history, woven into verfe. Perhaps was at first, rather a fiction, than a forgery; an exercise of ingenuity, more than an attempt to deceive. CHAP. CHAP. X. THE reader will now be pleased to recollect, that the two points which form the fubject of our present difcuffion, are, first, that the founder of Christianity, his affociates, and immediate followers, paffed their lives in labours, dangers, and fufferings; fecondly, that they did fo, in atteftation of the miraculous hiftory recorded in our fcriptures, and folely in confequence of their belief of the truth of that history. The argument, by which these two propofitions have been maintained by us, ftands thus: No hiftorical fact, I apprehend, is more certain, than that the original propagators of Christianity voluntarily fubjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking. The nature nature of the undertaking; the character of the perfons employed in it; the oppofition of their tenets to the fixed opinions and expectations of the country, in which they first advanced them; their undiffembled condemnation of the religion of all other countries; their total want of power, authority, or force, render it in the highest degree probable that this must have been the cafe. The probability is increased, by what we know of the fate of the founder of the inftitution, who was put to death for his attempt; and by what we alfo know of the cruel treatment of the converts to the institution, within thirty years after its commencement: both which points are attefted by heathen writers, and being once admitted, leave it very incredible, that the primitive emiffaries of the religion, who exercised their ministry, first, amongst the people who had destroyed their master, and, afterwards, amongst those who perfecuted their converts, should themfelves escape with impunity, or pursue their purpose in ease and fafety. This probabi VOL. I. Y lity, lity, thus fuftained by foreign teftimony, is advanced, I think, to historical certainty, by the evidence of our own books; by the accounts of a writer, who was the companion of the persons whose fufferings he relates; by the letters of the persons themselves; by predictions of perfecutions afcribed to the founder of the religion, which predictions would not have been inferted in his history, much lefs have been ftudioufly dwelt upon, if they had not accorded with the event, and which, even if falfely ascribed to him, could only have been so ascribed, because the event suggested them; laftly, by inceffant exhortations to fortitude and patience, and by an earneftness, repetition, and urgency upon the subject, which were unlikely to have appeared, if there had not been, at the time, fome extraordinary call for the exercise of these virtues. It is made out alfo, I think, with fufficient evidence, that both the teachers and converts of the religion, in confequence of their 4 their new profeffion, took up a new course of life and behaviour. The next great question is, what they did this FOR. That it was for a miraculous story of fome kind or other, is to my apprehenfion extremely manifeft; because, as to the fundamental article, the defignation of the person, viz. that this particular person, Jesus of Nazareth, ought to be received as the Meffiah, or as a meffenger from God, they neither had, nor could have, any thing but miracles to ftand upon. That the exertions and fufferings of the apoftles were for the story which we have now, is proved by the confideration, that this ftory is tranfrhitted to us by two of their own number, and by two others perfonally connected with them; that the particularity of the narratives proves, that the writers claimed to poffefs circumftantial information, that from their fituation they had full opportunity of acquiring fuch information, that they certainly, at least, knew, what their colleagues, Y 2 their |