actually does, should contain some points remote from our analogies, and from the comprehension of a mind which hath acquired all its ideas from sense and from experience.

It hath been my care, in the preceding work, to preserve the separation between evidences and doctrines as inviolable as I could; to remove from the primary question all considerations which have been unnecessarily joined with it; and to offer a defence to Christianity, which every Christian might read, without seeing the tenets in which he had been brought up attacked or decried: and it always afforded a satisfaction to my mind to observe that this was practicable; that few or none of our many controversies with one another affect or relate to the proofs of our religion; that the rent never descends to the foundation.

concur in representing these facts in this manner. A religion, which now possesses the greatest part of the civilized world, unquestionably sprang up at Jerusalem at this time. Some account must be given of its origin; some cause assigned for its rise. All the accounts of this origin, all the explications of this cause, whether taken from the writings of the early followers of the religion (in which, and in which perhaps alone, it could be expected that they should be distinctly unfolded,) or from occasional notices in other writings of that or the adjoining age, either expressly allege the facts above stated as the means by which the religion was set up, or advert to its commencement in a manner which agrees with the supposition of these facts being true, and which testifies their operation and effects.

These propositions alone lay a foundation for our faith; for they prove the existence of a transaction, which cannot even in its most general parts be accounted for, upon any reasonable sup

stronger proofs than belong to almost any other ancient book whatever, and by proofs which widely distinguish them from any others claiming a similar authority to theirs. If there were any good reason for doubt concerning the names to which these books are ascribed, (which there is not, for they were never ascribed to any other, and we have evidence not long after their publication of their bearing the names which they now bear,) their antiquity, of which there is no question, their reputation and authority amongst the early disciples of the religion, of which there is as little, form a valid proof that they must, in the main at least, have agreed with what the first teachers of the religion delivered.

The truth of Christianity depends upon its leading facts, and upon them alone. Now of these we have evidence which ought to satisfy us, at least until it appear that mankind have ever been deceived by the same. We have some uncontest-position, except that of the truth of the mission. ed and incontestable points, to which the history But the particulars, the detail of the miracles or of the human species have nothing similar to offer. miraculous pretences (for such there necessarily A Jewish peasant changed the religion of the must have been,) upon which this unexampled world, and that, without force, without power, transaction rested, and for which these men acted without support; without one natural source, or and suffered as they did act and suffer, it is uncircumstance of attraction, influence, or success. doubtedly of great importance to us to know. We Such a thing hath not happened in any other in- have this detail from the fountain-head, from the stance. The companions of this Person, after he persons themselves; in accounts written by eyehimself had been put to death for his attempt, as- witnesses of the scene, by contemporaries and serted his supernatural character, founded upon companions of those who were so; not in one his supernatural operations: and, in testimony of book, but four, each containing enough for the the truth of their assertions, i. e. in consequence verification of the religion, all agreeing in the funof their own belief of that truth, and in order to damental parts of the history. We have the aucommunicate their knowledge of it to others, vo-thenticity of these books established, by more and luntarily entered upon lives of toil and hardship, and with a full experience of their danger, committed themselves to the last extremities of persecution. This hath not a parallel. More particularly, a very few days after this Person had been publicly executed, and in the very city in which he was buried, these his companions declared with one voice that his body was restored to life; that they had seen him, handled him, ate with him; conversed with him; and, in pursuance of their persuasion of the truth of what they told, preached his religion, with this strange fact as the foundation of it, in the face of those who had killed him, who were armed with the power of the country, and necessarily and naturally disposed to treat his followers as they had treated himself; When we open these ancient volumes, we disand having done this upon the spot where the cover in them marks of truth, whether we consievent took place, carried the intelligence of it der each in itself, or collate them with one another. abroad, in despite of difficulties and opposition, The writers certainly knew something of what and where the nature of their errand gave them they were writing about, for they manifest an acnothing to expect but derision, insult, and outrage. quaintance with local circumstances, with the hisThis is without example. These three facts, I tory and usages of the times, which could only think, are certain, and would have been nearly so, belong to an inhabitant of that country, living in if the Gospels had never been written. The that age. In every narrative we perceive simplicity Christian story, as to these points, hath never and undesignedness; the air and the language of varied. No other hath been set up against it.reality. When we compare the different narraEvery letter, every discourse, every controversy, tives together, we find them so varying as to reamongst the followers of the religion; every book pel all suspicion of confederacy; so agreeing under written by them, from the age of its commence- this variety, as to show that the accounts had one ment to the present time, in every part of the real transaction for their common foundation; world in which it hath been professed, and with often attributing different actions and discourses every sect into which it hath been divided (and to the person whose history, or rather memoirs of we have letters and discourses written by contem- whose history, they profess to relate, yet actions poraries, by witnesses of the transaction, by per- and discourses so similar, as very much to bespeak sons themselves bearing a share in it, and other the same character; which is a coincidence, that, writings following that age in regular succession,) in such writers as they were, could only be the

consequence of their writing from fact, and not from imagination.

These four narratives are confined to the history of the Founder of the religion, and end with his ministry. Since, however, it is certain that the affair went on, we cannot help being anxious to know how it proceeded. This intelligence hath come cown down to us in a work purporting to be written by a person, himself connected with the business during the first stages of its progress, taking up the story where the former histories had left it, carrying on the narrative, oftentimes with great particularity, and throughout with the appearance of good sense,* information, and candour; stating all along the origin, and the only pro bable origin, of effects which unquestionably were produced, together with the natural consequences of situations which unquestionably did exist; and confirmed, in the substance at least of the account, by the strongest possible accession of testimony which a history can receive, original letters, written by the person who is the principal subject of the history, written upon the business to which the history relates, and during the period, or soon after the period, which the history comprises. No man can say that this all together is not a body of strong historical evidence.

to insult, outrage, and persecution. How such a story should be false, or, if false, how under such circumstances it should make its way, I think impossible to be explained; yet such the Christian story was, such were the circumstances under which it came forth, and in opposition to such difficulties did it prevail.

An event so connected with the religion, and with the fortunes, of the Jewish people, as one of their race, one born amongst them, establishing his authority and his law throughout a great portion of the civilized world, it was perhaps to be expected, should be noticed in the prophetic writings of that nation; especially when this Person, together with his own mission, caused also to be acknowledged the divine original of their institution, and by those who before had altogether rejected it. Accordingly, we perceive in these writings various intimations concurring in the person and history of Jesus, in a manner, and in a degree, in which passages taken from these books could not be made to concur in any person arbitrarily assumed, or in any person except him who has been the author of great changes in the affairs and opinions of mankind. Of some of these predictions the weight depends a good deal upon the concurrence. Others possess great separate When we reflect that some of those from whom strength: one in particular does this in an eminent the books proceeded, are related to have themselves degree. It is an entire description, manifestly diwrought miracles, to have been the subject of mi-rected to one character and to one scene of things: racles, or of supernatural assistance in propagating the religion, we may perhaps be led to think, that more credit, or a different kind of credit, is due to these accounts, than what can be claimed by merely human testimony. But this is an argument which cannot be addressed to sceptics or unbelievers. A man must be a Christian before he can receive it. The inspiration of the historical Scriptures, the nature, degree, and extent of that inspiration, are questions undoubtedly of serious discussion; but they are questions amongst Christians themselves, and not between them and others. The doctrine itself is by no means necessary to the belief of Christianity, which must, in the first instance at least, depend upon the ordinary maxims of historical credibility.t

In viewing the detail of miracles recorded in these books, we find every supposition negatived, by which they can be resolved into fraud or delusion. They were not secret, not momentary, not tentative, nor ambiguous; nor performed under the sanction of authority, with the spectators on their side, or in affirmance of tenets and practices already established. We find also the evidence alleged for them, and which evidence was by great numbers received, different from that upon which other miraculous accounts rest. It was contemporary, it was published upon the spot, it continued; it involved interests and questions of the greatest magnitude; it contradicted the most fixed persuasions and prejudices of the persons to whom it was addressed; it required from those who accepted it, not a simple, indolent assent, but a change, from thenceforward, of principles and conduct, a submission to consequences the most serious and the most deterring, to loss and danger,

See Peter's speech upon curing the cripple, (Acts iii. 18.) the council of the apostles, (xv.) Paul's discourse at Athens (xvii. 22.) before Agrippa. (xxvi.) I notice these passages, both as fraught with good sense, and as free

from the smallest tincture of enthusiasm.

† See Powel's Discourses, disc. xv. p. 245.

it is extant in a writing, or collection of writings, declaredly prophetic; and it applies to Christ's character, and to the circumstances of his life and death, with considerable precision, and in a way which no diversity of interpretation hath, in my opinion, been able to confound. That the advent of Christ, and the consequences of it should not have been more distinctly revealed in the Jewish sacred books, is, I think, in some measure accounted for by the consideration, that for the Jews to have foreseen the fall of their institution, and that it was to emerge at length into a more perfect and comprehensive dispensation, would have cooled too much, and relaxed their zeal for it, and their adherence to it, upon which zeal and adherence the preservation in the world of any remains, for many ages, of religious truth might in a great measure depend.

Of what a revelation discloses to mankind, one, and only one, question can properly be asked, Was it of importance to mankind to know, or to be better assured of? In this question, when we turn our thoughts to the great Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and of a future judgment, no doubt can possibly be entertained. He who gives me riches or honours, does nothing; he who even gives me health, does little in comparison with that which lays before me just grounds for expecting a restoration to life, and a day of account and retribution: which thing Christianity hath done for millions.

Other articles of the Christian faith, although of infinite importance when placed beside any other topic of human inquiry, are only the adjuncts and circumstances of this. They are, however, such as appear worthy of the original to which we ascribe them. The morality of the religion, whether taken from the precepts or the example of its Founder, or from the lessons of its primitive teachers, derived, as it should seem, from what had been inculcated by their Master, is, in all its parts, wise and pure; neither adapted to vulgar

prejudices, nor flattering popular notions, nor excusing established practices, but calculated, in the matter of its instruction, truly to promote human happiness, and in the form in which it was conveyed, to produce impression and effect; a morality, which, let it have proceeded from any person whatever, would have been satisfactory evidence of his good sense and integrity, of the soundness of his understanding and the probity of his designs; a morality, in every view of it, much more perfect than could have been expected from the natural circumstances and character of the person who delivered it; a morality, in a word, which is, and hath been, most beneficial to mankind.

very forcibly, will be found, I think, upon reflection, to reside more in our habits of apprehension, than in the subject; and that the giving way to it, when we have any reasonable grounds for the contrary, is rather an indulging of the imagination, than any thing else. Abstractedly considered, that is, considered without relation to the difference which habit, and merely habit, produces in our faculties and modes of apprehension, I do not see any thing more in the resurrection of a dead man, than in the conception of a child; except it be this, that the one comes into his world with a system of prior consciousnesses about him, which the other does not: and no person will say, that he knows enough of either subject to perceive, that this circumstance makes such a difference in the two cases, that the one should be easy, and the other impossible; the one natural, the other not so. To the first man, the succession of the species would be as incomprehensible, as the resurrection of the dead is to us.

Upon the greatest, therefore, of all possible occasions, and for a purpose of inestimable value, it pleased the Deity to vouchsafe a miraculous attestation. Having done this for the institution, when this alone could fix its authority, or give to it a beginning, he committed its future progress to the natural means of human communication, and to the influence of those causes by which human Thought is different from motion, perception conduct and human affairs are governed. The from impact: the individuality of a mind is hardly seed, being sown, was left to vegetate; the leaven, consistent with the divisibility of an extended being inserted, was left to ferment; and both ac- substance; or its volition, that is, its power of cording to the laws of nature: laws, nevertheless, originating motion, with the inertness which disposed and controlled by that Providence which cleaves to every portion of matter which our obconducts the affairs of the universe, though by an servation or our experiments can reach. These influence inscrutable, and generally undistinguish-distinctions lead us to an immaterial principle: able by us. And in this Christianity is analogous at least, they do this; they so negative the meto most other provisions for happiness. The chanical properties of matter, in the constitution provision is made; and, being made, is left to act of a sentient, still more of a rational being, that according to laws, which, forming a part of a more no argument drawn from these properties, can be general system, regulate this particular subject, in of any great weight in opposition to other reasons, common with many others. when the question respects the changes of which such a nature is capable, or the manner in which these changes are effected. Whatever thought be, or whatever it depend upon, the regular experience of sleep makes one thing concerning it certain, that it can be completely suspended, and completely restored.

Let the constant recurrence to our observation of contrivance, design, and wisdom, in the works of nature, once fix upon our minds the belief of a God, and after that all is easy. In the counsels of a being possessed of the power and disposition which the Creator of the universe must possess, it is not improbable that there should be a future If any one find it too great a strain upon his state; it is not improbable that we should be ac- thoughts, to admit the notion of a substance quainted with it. A future state rectifies every strictly immaterial, that is, from which extension thing: because, if moral agents be made, in the and solidity are excluded, he can find no difficulty last event, happy or miserable, according to their in allowing that a particle as small as a particle conduct in the stations and under the circum- of light, minuter than all conceivable dimensions, stances in which they are placed, it seems not may just as easily be the depositary, the organ, very material by the operation of what causes, and the vehicle, of consciousness, as the congeaccording to what rules, or even, if you please to ries of animal substance which forms a human call it so, by what chance or caprice, these stations body, or the human brain; that, being so, it may are assigned, or these circumstances determined. transfer a proper identity to whatever shall hereThis hypothesis, therefore, solves all that objec- after be united to it; may be safe amidst the detion to the divine care and goodness, which the struction of its integuments; may connect the promiscuous distribution of good and evil (I do natural with the spiritual, the corruptible with not mean in the doubtful advantages of riches the glorified body. If it be said, that the mode and grandeur, but in the unquestionably import- and means of all this is imperceptible by our ant distinctions of health and sickness, strength senses, it is only what is true of the most importand infirmity, bodily ease and pain, mental ala-ant agencies and operations. The great powers crity and depression) is apt on so many occasions to create. This one truth changes the nature of things; gives order to confusion; makes the moral world of a piece with the natural.

Nevertheless, a higher degree of assurance than that to which it is possible to advance this, or any argument drawn from the light of nature, was necessary, especially to overcome the shock which the imagination and the senses receive from the effects and the appearances of death, and the obstruction which thence arises to the expectation of either a continued or a future existence. This difficulty, although of a nature, no doubt, to act

of nature are all invisible. Gravitation, electricity, magnetism, though constantly present, and constantly exerting their influence; though within us, near us, and about us; though diffused throughout all space, overspreading the surface, or penetrating the contexture, of all bodies with which we are acquainted, depend upon substances and actions which are totally concealed from our senses. The Supreme Intelligence is so himself.

But whether these or any other attempts to satisfy the imagination, bear any resemblance to the truth, or whether the imagination, which, as I have said before, is a mere slave of habit, can be

resuscitate extinguished consciousness; or that amidst the other wonderful contrivances with which the universe abounds, and by some of which we see animal life, in many instances, assuming improved forms of existence, acquiring new organs, new perceptions, and new sources of enjoy

satisfied or not; when a future state, and the revelation of a future state, is not only perfectly consistent with the attributes of the Being who governs the universe; but when it is more, when it alone removes the appearances of contrariety which attend the operations of his will towards creatures capable of comparative merit and de-ment, provision is also made, though by methods merit, of reward and punishment; when a strong body of historical evidence, confirmed by many internal tokens of truth and authenticity, gives us just reason to believe that such a revelation hath actually been made; we ought to set our minds at rest with the assurance, that in the resources of Creative Wisdom, expedients cannot be wanted to carry into effect what the Deity hath purposed: that either a new and mighty influence will descend upon the human world to

secret to us (as all the great processes of nature are,) for conducting the objects of God's moral government, through the necessary changes of their frame, to those final distinctions of happiness and misery, which he hath declared to be reserved for obedience and transgression, for virtue and vice, for the use and the neglect, the right and the wrong employment, of the faculties and opportunities with which he hath been pleased, severally, to intrust, and to try us.

NATURAL THEOLOGY.

TO THE HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REV. SHUTE BARRINGTON, L.L.D. LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM.

MY LORD,-The following Work was undertaken at your Lordship's recommendation, and, amongst other motives, for the purpose of making the most acceptable return that I could, for a great and important benefit conferred upon me.

It may be unnecessary, yet not perhaps quite impertinent, to state to your Lordship, and to the reader, the several inducements that have led me once more to the press. The favour of my first and ever-honoured Patron had put me in possession of so liberal a provision in the Church, as abundantly to satisfy my wants, and much to exceed my pretensions. Your Lordship's munifi. cence, in conjunction with that of some other excellent Prelates, who regarded my services with the partiality with which your Lordship was pleased to consider them, hath since placed me in ecclesiastical situations, more than adequate to every object of reasonable ambition. In the mean time, a weak, and, of late, a painful state of health, deprived me of the power of discharging the duties of my station in a manner at all suitable, either to my sense of those duties, or to my most anxious wishes concerning them. My inability for the public functions of my profession, amongst other consequences, left me much at leisure. That leisure was not to be lost. It was only in my study that I could repair my deficiencies in the church: it was only through the press that I could speak. These circumstances entitled your Lordship in particular to call upon me for the only species of exertion of which I was capable, and disposed me without hesitation to obey the call in the best manner that I could. In the choice of a subject, I had no place left for doubt: in saying which, I do not so much refer, either to the supreme importance of the subject, or to any scepticism concerning it with which the present times are charged, as I do to its connexion with the subjects treated of in my former publications. The following discussion alone was wanted to make up my works into a system: in which works, such as they are, the public have now before them, the evidences of Natural Religion, the evidences of Revealed Religion, and an account of the duties that result from both. It is of small importance that they have been written in an order the very reverse of that in which they ought to be read. I commend, therefore, the present volume to your Lordship's protection, not only as, in all probability, my last labour, but as the completion of a regular and comprehensive design.

Hitherto, my Lord, I have been speaking of myself, and not of my Patron. Your Lordship wants not the testimony of a Dedication; nor any testimony from me: I consult therefore the impulse of my own mind alone when I declare, that in no respect has my intercourse with your Lordship been more gratifying to me, than in the opportunities which it has afforded me, of observing your earnest, active, and unwearied solicitude, for the advancement of substantial Christianity ; a solicitude, nevertheless, accompanied with that candour of mind, which suffers no subordinate differences of opinion, when there is a coincidence in the main intention and object, to produce any alienation of esteem, or diminution of favour. It is fortunate for a country, and honourable to its government, when qualities and dispositions like these are placed in high and influencing sta tions. Such is the sincere judgment which I have formed of your Lordship's character, and of its public value: my personal obligations I can never forget. Under a due sense of both these considerations, I beg leave to subscribe myself, with great respect and gratitude, MY LORD, your Lordship's faithful and most devoted servant, WILLIAM PALEY.

Bishop-Wearmouth, July, 1802.

CHAPTER I.

State of the Argument.

IN crossing a heath, suppose 1 pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone

came to be there: I might possibly answer, that for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and