one miracle, or of the completion of any one prophecy, you will resolve all your difficulties, (concerning the manner of God's interposition in the moral government of our species, and the nature of the doctrines contained in revelation,) into your own inability fully to comprehend the whole scheme of divine Providence.

We are told, however, that the strangeness of the narration, and the difficulty of the doctrines contained in the New Testament, are not the only circumstances which induce you to reject it: you have discovered, you think, so many contradictions in the accounts which the Evangelists have given of the life of Christ, that you are compelled to consider the whole as an ill-digested and improbable story. You would not reason thus upon any other occasion; you would not reject as fabulous the accounts given by Livy and Polybius of Hannibal and the Carthaginians, though you should discover a difference betwixt them in several points of little importance. You cannot compare the history of the same events as delivered by any two historians, but you will meet with many circumstances which, though mentioned by one, are either wholly omitted, or differently related by the other; and this observation is peculiarly applicable to biographical writings: but no one ever thought of disbelieving the leading circumstances of the lives of Vitellius or Vespasian, because Tacitus and Suetonius did not in every thing correspond in their accounts of these emperors. And if the memoirs of the life and doctrines of M. de Voltaire himself were, some twenty or thirty years after his death, to be delivered to the world by four of his most intimate acquaintance, I do not apprehend that we should discredit the whole account of such an extraordinary man, by reason of some slight inconsistencies and contradictions which the avowed enemies of his name might chance

to discover in the several narrations. Though we should grant you, then, that the Evangelists had fallen into some trivial contradictions in what they have related concerning the life of Christ; yet you ought not to draw any other inference from our concession, than that they had not plotted together as cheats would have done, in order to give an unexceptionable consistency to their fraud. We are not however disposed to make you any such concession; we will rather shew you the futility of your general argument, by touching upon a few of the places which you think are most liable to your censure.

You observe, that neither Luke, nor Mark, nor John, have mentioned the cruelty of Herod in murdering the infants of Bethlehem; and that no account is to be found of this matter in Josephus, who wrote the life of Herod; and therefore the fact recorded by Matthew is not true.-The concurrent testimony of many independent writers concerning a matter of fact unquestionably adds to its probability; but if nothing is to be received as true upon the testimony of a single author, we must give up some of the best writers, and disbelieve some of the most interesting facts of ancient history.

According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there was only an interval of three months, you say, between the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus; from which time, taking away the forty days of the temptation, there will only remain about six weeks for the whole period of his public ministry; which lasted, however, according to St John, at the least above three years. Your objection, fairly stated, stands thus: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in writing the history of Jesus Christ, mention the several events of his life as following one another in continued succession, without taking notice of the times in which they happened; but is it a just conclusion, from their silence, to infer that there really were no intervals of time between the transactions which they seem to have connected? Many instances might be produced from the most admired biographers of antiquity, in which events are related, as immediately consequent to each other, which did not happen but at very distant periods. We have an obvious example of this manner of writing in St Matthew, who connects the preaching of John the Baptist with the return of Joseph from Egypt, though we are certain that the latter event preceded the former by a great many years.

John has said nothing of the institution of the Lord's Supper; the other Evangelists have said nothing of the washing of the disciples' feet: What then? are you not ashamed to produce these facts as instances of contradiction ? If omissions are contradictions, look into the history of the age of Louis the Four

teenth, or into the general history of M. de Voltaire, and you will meet with a great abundance of contradictions.

John, in mentioning the discourse which Jesus had with his mother and his beloved disciple, at the time of his crucifixion, says, that she with Mary Magdalene stood near the cross; Matthew, on the other hand, says that Mary Magdalene and the other women were there, beholding afar off. This you think a manifest contradiction; and scoffingly inquire, whether the women and the beloved disciple, which were near the cross, could be the same with those who stood far from the cross? It is difficult not to transgress the bounds of moderation and good manners in answering such sophistry. What! have you to learn, that though the Evangelists speak of the crucifixion as of one event, it was not accomplished in one instant, but lasted several hours? And why the women, who were at a distance from the cross, might not, during its continuance, draw near the cross; or, from being near the cross, might not move from the cross, is more than you can explain to either us or yourselves. And we take from you your only refuge, by denying expressly that the different Evangelists, in their mention of the women, speak of the same point of time.

The Evangelists, you affirm, are fallen into gross contradictions in their accounts of the appearances by which Jesus manifested himself to his disciples after his resurrection from the dead; for Matthew speaks of two, Mark of three, Luke of two, and John of four. That contradictory propositions cannot be true is readily granted; and if you will produce the place in which Matthew says that Jesus Christ appeared twice and no oftener, it will be farther granted that he is contradicted by John in a very material part of his narration but till you do that, you must excuse me if I cannot grant that the Evangelists have contradicted each other in this point; for to common understandings it is pretty evident, that if Christ appeared four times, according to John's account, he must have appeared twice according to that of Matthew and Luke, and thrice according to that of Mark.

The different Evangelists are not only accused of contradicting each other, but Luke is said to have contradicted himself; for in his Gospel he tells us, that Jesus ascended into heaven from Bethany; and in the Acts of the Apostles, of which he is the reputed author, he informs us that he ascended from Mount Olivet. Your objection proceeds either from your ignorance of geography or your ill will to Christianity; and upon either supposition deserves our contempt. Be pleased, however, to remember for the future, that Bethany was not only the name of a town, but of a district of Mount Olivet adjoining to the town.

From this specimen of the contradictions ascribed to the historians of the life of Christ, you may judge for yourselves what little reason there is to reject Christianity upon their account; and how sadly you will be imposed upon (in a matter of more consequence to you than any other) if you take every thing for a contradiction which the uncandid adversaries of Christianity think proper to call one.

Before I put an end to this address, I cannot help taking notice of an argument by which some philosophers have of late endeavoured to overturn the whole system of revelation; and it is the more necessary to give an answer to their objection, as it is become a common subject of philosophical conversation, especially amongst those who have visited the Continent. The objection tends to invalidate, as is supposed, the authority of Moses, by shewing that the earth is much older than it can be proved to be from his account of the creation, and the Scripture chronology. We contend, that six thousand years have not yet elapsed since the creation; and these philosophers contend, that they have indubitable proof of the earth's being at the least fourteen thousand years old; and they complain, that Moses hangs as a dead weight upon them, and blunts all their zeal for inquiry.*

The Canonico Recupero, who, it seems, is engaged in writing the history of Mount Etna, has discovered a stratum of lava which flowed from that mountain, according to his opinion, in the time of the second Punic war, or about two thousand years ago: this stratum is not yet covered with soil sufficient for the production of either corn or vines; it requires then, says the Canon, two thousand years at least to convert a stratum of lava into a fertile field. In sinking a pit near Jaci, in the neighbourhood of Etna, they have discovered evident marks of seven distinct lavas one under the other; the surfaces of which are parallel, and most of them covered with a thick bed of rich earth now, the eruption which formed the lowest of these lavas (if we may be allowed to reason, says the Canon, from analogy) flowed from the mountain at least fourteen thousand years ago. It might be briefly answered to this objection, by denying that there is any thing in the history of Moses repugnant to this opinion concerning the great antiquity of the earth; for though the rise and progress of arts and sciences, and the small multiplication of the human species, render it almost to a demonstration probable, that man has not existed longer upon the surface of this earth than according to the Mosaic account; yet that the earth itself was then created out of nothing, when man was placed upon it, is not, according to the sentiments of some philosophers, to be proved from the original text of sacred Scripture: we might, I say, reply, with * Brydone's Travels.

these philosophers to this formidable objection of the Canon, by granting it in its full extent. We are under no necessity, however, of adopting their opinion in order to shew the weakness of the Canon's reasoning. For, in the first place, the Canon has not satisfactorily established his main fact, that the lava in question is the identical lava which Diodorus Siculus mentions to have flowed from Etna, in the second Carthaginian war; and, in the second place, it may be observed, that the time necessary for converting lavas into fertile fields must be very different, according to the different consistencies of the lavas, and their different situations, with respect to elevation or depression; to their being exposed to winds, rains, and to other circumstances; just as the time in which the heaps of iron slag (which resembles lava) are covered with verdure, is different at different furnaces, according to the nature of the slag and situation of the furnace : and something of this kind is deducible from the account of the Canon himself; since the crevices of this famous stratum are really full of rich, good soil, and have pretty large trees growing in them.

But if all this should be thought not sufficient to remove the objection, I will produce the Canon an analogy in opposition to his analogy, and which is grounded on more certain facts. Etna and Vesuvius resemble each other, in the causes which produce their eruptions, and in the nature of their lavas, and in the time necessary to mellow them into soil fit for vegetation; or if there be any slight difference in this respect, it is probably not greater than what subsists between different lavas of the same mountain. This being admitted, which no philosopher will deny, the Canon's analogy will prove just nothing at all, if we can produce an instance of seven different lavas (with interjacent strata of vegetable earth) which have flowed from Mount Vesuvius, within the space, not of fourteen thousand, but of somewhat less than seventeen hundred years; for then, according to our analogy, a stratum of lava may be covered with vegetable soil in about two hundred and fifty years, instead of requiring two thousand for the purpose. The eruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii is rendered still more famous by the death of Pliny, recorded by his nephew in his letter to Tacitus. This event happened in the year 79: it is not yet then quite seventeen hundred years since Herculaneum was swallowed up; but we are informed by unquestionable authority, that "the matter which covers the ancient town of Herculaneum is not the produce of one eruption only; for there are evident marks, that the matter of six eruptions has taken its course over that which lies immediately above the town, and was the cause of its destruction. These strata are either of

C

You perceive with what ease a little attention will remove a great difficulty; but had we been able to say nothing in explanation of this phenomenon, we should not have acted a very rational part in making our ignorance the foundation of our infidelity, or suffering a minute philosopher to rob us of our religion.

Your objections to revelation may be numerous: you may find fault with the account which Moses has given of the Creation and the Fall; you may not be able to get water enough for an universal deluge, nor room enough in the ark of Noah for all the different kinds of aërial and terrestrial animals; you may be dissatisfied with the command for sacrificing of Isaac, for plundering the Egyptians, and for extirpating the Canaanites; you may find fault with the Jewish economy, for its ceremonies, its sacrifices, and its multiplicity of priests; you may object to the imprecations in the Psalms, and think the immoralities of David a fit subject for dramatic ridicule; you may look upon the partial promulgation of Christianity as an insuperable objection to its truth, and waywardly reject the goodness of God towards yourselves, because you do not comprehend how you have deserved it more than others; you may know nothing of the entrance of sin and death into the world by one man's transgression, nor be able to comprehend the doctrine of the cross and of redemption by Jesus Christ: in short, if your mind is so disposed, you may find food for your scepticism in every page of the Bible,

*See Sir William Hamilton's Remarks upon the Nature of the Soil of Naples and its neighbourhood, in the Philos. Trans. vol. lxi. p. 7.

+ See Saül et David Hyperdrame. Whatever censure the author of this composition may deserve for his intention, the work itself deserves none; its ridicule is too gross to mislead even the ignorant.

as well as in every appearance of nature; and it is not in the power of any person, but yourselves, to clear up your doubts; you must read, and you must think for yourselves, and you must do both with temper, with candour, and with care. Infidelity is a rank weed; it is nurtured by our vices, and cannot be plucked up as easily as it may be planted. Your difficulties with respect to revelation may have first arisen from your own reflection on the religious indifference of those whom, from your earliest infancy, you have been accustomed to revere and imitate; domestic irreligion may have made you a willing hearer of libertine conversation; and the uniform prejudices of the world may have finished the business at a very early age, and left you to wander through life without a principle to direct your conduct, and to die without hope. We are far from wishing you to trust the word of the clergy for the truth of your religion; we beg of you to examine it to the bottom; to try it, to prove it, and not to hold it fast unless you find it good. Till you are disposed to undertake this task, it becomes you to consider with great seriousness and attention, whether it can be for your interest to esteem a few witty sarcasms, or metaphysical subtleties, or ignorant misrepresentations, or unwarranted assertions, as unanswerable arguments against revelation; and a very slight reflection will convince you that it will certainly be for your reputation to employ the flippancy of your rhetoric, and the poignancy of your ridicule, upon any subject rather than upon the subject of religion.

I take my leave with recommending to your notice the advice which Mr Locke gave to a young man who was desirous of becoming acquainted with the doctrines of the Christian religion:-" Study the Holy Scriptures, especially the New Testament: therein are contained the words of eternal life. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter."‡ I am, &c.

Locke's Posthumous Works.

SIR,

LETTER I.

You

I HAVE lately met with a book of yours, entitled-" The Age of Reason, part the second, being an investigation of true and of fabulous theology;"-and I think it not inconsistent with my station, and the duty I owe to society, to trouble you and the world with some observations on so extraordinary a performance. Extraordinary I esteem it; not from any novelty in the objections which you have produced against revealed religion, (for I find little or no novelty in them,) but from the zeal with which you labour to disseminate your opinions, and from the confidence with which you esteem them true. perceive, by this, that I give you credit for your sincerity, how much soever I may question your wisdom in writing in such a manner on such a subject: and I have no reluctance in acknowledging, that you possess a considerable share of energy of language, and acuteness of investigation; though I must be allowed to lament, that these talents have not been applied in a manner more useful to human kind, and more creditable to yourself. I begin with your preface. You therein state-that you had long had an intention of publishing your thoughts upon religion, but that you had originally reserved it to a later period in life. I hope there is no want of charity in saying, that it would have been fortunate for the Christian world, had your life been terminated before you had fulfilled your intention. In accomplishing your purpose you will have unsettled the faith of thousands; rooted from the minds of the unhappy virtuous all their comfortable assurance of a future recompense; have annihilated in the minds of the flagitious all their fears of future punishment; you will have given the reins to the domination of every passion, and have thereby contributed to the introduction of the public insecurity, and of the private unhappiness, usually and almost necessarily accompanying a state of corrupted morals.

No one can think worse of confession to a priest and subsequent absolution, as practised

in the Church of Rome, than I do; but I cannot, with you, attribute the guillotinemassacres to that cause. Men's minds were not prepared, as you suppose, for the commission of all manner of crimes, by any doctrines of the Church of Rome, corrupted as I esteem it, but by their not thoroughly believing even that religion. What may not society expect from those who shall imbibe the principles of your book?

A fever, which you and those about you expected would prove mortal, made you remember, with renewed satisfaction, that you had written the former part of your Age of Reason-and you know therefore, you say, by experience, the conscientious trial of your own principles. I admit this declaration to be a proof of the sincerity of your persuasion, but I cannot admit it to be any proof of the truth of your principles. What is conscience? Is it, as has been thought, an internal monitor implanted in us by the Supreme Being, and dictating to us, on all occasions, what is right or wrong? Or is it merely our own judgment of the moral rectitude or turpitude of our own actions? I take the word (with Mr Locke) in the latter, as in the only intelligible sense. Now, who sees not that our judgments of virtue and vice, right and wrong, are not always formed from an enlightened and dispassionate use of our reason in the investigation of truth? They are more generally formed from the nature of the religion we profess; from the quality of the civil government under which we live; from the general manners of the age, or the particular manners of the persons with whom we associate; from the education we have had in our youth; from the books we have read at a more advanced period; and from other accidental causes. Who sees not that, on this account, conscience may be conformable or repugnant to the law of nature?-may be certain, or doubtful?and that it can be no criterion of moral rectitude, even when it is certain, because the certainty of an opinion is no proof of its being a right opinion? A man may be certainly persuaded of an error in reasoning, or of an untruth in matters of fact. It is a maxim of