۱ moral teacher (remembering that this was only a fecondary part of his office; and that morality, by the nature of the subject, does not admit of discovery, properly so called); when we confider either what he taught, or what he did not teach, either the substance or the manner of his inftruction; his preference of solid to popular virtues, of a character which is commonly despised, to a character which is universally extolled; his placing, in our licentious vices, the check in the right place, viz. upon the thoughts; his collecting of human duty into two well devised rules, his repetition of these rules, the stress he laid upon them, especially in comparison with positive duties, and his fixing thereby the sentiments of his followers; his exclufion of all regard to repu tation in our devotion and alms, and, by parity of reason, in our other virtues: when we consider that his instructions were de livered in a form calculated for impression, the precise purpose in his fituation to be consulted; and that they were illustrated by Parables, the choice and structure of which F4 would would have been admired in any composition whatever: when we observe him free from the usual symptoms of enthusiasm, heat and vehemence in devotion, austerity in institutions, and a wild particularity in the descriptions of a future state; free also from the depravities of his age and country; without fuperftition amongst the most superftitious of men, yet not decrying positive distinctions or external observances, but foberly recalling them to the principle of their establishment, and to their place in the scale of human duties; without fophiftry or triffing, amidst teachers remarkable for nothing fo much, as frivolous fubtleties and quibbling expofitions; candid and liberal in his judgement of the rest of mankind, although belonging to a people, who affected a feparate claim to divine favour, and, in consequence of that opinion, prone to uncharitableness, partiality, and restriction: when we find, in his religion, no scheme of building up a hierarchy, or of miniftering to the views of human governments: in a word, when we compare Chriftianity, tianity, as it came from its author, either with other religions, or with itself in other hands, the most reluctant understanding will be induced to acknowledge the probity, I think also the good sense, of those to whom it owes its origin; and that some regard is due to the testimony of such men, when 1 they declare their knowledge that the religion proceeded from God; and when they appeal, for the truth of their afsertion, to miracles which they wrought, or which they faw. : Perhaps the qualities which we observe in the religion, may be thought to prove something more. They would have been extraordinary, had the religion come from any person; from the perfon from whom it did come, they are exceedingly so. What was Jesus in external appearance? a Jewish peasant, the son of a carpenter, living with his father and mother in a remote province of Palestine, until the time that he produced himself in his public character. He had no mafter to instruct or prompt him. He He had read no books, but the works of Mofes and the prophets. He had visited no polished cities. He had received no lessons from Socrates or Plato; nothing to form in him a taste or judgement, different from that of the rest of his countrymen, and of persons of the fame rank of life with himself. Supposing it to be true, which it is not, that all his points of morality might be picked out of Greek and Roman writings, they were writings which he had never seen. Suppofing them to be no more than what fome or other had taught in various times and places, he could not collect them together. Who were his coadjutors in the undertaking, the persons into whose hands the religion came after his death? a few fishermen upon the lake of Tiberias, persons just as uneducated, and, for the purpose of framing rules of morality, as unpromising, as himself. Suppose the miffion to be real, all this is accounted for; the unfuitableness of the authors to the production, of the characters racters to the undertaking, no longer furprises us; but, without reality, it is very difficult to explain, how such a system fhould proceed from such persons. Christ was not like any other carpenter; the apostles were not like any other fishermen. But the subject is not exhausted by these observations. That portion of it, which is moft reducible to points of argument, has been stated, and, I trust, truly. There are, however, fome topics, of a more diffuse nature, which yet deserve to be proposed to the reader's attention. The character of Christ is a part of the morality of the Gospel: one strong obfervation upon which is, that, neither as represented by his followers, nor as attacked by his enemies, is he charged with any personal vice. This remark is as old as Origen :"Though innumerable lies and calumnies had been forged against the venerable Jesus, pone had dared to charge him with an intemper |