SECTION II.

I. What facts in the history of our Saviour might be taken notice of by pagan authors. II. What particular facts are taken notice of, and by what pagan authors. III. How Celsus represented our Saviour's miracles. IV. The same representation made of them by other unbelievers, and proved unreasonable. V. What facts in our Saviour's history not to be expected from pagan writers.

We now come to consider what undoubted authorities are extant among pagan writers; and here we must premise, that some parts of our Saviour's history may be reasonably expected from pagans. I mean such parts as might be known to those who lived at a distance from Judæa, as well as to those who were the followers and eyewitnesses of Christ.

II. Such particulars are most of these which follow, and which are all attested by some one or other of those heathen authors, who lived in or near the age of our Saviour and his disciples. "That Augustus Cæsar had ordered the whole empire to be censed or taxed," which brought our Saviour's reputed parents to Bethlehem: this is mentioned by several Roman historians, as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion. "That a great light, or a new star, appeared in the east, which directed the wise men to our Saviour:" this is recorded by Chalcidius. "That Herod the king of Palæstine, so often mentioned in the Roman history, made a great slaughter of innocent children," being so jealous of his successor, that he put to death his own sons on that account: this

character of him is given by several historians, and this cruel fact mentioned by Macrobius, a heathen author, who tells it as a known thing, without any mark or doubt upon it. "That our Saviour had been in Egypt:" this Celsus, though he raises a monstrous story upon it, is so far from denying, that he tells us our Saviour learned the arts of magic in that country. "That Pontius Pilate was governor of Judæa; that our Saviour was brought in judgment before him, and by him condemned and crucified :" this is recorded by Tacitus. "That many miraculous

cures, and works out of the ordinary course of nature, were wrought by him :" this is confessed by Julian the apostate, Porphyry, and Hierocles, all of them not only pagans, but professed enemies and persecutors of Christianity. "That our Saviour foretold several things which came to pass according to his predictions;" this was attested by Phlegon in his annals, as we are assured by the learned Origen against Celsus. "That at the time when our Saviour died, there was a miraculous darkness and a great earthquake:" this is recorded by the same Phlegon the Trallian, who was likewise a pagan, and freeman to Adrian the emperor. We may here observe, that a native of Trallium, which was not situate at so great a distance from Palæstine, might very probably be informed of such remarkable events as had passed among the Jews in the age immediately preceding his own times, since several of his countrymen with whom he had conversed, might have received a confused report of our Saviour before his crucifixion, and probably lived within the shake of the earthquake, and the shadow of the eclipse, which are recorded by this author. "That Christ was worshipped as a God among the Christians; that they would

rather suffer death than blaspheme him; that they received a sacrament, and by it entered into a vow of abstaining from sin and wickedness," conformable to the advice given by St. Paul; "that they had private assemblies of worship, and used to join together in hymns:" this is the account which Pliny the younger gives of Christianity in his days, about seventy years after the death of Christ, and which agrees in all its circumstances with the accounts we have in holy writ, of the first state of Christianity after the crucifixion of our blessed Saviour. "That St. Peter, whose miracles are many of them recorded in holy writ, did many wonderful works," is owned by Julian the apostate, who therefore represents him as a great magician, and one who had in his possession a book of magical secrets left him by our Saviour. "That the devils or evil spirits were subject to them," we may learn from Porphyry, who objects to Christianity, that, since Jesus had begun to be worshipped, Esculapius and the rest of the gods did no more converse with men. Nay, Celsus himself affirms the same thing in effect, when he says, that the power which seemed to reside in Christians, proceeded from the use of certain names, and the invocation of certain demons. Origen remarks on this passage, that the author doubtless hints at those Christians who put to flight evil spirits, and healed those who were possessed with them; a fact which had been often seen, and which he himself had seen, as he declares in another part of his discourse against Celsus. But at the same time he assures us, that this miraculous power was exerted by the use of no other name but that of Jesus, to which were added several passages in his history, but nothing like any invocation to demons.

III. Celsus was so hard set with the report of our Saviour's miracles, and the confident attestations concerning him, that though he often intimates he did not believe them to be true, yet, knowing he might be silenced in such an answer, provides himself with another retreat, when beaten out of this, namely, that our Saviour was a magician. Thus he compares the feeding of so many thousands at two different times with a few loaves and fishes, to the magical feasts of those Egyptian impostors, who would present their spectators with visionary entertainments, that had in them neither substance nor reality which, by the way, is to suppose, that a hungry and fainting multitude were filled by an apparition, or strengthened and refreshed with shadows. He knew very well that there were so many witnesses and actors, if I may call them such, in these two miracles, that it was impossible to refute such multitudes, who had doubtless sufficiently spread the fame of them, and was therefore in this place forced to resort to the other solution, that it was done by magic. It was not enough to say, that a miracle which appeared to so many thousand eyewitnesses was a forgery of Christ's disciples, and therefore, supposing them to be eyewitnesses, he endeavours to show how they might be deceived.

IV. The uncontroverted heathens, who were pressed by the many authorities that confirmed our Saviour's miracles, as well as the unbelieving Jews, who had actually seen them, were driven to account for them after the same manner: for, to work by magic, in the heathen way of speaking, was in the language of the Jews to cast out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. Our Saviour, who knew that unbelievers in all ages would put this perverse

sense.

interpretation on his miracles, has branded the malignity of those men, who, contrary to the dictates of their own hearts, started such an unreasonable objection, as a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and declared not only the guilt, but the punishment of so black a crime. At the same time he condescended to show the vanity and emptiness of this objection against his miracles, by representing that they evidently tended to the destruction of those powers, to whose assistance the enemies of his doctrine then ascribed them. An argument which, if duly weighed, renders the objection so very frivolous and groundless, that we may venture to call it even blasphemy against common Would magic endeavour to draw off the minds of men from the worship which was paid to stocks and stones, to give them an abhorrence of those evil spirits who rejoiced in the most cruel sacrifices, and in offerings of the greatest impurity; and, in short, to call upon mankind to exert their whole strength in the love and adoration of that one being, from whom they derived their existence, and on whom only they were taught to depend every moment for the happiness and continuance of it? Was it the business of magic to humanise our natures with compassion, forgiveness, and all the instances of the most extensive charity? Would evil spirits contribute to make men sober, chaste, and, temperate and, in a word, to produce that reformation, which was wrought in the moral world by those doctrines of our Saviour, that received their sanction from his miracles? Nor is it possible to imagine, that evil spirits would enter into a combination with our Saviour to cut off all their correspondence and intercourse with mankind, and to prevent any for the