being sent to jail, that "God wrought special miracles by the hand of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick, handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out from them."—Acts xix. 12.

Here again is an egregious atopism.-How could St. Paul have aprons? or what use could Jews have of pocket handkerchiefs? Are we to forget that their sleeves and beards answered all the purpose, and saved washing?

We are at full liberty to have our mirth out at the story of St. Bartholomew possessing the faculty of becoming invisible, and appearing and disappearing, as the cause of the gospel required, because that story rests only on the authority of the apostolic history of Abdias, a few pages further on than our canonical Acts of the Apostles has continued to make extracts from it; but had it been introduced, as many arguments would have been adduced by our clergy to justify it, and as great peril of incarceration incurred for snuffing at it, as at precisely the parallel story of St. Philip, who, in the canonical part of the book, is described as riding in the air, as picked up by the Spirit of the Lord in one place, and popped down in another (Acts 8. 40).

That no such persons as the Twelve Apostles ever existed.

Thus the glorious company of the apostles, having glistened upon the world's darkness like the sparks on a burnt rag, go out in like manner, leaving no more vestige of their existence, or of any effect of the miraculous powers with which they are believed to have been invested, than "the bird's wing on the air, or the pathway of the keel through the wave." No credible history whatever recognizes the existence of any one of them, or of any one result of all their stupendous labours and sufferings. The very criterion miracle itself, the most critical and important of all, that which if not true, leaves not so much as a possibility that any other should be so-the miracle of the gift of tongues, not only has no one particle of concurrent evidence in all the world to make it credible, or even to make it conceivable, but absolutely breaks down and gives way, and is attended by positive demonstration of its falsehood, even in the immediate context of the legend which relates it. In sequence, on the passage which instructs us that the assembled apostles were by the immediate power of God "enabled to speak all the languages of the earth in a moment of time," and thus

unquestionably must have been rendered the most consummate and accomplished scholars that ever lived, we find Peter and John, the most distinguished of them, in the next scene, brought before the magistrates as notorious tricksters and cheats, and then and there availing themselves of their supernatural gift of eloquence to no better effect, than to show that they were unlearned and ignorant men, (Acts iv. 13).

The Arabian Nights Entertainments are more consistent. Consult the records of history, and what has become of these most extraordinary personages that ever existed, if indeed they ever existed? Not only their names are no where to be found, but the mighty works which should have perpetuated their names have no records. The churches which they are said to have founded, have all shared the fate of Alladin's castle: the nations which they converted, have all relapsed into idolatry; the light that was to lighten the Gentiles, only served to introduce the dark ages. Not only chronology and history withhold all countenance from the fabulous adventures of these fabulous personages, but geography itself recoils from the story; not only were there no such persons as themselves, and no such persons as the kings and potentates whom they are said to have baptized and converted, but no such countries, cities, and nations as many of those in which they are said to have achieved their mightiest works. Like their divine Master, their kingdoms were not of this world. Where, for instance, was the country of the Magicians, of the Amazons, of the Acephali, the Monoculi, and the Salamanders? Where but in the same latitude with Brobdignag and Lilliputa ?

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE ARGUMENT OF MARTYRDOM.

From the self-evident absurdity of all arguments drawn from miracles, which could be of avail only to those who witnessed them, and even to them of no further avail than to make them stare and wonder, but. to leave them in as great ignorance as ever as to the what then, or what inference, from an unaccountable fact to the truth or falsehood of an unaccountable doctrine, divines have been driven upon the dernier resort of a desperate attempt to connect

Christianity with a species of historical evidence arising from the argument of martyrdom..

Accordingly, in the latest or at least most popular treatise on the Evidences of Christianity which is now read in our universities, and generally appealed to as exhibiting the whole stress of the cause set in the best light, and shown to the utmost advantage, the whole burthen is laid on these two propositions :

First, "That there is satisfactory evidence that many professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct."

Second Proposition. "That there is NOT satisfactory evidence that persons pretending to be original witnesses of any other similar miracles, have acted in the same manner in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts."*

Such are the specific propositions on which the whole fabric of the evidences of Christianity is raised, by that great master "of thoughts that are just, and words that are beautiful," whose name and authority were urged to justify the cutting off from society of one whose only offence was, that he availed himself of thoughts quite as just, in words as beautiful, leading only to diametrically opposite conclusions.

Not to quarrel with the logic of these propositions, nor waste a moment's indignation on the apparent insult offered to the acutest sensibilities of our nature, in thus couching conditions involving the eternal happiness or misery of man, in terms whose laxity of purport and indefiniteness of sense could intend no other drift than to evade conclusion, to disappoint solicitude, and to defeat examination;

We apply at once to this whole argument of martyrdom, these two grand conflicting propositions :

First, That sufferings undergone by the first preachers of Christianity is not the kind of evidence which we have

* Paley's Evidences of Christianity.

+ Words of Sir James Scarlett, sold to the prosecution of the Author in the Court of King's Bench, October 24, 1827.

a right to expect that the good and gracious Father of mankind should have given to a revelation which he was pleased to make;

Second, That it is absolutely not true, that the first preachers of Christianity did undergo any sufferings whatever in attestation of the accounts which they delivered.

In still briefer proposition, the argument of martyrdom is not true; and it would be good for nothing, if it were

true.

I. That Martyrdom is not the kind of evidence which we have a right to expect.

Against this first and primordial consideration of the business, a most preposterous and absurd war of nonsense and insolence is generally raised, to shelter and protect the desolation of the Christian argument. "Nay, but O man, who art thou, that repliest against God? What right have we to demand that God should give to his revelation just such evidence as we please to think necessary?"

To all which sort of language, though disgracing the style of authors who have acquired the fame of critics, scholars, and rational men, on all other subjects, we have only to bid observance be awake to the petitio principii, or entire begging of the question, which it involves. For they who write or preach on the evidences of the Christian religion, must at least be supposed to hold out that they have some reasons or arguments to offer, which shall induce men who before did not believe, to become believers; or those who before did in some degree believe, to believe with a stronger degree of conviction than they otherwise would: (which is a branch of the same general purpose) and to acquit themselves in the discharge of that duty which the apostolic injunction hath bound upon them-i. e. to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them, with meekness and fear.* But such an answer is a veto upon all reason, and a complete admission of entire inability to give one; and, instead of indicating any disposition of meekness, is little short of an assumption to themselves of the most unqualified infallibility; and brings their logic into a circle, which all rational men know at once to be downright idiotcy. For not only must they maintain that the evidence

* 1 Pet. iii. 15.

was therefore proper, because it is such as God has been pleased to give, but that God has been pleased to give it, because it was proper: thus assuming to themselves that very right which they impugn, and exercising that prerogative which they hold to be the highest pitch of impiety when claimed by other persons, or exercised to other ends than their's.

And this, their argumentum in circulo, is spun upon the pivot of another sophism in logic, the assumptio ex post facto. The propriety and sufficiency of their evidence would never have been dreamed of, if it had not been that such, and none other, was the best evidence they had to pretend; and any other evidence whatever that they had chosen to pretend, they could just as well have pretended to be the proper and sufficient evidence as this.

The impropriety of the argument as it respects the character of God.

A moment's conscientious reflection must surely lead any rational mind to a conviction how essentially immoral and unfit, and how egregiously irrelevant and inconclusive any such sort of evidence to a divine revelation must be, and make the very most of it, and concede the very utmost in its favour. Is it in the compass of invention to conceive any thing more UNWORTHY OF GOD? more disparaging and subversive of all respectful and honourable apprehensions, which, whosoever believeth that there is a God at all, ought to entertain and cultivate in his mind? Or was there ever in the world a conceivable worse example of injustice and cruelty, than that involved in the supposition of the Almighty Governor of the universe choosing out his best and most accepted servants to send them on a message, the faithful delivery of which should bring on them the most horrible sufferings, and most cruel deaths? What else is a Moloch? or Belial? What other notion can we have of a demon? What dye of grimmer blackness can be added to that monster of your conceit, whom you have described as dealing thus with those who love and serve him best: whom you pourtray as a tyrant, whose commissions are fatal to those who hold them, who pays his best servants with bloody wages, whose embassies of peace are borne on vulture's wings, whose charities are administered in works of destruction, whose tender mercies are cruel ?

And what relevancy, pray, after all, between the suffer