three persons from the dead, and two of them in the presence of a great number of persons, his enemies as well as his friends.

A miracle something similar to that of your forefathers being fed with manna, was his feeding first five thousand, and afterwards four thousand men, besides women and children, with a small quantity of provision. With respect to a mere command of the powers of nature, what could she w it more than his stilling a tempest, or his walking on the sea, in which there could be no artifice by which the spectators could be imposed upon? And though after his resurrection, he did not appear to all the people, he was repeatedly seen and examined by numbers of those who were best acquainted with him, and at one time by more than five hundred persons at once. At first his disciples had no expectation of ever seeing him again, and therefore could not have been pre-disposed to believe the fact; and afterwards they had leisure to converse with him, and examine him as particularly as they pleased; and in the presence of a great number of them he ascended into heaven. After this he appeared to one of the most inveterate enemies of his religion, Saul of Tarsus, who, being thereby convinced of the truth of Christianity, became a zealous preacher of it. Read the history, and you must perceive that it bears, in all respects, as evident marks of truth as that of Moses.

The obstinacy and incredulity of your nation in general, in the time of our Saviour and the apostles, may be satisfactorily accounted for on the principles of human nature, over which, motives of interest, ambition, and revenge, have often more influence than all other considerations. How often did the great body of your nation revolt from their allegiance to God, notwithstanding the clear and frequent proofs of his interposition! Within a very few days after the most express command, given from the mouth of God himself, in an audible voice from Mount Sinai, forbidding them to make any graven image, they made a golden calf, and bowed down before it.

Is it then any thing very extraordinary, that, chagrined as your ancestors were, disappointed in the humble appearance of Jesus, and stung by his severe, though just reproofs of their hyprocrisy and other vices, they were so far from hearkening to him, that they apprehended him, and put him to death and that they persisted in wreaking their vengeance on his followers? It is but too natural for interested, ambitious, and irritated men, to act as they did. But that

Jesus, who was so unlike what was expected of the Messiah, should have been received in that character by such numbers of your countrymen, cannot be accounted for but on the supposition that they had received the fullest satisfaction that his claim was well founded.

It is, indeed, hardly possible to account for the very pretensions of Jesus himself, on any principles but the fullest conviction in his own mind, that God had sent him. He was a man of virtue and integrity, if ever there was one; and, as appears by his whole history, he was no wild enthusiast, but of a very cool and temperate mind. Being a Jew as well as yourselves, he would naturally have the same notion of the Messiah that other Jews of his age had, and which you retain to this day. What then could have given him an idea of a spiritual, instead of a temporal kingdom? And what could have supported him under the terror of a violent death, to which he voluntarily surrendered himself, and which in his coolest moments he frequently expressed his deliberate intention of doing, in full confidence of being soon raised to life again, but the firmest persuasion that God was with him, and would carry him through his arduous undertaking?

Had Jesus been an impostor, like others by whom you have been imposed upon since, he would certainly have availed himself of the popular prejudices, instead of opposing them. He would have courted the leading men of his country, and not have irritated them against him; or at least would have secured a sufficient number of partisans among the common people; and at several periods of his history, and especially in the week in which he was crucified, they were much disposed in his favour. But he always himself opposed every attempt to make him a king.

If he had not been a good man, as well as fully persuaded of his divine mission, he would naturally have assumed the title and rank of a king, in order to gain followers; and having no expectation of a spiritual kingdom, or of any reward, in another life, he would never have been so foolish, or so mad, as to have submitted to die, when it was in his power to make his escape. For when those who were sent to apprehend him were struck with awe, and fell backward to the ground, (John xviii. 6,) he encouraged them, and voluntarily went with them, though he knew it was to certain death.

Had the scheme been that of the apostles, after the death of Christ, (as the object of it must have been their own emo

lument or honour,) they certainly made a very unnatural choice of a head, to whom all the honour was given; a man whose influence, whatever it was, must have expired with him, and whose name, as that of a crucified malefactor, could have been no credit to them. Besides, it is highly improbable that they, whose ambition led them to dispute, as we find they did, about precedency while their master was living, should live in the most perfect harmony, and jointly carry on the same scheme, after his death, with no bond of truth and integrity to keep them together.

Consider, then, I beseech you, the history of Christ, which is as authentic as that of Moses, or that of any of your prophets. The transactions of it, and of the period which fol lowed it, were "things not done in a corner." (Acts xxvi. 26.) And consider whether, as men of reason and understanding, you can account for the reception of Christianity in so great a part of the world, and especially by so many of your countrymen, and for its continuing to gain ground, and establish itself, notwithstanding the most violent opposition, both from the heads of your nation, and all the other powers of the world, on any other supposition than that of its having come from God.

Jesus Christ was not such a man as Mahomet, who pretended to no miracle besides the composition of the Koran, (which it certainly does not exceed the capacity of man to write,) and who propagated his religion by the sword. Christ and the apostles appealed to miracles of the most public nature, and had no means of propagating their religion but the evidence of its truth.

I have carefully perused the most celebrated of your writers against Christianity, and I do not find in any of them a due examination of the historical evidence for it. They have contented themselves with saying in general, that Christianity was received by very few of your countrymen, and those the lowest of the people; and that even among the Gentiles, the professors of it were not numerous before it was established by the power of Constantine.

Now a slight acquaintance with history would convince you that this was far from being the truth of the case. The history of the book of Acts (the authority of which was never disputed, any more than that of the books of Moses) shews that there were many thousands of Christian Jews in Jerusalem itself, presently after the death and resurrection of Christ, and many of them of considerable rank. And, according to other, the most authentic, accounts, there

appears to have been a large body of Jewish Christians, (generally called Ebionites,) residing chiefly in Syria, whither they had retired upon the approach of the Jewish war; and there were even several considerable writers among them. Of these I shall only mention Hegesippus, who wrote the history of the Christian Church, in continuation of the book of Acts; and Symmachus, who, besides translating the Old Testament into Greek, wrote a Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, in which he undertook to refute the story of the miraculous conception. They were also learned Jewish Christians of whom Jerome learned the Hebrew tongue.

As to the Christian Gentiles, it is well known that they were exceedingly numerous in all parts of the Roman empire; that they did not in general consist of the lowest of the people, but had among them many persons of wealth,, rank, and character, and that they endured several severe persecutions before the time of Constantine. Besides, how could this emperor, in a period which was full of civil dissension, and who, having had many competitors to contend with, must have had many more to fear, have safely changed the public religion of the Roman empire, if the minds of the people had not been well prepared for it, by their general profession, or at least good opinion, of Christianity?

Now what we maintain is, that this state of things (which no person acquainted with history can deny) could not have taken place without such evidence of the miracles and resurrection of Christ, as it was not in the power of those who had the best opportunity of inquiring into it, to resist.

In order to form a right judgment with respect to those facts on which the truth of Christianity depends, permit me to observe, that you must not (as too many of you, I perceive, do) confine yourselves to the reading of books written by your countrymen, but give due attention to Greek and Roman literature; by which only you can form a just idea of the state of things in the times in which Christianity was promulgated. It is well known that there are no Hebrew writings of that period now extant. But other nations have had writers and historians, as well as yours; and they are entitled to credit in proportion to the marks of good information and of veracity which they bear. Read, then, with attention the writings of the age in which Christianity was promulgated, and any others that are able to throw light upon it, and consider who they were that received Christianity, and who they were that rejected it. This, I am persuaded,

will satisfy you, that the work was of God, and therefore that it was in vain that the rulers of your nation, and of the world, opposed it.

LETTER IV.

Of the Doctrine concerning the Messiah.

You say that whatever miracles might have been wrought by Christ and his apostles, he could not be your Messiah, because he did not bear the proper characters of the Messiah, as they are laid down in the prophets. But I earnestly beg that you would re-consider those prophecies, and what is really said of the person who is distinguished by the title of the Messiah, or the anointed messenger of God. That particular title is not used (except by Isaiah, [xliv. 28, xlv. 1,] who gives it to Cyrus) by any of your prophets before Daniel, who applies it to a person who was to be cut off, and who assigns a term for that event, which must have been elapsed many centuries ago. (Dan. ix. 24.) For seventy weeks, (or a period consisting of as many years as seventy weeks contain days,) from the command to rebuild Jerusalem, which was then in ruins, must, on any computation, have expired about the time of Christ.

Your Rabbi Isaac, in his celebrated treatise entitled the Bulwark of the Faith, says, that the seventy weeks of Daniel are a period of four hundred and ninety years, to be reckoned from the word of God to Jeremiah concerning the return from the Babylonish Captivity, or from the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar, to its destruction by Titus. He also says, that Messiah, the prince, in the former part of the prophecy means Cyrus, who is called the Messiah, or the anointed, by Isaiah; and that by the Messiah who is to "be cut off," in the latter part of the prophecy, is meant the last king of the Jews, or Agrippa the younger, who is said by a spurious Josephus (never quoted by any writer before the twelfth century) to have been killed by Vespasian before the taking of the city.

But, to mention no more objections to this hypothesis, from the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar to that by Titus was a period of more than six hundred and fifty years; and king Agrippa was not cut off at all, but probably

Section xlii. (P.)