dently a man of great benevolence, and had a strong sentiment of friendship for his apoftles and others. And it cannot be fuppofed that such a person would purposely deceive and mislead his countrymen and friends. Impoftors have callous hearts. Intent upon their schemes, they are deaf to every other confideration.

Jefus gave many proofs of the strongest and tenderest affection. When he came within fight of Jerufalem, he wept over it, in the prospect of the calamities that awaited it. He wept at the grave of Lazarus; and his discourses to his apoftles a little before his death discover the most amiable fympathy, and concern, without the least regard to his own approaching fufferings. He was only occupied with the idea of what they would feel when he was removed from them. We fee nothing like this in the conduct of Mahomet.

Though Jefus affected no aufterity, he was free from all fenfual indulgence, which was by no means the cafe of Mahomet; and he certainly did not aim at temporal power, but refolutely declined feveral proposals of the multitude to make him a king. What, then,

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then, could an impoftor, without ambition, or perfonal indulgence, aim at? Jefus, being a man, must have had fome fuch objects as other men have; but there was nothing that other men moft covet that his conduct was at all adapted to gain. He muft, therefore, have had views of a higher nature. On any other hypothefis his conduct is abfolutely unaccountable; but, on the fuppofition of his being confcious of having a divine miffion, and of a station of honour and power destined for him in a future world, all his difcourfes, and his whole conduct, are perfectly natural. For the joy that was fet before him (Heb. xii. 2) he endured the cross, defpifing the fhame of that ignominious death; but that he should have done this without having had in view any thing that any other man ever thought worth pursuing, is not to be supposed of him, or of any man.

Let all these circumstances be duly confidered, the obfcure birth, and mean occupation, of Jefus, in a distant and despised country; his high pretenfions to be the Jewish Meffiah, without any affumption of kingly power, univerfally deemed to be most effential to that character; his claim to a kingdom,

dom, though not of this world, and to the power of railing the dead and judging the world, when he had nothing but the certain profpect of a violent death before him; his undertaking to overthrow all the religions of the heathen world, firmly attached as the several nations were to them, religions which had kept their ground from time immemorial, notwithstanding a long period now boasted of as the most enlightened of any till the prefent, when there had not been from the beginning of the world an example of any nation voluntarily changing their religion; his holding out to his difciples nothing but perfecution in this world, and happiness in another; his having no fecrets; his discovering no anxiety about the evidences of his divine miffion, joined with his calm good-sense, his exalted piety, his general benevolence, and the strong affection he always fhewed to his friends and followers;-let all these circumstances, I fay, be confidered, and, without attending to his miracles, and his success, it must furely be thought impoffible that this man could have been an impoftor, and meant to deceive the world. This internal evidence added to the external, on which I have al

ready enlarged, viz. from miracles, and prophecy, must be abundantly sufficient to fatisfy any reasonable and candid inquirer, with respect to the truth of Christianity, and of revealed religion in general.

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE XIII.

The Moral Influence of Chriftian Principles.

If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do JOHN xiii. 17.

them.

IN the Difcourfes which I have already delivered on the fubject of the evidences of revealed religion, I first endeavoured to fhew the value of religion in general, then the fuperior value of revealed religion, compared with that which is called natural. After this I After this I gave you a view of the state of the heathen world with refpect to religion, and to philofophy alfo as connected with religion; and the great fuperiority of the fyftem of Mofes, which has been most objected to by unbelievers, in both those refpects. I then proceeded to explain the direct, or external, evidence of the Jewish and Christian religions, from miracles, and from prophecy; and in the last place, as a

part