pofing them.

He would have courted the

leading men of his country, and not have irritated them against him; or at least would have fecured a fufficient number of partizans among the common people; and at feveral periods of his history, and especially in the week in which he was crucified, they were much difpofed in his favour. But he always himself opposed every attempt to make him a king.

If he had not been a good man, as well as fully perfuaded of his divine miffion, he would naturally have affumed the title and rank of a king, in order to gain followers; and having no expectation of a spiritual kingdom, or of any reward in another life, he would never have been so foolish, or fo mad, as to have fubmitted to die, when it was in his power to make his escape. For when those who were fent to apprehend him were struck with awe, and fell backward to the ground (John xviii. 6.) he encouraged them, and voluntarily went with them, though he knew it was to certain death.

Had

Had the scheme been that of the apostles, after the death of Chrift (as the object of it must have been their own emolument or honour) they certainly made a very unnatural choice of a head, to whom all the honour was given; a man whose influence, whatever it was, must have expired with him, and whofe name, as that of a crucified malefactor could have been no credit to them. Besides, it is highly improbable that they, whose ambition led them to difpute, as we find they did, about precedency while their master was living, fhould live in the most perfect harmony, and jointly carry on the fame scheme, after his death, with no bond of truth and integrity to keep them together?

Confider then, I befeech you, the hiftory of Chrift, which is as authentic as that of Mofes, or that of any of your prophets. The tranfactions of it, and of the period which followed it, were not things done in a corner (Acts xxvi. 26.) And confider whether, as men of reafon and understanding, you can account for the reception of chriftianity in fo great a part of the world, and especially

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efpecially by fo many of your countrymen, and for its continuing to gain ground, and establish itself, notwithstanding the most violent oppofition, both from the heads of your nation, and all the other powers of the world, on any other fuppofition than that of its having come from God.

Jefus Chrift was not such a man as Mahomet, who pretended to no miracle befides the compofition of the Koran (which it certainly does not exceed the capacity of man to write) and who propagated his religion by the fword. Chrift and the apostles appealed to miracles of the most public nature, and had no means of propagating their religion but the evidence of its truth.

I have carefully perused the most celebrated of your writers against christianity, and I do not find in any of them a due examination of the hiftorical evidence for it. They have contented themselves with faying in general, that christianity was received by very few of your countrymen, and thofe the loweft of the people; and that even among the gentiles, the profeffors of it were not numerous be

fore

fore it was established by the power of Constantine.

Now a flight acquaintance with history would convince you that this was far from being the truth of the cafe. The history of the book of Acts (the authority of which was never difputed, any more than that of the books of Mofes) fhews that there were many thousands of chriftian Jews in Jerufalem itself, presently after the death and refurrection of Chrift, and many of them of confiderable rank. And, according to other, the most authentic, accounts, there appears to have been a large body of Jewish chris tians (generally called Ebionites) refiding chiefly in Syria, whither they had retired upon the approach of the Jewish war; and there were even several confiderable writers among them. Of these I fhall only mention Hegefippus, who wrote the history of the chriftian church, in continuation of the book of Acts; and Symmachus, who, befides tranf lating the Old Teftament into Greek, wrote a Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, in which he undertook to refute the story D

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of the miraculous conception. They were alfo learned Jewish chriftians of whom Jerom learned the Hebrew tongue.

As to the christian Gentiles, it is well known that they were exceedingly numerous in all parts of the Roman empire; that they did not in general confift of the lowest of the people, but had among them many perfons of wealth, rank, and character, and that they endured several severe perfecutions before the time of Constantine. Befides, how could this emperor, in a period which was full of civil diffenfion, and who, having had many competitors to contend with, must have had many more to fear, have fafely changed the public religion of the Roman empire, if the minds of the people had not been well prepared for it, by their general profeffion, or at leaft good opinion, of christianity?

Now what we maintain is, that this state of things (which no perfon acquainted with history can deny) could not have taken place without fuch evidence of the miracles and refurrection of Chrift, as it was not in the

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