And the apostles must know what they taught, to be lies, if it was so; because they spoke of those things which they had both seen and heard, had looked upon and handled with their hands, &c.*

Neither can it be said, that they perhaps might have proposed some temporal advantages to themselves, but missed of them, and met with sufferings instead of them; for if it had been so, it is more than probable, that when they saw their disappointment, they would have discovered their conspiracy; especially when they might not only have saved their lives, but got great rewards for doing of it. How improbable, then, is it, that not one of them should ever have been brought to do this?t

But this is not all. For they tell us, that

*Acts iv. 20. 1 John i. 1.

If you believe, that the gospel is the production of human deceit; and yet, that in the prodigious number of apostates once concerned in carrying on the amazing villany, such as Judas, Demas, Simon Magus, Alexander the coppersmith, who did St. Paul much evil, &c. not one was ever found, that would prove the forgery: might you not as reasonably be. lieve, that if there were two violent parties in a state, and that one of them had been guilty of some egregious villany, which was known to many of the other party, yet that none of the latter could be prevailed upon to disclose and prove it to the world?.

their Master bid them expect nothing but sufferings in this world. This is the tenor of all that gospel which they taught: and they told the same to all whom they converted. So that here was no disappoint

ment.

For all that were converted by them, were converted upon the certain expectation of sufferings, and bidden prepare for it. Christ commanded his disciples to take up their cross daily, and follow him; and told them, that in the world they should have tribulation; that whoever did not forsake father, mother, wife, children, lands, and their very lives, could not be his disciples; that he who sought to save his life in this world, should lose it in the next.

Now, that this despised doctrine of the cross should prevail so universally, against the allurements of flesh and blood, and all the blandishments of this world, against the rage and persecution of all the kings and powers of the earth, must show its original to be divine, and its protector almighty. What is it else could conquer without arms, persuade without rhetoric, overcome enemies, disarm tyrants, and subdue empires, without opposition?*

*The sacred pen-men, the Prophets and Apostles, were holy, excellent men, and would not; art

VIII. We may add to all this, the testimonies of the most bitter enemies and persecutors of Christianity, both Jews and

less, illiterate men, and therefore could not, lay the horrible scheme of deluding mankind. The hope of gain did not influence them, for they were selfdenying men, that left all to follow a Master, who had not where to lay his head, and whose grand, initiating maxim, was, Except a man forsake all that he huth, he cannot be my disciple. They were so disinterested that they secured nothing on earth but hunger and nakedness, stocks and prisons, racks, and tortures; which indeed was all that they could, or did expect, in consequence of Christ's express de clarations. Neither was a desire of honour the mo tive of their actions; for their Lord himself was treated with the utmost contempt, and had more than once assured them, that they should certainly share; the same fate: Besides, they were humble men, not above working as mechanics for a coarse maintenance, and so little desirous of human regard, that they exposed to the world the meanness of their birth and occupations, their great ignorance. and scandalous falls.

Add to this, that they were so many, and lived at, such distance of time and place from each other, that had they been impostors, it would have been, impracticable for them to contrive and carry on a forgery without being detected. And as they neither would, nor could deceive the world; so they neither could nor would be deceived themselves: For they were days, months, and years, eye and ear witnesses of the things which they relate; and when they had not the fullest evidence of important facts, they insisted upon new proofs, and even upon sensible demonstrations; as, for instance, Thomas, in

Gentiles, to the truth of the matter of fact of Christ; such as Josephus and Tacitus ; of which the first flourished about forty

the matter of our Lord's resurrection, John xx. 25. And to leave us no room to question their sincerity, most of them joyfully sealed the truth of their doc trines with their own blood. Did so many and such. marks

But veracity, ever meet in any other authors?

while they lived, they confirmed their testimony by a variety of miracles, wrought in divers places, and for a number of years; sometimes before thousands of their enemies, as the miracles of Christ and his disciples; sometimes before hun dreds of thousands, as those of Moses. These miracles were so well known and attested, that when both Christ and Moses appealed to their authenti city, before their bitterest opposers, mentioning the persons upon whom, as well as the particular times when, and the places where, they had been perform ed; the facts were never denied, but passed over in silence, or maliciously attributed to the Prince of the Devils. By such a pitiful slander as this, Porphyry, Hierocles, Celsus, and Julian the Apostate, those learned and inveterate enemies of Christianity, endeavoured (as the Pharisees had done before them) to sap the arguments founded upon the miracles of Christ and his disciples So sure then as God would never have displayed his arm, in the most astonishing manner, for the support of imposture, the sacred pen-men had their commission from the Almighty, and their writings are his lively ora cles.

To conclude: If the gospel (and consequently the scripture) is an imposture, you suppose that some poor Galilean fishermen, only by means of an absurd lie, which they told without wit, and wrote without

years after the death of Christ; and the other about seventy years after. So that they were capable of examining into the truth, and wanted not prejudice and malice sufficient to have inclined them to deny the matter of fact itself of Christ. But their confessing to it, as likewise Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian the Apostate, the Mahometans since, and all other enemies of Christianity that have arisen in the world, is an undeniable attestation to the ruth of the matter of fact.

IX. But there is another argument more trong and convincing than even this matEr of fact; more than the certainty of what

egance, foiled the multitude of the Jewish and Pagan priests, who had prejudice, custom, possession, learning, oratory, wealth, laws, governors, and emperors on their side; yea, and truth also, upon your principles, at least when they decried the gospel as a cheat. Would it be more ridiculous to believe, that David killed Goliah, with a grain of sand, and cut off his head with a spire of grass or that our sailors sink men of war with a puff of breath, while our soldiers batter down ramparts with snowballs.

O ye sons of worldly wisdom, drop your unjust prejudices; candidly weigh both sides of the question, and you will soon see, that in rejecting the gospel as an imposture, you display a far greater degree of credulity, than we do in cordially receiv ing .

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