happinefs of millions. This caufe renders the reprefentations of hiftory, with respect to religion, defective and fallacious, in a greater degree than they are upon any other fubject. Religion operates moft upon those of whom history knows the leaft: upon fathers and mothers in their families, upon men fervants and maid fervants, upon the orderly tradefman, the quiet villager, the manufacturer at his loom, the hufbandman in his fields. Amongft fuch, its influence collectively may be of inestimable value, yet its effects in the mean time of little, upon thofe who figure upon the ftage of the world. They may know nothing of it: they may believe nothing of it; they may be actuated by motives more impetuous than those which religion is able to excite. It cannot, therefore, be thought ftrange, that this influence fhould elude the grafp and touch of public hiftory; for what is public hiftory, but a register of the fucceffes and difappointments, the vices, the follies, and the quarrels, of those who engage in contentions for power?"

The conclufion contains, as it ought, a clear and able fummary of the preceding arguments. We fhould be glad for the fake of public utility, to extract the whole, but on account of its extent muft content ourselves with felecting the moft material part:

"The truth of Chriftianity depends upon its leading facts, and upon them alone. Now of thefe we have evidence which ought to fatisfy us, at least until it appear that mankind have ever been deceived by the fame. We have fome uncontefted and inconteftible points, to which the hiftory of the human VOL. XXXVI.

More

fpecies hath nothing fimilar to offer. A Jewish peafant changed the religion of the world, and that, without force, without power, without fupport; without one natural fource or circumftance of attraction, influence, or fuccefs. Such a thing hath not happened in any other inftance. The companions of this perfon, after he himfelf had been put to death for his attempt, afferted his fupernatural character, founded upon his fupernatural operations; and, in tef timony of the truth of their affertions, i. e. in confequence of their own belief of that truth, and, in order to communicate the knowledge of it to others, voluntarily entered upon lives of toil and hardship, and, with a full experience of their danger, committed themfelves to the last extremities of perfecution. This hath not a parallel. particularly, a very few days after this perfon had been publicly executed, and in the very city in which he was buried, these his companions declared with one voice that his body was reftored to life; that they had feen him, handled him, eat with him, converfed with him; and, in pursuance of their perfuafion of the truth of what they told, preached his religion, with this ftrange fact as the foundation of it, in the face of those who had killed him, who were armed with the power of the country, and neceffarily and naturally dif pofed to treat his followers as they had treated himfelf; and having done this upon the pot where the event took place, carried the intelligence of it abroad, in defpite of difficulties and oppofition, and where the nature of their errand gave them nothing to expect but derifion, infult, and outrage. This is without example. Thefe three facts, I think, are cer

tain, and would have been nearly fo, if the Golpels had never been written The Chriftian ftory, as to thefe points, hath never varied. No other hath been fet up against it. Every letter, every difcourfe, every controverfy, amongst the followers of the religion; every book written by them, from the age of its commencement to the prefent time, in every part of the world in which it hath been profeffed, and with every fect into which it hath been divided, (and we have letters and difcourfes written by contemporaries, by witnefles of the tranfaction, by perfons themfelves bearing a fhare in it, and other writings following that age in regular fucceffion) concur in reprefenting thefe facts in this manner. A religion, which now poffeffes the greatest part of the civilized world, unqueftionably fprang up at Jerufalem at this time. Some account muft be given of its origin, fome caufe af figned for its rite. All the accounts of this origin, all the explications of this caufe, whether taken from the writings of the early followers of the religion, in which, and in which perhaps alone, it could be expected that they fhould be diftinctly unfolded, or from occafional notices in other writing of that or the adjoining age, either exprefsly allege the facts above ftated as the means by which the religion was fet up, or advert to its commencement in a manner which agrees with the fuppofition of thefe facts being true, which renders them probable according to the then state of the world, and which teftifies their operation and effects.

"Thefe propofitions alone lay a foundation for our faith, for they prove the exifience of a tranfaction,

which cannot even in its most gene•* ral parts be accounted for upon any reafonable fuppofition, except that of the truth of the miffion. But the particulars, the detail of the miracles or miraculous pretences (for fuch there neceffarily must have been) upon which this unexampled tranfaction refted, and for which thefe men acted and fuffered as they did act and fuffer, it is undoubtedly of great importance to us to know. We have this detail from the fountain head, from the perfons themfelves; in accounts written by eyewitnefles of the fcene, by contemporaries and companions of those who were fo; not in one book, but four, each containing enough for the verification of the religion, all agreeing in the fundamental parts of the hiftory. We have the authenticity of thefe books established by more and ftronger proofs than be long to almoft any other ancient book whatever, and by proofs which widely diftinguifh them from any others, claiming a fimilar authority to theirs. If there were any good reafon for doubt concerning the names to which these books are af cribed, (which there is not, for they were never ascribed to any other, and we have evidence not long after their publication of their bearing the names which they now bear, their antiquity, of which there is no queftion, their reputation and authority amongst the early difciples of the religion, of which there is as little, form a valid proof that they muft, in the main at leaft, have agreed with what the first teachers of the religion delivered.

"When we open these ancient volumes, we difcover in them marks of truth, whether we confider each in itself, or collate them with one

another..

another. The writers certainly knew fomething of what they were writing about, for they manifeft an acquaintance with local circumflances, with the hiftory and ufages of the times, which could only be long to an inhabitant of that country, living in that age. In every narrative we perceive fimplicity and undefignedness; the air and the language of reality. When we compare the different narratives together, we find them fo varying as to repetall fufpicion of confederacy; to agreeing under this variety, as to fhew that the accounts had one real tranfaction for their common foundation: often attributing different actions and difcourfes to the perfon whofe hiftory, or rather me moirs of whofe hiftory, they profefs to relate; yet actions and difcourfes fo fimilar, as very much to befpeak the fame character; which is a coincidence, that, in fuch writers as they were, could only be the confequence of their writing from fact, and not from imagination."

After the account we have given, it is hardly neceffary to fay, that we

ftrongly recommend this work to general perufal. We think the au thor has very happily executed what he profeffes to have been his defign. "To preferve the feparation Between evidences and doctrines as inviolable as he could: to remove from the primary queftion all confiderations which have been unne ceffarily joined with it; and to offer a defence of Christianity, which every Christian might read, without feeing the tenets in which he had been brought up attacked or decried:" he adds, " It always afford"It ed a fatisfaction to my mind, to obferve that this was practicable; that few or none of our many controverfies with one another affect or relate to the proofs of our religion; that the rent never defcends to the foundation." To this book then let the doubter or the deift have recourse; and when he has fatisfied himself, as here abundantly he may, of the irrefragable evidence of the whole, let him carefully confider the facred books themfelves, and adopt as doctrines whatever he finds there delivered.

THE