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"multitude of those who believed it; who by their "sermons and their actions, by their public of"fices and discourses, by festivals and sacraments, "by arguments of sense and experience, by rea"son and religion, by persuading rational men, " and establishing believing Christians, by their living in the obedience, and dying for the testimony of Jesus, have greatly advanced his king"dom, and his power, and his glory, into which "he entered, upon his resurrection from the "dead."

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Thus we have taken such a view, as the usual time allotted to discourses of this kind will allow us to take, of the evidence for our Lord's resurrection, predictive and historical; to the completion of which, it is hard to conceive any thing wanting, unless it were the testimony of the adversary to the truth of the disputed fact, by the futility of an objection started to overthrow it. And with this proof likewise the Roman guard, under the direction of the Jewish rulers, has thought proper to furnish us. "The dis

Bishop TAYLOR's Moral Demonstration of the Truth of Christianity, republished, since this Discourse was written, by a learned and amiable prelate of our church. May it meet with the success it deserves; for no tract ever came from the pen of man better calculated to dispel those doubts and difficulties which may arise in the mind of a believer, or to work conviction and conversion in that of the unbeliever, who can bring himself to give it a fair and attentive perusal. This has ever appeared to me to be its true character, since the hour when, with equal surprise and pleasure, I first met with it, where it so long lay hid den from the fashionable world, in the Ductor Dubitantium.

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ciples," say they, "came by night, and stole him away, while we slept." The disciples came and stole the body! They who all forsook their Master at his apprehension, and fled; they who from that time had absconded, for fear of the Jews, without hope, without courage, without contrivance, became all at once subtile in council, and daring in execution. They projected a plan to displace the guard, break the seal, remove the stone, and rescue the body, in order to persuade the world, that their Master was risen from the dead. And all this they effected, not with the precipitation of men engaged in a bad design, who feared a discovery, and would therefore have hastily seized the body, wrapped as it was in the sepulchral vestments; but with all the composed sedulity of domestics, carefully disentangling it from the linen clothes, and then depositing them in the exactest order. It is now proper to inquire where were the soldiers appointed to watch the sepulchre, all this while? What were they doing? The answer is ready; they were asleep. Notwithstanding the rigour of the Roman discipline, and the care that would doubtless be taken, to select proper men upon this great occasion, yet the disciples came and stole the body, "while they slept." But did they indeed sleep? Did they all sleep? Determine then, ye Jews and infidels, what degree of credit is due to the testimony of men concerning what happened, when, by their own confession, they were asleep! This idle tale, which thus carries its own confutation with it, could have been the offspring only of a corrupt and

infatuated Sanhedrim, to whom the watch told what had happened-not that the disciples came and stole the body while they slept--but that, while they were half dead with fear, at beholding the heavens around them in a blaze of glory, and feeling the earth under them trembling from its centre, the Galilean arose from the dead, to the confusion of all his enemies. But to stifle this evidence, and prevent the report from spreading, the soldiers had large money given them by the chief priests (and indeed the work deserved the wages) to propagate a story so absurd and shameless, that, instead of invalidating the truth of the resurrection, it is of itself sufficient to make any man believe it, who was before determined to the contrary.

If, therefore, the patriarchs, the law, and the prophets; if heaven and earth; if angels from above, and the dead from beneath; if the appearances of Christ himself on earth and from heaven; if the Spirit of truth, with all his gifts and graces; if the miracles of the apostles, the lives of the saints, the sufferings of confessors, and the deaths of martyrs; if the conversion of the world to the faith of a crucified Saviour, without power, wealth, or learning; if the church, with the antiquity, universality, and consent of her institutions and services for above seventeen centuries, from the day on which Christ was first seen by the eleven after his resurrection, to this hour in which we are now assembled for the commemoration of it; and lastly, if the objections of the adversary establishing the truth which they were intended to

subvert; that is to say, in one word, if all the evidence which God can give, or man receive, be sufficient to prove a matter of fact; then may we evermore rejoice, and evermore let us therefore rejoice, in all the glorious consequences of the proposition in the text-" the Lord is risen indeed."

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PHILIPPIANS, III. 20, 21.

From whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

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THE text treats of a most amazing change to be one day wrought in the bodies of men, as also of the person who is to effect it, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ. And indeed, "we trusted it had been he "who should have redeemed Israel" from all his troubles. But are we strangers in Jerusalem, "and know not the things that have come to pass "there in these days;" that this same Jesus, falsely accused, through envy, by the nobles of Judah, has been cast into the den of lions, with a stone brought and laid upon the mouth of the den, and sealed with a signet, that the purpose might not be changed concerning him, nor any possibility remain

a Dan. vi. 17.

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