till the judges and public officers had been changed; and till people had been less attentive to their depositions?

(9.) Consider the PLACE where the apostles bore their testimony to the resurrection.

Had they published this event in distant countries beyond mountains and seas, it might have been supposed that distance of place, rendering it extremely difficult for their hearers to obtain exact information, had facilitated the establishment of the error. But the apostles preached in Jerusalem, in the synagogues, in the prætorium : they unfolded and displayed the banners of their master's cross, and set up tokens of his victory, in the very spot on which the infamous instrument of his sufferings had been set up.

(10.) Consider the MOTIVES which induced the apostles to publish the fact of Christ's resurrection.

It was not to acquire fame, riches, glory, or profit-by no means. On the contrary, they exposed themselves to sufferings and death, and proclaimed the truth from a conviction of its importance and certainty. Every where they were hated, calumniated, despised, hunted from city to city, cast into prison, scourged, stoned, and crucified. And for what were all these excruciating sufferings endured? Gain, honour, and pleasure, are the only gods to which impostors bow. But of these the apostles acquired, and plainly laboured to acquire neither. What then was the end for which they suffered? Let the infidel answer this question.

"As they gained nothing, and lost every thing, in the present world; so it is certain that they must expect to gain nothing, and suffer every thing, in the world to come. That the Old Testament was the word of God, they certainly believed without a single doubt. But in this book, lying is exhibited as a supreme object of the divine abhorrence, and the scriptural threatenings. From the invention and propagation of this falsehood, therefore, they could expect nothing hereafter, but the severest effusions of the anger of God. - For what, then, was all this loss, danger, and suffering incurred? For the privilege of telling an extravagant and incredible story to mankind, and of founding on it a series of exhortations to repentance, faith, and holiness; to the renunciation of sin, and the universal exercise of piety, justice, truth, and kindness; to the practice of all that conduct, which common sense has ever pronounced to be the duty, honour, and happiness of man; and the avoidance of all that which it has ever declared to be his guilt, debasement, and misery. Such an end was never even wished, much less seriously proposed by an impostor. At the same time, they lived as no impostors ever lived; and were able to say to their converts, with a full assurance of finding a cordial belief of the declaration, Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily, and justly, and unblameably, we behaved ourselves among you that believe. That this was their true character is certain from the concurrent testimony of all antiquity. Had they not nobly recorded their own faults, there is not the least reason to believe that a single stain would have ever rested upon their character. If, then, the apostles invented this story, they invented it without the remotest hope or prospect of making it believed; a thing which was never done by an impostor; propagated it without any interest,

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without any hope of gain, honour, power, or pleasure, the only objects by which impostors were ever allured; and with losses and sufferings, which no impostor ever voluntarily underwent proposed as their only end, or at least the only end which has ever been discovered to mankind, an object which no impostor ever pursued or even wished; and, during their whole progress through life, lived so as no impostor ever lived; and so as to be the most perfect contrast ever exhibited by men, to the whole character of imposition."

11. Lastly, the Miracles performed by these witnesses in the name of Jesus (one of which has already been noticed,) and in confirmation of their declaration concerning the resurrection of Jesus, are God's testimony to their veracity.

No subject was ever more public, more investigated, or better known, than the transactions of the apostles. Luke, an historian of great character, who witnessed many of the things which he relates, published the Acts of the Apostles among the people who saw the transactions. It would have blasted his character to have published falsehoods which must instantly be detected: it would have ruined the character of the church to have received, as facts, notorious falsehoods. Now the Acts of the Apostles were written by Luke, receiv ed by the church, and no falsehood was ever detected in that book by Jew or Gentile. The primitive Christian writers attest its truth and authenticity, and heathen authors record some of the important facts which are related by the evangelical historian. In the second chapter, we are informed that the apostles, who were known to be unlearned fishermen, began to speak the several languages of those people, who at that time were assembled at Jerusalem from different countries. When the people were astonished at this undoubted proof of inspiration, the apostles thus addressed the multitude: Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know this Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. To the gift of tongues, as a proof of inspiration, was added a number of undoubted miracles, in confirmation of this testimony concerning Jesus Christ. These miracles are related in the Acts of the Apostles, and were published among the people who witnessed them. They were not, like the miracles of Christ, confined to Judæa or Galilee, but they were performed wherever the Gospel was spread, before Jews and Heatheus indiscriminately, and with the express design of confirming their mission from their master. Their miracles too were subjected, like those of Christ, to the most rigorous investigation; and their adversaries and persecutors were compelled, as we have already seen,2 to admit them as facts, and to acknowledge among themselves that their publicity rendered it impossible to deny their reality. There was no want of inclination among the chief men of Judæa to deny the apostolical miracles: but the public notoriety of the facts rendered such a denial impossible. Though they did not hesitate to persecute the Christians, their persecution was vain. The people who heard the narra

1 Dwight's System of Theology, vol. ii. p. 529.

2 See p. 197.200, 201. 265. supra.

tives and doctrines of the apostles, and who saw that both were confirmed by unquestionable miracles, neither did nor could resist their conviction: and the church daily received new accessions of converts, so that within thirty years after Christ's resurrection one of those apostles appealed to it as a well known fact, that the Gospel had been carried into all the countries of the then known world. (Col. i. 6.)

"Collect," says the eloquent Saurin, to whom we are indebted for some of the preceding observations, "Collect all these proofs together: consider them in one point of view, and see how many extravagant suppositions must be advanced, if the resurrection of our Saviour be denied. It must be supposed that guards, who had been particularly cautioned by their officers, sat down to sleep; and that, nevertheless, they deserved credit when they said the body of Jesus Christ was stolen. It must be supposed that men who had been imposed on in the most odious and cruel manner in the world, hazarded their dearest enjoyments for the glory of an impostor. It must be supposed that ignorant and illiterate men, who had neither reputation, fortune, nor eloquence, possessed the art of fascinating the eyes of all the church. It must be supposed, either that five hundred persons were all deprived of their senses at a time, or that they were all deceived in the plainest matters of facts; or that this multitude of false witnesses had found out the secret of never contradicting themselves or one another, and of being always uniform in their testimony. It must be supposed that the most expert courts of judicature could not find out a shadow of contradiction in a palpable imposture. It must be supposed that the apostles, sensible men in other cases, chose precisely those places and those times, which were most unfavourable to their views. It must be supposed that millions madly suffered imprisonments, tortures, and crucifixion, to spread an illusion. It must be supposed that ten thousand miracles were wrought in favour of falsehood, or all these facts must be denied. And then it must be supposed that the apostles were idiots, that the enemies of Christianity were idiots, and that all the primitive Christians were idiots."

When all the preceding considerations are duly weighed, it is impossible not to admit the truth of Christ's resurrection, and that in this miracle are most clearly to be discerned the four first of the criteria already illustrated. And with regard to the two last criteria, we may observe, that baptism and the Lord's Supper, together with the observance of the Lord's Day, were instituted as perpetual memorials of the death of Jesus Christ. They were not instituted in after-ages, but at the very time when the circumstances to which they relate took place; and they have been observed without interruption through the

1 Saurin's Sermons, translated by Mr. Robinson, vol. ii. serm. viii. p. 221. The reader who is desirous of investigating all the circumstances of our Saviour's resurrection, will find them considered and illustrated in Mr. West's well-known Treatise on the Resurrection, in the late Dr. Townson's Discourses, originally published in 1792, 8vo. and reprinted in the second volume of his works, and most recently and elaborately in Dr. Cook's "Illustration of the General Evidence of Christ's Resurrection." 8vo. 1808.

whole Christian world, in all ages, from that time down to the present. Besides, Christ himself ordained apostles, and other ministers of his Gospel, to preach and administer the sacraments, and that always, "even unto the end of the world." (Matt. xxviii. 20.) Accordingly, they have continued to this day; so that the Christian ministry is, and always has been, as notorious in point of fact, as the tribe of Levi among the Jews. And as the æra and object of their appointment are part of the Gospel narrative, if that narrative had been a fiction of some subsequent age, at the time of its fabrication no such order of men could have been found, which would have effectually falsified the whole story. The miraculous actions of Christ and his apostles being affirmed to be true no otherwise than as there were at that identical time (whenever the deist will suppose the Gospel history to be forged,) not only sacraments or ordinances of Christ's institution, but likewise a public ministry of his institution to dispense them; and it being impossible, upon this hypothesis, that there could be any such things before they were invented, it is as impossible they should be received and accredited when invented. Hence it follows, that it was as impossible to have imposed these miraculous relations upon mankind in after-ages, as it would have been to make persons believe they saw the miracles, or were parties concerned in the beneficial effects resulting from them, if they were not.

X. Such is the diversified and authentic testimony for the miracles recorded in the Scriptures, especially those related in the New Testament and as the various parts of which this proof of the inspiration of the Bible consists, are necessarily placed at some distance from each other, we shall conclude this branch of the evidence by a brief recapitulation of the scattered arguments, together with a few original suggestions. If then we have found, after a minute investigation, that the miraculous facts which are proposed for our belief, and upon the credit of which a particular system of doctrines and precepts depends, are such, 1. As do not imply a self-contradiction in them :- 2. If they appear to have been done publicly, in the view of a great multitude of people, and with the professed intention of establishing the divine authority of the person or persons who performed them: -3. If they were many in number, instantaneously performed and independently of second causes, frequently repeated, and repeated for a series of years together:- 4. If they were of an interesting nature in themselves, of such a nature that the senses of mankind could clearly and fully judge of them, likely to have made strong impressions on the minds of all who beheld and heard of them, and, for that reason probably, were much attended to, talked of, and investigated at the time when they were wrought:-5. If public ceremonies were instituted in memory of the miraculous facts, and have been observed in all succeeding ages ever since they were so instituted :—6. If the effects produced by them were not transient, but lasting; such as must have existed for many years, and were capable, all the while, of being disproved if they were not real:-7. If they were committed to writing at, or very near, the time when they are said to have been

done, and by persons of undoubted integrity, who tell us that they had been eye-witnesses of the events which they relate; by persons, who, having sufficient opportunity of knowing the whole truth of what they bear testimony to, could not possibly be deceived themselves; and who, having no conceivable motive nor temptation to falsify their evidence, cannot, with the least shadow of probability, be suspected of intending to deceive other people:-8. If there be no proof, nor well-grounded suspicion of proof, that the testimony of those, who bear witness to these extraordinary facts, was ever contradicted even by such as professed themselves open enemies to their persons, characters, and views, though the facts were first published upon the spot, where they are said to have been originally performed, and among persons, who were engaged by private interest, and furnished with full authority, inclination, and opportunity, to have manifested the falsity of them, and to have detected the imposture, had they been able: 9. If, on the contrary, the existence of these facts be expressly allowed by the persons who thought themselves most concerned to prevent the genuine consequences which might be deduced from them; and there were, originally, no other disputes about them, but to what sufficient cause they were to be imputed:-10. If, again, the witnesses, from whom we have these facts, were many in number, all of them unanimous in the substance of their evidence, and all, as may be collected from their whole conduct, men of such unquestionable good sense, as secured them against all delusion in themselves, and of such undoubted integrity and unimpeached veracity, as placed them beyond all suspicion of any design to put an imposture upon others, -if they were men, who showed the sincerity of their own conviction by acting under the uniform influence of the extraordinary works which they bore witness to, in express contradiction to all their former prejudices and most favoured notions; in express contradiction to every flattering prospect of worldly honour, profit and advantage, either for themselves or for their friends; and when they could not but be previously assured that ignominy, persecution, misery, and even death itself most probably would attend the constant and invariable perseverance in their testimony:-11. If these witnesses, in order that their evidence might have the greater weight with a doubting world, (each nation being already in possession of an established religion,) were themselves enabled to perform such extraordinary works, as testified the clear and indisputable interposition of a divine power in favour of their veracity; and, after having undergone the severest afflictions, vexations and torments, at length laid down their lives, in confirmation of the truth of the facts asserted by them: - 12. If the evidence for such miracles, instead of growing less and less by the lapse of ages, increases with increasing years:- - 13. If those persons, who both testify and admit them, seem, on the one hand, to aim at nothing else but their own salvation and that of their brethren; and, on the other hand, if they are persuaded that their salvation is inconsistent with imposture and deceit :- 14. If great multitudes of the contem