demonstrated the divine mission of Jesus Christ. To it, as a proof the most valid, and unexceptionable, our Lord referred the Jews, and therefore, to it, as the great fundamental, Matthew and John appealed: they proved it by declaring that they had conversed with Jesus Christ after he arose from the sepulchre; and when that was proved, there could be no dispute about any thing else. The divinity of the Christian religion, and the ascension and glory of their Lord, rest on this base. All the blessings likewise of the gospel, regeneration, our resurrection, and life eternal, are ascribed by the apostles, Peter and Paul, to the resurrection of Christ; and for these reasons, to be sure, when John had described his Lord's resurrection, he added, and many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life through his name.' We must allow then, that the account of the ascension by Luke and Mark, may be authentic, though not mentioned by Matthew and John.

"In the next place, St. John is not totally silent as to the ascension of our Lord. In his sixth

chapter, ver. 62, it is written What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was

before?' and in the 7th chapter, ver. 39th. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe in him should receive. For the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.' Here most certainly the apostle speaks of the ascension of his Master, and though he did not write the history of it, yet, not obscurely, says the thing was to be; which confirms the accounts of St. Luke and St. Mark. And since, in the 14th and 15th chapters of St. John, ver. 16 and 26, the apostle declares, that Jesus foretold he would send to them, his disciples, the Comforter or Holy Spirit from the Father, after his ascension to heaven; and that the apostles demonstrated by miracles, after the death of their Lord, that they had received this Comforter or divine Spirit, it follows, that the ascension and glorification of Jesus is as much asserted and confirmed by the gospel of St. John, as if that apostle, like Luke, had wrote the history of it. This is evident to me, and I think, it is not possible to dispute it.

"The sum of the whole is, that the prejudices of the pious, and the arts of the crafty and interested, have defaced the true gospel of Christ, and substituted human notions and consequences in the place of divine revelation: but let us strip the sacred records of the false glosses and systems,

with which the theorists have covered it, and allow the enemy, that the apostles, sometimes wanting the unerring spirit of their Master, were liable to slight mistakes, and inadvertencies, in the representation of ordinary events; that they did, sometimes, by too great an affection for their Master's doctrine, strain some things, and cite prophecies that did not relate to Jesus in any sense at all;* let this be done to remove incumbrances, to clear

Let us now see, says a great man and upright Christian, what use the enemies of Christianity have endeavoured to make of the prophecies, as the evangelists apply them; and what answer the truth of the case will oblige us to give to them.

They assert that the foundation of the Christian religion is laid by the evangelists, on the proof of this point, that the mission and character of Jesus were foretold by the prophets; and that the validity of this proof depends entirely on the force of those particular prophecies which the same evangelists have applied to the illustration of it, in their several gospels. Upon this hypothesis, the enemy undertakes to shew, that the prophecies, so applied by them, do not at all relate to Jesus, in their proper and literal signification, but only in secondary, typical, and figurative sense: but then this way of interpreting them is equivocal, precarious, and incapable of yielding any rational satisfaction; and of consequence Christianity has no foundation. Such

up difficulties, and to answer objections otherwise unanswerable, and the writings of the apostles will

is the use the enemy make of the prophecies applied by the evangelists.

In truth, if we admit that Christianity has no other foundation than what its enemies assign it, it might not perhaps be difficult for them to make good the rest: for upon that supposition, many objections are thrown in. our way, which it is scarce possible to get rid of. But while they fancy themselves to be demolishing foundations, they are battering only such parts of the edifice, as serve for its ornaments rather than its support: and had the enemy gone farther, and shewn that some of the prophecies cited by Matthew did not relate to Jesus in any sense at all, they would have done no more than what some of the primitive fathers, as well as modern critics had done before them, without designing or doing the least hurt to Christianity.

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Jesus declared in general, that Moses and the prophets had testified of him but since the evangelists did not think it necessary to give a precise account, or deduction of the several prophecies, which were alleged by him in proof of that declaration, it is sufficient to take it, just as we find it, without thinking ourselves obliged to defend all the particular instances or applications, which were offered afterwards in support of it by fallible men. Whiston, in his Literal Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies, has produced forty-five prophecies from the Old Testament, which are cited in the New, in proof

appear to be a globe of light from heaven; to irradiate the human understanding, and conduct the

of the Messiahship of Jesus, and which he declares to have been clearly and directly fulfilled, without the least pretence of any reply from any author whatsoever. Now if any number of these, how small soever, are found to be as clearly accomplished, as he takes them to be, they are sufficient to support the authority of the gospel, though all the rest were thrown aside.

But to say the truth, the grounds of our faith, in these latter ages of the church, do not lie in the particular interpretations of prophecies, made by men, who might be mistaken, and who, as Jerome says more

St. Jerome is one of the four great doctors of the Latin church, who support the magnificent bronze chair of St. Peter, in this saint's church in Rome. The other three doctors are St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory. Great might be the piety of those doctors, for any thing I can say to the contrary: but this is certain, from their writings, that they did not understand Christianity.

St. Jerome, born at Stridon, in Dalmatia, in the year 340; was a hot, abusive man, and quarrelled even with St. Augustin. In his disputes, he is more like a madman than a saint, and ever in the wrong. He wrote comments on all the prophets, Ecclesiastes, St. Matthew, and the epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon; but they are sad stuff in respect