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."

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 in 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

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 reluc tance 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.

CHAPTER III.

The Candor of the Writers of the New Testament.

MAKE this candor 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

particulars of that story, according to his choice, or according to his judgment of the effect.

A strong and well-known example of the fairness of the evangelists, offers itself in their account of Christ's resurrection, namely, in their unanimously stating, that, after he was risen, he appeared to his disciples alone. I do not mean that they have used the exclusive word alone; but that all the instances which they have recorded of his appearance, are instances of appearance to his disciples: that their reasonings upon it, and allusions to it, are confined to this supposition; and that, by one of them, Peter is made to say, 'Him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead." The commonest understanding must have perceived, that the history of the resurrection would have come with more advantage, if they had related that Jesus appeared, after he was risen, to his foes as well as his friends, to the Scribes and Pharisees, the Jewish council, and the Roman governor: or even if they had asserted the public appearance of Christ in general unqualified terms, without noticing, as they have done, the presence of his disciples upon each occasion, and noticing it in such a manner as to lead their readers to suppose that none but disciples were present. They could have represented it one way as well as the other. And if their point had been, to have the religion believed, whether true or false; if they had fabricated the story ab initio, or if they had been disposed, either to have delivered their testimony as witnesses, or to have worked up their materials and information as historians, in such a manner as to render their narrative as specious and unobjectionable as they could; in a word, if they had thought of anything but of the truth of the case, as they understood and believed it; they would, in their account of Christ's several appearances after his resurrection, at least have omitted this restriction. At this distance of time, the account as we have it is perhaps more credible than it would have been the other way; because this manifestation of the historians' candor, is of more advantage to their testimony, than the difference in the circumstances of

Acts x. 40, 41.

the account would have been to the nature of the evidence. But this is an effect which the evangelists would not foresee; and I think that it was by no means the case at the time when the books were composed.

Mr. Gibbon has argued for the genuineness of the Koran, from the confessions which it contains, to the apparent disadvantage of the Mahometan cause.' The same defence vindicates the genuineness of our Gospels, and without prejudice to the cause at all.

There are some other instances in which the evangelists honestly relate what, they must have perceived, would make against them.

Of this kind is John the Baptist's message, preserved by St. Matthew and St. Luke [xi. 2; vii. 18]. Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?' To confess, still more to state, that John the Baptist had his doubts concerning the character of Jesus, could not but afford a handle to cavil and objection. But truth, like honesty, neglects appearances. The same observation, perhaps, holds concerning the apostacy of Judas.'

John vi. 66. From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.' Was it the part of a writer, who dealt in suppression and disguise, to put down this anecdote?

Or this, which Matthew has preserved [xiii. 58]? He did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.'

Vol. ix. c. 50, note 96.

I had once placed amongst these examples of fair concession, the remarkable words of St. Matthew, in his account of Christ's appearance upon the Galilean mountain: 'And when they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted.'* I have since, however, been convinced, by what is observed concerning this passage in Dr. Townshend's Discourset upon the resurrection, that the transaction, as related by St. Matthew, was really this: Christ appeared first at a distance; the greater part of the company, the moment they saw him, worshipped, but some, as yet, i.e. upon this first distant view of his person, doubted; whereupon Christ came up‡ to them, and spake to them,' &c.: that the doubt, therefore, was a doubt only at first, for a moment, and upon his being seen at a distance, and was afterwards dispelled by his nearer approach, and by his entering into conversation with them.

† St. Matthew's words are Καὶ προσελθὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς. This intimates, that, when he first appeared, it was at a distance, at least from many of the spectators. Ibid. p. 197.