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 should 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 apostles and emissaries themselves.

CHAPTER VII.

There is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be 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 those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.

who had wrought no deliverance for the Jewish | miraculous pretensions alone, were what they had nation, was declared to be their Messiah. This, to rely upon. without ascribing to him at the same time some proofs of his mission, (and what other but supernatural proofs could there be?) was too absurd a claim to be either imagined, or attempted, or credited. In whatever degree, or in whatever part, the religion was argumentative, when it came to the question, "Is the carpenter's son of Nazareth the person whom we are to receive and obey?" there was nothing but the miracles attributed to him, by which his pretensions could be maintained for a moment. Every controversy and every question must presuppose these; for, how ever such controversies, when they did arise, might, and naturally would, be discussed upon their own grounds of argumentation, without citing the miraculous evidence which had been asserted to attend the Founder of the religion, (which would have been to enter upon another, and a more general question,) yet we are to bear in mind, that without previously supposing the existence or the pretence of such evidence, there could have been no place for the discussion of the argument at all. Thus, for example, whether the prophecies, which the Jews interpreted to belong to the Messiah, were, or were not applicable to the history of Jesus of Nazareth, was a natural subject of debate in those times; and the debate would proceed, without recurring at every turn to his miracles, because it set out with supposing these; inasmuch as without miraculous marks and tokens, (real or pretended,) or without some such great change effected by his means in the public condition of the country, as might have satisfied the then received interpretation of these prophecies, I do not see how the question could ever have been entertained. Aollos, we read, "mightily convinced the Jews, snowing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ;" but unless Jesus had exhibited some distinction of his person, some proof of supernatural power, the argument from the old Scriptures could have had no place. It had nothing to attach upon. A young man calling himself the Son of God, gathering a crowd about him, and delivering to them lectures of morality, could not have excited so much as a doubt among the Jews, whether he was the object in whom a long series of ancient prophecies terminated, from the completion of which they had formed such magnificent expectations, and expectations of a nature so opposite to what appeared; I mean, no such doubt could exist when they had the whole case before them, when they saw him put to death for nis officiousness, and when by his death the evidence concerning him was closed. Again the effect of the Messiah's coming, supposing Jesus to have been he, upon Jews, upon Gentiles, upon their relation to each other, upon their acceptance with God, upon their duties and their expectations; his nature, authority, office, and agency; were likely to become subjects of much consideration with the early votaries of the religion, and to occupy their attention and writings. I should not however expect, that in these disquisitions, 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

Acts xviii. 28

Ir being then once proved, that the first propagators of the Christian institution did exert 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 Christians 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, or 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 malefac tor, 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 thence to distant coun

tries; that the converts were numerous; that they | another passage allowed by many, although no suffered great hardships and injuries for their pro- without considerable question being moved about fession; and that all this took place in the age of it, we hear of "James, the brother of him who the world which our books have assigned. They was called Jesus, and of his being put to death.”* go on further, to describe the manners of Chris- In a third passage, extant in every copy that retians in terms perfectly conformable to the ac-mains of Josephus's History, but the authenticity counts extant in our books: that they were wont of which has nevertheless been long disputed, we to assemble on a certain day; that they sang have an explicit testimony to the substance of our hymns to Christ as to a god; that they bound history in these words:" At that time lived Jethemselves by an oath not to commit any crime, sus, a wise man, if he may be called a man, for he but to abstain from theft and adultery, to adhere performed many wonderful works. He was a strictly to their promises, and not to deny money teacher of such men as received the truth with deposited in their hands; that they worshipped pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and him who was crucified in Palestine; that this Gentiles. This was the Christ; and when Pilate, their first lawgiver had taught them that they at the instigation of the chief men among us, had were all brethren; that they had a great contempt condemned him to the cross, they who before had for the things of this world, and looked upon conceived an affection for him, did not cease to them as common; that they flew to one another's adhere to him; for, on the third day, he appeared relief; that they cherished strong hopes of im- to them alive again, the divine prophets having mortality; that they despised death, and surren- foretold these and many wonderful things condered themselves to sufferings.t This is the ac- cerning him. And the sect of the Christians, so count of writers who viewed the subject at a great called from him, subsists to this time."+ Whatever distance; who were uninformed and uninterested become of the controversy concerning the genuine. about it. It bears the characters of such an account ness of this passage; whether Josephus go the upon the face of it, because it describes effects, whole length of our history, which, if the passage namely, the appearance in the world of a new re- be sincere, he does; or whether he proceed only a ligion, and the conversion of great multitudes to very little way with us, which, if the passage be it, without descending, in the smallest degree, to rejected, we confess to be the case; still what we the detail of the transaction upon which it was asserted is true, that he gives no other or different founded, the interior of the institution, the evi- history of the subject from ours, no other or dif dence or arguments offered by those who drew ferent account of the origin of the institution. over others to it. Yet still here is no contradic- And I think also that it may with great reason tion of our story; no other or different story set be contended, either that the passage is genuine, up against it: but so far a confirmation of it, as or that the silence of Josephus was designed. that, in the general points on which the heathen For, although we should lay aside the authority account touches, it agrees with that which we of our own books entirely, yet when Tacitus, who find in our own books. wrote not twenty, perhaps not ten, years after Josephus, in his account of a period in which Jose phus was nearly 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 spread not 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, Christus 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 *See Pliny's Letter.-Bonnet, in his lively way of to draw from him a complaint, that the contagion expressing himself, says,-" Comparing Pliny's Letter with the account of the Acts, it seems to me that I had had seized cities, towns, and villages, and had so not taken up another author, but that I was still read-seized them as to produce a general desertion of ing the historian of that extraordinary society." This the public rites; and when, as has already been is strong but there is undoubtedly an affinity, and all the affinity that could be expected.

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

"It is incredible what expedition they use when any of their friends are known to be in trouble. In a word, they spare nothing upon such an occasion;-for these miserable men have no doubt they shall be immortal and live for ever: therefore they contemn death, and many surrender themselves to sufferings. More. over, their first lawgiver has taught them that they are all brethren, when once they have turned and renounced the gods of the Greeks, and worship this Master of theirs who was crucified, 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 Peregrini, t. i. p. 565. ed. Græv. † Antiq. L xviii. cap. v. sect. 1, 2

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 disposed of his difficulties by passing it over in silence. Eusebius wrote the

Antiq 1. xx. cap. ix. sect. I.
† Antiq. L xviii. cap. iii. sect. 2

religion; the persecution of its followers; the miraculous conversion of Paul; miracles wrought by himself and alleged in his controversies with his adversaries, and in letters to the persons amongst whom they were wrought; finally, that MIRACLES were the signs of an apostle.*

*ife of Constantine, yet omits entirely 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 In an epistle, bearing the name of Barnabas, express reference to Christ. This is at least as the companion of Paul, probably genuine, cerremarkable as his silence about the infants of tainly belonging to that age, we have the sufBethlehem Be, however, the fact, or the cause ferings of Christ, his choice of apostles and their of the omission in Josephus,t what it may, no number, his passion, the scarlet robe, the vinegar other or different history on the subject has been and gall, the mocking and piercing, the casting given by him, or is pretended to have been given. lots for his coat,t his resurrection on the eighth But further; the whole series of Christian (i. e. the first day of the week,t) and the comwriters, from the first age of the institution down memorative distinction of that day, his manifestato the present, in their discussions, apologies, tion after his resurrection, and lastly, his ascenarguments, and controversies, proceed upon the sion. We have also his miracles generally but general story which our Scriptures contain, and positively referred to in the following words:upon no other. The main facts, the principal "Finally, teaching the people of Israel, and doagents, are alike in all. This argument will ap-ing many wonders and signs among them, he pear 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.

preached to them, and showed the exceeding great love which he bare towards them."s

In an epistle of Clement, a hearer of St. Paul, although written for a purpose remotely connected with the Christian history, we have the resurrrection of Christ, and the subsequent mission of the apostles, recorded in these satisfactory terms: "The apostles have preached to us from our Lord Jesus Christ from God:-For, having re

The remaining letters of the apostles, (and) what more original than their letters can we have?) though written without the remotest de-ceived their command, and being thoroughly sign of transmitting the history of Christ, or of assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christianity, to future ages, or even of making it Christ, they went abroad, publishing that the known to their contemporaries, incidentally dis kingdom of God was at hand." We find noclose to us the following circumstances:-Christ's ticed also, the humility, yet the power of Christ, T descent and family; his innocence; the meekness his descent from Abraham, his crucifixion. We and gentleness of his character; (a recognition have Peter and Paul represented as faithful and which goes to the whole Gospel history;) his ex-righteous pillars of the church; the numerous alted nature; his circumcision; his 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 Filate; his stripes, crucifixion, and burial; his resurrection; his appearance after it, first to Peter, then to the rest of the apostles; his ascension into heaven; and his designation to be the future judge of mankind;-the stated residence of the apostles at Jerusalem; the working of miracles by the first preachers of the Gospel, who were also the hearers of Christ ;‡—the successful propagation of the

There is no notice taker of Christianity in the Mishna, a collection of Jewish traditions compiled about the year 180; although it contains a Tract"De cultu peregrino," 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; al though both these works are of a religious nature, and although, when the first was compiled, Christianity was on the point of becoming the religion of the state, and, when the latter was published, had been so for 200 years.

Heb. ii. 3. "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation, which, at the first, began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost?" I allege this epistle without hesi 20

sufferings of Peter; the bonds, stripes, and stoning of Paul, and more particularly his extensive and unwearied travels.

In an epistle of Polycarp, a disciple of St. John, though only a brief hortatory letter, we have the humility, patience, sufferings, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, together with the apostolic character of St. Paul, distinctly recognised.** Of this same father we are also assured by Irenæus, that he (Irenæus,) had heard him relate, "what he had received from eye-witnesses concerning the Lord, both concerning his miracles and his doctrine."+t

In the remaining works of Ignatius, the contemporary of Polycarp, larger than those of Polycarp (yet, like those of Polycarp, treating of subjects in nowise leading to any recital of the Christian history,) the occasional allusions are proportionably more numerous.-The descent of

tation; for, whatever doubts may bave been raised about its author, there can be none concerning the age in which it was written. No epistle in the collection carries about it more indubitable marks of antiquity than this does. It speaks, for instance, throughout, of the temple as then standing, and of the worship of the temple as then subsisting. Heb. viii. 4: "For, if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing there are priests that offer according to the law." Again, Heb. xiii. 10: "We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle."

Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds."-2 Cor. xii. 12. † Ep. Bar. c. vii. 1 Ibid. c. vi. § Ibid. c. v. Ep Clem. Rom. c. xlii. ¶ Ep. Clem. Rom. c. xvi. ** Pol. Ep. ad Phil. c. v. viii. ii. iii. + Ir. ad Flor. ap. Euseb. 1. v. c. 20.

(25)

tian rites above-mentioned, with the minute and circumstantial directions contained in the pretended apos. * Ad Smyr. c. iii. † Ap. Euseb. H. E. lib. 4. c. 2. tolical constitutions, will see the force of this observa. Just. Dial. cum Tryph. p. 288. ed. Thirl. tion: the difference between truth and forgery.

writer whose mind was in the habit of consider ing John's imprisonment as perfectly notorious The description of Andrew by the addition "Simon Peter's brother,"* takes it for granted, that Simon Peter was well known. His name had not been mentioned before. The evangelist's noticing the prevailing misconstruction of a discourse, which Christ held with the beloved dis

were already public. And the observation which these instances afford, is of equal validity for the purpose of the present argument, whoever were the authors of the histories.

then, or, in other words, that the accounts in our Gospels are, as to their principal parts at least, the accounts which the apostles and original teachers of the religion delivered, one arises from observing, that it appears by the Gospels themselves, that the story was public at the time; that the Christian community was already in possession of the substance and principal parts of the narrative. The Gospels were not the original cause of the Chris-ciple, proves that the characters and the discourse tian history being believed, but were themselves among the consequences of that belief. This is expressly affirmed by Saint Luke, in his brief, but, as I think, very important and instructive preface:-"Forasmuch (says the evangelist) as These four circumstances; first, the recognition many have taken in hand to set forth in order a of the account in its principal parts, by a series of declaration of those things which are most surely succeeding writers; secondly, the total absence of believed amongst us, even as they delivered them any account of the origin of the religion substanunto us, which, from the beginning, were eye-tially different from ours; thirdly, the early and witnesses and ministers of the word; it seemed extensive prevalence of rites and institutions, good to me also, having had perfect understand- which result from our account; fourthly, our acing of all things from the very first, to write unto count bearing, in its construction, proof that it is thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that an account of facts, which were known and bethou mightest know the certainty of those things lieved at the time;-are sufficient, I conceive, to wherein thou hast been instructed."-This short support an assurance, that the story which we introduction testifies, that the substance of the have now, is, in general, the story which Chrishistory, which the evangelist was about to write, tians had at the beginning. I say in general; was already believed by Christians; that it was by which term I mean, that it is the same in its believed upon the declarations of eye-witnesses texture, and in its principal facts. For instance, and ministers of the word; that it formed the ac- I make no doubt, for the reasons above stated, but count of their religion in which Christians were that the resurrection of the Founder of the reliinstructed; that the office which the historian gion was always a part of the Christian story. proposed to himself, was to trace each particular Nor can a doubt of this remain upon the mind of to its origin, and to fix the certainty of many any one who reflects that the resurrection is, in things which the reader had before heard of. In some form or other, asserted, referred to, or asSaint John's Gospel, the same point appears sumed, in every Christian writing, of every dehence, that there are some principal facts, to scription, which hath come down to us. which the historian refers, but which he does not relate. A remarkable instance of this kind is the ascension, which is not mentioned by Saint John in its place, at the conclusion of his history; but which is plainly referred to in the following words of the sixth chapter:-" What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" And still more positively in the words which Christ, according to our evangelist, spoke to Mary after his resurrection, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go unto my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God."+ This can only be accounted for by the supposition that Saint John wrote under a sense of the notoriety of Christ's ascension, amongst those by whom his book was likely to be read. The same account must also be given of Saint Matthew's omission of the same important fact. The thing was very well known, and it did not occur to the historian that it was neces

sary to add any particulars concerning it. It agrees also with this solution, and with no other, that neither Matthew, nor John, disposes of the person of our Lord in any manner whatever. Other intimations in Saint John's Gospel of the then general notoriety of the story are the following: His manner of introducing his narrative (ch. i. ver. 15:) "John bare witness of him, and cried, saying," evidently presupposes that his readers knew who John was. His rapid parenthetical reference to John's imprisonment, "for John was not yet cast into prison," could only come from a

And if our evidence stopped here, we should have a strong case to offer: for we should have to allege, that in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, a certain number of persons set about an attempt of establishing a new religion in the world: in the prosecution of which purpose, they voluntarily encountered great dangers, undertook great labours, sustained great sufferings, all for a miraculous story which they published wherever they came; and that the resurrection of a dead man, whom during his life they had followed and accompanied, was a constant part of this story. I know nothing in the above statement which can, with any appearance of reason, be disputed; and I know nothing, in the history of the human species, similar to it.

CHAPTER VIII.

There is satisfactory evidence that many professing to be 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 those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.

THAT the story which we have now is, in the main, the story which the apostles published, is, I think, nearly certain, from the considerations which have been proposed. But whether, when we come to the particulars, and the detail of the