highly exafperated at this proceeding, they would never have suffered him to publish that as one of the laws of Mofes, which they knew to be a mere forgery.

If we go farther back into the Jewish history, we shall still be unable to pitch upon any time in which any material change

in the facred books could have been attempted, with the leaft prospect of fuccefs. It was one of the most earneft inftructions of Mofes himself, that the book of the law, a copy of which was lodged in the ark, fhould be the fubject of conftant reading and meditation in every Ifraelitifh family; and it was exprefsly appointed that it should be read publicly every feven years, at the feaft of Tabernacles, Deut. xxxi. 9, 13; and the Levites, who were difperfed through all the twelve tribes, were particularly appointed to study and to explain it to the rest of the nation; and, notwithstanding the times of defection and idolatry, they were never intirely without prophets, and even many thousands of others, who continued firm in

the

the worship of the true God, and therefore must have retained their regard to the facred books of the Law.

As to the alarm of king Jofiah and his court, on finding a copy of the Law in the temple, it may be accounted for many ways better than upon the fuppofition of that being the first copy of all, either impofed upon the king, or impofed by him upon the people; neither of which could poffibly have been effected. It is not improbable, but that this particular copy might have been the original one, which had been taken out of the ark, and mislaid, in fome former idolatrous reign; and the paffages which they read might contain fome awful denunciations against idolatry, to which they had given but little attention before. Whatever we may conjecture with respect to this particular fact, it can never be thought in the leaft probable, that a nation fo prone to idolatry as the Ifraelites were, from the time of their fettlement in the land of Canaan to the Babylonith captivity, fhould either forge, or not detect and expofe the forgery of

books

books pretending to fo high authority, and fo hoftile to their favourite propenfity.

Upon the whole, the Jews have, no doubt, acted the part of most faithful and even fcrupulous guardians of their facred books, for the ufe of all the world in the times of christianity. After the laft of their prophets, Malachi, they admitted no more books into their canon, fo as to permit them to be read in their fynagogues, though they were written by the most eminent men in their nation; it being a maxim with them, that no book could be entitled to a place in the canon of their fcriptures, unless it was written by a prophet, or a perfon who had had communication with God.

That the fcriptures of the Old Teitament have not been materially corrupted by the Jews fince the promulgation of chriftianity, notwithstanding it is thought that, out of enmity to christianity, they attempted it in a few paffages, (though it was more with refpect to the Septuagint Greek than the original Hebrew) is evident from the many prophecies

prophecies still remaining in their fcriptures, concerning the humiliation and fufferings of the Meffiah, in which the chriftians always triumphed when they difputed with the Jews. Thefe paffages, therefore, we may affure ourselves, would have been the first that the Jews would have practised upon, if it had been in their power, or in their inclination to do it.

All the books of fcripture have alfo many internal marks of their being the genuine production of the ages in which they are faid to have been written, as they contain fo many allufions to particular perfons, places, opinions, and cuftoms, which are known, from other allowed hiftories, to have exifted in thofe times; and the hiftorical incidents which the facred writers occafionally mention, are fufficiently agreeable to other authentic accounts; the variations being no greater than fuch as are to be found in other genuine hiftories of the fame period. This branch of the evidence of christianity has alfo been particularly illuftrated by Dr. Lardner.

SECTION

1.

SECTION II.

Of the evidence from teftimony in favour of the chriftian revelation.

TAK

AKING it for granted that the books of feripture are the genuine productions of the perfons and times to which they are ufually afcribed, I fhall proceed to confider the value of the evidence which they contain, for thofe facts, on which the truth of the Jewish and christian religions depends, beginning with the latter.

We find in the books of the New Teftament, and especially the four Evangelifts, and the book of Acts, not only that twelve perfons who are called apostles, but that thousands of others were witneffes of a continued course of miracles performed by Jefus Chrift, during the whole courfe of his ministry; especially that he was actually put

to