political events, is not to be admitted; if a verdict is to be returned openly affronting every principle by which the course of human affairs is regulated, and the judgments of men directed, the true occasion of so great a violence should be placed in the light. And no other account of the strange anomaly can be given than this, namely, that the supposition of the resurrection of the dead, which is the centre fact affirmed in these books, and which must bear all the burden of the argument, offers a greater outrage to reason than the rejection of the clearest and fullest evidence that history has ever accumulated. Unless then it be thought by us a thing incredible that God should raise the dead,' there remains not even a pretext for questioning the authenticity of the Gospels and Epistles, the proof of which, in every separate part of it, FAR EXCELS that of the best authenticated historical record of antiquity."

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NOTE II. (Page 31.)

The following passage from the great Richard Bentley, is well deserving of a place here, in corroboration of what I have stated :"The result of the whole is, that either, à posteriori, ALL ancient books, as well as the sacred, must now be laid aside as "uncertain and precarious" [the terms used by Collins, on whom he is animadverting]; or else say, à priori, that all the transcripts of sacred books should have been privileged against the common fate, and exempted from all slips and errors whatever. Which of these our writer and his new sect will close with, I cannot foresee. There is, in each of them, such a gust of the paradox and the perverse, that they equally suit with a modern Free-thinker's palate.....

"If a corrupt line or dubious reading chances to intervene, it does not darken the whole context, nor make an author's opinion or his purpose precarious. Terence, for instance, has as many variations as any book whatever, in proportion to its bulk and yet, with all its interpolations, omissions, additions or glosses, (choose the worst of them on purpose,) you cannot deface the contrivance and plot of one play; no, not of one single scene; but its sense, design, and subserviency to the last issue and conclusion, shall be visible and plain through all the mist of Various Lections. And so it is with the SACRED TEXT. Make your thirty thousand as many more, if numbers of copies can ever reach that sum. All the better to a knowing and serious reader, who is thereby more richly furnished to select what he sees genuine. But even put them into the hands of a knave or a fool: and yet, with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity but that every feature of it will still be the same.

"And this has already prevented the last shift and objection, that Sacred Books, at least books imposed upon the world as Divine laws and revelations, should have been exempted from the injuries of time, and secured from the least change. For what need of that perpetual miracle, if, with all the present changes, the whole Scripture is perfect, and sufficient to all the great ends and purposes of its first writing? What a scheme would these men make! What worthy rules would they prescribe to Providence! That, in millions of copies, transcribed * Isaac Taylor's History of Transmission, pp. 236-238.

in so many ages and nations, all the notaries and writers, who made it their trade and livelihood, should be infallible and impeccable ! That their pens should spontaneously write true, or be supernaturally guided; though the scribes were nodding or dreaming! Would not this exceed all the miracles of both Old and New Testament? And, pray, to what great use or design? To give satisfaction to a few obstinate and untractable individuals.*

NOTE III. (Page 40.)

The admissions of even our opponents on the general excellency of the contents of the New Testament, especially as to its morality, and the perfection of the example of Jesus Christ, shew, with great plainness, how little a resort to objections against the morality of the book, will avail as an excuse for the rejection of its Divine authority.

Take the character of the founder of Christianity, the Lord Jesus Christ, as drawn by the pencil of Rousseau. The great beauty and force of the passage must be my apology for referring to what is so well known. But the passage will bear perusal more than once.

"I will confess to you, (writes this master mind,) that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the PURITY OF THE GOSPEL has its influence on my heart. Peruse the work of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple, and sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity in his manners! what affecting gracefulness in his delivery! what sublimity in his maxims! what profound wisdom in his discourses! what presence of mind in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation?-When Plato described his imaginary good man with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ; the resemblance was so striking that all the Christian fathers perceived it.

"What prepossession, what blindness must it be to compare the son of Sophroniscus to the son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion is there between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted, whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice; he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precept. But where could Jesus learn among his competitors, that PURE AND SUBLIME MORALITY, of which he ONLY has given us both PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE? The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophising with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed the weeping execuPhileleutherus Lipsiensis, pp. 111-114.

tioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes! if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus, were those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my friends, it bears not the marks of fiction; on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty, without obviating it: it is more inconceivable, that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.'

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Mr. Chubb made a somewhat similar acknowledgment, when he wrote, In Christ, we have an example of a quiet and peaceable spirit, of a becoming modesty and sobriety, just, honest, upright, and sincere; and above all, of a most gracious and benevolent temper and behaviour. One who did no wrong, no injury to any man, in whose mouth was no guile; who went about doing good, not only by his ministry, but also in curing all manner of diseases among the people. His life was a beautiful picture of human nature in its native purity and simplicity; and shewed at once what excellent creatures men would be, when under the influence and power of that Gospel which he preached unto them."+

Alas! the very purity of the book was the cause of its rejection, even where its Divine authority thus shone as a sunbeam.

* J. J. Rousseau, in his Works, vol. xxxvi. pp. 35-39, ed. Paris, 1788-1793. + Chubb's True Gospel of Jesus Christ, sect. 8, pp. 55, 56.

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