Page images
PDF
EPUB

time the general belief of the Jewish nation, as it continues to be at this day. But what he afferted of himself being appointed to raise all the dead, and to judge the world, must have appeared in the highest degree extravagant, and revolting, without the most evident teftimonials of a divine authority for fuch high pretenfions. What could an impoftor, who must have known that he had no authority for fuch a claim, if fuch an idea could have been entertained by him (which, however, must be confeffed to be very improbable) have expected, but that, on the first hearing of such pretenfions, his audience would have turned from him with derifion. His pretending to a kingdom, and a kingdom not of this world, but in another, after he should be dead, was also more likely to expofe him to contempt, than to procure him refpect. And this declaration was made by Jefus when he was before a court of judicature, expecting immediate death. That, notwithstanding these circumstances, Jefus did not appear an object of contempt, but attracted the most refpectful attention, and had many difciples while living, and many more after he was dead, has furely in it something very extraordinary,

Y 2

dinary, and well deferving to be enquired into; great effects always implying great caufes. All these circumftances certainly fhew that Jefus was confcious to himself of having advantages fufficient to counterbalance all the disadvantages he lay under, and his fuccefs proves that he was really poffeffed of them.

3. Still more extraordinary was it that such a perfon as Jefus fhould have extended his views beyond his own country, as it is evident that he did when he directed his disciples to profelyte and baptize all nations, and when he foretold the universal spread of his religion, which, though inconfiderable in its rise, like a grain of mustard feed, or a small quantity of leaven, was deftined to embrace the whole world. No other Jew, of any rank or character, had talked in this manner before; and confidering the extreme contempt in which the Jews must have known that they were held by other nations, except by the few whom they had profelyted, any Jew muft have known that a person of his nation undertaking any thing confiderable, was likely to meet with the worst reception, and nothing more offenfive, or more hazardous, could have been undertaken by any man.

The

The object of the religion of Jefus was nothing less than to overturn all the established fyftems of religion then fubfifting in the world, fyftems always most intimately connected with civil policy, and as fuch most vigilantly guarded by all the power of the respective states, and, as was then univerfally thought, with the greatest reafon; it being taken for granted, that their temporal profperity depended upon the obfervance of the rites tranfmitted to all nations by their remote anceflors. The philofophers, who despised these rites, never ventured to hint at the propriety, or the fafety, of discontinuing them; and the few who incautiously spake with disrespect of them were charged with atheism, and had been put to death, or banished. We may, and justly do, laugh at the religion of the Greeks and Romans, and that of the reft of the heathen world, as systems of the most wretched fuperftition; but they were serious things with themselves; and befides their reputed facrednefs, and the general dread of a neglect of them, they mixed with all their habits of life.

In all ancient nations all occafions of joy or forrow, and almost every transaction of a

[blocks in formation]

civil nature, partook of their religion; but more especially was every feaion of festivity, to which they were moft paffionately attached, a religious act. Even the theatrical exhibitions of the Greeks and Romans, calculated to entertain perfons of the most refined tafte, as well as the feftivals of Bacchus and Venus, which gratified the lowest and most debauched of the vulgar, were equally in honour of their gods. Alfo all their most admired poems were with them, as with other nations, tinctured with their religion; fo that, without a knowledge of their religion, it is not now poffible to understand them, I cannot, indeed, give a juft idea of the extreme difficulty of the undertaking to over turn the religion of the feveral states of antiquity, without entering into a detail of par ticulars too long for any difcourfe. Only perfons well acquainted with antiquity will eyer conceive it.

This being the cafe, to change the religion of a people was, in a manner, to make them over again. To fubdue them by force of arms must have appeared much more easy. There is not, indeed, a single instance in all ancient hiftory of a nation changing their re

ligion from perfuafion or example. It is what the greatest calamities, and the approach of extermination, has not been able to effect. The cafe of the Jews is the only exception on record. For they were ever ready to adopt the religion of the neighbouring nations. But then their remote ancestors in Mefopotamia, according to Jofhua, and themfelves in Egypt, had been addicted to them, Though the Egyptians faw the inability of their gods to fave them from a series of the greatest calamities, and though the Canaanites found that theirs could not prevent their expulfion from their country, and their almost extermination, both the Egyptians and the remains of the Canaanites appear to have continued as much attached to their feveral religions as ever. They would rather suppose that their gods were angry with them, and had for that time deserted them, than imagine that they had not been able to defend them, or that the gods of other nations (whose power they never called in question) had in that particular prevailed over theirs. For no heathen nation in all antiquity excluded the agency of fuperior powers in any event, public or private. The events of battles, though

Y 4

« PreviousContinue »