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the inftitutions of which it appears that they were remarkably prone, notwithstanding what they had fuffered in that country; and all the land of Canaan was under the dominion of a great number of petty kings or tyrants; whereas, it is obferved of the Ifra lites, before the times of Saul (by whofe appointment to be king they made an infringement in their original conftitution) that every man did what was right in his own eyes. Indeed, the civil government of the Hebrews was fo exceedingly favour..ble to liberty, virtue, and domestic happiness, as, confidering the many abfurd and iniquitious conftitutions of other nations, furnishes a very strong argument for its being of divine appointment.

Laftly, I fhill obferve, that the prophecies of the Old Teftament, which have been exactly fulfilled, fome of them long fince the books which contain them were tranflated into other languages, and difperfed all over the world, fully prove that the writers of them had divine communications. But this argument I referve for

a diftin&

a diftinct confideration, in favour of the whole fyftem of Jewish and chriftian revelation, as one.

The very pretenfions of Jefus Chrift, are a fufficient proof that there was fomething fupernatural in his cafe. Before his time the Jews had had no prophets for feveral hundred years, nor do they feem to have expected any before the appearance of the Meffiah, or his forerunner; and no Jew had no Jew had any idea of extending the proper kingdom of God to thofe who did not conform to the inftitutions of Mofes. How then fhould it ever have come into the head of any Jew, and efpecially a perfon fo obfcurely born, and fo privately educated as Jefus was, to affume more power than any of their former prophots, more than even Mofes himself had pretended to, and to act and fpeak from Ged by a more conftant and intimate kind of infpiration than any before him? How can it be fuppofed that any Jew fhould have formed the idea, or the wish, to fay nothing of the power of effecting a thing

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fo fundamentally contrary to any notion that was ever entertained by a Jew, whether, with respect to his character, he was

virtuous or vicious.

When the wifeft of the heathen philofophers entertained great doubts with respect to a future ftate, when the belief of it was almost worn out in the world, how can we account for Christ's preaching, with fuch fteadiness and affurance as he did, the doctrine not only of a future ftate, but of a refurrection, of which nothing in nature could have given any man the least idea, and yet to this refurrection Chrift referred all the hopes of his followers, and gave the fulleft proof of his own entire perfuafion concerning it, by calmly yielding himself up to death, in full confidence of rifing again from the dead in a very few days, as a proof of the divinity of his doctrine and miffion, and a pattern of a future and general refurrection. How, I fay, can we account for thefe extraordinary views, or this conflancy in the purfuit of them, but upon the fuppofition that Chrift was infpired,

and

and authorized by God in preaching and acting as he did?

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The rife of fo remarkable a religion as the chriftian, in the circumftances in which it made its first appearance, and also the invincible patience and fortitude of the primitive chriftians, in perfevering in the feffion of the gospel, notwithstanding the ridicule and fevere perfecution to which they were thereby expofed, both from the Jews and the reft of the world, and the readiness with which fuch numbers of them died martyrs to their profeffion, are easily accounted for on the fuppofition that chriftianity is true, but they muft certainly be puzzling facts to an unbeliever, who confiders the uniformity of human nature, how strong a conviction the conduct of the primitive christians implies, and what proofs are neceffary to produce that conviction; and this not in the cafe of a fingle perfon, for which no reafon would have been required, but of great numbers, not of Jews only, but of all nations of the world, Bb 3

and

and fome the moft learned and inquifitive of their age.

The time and manner in which the Jewish and chriftian revelations were promulgated, were fo admirably adapted to the state and circumstances of the world, and were fuch a seasonable check upon the diforders of it, as makes it exceedingly probable that a fcheme fo truly excellent, and so seafonably applied, could only proceed from the father of lights, and the giver of every good and perfect gift.

Abraham and his pofterity began to be diftinguished by God at the very time that the primitive religion of mankind began to degenerate into idolatry; fo that, for many ages, they bore their teftimony to the unity, the fupremacy, moral character, and government of God; and being fituated in the very center of the then civilized part of the world, they must have been fome check upon the prevailing idolatry, and the wickednefs which accompanied it. And, bad as the

ftate

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