sitions, whether preserved in the form of letters, speeches, or set treatises, frequent or very direct mention of his miracles would occur. Still miraculous evidence lay at the bottom of the argument. In the primary question, miraculous pretensions, and miraculous pretensions alone, were what they had to rely upon.

That the original story was miraculous, is very fairly also inferred from the miraculous powers which were laid claim to by the Christians of succeeding ages. If the accounts of these miracles be true, it was a continuation of the same powers; if they be false, it was an imitation, I will not say, of what had been wrought, but of what had been reported to have been wrought by those who preceded them. That imitation should follow reality; fiction be grafted upon truth, that if miracles were performed at first, miracles should be pretended afterwards, agrees so well with the ordinary course of human affairs, that we can have no great difficulty in believing it. The contrary supposition is very improbable, namely, that miracles should be pretended to, by the followers of the apostles and first emissaries of the religion, when none were pretended to, either in their own persons or that of their master, by these apos tles and emissaries themselves.

CHAP. VII.

There is satisfactory evidence, that many, professing to have been original witnesses of the Christian Miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.

I'T once then being proved, that the first propagators of the Christian institution did exert great activity, and subject themselves to great dangers and sufferings in consequence and for the sake of an extraordinary, and I think we may say, of a miraculous story of some kind or other; the next great question is, whether the account, which our scriptures contain, be that story; that which these men delivered, and for which they acted and suffered as they did.

This question is, in effect, no other than whether the story, which Christians have now, be the story which Chris

tians had then; and of this the following proofs may be deduced from general considerations, and from considerations prior to any inquiry into the particular reasons and testimonies by which the authority of our histories is supported. In the first place, there exists no trace or vestige of any other story. It is not, like the death of Cyrus the great, a competition between opposite accounts, or between the credit of different historians. There is not a document, er scrap of account, either contemporary with the commencement of Christianity, or extant within many ages after that commencement, which assigns a history substantially different from ours. The remote, brief, and incidental notices of the affair, which are found in heathen writers so far as they do go, go along with us. They bear testimony to these facts; that the institution originated from Jesus; that the founder was put to death as a malefactor, at Jerusalem, by the authority of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate; that the religion nevertheless spread in that city, and throughout Judea; and that it was propagated from thence to distant countries; that the converts were numerous; that they suffered great hardships and injuries for their profession; and all this took place in the age of the world which our books have assigned. They go on farther, to describe the manners of Christians in terms perfectly conformable to the accounts extant in our books; that they were wont to assemble on a certain day; that they sung hymns to Christ as to a God: that they bound themselves by an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from theft and adultery, to adhere strictly to their promises, and not to deny money deposited in their hands; that they worshipped him who was crucified at Palestine; that this, their first lawgiver, had taught them that they were all brethren; that they had a great contempt for the things of this world, and looked upon them as common ; that they flew to one another's relief; that they cherished strong hopes of immortality; that they despised death, and surrendered themselves to sufferings." This is the account

Vide Pliny's Letter. Bonnet, in his lively way of expressing himself, says➡“ Com paring Pliny's Letter with the account in the Acts, it seems to me that I had not taken up another author, but that I was still reading the bistorian of that extraordinary soci "This is strong; but there is undoubtedly an affinity, and all the affinity that gould be expected.

It is incredible what expedition they use when any of their friends are known to be in troubles In a word, they spare nothing upon such an occasion; for these misera ble men have no doubt they shall be immortal, and live for ever, therefore they can temu death, and many surrender themselves to sufferings. Moreover, their first law. giver has t

that they are all brethren, when once they have turned and res Grecks, and worship the master of theirs who was crucified,

of writers who viewed the subject at a great distance, who were uninformed and uninterested about it. It bears the characters of such an account upon the face of it, because it describes effects, namely, the appearance in the world of a new religion, and the conversion of great multitudes to it, without descending, in the smallest degree, to the detail of the transaction upon which it was founded, the interior of the institution, the evidence or arguments offered by those who drew over others to it. Yet still here is no contradiction of our story, no other or different story set up against it; but so far a confirmation of it, as that, in the general points upon which the heathen account touches, it agrees with that which we find in our own books.

The same may be observed of the very few Jewish writers, of that and the adjoining period, which have come down to us. Whatever they omit, or whatever difficulties we may find in explaining the omission, they advance no other history of the transaction than that which we acknowledge. Josephus, who wrote his Antiquities, or history of the Jews, about sixty years after the commencement of Christianity, in a passage generally admitted as genuine,. makes mention of John under the name of John the Baptist; that he was a preacher of virtue; that he baptized his proselytes; that he was well received by the people; that he was imprisoned and put to death by Herod; and that Herod lived in a criminal cohabitation with Herodias, his brother's wife. In another passage, allowed by many, although not without considerable question being moved about it, we hear of "James, the brother of him who was called Jesus, and of his being put to death." In a thir passage, extant in every copy that remains of Josephus's history, but the authenticity of which has nevertheless been long disputed, we have an explicit testimony to the substance of our history in these words" At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man, for he performed many wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and Gentiles. This was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they, who before had conceived an affection for him, did not cease to adhere to him; for on the third day he appeared to them alive again,. and engage to live according to his laws. They have also a sovereign contempt for all. the things of this world, and look upon them as common." Lucian de Morte Peregri c. I. p. 565, ed. Græv.

Antiq. 1. xviii. cap. v. sect. 1. 2.

†Antiq. 1. xã, cap. ix, sect, 12.

the divine prophets having foretold these and many won derful things concerning him. And the sect of the Christians, so called from him, subsists to this time ”* Whatever becomes of the controversy concerning the genuineness of this passage; whether Josephus go the whole length of our history, which, if the passage be sincere, he does; or whether he proceed only a very little way with us, which, if the passage be rejected, we confess to be the case; still what we asserted is true, that he gives no other or different history of the subject from ours, no other or different account of the original of the institution. And I think also that it may with great reason be contended, either that the passage is genuine, or that the silence of Josephus was designed. For, although we should lay aside the authority of our own books entirely, yet when Tacitus, who wrote not twenty, perhaps not ten, years after Josephus, in his account of a period in which Josephus was near thirty years of age, tells us, that a vast multitude of christians were condemned at Rome; that they derived their denomination from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius was put to death, as a criminal, by the procurator Pontius Pilate; that the superstition had not spread only over Judea, the source of the evil, but had reached Rome also: when Suetonius, an historian contemporary with Tacitus, relates that in the time of Claudius, the Jews were making disturbances at Rome, Crestus being their leader; and that, during the reign of Nero, the Christians were punished; under both which emperors Josephus lived: when Pliny, who wrote his celebrated epistle not more than thirty years after the publication of Josephus's history, found the Christians in such numbers in the province of Bithynia as to draw from him a complaint, that the contagion had seized cities, towns, and villages, and had so seized them as to produce a general desertion of the public rites; and when, as hath been already observed, there is no reason for imagining that the Christians were more numerous in Bithynia than in many other parts of the Roman empire: it cannot, I should suppose, after this, be believed, that the religion, and the transaction upon which it was founded, were too obscure to engage the attention of Josephus, or to obtain a place in his history. Perhaps he did not know how to represent the business, and dispose of his difficulties by passing it over in silence. Eusebius wrote the life of Constantine, yet omits entirely

Antig. 1. xiii, cap. iii, sect.

the most remarkable circumstance in that life, the death of his son Crispus; undoubtedly for the reason here given. The reserve of Josephus upon the subject of Christianity appears also in his passing over the banishment of the Jews by Claudius, which Suetonius, we have seen, has recorded with an express reference to Christ. This is at least

as remarkable as his silence about the infants of Bethlehem.* Be, however, the fact, or the cause of the omission in Josephus,† what it may, no other or different history of the subject has been given by him, or is pretended to have been given.

But further, the whole series of Christian writers, from the first age of the institution down to the present, in their discussions, apologies, arguments, and controversies, proceed upon the general story which our scriptures contain, and upon no other. The main facts, the principal agents," are alike in all. This argument will appear to be of great force, when it is known that we are able to trace back the series of writers to a contact with the historical books of the New Testament, and to the age of the first emissaries of the religion, and to deduce it by an unbroken continuation, from that end of the train to the present.

The remaining letters of the apostles (and what more original than their letters can we have) though written without the remotest design of transmitting the history of Christ, or Christianity, to future ages, or even of making it known to their contemporaries, incidentally disclose to us the following circumstances: "Christ's descent and family, his innocence, the meekness and gentleness of his character (a recognition which goes to the whole gospel history) his exalted nature, his circumcision, transfiguration, his life of opposition and suffering, his patience and resignation, the appointment of the eucharist and the manner of it, his agony, his confession before Pontius Pilate, his stripes, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, his appearance after it, first to Peter, then to the rest of the apostles, his ascension into

* Michaelis has computed, and, as it should seem, fairly enough, that probably not more than twenty children perished by this cruel precaution. Michael. Introd. to the N. Test. translated by Marsh. Vol. I. c. ii. sect. 11.

+ There is no notice taken of Christianity in the Mishna, a collection of Jewish tra ditions compiled about the year 180, although it contains a Tract, Deculta Peregri no," of strange or idolatrous worship yet it cannot be disputed but that Christianity was perfectly well known in the world at this time. There is extremely little notice of the subject in the Jerusalem Talmud, compiled about the year 300, and not much more in the Babylonish Talmud of the year 500, although both these works are of a religious nature, and although when the first was compiled, Christianity was upon the point of becoming the religion of the state, and, when the latter was published, had been so for 100 years