cious, yet, as it should seem, unprepared answers, will be confessed in the case of the Roman tribute;' in the difficulty concerning the interfering relations of a future state, as proposed to him in the instance of a woman who had married seven brethren; and, more especially, in his reply to those who demanded from him an explanation of the authority by which he acted, which reply consisted, in propounding a question to them, situated between the very difficulties, into which they were insidiously endeavouring to draw him."

Our Saviour's lessons, beside what has already been remarked in them, touch, and that oftentimes by very affecting representations, upon some of the most interesting topics of human duty, and of human meditation; upon the principles, by which the decisions of the last day will be regulated; upon the superior, or rather the supreme, importance of religion;5 upon penitence, by the most pressing calls, and the most encouraging invitations; upon self-denial,' watchfulness, placability, confidence in God," the value of spiritual, that is, of mental worship," the necessity of moral obedience, and the directing of that obedience to the spirit and principle of the law, instead of seeking for evasions in a technical construction of its terms." 12

8

If we extend our argument to other parts of the New Testament, we may offer, as amongst the best and shortest rules of life, or, which is the same thing, descriptions of virtue, that have ever been delivered, the following passages :

'Pure religion, and undefiled, before God, and the Father, is this; to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.' 13

'Now the end of the commandment is, charity, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.'14

6 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.' 15

1 Matt. xxii. 19, 2 Ibid. 28. 3 Ibid. xxi. 23 et seq. 4 Matt. xxv. I et seq.

6 Luke xv.

Mark viii. 35. Matt. vi. 31-33. Luke xii.

7 Matt. 9 Luke xvii. 4.

11 John iv. 23, 24.

16, 21; 4, 5.

Mark xiii. 37. Matt. xxiv. 42; XXV. 13.
10 Matt. v. 25-30.
1 Tim. i. 5.

v. 29.
Matt. xviii. 33.
12 Matt. v. II.

13 James i. 27. 14

15 Tit. ii. II, 12.

Enumerations of virtues and vices, and those sufficiently accurate, and unquestionably just, are given by St. Paul to his converts in three several epistles.'

2

The relative duties of husbands and wives, of parents and children, of masters and servants, of christian teachers and their flocks, of governors and their subjects, are set forth by the same writer, not indeed with the copiousness, the detail, or the distinctness, of a moralist, who should, in these days, sit down to write chapters upon the subject, but with the leading rules and principles in each; and, above all, with truth, and with authority.

Lastly, the whole volume of the New Testament is replete with piety; with, what were almost unknown to heathen moralists, devotional virtues, the most profound veneration of the Deity, an habitual sense of his bounty and protection, a firm confidence in the final result of his counsels and dispensations, a disposition to resort, upon all occasions, to his mercy, for the supply of human wants, for assistance in danger, for relief from pain, for the pardon of sin.

ANNOTATIONS.

'The members of civilized society can, in all ordinary cases, judge tolerably well how they ought to act?'

Paley is, here, and in several other places, at variance with what he has said in his Moral Philosophy; that'the only difference between an act of prudence, and an act of virtue, is, that in the one case we consider what we may gain or lose in the present world, and in the other, what we shall gain or lose in the next world.' For, it is plain that on this principle, men to whom a future state had not been revealed, so far from 'understanding what they ought to do' would have had no more notion of 'ought,' or of duty, than a blind man, of

colours.

This fundamental error in Paley's views (which I have fully

1 Gal. v. 19. Col. iii. 12. I Cor. xiii.

2 Eph. v. 33; vi. I, 5. 2 Cor. vi. 6, 7. Rom. xiii.

treated of in the Annotations on his Moral Philosophy) goes to weaken very much the force of his arguments from the moral character of Jesus, and of his Gospel.

They exhibit no particular description of the invisible world.

Let any one who meets with an unbeliever, who treats Christianity as a series of 'cunningly devised fables,' ask him how it happens that none of the Sacred Writers has given a full, detailed, and captivating description of everything that is to take place at the end of the world ;—of all the interesting particulars of the glorified bodies with which the faithful will rise, and of the heavenly joys to which they will be admitted.

Nothing certainly could have been more likely to gratify the curiosity of believers, and even to attract fresh converts, than a lively and magnificent description of heavenly glories. And those who gave full credit to the writer, as the Corinthians evidently did to Paul, would not have hesitated to believe his account of these things. Had he been an impostor, it would not have been at all difficult for him to invent such a description; and had he been an enthusiast, he could not have avoided it. One, whose imagination had got the better of his judgment, and whose wild fancies were regarded by himself as revelations, could never have treated of such a subject as this without being tempted by its mysterious and deep interest, to invent, and actually believe, a vast number of particulars respecting the other world.

Why, then, you may ask, do we find nothing of this nature in the writings of the Apostles? The plain answer is, because they were not either impostors or enthusiasts; but plain, simple, honest men, who taught only what had been revealed to them, and what they had been commissioned to reveal to others. You may safely defy an unbeliever to give any other answer to the question, if he can. For near eighteen centuries has this proof remained uncontradicted; and in all that time no one has given, or even attempted to give, any explanation of the brief, unadorned, cool, and unpretending accounts which the New-Testament-writers give of matters so interesting to man's curiosity, except by considering them as upright and sober-minded men, setting forth what they knew to be truth, just as they had received it.

And it should be observed, that if we were totally unable to perceive the wisdom, or to guess the cause, of the Sacred Writers giving us such scanty accounts of the life to come, still, the proof which this scantiness affords of the truth of what they say, remains the same. For if they wrote as no impostor and no enthusiast ever would write, they could have been neither. What cannot have come from Man, must have come from God; whether we can perceive anything of its divine excellence, or not.

'Our Lord enjoined no austerities.'

This very remarkable point I have dwelt on at large in the Essay on Christian Self-denial; and more briefly in the Lessons on Morals, and the Lessons on Mind.

'He censured an overstrained scrupulousness about the Sabbath; but how did He censure it ?'

Paley's words may be understood to imply that any man had an equal right with the Lord Jesus to dispense with the observance of the Sabbath. But our Lord Himself implies the contrary, in saying 'The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.'1

Paley, in his Moral and Political Philosophy (bk. v.ch. 6), treats of Sabbatical Institutions'—the Jewish Sabbath, and the Lord's Day. And when (a good many years after) the same doctrine, in substance, with his, was put forth by another author, and again by others, subsequently, it was decried, not merely as erroneous, but as an unheard-of novelty. Not merely many of the illiterate, but several also who were supposed to be learned Divines, spoke of it (and that in published works) as something that had never before occurred to any christian writer. Now it was indeed no novelty sin Paley's time; his view being what was almost universal throughout Christendom for the first fifteen centuries and more; and had been set forth by Calvin and others of the most eminent Reformers. But it is not perhaps very strange that persons of no extensive reading, should have been ignorant of ancient books, some of them in Latin. But Paley's work had been for half a century a text-book in a great university. And that any writer on these subjects should either be himself

1 This point is fully treated in the Thoughts on the Sabbath.

ignorant of its contents, or should calculate on that ignorance in his readers, is really wonderful. As for the soundness or unsoundness of Paley's doctrine, that is a question of opinion, and is one on which I shall not now enter. But the existence of his opinions is a matter of fact; and is a fact of which one might have supposed all readers to be aware. But its having been thus overlooked, is a strong proof that an author of great celebrity may be much talked of, and yet little known.

I have thought it necessary to advert-not without reluctance to this matter, because any such error, when detected (as it is sure to be, sooner or later), leads to consequences extending far beyond the immediate question it may happen to relate to. When a religious teacher makes such a misstatement of facts as proves him to be either grossly and culpably ignorant of what he ought to have clearly ascertained, or else, guilty of disingenuous suppression, all the rest of his teaching is likely to be regarded with a distrust which may be undeserved, but which cannot be wondered at.

'The lenity of his character, and of his Religion.'

Paley seems to imply that our Lord represented a rejection of Him as a sin that would be more leniently dealt with than rebellion against the Lord under the Old Dispensation. But the distinction drawn is evidently between temporal, and future judgments. For He says expressly that it would be more tolerable for Sodom, in the Day of Judgment, than for that city' which should reject his messengers.

I

CHAPTER III.

The Candour of the Writers of the New Testament.

MAKE this candour to consist, in their putting down many passages, and noticing many circumstances, which no Writer whatever was likely to have forged; and which no writer would have chosen to appear in his book, who had been careful to present the story in the most unexceptionable form, or who had thought himself at liberty to carve and mould the