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jections that might be started, industriously pre

vented them.

It is not enough therefore to see that the Christian religion is every way becoming the wisdom and nature of God, and highly conducive to the perfection and happiness of man, unless we can also satisfy ourselves of the truth of the fact that it was indeed revealed from heaven. And I doubt not to assert it as a thing certain from manifold experience, that the more fully persons inquire into the evidence of this fact, the more nicely they sift, and the more scrupulously and minutely they examine its several proofs, the more substantial and convincing will they always find them.

Another thing that will present itself to the inquiry of a considerate and knowing mind, as necessary to be canvassed, is, whether this revelation has not been superseded by a later. The Jews affirm that theirs is the only religion revealed from heaven. Christians acknowledge the truth of their revelation; but at the same time allege that far the greater part of the things therein enjoined are set aside by the new revelation made to them. Is there no one of a yet more modern date to which the Christian ought to yield? A very large part of the world make pretences to such a revelation, and would obtrude the Koran upon us, as what ought to take place in the room of our gospel. But the more impartially we examine the contents of that book, and the methods by which a professed belief of it has been enforced and propagated, so much the less proofs shall we find of its being a divine revelation. If war, bloodshed, slaughter, and desolation, carried on for no end but the making converts and

proselytes, can be evidence of the truth of a religion; if the drawn sword, pointed at a man's breast, can be a natural and proper means to convince his mind, divest him of his errors, and shew him the truth; then may we entertain favourable sentiments of Mohammed and his religion. But if these are methods repugnant to nature and truth; if these terrify and confound, but not instruct men; if they darken the mind, instead of enlightening it; if they make men hypocritically profess what they neither do nor can believe; then may we firmly persuade ourselves that the Christian revelation still continues in its full force, and that the pretences of the Musselmen are all groundless.

To go through each of these three inquiries in so full and distinct a manner as a subject of this nature ought to be treated, and to answer all the objections that have been raised, would take up much more time than the honourable founder has allotted to any one person in the preaching of this Lecture. I shall confine myself therefore to the second inquiry, and lay before you those proofs which convince me that the Christian religion is in fact a divine revelation.

No one, I think, pretends to deny that Christianity has been now openly and publicly professed for 1700 years and upwards; and were it denied, it is the easiest thing imaginable to shew it by turning to the histories of every age during that period. How great a part of the world professed this religion when Constantine the Roman emperor became a Christian, no one who has looked into the accounts of his life and times can be ignorant. How very numerous the Christians were in the province of

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Bithynia, in the reign of the emperor Trajan, Pliny is an undeniable witness. Suetonius and Tacitus inform us with what severity the followers of Christ were treated before this under Nero. But if we ascend a little higher, and consult the histories of Julius Cæsar, or his successor Augustus, or of any princes contemporary with or elder than them, we find not a word of any such religion, or of the persons who professed it. Hence is it most evident, that the relation given us in our sacred books of the rise of Christianity exactly corresponds with what we are able to gather concerning it from other authors; and it is plainly demonstrable from heathen writers, that the time fixed by the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, for its first appearance and progress in the world, is the very time in which it began, and no other.

As the five books I have now mentioned are the only genuine sacred books which give us a clear, distinct, historical account of the original success of the Christian religion, so the wonderful facts related therein must, I think, be readily acknowledged by all to be in themselves the most likely means to spread and propagate it: and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to conceive how it should in so short a time gain the ground it did, if these facts had not been true. If indeed we take them for granted, that is, if there were prophecies delivered to the Jewish nation many ages before concerning the MesIsiah who was to come; if these all centered in and described the blessed Jesus; if there were various miraculous appearances preceding and attending his birth; if he had open and express attestations from heaven of the truth of his mission; if he healed the

sick, cleansed the leprous, gave sight to the blind, cured the paralytic, and this at a word's speaking, and sometimes at a distance; if he raised to life those who had been some time dead; if, according to his own prediction, he arose himself from the dead on the third day; if he foretold several things as difficult to be foreseen as this, and which exactly answered in the event; if his disciples after him did more and greater miracles than he himself had done; if they wrought these wonderful works, not for the space of one or two years only, but upwards of thirty years together, not in small villages, but the greatest and most populous cities; if the whole Jewish nation, and multitudes that came from all countries to Jerusalem, were witnesses of these things; if they performed them not in Judæa only, but in every even the most distant parts of the world, whither they went to preach the gospel; if these facts, I say, are taken for granted by us, it is no difficult matter to conceive how the Christian religion should in the course of a few years be spread through the vast extent of the Roman empire, and much beyond it. But if we will not admit the truth of these facts, I think it is utterly impossible for the wit of man to invent any probable account how it came to pass that this religion was so soon and so widely propagated as we find it was.

We learn both from Jewish and heathen writers, that the Author of this religion underwent the disgrace of a public execution, due only to the vilest of malefactors and Christians themselves have always openly professed that he suffered the painful and ignominious death of the cross. How strong a prejudice must this raise in the minds of all against

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embracing it! how great an aversion to it! what an invincible obstacle must this have been to its spreading and prevailing, had not those extraordinary and miraculous means before mentioned been made use of to that end! and even those, when heard of only by a distant rumour, but not seen, not examined into, and thoroughly understood, might give persons no very agreeable idea of the Christian religion, being represented by its enemies as the effects of sorcery. Hence it was, I am persuaded, that Tacitus and Suetonius were led to pass the harsh censures they do upon this religion and its professors. It was natural for persons, who would not give themselves the trouble to sift this affair to the bottom, to conclude that a Roman governor would not have condemned Christ to so cruel a death, had he not been a criminal that highly deserved it; and to take it for granted, that all who could list themselves under such a wretch as their teacher and master, must be as wicked as himself; and that none but the worst of mankind could deify and worship one who had been deservedly punished with the death of the vilest slave. It is possible they might also think that nothing but an invincible love to the wicked, detestable arts of sorcery, which he had taught them, could induce them to adhere to him. Is it any wonder that persons who took up with opinions so injurious, so foreign from the truth, should speak ill of Christians and their religion? This, however, may convince us what prejudices prevailed, and that nothing but the most glaring evidence of the con

a Exitiabilis superstitio, Tac. Superstitionis maleficæ, Suet. Epithets very usually affixed to the magical arts.

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